the ship review

The ship is a first person murder mystery like multiplayer game built on the source engine. The plot is as follows. A large group of passengers have been invited onto a free cruise invited by a mysterious man called mr.x. Once far off shore Mr.X tells the passengers that in order to get back to civilization they have to murder a different assigned passengers and are awarded money for each successful murder.

The gameplay is very simple. It plays like half-life with an inventory system and needs. by needs i mean that your character has needs that have to be maintained, like using the bathroom, eating, sleeping, and social interaction. This adds a sims like quality to the game that I think is just for filler because it's usually just plain annoying. Having to worry about avoiding getting murdered while trying to murder your target keeps you on your toes and makes you think on how to avoid looking suspicious to hide from your pursuer.
(there is also a singleplayer mode with a fairly good storyline to it.)
I would highly recommend getting this game as it is inexpensive and very fun for killing time

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Bioshock review

Bioshock is a first person shoot that has received numerous awards for its ingenious plot and addictive gameplay. The year is 1960 you are a man named Jack who's origins are unknown. The opening cinematic shows you looking through his point of view at a gift in your lap while the first words play "They told me. Son your special, you were born to do great things. you know what? They were right." just as that finishes the plane goes down for unkown reasons. you decend into the ocean below watching the wreckage sink and almost getting sliced up by a propeller. As you reach the surface you are surrounded by the flaming wreckage of the plane and you start to swim towards a light house in the distance beginning your journey to rapture the underwater city where normal laws don't apply.

Rapture was made by Andrew Ryan who believed in a communist type of living where man should work for what he gets and no more or less. He also believed in scientific freedom and created rapture for those who wanted to do things such as the more frowned upon parts of genetic engineering. This led to the discovery of adam and then plasmids. Adam is described as a raw form of stem cells that when introduced into the body would find and replace stable cells with the unstable adam ones. Plasmids are serums made from adam that when introduced to the body re writes your genetic code allowing you to do amazing things such as shoot lightning out of your fingertips or gain the power to use mind control. This used EVE which is a modified version of ADAM  used to fuel the plasmids and is like plasmids injected into the blood stream through a needle.

The use of ADAM did come with side effects as seen on the common enemy in rapture called splicers. Splicers get there name from splicing their genes with too much adam eventually causing them to become horridly disfigured and lose their humanity, the only thing that gets them through each day is killing anything that moves and harvesting it's ADAM.

The gameplay holds up very well seeing as the game came out in 2007. The controls are very weird at first but you get used to them quite fast. The ominous atmosphere has you ever on your toes and a new creepy scene or shady looking dimly light room awaits you around every corner.

Opening cinematic (Note: I am not the creator of this video and all credit goes to its uploader caspa9141 and the creators of bioshock)

Battlefield 4 Beta

As of yesterday anyone who is a Battlefield 3 premium member or purchased a copy of battlefield 4 you got access to the beta. The bf4 beta features one map called Siege of Shanghai, where you battle through the streets of shanghai. This map was famous in their reveal trailer for a skyscraper that if it took enough damage would collapse and the skyscraper was replaced with a piles of rubble and hazy dust clouds.

What I like about Bf4 is the variability not only in the maps which would have things like multistory building access through elevators and being able to raise roadblocks on bridges as a foot soldier to block out tank and trucks from accessing the area until the enemy can overcome you and lower the blocks. The other variability is in the soldier and weapon customization. You are able to customize your soldiers camo (though its only cosmetic) to a large variable of parts to attach to your weapon from sights to barrel attachments and weapon grips.

The game play isn't much different from battlefield 3 but I feel like using a sniper rifle was easier but this may have been due to zeroing in the sniper rifles (zeroing in a sniper allows the scope to be adjusted to the range of what your aiming at so you don't have to account for bullet drop as much) the other classes assault, engineer, and support all have unique parts to their classes. Assault manly uses battle rifles and carbines with the gear being med kits and explosive devices. The engineer mainly uses pdw's (personal defence weapons) and has gear usually being vehicle repair tools or launched explosives (rocket launchers and such). And support uses light machine guns, varied explosives and ammo resupply boxes. And finally snipers use sniper rifles mainly (kind of obvious) and varied enemy detection devices (such as a hand thrown movement sensor) and hand explosives (i.e. c4)

overall i rate bf4 beta (keep in mind its not the full version of the game) a 7.8/10

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Kirbys Nightmare in Dreamland review

I have always been very fond of Kirby's Nightmare in Dreamland because it's one of the games I most remember playing when I was younger. The games plot is as follows. Kirby is sleeping when he realizes he isn't having any dreams so he ventures to the fountain of dreams which supplies all the dreams for the people in dream land. (the area Kirby lives in this game is called dream land) When he arrives Kirby is shocked to find king Dedede (one of the main villains/friends of Kirby) bathing in the fountain of dreams, and while doing so he broke the star rod which supplies power to the fountain which in turn supplies dreams. Kirby defeats him but before he can but the star rod back nightmares appear and steal the fountain and the rod, and now Kirby must venture off to save the fountain and star rod.

The gameplay is simple (mostly because there was only a d-pad and a and b buttons) you travelled through a few worlds each with a different theme (woods, ocean, mountain etc) each of the worlds have a few levels and then a boss level which again was themed to the world. (the boss of the woods world is a giant angry tree) until you finally made it to the last level and then eventually complete the game.

While at a young age you don't see much wrong with it a lot of Kirby universe can seem a little weird at times. Some people on the internet even go as far to say Kirby the cute squishy pink hero of the game is a xenophobe (someone with irrational fear or hate of people who look or act differently than themselves) because of his literally eating and killing every single creature that crosses his path (some of the enemies in the game don't even attack Kirby on purpose)

The game is actually a remake of a Nintendo Entertainment System game called Kirby's adventure. The only differences being a 32-bit game instead of 8-bit the color palate, some enemies being changed, and now when Kirby absorbed an enemy's power he got a little hat and sometimes a color change to represent the power (I.E. when he swallows a flaming enemy he gets a little redder and has a crown with fire coming out of it on his head)

(fun fact on all american Kirby games the boxart shows Kirby looking angry or frowning while in japan all the boxart shows him smiling and looking happy)

here are some pictures of the game in action:

payday 2 the continuation of a bank robbery game

A few years back a game called payday the heist was released by overkill software a slightly indie studio, shortly followed by an immediate cult following to the game. The reason being its uniqueness this game had one objective and that was to rob whatever place you were in of all its valuable. Now a few years later the sequel came out and with a multitude of improvements.

The four characters of the game are Dallas: a patriotic mobster like person who belives his ways as a robber is just another way to make money rather than criminal acts, Hoxton: The original hoxton was a short tempered young british man but for unknown reasons is mia in this game and is replaced with a rather lame sounding american man who is dallas' brother, next is chains at a younger age he could never stay out of trouble and at an older age was kicked from the marines due to his violent ways and was eventually hired by a criminal group leading to his joining of the payday gang. And finally wolf, wolf used to be a regular man he lived in sweden and owned a computer software company but after his company went bankrupt and his family left him wolf went insane and acted out robberies and other things of violence that he had seen in movies eventually leading to his realization that he liked that way of life.

Payday 2 starts off with you master planner (who calls himself Bain) welcomes you back from your vacation saying your "services" are needed once again and after getting your starting kit and a short but to the point tutorial you thrown into the game. The mission browser is stylized as a special network for criminals called crime.net and its here where you will select the heist you will take part in. After getting into a game or making one you wait a bit to have the game filled with other players and then once started you are taken to a briefing screen where you will get info on the heist its here that you also select your weapon and equipment to take along. The missions vary from a 1 day bank heist to (the longest ones so far only reaching 3 days days being individual missions inside the mission) and dealing with money and jewelry to making meth and transporting cocaine and even stealing paintings.

while the first game was an amazing work of art it was lacking a very major component, customization. The game had variablility in the placement of cameras, workers, guards, etc but there was no customization, this has definitely been fixed in payday2. To start there are about a dozen primary and a dozen secondary weapons each with weapon part customizations from sights to barrel extensions all of them show up as a unique model on the weapon in game too.And they also added mask customization to the game as well, now you can collect masks and customize their looks with materials patterns and colors which can lead to some very creative masks! all unlocks are aquired through a literal pick a card system at the end of each heist where longer and more difficult heist reward you with a rarer bounty than an easy short mission.

The gameplay is very tight the controls are very convenient and can be remapped to your liking if wanted. The enemies (fbi, swat, gang members, etc) come in waves with breathing time to secure loot heal yourself and scavenge for ammo between each wave. sometimes the ai is a little brain dead on easier missions but on the more difficult ones they seem to work fine (this will hopefully be improved on in a future update) Along with all of this the game is accompanied by the musical works of simon viklund who made the soundtrack for both of the payday games (and both soundtracks are definitely worth listening to!)

overall I would give payday 2 a 7.8/10 its a great game but it needs to improve a few things before it can truly reach its full potential.

a website used by players to plan out their skill trees http://www.pd2skills.info/

Pics:

From left to right: Hoxton, Dallas, Wolf, Chains
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some masks





A screenshot from the standard bank heist mission

just cause 2 multiplayer mod a chaotic calamity filled cluster f**k

The game is called just cause 2, its a highly addictive and fun free roaming third person shooting game with a high modability factor (meaning plenty of user made content for the game) in this case a very special mod indeed. Introducing just cause 2 multiplayer mod possibly one of the funnest and funniest things I have ever played! The original game just cause 2 was made as a single player only title with no online capabilities but thanks to a group of amazing people all that and more has been changed! After going through a simple setup and naming you character you get thrown into the just cause 2 world, except this time there are up to 5000 other people doing the same thing you are which is driving, flying, and blowing s**t up. The mod is still in beta but has a planned full release in this month or early october so as of currently the only way to play is to wait for a beta test (one is currently happening and ends this friday) while the game can be played by yourself its just not as fun without calling a friend on skype and flying a boat across a mountain range together (yes you read that right). which brings me to the next thing the modifiers in the game, by typing /boost into the chat box you get the option to adjust the speed of your boost, if maxed out you can pretty much fly anything i.e. cars over oceans) and also makes for some hilarious looking moments. The game also has activities constantly happening like races demolition derbys and deathmatches all of which will award you in game cash for completing them (money is also awarded for killing other players but only a small amount) this money can then be used to buy specific weapons, vehicles and player models for you to use. While the mod is great fun it has its fair share of problems the main one being random crashes. Just yesterday I was playing the game with a friend of mine and combined together the game crashed on us say 8-9 times and we played for about an hour and a half. Hopefully this annoyance will e fixed with full release and if not... it's still one of the best things I ever played below is a link to the mods website and some screenshots

website: http://www.jc-mp.com/

(please excuse any profanity in the text box as I had no control over what others playing the game at the time said and there is not an option to turn the text box off)

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Battlefield 3 a team based multiplayer experience

Hello I'm back from my summer vacation and i'm kicking it off with battlefield 3. I recently got this game from the humble origin bundle (now over) which is a bundle of ea games where all the proceeds go to charity (it raised over 10,000,000 all for charity)

Anyway battlefield 3 is the most recently fully released battlefield game in the ongoing series. The campaign story has you following Henry Blackburn a sergeant in the marine corps who is under interrogation about 2 missing nuclear missiles that was found in a mission he was on. The game play is nothing new but it is still executed in a very good way so the game feels smooth and the controls are easy to learn. The campaign was gripping and intense at some points, but at others a little frustrating.

The other game modes are co-op which has you and a friend defending objectives piloting choppers and being a part of a tank unit (vehicle sections usually have one person piloting and another utilizing some kind of gun. To encourage players to play co-op it has exclusive unlocks in the form of weapons that can be used in the competitive multiplayer.

Multiplayer  has your average game modes (i.e. control points team death match capture the flag etc) but they are all very fun and addictive to play. control points (called conquest) has two teams (always Russians and united states) fighting of the ownership of 3 to 6 control points, team death match is basically what it sounds like its two teams fighting to wipe out the enemy team first and capture the flag (do i really need to explain this one?) the game while fun seemed a little lacking in its base form where it felt like the amount of maps to play on were a little on the short side and some maps felt too similar to be considered different to me. (there are 5 downloadable content packs which I will do reviews on soon) overall I give the game an 8/10 and highly recommend giving it a try especially since you can pick it up for a cheap price nowadays.