Friday, December 21, 2012

Game review: The Walking Dead

Hello ladies and gents!
Today I'll be talking about comic-oriented game called The Walking Dead.

 A bit about the game and developers.
The Walking Dead the game was made and published by telltale games studios. They are the same guys behind few other very famous and, as I heard, good games such as Tales of Monkey Island, Sam & Max seasons and few more.
Now, before I allow you to read my review, I want to tell you all that The Walking Dead TV Show is currently my favorite TV series, and therefore i was very assured that this game will ruin it all for me. I was wrong!

About Gameplay. 
Since The Walking Dead is more show than a game, there is not much to say about it's gameplay. This game is all about the story. Which I'll be writing about later. The Walking Dead is a puzzle game in which you have to react very fast. It's all about your own decisions. You don't move around the area too much by yourself, but when you do, you need to solve an easy puzzle. And by that I mean that you need to find out how to start a train, how to remove the wagon from the front part of the train,  how to kill few zombies without them seeing you and so on and on. It's easy but it does tend to get slightly tricky.

You also need to interact with your fellow "crew" members and ask for their opinions, thoughts and so on and on. In some scenarios you even need to decide which person should you save while letting the other one die.
 This game is more a show than a game to be honest. As stated before, you rarely ever move around. You are mainly stuck in cinematic which you can't skip because you have to chose something that you want Lee to say. Or you just decide to stay quiet and let the game take its course.

Very great thing about this amazing game is that story is tailored by the choices you make. Those who know me in real life, or at least those who spent some time to talk to me online know that I am actually a pretty good fella. And therefore, all my choices in game were always nice. Of course, that was not the best thing to do, but hey, that's what I'd do.

Choosing who to save and who to leave is the hardest aspect of this game. I'm a guy so, of course, I always chose females. Sometimes that was wrong. I'm sure that if I was making some other choices that the story of my game would be a bit different, and therefore I'll re-play it once i get home from Czech!

Graphic and Audio
Graphically speaking, The Walking Dead is very different than anything I've ever seen so far. I'm used on games with cartoony graphic such as League of Legends or Dungeon Defenders, and I'm also used on games that have "old cartoony" graphic, such as World of Warcraft, but this.. This game has something unseen. Comic book graphic! Everything in this game looks exactly as how it should look in a comic book! This makes it very unique. Songs in this game are very quiet. They are just "background noises", while you can listen to the wind, thunders and zombie moans. Zombie moans do, indeed, sound very great! Though, I didn't expect anything less from a game that got Game of the Year award!

Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
Okay so as i said in gameplay section, this game is all about Story, so be sure to skip it if you do not want any spoilers! In this game you start out as a killer who is going to jail because he killed a man who slept with his wife. His name (the guy that you play as) is called Lee. He was a teacher before all this happened. As you are heading out of Atlantic City you come across a zombie. You run over him and then fall off the road. I won't tell you many details because I think that it wouldn't be fun like that.

Anyway, after the crash you get into one house to search for help where you find one small girl. She decides to join you in your journey since you promised to look for her parents. Outside of her house, you find two guys who then take you to Hershel's farm, long before Rick and his crew comes there. After a while you leave the farm and end up in a shop which your parents used to own. You get a nice big crew there.

Then, you move to an empty hotel. You find some people who have a Dairy Farm and they invite you over for a dinner. Your friend gets shoot by an arrow there and those people from Dairy Farm end up cooking his legs for you and your crew. Once you find that out.. Let's say it's not so pretty sight. Few days / weeks after you return to your hotel some bandits come to rob you. You get into a massive fight and end up leaving the hotel behind and driving away. You also find out that there's a traitor in your crew.

After a while of driving you find a train. You need to solve a rather easy, yet tricky, puzzle to get it all set to go. Once ready, you and your crew start to drive to Savanah. Of course, there is no safe trip that lasts long. On your way there you end up stopping because there was a truck hanging right in front of the tracks, and you need to take care of it. Once you do that a friend of yours hurts his leg very bad since he had to jump from a "bridge" since there were millions of zombies chasing after you.

Once you get to Savanah you see that it's a very abandoned city and you find out that Clementine is talking to some random fella over a walkie talkie. Your main mission is to find an engine for the boat that you've found. After a while when you manage to find it, the little girl that you are taking care of gets stolen from you, and of course, you get bit.

You tell your friend to cut your arm off. Once they do that you go to search-and-rescue mission. When you located little Clem you find out that she was stolen by a psycho who is talking to a zombiefied head of his dead wife. You kill him and lead Clem to safety.. Well she actually leads you. The two of you get stuck in a small room.. You are almost turned into a zombie. You make her shoot you and as soon as that happens BOOM, the end.

I left out A LOT of details because I really did not want to spoil the game too much for you. You should all really get it!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Amazing, new, unexpected graphic.
- Amazing storyline.
- Game is tailored by the choices you make.
- You meet Hershel and Glenn before they join Rick's crew.

Cons:
- The text that you have to chose from disappears very fast, so somebody whose English is not too good will have some troubles with playing the game.
- There are some occasional lags  when the cinematic are getting "tailored" so it's sometimes hard to react and kill a zombie in 2 seconds that you get.

Final grade: 8/10

Extra info: The Walking Dead the game surprised me! In a great way! As a massive fan of The Walking Dead TV Series, i really doubted that this game would be even nearly as good as the show is, but I was wrong. Both stories are amazing and I love them both! I really recommend this game to everyone! It takes a bit of time until you get used to graphic, movement and the game itself but when you do... Paradise, hehe.

Also, on the side note, I will be going to Czech Republic tomorrow and therefore, there will probably be no reviews for two weeks! There still might be some but i doubt it.
Therefore, I wish you all Marry Christmas and very Happy New Year! June wishes you all the same thing :P

Wolfie

Friday, December 14, 2012

Game Review: Guns of Icarus Online

Hello everybody!
As many of you remember, I already did a review of Guns of Icarus Online about three to four months ago. In fact, I believe that I was the first reviewer that actually reviewed it. I'm not sure though.

 A bit about the game and developers.
Guns of Icarus Online is being developed and published by Muse Games. Muse games are tiny indie company, filled with only great fellows. I am in contact with few of them (even the founder of Muse Games!) and they are all great guys! If we weren't a whole continent away, I'd even go on the party that they made couple of weeks ago. Guns of Icarus Online is a very new game. It got released about a month or two ago, and it was in beta for quite a long time. It's a post-apocalyptic game in which you take control of a zeppelin and try to destroy the enemy. That is so for now, but in the near by future there should be more of a MMORPG-style game mode.

About Gameplay. 
Guns of Icarus Online has rather unique gameplay from the other games. There is just one more game with a similar gameplay as GoIo. In GoIo you are divided in few crews with four men on each zeppelin. Your mission is clear and simple.  You and your friendly zeppelins need to kill the enemy couple of times before they kill you. It's usually 2 vs 2 game. It sounds easy, but it is actually not. In each crew there should be a pilot, at least one gunner and at least one engineer. The fourth guy can be what ever the rest of the crew wants him to be. TLS members usually go three engineers and a pilot, but we think about changing that strategy into one pilot, one gunner and two engineers, since now gunners give more boosts than what they used to in beta.

Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean that one class is worse then the other, it just means that Pilot, for example, can use more pilot-oriented skills (if i am not mistaken, three) while he can use only one gunner and one engineer skill. While on the other hand, gunner can use three to four gunner skills, while he can use only one pilot skill and only one engineer skill. It works the same with the engineer class. Recently Muse Games made a very nice patch. A pilot of the ship does not need to be the captain of it. Syphio has always been a better pilot than me, but I'm actually the commander of our crew so this patch was awesome for us.

In GoIo there are various types of ships and weapons. I will talk about weapons first.
There's a decent amount of guns in GoIo and that number keeps increasing every few months, or when ever developers feel like it. All guns are different in this games. Some guns work great the further you are (such as, for example, sniper) but they are practically useless on close. And also, the further you shoot the target at, the bigger the chance of him moving away is. Then there are also some close-combat guns such as shotguns which are the strongest guns in the game if you come very close, but from far they are useless. You need to build a good strategy. TLS and N7 (our second team) keep changing the strategies non-stop. The latest one we came across was that N7 would drive a tower (great defense, bad offense zeppelin) and they would mainly use sniper rifles, while TLS would have some tanky ship such as pyramitdion or something and would mainly go into close combat, taking enemies down with their shotgun.

Since GoIo is so team-play oriented game, it also requires you to chose a good combination of ships. There are not too many ships in GoIo but Muse Games work their asses off to make new ships. Great combination, in my opinion, is very fast ship such as squid to fly around the map, shooting the enemy with snipers, and a very tanky zeppelin such as Tower or Pyramidion that would rush in between (Well not really because nobody can survive that) the enemy and shoot them with shotguns. Thinking of which ship to use in combination with the other one seems rather easy, but you have to think hard about each ships durability, speed, gun slots and so on and on. It is, in fact, very tricky to guess a good combination. It's totally the same with guns.

The new future in this game that got released upon the game release, is the shop. In Shop everyone can buy new equipment for their character to look slightly different than the others. It is not expensive, but in my opinion they should remove that shop and make all the items free, or they could make some kind of in-game currency that you get by winning battles or doing achievements.Which brings me to the next subject, achievements. This game has level system and achievements, but neither of them are important in this game. Nobody can (for now) see the achievements that you've earned. Both achievements and level system were mainly added just for personal satisfaction. Some achievements, on the other hand, do give you some fancy rewards such as new equipment and stuff. Since i don't care about the look of my character nor the achievements, i haven't unlocked even one yet :P

Graphic and Audio
Graphic of Guns of Icarus online has stunned me. Unity is new software and very good, but when it first came out I thought that it will only be good for browser games. Muse Games have proven me wrong. Muse Games have really put a lot of effort into their game's look, and honestly, I love it. They still can't be compared to big, strong companies such as Valve or Ubisoft or what ever, but Muse Games have really done an awesome 3D work. Something that not too many indie developers can do.
Songs of this game are very good, but they do tend to get kind of annoying and loud at times, and thus, after about a month of my play time i had to turn the volumes off. Only the song volume though.

Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
Not much of a spoiler since Guns of Icarus online doesn't even have a story. In fact, it has something better! Player imagination! Since you chose your own crew, you can also chose if you want to be a "role-playing" crew or just casual gaming crew. As a role player, you can build your own past of the crew members, how the ship that you fly was made and what ever you want, which makes this game's story very fun. Casual players on the other hand don't really care about this game's story and they just care about shooting each other down from the sky. In either way, it's very fun to play this game!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Cheap and amazing.
- Very teamwork oriented.
- Customization will be added in the future.
- Very nice graphic for an inde-game.
- Regular updates and patches that add new stuff to the game.
- Various weapons, maps and ships.

Cons:
- Shop system. Everything in it is cheap, but I still see it kind of useless.
- Not too many players play this game.

Final grade: 9/10

Extra Info: Guns of Icarus Online is very amazing game. If there was no GoIo, TLS would never meet N7. And for that, I am very grateful to Muse Games. You guys did a great job and I honestly hope that you will keep doing a great job! TLS, N7 and I will keep on supporting you in any way we can!

That is it for now!
Have fun everybody!

Wolfie

P.S. I do not have any new pictures yet. I will add new pictures as soon as my teams are ready! That will be today probably! I'm sorry about making this look rather blank.
P.S 2 As you can see I added two pictures. I will keep taking pictures, deciding which ones look the best and i will keep updating this post with new pictures

AND the giveaway of Guns of Icarus Online is now online! It was brought to you by our dear Bubbles, the founder of Muse Games! Thank you a lot sir Bubbles!

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/zRQK1/

Do you want to join the giveaway? Sure! All you need to do to be able to join the group is click "subscribe" button, or just comment a lot before the giveaway ends.
Good luck!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A question

Hello everybody.

I can see that my blog is growing on popularity, so i recently got an idea.
I thought that i could get my own domain and make a personal blog. I would be able to do slightly more stuff then what i can here. Though, keep in mind that it will be hard to learn all that since I am actually not a programmer and that would all be kind of new to me. So bear with me.
I want you to vote if i should make a personal blog or should i stay on blogger?

If you say no, there is no need to explain anything.
If you say yes, i also want you to give me an idea for a new name. "MidnightWolfie" is starting to get stolen very often so i need to do something that only i would have. Something unique. I sadly can't think of anything so i need you guys to do it for me!

Please, don't make it too long (in my opinion, MidnightWolfie is long) and make it sound awesome :D

Thank you all!
Wolfie

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Game Review: Chivalry: Medival Warfare

Hello everybody!
Today I'll be reviewing Chivalry: Medieval Warfare


A bit about the game and developers.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a game made by indie game developing company called Torn Banner. They are pretty unknown.. Or at least they were until they made Chivalry!
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a first person slash-em-up game. You literally take any weapon you can ( greatsword, sword, dagger, bow and arrow, crosbow...) and just kill your enemy!

About Gameplay. 
As said above, Chivalry is a medieval slash-em-up game. On the beginning of each game you have to choose a side, either for the good guys who are also called Agatha Knights or the bad guys who are also called Mason Order. After that you are asked about what class would you want to be. Each class has its own weapons. All weapons have advantages and disadvantages.

Greatsword can kill you in three hits (or one if you aim at the neck / head ), but It's very slow and your enemy can block it. On the other hand, short swords are very swift but they take a lot of hits to kill somebody. Polearm is great at distance, but up close is almost useless. Bow and arrow or crosbow are very powerful and awesome, but extremely hard to use. You need to count how long does your arrow take to fly to your opponent, and then you need to count how high do you have to aim and so on and on. It's extremely hard.

There are several game modes in this game. I saw only three though, since people favor them the most. I saw siege, team death match and just death match. I never saw a siege, no matter how many times i've played it. I do, though, know that you use battle rams to brake the doors while enemy throws boiling oil on you from the above. Very awesome indeed! Since i was too slow, i never saw battleram in action.. But i do know that you have to run back and forth while using it! Team Death match is just as the name says, team death match. Blue vs the red. And death match is where every man is for himself (or herself). Your only mission is to kill everyone. In my opinion, this is great for training.

You can block every attack in this game, by holding right mouse button in last second, and looking at your opponent's tip of the sword. It's hard at first, but once you understand it, it's a piece of cake. Each weapon has three kinds of attack. Left mouse button (slash) mouse button up (thrust) and mouse button down (chop). Slashing is great when you are going against more then just one player, but be careful not to hit their shields or walls or trees. Chop and Thrust are mainly good if you are in a team fight and you don't want to harm your friends. Also, do note that team killing is allowed in this game. Once you hit your friend, he get's 100% of the damage, so be very careful!

You can unlock new weapons by playing one class and one weapon for a big number of kills. And don't worry, kills are stacked, and even if you choose different class and weapon, you will still continue from the same number of kills needed where you left off. You can also unlock different helmet styles but I don't know how. I've never even seen anyone with different helmet style than the normal one.



Graphic and Audio
Graphic in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is just stunning. Rain is awesome, grass is wonderful, buildings, all the details on character's armors, pieces of bones sticking out of neck and head after chopping, blood all over the floor and walls when you kill someone. It's just so stunning and great!
Audio, on the other hand is kind of a let down. Through all of my games, i've only heard maybe one song. And that was a very quiet song. Though, sounds of a person chocking in their own blood till death, or people who went "dumb" after getting hit with a warhammer in the head... Those sounds are awesome. Very, very awesome and stunning indeed.


Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
Not much spoilers though. In this game there are two sides, Aghata Knights and Mason Order. Mason Order are people who don't like to listen to the king+s wishes and so on and on, and thus they are in the war with Aghata Knights. Very usual and normal Medieval story.




Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Cheap, yet awesome!
- Beautiful, stunning graphic.
- A lot of players
- Sounds that remind you how cruel the reality was.
- Team killing.
- People who work together have more chance to win then some random people.

Cons:
- No horses nor any kind of mounts.
- Way too much blood for someone who is under 16.
-  Not enough songs.
- No costumisation.

Final grade: 7/10

Extra info: First of all, i want to say that I'm VERY sorry, to Torn Banner, because they have been waiting for a review from me for almost two months. I was very busy at fist, then i had a death case, so i got even more busy.. So I'm very late. I'm very sorry Torn Banner studios. Except that, people, this game is awesome! If you wanted to buy War of the Roses but you couldn't because its way too over your budget, then this is the right game for you! I recommend it with all of my heart. You will definitely see me playing it more often!

Wolfie

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Real life update

Hello everybody!

I didn't write real life updates for quite a while O_O
Alright, so i have been reading a lot of your comments and I was thinking of them non-stop and thing that i wanna say.. Is that i do want to write more then one review a week, but i can't.
Out of few reasons.
First, I'm in my last year of high school, so I am very busy with preparing for prom.
Second, a lot of game developers / publishers do not respond to my email or they take a while to reply, so I usually don't have enough permissions to review games so fast.
And third, i recently got a copy of RIFT so  i was very busy playing that :P Now I got my hands on WoW so i'm very busy playing that as well! XD

Other thing i wanted to say is that i WILL start making videos, but not too soon. My clan is starting to fall apart very, very slowly and only because of real life and inactivity. Syphio left because he truly is busy (he's a leader of a new indie game developing group) while Merkava left cause of his personal problems which i will not talk about. Though, i will state that he had NO right to leave because of this and that I'm VERY angry at him. And honestly, I'm glad that he deleted me off his friend list cause I'd be very mean to him -.-
So yea, because of that I won't be able to make a Payday: The Heist video.

And final thing..
I'm gonna spend Christmas with June! I bought a ticket a month ago already. I'll be traveling to her 23rd of December and I'll stay there for 2 weeks. That means that there will probably be no reviews. Or there might be one, but it won't have any pictures.  I could, though, write a real life update every now and then to let you all know how is it going. How is it to go from city Xmas life to village Xmas life. How is ti to stare at the dog who wants to tear you apart, how is it to walk behind horses who can run over you when ever they feel like it, and how is it to wake up in the morning, bed heating because of June :3
There are a lot of things i can talk about on Xmas, but there are no many games i can review then. Just because i won't have time. June and I promised that we won't use pc.

Anyway, that's it for now!
The new game review will be up on friday! I'll be reviewing Chivalry: Medieval Warfare for those who are curious about it. And after that I'll probably do a re-review of Guns of Icarus Online now when it's fully out. Alright, thank you all for reading and I hope that you will all have a good day :)
Or night if you're from Europe as i am.

Have a great day!
Wolfie

Friday, November 30, 2012

Game Review: Payday The Heist

Hello there my dear thieves!
Today I'll be talking about one very unique shooter game called Payday The Heist. I will NOT talk about Wolf Pack DLC since i do not have it.


A bit about the game and developers.
We all like to daydream about how awesome would it be to rob a bank every now and then. Easy money and not much work to do. Well, Payday The Heist lets you do exactly that.
Payday The Heist is a game published by  Sony Online Entertainment but it was developed by OVERKILL software.

About Gameplay. 
Payday is a game that will look alike Left 4 Dead 2 to every gamer who has ever played it. In Payday you work in a team of 4 people to do your mission. In stead of zombies, your enemies are policemen and swats. There are currently seven different heist, each making you use a different strategy. Sometimes even weapons. In Payday The Heist you level up by completing heists and obtaining money which are actually experience. Leveling up will give you new weapons and modifications. There are three skill trees in Payday, Assault, Support and Sharpshooter. As you gain level, you lever up one of those skills. You may chose which one by pressing tab and then clicking buttons 1, 2 or 3. Assault gives you more ammo, bigger damage and so on and on, while Support gives you shotguns, more crew bonuses and other stuff. I have played 30+ hours of Payday and yet I've never leveled up my sharpshooter skill since i think its kind of pointless to have a sniper in this game. But yea, Sharpshooter skill gives you sniper.

In Payday your main enemies are SWATs. They start attacking you when you get spotted, and they always come in waves. Some waves are long, and others are short. On normal difficulty you usually have about 30 seconds between each wave, while on Overkill difficulty wave's are every 5 or more seconds. So yea, law doesn't allow you to breath in peace... There are several types of swats, from normal swat to a "bulldozer" which is a heavy-armored and heavy-armed swat. They usually come 1-2 in a pack. On Overkill there can even be up to five of them at the same moment. Three special swats are Buldozer, Taser and a Cloaker. Taser uses electricity  to make you unable to move nor aim. After few seconds you fall on the floor, helpless. Cloaker comes to you quietly and then hits you with an electrified stick. You instantly fall on the floor without being able to shoot. FBI agents aren't much of a threat, they just jump in between waves to save hostages.

In case that you get downed in Payday, your team-mates have about 30 seconds to rise you back up. While you are downed you can't move but usually can shoot, so make sure to help your friends by shooting enemy, so they could help you! Though, if you are still being shot at when you are downed, after few bullets you won't even be able to shoot. In case that your friends don't "revive" you in those 30 seconds, you are taken into custody. I am not sure how long are you forced to stay there, but I think its about 2 minutes. After 2 minutes you instantly respawn close to your friends. In case that you shoot civilians, you get a penalty which makes your custody last longer. Of course, after a while an NPC named Bain (who is actually a guy who makes a whole heist plan) is able to make a deal with the law forces. So after few seconds (usually about 30 seconds to a minute) you are able to trade a civilian so your friend could instantly respawn back.

Each Heist is different. In one heist you need to rob world's biggest bank, while on the other mission you need to take a blood example of an infected person. But I'll talk about that in the Story section bellow.

Graphic and Audio
Payday has wonderful graphic, and yet It isn't a heavy game to run. In the option menu i get up to 150 FPS, while in the game itself it's always around 60-70 FPS in the biggest combat. There are great details on pictures, guns, SWATs, your team-mates and anything else. Graphic is really great!  Songs are so freakin addicting that I love to beat heists just to listen to them! As soon as i get few extra € I'm gonna buy the soundtrack DLC hehe.

Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
As I've said earlier, each Heist in Payday requires its own tactic. Each heist also has its own story. In First World Bank you walk into a bank quietly and then take it over. On Heat Street you have been back stabbed by your own friend, so you have to chase him down, set his van on fire and then take him and the money that he stole from you.

Panic Room is a map where you walk into a drug dealer house and try to make a nice deal. While they are trying to make a deal with you, you start to shoot at them and kill them one by one. Your plan was, from the very beginning, to rob their vault. Large, large vault.

On Green Bridge you have to find a guy by searching swat transport cars. Once you do that you need to take him up to the roof and wait for an airplane (yea, AIRPLANE. Not a helicopter!) to pick him up. In my opinion, that is one of funniest things to see in Payday.

Diamond Heist, on the other hand, can be done in hard or easy way. So far I've only managed to do it once in easy way. If you chose hard way, it means that you sneak all over the building to search for alarm boxes. Once you turn three of them down, all you have to do is steal the diamonds. Easy way makes you start the heist and just fight your way to alarm boxes, wait about two to three minutes for them to finish and then take the money.

Slaughter House is a heist on which you make an ambush for SWATs who are driving a money transport with them. You literally push the transportation vehicle into the building, then wait to open the vehicle's doors and then you carry the gold out of the building. This is one hard, yet easy heist.

And last but not least, No Mercy hospital heist. On this heist you go into the No Mercy hospital from Left 4 Dead. Your objective is to get a positive blood sample from an infected victim. As in Diamond Heist you have easy and hard way to do this. Hard way means that you trigger the heist on beginning, grab a teddy bear, set him on sealed doors and then just wait and kill swats. Once the Teddybear has done his work, you need to decide between three other sealed doors. You need to keep unsealing all three until you find the infected guy.
Easy way, though, is easier but requires more skill. Easy way is the Safe approach in which you make sure that all civilians are tied so they can't trigger the alarm, then you get into doctor's clothing and go to the currently unsealed room. There you will be nicely greeted with a sweet Blondie npc who will tell you everything she knows about three unsealed victims. Once you decide which one is the infected, you cut the security line of it so the doors don't get sealed and then you just get the blood and do your best to find the positive samples as fast as you can. During that, there are countless waves of Swat attacks so you better be prepared! Also, this is my favorite heist since L4D is one of my favorite games, hehe.

Do note that there are a lot of secret levels as well! Though, I have never done any of them so I can't tell you anything about them.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Wonderful graphic, yet the game runs incredibly smooth.
- Great audio tracks.
- Various heists that do have random encounters each time you play them.
- Random chance of meeting Bill from L4D in No Mercy hospital.
- Various guns.
- Easy to use skill tree.
- Five different difficulties which make this game even better!
- Fun that keeps on going and going.

Cons:
- I did say that it's very fun, but after a decent amount of runs through the heists, It kind of gets boring.
- Some head shots do not count so you need to make two or three of them.

Final Grade: 9/10

Extra info: Payday is a great game and I recommend it to everyone! I was thinking of making a gameplay of it done by Syphio, Merkava and me, but I didn't know if you guys might like it or not, so I'm gonna let you decide if you want to see it or not.


Thank you, all of you for reading!
Wolfie

Friday, November 23, 2012

Game Review and giveaway: Fortix 2

Heya folks! Today I'll be writing about something slightly different than what I usually write about. I'm gonna write about an arcade called Fortix 2!


A bit about the game and developers.
Fortix 2 is a game published by Nemesys Games studios! They are the same studio behind a game that i reviewed about a month ago, Ignite. Fortix 2 is a sequel to a game called Fortix, which is not published by the same company and thus I still haven't played it.

About Gameplay. 
Fortix 2 is an arcade game in which you are a knight who is trying to make one demon leave his kingdom by moving in straight lines. Of course, there always has to be something that is trying to battle against you to stop you from doing so. In this game those are dragons, orgs, bats, and a towers (which are actually turrets).

Some creatures have different types. For example there are three types of dragons. Green dragon, bone dragon and black dragon, each of them doing something different. Green dragons are just dumb and they just roam the map, maybe accidentally hitting you. Bone dragons sense when you get out of safe area and instantly start to fly towards you to eat you alive. Black dragons are my biggest enemies..  They are very fast, smart and they spit fire which is very hard to dodge.

Orgs just walk around the fortress. Fortress is guarded by towers which throw rocks or fire arrows at you. And bats follow your safe line. Which means that even though you are safe from all other creatures, bats can still kill you in safe area as well.
To get rid of a monster you have to make a square over them which will instantly banish them.

There are also some doors that you sometimes need to open by gathering keys on the map, since you can't actually go over the wall. And there are some power ups which grant you some bonus speed, extra life or maybe freeze enemy creatures for a short period of time. During all that time your main mission is to conquer the map by walking over it and destroying monsters on it.

To be able to finish the mission you need to destroy all turrets and catch all the red shields with an axe in them. That is your main mission. Killing all creatures on the map will only give you extra points.

Graphic and Audio
Graphic is very cartoony, but it's very fun to play something that looks slightly different than other games that I have played so far. During all my gameplay i only heard about three different music tunes and all three of them sounded like those tunes that you hear in any Medieval movies or games. Very nice and catchy sounds indeed!






Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Fortix 2 is very fun to play, and maps look very nice.
- The game is easy enough for it to be very fun to children, while also being difficult enough to make adults play it until they beat it!
- Medieval music fits great into the game.
- You can change your character's icon.

Cons:
- The game is very short.
- Sometimes you step out of the safe zone so little that you can't even see it, which sometimes leads to unexpected death. (Happened to me several times)



Final grade: 8/10


Extra info: Fortix 2 is very fun, short game and I recommend you to buy it if you have few €. In case you'd like to try your luck by trying to win it, sure! All you have to do is either subscribe to my blog or write a lot of comments and visit very often, and I'll invite you to my private Steamgifts group!

If you are in the group already, join the giveaway here: Fortix 2 group giveaway.

Thank you, Developers, for giving me three copies of Fortix to give away!

Wolfie

Friday, November 16, 2012

Game Review: Sanctum

Hello Ladies and Gents! Today I'll be writing about something a bit different.. Of course, it's another indie game, BUT, very different indie game indeed! And the name of this game is: Sanctum!


A bit about the game and developers.
Sanctum is a game which is published by Coffee Stain Studios. They are indie developing and publishing studio with currently only one game. Honestly, I don't think that they have any kind of plan for any future games, but I really think that they should make something more, because in my opinion, Sanctum is a great game and it is a great start for something bigger and more popular!

Now, Sanctum isn't game as we are used to. Yea, its a FPS. But It's a tower defense FPS. And I may be wrong, but in my opinion and with my knowledge, this is unique tower defense FPS. And as soon as you rode that you thought "oh that idiot, he never heard of Dungeon Defenders..." and here, you are wrong. I did hear about Dungeon Defenders and i still think that Sanctum is unique, because Sanctum is a Sci-fi game that is in future and you use guns, snipers, rocket launchers to kill creatures that kind of (not really) look like mechs... They look like aliens but if you think hard enough, they might look like mechs.
And Dungeon Defenders is based in fantasy theme with goblins, orcs, mages and swords. But that's a different game so nobody cares about it for now.

About Gameplay. 
As I told you a moment ago, Sanctum is a tower defense game. Which means that there are a lot of waves. Your main mission is to protect one big, round blue ball. The ball probably has a name, but since it wasn't mentioned anywhere (maybe it was in the tutorial) I have completely forgot it.You have to defend it from various creatures such as weird creatures with tentacles that fly, weird looking dragons, some kind of alien that looks like that alien from Falling Skies and so on and on. Those aliens will try to come to your ball and destroy it through the shortest route they can find. That's why your are here. You need to build blocks to make the way for Aliens as long as it can possibly be. After you are done with that, you need to build various weapons inside of those blocks (or on top of them.).

In Sanctum the maps aren't as easy as they are in other tower defense games. In Sanctum there could be some old objects on the path which means that you can't build any kind of barricade there, but Monsters might walk around it. Now that seems like a bad thing, but i like it. It means that you need to think even harder to be able to win. But don't worry, the game shows you where exactly will the monsters walk so it makes the game a lot easier and more fun!

Sanctum has various weapons and floor modifications starting from a small assault rifle that you use to kill creatures, all the way to anti-air creature weapons that are not controlled by players. Players can usually chose 3 weapons that they will use in game for themselves, and at least 5 more constructions that they will use to fight creatures with. The guns that you use by yourself are very good and powerful, but everybody needs a bit of help and that's why constructions are made. You can make a floor that will slow enemies down so you can shoot at them more accurately, or you can build a mortar that will shoot at enemies as soon as they get into range. Thought, of course, even constructed weapons might miss, so don't relay on them fully!

All constructed weapons and the weapons have weakness that you have to be aware of. For example, shotgun is very powerful but it can't hit anything after like 10 meters. And it has a long, long reloading. Aliens also have weaknesses. There are different types of aliens raging from tiny, fast but with very low hp, all the way to those big ones with very thick armor, very slow movement speed and a decent amount of hp. You need to take all that into your plan when you are constructing an area for the aliens to walk through while you slowly kill all of them.

Another, very surprising thing about Sanctum is that even thought it's an indie game, it always has few servers and games up and running! That's very rare to see lately with an indie game. And Multiplayer is very fun too! Only problem about it is lag issues due to hosters. So don't blame the game for it! Blame hosters!







Graphic and Audio
The graphic in this game is great! The sight, sky, nature.. Everything about it has passed under great in my opinion. Even the creatures look great! Only bad thing is that character's breasts are very small so nobody can blame breasts for being distracted and losing xD . At first sight I thought that music will get very boring in this game after some time, but I was very wrong! The music is always very calm, but yet awesome, so I never even thought about turning the sound off. I am even thinking of buying the game's soundtrack!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Unique gameplay.
- Cheap and yet very fun.
- Maps aren't as easy to beat as they are in all other tower defense games.
- Sounds and visuals are amazing!
- Great amount of different structures (constructed weapons) and user-owned weapons.
- Teleporting to any teleport on the map (you can build your own teleport anywhere you want.)

Cons:
- Too many DLC's. In my opinion, if all the DLC's were free and just inserted into the game, there would be a lot more players.
- There are no game-hosted servers. Everything is user-hosted so there may be lag.
- One game takes a lot of time to beat... This game is very time consuming.
- Game is very hard to learn for beginners. Thought, once you learn it you can beat any map on any difficulty!

Final grade: 8/10



Extra info: In case that you are looking for a relatively cheap and yet very fun game to play with your friends / mates / clan buds, this is the game for you! It's cheap, and yet it is good enough to be played over and over again until you starve to death! This game gets my full recommendation if you are low on budget and you are searching for something that will entertain you until you get those 120€ to buy BF3 and Skyrim!

Wolfie

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Game Review: King Arthur II - The Role-playing Wargame.

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!

Today I'll be reviewing King Arthur II - The Role-playing Wargame!





A bit about the game and developers.
King Arthur II is a game made by Paradox Studios, the same company behind the famous Magicka, Mount & Blade collections and the newly released and yet very loved, War of the Roses. King Arthur II is a long awaited sequel to the previous game called King Arthur (who figured?). I have never played King Arthur, so i can't tell you anything about it, but from what i've learnt from playing King Arthur II, the first and second game are connected.


About Gameplay.
King Arthur II is a Turn based, fantasy strategy game. Well, wargame to be more exact. In this game you can build just few buildings that you don't even see, and they only boost your army up. Or give you more magic deffence or offence.
For as long as I have been playing the game I have never seen any other place to build your army except in the army camp, which you can set up almost anywhere you go. You can even use your turn to walk over map, do a battle or two if you manage, and then at the very end of your turn (when your unit already lost  the movement option) you can set up a camp to retrain your hurt units which will then put your current unit size to maximum (for example if you can have 120 archers and after the battle you have 30, you put the unit under training and you'll have 120 archers again) or to recruit even newer units to your group. All those units are able to fight starting from your next turn, which is in my opinion great! No wait time needed.

The reason why this game is called a "role-playing game" is because it really is an Role-Playing game. In this game you follow the storyline in which you are forced to make your own decisions. You usually have few choices that you can make, which will then be an impact on the future battle. Or maybe you will chose so good answers that you won't even need to go to the battles. And sometimes you should just go with a safer option and just fight, in stead of walking into a trap and losing your troops or get some sicknesses or something. There are, of course, some missions on which you will not get into a battle no meter what choice do you get, but there will still be a difference in your reward. Or maybe you won't even get any.

As i stated before, King Arthur II is a fantasy game. Which means that you don't only battle humans in this game. You battle various monsters which include undead warriors, furious battle mages, large spiders or some weird flying worms or even dragons!
That made me like the game more because you can see the world of which we can only daydream of.


Graphic and Audio
One surprising thing about this game is the audio. The songs are put so nicely that you just can't get bored of them. They fit every situation that you are currently in. And while you are on the map area the songs are somewhat peaceful and calm. I loved the songs very much.
Graphic on the other hand... Is absolutely amazing! There are tones of different mountains, tones of different units and tones of details on each unit! The land scope is very beautiful and in my opinion, it looks amazing for a strategy game. Very amazing indeed! All creatures, demons, dragons, humans, castles, spikes and all the trees are just gorgeous in this game.


Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
In King Arthur II your main mission is to find a healer that will heal your father, Arthur himself, from a deadly sickness. You need to travel across the land, talk to various Lords, be in good diplomatic relationships with them, and at the same time you have to fight the evil demons, undead, and other Lords who do not like you nor wish to help you.
You may think that your search is easy, but it's not. First you need to find one healer which is hard to find. Once you find him and travel to that location, you find out that he has left that castle a while ago, and thus you need to go after him. Once you go to the other castle you find out that he left few moments (which i think are actually days) ago and that you need to help the Lord of the castle to deal with demonic possessions. And once you finally manage to catch the healer, he tells you that he can't help and thus you need to find Merlin's apprentice. I didn't finish the game due to a massive lag that I had because of my weak CPU. But I think that a hardcore gamer should finish this game within 5 hours, while a normal gamer should take no more then 10.


Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Wonderful graphic and audio.
- Units have a lot of detail.
- You are able to chose your own choices.
- You unlock new units as you progress.
- Unit building / training is instant.
- The game is in a Fantasy world even thought you play it on United Kingdom.

Cons:
- The game is very CPU dependent so i had a massive lag.
- Storyline mission is a bit too short.
- No multiplayer.
- The items that your character wears are not shown on him. He always has default armor.

Final grade: 8/10

Extra info:
King Arthur II is really a fabulous game. If you are searching for some good storyline and you don't have time for something too long and time consuming, King Arthur II is a great game for you. Great game indeed!
If you want my advice in buying or not buying this game: go for it. Trust me, you will not regret it!

Wolfie

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Game Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Hello Ladies and Gents!

Whats better than to spend Halloween by reading a review about a zombie shooting game?
Today I'll be writing a review of the best zombie shooting game made so far, called Left 4 Dead 2.

A bit about the game and developers.
Left 4 Dead 2 was made by a pretty famous company called Valve. Valve are the same developers who made Left 4 Dead, Half Life series, Counter Strike series, Team Fortress series and Portal series. They also run the worlds best gaming application called Steam (even thought i'm pretty sure that you know all of this already.)

 About Gameplay.
In Left 4 Dead 2 you take a role of one of 8 characters. Those 8 characters are divided in two groups of 4. Each group has three guys and one girl. Original L4D2 group contains: Ellis, Rochelle, Nick and Coach. After some time Valve decided to add a DLC which added all L4D maps and characters into the game, so "new" characters are: Bill, Zoey, Francis and Louis.
There is no any boost to any of the characters, It's just your personal look throught that campaign. Players can't change their character unless they return to the game lobby again. There are all together 13 Campaigns in L4D2 ad each campaing has about 3-4 maps. So yea, that's a lot of maps to go throught!

There are few different game modes too. There are Campaign, Survival, Versus, Realism, Realism Versus and Scavenge.

In Campaign you only beat the campaigns. Nothing too hard nor too new. In Survival you are on just one small map and your mission is to survive as long as you possibly can while hordes of zombies keep attacking you over and over again. And no, it is not in waves. They all attack you at once.

In Versus you play against other players, 4 vs 4. One team gets to be survivors while the other team gets to be infected. Infected players can't chose which zombie do they wanna be, its always random. Survivors mission is to get to the very end of the map as fast as they can and in as big number as they can (all four would be the best), while infected team needs to do everything they can to stop them by killing all of them.

You may think that It's easy but you're wrong. There is low chance that you get awesome zombie combo on the very beginning such as Jockey, Charger, Smoker and Hunter. But If you get that combo, if the team is trained well and if your timing is awesome, you can stop survivors within the first ten seconds. Charger charges at one guy, Hunter jumps on the other, Jockey does the same to the other survivor while smoker pulls the fourth. And Woala! You have won. As soon as the survivors reach the safe room or infected kill all the survivors, teams change sides. They re-do the same map again, but infected are now survivors and survivors are now infected. The team who finishes the map with most points start out as survivors in the next round.




Realism mode is the same as campaign mode but just a bit harder. In Realism mode you do not see glowing outlines of your friends when they are behind a wall or somewhere far. If you get separated, you will be lost for quite a while since you can't see where did they go.
Realism Versus is Versus but in realism mode (duh o-o)

In Scavenge mode your mission is to gather gas tanks as fast as you can and pour them into a car / generator / where ever, while hordes of zombies attack you non-stop. Yea, these zombies only make your game harder...

And final mode which is very un-needed is called "The Mutation".
Mutation is actually just a mode which Valve changes every month or two. They put up new modes in it and let you test it out. If community likes it, Valve leaves it in L4D2. If community dislikes it, they remove it and forget about it. They changed that mode now thought. Now you can play all the old mutations without needing to download any mods for it. I like that because I really liked the head shot mode. You could only kill zombies by head shooting them. Very hard but very real as well!

In Left 4 Dead 2 there are various weapons as well. There is Ak47, M16, Uzi, two different types of handguns, two snipers and few more weapons. Don't worry, there are various melee weapons too such as Katana, Chainsaw, Axe, cooking pot and a cricket bat. There is no better feeling then hitting a witch with a cooking pot! If you are lucky you might even run into an MP5 which is saw only once so far in my 100+ hours of gameplay.

Graphic and Audio
Graphic in Left 4 Dead 2 is nothing special but I love it. It's not something that looks too realistic, but it is also not something that looks cartoonish. And the blood looks great too! The maps are great, scary, dark and sometimes even slightly confusing which makes the game even more fun.
Music in L4D2 is also nothing special, but it's very catchy! I often find myself mumbling the beginning screen song over TS when I'm with my clan.

Story
Don't read this if you are against few spoilers!!!!! Awesome thing about L4D2 is that all the missions are connected to each other. The end of your first mission is the beginning of second and so on and on. The latest campaign in L4D makes Bill die. And one of newest missions in L4D2 (The Parrish) makes you meet the L4D survivors and they help you survive while you put down the bridge that L4D survivors raised.  You can also find Bill's dead body in the generator room.. Poor Bill.. He was my favorite character...

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Zombies.. And a lot of them.
- Various weapons.
- A lot of missions, maps and an official add-on support which allows you to add custom made maps.
- Great story.
- Versus mode which makes this game rather unique.
- New, totally free DLC's.
- All L4D maps and characters have been added to L4D2 fully free of charge.

Cons:
- NPC survivors are kind of stupid sometimes.
- There are often no official dedicated servers, so you gotta play on best community one. And sometimes those are just terrible.

Final grade: 9/10

Extra notes
Left 4 Dead 2 is really not expensive and It's one of those games which you will play over and over and over and over again until your death. It's very addicting and fun game, and if you meet some new friends or if you join a good clan the game will be even more fun to play! So really, if you can spare few €, buy this game! And L4D2 is on 75% discount very often, so i suggest you to wait until then if you can't afford the full price.

Thank you all for reading and commenting on my blog!
Have a great day,
Wolfie