Saturday, April 27, 2013

Game review: Mass Effect 2

Hello ladies and gentlemen in the online universe, Today I'll bring you a review of a RPG game Mass Effect 2!

A bit about the game and developers.
Mass Effect series were developed by BioWare and Published by Electronic Arts. Mass Effect has three games which makes it Trilogy. It's a Role Playing game.

About Gameplay. 
Mass Effect 2 is a role playing game in space. Your objective is to save the Earth, Universe, humanity, anything that you can. In this game your choices matter. The choices you make will affect you in the further games. It also matters who lives and dies from your crew mates, because if they die in Mass Effect, they won't appear in Mass Effect 2, and if they die in Mass Effect 2, they won't appear in Mass Effect 3. This game requires you to stay fully focused all the time and to really think your choices through! I have never played Mass Effect, but I did watch the story videos in couple of minutes just so I wouldn't be confused on what is going on in Mass Effect 2.

To start this off, I'll begin by saying that this game is awesome mainly because of the story. You are Captain John Sheppard and you need to make a good crew to fight off the Reapers. Reapers are huge robots that can think like humans and they want to take over the universe! I won't give away any spoilers.



There are many different weapons, armors and mods in the game. Different weapons are used for different play styles. For example, I always love to use assault rifle, but the assault rifle that shoots very straight and precise. While on the other hand, I also like to have people with machine guns right behind me so they could support me. So yea, there are many different weapons that can fit anyone's play style. On the other hand, there are not many armors and they are mainly here for the look. I really couldn't see the difference between armor that gives you no boost, and armor that gives you 5% more shields. So once again, armors are mainly here only to show your look. Mods are very good and needed since it can help you survive.

There are many different modifications for your ship, armors, and weapons. Weapon mods make your
weapons stronger, do more damage against certain types of enemies or they allow you to have an extended magazine, while Armor mods allow you to have more HP, have more shields or just give you bigger protection against some types of damages or creatures. Ship modifications are very important once you go to the battle with your ship about which I will say nothing. Ship modifications also allow you upgrade your weapons and have better shields.

When you are choosing your team you need to think about many various stuff. You need to think about who is specialized for what. You need to think of which weapon combinations suit the best, you need to think about what weapons do you want to support you while you do what you have to. Honestly, if you're like me, you don't need to care about all that. You'll have to work a bit harder but you'll find the game a bit more enjoyable. I, for example, always played with my favorite characters. Thane and Garrus.

Once you get your crew mates, the next thing to think about is their loyalty to you. You need to do each crew member's loyalty to unlock all their powers and to grant them higher chance of survival in the final mission. Some people's loyalty's missions are very bad and you have an option to kill one man and let many people die, or to ignore one man and save a lot of other people while your friend does not become loyal to you. I had to chose that couple of times, but even if it made me a bad person, I kept choosing my friends over other people. Only the ones I like though, like Thane, Garrus, Miranda, Jacob and so on and on.

Choices you make in this game will follow you everywhere. From one game to the other, and you can not change them. So don't ever do something you will regret. And by that I mean: don't ignore loyalty quests. If you see that person as dear to you, do the loyalty quest HIS (or her) way, because if you don't you might lose him (or her).. Just as i have.



Graphic and Audio
Mass Effect 2 has amazing graphic, amazing bullet details, rocket impacts, textures, character details.. And mainly, the cinematic. The cinematic videos are so good, the voice acting is so good that it's like you are really there. And the soundtracks are very touching at the moments, and yet they can get very pumped up at the other times. I really love to listen to all those soundtracks in game. All of them.


Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Amazing storyline, one of the best I've ever seen.
- Ability to chose your answers that will follow you until the very end of the game.
- Various weapons and armors.

Cons:
- There are some buggy places in which you will climb onto an invisible platform and you will have a hard time getting down from it, which will make you unable to move.
- There are no space ship battles.
- Tones of DLC's that make the game twice as expensive if you want to buy all of them.

Final grade:    9.8/10.

 Extra info: This game does not have full 10 only because of the DLC's and the platform bug. Without it the game would get full 10/10. I definitely recommend this game to everyone!
Also, I didn't put any pictures that I made here because I felt as if most of them would be too big spoilers. Mainly every good shot reveals something nice.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Game Review: Supreme Commander 2

Oi everyone!
Time for some good old strategy again!

A bit about the game and developers.
Supreme Commander 2 is a great robotic strategy game developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Square Enix.Gas Powered Games are also developers of Demigod, original Supreme Commander and so on and on, while Square Enix is a publisher of many published games like Tomb Raider, Hitman, Sleeping Dogs and others.

About Gameplay. 
Supreme Commander 2 is a strategy game with three different factions. Each faction has its own
units. Each Faction has its own bonuses. UEF have strongest unites, most expensive units and units with most HP. Cybran Nation are the weakest but the least expensive. They take the least amount of time to construct and are always largest in numbers. Aeon Illuminate are the most balanced units. Their HP and attack strength fits perfectly with the price of the unit and the construction time. There's one more faction in this game, but since it's unplayable I don't think they are too important.

The game has both single player and multiplayer mode. In single player your objective is, of course, to save the world. The story is pretty good but nothing too special. The awesome thing about this game is the multiplayer. Since the game is about 2-3 years old the servers are very empty. And those that have players are usually professionals and games with them lasts about five to ten minutes. There's tones of strategies you can do to win this game. I played a lot of skirmish games to learn a lot about this game.

To be able to play this game correctly you need to  learn fast. Because even AI is so smart that it can win against you on normal difficulty. It will attack you from all possible directions: water, air and land. It will attack in small waves while slowly building a huge wave of army. The AI is amazing.
It has three different resources. Mass, Energy and Research. You can set up research facilities and energy builders where ever you want, but you can only place Mass on a designed area. Players can fight against each other to be able to own the Mass builders that they need.

You need Mass and Energy to be able to build new units and structures, while you need research points to be able to research for new units, more HP or new building that will help you with who knows what. You need to make sure to always have enough of each, but you also need to make sure that you're able to make a big amount of units since this game is all about large scale wars.

As mentioned before, this game is all about large scale wars.  In my opinion best tactic is to play with
two friends. One person focuses on land units, second on water and third on air. That way you can have biggest army numbers due to smallest cost of units. There are two main game types, annihilation and score points. In annihilation your objective is to kill enemy commanders while in score points your objective is to gather as main points as you can by taking over couple of big towers.

Graphic and Audio
Graphic is great! Lasers and rockets everywhere, blown up robots, massive explosions. It's very well made. Details on the units are also extremely nice! Songs are very quiet and calming, but for the most of the time you're so focused on the action and all the lasers that you barely even hear it.


Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Wonderful graphic.
- Amazingly fun skirmish.
- Huge scale battles.
- Very fun if you have a friend or two to play against the AI.

Cons:
- No players so there are barely any multiplayer games.

Overall grade: 7/10

If you're big mech fan as I am, and if you love strategy games, this game is for you. It doesn't involve much thinking, but it's extremely fun to play. Though, don't count on Gundam units to be in this game. Sadly there are no units looking like Gundam ones, hehe.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

I apologize.

Hello readers!

I apologize that this weeks review is going to be late. I got Two Worlds II a week ago and I wanted to review it, but I still have a problem. When ever i press "Start a new game" my game crashes to the desktop. The problem is so weird that support stopped responding to me on forum and over email, so I never managed to even try the game out.
Therefore, I yesterday decided that I'll review Supreme Commander 2. But that's why I'll need a day or two more.
I'm sorry to keep you all waiting!

Wolfie

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Fast giveaway!

Hello everyone!
Thanks to developers, i got two copies of Torchlight II for giveaway!!


Don't forget to thank the devs for it!

Have fun and good luck everyone.
Wolfie


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Game Review: War of the Roses: Kingmaker

Hello readers!
Today I'll be reviewing a combat game called War of the Roses: Kingmaker

A bit about the game and developers.
War of the Roses: Kingmaker has been developed by 13-man team from Fatshark and produced by Paradox Interactive who are the publishers of Magicka, Mount & Blade and very many other great games. All hail those 13 people for making so great game. I can't even imagine how hard work it was!

About Gameplay. 
War of the Roses: Kingmaker is a team based third person action game set in Medieval England during the happening of real life Wars of the Roses. All the maps are based on real locations where the battles were so it makes the game feel even more special than what it is.

Right from the start you'll see how different this game is from the rest of the new games I've played.
To start off I'll say that you need a strong machine to play this game. I will be saying why is it needed below in the graphic area. War of the Roses is different when it comes to combat system. You have four different attacks, two slashes, stab and a chop. Slashes are great for multi targets and on wide areas, chop is great in small, closed up area or where you can't swing too much due to your friends being too close, while stab is great for piercing armors. The longer you hold your attack, the more power you put into it and therefore do more damage.

Defense is done on the same way. You hold your right mouse button and move it left, up, down or right. Half of a second before your opponent strikes you you will see a small orange bar appear on either right, left, top or bottom part of your screen. That will appear at the area where your enemy wants to hit you. You have to press right click and drag your mouse to the given side in order to defend. If you don't do that, you will get hit and probably killed. Shield users don't have to worry about that because shields protect you from all sides.

Armors have major roles in WotR. Light armor makes you fastest but very unprotected, while medium armor gives you some protection and some agility. Heavy armor, on the other hand, gives you massive protection but ends up making you slow. Slashing your opponents who have heavy armor is useless because your sword / dagger / pole arm / axe will just bounce back. The only way to kill people with heavy armor is to stab them.

There are four basic profiles which have their own set of perks and weapons. You can not modify those. Until level 15-ish i recommend you to use only those classes because they are more powerful than anything you can create.You can make your own "warrior" from the level five already. You can name it, give him any weapon you want, give him the perks you want, and even give him a horse! Bear in mind though, you need to have a decent amount of money to be able to do all that.

Coins are very big part of this game because there are many different things to buy in it. Money is
very hard to gain, so keep saving it! With coins you can buy additional character slots, perks (which allow him to use certain weapons, shields, or give him an ability to ride a horse), you need to buy weapons, weapon modifications, armors, armor colors (if you want) and horses. Different horses have different prices. Also, your level is only important until 20. At 20 you unlock pretty much everything that the game can offer to you. But even then the money is hard to gain.

You gain money by winning missions, assisting your allies in kills, killing enemies yourself, executing enemies and healing your allies. Healing your allies gives you the most XP and coins so always do that over executing enemies or doing something else! Instant kills also earn you some money, and squad wipe, but those two are hard to get. If you're on a horse its easier, but it's hard to aim.

If you are thinking about getting a horse, think twice about it. It's very expensive, and extremely hard to use, so I don't want you to waste your money on early levels. You will get more kills by using your sword or mace than riding on a horse, looking awesome. Using crossbow and longbow also has its bonuses. It's very hard to aim, reload and stay alive, but once you master it, it's overpowered. Especially the crossbow. On later levels crossbow can one shot kill you if the user is good. You do have limited number of arrows, and the reload time is massive, but it's worth it.

Customization in War of the Roses is not big, but it is still amazing. You can make your own crest which will then be displayed on your armors, shields and on top of your helmet! It will only be showed on the heads of custom made armors though.

Graphic and Audio
The graphic of this game is just amazing. Beautiful grass is on every corner of the map, Sun shines
beautifully, and the blood looks amazing. But the best thing is the reflection on your armor. Even if your graphic is on low quality, you can still see a reflection of everything in your armor. It's very important to say that Fatshark has built this game from ground up all with their own engine! Fantastic work guys!

There is not much to say about audio because most of the time you don't even hear it. It made me a bit disappointed but it's just one of few bad things of this game. There is some background music every now and then, but not often.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
 - Amazing graphic.
- Very different gameplay.
- Long learning curve which makes you focus on the game and learn every aspect of it fast.
- Combination of stealth approach is always welcome.
- Massive weapon customizations.
- Ability to make your own crest.
- Extremely fun.

Cons:
- Some bugs like non-working abilities.
- Requires a strong PC.
- Money comes very slow, but goes away extremely fast.

Extra info: This game is extremely fun and I just can't get enough of it. I'm very happy that I was playing with a good friend of mine, Zukureneno, who taught me the ropes very quickly! Paradox Interactive were so awesome that they gave me three copies of the game for giveaway so here you go guys from the group!



Also, I'm sorry that it took me so long to make this review, but I wanted to finish this video completely and uploading it took me a very long time. So here you go, my first game review in a video format as well! Zukureneno also joined me on it!