Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The review will be a bit late.

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!
For the past few days I was not home, and I will not be home for the next few days. Therefore, I am sorry to tell you that my review will be a bit late. I am hoping that I will be able to review the game by Sunday.
The game that I'll be reviewing is Insurgency, a new, indie First Person Shooter from New World Interactive.
I still haven't even turned the game on, but I have heard great stories about it. So lets have some high hopes!

Thank you all for reading and for your patience!
Wolfie

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Game Review: Sleeping Dogs

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!
Today I will bring you a review of another sandbox shooter game, called Sleeping Dogs!
A bit about the game and developers.
Sleeping Dogs is a sandbox adventure-action game in which you are an undercover cop that does his best to arrest the leaders of largest, most dangerous gangs in Hong Kong. Sleeping Dogs has been developed by United Front Games and published by Square Enix.

About Gameplay.
As I said, in Sleeping Dogs you are an undercover police officer. A friend of yours manages to put you into the strongest, most dangerous gang in Hong Kong, and from there you are slowly working your way from a foot soldier to gang leader. On your way there you encounter various problems and problematic people.

Since this is a sandbox, you are able to travel all over the Hong Kong, even without being on a mission. You are also able to go to shops and buy clothing that give you extra experience from one of the tree skill lines, or extra damage with melee weapons. You can also buy different cars and motor bikes. Very bad thing about this game is that you can't own a stolen vehicle. So If you stole a car from someone, you can't just store it in your garage and re-use it. To be able to do that, you have to buy the car first.

Sleeping Dogs is a role playing game. In this role playing game you also earn experience points for three different factors. Cop experience, Triad experience and Face experience. Each of those factors gives you different powers in game, and I have to say this.. It is pain in the ass to level it up. You get Cop and Triad experience by doing main missions, but you get Face experience only by doing boring, way too easy side missions which barely give you any experience at all. And the worst part is that you can't drive good cars and have good clothing without high Face experience!

Cop experience give you different skills for weapons such as slowing down time, or it allows you to knock weapons out of your opponent's hands. Triad experience allows you to deal more damage using melee weapons, and it also allows you to jump onto cars from further distances and so on and on. Both of them are quite useful.

The game practically has two different storylines, one for police officer that is under cover, and one for a gang member. That is what makes this game slightly different, as well as rather long. After 11 hours of the gameplay I really started to get tired of it, since everything took so long to evolve, and the Face experience was locking me out of good clothing and badass cars.

Graphic and Audio
The game looks rather nice, but there are many other games which bypass it in the quality. I think that the developers didn't really put much work into it, and that they could have made it much, much better. Audio is pretty much always Chinese, so people who like that will enjoy it a lot. I on the other hand, found it slightly annoying after two hours into the game.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- You get to experience the stress of an undercover cop.
- A different approach on missions.
- Very unique skill trees.
- Good, but too long story line.

Cons:
- No multiplayer.
- Face experience stops you from enjoying the customization in the game.

Final grade: 6/10

Extra Info: The game is fun, but It really gets a little bit boring after a while. If they added some type of a multiplayer into it, i am sure that the game would be much better.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Omerta - City of Gangsters Review

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!
Today I will be giving you a review of a Turn Based Strategy game called Omerta - City of Gangsters.


 A bit about the game and developers.
Omerta- City of Gangsters has been developed by Haemimont Games, but has been published by Kalypso Media.Omerta - City of Gangsters is an turn based strategy game in which you are a gangster leader. Your job is to take over the city that you live in.

About Gameplay.
Omerta has two different game modes. Multiplayer and Single player. And they are very different. In Single player you have to follow a given story. You are able to manage a whole town, you decide what building will be bakery, what building will be making alcohol, what building will be storage and what building will you be selling your stuff from. Of course, as you are completing your objectives the detectives always want to catch you. You also have few ways to deal with them - either kill them, or pay them to work with you. And even though you have settled with the Detectives for now, other detectives will try to get you. And once you take care of those as well, another mob will try to get you. So through your whole gameplay you had someone to deal with as your mob family grows.

The game is an real time strategy when you are managing the city. By that, I mean that you can see a lot of little details such as your mob members running around the town, stealing the cars that you told them to steal and then driving around the map in them. Then, when you send them somewhere, you can see them drive their cars to that location, get out of the cars and go into the buildings. Everything is very detailed and awesome! But when it comes to combat, the game turns into a turn based strategy game, in which each gang member (or a detective) has their own turn to decide what do they want to do, such as move around, hide behind covers or attack someone.

During combat each character has their own abilities. The player has to chose if he wants to move or use any of the abilities. The player can move and then use abilities, but he can't use abilities and then move. So, once you decide to attack someone, your turn is automatically over. Therefore, during the fight the player needs to think of the whole strategy. Each in game character is different. Some of them use bats, some use knives, some use hand guns and others use shotguns. And therefore each character has different skills. Some of them are medics while others are sneaky ninjas. All of this should be applied during your combat seasons, since in most cases you are always outnumbered by detectives.

Multiplayer does not have the city running gameplay. Multiplayer is either a versus game, or a co-op game with your friends, or random strangers. Multiplayer is a turn based combat game, in which you and your friend have to do various missions together, or compete against each other. The turns during multiplayer are very random and character based.

Graphic and Audio
Graphic of Omerta - City of Gangsters is very amazing. The details put  into the city, cars, characters, trees, shades and day and night cycles are really stunning for a strategy game. I was very surprised. Music, on the other hand gets quite annoying, so I had to mute it an hour into the game.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- You get to run the mob in a strategy game.
- Very beautiful graphic.

Cons:
- Nothing new. Everything in this game has been seen way too many times before.
- Multiplayer experience is not as fun as single player is.

Final Grade: 5/10

Extra Info: The game is quite fun but I was expecting much more out of it when I first laid my eyes on it. I'm sad that it turned out as it did. I was actually playing the game with a good friend of mine, Str33tsGaming, who made a YouTube video of us playing the game. Since I liked the video I thought of placing it on my blog. So everyone can see a bit of Multiplayer, Versus mode. Enjoy!
P.S. I had no idea he was recording until the next day, when he uploaded it..

Monday, January 6, 2014

Game Review: Outlast

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!
Today I'll give you a review of a very new horror game, called Outlast.

A bit about the game and developers.
Outlast has been developed and published by Red Barrels. Outlast is a survival game in which you play as a game reporter that went to check out an asylum. Your main job is to get out alive. It sounds pretty easy, right?

About Gameplay.
As said above, Outlast is a game in which you are a writer. Your job was to go into the Asylum and find out what was going on. Inside of the Asylum most of the things seem fine, until someone grabs you and throws you off the second floor. I don't know how, but you manage to survive. Also, for some unknown reason your camera doesn't brake in any way. And that is where the real gameplay starts.

You have to complete the "objective" that your guide tells you to do. You are some kind of a witness, who's job is to witness and record everything that is happening in the Asylum. At beginning you decide to ignore everything that the person says, and just do your best to get out. Of course that does not work. At that point the guy forces you to go even deeper into the Asylum to witness even more stuff. You use your camera to record everything. At some point of the game, everything gets so dark that you can't even play without the camera. And the developers made it look so amazing! When you turn on the infrared, you don't really see too far ahead of you. And I was rather amazed by that. On a good side!

This game is pretty heavy on the story. The game doesn't really force you to think too much. There aren't really any hard puzzles that you can't solve within a minute or two. But the story is extremely well done and the game is definitely worth it!

Graphic and Audio
The game's visuals are awesome. The graphic is really well made! The nature, the difference between camera view and without camera view is pretty big, so they have really pulled it off great. Audio in the game is very scarry, and really fits the theme. So great job about that as well!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Quite scarry!
- At some point the game rather creeps you out than scarries you.
- Amazing visuals.

Cons:
- Sometimes they just make the game hard on the places, where the objective is so easy to reach.

Final Grade:  9/10!

Extra Info: I really didn't think that the developers will make this game as good, but they really managed to pull it out! Great job! This game is definitely a must have!