Game Review: Rocket League

A bit about the game and developers

Rocket League was developed and published by Psyonix. I think it is quite interesting to say that Rocket League asked EA to be published by them back in 2011, but sadly EA have turned them down. I bet that they are feeling quite sad nowadays since the game is getting quite the hype. Psyonix made quite a few games but most of them weren't that popular. The latest one of them being Nosgoth, which was actually closed down back in May of 2016. Psyonix also contributed in making of some quite popular games such as Mass Effect 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, and 3, Gears of War and some other.

Gameplay

Rocket League is a fast paced car-based football (soccer for Americans.) game, in which the player commands a vehicle that has to score goals using a Football. (Yet again, soccer ball for those whom speak US English rather than UK English.) To be score the goal, the player needs to battle other players and work well with their team. The game allows players to use boost and speed up, as well as do different tricks, such as aerodynamic jumps, wall driving and cool side kicks. All of those need to be combined to achieve a win. The vehicle is quite hard to maneuver with, so I highly recommend using a gamepad.

After each round the players will unlock some cosmetics, that they can use to equip their vehicle with. There are numerous cosmetics, such as different stripes, lines, hats, antennas and boost colors. Those cosmetic items don't make one vehicle any better than the other one, it just makes more fun and variety to the game. Rocket League also has about 20 different vehicles and the number keeps on growing. Developers often add new vehicles to the game which need to be purchased as a DLC. The DLC's are also quite cheap, and I think that having those vehicles as a DLC content enables the game to  grow even more. No matter which vehicle the player takes, all of them are the same. Ball hit boxes change with each car, but the speed and strength is always the same with each one. Rocket League is purely skill based, and that's what I absolutely love about the game.

The angle you hit the ball, the speed you do it at, if you are airborne or not, if the ball was falling or not before you hit it - all of those things matter in this game. Every action has to be calculated, and everything matters. One mistake or a good action can either lead to a lost game, or a won one. There are, of course, countless ways for you to engage the ball. You can either wait for it to be stationary on the floor, you can use jumping into your advantage, or you can drive up walls, and then  try to hit the  ball from there. And then, of course,  there is this professional action that only very skilled players use, called "The acrobatics." Basically, you need to learn how to control your vehicle midair using nothing but a bit of a boost. It sounds rather easy, yes, but when you start to use it you find otu how hard it actually is.

Graphic and Audio.

Rocket League has a very beautiful graphics. The backgrounds, car models, the maps, all of it is quite beautiful. Including the decals on the vehicles. But, when it comes to audio of the game I am slightly let down. The game had been out for about two years now, and still it has no in game music. There is music in the menu, but while you are playing the game there is none but occasional song that you hear in the background - as if it were coming out from a building next door. You can hear people cheer at all times, and the vehicle sounds are very nice, but I would really like to see some actual songs inside of the game too.

Pros, cons and final grade.

Pros:

- Beautiful graphic

- Extremely fun gameplay

- Unique

- Lots of items that are quite easy to acquire.

Cons:

- Can get very repeatable after an hour or two, so it is quite hard to play it for a longer time in one go.

- No songs during the game

- Sometimes the servers can get quite laggy

Overall score: 8.5 / 10

I have to say that I am very sorry that it took me so long to make this post. I wanted to do it back in June but I was unable to, or just forgot. I wrote this review in honor of my best friend, and a gaming partner - Syphio. He passed away 7th of June 2016. Rocket League was one of his most favorite games. Syphio, you will be greatly missed.

Trailer

Buy the game right here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hello there followers.
I won't really get into much writing right now, but I would like to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. I've been going through some rough time right now so I wasn't active. But if I get the strength, I will start writing again.

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! I wish you all the best.

Game Review: Banished

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I am back! I am probably not going to be as active as I used to be, due to a very busy real life, but I will still do my best to write as often as I can. With that said, I also started streaming every now and then. Usually it's Sunday around 6PM GMT+1 time zone. And it usually lasts until late evening, depending on how many people watch, or if I feel like streaming or not. I was also thinking of hosting my own blog, without Blogger. That would allow me to edit the blog exactly the way I want it to be, and it would give me a lot more freedom to move around it. Let's just say that I would like to advance from my current position of being a common game reviewer, to a more professional position. I would be very happy if you would tell me your opinion on that topic in the comment section below. With that small intro said, I am happy to welcome all of you back to MidnightWolfie's Reviews!

Game and the developers.
Banished has been developed by Shining Rock Software. I was very surprised when I learnt this, but Shining Rock Software is actually a team of.. Well, a single person. Just one guy programmed the game, added graphics to it, and composed music for it. I mean, talking about a talent! I wish I could find a bit more information about this, but sadly their website only said that. I will, though, try to get in contact with the guy and ask him for an interview. I think that will be rather interesting.

Gameplay.
Banished is a survival city-building game, in which you tell humans what to do in order to, well, survive. You need to focus on keeping your people alive. You do that by telling them what to build next. But to build that, they need materials. Now, in a non-modded version of the game materials are quite easy to get, but the gameplay is very hard and challenging. For now I'll talk about a non-modded version, and then later about the modded one. In a non-modded version you start up with, depending on your difficulty settings, some food and building materials. With those materials you need to focus on obtaining more food by hunting, fishing and plant growing. Of course, you also need to build some houses to let your people move in. All of that requires materials, so you need to order your people to chop some wood down. But trees don't grow themselves back, so you will need to plant some trees yourself. Then again, you don't have that many people to manage all of this, so now you have to wait few years until your children grow up and are able to work. But while you are waiting for your population to grow, a disease breaks out.  So now you quickly build up a hospital but it's already too late, you lost 80% of your population. And boom, you lost the game. So let's re-start it! Now you know what to do, what not to do, and you play it slow and safe. And that's exactly how you get to enjoy this game even more.

Achievements play a big part in this game since they always give you something new to do. Obtaining them is very hard, and can prove to be a big challenge, so that makes things even more interesting. Some achievements are focused on your citizen number, others are focused on your animals, food, or stockpiles.
I wish that the developer let the player discover his / her own crops, plants and animals by pure accident in stead of just trading for it. Trading for it can sometime take a very long time, because you never know what you get. I am forced to dismiss 90% of my trades just because they never had any crops or animals, and I really didn't ever need anything else.

Now let's talk a little bit about modded version of the game. There are some very interesting mods which allow you to build over thirty ( 30 ) new buildings, collect and build many more materials, grow more crops and own more types of animals, trading goods, send people on adventure and so on and on. If you use the right mods it actually feels like you are playing a  different game. There are of course some slower aging mods which allow the player to expand their cities much faster. But it all comes for a price. As soon as you have active mods, you do not get any achievements. So for achievement collectors this is a big problem. But then again if someone really wants those achievements I am sure that they will be more than happy to play the vanilla game, just like I did.

Graphic and Audio.
Banished has very beautiful, quite detailed graphic. In fact, I am deeply surprised by how beautiful it is knowing that just one person did all of it. The in game songs are also very nice, but they do tend to get rather annoying after about ten hours of repeating the loop. And sadly the songs don't really fit into the game. Sometimes the songs are very fast, while you do nothing other than plant crops. Or the song is very nice and calm, while your entire village is being torn apart by a tornado.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Amazing graphic.
- Amazing game play mechanic (Connections between buildings)
- Feeling of accomplishment when your people manage to live through 300 years.
- Mods.

Cons:
- Very slow starting faze.
- Can't find and tame animals, can't find different seeds, the player is forced to wait for the right trader.
- No way of changing the ground in any way.

Overall Score: 9 / 10.
Even though Cons seem to be rather annoying, the game always finds a good way to let you enjoy it and have a great time playing it.

Trailer

Buy the game right here.

A small update.

Hello there followers!
I am very sorry for not writing earlier, but I have had a lot of things starting to happen. I have recently moved from one house to another, and I am about to move into a new house today or in two days.
With that said, I have also recently got a better job offer. I am stuck at this job which doesn't give me any free time for just two more days, and then things should start going better.
I haven't had much free time as I said above, and a lot of things were happening, but I did manage to squeeze a few games into my schedule. And I will write reviews about most of them. The games which you can expect reviews from are Resident Evil 6, Rocket League, The Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Planets cube (This is very, very early alpha!) and maybe few more games which I don't remember at the moment.

So as you can see, there is a lot of things that I plan to do, and I just hope that my motivation comes back fast. I would also really like to start streaming, but sadly they do not offer good upload rates around the area that I live in, so I'm having issues with that as well. But I will think of something!

I am very thankful for everyone who decided to stick with me through all this time, and I am very sorry for not writing earlier.
Have a great time,
Wolfie

No new reviews for a short while.

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!
I have got sad news to share with you. I won't be able to do reviews for a short time. A week or two. Sadly my mother board died and I need to get it replaced. It started about a week and a half ago when my first memory slot died. The PC didn't want to boot up and it took me three days to figure the issue out. I had to take out the memory from the non-working slot, and after that the PC (kind of) worked like a charm. Sadly though, yesterday it died again. And in my attempt to fix it, I burnt my motherboard.
So I won't get the new motherboard until Saturday or Monday, I am not sure when yet. And maybe, just maybe my Power Supply Unit died as well, so I would need to replace that as well. Let us hope that isn't the issue though.
Anyway, thank you all for being patient! And I am really sorry to keep you all waiting!

Game Review: Fight The Dragon

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, today I'll be reviewing a community generated Hack'n'Slash RPG Fight The Dragon.

A bit about the game and developers.
Fight The Dragon has been developed and published by 3 Sprockets. Fight the dragon is a Hack'n'Slash RPG in which everyone can create their own dungeons. The game is all about going on an adventure by yourself or with your friends. There are few maps that were designed by the developers of the game, but all other content has been made by the community itself.

About Gameplay.
In Fight The Dragon you are given the choice to be one out of four playable classes. You can chose between Fighter, Fire Mage, Ice Mage and a Rogue. Fighter is a tank or a damage dealer, depending on your equipment and play style. Fire Mage is an Area of Effect damage deal, which is great to take down multiple enemies. Ice Mage is mainly a stunner, who focuses on freezing the enemies in place so the others can take them down fast and easy. Rogue is a damage dealer and a trap finder. He focuses on poisoning the enemies to deal extra damage, setting up traps and dismantling traps in game.

The game futures many different weapons and armors. All the classes can wear all the armors, but they are limited with the weapons. Sword, axe, club and a shield may be wielded by any class. Fighter specific weapons are greatswords, spears, greathammers and a throwing hatchet. Wizard specific weapons are crystal, staffs, wands and a magic tome. And finally, rogue's specific class weapons are daggers, shortswords, crossbow and shurikens. Inside of an adventure the loot is separated, meaning that everyone gets their own loot. That's a great thing because no one needs to fight about what belongs to who. Sadly there is no trade system in the game, but a player can just drop the icons he or she does not want on the ground, and someone else can pick them up in stead.

As I said earlier, most of the dungeons in this game are made by players. Fight The Dragon has an amazing and very mature community, and most of the people are creating their own maps. Some people make arena maps, some of them just build nice little towns, while others, more serious people, make their own little campaign. I think that's very amazing since those people just keep making the game expand more and more. It kind of feels as if it's just filled up with  free DLC's everywhere!

The game also supports Steam Workshop, which allows you to have an even bigger character customization. Imagine running around in a Batman costume! Yes, of course I did that. Who wouldn't? There are new items inside of the workshop quite often, but not as often as the new maps.

Fight The Dragon also has a specific type of loot called "Dragon Scrolls". The player can use that scrolls in single player to fight a dragon. Sadly, the dragon is so hard to kill that I did not even manage to get close to it yet. He's got a million HP and deals too much damage. He also drops specific items which a player can obtain from a dragon and dragon alone, the dragon rings. I have tried to find out what happens once the player kills the dragon by browsing the internet a little bit, but I didn't find anything related to it, except that "it's not worth the hassle".

Graphic and Audio.
The game is pretty blocky, but the developers still made it look quite pretty. Awesome thing about that is that the game runs on quite old and weak computers. Songs in the game are very nice, and I really enjoyed having them as my background music, but the weapon sounds could use a bit of a tun up. Shurikens, throwing hatchets and the crossbow all have the same sound, and I have found that very annoying.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Community based dungeons / campaigns.
- Steam Workshop support.
- Many different weapons and armors.
- Ability to create your own dungeons and campaigns with a very simple in game creation tool.

Cons:
- Very slow character progression.
- The dragon can't be fought with friends.
- No ability to make custom weapons and armors.

Final grade: 7.5/10

Game Trailer.

Extra information: If you are interested in a very cool co-op experience in which you can rank up your character and make your own dungeons, this game is definitely for you. 

You can buy the game over Steam by clicking this link!

Trying to move to video reviewing.

Hello there Ladies and Gentlemen!
As you have seen, even though I have returned I still didn't post more than just one review. Main reason to that is simply because I have no time to play too many games. I want to review Fight The Dragon, but I feel like I just didn't learn enough of things about it yet. And therefore I stopped writing it multiple times.
But what I have been doing is, I have started making more video gameplays. Most of the people prefer to watch a video in stead of read a review, so I want to try and reach to that audience as well. Don't get me wrong, I will still write all the reviews, but I'm just trying to reach out to more people.

Very soon there will be a giveaway of EvE Online coming up, so make sure to stick around!
Also feel free to leave any type of feedback to the blog. I love hearing what other people think I should change, improve or leave out.
Thank you all for reading!

P.S. A new review is definitely going to happen within the next four to five days! Definitely!

Game Review: Planetary Annihilation

Hello Ladies and Gentleman! To start off, I want to wish you all a very Happy New Year! I hope that everyone will have better year than any previous one and that you will be able to accomplish everything that you wanted to accomplish thus far.  With that said, I decided that as of 2015 I will stop being lazy! And the best way to do that is to start writing reviews again. And for my first review I chose Planetary Annihilation. I have played quite a few hours of this game and I feel more than confident of reviewing it. So here we go!

A bit about the game and developers.
Planetary Annihilation has been developed and published by Uber Entertainment. They are quite a new company, but they have a very experienced team. Their only other PC game is Super Monday Night Combat, which is a completely different game from Planetary Annihilation.  Planetary Annihilation is a Real Time Strategy with just one simple game. Complete annihilation of your enemy!

About Gameplay.
Planetary Annihilation is a very fast paced RTS. As said before, your only goal in this game is to kill the enemy commander, pretty which is pretty much the same thing like in Supreme Commander series. And once again, just like in Supreme Commander series, you start off with a big commander who starts building up a colony. But this game comes with a fantastic twist! You can get off from the planet on which you are currently, and actually move to different asteroids or planets if there are any. So the map in this game can be quite large, and even though the game is very fast paced few hours can pass before you finish the round. And since you can populate many planets, you can also control them. You can smash one planet into another and take the enemy down by surprise. That happened to me twice already.

Until recently this game was only playable in multi player. But recently Uber Entertainment has added single player. Single player has two game types. Galactic war or Skirmish against AI. In skirmish you battle only one round. You can set up how many planets will there be, resources and players (AI's.). Galactic war is something like a campaign. You start off on one solar system, and your goal is to conquer the entire galaxy. So you jump from one system to another. Some of them have enemies, others do not. Each solar system has an "upgrade" which you use. At first you start off with just three upgrade slots, but as you move through the game you manage to unlock more of them. They aren't exactly upgrades since they actually allow you to build more units. So, without the unlocks you are forced to only use tanks. As you progress (and get lucky!) you unlock air vehicles, orbital vehicles, naval and so on and on. Maybe you even manage to get a NPC commander to help you out! I was lucky enough to get another commander Silva, and he helped me a lot. In fact, I won most of my games thanks to him!

Multiplayer is much different than the singleplayer experience, but that is to be expected. Unlike in single player where bots do their best to get higher tier bots, tanks and aircraft, in multiplayer people use many different strategies and even kill each other within the first two to five minutes of the game! Playing a game with 8 players is very fun but can also get slow and boring once you get rid of most commanders since you can't find the rest of them on so large map. Multiplayer also lets you chose if you want to have shared armies or not. If they are shared you can control each other's units, including the commander. But of course, just like any other game sometimes you encounter bugs. For example in my previous game my teammate's commander couldn't build anything. But that's a minor bug which was fixed as soon as we remade the round.

Graphic and Audio.
Graphic of this game is filled up with pixels and tiny boxes. But that's mainly how this game is supposed to be. This game is voxel based strategy, and I have to tell you that the developers did an amazing job. Even though the game looks quite simple, it's still beautiful. The universe, the planets, the water, trees and vehicles, everything looks very beautiful. The audio in this game is exactly what it should be. Background music. You don't even realize it's there unless you actually focus on it, and it just fits in perfectly as you play. So great job on the music choice!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Large maps.
- Beautiful graphic.
- Fun single player.
- Extremely fun multiplayer.
- A lot of different units.

Cons:
- Hard learning curve. No tutorial.
- Multiplayer games can get long and boring since the map is too big.
- Starting your first Galactic war campaign feels harsh and unfair.

Final grade: 8.5 / 10

Game Trailer

Extra information: If you are a fan of Supreme Commander, or Total Annihilation games, you will love this game. It's large, fast paced and almost no experience is the same. Great game indeed!

You can buy the game over Steam by clicking this link!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hello there Ladies and Gentlemen!

I know that I am not too active lately, but I do know that I will fix that soon!
I got my PC back and I have got quite a few games on my list waiting to be reviewed! But before all that begins again, I would just like to tell everyone Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I hope that all of you will have a wonderful time with your family and friends, and I hope you will enjoy your gifts.

Have a great vacation,
Wolfie

An update of all the recent events.

Hello there readers!

I haven't been writing for a long, long while, but I have a good excuse for it! On my last post I said that I can't play anymore, due to June being over at my place. Well, about a month later we went into her country, Czech Republic. Luckily things were better than I have hoped for. I managed to get a job, and I have managed to stay in Czech. I am currently living with June. I couldn't be happier!
But there's one slightly bad thing about that. I do not have my gaming PC here. Therefore, I can't do almost any gaming. I do have my laptop here but he's way too outdated for any new games. I even have slight lag issues in Hammerwatch!

I think I'll be mailing my PC from Croatia to Czech within few months. And once I do that, I'll start writing again!
I'm really sorry for letting you know so late, but I rarely have any free time. And when I do, i tend to spend it with June in stead of just being on PC all the time.
Thank you all for being faithful readers!

Wolfie