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

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!

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

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

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