Game Review: FTL: Faster Than Light.

Hello once again Ladies and Gentleman, today I'll be doing a review of FTL: Faster Than Light.

 

A bit about the game and developers.

FTL: Faster Than Light is a space simulation game developed and published by a tiny indie company that has just two members, Subset Games. Great job developers!

About Gameplay.

So, as I said, FTL is a space simulation game. In it your objective is to fly from one point of the galaxy to the other. You're being chased by rebels, because you've stolen something from them. I say that this game is space simulation because you need to tell your ship crew what to fix, where to go, where to put fire down, and so on and on. You also decide where will your ship shoot at your opponent.

Don't let this game fool you. It looks very fun and relaxing, but it is actually quite complex! Imagine how much you have to attack next - enemy's shield, or maybe guns.. Maybe their engine so they couldn't dodge... Or maybe their medical area so their crewman can't heal - while you have to make sure that there are no hostiles on your ship, and if there are, you have to order your crewmen to kill them. Then you have to put down the fires, fix your guns, fix your shields, fix your oxygen and so on and on.

Now, don't get me wrong. This game is amazing! Also, in case that your ship gets destroyed, you have to do everything from the beginning. And that is what actually makes this game hard. There are never more than just one opponent (at least I've never faced more than one!) in one battle, but it's still quite hard to beat them. There are a lot of ships and ships skins that you can unlock as you progress in the game. Sadly I don't know what is your reward for beating the game, since I've only got to the half of it after trying the game out many, many times.

In the game there are a lot of other areas in which you can jump to that can actually hurt your ship. In those areas there can be either meteors, which can "beat your ship" to death, or you can come too close to the sun which will then make your hull get damaged, which means you can die! There are also some random planets on which you can, randomly, get more crewmen on your ship. They can all even be different races! Every race has their own bonuses, but sadly I don't know them so I can't talk too much about that.

Graphic and Audio

Graphically speaking, the game is very pixelish. Well of course, it's an pixel, indie game! And I have to say, it's very well done! I love the artwork, the explosions, the space, the look of ships. It's very well done. Audio is very relaxing as well. I really enjoy all of the background songs in the game.

Pros, cons and final grade.

Pros:

- A lot of ships to unlocks (and skins!)

- Very nice background pictures and audio.

- Cheap!

Cons:

- Quite hard.

Final grade:  8/10

Extra info: Get this game. You won't regret it! It's just amazing.

FTL: Faster Than Light

Hello Ladies and Gentleman!

This week I have something new for you. I didn't do a review, but I made gameplay videos of FTL: Faster Than Light!
I will still write a review for it, but for now I just hope that you'll watch my videos on youtube, and comment on them. I'd like to know your honest opinions, if I'm doing it right and if I should add something or remove something.
Thank you very much for watching, and I really hope you will like the videos!

Game Review: Kerbal Space Program

Ladies and Gentlemen, today I present to you - Kerbal Space Program!

A bit about the game and developers.
Kerbal Space Program is a space travel simulation game developed and published by Squad. Kerbal Space Program is their only game for now, and even that one isn't out yet. All of the review and game footage that you will see in this review is from ALPHA! Things could change when ever Squad feels they want something new.


About Gameplay.
As I said earlier, Kerbal Space Program is a simulation game. In it your objective is to build up a space craft and fly it into the space. You have a lot of different parts to chose from, with which you can create your space craft very unique! And It's very simple as well. All you need to do is Drag and Drop the part where you want it to be, and woala, you've got yourself a small aircraft. Of course, you do need to think about the laws of physics, and It will take you a couple of tries to even manage and get into the space! You need to think about how many engines should you take, how much fuel, how big should your ship be... And if it's too big, you should put it into couple of smaller pieces and just launch them into the space one by one.

That sounds very simple, doesn't it? Well I'm sorry to brake this down for you.. This game is insanely hard! Just imagine, you need to set up the space craft just perfectly! Then you need to set up the valid commands (what engines start first, then which ones fall to the ground while the new ones start, and so on and on), then you need to think about the gravity. You need to make your space craft go straight forward into the air until it reaches about 10 000 km. After that you should turn around 45 Degrees. By that time, you're almost out of the gravity's reach. But that is not all of it! Once you get your space craft out into the orbit, you will probably lose all of your fuel. So then you need to launch more fuel from the ground. Simple, right? Nope! By the time you get into the orbit, your other part of the space craft is already orbiting around the "Earth" (i forgot the name of the in game planet, I'm sorry!) so you either have to catch up with it, or make your fuel fly the other way around. Very hard, but fun!

Once you have finally put your ship fully together, you can travel to the Moon, Mars, or where ever you want! As long as you know what you're doing, and as long as you've got enough fuel left. Don't forget that you'd like to get your crew back, right? We need them to be heroes after all! And I think that the game wouldn't be so hard if it had a better tutorial. Tutorial teaches you how to fly a ship, and how to assemble it on the ground, but it doesn't teach you how to assemble it in space, it doesn't teach you how to land on the moon, nor anything else. That's the main reason why this game is hard. And I think that once the developers finish the tutorial properly, the game will be much more loved in the public! I, sadly, never managed to get out of the "Earth's" orbit and go to the moon. I managed to get half way there once, but that's it, hehe. It's just hard.

Graphic and Audio
Graphically speaking, the game looks great. This game is made by the Unity software, and it's amazing what Squad made this game look like. It has a lot of nice details, the land looks pretty decent, and the space looks amazing. Water, though, looks pretty bad. But once again, this game is just in alpha! The songs are pretty good too, but after too many hours, they get a bit annoying. Not so big problem though!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Very fun building game.
- Ability to make your ship look different from all the other ones.
- Ability to travel around the space, and go on any planet in our solar system.

Cons:
- Lack of tutorial.

Overall grade: 8/10.
To explain my grade - It would be 9 if the game had better tutorial system. This game is extremely fun, but very hard to learn, so better tutorial would be very welcome. It would also be 10 if they put the Kerbal customization into the game, and if they added multiplayer into it! It could be very hard to do, but I'm sure it'd be awesome, hehe.

Extra info: I really loved Kerbal Space Program, and I will keep on watching the game progress. I will review it once again once it comes fully out, because I'm sure that this game will still have a lot to offer! I support Kerbal Space Program!

Game Review: Battlefield 3

Ladies and gentlemen, I am back! For my first review I wanted to review Kerbal Space Program, but that game is so complicated that I will need to do it next week, hehe. So instead, this week I'm bringing you: Battlefield 3!

A bit about the game and developers.
Battlefield has been made by Dice, and published by EA games. Both Dice and EA games are quite familiar with their Battlefield series and The Sims series. Let's not forget Sim City, hehe.

About Gameplay. 
As it was expected, Battlefield 3 is a very fun, fast paced First Person Shooter game. The game is awesome for the most of it, but on the other side... Okay, let's start out with the problems since there aren't that many of them. To start off, Co-Op is almost un-playable. There has been an error with the game that once you enter into Co-Op, if you leave you get bugged out. The bug is that the Battlelog (I'll talk about it later) keeps saying that you and your partner are in co-op with each other, and therefore you can't join any other Co-Op game. So you have to wait whole day for this to disappear so you could play another round of Co-Op the next day. That wouldn't be so big of a fuss if it was a new problem.. Sadly, this problem has been here for months already, and Dice nor EA ain't doing anything about it. And to make it worse, in 80% of cases the Co-Op won't even start properly. It sometimes crashes on start, and in the other times it is stuck on infinite Loading screen. Now, the Battlelog. Battlelog itself is not a problem, but waiting for it to start your game is very annoying. It's very fast with Co-Op start up and Multiplayer, but single player campaign is starting up so slowly that you lose whole interest into game by the time it launches.

And now the good parts... Battlefield 3 is extremely fun! Of course, as any other well made First Person Shooter game that involves some-or-a-lot of tactical approach, this game needs friends that you could play with. Without friends / clan members, this game is just boring to play multiplayer, and is very un-enjoyable. Battlefield 3 has a lot of different game modes, but the most fun three ( in my opinion, of course! ) are Rush, Team Deathmach and Conquest Large. My personal favorite of them all is Conquest, due to it's awesome large maps which allow your team and you to take various different tactical approaches to win over your enemy. Conquest also allows both sides ( US and RU ) to use jets, helicopters, tanks and other mobile units that will allow them to win. I don't know why, but a team-mate and I decided to try out the Jets once, and once you really get to understand them, they are very fun and quite easy to fly. I've spent quite a bit of my play time up in the air, supporting my troops with some rockets, or taking down enemy jets that were pinning down my friends. It's extremely fun and very fast paced!

Team Deathmach is extremely fast paced too, and only the team with good co-ordination will be able to win very easily. Our tactic is usually - everyone pick the assault class! Assault class allows you to heal your squad members, and once you level it up, it allows you to revive your fallen friends. That's awesome because if you manage to revive your fallen ally, the death will not count so the enemy team will not get one kill point. Only bad thing about this tactic is that you will either run out of bullets after a while ( No support = no bullets ), or the other people from your team don't know that you will revive them, so they respawn and enemy gets the kill point.

Rush is also fast paced mode in which one side has to attack the opposite side's "base", while the other side has to hold onto it for about 225 kills. In case they fail, they will be forced to retreat further into their base, and they will need to kill 225 more enemy soldiers to win. This mode is quite hard for the attackers, and only way to win is great teamwork.

Battlefield 3 allows 4 classes. Assault, Engineer, Support and Recon. Assault heals others and revives fallen allies as i said earlier, Engineer has a rocket launcher with which he can shoot down enemy tanks, helicopters, jets, and he can fix your friendly vehicles. Support's role is to run with their allies and give them ammo bags so they would never be empty handed, as well as set up mines for tanks, or claymores for other enemy units. And finally, Recon is the class that has to go with the more "stealthy" way. His specialty is to deploy a spawn beacon, which he can put in the back of the enemy lines which then allows his team mates to spawn directly behind the enemy.  Each weapon in Battlefield 3 has an "attachment" area in which the person can put tactical lights, or lasers to blind their enemy, silencers to hide them from the minimap, and handgrip to make the gun more steady. Of course, there are other attachments that you can put in stead, but these are the more used ones.

Graphic and Audio
Visual effect of this game are AMAZING. The sun shine bothers you ingame, the rifle doesn't have a "spark" on every bullet, just as it doesn't in real life, and there's tones of dust that appears after every explosion. Usually people are very annoyed by this, but this dust is here in real life too. Dice is trying to make this game as realistic in look as possible. The dirt on your protection glasses is extremely well made as well. I was insanely stunned when I was playing the game. But on the other hand... Game's main theme song is awesome, and I love the re-make of it. But in multilayer there is no audio in the background so it gets quite "lonely". Therefore, my team mates and I always need to have a music bot in Team Speak with us that will give us some good background music.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Amazing realistic graphic.
- The game forces you to use team work to win over your enemy.
- Maps are very well put together.
- A lot of different game modes.

Cons:
- Barely working Co-Op.
- Not so awesome campaign.
- Lack of background music.
- Premium and DLC's are a money steal...

Final grade: 8/10

Extra info: This game is extremely fun, but hey it's just a normal FPS. It's not worth 100 € to enjoy it fully. If the game was 30€ with all DLC's in it, it would be good price, but anything above that is just too much over the top. If you can get this game within 30€ reach, and if you have friends to play with, i definitely recommend this game!

--- Pictures to be added ---