Hearthstone Review

Heartstone

Release Date: Uhhhhh....

Developer: Blizzard

System Used: PC

So while I'm putting off music reviews (because I don't know what to do) I have decided to go over Hearthstone because it's a game that is free and everyone can have access to it as long as you have a decent internet connection. 

So let me start by saying that I usually hate pay to win games. A lot. When you have to spend money to be as good as everyone else it is annoying; and in some ways, that is kind of exactly what Hearthstone is. At the same time though, it really isn't what it is at all and I still managed to absolutely love this game. Here's why.

The premise of the game is that it is a card game and the battles are card battles. You get gold to buy packs of five cards and you use those cards to make different decks. There are nine different types of decks that you can build each with their own theme of cards and play styles. For those of you familiar with Magic: The Gathering think of it as very similar, except you can't miss land drops and there's only about five abilities and spell types instead of fifty bajillion. 

So to start the game, you have to go through a fairly lengthy tutorial but it describes all of the game mechanics that you have to be familiar with.

It teaches you through failure which is kinda cool and a bit of a change from what is normally done. After the tutorial is over you have either the choice to play people on the servers or you can play their two different types of single player. One of them is just practice against the computer and the other is their all new adventure room things called Naxxramas. All in all it's a lot of fun and best of all, it's free. There really isn't a reason not to try it.

Gameplay: 10 out of 10
Story: N/A (they try with Naxxramas but.... not really)
Audio: 3 of 10 (songs are annoying)
Video: 8 out of 10 (could be better cards/animation)

Total: 6.7 broken decks out of 10 

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money Review

Fallout New Vegas Post 3! Yes I know I'm reviewing the DLCs out of order. Guess what? I don't care! And this one says it's for level 20+ while Old World Blues is level 15+ so it's later game anyway, so suck it.

Pop quiz: What's the term for a poker hand with two pair aces and eights? Dead man's hand. That's not really related, though there is a challenge to collect the five cards to make the dead man's hand.

So then Dead Money brings you to the dazzlingly brilliant casino Sierra Madre... or it was supposed to be dazzlingly brilliant. The great war happened just before the place was set to open. When atomic fire is raining from the sky, big fancy trivialities sort of take a back seat. This means that all the treasure in the casino's vault is just sitting right there, waiting for someone to come along and pluck it up. Enter Elijah. Elijah is a crazy old man, obsessed with getting into the vault and taking that treasure for himself. But he can't do it alone. However, no sane person would attempt to break into Sierra Madre, the surrounding area is covered in a toxic red fog known only as "the cloud". In addition to being lethal in large quantities, the cloud has slowly twisted the people who once inhabited the area around Sierra Madre. Now they stalk the desolate streets looking for anything that still breaths and hunting it down. So as I said, no sane person would willingly walk in here. Unfortunately, you are not willing. Upon being taken to Sierra Madre Elijah straps an explosive collar around your neck and tells you that you must help him with his plan or he'll kill you. Nothing quite like threats of certain death if you should disobey.

Now one thing that certainly makes this DLC more difficult than the others is that you are allowed to bring precisely nothing with you. Any and all gear and items you may be holding upon traveling to Sierra Madre are taken and cannot be reclaimed till you have finished your business and returned home. This means you are forced to survive with what you can scavenge. This is an interesting challenge, but actually winds up being a bit less of a problem than you might think, provided you have any skill with melee weapons. A suit of reasonably decent armor can be found early on in the area. There are easily obtainable guns, a holo-rifle is given upon your arrival, and a revolver can be found soon afterwards. Though ammunition is in fairly short supply. But in truth, you're not likely to want to use the guns anyway. The main type of enemy is the "ghost people" who happen to have a terrible habit of not staying dead when you kill them. You can put them on the ground with bullets same as everything else, but after a bit they'll likely get back up and resume trying to kill you. How rude. Thankfully they can be rendered permanently dead. This is achieved by destroying one or more of their limbs. That, and the limited ammo, is why being up close and personal to your murder victims is going to benefit you here. Provided your hacking and smashing doesn't ruin a limb in the course of a normal murdering, you can give one or two additional strikes to the fallen foe and make sure they're no longer a threat. Thankfully melee weapons are in no short supply as most of the ghost people carry a knife spear and if unarmed is more your thing don't fret, we have a bear trap fist for you.

So the gear issue, while somewhat limiting, isn't overly crippling. But rest assured there are other things to worry about in Sierra Madre. As I said, the toxic cloud that hangs heavily in the air can be lethal, should you stumble into one of the denser pockets of it. And if that wasn't enough, your bomb collar isn't exactly grade A technology and will suffer potentially fatal interference from various radios and speakers around the villa. Thankfully such lethality isn't instantaneous, that'd be just cruel, and would actually render the mission impossible. If you should wander too close to an active speaker or radio your collar will begin to beep and give you a few seconds to either move away or eliminate the source of interference. The radios can be activated to turn them off, and most, though not all, of the speakers can be shot to ruin them. But just in case the enemies that don't like staying dead, the toxic air, and the constant worry of stepping to close to a stray speaker and blowing yourself up aren't enough there's more. In addition to all of these things to concern yourself with there are also holographic security guards that somehow manage to hurt you physically should they spot you. These guards are completely impervious to all forms of damage, one of the perks of being composed of nothing but a projected image. The only methods of dealing with them is running, sneaking, or disabling the emitter (either directly or via a terminal). Oh and add in to all that an utter plethora of mines, tripwires, bear traps, and pressure plates to stumble over and ruin your day with. Seriously, having the "light step" perk is sooooo helpful here.

So difficulty certainly isn't an issue with this one. But it's not perfect. One criticism I do have against the DLC is that it's significantly less open than either Honest Hearts or Old World Blues (I still haven't played Lonesome Road so I can't comment on it yet). It's not terribly linear dragging you by the nose from point a to point b. There are little side areas and there is some control in what objective you do when, but it is a much more focused experience. Whereas I just didn't want to explore in Honest Hearts, there really just isn't much to explore here. Logically this does make sense, the Sierra Madre wasn't an entire town. It was a casino with a small-ish villa surrounding it, and even if it had been a full on town, Elijah isn't likely to let you wander far from your goal. So I understand why it's a confined area, but I will say there is certainly the least content for your money here (again with the possible exception of Lonesome Road).

All in all I do think it's a well made, if at times slightly bothersome experience. The list of things I mentioned earlier can push you out of you normal means of doing things which I do enjoy when games do, if they do it well. And this is mostly well done. There can be some slight annoyance when trying to locate a speaker or radio causing issues and you have to keep going into the danger zone frantically looking around then darting back before your neck goes boom. The pockets of thick cloud mess with your vision making it rather hard to see properly, meaning you often have to stand at the edge of such areas and try and locate what you're looking for before going in. In addition, just walking around outside, while not in thick cloud, will cause your vision to pulse occasionally for a moment.

So in the end, it winds up being a decent, if short and occasionally mildly irritating experience. I will reiterate if you're really interested in getting the best bang for buck this might not be a particularly good choice for you. But if you do like New Vegas and want something new and different that will provide some interesting challenges then Dead Money should provide that.

Gameplay: 7.5 out of 10
Story: 7 out of 10
Visuals: 7 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 7 severed limbs out of 10

Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts Review

New Vegas DLCs Mini-series part 2. This isn't the image I really wanted to use for this post, but the others were problematic, and this one is somewhat related, as Honest Hearts introduced the Giant Cazadors.... cause ya know, the normal ones weren't horrible enough. Fuck you Dr. Borous.

Okay then, so the idea for this DLC is that your pip boy picks up a broadcast of a caravan leader from a company looking to hire another person for their caravan trip north into Zion in Utah. Though I will say the fact his broadcast mentions that he wants specifically a courier with a pip boy is just kinda a little bit totally fucking screaming "HEY PLAYER!!! YEAH YOU! COME DO THIS SHIT!! IT'S TOTALLY FOR YOU! DO IT! DO IT NOW!!" But aside from that the premise makes sense. They know their path is dangerous, and in fact them wanting someone with a pip boy makes sense cause the pip boy has all kinds of maps of areas. So you go into Zion and very promptly your whole caravan is slaughtered. You then meet up with "the burned man" and he explains that before he will help you leave you must gather some items and help him and his tribe and a man named Daniel who has his own tribe out in their conflict with the white legs, a rival clan. At the end of the DLC you have the option of either fighting back against the white legs and letting Daniel's tribe stay in Zion, or helping Daniel and his tribe flee from Zion before the white legs kill them.

So I feel the main draw here is that Zion looks really quite nice, and also quite different from the Mojave. I mean nothing against the designers but the Mojave does all look pretty much the same, dry, dusty, flat. And in fairness, that is what that area of the world looks like. I've been to vegas, I've seen the surrounding area. It is dry, dusty, and flat. And it's fine there's nothing wrong with having fairly samey environments but it can bit a touch dull after a while. So when you're maybe level 20 or so and have spent a fair bit of time wandering the Mojave, it might be nice to take a little while and head up to Utah for some different scenery. Aside from that there's not a lot of draw here. I found myself much less interested in exploring this place that I was in exploring the Old World Blues DLC area. And I feel like that's because aside from the different scenery, it still feels pretty much like the Mojave. It's nice to look at, but personally both of the times I played trough it I did the quests and then had my fill of the place and wasn't terribly interested in exploring. So I went to get the unique Survivalist's rifle, and was on my way.

I said above that this DLC still feels more or less like the Mojave. And I feel like this is something of a downside. Whereas Old World Blues, has the strange personalities of the think tank and the whole deal with your organs and Dead Money takes you to Sierra Madre with a very focused goal and new challenges, Honest Hearts doesn't really have that anything to make if feel special. Were you to swap the landscape this could just be anywhere in the Mojave. Not that there's anything wrong with the Mojave. The core game is brilliant or I'd never have bought the DLC. But I do feel that Honest Hearts lacks its own sort of personality like the other DLCs have.

And I feel like that's sort of all there is to say on the matter. It looks pretty, there are a few quests to do, there's plenty of caves to go spelunking in, there is a challenge to find six hidden caches of gear (though seven exist if you count the location with his body and rifle) from the survivalist as well as some admittedly interesting journal logs of how he survived the bombs falling and lived in Zion for many years. But I wasn't terribly interested in doing most of this. As I said earlier, the main point of this DLC for me is that it looks nice.

Gameplay: 6.5 out of 10
Story: 7 out of 10
Visuals: 8.5 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 pretty vistas out of 10

Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues Review

Alright then, so I started playing FO:NV again, and just last night finished going through the Old World Blues DLC for it, so I thought, fuck it, let's talk about it.

So then, the premise for this DLC is that the player character finds a crashed satellite in the Mojave wastes. Looking closely at this satellite around midnight will magically teleport the player to Big Mt. Shut up yes it will! Okay I know that bit doesn't make sense but well.... save your "I don't fucking believe this" card. You'll want it later.

So then Big Mt., or the Big Empty, is an old pre-war science and research station that used to be deep under the earth in a mountain. Things stayed that way till a nuke fell on the mountain and now we have the mostly still intact ruins of the site in a crater. The player wakes up on a balcony in Big Mt. feeling slightly wrong but not seeming to be much worse for the wear of whatever happened while he/she was out. Upon walking down into the building you are greeted by a collective of what used to be a group of scientists. Now the "think tank," as they call themselves, are a small collective of scientists' brains in jars connected to robots that enable them to see, hear, speak, and continue doing science. The player is informed that his/her spine, heart, and brain have been taken out and replaced with old world tech that allows you to still function but that without a brain, which they conveniently lost, you are not capable of leaving. And thus we have our objective; go get our brain back. No I'm not joking. The central quest of this DLC is running around an old science station to try and get your brain so you can put it back into your skull and leave.

Now before I say anything about the gameplay I am going to forewarn you all, I do have some mods that tweak various things about the game so the experience was slightly different for me than it would be for some others who don't have the mods I do. Now there is some randomization with what enemies spawn exactly where and what loot people get so my playthrough will inherently be slightly different from one you might have anyway, but I wanted to be up front about the fact I am using a few mods.

So then, gameplay wise, I actually found Big Mt. quite fun to run around. The game says you should be level 15+ before going there, I believe I was about 20 or so when I showed up. I did find the place slightly difficult, but that was in no small part due to my lack of good available weapons. Now you are allowed to bring whatever you want without when you go to Big Mt. so could just bring an armory with you, but as I knew I'd be bringing a lot of stuff back I wanted to be traveling light, so the only gun I brought with me was my .44 revolver. Now had I speced into energy weapons, I'd have had zero issues with weaponry. The player is promptly given a sonic emitter pistol and energy cells for it are IMMENSE. In addition to the plentiful ammo, this pistol also has boosted damage against robots, which most of the enemies in Big Mt. are some form of. However my skill with energy weapons was quite poor. Now I was able to convince the group of scientist to give me a gun that used .357 ammo. The problem is the gun they did give me was a fucking minigun ie it was weak, heavy as hell, innacurate, and burned through ammo. Thankfully I found a lever action shotgun and more importantly an axe with a blade made of electricity. Yes you read that correctly. That axe became my best friend as I repeatedly introduced it to the skulls and circuitry of my foes.

One thing I think is worth mentioning is there's a lot of unique enemies in this DLC. Let me try and remember here; A robo-brain, a spore carrier, a spore plant, 2 protectrons, 3 mister gutsies, a securitron, a deathclaw (wild wasteland only), a bloatfly, a cazador, a nightstalker, a cyberdog, a robo-scorpion, a sentry bot....... I think that's all of them. But that's 16 unique/boss enemies to find and kill.

The place is cool to explore and see the strange expirements that the mad scientists were up to once upon a time. If you pay attention they actually explain why Sierra Madre, the location of the Dead Money DLC, is the way it is and the player can obtain one of the suits the enemies from that DLC wear as well. This DLC also explains the existence of Cazadors so you finally have someone to blame for unleashing those hellspawn on you... seriously fuck you Dr. Borous. Fuck. You. I'm glad your dog is dead. Should have killed you too.

Oh and in addition to all the other cool shit this DLC has, if you take a bit of time to sort the place out, you get a really cool player home with all sorts of neat little robotic friends to keep you company who provide a rather large array of uses.

But I digress. Now I haven't yet played Lonesome Road (you may be getting a post about the one when I do (and maybe the other two as well *wink wink*)), but between this, Dead Money, and Honest Hearts, I'd say Old World blues is definitely the best DLC. The story for it is interesting, it melds right into the lore of the universe and shows off some dirty secrets. It's really quite fun.

Gameplay: 9 out of 10
Story: 8.5 out of 10
Visuals: 7 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 9 removed organs out of 10

The Furies of Calderon (FIRST BOOK REVIEW EVER!)

Book: The Furies of Calderon (Book One of the Codex Alera)

Publisher: Ace Books

Release Date: October, 2004

Welcome to the first book review on Colored Media. Ever. I have no idea if Green will ever start doing these, but I figure I love to read so there is no reason for me not to review books on here. Technically, they are media products, so why the fuck not. Jim Butcher is one of my favorite authors in the world; Scratch that, he is my favorite. So far I'm loving this series, I'm very excited for his steam-punk series, and he penned my favorite series of all time in The Dresden Files. I'll probably get to those eventually, but for now I'm focusing on his Codex Alera. I decided to read this (not just because it is Jim Butcher) because it's backstory sounded too great to pass up. Supposedly someone told Jim he could not write on a lame premise. Jim asked for two and said he would. The two lame ideas were Pokemon and the Lost Roman Empire. It turned into a six book series.

The book premise does stray a little bit away from Pokemon but that is good because we don't want to see Mr. Butcher get sued. The way that his world is portrayed is that each person gets a little bit on an ability to "craft". This is the ability to control the elements because of being able to tap into the energies of their "fury" which is a sort of monster that begins working with that person when they come age. In Alera pretty much everyone has access to some sort of crafting that is related to the elements; wood, water, air, fire, earth, and metal comprise the crafting types, at least for now. Also, the Roman Empire is seen clearly in their structures and how the climate seems to be. 

And this is where this story starts. Enter Tavi a young boy who is fifteen (basically a man it seems by societal standards) and has absolutely no ability to fury craft. This is unheard of and he is ridiculed and abused by many people who consider him to be a freak because he doesn't have access to magical powers. Seems, much different from our world doesn't it? But still, Tavi is determined to make something of himself. This leaves him in a position and mind set that he interferes into something that was really not something he should have. He saves a Cursor, a messenger of the First Lord, of Alera. This throws himself and his family into a political play for power by a rouge lord looking to seize power. The story sees Tavi get captured by a bunch of Savages, called the Marat, and puts him in plenty of positions that make Tavi push himself to the brink even though he has no access to furycrafting as all other Alerans do. In the end, Tavi comes out being an integral part of stopping the rouge lord's attempt to seize power and gains a full scholarship to go to the Academy, where he may learn why he can not furycraft and can possibly make something of himself regardless of his lack in abilities.

That's really the plot in a spoiler free format. Fairly condensed. All in all though, a really great book that makes me want to continue reading the other five. It is a super awesome book that creates magic in a new way that I really had never envisioned before. This is something that sticks out as the sign of a good author for Butcher here.  He is writing in a different point of view with a different voice, and in a completely different world. It isn't just the fact that it's creative is good, he keeps really all influence from his other series out and doesn't lean on it at all. This is something that I really like to see from authors, and what makes Butcher one of the best. I can already begin to see a larger story being weaved in between the lines much like other fantasy novels.

Well that's all for now. Next book to be reviewed? Probably Academ's Fury (Book Two of the Codex Alera). Don't know when I'll be finished with the book so some album and movie reviews in between. Something like Prolonging the Magic by Cake. Yeah, maybe that. 

7 furyless children out of 10

(oops, there's only one of those...)

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300 Rise of an Empire Review

So then, in addition to the Lego movie and the newest planet of the apes movie, I also saw 300: rise of an empire. It’s pretty much 300 naval edition and is slightly less good than the original.

The plot involves some guy from Athens, whose name I’ve already forgotten and doesn’t matter anyway, leading a group of Greek soldiers against the Persians but this time there’s water involved. By which I mean most of the combat is on boats. Aside from that it’s more of less the same movie. There’s a couple sex scenes, there some fighting, there’s one part with semi-monster looking human shows up and the Greeks kill him as well. Like I said, 300: Naval edition.

So if it’s more or less the exact same movie, why would it be slightly less good? Because they really really REALLY overplay the blood effects. Anytime someone gets cut or stabbed or hit they slow down and show the blood flying out, and it has these tendencies of A. getting old real damn quick and B. Never looking quite like real blood.

Aside from that, it’s pretty much the same as the first sans the iconic phrase “THIS IS SPARTA!” Really though, there’s the small group of incredible Greek fighters who actually have some slight shadows of personality and care about each other repeatedly thwarting the advances of the much larger Persian army composed almost entirely of faceless nobodies. There’s an evil leader of the Persians but wait there’s a very minor difference here she’s female! Mind you they could have recast the movie with any other person sitting on the throne and only had to change about 2 minutes of flashbacks and maybe 10 lines of dialogue.

All that said I mean it’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s the same as the first one and that one was good. If you want to see that again but with essentially meaningless differences you can watch this.

6.5 ridiculously overplayed kill scenes out of 10

The Lego Movie Review

I fucking loved legos as a kid and have actually been a fairly avid player of the games based upon them. I never played the Harry Potter lego games, but aside from that I've played at least one of all the different groups of them I think. Off the top of my head I've played: Starwars (1, 2, and complete), Indiana Jones, Batman, Marvel heros (2?), Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings.... probably some other ones I'm forgetting. You get the idea; lots of em.

So what's it about? Well there's this guy named President Business who rules the world and has carefully crafted an illusion of happiness that he forces his subjects to adhere to but, as there always is in such situations, there's a group of people not following the code. Come to find out that the Pres wants to glue all the legos into place so that everything stops changing and is eternally perfect because he hates disarray. The main character, Emmet, is supposedly the chosen hero who has found the magical artifact capable of stopping the impending apocalypse.... problem being he's basically a totally worthless nobody with no useful skills what so ever.... or is he?

I thought it was a good movie. There are some funny bits, and being an avid lego games played I do always enjoy seeing the neat ways people come up with using legos to try and create particular visual images. In that respect I think the movie does great. Almost everything is done with lego bits but it still looks good and there's never any confusion as to what's supposed to be what, or what's happening.

My one gripe that kept me from liking this movie more was the ending. Now it is a kids movie so I expected the cliche as fuck moral to be at the end of the movie (Fucking spoilers the end is that fun creativity is better than strict boring order) What I took issue with wasn't this, but..... how to say it without spoiling it.... The way they go about choosing to teach this moral is what I didn't care for. It's not awful or confusing I just didn't care for it personally. And there is one particular thing that happens that ends up being really kinda annoying when you think about it.

**SUPER SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING**
Yeah I didn't like the framing device of the whole thing being set up in the guys basement and the order vs. creativity clash being between him and his son. I thought it would have been served far better without this. But what really erks me is the scene where Emmet moves of his own volition. With the framing device, they've established that everything is happening because the son and father are controlling it and the pieces are not autonomous, but then Emmet moves on his own and is also totally autonomous.... cause ya know here's the reason for all this, but fuck the reason for all this! So that's annoying to me.
**SUPER SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING END**

Long story short it's worth a watch if you don't mind the cliche that is inherent in a child movie the same way a romance subplot is inherent in every movie (yes including this one cause the kids don't get a pass on that shit either). I personally got a bit annoyed with a bit near the end but that may not be such a bother to everyone else.

8 lego batmans out of 10

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Review

So I went and saw this movie this weekend.

So in short, there's some super intelligent apes made so in the previous movie by a drug that was meant to be a cure for alzheimers. This same drug just so happened to kill off the vast vast majority of the human race and it's been ten years with that handsome fellow there, name of Caesar, leading a large group of apes in what has been a mostly peaceful life. Come to find out the obvious thing happened and once again people could just roll over and die. So some humans wander into the apes territory intent on using a damn there to generate power so the can use a radio to try and connect with any other surviving groups of mankind.

Neither side really has any reason to trust the other and members from both sides are leery as hell about the threat the others pose and rather predictably everybody is totally true to there word and everything goes off without a hitch and they all live happily ever after. Wait no..... that doesn't sound right. Oh yeah, of course everything goes tits up and both sides wind up thinking the other started a war they were all holding their breath for.

In short there's some apes and some humans, some uneasy tension, followed by the predictable (though admittedly well done) action scene. It's fine. Everything plays out more or less exactly the way you expect it to. Not to say that I have anything against the movie. I don't regret seeing it or want my money back or anything. I'm just left being not terribly impressed. The big action scene between the humans and apes winds up being just a touch silly when you see the second in command ape riding a horse holding a giant LMG in each hand blindly firing them at the humans.

But all in all I find it to be unoffensive but no overly impressive either. It's a fine way to spend a bit of time if you haven't got anything better to do but you won't be really missing anything if you skip it.

6 talking apes out of 10

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Release Date: November 15th, 2013

Developer: Infinity Ward

System Used: PS4

First off... God damn this is a good game. I mean it isn't all that different from any of the Call of Duty games that are out there. The mechanics are the same, the guns do relatively the same stuff, and the explosions all seem relatively the same as they were before. It's kind of the same Call of Duty that I began to hate shortly after I got to fifth (or something) prestige on Modern Warfare 2. I really liked that game. But anyways, I only picked a copy of Ghosts because it came basically free with my Playstation 4 bundle and I really don't want to spend $60 on another game until Destiny, The Order, or Madden 15 come out. So, this one one was picked. Aaaaaaand despite my full will to dislike what the franchise has become I actually really liked it. A lot. Well, for the most part. So lets get moving along with what was good and was not good, mildly glancing over the plot because like all CoD games it's rarely talked about. We'll follow that trend here because.... well I don't really want to talk about it. 

The pros first. Easiest one is obviously the campaign. There are so many things that are good about this campaign. The story is meh, like a lot of others, but the gameplay in a lot of games goes much farther just the mechanics. The aesthetics and the game's ability to immerse you in it is something that really makes it worth playing. The mechanics have never been bad per se in the franchise they have just grown tired to me. My extended break probably helped a bit, but what I really liked about this game was the fucking way the story sucked me in. I mean, seriously, it was pretty unexpected all the random stuff that was thrown into the game. It was totally unrealistic in every sense of the word, but still pretty fucking awesome. You get to fight a mission that for most of it you are propelling yourself down the side of the building and capping motherfuckers in the face. Another that takes place completely underwater, one where you sneak into an enemy base wearing the other teams uniforms and cause havoc and then just walk the fuck out. There's another mission that is completely under fucking water. And finally, there is a mission in. Outer. Fucking. Space. Yeah, outer space. Really not all that realistic, but suuuuper fucking awesome. When I was playing through these it really made me want to keep playing. And well, I did. I got through the game in two very lengthy and very long sessions. They made it extremely worth playing and made me want to play it again which is kind of exactly what I did the next day on veteran. It's fucking tough, but I'll finish soon. 

Moving onto the cons in the game will be just as simple to explain. And really, it is only one just as there is really only one pro. The multiplayer. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and that is what the game is supposed to be but that doesn't mean that there aren't glaring problems with it. Huge. Glaring. Steam roller problems. Steam roller you say? Yeah, that's what the multiplayer is, steamroller-y. Basically, once one person starts to get going, they don't stop. They keep going and they end up finishing the map 26 and 4. Happens a lot. And the reason for that is mostly because the dogs are fucking broken, and the choppers are even worse than they were before. Not a bigger problem than they used to be but still awful. 

Seriously though, fuck those dogs. 

Gameplay: 7 of 10

Story: 8 of 10

Audio: 8 of 10

Visuals: 8 of 10

Overall: 8 awesomely unrealistic missions of 10

One Way Heroics Review

So with the recent summer sale I was able to pick up a handful of new games to play, and that means I have a hand full of new games to tear apparent and explain why they either suck, or are actually pretty decent. First of the summer sale games to the chopping block is One Way Heroics.

Da fuck is OWH? OWH is a rouge-like-esq game where in the character is tasked with traveling across the land and defeating the evil demon lord. What makes this interesting (and gives the game it's name) is that the player is forced to constantly move to the right (similar to FTL) because the left side of the scree is slowly swallowed up by the evil darkness which will kill you. I think this is implemented well in that it's not a huge threat and a constant annoyance, but it does force you to consider your actions. Do you run up north and grab that bag for the goodies inside? You could get there in time but if you do you won't be able to explore the building to the south. do you explore this dungeon? You might get good loot from it, but you could get jumped by mobs and wind up getting caught between a rock and a deep dark deadly place. The player does move faster than the ominous blackness so like I said it's not a massive threat just a sort of constant pushing you on your way.

There are a handful of playable classes; knight, swordmaster, hunter, force user, pirate, adventurer, bard, and hero. Each class starts with different gear, stats, and skills. In addition to classes the player is allowed to pick bonus traits before starting the game to apply to the character. These traits can vary from simple things like stat ups, to getting a loyal pet to fight along side you, or being better at picking locks. And to further add to the variance and replayability of the game the world, monsters, loot, and everything else is randomly generated each time. This did once lead to me spawning with a huge wall of mountains staring at me say "Hope ya weren't too committed to this life!" Mountains can actually be traversed by the way, they just take several turns to do so, but I'd spent lots of time running up and down the range looking for a path through.

One thing that I think is pretty neat about the game is something called the dimensional vault. Now for those of you who don't know a rouge-like game typically means that each run is entirely self-contained and unique. You die, and everything related to the run is now gone. This is only about 95% the case with OWH. OWH allows player the ability to save a small number of items between runs in the dimensional vault. So if you find the super-uber-death-sword-of-slaying-everything-that-lives-and-most-things-that-don't +15 and then your guy dies on the very next turn, you can actually keep and use it. Which is kinda nice. Alternatively, you can completely ignore this mechanic. It's in no way forced on you, so if you want each run to be it's own thing, it totally can be.

My one grip with the game is I fell like items I buy from shops should be identified when I get them. Now you could argue the dealer is a shady guy looking to profit off the apocalypse and doesn't understand what he's selling, or that the hero thinks time is so very valuable he doesn't want to waste time listening and simply says prices and decided in the next .2 seconds if he's gonna buy the stuff or not. But I do wish that these items were identified.

Now this is one of those rare games that I bought on sale and don't have to say that you should probably wait for it to be on sale to. I got the game for 87 cents but normally it sells for $3.50 And that's a totally reasonable price for this.

Gameplay: 8 out of 10
Story: 5 out of 10
Visuals: 7 out of 10
Audio: 6 out of 10
Overall: 7.5 pixel art heroes dying to bad RNG out of 10