Well, now that I've talked about all four of the major DLC packs I figure it's time I talk about New Vegas proper.
I'm gonna be straight up here. This game is awesome. Though I'm assuming that you probably didn't me to tell you I think that given the fact I've written 4 other posts about it already. But yes, this game is awesome. Yes it's buggy. Yes people sometimes say and do silly things. The game is still totally awesome and I'm super fine with having bought the game twice. I'm not even really sure where to start tackling this beast of a fuckin game. Well I normally talk about story first, so let's talk about that.
The story starts with you being shot in the head. You die and the game is actually over right there. Ballsy fuckin move by Bethesda to release this, but ya know, I think it's good. No no, of course the game isn't over right there. You play the whole game as a ghost. I'm joking again. You miraculously survive being shot in the head and wake up a little while later in the house of good guy Doc Mitchell, who saves you life after a robot pulls you out of the shallow grave you were buried in. After not requesting any compensation for saving your life he proceeds to give you his pipboy and his old vault suit. Seriously, Doc Mitchell is the nicest guy. Anyway your character swears some sort of vengeance upon Benny, the guy who failed to kill you, and promptly runs off in search of him, to educate him in the proper technique for shooting someone in the head, through example of course. Through a series of several other quests the character learns of an oncoming battle over hoover damn between Mr. House and his robot army, the NCR, and the legion. The player can throw their hat into the ring as well in a special hidden (not well hidden, but hidden) quest line.
That's the central story line, and the game ends after the fight for Hoover damn. But..... this being a Bethesda game you're safe to do what I almost always do and tell the main story it can go fuck itself and spend all your time wandering around the massive world. I've spent my recent time with the game playing the DLCs (duh), collecting all the unique weapons, playing some modded quests, and hunting achievements. Cause I so love getting achievements.
There is some interesting play going on with the factions. The major groups (and sometimes minor groups) of the Mojave each have a sort of collective feeling about you based upon your past interactions with that group. Often times an act will gain you positive reputation with one group, while getting infamy with another. This is most commonly seen with NCR and the legion as they directly oppose one another. It can be interesting trying to manipulate your reputation with everyone, though in general it comes down to don't murder anyone in the faction and do a few nice things for a few people and they'll like you. this must be why I always end up hated by the legion. They just make themselves so utterly murderable. Seriously fuck the legion, every one of those guys is a massive asshole. It actually made me smile when I looked at the global steam achievements and saw that the legion support victory was the least common. Fuck you Caesar. The world agrees, anyone other than you is a better leader. One thing that grates on me a little is how exactly do I gain bad reputation if I slaughter an entire group of the faction? Who's telling that story?
"The Black Pearl? I've heard stories. She's been preying on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors."
"No survivors? Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?"
Yeah that. when I kill everyone around, how is it that the other members of the group miles away find out instantly about this? (Let alone find out at all) I know it's a gameplay balancing thing. But it can be a little immersion breaking. I guess the argument is there there is some unnoticed survivor who sees me doing all this and runs off while I'm busy committing genocide and tells everyone what a horrible person I am. You can kill someone without having your reputation being affected, if you kill them real stealthy like.
I do want to say that the Karma system is silly, useless, and basically broken. There's a system that is essentially morality. But it's called Karma. I don't out rightly hate morality mechanics, but I find they're pretty much always implemented poorly. They either have essentially no effect, which the one in NV does, or just wind up forcing you to play through the game twice to see all of it. Normally they have the side effect of making the main character massively bland, but that's not an issue here. The mortality is sort of a left over relic from fallout 3. In fallout 3 mortality was slightly more important. Here most of the effects of mortality have been shifted to factions, which makes some more sense. They just chose not to remove the karma mechanic for.... idk reason. In addition to the karma having almost zero effect (at this moment the
only effects I can think of it having is that if you get too evil Cass
won't want to be a follower and it affects what perk you can get at
level 50) it's also very easy to get whatever karma you want. Want good karam? Go shoot some fiends. Apparently murdering a strung-out psychotic junkie who is trying to murder you, is a good act. I get it, you're making the area safer for other people, but that's not why I kill them. I do it as a selfish act to protect me and my stuff. Sometimes I do it even more selfishly. I'll shoot fiends who don't even know I'm there cause I want to loot their corpses. I often murder a bunch of destitute drug addicts then pick over their corpses taking anything of value. And that's considered a morally good thing. If you wanted negative karma, that's easy to do as well, just go into any owned building, walk out of sight and begin taking everything that's not riveted to floor. You lose karma for stealing. So go murder fiends, or go on a massive thievery binge. Either of these approaches get you caps and easily affects your karma.
The implementation of gambling adds some neat little games for you to play (and the ability to make a boatload of caps doing so) and an achievement if you play them well enough to get thrown out of all the casinos. There's also a card game played outside of casinos called caravan. The rules of caravan are a bit odd so I'm not going to get into them here.
Hmmmmm other things to discuss? Well, in case you didn't see them all I did reviews of each of major DLC packs for the game. I'll link them here.
Dead Money - Somewhat linear and it can be annoying at times with it's gimmicks. Not great, but it's worth seeing at least once.
Honest Hearts - Not terribly interesting in any way, but it's pretty.
Old World Blues - It kicks ass and you should totally fucking get this is you have New Vegas.
Lonesome Road - Mostly good, but there's one really fucking annoying moment/choice you're forced into that leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.
So then, aside from those there is also the Gun Runner's Arsenal pack. GRA doesn't add any new areas or quests, but instead adds a pile of new murder devices. Hooray! Many of the new toys are very expensive unique variants of existing weapons you have to purchase from various vendors. In addition to that there are also GRA variants of some already existing guns, the only difference between these guns and the normal ones is the GRA ones can be modded, cause..... just adding mods for the normal guns would have been too easy? Or would it have made too much sense? Maybe there was some reason this actually was easier due to how the game is set up. There are also a handful of new bombs and some new ammo types for a few guns. Just generally more things to add to your arsenal, huh almost like they named it sensibly (not like lonesome road! BURN!). There are also some new achievements three of which are fun and challenging to get. GRA adds in 15 new challenges divided evenly into one, two, and three star difficulties. There are achievements for completing three of each level of challenge. And the three star challenges are not easy to pull off. Feels good to know I am one of the less that 1% of players who have done so. Awww yeeeah.
One minor gripe I have is that the AI is kinda stupid. Like kinda really fucking stupid. It's possible to crouch down directly in front of someone and pickpocket them at times. If you post up a reasonable distance away, you can snipe people and the people standing 3 feet away won't seem to be bothered enough to bat an eyelash. The companions are all borderline suicidal, so their being mortal in hardcore is kinda sucky. Oh I suppose I'll mention hardcore mode.
Hardcore mode has some minor tweaks to make the game more difficult/immersive. Your character requires food, water, and sleep. Stimpacks and rad-away work overtime as opposed to instantly. Broken limbs are only fixable with doctor's bags or help from a doctor. Also ammo has weight. And yes, companions can die as opposed to being simply knocked unconscious. There's an achievement for playing the full game in hardcore.
Well this review is already starting to drag on so if there's some other aspect of the game you'd like my thoughts on go ahead and leave a comment, or tweet me Colored Media twitter or @Colored_Media. I'm also considering doing one last post where I talk about a few mods I'm using (and could also answer any questions). Would anyone be interested in seeing this? Again, please leave a comment or tweet and I'll be sure to read them.
10 big irons out of 10
For those of you who aren't comic book nerds, that glowing blue guy on the right is called Electrode and he's the villain here.... sort of.
So after his girlfriend's dad was offed at the end of the last movie (spoilers!) Peter is now grappling with doubt and insecurity relating to Gwen. He loves her but doesn't want her to be around him in case she gets hurt due to his hero antics, ya know the traditional story the superhero dating a human goes through. So he pushes her away and spoilers it doesn't work. Anyway 2 ball there (get it 2 ball, cause he's bald so like cue ball but 2 is the solid blue one (if you actually got that without it being explained, congratulations)) is a guy named Max who really probably needed to see a therapist or two, and also learn to be a little more assertive. He has zero friends and everyone at his job pushes him around like he's the prison bitch. One day Spiderman saves him, and he developes a very unhealthy hero worship. This is important later on. I don't wanna say too much more, but in short order he ends up mutated into the glowing weirdo you see above and then proceeds to lead a totally normal life but is a bit of a social outcast due to the blue skin. Really unexpected turn by the writers here. No obviously him and Spiderman begin fighting and it leads to a big throwdown near the end. There's also a side plot involving Harry Osboure dealing with a life threatening genetic disease.
This movie actually wound up being better than expected. I recall that the last one left me less than impressed and after reading over the old review that I did of it (located here: Amazing Spiderman Review) I can understand why. The bad guy from the film was bothersome for a few reasons, and the plot on the whole was pretty boring and run of the mill. Is that the one where they line up all the cranes along the street for him to swing on? Or was that one of the other Spiderman films? Either way, that scene was really lame. But yeah, back when I wrote the review I stated that the only good thing about that film is the actor playing Peter and from what little I can recall of that movie (I also called it forgettable) that adds up.
So maybe it was lowered expectations cause of the first, or maybe I'd heard somewhere that this one sucks, or perhaps both, but I went into this expecting to be thoroughly unimpressed. Now, saying that this is better than expected isn't what I'd call a compliment given all that. I basically just said it's better than a big pile of shit. Now, there are plenty of things that are better than a big pile of shit but are still not what I'd call good. This isn't even one of those things. I actually liked this one. It's not the best movie ever, but I think the fight scenes are well done, and though I didn't really expect this, there's actually a reasonable bit of humor in there as well. Spiderman has been know to be a bit of a joker, so a touch of humor here and there makes sense. But yeah, I think things are well done here. Good film. Give it a try.
8 witty retorts out of 10
So I wound up watching this today. Yes I'm aware that Robin Williams recently passed away, so in that respect this review is topical. I'm not going to discuss it aside from saying that I hope his family and friends can find a way to be at peace with things.
So then, the plot of the movie revolves around a magical board game. The board game functions such that up to four people can play, each player taking a turn to roll the dice. Every roll of the dice causes something.... interesting to happen. A couple examples are a horde of trouble causing monkeys and a hunter hellbent upon killing one of the players. There are of course other occurances, but I wouldn't want to spoil all of them.
The movie starts with, well it starts with a pair of boys in the 1800's disposing of the game clearly having played it and not wanting anything else to do with the damned thing. The first important event is when a young boy named Alan starts the game with his friend Sarah. Due to a consequence of one of the rolls Alan winds up trapped inside the game for many years. Fast forward those many years later and a new pair of children pop open the game and place the third and fourth pieces onto the board and start playing. Early on Alan is released and they all vow to keep playing despite the horrible things the game throws at them because supposedly if they complete the game everything will be undone.
That's the basic plot of the movie. Mostly it deals with them handling the various horrors the game throws at them as they all try to continue taking their turns and trying to have one of them get to the center to finish the damned thing. I do think all of the various issues are interesting enough, nothing really over stays it's welcome. The most important of the issues is the aforementioned hunter, but he proves to be interesting enough to warrant the additional screen time so it's quite alright.
And that's basically all I have to say about it. It's a fun little movie if you haven't seen it before give it a try. Or if you have before and now remember it and have that little inkling to see it again. I like it. Not amazing, but it's certainly worth seeing at least once.
7.5 dangerous ass board games out of 10
One question that I was asked while watching the movie was what would happen if one of the players dies? The things the game spawns are very clearly dangerous. The rules of the game state that when it's your turn it must be you who plays. So what happens if someone dies? I suppose either their piece would be removed and the remaining players would have to continue, or the game would simply become unfinishable.
The quickest one sentence description I can give is that it's like if you put Call of Duty in the 1400's. Oh and didn't re-release it every year with a slightly different name.
This game is utter chaos. It's totally utter fucking chaos..... and I love it. It's just a mass of angry screaming guys in blue and a mass of angry screaming guys in red and they run at each other and commit brutal murder. And in truth things do really get very chaotic. When you have five guys screaming and swinging giant broadswords and battle axes in a small area things get messy. Limbs start being hacked off blood gets everywhere and fairly often you wind up accidentally taking out one of your own guys in the process. Yeah warning now, if you super hate team killing, don't play this. Team killing fucking happens. Yes there are people just being dicks running around intentionally killing teammates, but those are in the minority, what I'm talking about here is when you give that massive bastardsword a good swing and happen to stab your buddy on the backswing, or maybe he tried to attack right then and got in front of you, or a little to close to the other guy. and now you wound up chopping off your friend's head in the process of eviscerating the other guy too. It can and will happen. Now, if it's in a moment like that, people aren't likely to get too mad about it cause most people understand that this shit is not an exact science and sometimes you wind up hurting or killing people you didn't mean to. That being said, don't be the dick who team kills on purpose, nobody likes that guy.
Story? What story? The story is grab that giant sword run that way and kill the reds! Kill the reds! Kill the reds! Okay, there is a very minor story. The blue guys are Agatha knights who presumably work for the ruler of the region. The reds, or Mason Order, are a group of rebels best I can tell. but seriously, fuck the story, go cut someone's head off!
There are four playable classes; archer, man at arms, vanguard, and knight. The archer is exactly what you'd think; an archer, very weak but this class allows consistent ranged combat (the other classes can have a few thrown weapons but are very much so meant for up close brutality). The man at arms is a sort of scout style unit, quick on his feet but not going to be taking a huge amount of damage before he starts screaming for a medic. The scout does have one of my favorite off hand weapons in the game: the fire pot. I do so love throwing one at my enemies and laughing as they run around burning. The vanguard is my favorite class to play and strikes a reasonable balance between health and movement, having a decent amount of both. The vanguard uses mostly larger two handed weapons which can make him a good damage dealer. Lastly the knight is the big tanky bitch. They're slow as hell but wrapped in a lot of armor and have the option to use both a two handed weapon and shield at the same time. Your best bet is to out maneuver this guy and get him from behind.
Each class does have a variety of killing tools to pick from. Archers have bows, cross bows, slings, and I believe throwing spears for primary weapons. Men at arms have one handed swords, axes, and maces. Vanguards have the two handed swords, spears, axes, and a pole hammer. Knights have two handed swords, axes, hammers, and flails. In addition to these primary weapons, each class is granted a secondary weapon. These will normally be smaller, weaker weapons that you won't be using hugely often, but they aren't meaningless. I've seen knights pull out short swords to deal with men at arms. The thing here is that all weapons have three criteria: damage, reach, and speed. The off hand weapons are usually going to be shorter and weaker, but (most noticeable when compared to large two handers) can be quite quick. Lastly each class gets a third equipment slot. This third slot is a sort of wild card. Archers use it to pick ammunition, while other classes can grab a shield or thrown weapon for this slot.
One thing that's cool is as you use a weapons you'll (usually) unlock other variants of that weapon to use. The variants will have marginally different stats meaning that maybe you like the sword's move set (yes the move sets do vary a bit for different weapons, I personally hate the spear's move set) well here's a new sword, this one is a little slower and shorter, but is stronger. So you can try and get a little bit of say in the exact performance of your weapons. And yes there are different types of attacks that can be performed. The standard attack is (usually) a right to left swipe. Scrolling the mouse wheel forward will perform a stab or thrust. Scrolling it backward will perform the overhead whollop. I believe there is also a way to swing left to right, maybe by holding alt. I'm not sure if the different types of attacks have different actual stats. What I mean is, the stab attack maybe have like 5% better range, or the overhead attack may have slightly boosted damage. I have nothing to confirm if this is true, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was. I do know for sure that the attacks do actually have different areas of affect. Meaning that you'll probably be wanting to use stabs if you have friends (or walls, yes you can hit walls and cause yourself issues) nearby you're trying to avoid hitting. If however, you're perhaps faced with two enemies side by side, a standard swipe may hit both of them at once. The vanguards and knights also have special charging attacks which can be used after sprinting for long enough with the weapon drawn (Note these are class restricted because they are only present on two handed weapons). Much like my suspicions about different attacks having slightly different stats, I have heard that maces do bonus damage to heavily armored units (vanguard and knights) while swords do more damage against lesser armored units (archers and men at war). Again, I don't know if this is true or not, though I suspect if it was there would be a whole hell of a lot more people using maces since a damage bonus would be more helpful against the more beefy guys.
The game is pretty much all online by the way. So if you really hate any interactions with other humans, or you have shit internet, then be warned.
I do have a couple minor gripes. One being that whenever I join a sever it seems to always always move to free for all and never go back to a team based game. One other more significant annoyance is that there is some customization allowed in the game. I don't have an issue with this, I enjoyed playing dress in hat wearing simulator, I mean TF2, but what I do have issues with is that you can change your guy's colors. This really annoys me because color is very very important. And it's really annoying when I look at a guy and can't be sure if I'm supposed to be murdering him or not. This wasn't an issue with TF2 because no matter how silly the hat was the guy was always red or blue, meaning you could instantly know if you needed to kill him or not. This issue is lessened some once you learn that black is associated with red team and white with blue team, but I shit you not I once saw a purple guy. What the fuck team was he on? I seriously didn't know for the entire game. This is really pretty annoying. Change the look of your helmet and chestplate all you like but be the appropriate fucking color. One last thing is that the first person perspective arms, always seem to be really small. I'm supposed to be a big burly knight and I have tiny little child arms.
The game is available on steam for $25. I don't recall it being that pricy when I got it. I think it may have been cheaper as a beta or perhaps it was on sale when I bought it. I'll leave you to decide if you think it's worth the price tag, but it is bloody fun. "Bloody fun" here having the dual meaning of it's fun and it's bloody, and also like the British/European bloody good time usage. That's pretty much all there is to say about it. Brutal medieval combat.Gameplay: 9 out of 10
Story: N/A
Visuals: 5.5 out of 10
Audio: 7.5 out of 10
Overall: 8 violently severed limbs out of 10
Anime time bitches! Yeah kind of a new thing here. I mentioned a couple of them in my top ten tv shows post, but I'm pretty sure this is the first review of one so let's do this shit!
Alright so that dude front and center is named Rin Okumura and there's a reson he's front and center. Fucking spoilers, he's the main character. Bigger fucking spoilers he also happens to be Satan's kid. Yeah that's a thing. Hence why his head and sword are on fire and he has fangs. Everything really starts when daddy comes knocking and offs the priest who was raising Rin and his twin brother Yukio (the guy to the left of Rin). This makes Rin justifiably upset, and Rin vows he's going to become an exorcist and beat up his dad for killing his step-dad. Talk about daddy issues. That's basically the set up for the show. Most of the 25 episode season deals with Rin in training learning to be an exorcist, along with a few friends/classmates who are most of the other people in that picture.
Things change up a bit near the end when a couple of grand schemes are revealed and daddy Satan comes trying to take over the earth. Spoilers again, it doesn't work. And the reasoning behind this is just...... I don't know what the fuck the writers were smoking, drinking, or injecting to think that this was..... no that's not even it either. It's not like the batshit totally out of the buildings behind the buildings that are past the edge of left field. It's just, they reveal some backstory between a couple of characters and it's like..... did this suddenly become a Disney movie? The thing is just like.... really? That's the characters motivation? Fucking really? And it's just silly and sounds like it was made to teach a four year old a moral.
And it doesn't ruin the whole series, or even really make it bad, I honestly found the whole idea of it funny in a "you just have to be fucking joking" way. And in the event that's what was intended (which I doubt) then A+ to the writer. If I was meant to take that shit seriously... 
Yeah that basically. Yeah it's really tonally dissonant with the rest of the show, and I can't wrap my head around why it was done that way and why nobody was like.... "Do you really think this is a good idea?" But like I said, it doesn't ruin the show and while it does make, mostly just one episode, really fucking silly, it's not the worst thing ever.
On the whole though I liked Blue Exorcist. For those of you who are wondering I watched the dubbed version not the subbed version. It is available on Netflix, or was last I knew, though that may be only the dubbed version. Fairly actiony without being too heavy handed about it and there are the calmer moments and the characters and character developments are *mostly* reasonable and for the good of the show. So if you like anime and want a new one, or maybe you aren't hugely into it, and are looking for one to try that's not too crazy, then maybe give this a look. But if you happen to fall into the second category don't judge all animes based upon this ones ending, I swear they don't all do that.
7.5 demonic children out of 10
Did you like the old school Zelda games? This is like that.
So then, this game tells the story Ittle, a young lass with a thirst for adventure, and her constantly drinking companion Tippsie, a.... thing
Seriously what the fuck do you call that? It's like a linoone from poken'mon with a set of bee wings taped to its back. Well anyway that's Tippsie, he doesn't really do much aside from berate you for not being smart enough to solve the occasional puzzle and inform you if a room is solvable based upon your equipment loadout.
There's not a lot of story to speak of so I'll do as the game did and pretty much ignore it. The gameplay is fairly simple. Most of your time will be spent dispatching the few variants of foes and messing with lots and lots and lots of blocks. Stone blocks, portal blocks, ice blocks, cracked blocks, stone blocks you can't push. Also yeah, there is no pull. The lack of ability to pull blocks makes some puzzles much more complicated. Cracked blocks can be exploded with bombs. Ice blocks can be destroyed with fire and depress switches. Portal blocks can be used to depress switches or help teleport objects and creatures.
The basic layout of the game involves going into the very Zelda looking castle and solving puzzles there until you collect enough money to buy a new piece of gear. There are three pieces of gear to buy; the fire sword, the ice staff, and the portal wand. One thing that I do think is pretty cool about the game is that it is actually possible to complete the game with any two of the three pieces of gear. I opted for fire sword and portal wand and told the ice staff some unpleasant things about it's mother and that I didn't want to see it again. The option to avoid one piece of the available gear does help give some incentive to replay the game after completing it. Which, and I know some people will be bothered about this, is probably a good thing, cause the game is a bit short. My (almost) blind run through of it clocked in at just under three hours. In fairness I didn't find all the collectable cards, all the heart pieces, do either of the optional dungeons, was able to entirely skip the ice staff dungeon, and found a shortcut to skip almost all of the portal wand dungeon. So I did have what would be a fairly quick pass through the game, but I was also gimped in not having one of the gear items which also slowed me down some. I'm not too bitter about the length of it, and I may at some point go back and play through the game a couple more times or at least take my existing save and try to get the rest of the cards and heart pieces and do the optional dungeons.
Some of the puzzles can be a bit complicated and there is a "master cave" which is presumably filled with super tough puzzles. As I mentioned I haven't done this yet, but I'd at least buy the ice staff before trying that shit. The combat is very simple. You have one attack: swing the point bit of your sword at the other guy (Or bash him with the stick if you don't have the sword). The ice wand may also be used in combat but I can't say for sure. In the event that you should die, there's basically no consequence, save the room you're in being reset. Enemies are in some instances used as a puzzle mechanic or a little arena room with some reward for killing them all, but more often than not, wind up really just being a kind of annoying housekeeping you have to deal with before solving the puzzle, especially the pancake fuckers that eat bombs. Yes there is an enemy that looks like pancakes. Yes really.
The art style... well look at the images above and you'll have a good idea whether you're going to like it or not. I thought it looked fine. It is a fairly easy game (remember I haven't done the master cave, maybe all the difficulty is in there) so if you're looking for a challenge you might not want to pick this one up. And yes it is somewhat short and the $10 price tag may make some people say that it's not enough, but the option of redoing the game with a different gear set to make you resolve rooms differently helps to add replayability, and honestly, if you compare the concept of $10 for a three hour game to something like going to the movies, which is going to be more expensive, last less time, require you to put on pants and drive to the theater, and be non-interactive, then I'd say the price tag isn't too bad. But if you had ten bucks and were trying to decide between this and FTL I'd tell you to buy FTL. There's just more for the money there.
On the whole it's well made, if a touch light on content. But it doesn't overstay it's welcome and if you want to get your money's worth you can redo the game each time leaving out one of the three items, then take all three for a victory lap. Go for the master cave if you're feeling ballsy and want to prove to your friends you're some kind of brainiac. And for those of you who like things to be over quickly (I bet you're not much fun in bed) there's an achievement to complete the game in under 15 minutes.
Gameplay: 7.5 out of 10
Story: 4 out of 10
Visuals: 7 out of 10
Audio: 7 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 fucking block puzzles out of 10
Ironically the lonesome road is not that lonesome at all. The very first thing you do is in fact get a companion. And a very noisy companion at that who constantly makes noises and forces you into conversations to remind you that you are in fact not alone.
Well one thing that sets this DLC apart from the others is that you're actually allowed to leave the lonesome road at any time. the other DLCs have various contrived reasons of locking you into them; the bomb collar in Dead Money (this one makes the most sense since Elijah was using you for slave labor), the lack of help on how to leave until you assist Grahm in Honest Hearts (Why the fuck do I need his help anyway? I'm the player character, I don't need anyone's help!), and the whole thing about needing you brain to pass the force field in Old World Blues (But you can actually leave your brain in Big Mt. if you want to and still leave provided you leave your brain at the proper place because of reasons). This DLC is sensible, you walk into it, and there's not a fucking thing preventing you from throwing up your middle fingers, turning 360 degrees, and moon walking the fuck away..... and a sensible person would do just that. But more on that later.
The set up for this DLC actually involves the main story of the game itself. If you dig a little you can find out that originally there was a different courier who was slotted to carry the platinum chip but that upon seeing you were next in line backed away from the job saying it should be given to you. That original courier is a man named Ulysses. Ulysses has lured you to "the divide" to have some big showdown with you.
So then lonesome road really thinks it's got the big boy pants on and isn't pulling punches cause it recommends you be at least level 25 and reminds you that if things get to hard you're allowed to tuck your tail between your legs and run away crying. You bitch. I did actually use the ability to leave once though to take a pile of loot back to my house. I didn't think LR was that tough but in fairness I was about level 35 when I started it and my badass revolver would one shot almost all of the marked men who primarily inhabit the area. There were minor issues with the tunnelers, who came from underground, cause they hit fairly hard. I did run into some larger issues when the deathclaws showed up. Because, much like the honey badger, deathclaw don't give a fuck. I had about 35 DT and would still be insta-gibbed by a deathclaw if I wasn't high as a kite on chems. The only difference between fighting a deathclaw now, and at level one is that now I have the capacity to kill the deathclaw before it gets to me. If it does get to me the result is pretty much the same as if I was a naked toddler.
One thing I complained about in the Honest Hearts review was that HH didn't feel like it's own thing. LR doesn't have quite as different a tone as Dead Money and Old World Blues, but it does at least have a different feeling from the Mojave. The marked men are a unique enemy and I appreciate that their existence is explained. The occasional tunnelers are also very different though there backstory is, in my opinion, a bit lame. I quite enjoyed the side objective of finding the 30 undetonated warheads and blowing them all up to reveal the hidden paths and secret caches (and of course the achievement).
I found the majority of this DLC actually well done and enjoyed going through almost all of. The enemy design is cool. There was some side areas to explore and the aforementioned explosive Easter egg hunt. I got a ballin new set of armor and a pile of upgrades for ED-E, one of my favorite companions. I made quite a good amount of caps pawning off the armor and weapons from all the marked men. Unfortunately, there was one thing that happened, that does really grate on me. You may recall that I said earlier that a sensible person would walk away from this DLC. Why? Let me explain.
There is a point in the quest line where you have to go through a particular door. This door is locked by default. The only way to unlock this door is to do something really really fucking stupid. Really really colossally fucking moronic. Alternatively you could do it not for being the stupidest man who has ever lived, but instead as a result of being a homicidal maniac who loves nothing more than chaos and has severe suicidal tendencies. So you either have to do something that you know you really shouldn't fucking do, or not be able to finish the DLC. I did it cause I wanted to be able to finish the DLC and, as a reasonable fucking person would, Ulysses berated me for being so foolish as to do so. The game yelled at me for doing the thing it made me do. I understand the idea behind why this scene exists, I'm sure someone was like "ya know what would be cool?" and then this happened. Possibly a good idea, very much so fucked up execution, and while it doesn't ruin the entire DLC for me, it is a significant black mark on the record.
I will say that my hatred of the event is slightly lessened by the fact that doing it not only allows you to progress, but unlocks a special area. And holy fucking shit that special area. The area is not very large and has about 8 deathclaws and also a well sized orgy's worth of marked men all of who are regenerating health like mad due to the IMMENSE amount of radiation in the area. Even at the cap of 85% rad resistance I was getting 2 and 3 rads a second. The wiki says that some spots in the area have upwards of 25 rads a second. For reference, that could kill you in under a minute if you started from zero radiation. So with the constant warm glow of radiation trying to kill me, the fuckton of deathclaws, and the orgy I interrupted, there was a very significant risk of death here. I spent the entire time here not so much kissing the sky as bending it over and pounding away at it's backside. Kudos if you got that reference.
The story here is kinda weak. Ulysses lured you here to have a showdown with you because of something you did in the past. Cause you're somehow related to the history of the divide, cause you walked that road before. And he's mad about what you did.... or he's not mad. He says things about having learned from your actions... so maybe he thinks he's some kind of successor to you some how. He also constantly rants about the NCR and the legion calling them the bull and the bears after their symbols. Symbols are a very important thing to him for some reason. Maybe I should have paid more attention to his dialogue, or tried to get him to say more, though I continued every talk till the game forced me out of the conversation. But as things were his motives and his goal were at best fuzzy. He was gonna bomb the NCR and the legion cause... he thought he could do better and that sending one bomb at a relatively small portion of each of the forces would some how entirely undermine them both while simultaneously ensuring his total superiority over everyone. Things work like that right? Spoilers: no. And it turns out that basically fucking everything is his fault. Ulysses used to be part of the legion, and was the first among it's ranks to see the hoover dam, when he told Ceaser about it, and the flag with the two headed bear, the legion came to fight their new adversary. Good job numbnuts.
So on the whole this gets a thumbs up, through not for the fucking story, and I am still irritated by being forced to make such a stupid fucking choice, and then being yelled at for having done so. I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT YOU MADE ME SO DON'T BE YELLING AT ME YOU FUCK!
Gameplay: 7.5 out of 10
Story: 3.5 out of 10
Visuals: 6.5 out of 10
Audio: 6 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 stupid fucking choices out of 10
What the fuck is this game? Yeah that was my question when I bought this. Why'd I buy it if I didn't know what it was? Good question. Well steam handed me a 90% off coupon for it, and normally I ignore the coupons, but this one being 90% got my attention, so I went and looked. Lyne is a puzzle game that came out on steam a few months back to very little fanfare (to clarify, I was completely unaware of it's existence till the day I bought it) It is normally $3, those of you with any amount of mathematical prowess will be able to reason that this game 90% off was 30 cents. So yeah, I figured for 30 cents, I probably wouldn't be too upset with the purchase.
The easiest way for me to explain to you how this games works is for me to show you the in game screen.
The game looks like this. The objective is simple. Connect all of each type of shape with one line per shape. The line must start and end on the shapes with the smaller white version inside itself. You must touch every shape on the board. No two lines may overlap or intersect. Oh, and those octagons have to be touched multiple times, but can be connected to any shape. The little diamonds in the octagon represent how many times the octagon must be touched by a line, this number ranges from two to four.
And that's really all there is to it. It is, as the game boasts, "deceptively simple." Most puzzles can be solved in under a minute, and if you're like me the set up for this game is starting to ring a particular bell in your head. The "Hey this look a hell of a lot like a phone game" bell. Yes, Lyne is a port of a phone game. But, here's why I'm okay with this one;
Lyne on steam: $2.99
Lyne on itunes: $2.99
Lyne on android: $2.50
Idk why it's cheaper on android, but it is. But the point is it's (roughly) the same price on mobile and on the pc. A lot of mobile games seem to jack up the price when they move it to pc. I'm totally fine with the idea of the devs porting the game over and trying to get a bit more money off it. I sure as hell would, but what's bullshit is when the price suddenly jumps up to $10 or $15 bucks. Thankfully, that's not the case here. It's the same price just like it should be.
I'm not normally a huge puzzle game fan, though there may be a review of Ittle Dew coming soon, so if that will color your opinion of my opinion of this game then now you know. In a word I found this game to be pleasant. The aesthetic of the game is easy on the eyes and there are a handful of unlockable pallets that shift the colors which allows for some variance. The sounds are minimal but I think some heavy sound track would honestly be out of place here and thankfully the little sounds upon selecting a node do not begin to grate over time as can be the case.
For those of you concerned with amount of content included there 26 sets of levels, each set consisting of 25 puzzles and in case those 650 puzzles arent enough there are also one to three daily sets available each day as well.
And that's about all I have to say. Maybe not your thing if you're not into puzzle games, but if you are into them, or maybe if you're thinking about trying one out but want something simple to ease into the genre, then maybe try out Lyne. It's not going to revolutionize anything, but you could do a lot worse for $3.
Gameplay: 6.5 out of 10
Story: N/A
Visuals: 6.5 out of 10
Audio: 6.5 out of 10
Overall: 6.5 connected polygons out of 10
So I went and saw this on Saturday. You we're gonna get a review of a not well known indie game today, but that's been bumped for now. And for those of you who are awaiting the Fallout NV Lonesome Road, I did start playing that again, so that should be coming soonish.
So then, I actually rather liked the story here. Hercules is of course well known for his amazing feats but he's not actually a revered hero. He (and his compatriots) are in fact a band of mercenaries working for gold not glory. The movie opens with the gang having been hired to deal with some pirates. The pirates are quickly dispatched and the group is approached by a princess seeking their help to deal with a particularly dangerous rebel causing trouble in her realm. This is the main story we deal with.
The visuals are plenty well done, though I find most of them don't warrant any particular callout. Honestly the story really is what I find to be the best aspect of the movie, but I'm not going to say anymore so as to avoid spoiling things.
I will say that I think picking The Rock to play Hercules was a good choice. Dude is ripped as hell and pulls of the demigod / "I AM HERCULES!" thing quite well. And he is in fact capable of showing off more emotion than just anger or stoicism unlike lots of the giant masses of meaty half-men half-brickwall types.
So I mean yeah it's alright. Is it a must see? No. Is it likely to be the best movie of the year? Probably not. But if you're looking for an alright movie to watch then you could do a lot worse than this. And th-th-th-th-that's all folks.
I really hope someone get's that reference.
7 massive lions out of 10
This is a game that I have been thinking about reviewing for quite a while. I have played quite a fair bit of it (a little over 2 days worth at the time of writing this) and done damn near everything one can do in this game.
The story is a little light, your endless parade of knights is charging into the castle in search of some artifact that is supposed to cure the poisoned king. And that's about it. There's a little more but I'm not gonna spoil it. The story is told through journal entries found randomly throughout the castle as you explore. But this is good, a heavy story wouldn't suit this game well. Kudos to the developer for not burdening us with one.
So if that's all I have to say about it, you can assume I haven't been playing this for the story, and this assumption will make an ass of neither of us. I've been playing it for the nice mechanics. It's not a hugely complicated game mind you, there's only a few commands. Jump, swing the sword, cast your magic, use your class special, and (if you have it available) dash. Well of course also move. But that's it. That's all the things you do. But simple, is not necessarily bad. The fact the game is so stripped down makes it really all about skill and quick thinking. You learn enemy tells and attack patterns and get better at avoiding hits.
The overarching goal of the game is to defeat four bosses, one in each different section of the castle, and this opens the way to the final boss that you beat the game upon defeating. However, it is very unlikely, though not impossible, that you'll do this with Sir Lee, the first playable character. The more immediate goal of most runs is in fact to make money. Upon killing enemies, breaking furniture, and opening chests, you are rewarded with money. Upon the almost inevitable death of your character this money can used to buy new gear, unlock magic runes that grant various abilities (dashing, multiples jumps, improved move speed, and vamparism to names a few), upgrade base stats (like health, mana, armor, and damage), unlock/upgrade classes, and get new abilities (like reduction in mana cost, increased gold gain, and a small chance of not dying when you normally would).
The castle's layout is randomly recreated each time you enter it, unless you use the services of the architect. So each venture into the castle has you mapping the area out and hunting for new chest crack open and pilfer the contents of. Each venture into the castle also has you playing as a new character. Upon the death of Sir Lee, and all of his descendants, the player is given the choice of three children to play next (This can eventually be upgraded to allow one additional pool of three kiddies to pick from). The avaliable kids will have their class, magic attack, and traits randomly picked from all of them that you have available. There are 10 playable classes; knight/paladin, knave/assassin mage/archmage, miner/spelunker, spellthiff/spellsword, shinobi/hokage, barbarian/barbarian king, lich/lich king, half-dragon, and the traitor. Knight, knave, mage, and barbarian are unlock by default. All classes save traitor can be unlocked simply by spending gold on them. I'll discuss how to get the traitor a bit later on.
There are 10 different magical attacks (not counting the traitor's shit cause he doesn't play by the rules) some of which are class restricted. But more interesting than this is the traits. There are a whopping 35 different traits, of which you can have between zero and two on any character. The traits vary wildly in effect from something like "gay" which has precisely no change to anything, to something like "baldness" only a minor visual difference in your lack of hair, to "P.A.D." which makes spike traps not work, to "C.I.P." which hides your health bar, to "vertigo" which flips the entire fucking screen upside down. Some traits prevent having others, like "gigantism" and "dwarfism" cannot both be on the same character. But in general, most traits can be obtained with most other traits for odd and sometimes very useful, or very annoying combinations. But in the event you happen to hate all the children to choose from you can simply run into the castle and kill yourself on the first enemy to get a fresh batch of sacrifices er uhhh brave warriors to pick from.
So you may recall at the start of this post I said I'd done almost everything. This may provoke your curiosity to ask what haven't I done yet? Sometimes after the game was released the developers released a free update which added in some additional content. It's always lovely when developers do that (cough cough FTL cough). The additional content that was added to Rogue Legacy was the traitor, and the means to unlock him. If you're playing the game or plan to, and don't want to know how to do it then skip the rest of this paragraph. After defeating each of the four area bosses so gain the ability to obtain emblems that represent them. Presenting these emblems to Charon, who you must talk to each time you enter the castle, will unlock new more challenging versions of the previous bosses. Upon killing all of the four bosses older, meaner brothers you unlock a fifth additional boss fight. Beating this new fifth special boss will unlock the traitor class.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that I do think the game looks quite nice.
This is a slightly better image that the one I used at the top of the post. You may not care for the visual style, but I think it's quite pleasing to look at.
So that's that then. Very little story, but it's not about the story. Some pleasing visuals and in fact a nice bit of humor in the game. It's simple, but what is there is crafted very well. The randomized characters and castle does mean that each time you play is a little different from the others. And the many different types of available gear and runes allows for different ways of playing which is always good.
Gameplay: 9 out of 10
Story: 7 out of 10
Visuals: 8 out of 10
Audio: 7.5 out of 10
Overall: 9 descendants out of 10
P.S. I do plan on doing a post on Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome road and in fact one on the game as a whole, but I wanted a small break from that, so you're getting a Rogue Legacy post now. The Lonesome road post will be forthcoming soon-ish.... probably.
