Search Results for: fallout

Sold as an open-world action role-playing video game, but in reality it’s everything but. I was super happy to give Nier: Automata a miss despite the rave reviews (people out there literally calling it a masterpiece, 9-10/10’s and reviewers saying they were literally brought to tears with the storyline, or at least very deep in thought about it post game.

Man have these guys played Fallout 4?! To me, Nier: Automata feels very Japanese in an old school Indie Sega Mega Drive game kinda way. It’s story is cool, but nothing new in the post-apocalyptic gaming world. The soundtrack is getting HUGE praise, but I always turn music off in games, that’s just how I play. The graphics are really low definition and over-stylised, it’s such a low saturation and hazy environment which doesn’t look good despite running in 4K and on max graphics settings. I suppose it’s just not that kind of ULTRA high res textures gaming experience (with a full screen bug and laggy cut-scenes I’d say it Nier would have been better on the PS4 than the PC).

The gameplay is super arcade style. The game goes from 3rd person to 2D side and overhead like old school coin operated games like 1942 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which I sank lots of 20c coins into as a kid!). It’s hilarious that Nier is blowing people’s minds as it’s just old turned new again. Think iPad, and how Angry Birds blew minds (but in reality it’s a really simple game). Old platform games came back to star on “new” technology (tablets). I see it as a low-tech, going back to go forwards kinda thing.

A quick dip back into Ghost Recon had my PC’s fans on full blast minutes in, and I found myself in the dying light, in the rain, gawking at the detail on my Ghost’s wet backpack.

This fan made video is awesome, and literally a love letter to the game itself! It’s what pushed me over the edge to hit the buy it now button (and I’m glad I did!)!

I’m a vampire. I swear. I’m 41, and feel like I’ve done so much and lived forever. Where I have lived on, my friends have gone, so I keep making new young friends in life, but eventually they all go too (“Going” in this case probably means getting married and having kids and moving on with their lives rather than dying, but you get my analogy?!).

Something that many might not know about me is that I am a huge vampire fan. I grew up on Anne Rice novels, and loved everything she wrote (later on I read her erotic novels which she published under a fake name, they were super fucked up!!!). Her novel “Interview with the Vampire” ended up becoming a pretty successful movie, one which I’ve watched a few times, and enjoyed (but ultimately I love Bram Stroker’s 1992 Dracula starring Garry Oldman as the Nosferatu the most).

I was more punk than goth when I was younger, but I hung out with goths all day long as my long term girlfriend Caryn at the time (we dated for 7 years) was sister to Sydney’s King Goth Charles Gillespie, who ran and owned Club 77 for years, had Marylin Manson hang out at his house, which has so many dead animals hanging on the walls you’d think you were hanging out at an abattoir!

I collected and read the entire Sandman series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman too, love his artwork, love the fantasy world he has created, love Dave McKeon’s heavy layered photoshop work (a huge inspiration to me back in high school). I’m still hopeful they will one day make a movie on The Sandman, the lore is there for the taking!

Somewhere along the lines Twilight happened, and maybe Twilight killed the vampire for me just like Fast & Furious killed car culture. Either way I’ve not really felt attached to any kind of vampiric love for a while, until now!

Enter Vampire Bloodlines. I stumbled upon this title when searching for the best Role Playing Game (RPG) of all time. It came up time and time again. Made in 2004 (it’s old!), it was a rushed release and on release it was so broken that people could not play it. The game died in the ass on release, but over time a community of fans fixed the game to the point where they’ve released an unofficial patch which realises much of what the games developers wanted to do with the game in the first place.

Isn’t that just amazing?! I’ve seen it with Fallout 4 and the community of modders who not only fix bugs in the game, but make everything about the game better, from textures through to gameplay mechanics. What you have to realise is that it’s not the developers who are shit here, it’s the fact that there are a shitload more amazing ‘developers’ in the world than in one studio, so when a game developer releases a game which the community can mod, it’s only fair that there will be better coders/designers/artists out in the world (in comparison to the smaller pool of talent in one dev team).

So, back onto vampires, goths, and games. I decided to download Bloodlines off Steam (it was $25AUD), I downloaded the official patch, installed it without issues and the game is running fine so far. There’s no way of using a controller as there are a LOT of keyboard commands you can use, it’s going to take a while for me to be completely fluent with them all, but Bloodlines isn’t exactly an action first person shooter so I’m sure I’ll feel more comfortable with the controls over time as it’s a slower paced game.

When you launch the game you’re thrown into character creation, definitely one of my favourite parts of starting any new game (and I love that dark Massive Attack like track on the home screen! Sets the mood right!).

Like Fallout New Vegas’ start with the Doc. Bloodlines starts with a psych test to help figure out what class of vampire suits you best. I loved the psych questions right away and I answered them as honest as I could, this gave me the class of “Malkavian”, the crazy ones, which I’ve read over and over again as one of the most fun play though characters in the game as their dialogue is totally whack and almost nonsensical (which then makes for some fun unexpected results when you’re forced to make a choice). The Malkavian character is one that a lot of Bloodlines players suggest as a 2nd play though just for the sheer fun of it. It’s probably not the best character for a first play though due to the fucked up dialogue, but hey it’s what I got so I’m sticking with it.

If you answered in other ways you could have gotten Nosferatu for example, these guys are so ugly that gameplay would force you to always be lurking in the shadows and underground tunnels for the entire game. Talking to other NPC’s to gather info from them becomes impossible as you’re so not human looking that most of them will scream and run away from you. Unlike Skyrim where it almost doesn’t really matter what class you choose as in the end you can get any class to work once you’re levelled up enough, with Bloodlines classes it really seems to matter which class you choose and that’s an awesome thing (especially for game re-playability).

After the character creation screen you’re thrown into a cut scene which really shows how dated the graphics are, but you know what? Despite a low polygon count the expressions on the characters are better than this year’s 2017 Mass Effect Andromeda. Far from realistic, but the expressions are there and the voice acting is bang on. The tutorial at the start throws you into the basics, yup there’s a lot you can do in this game and surprisingly it’s not just a point and click RPG but much more dynamic than I originally thought.

It turns out you can play first person and 3rd person, and you have all the controls of a FPS, and that’s because this game has been built on an early Unreal engine (blew my mind and makes so much sense as to why I’m loving it right now). Bloodlines worked originally as a turn based Dungeons and Dragons style board game of sorts, but when it went digital it didn’t do the RPG point and click Fallout 1 style game, but went right into open world FPS, much more like modern Fallout games. Really impressive.

What I’m sincerely loving the most is the general goth vibe of the game. It’s so bang on I can’t believe it, and it’s surely the real reason as to why so many people out there think the writing in this game is so good. I don’t think it’s the writing. I think it’s the fact that the guys who made this game had to be goths, or at least were mates with goths, because some bits in this game are just SO goth it brings me back, hard!

Just seeing goth guys dance on the dance floor, IT’S BANG ON! If you’ve ever seen goths dance, it looks like they’re invisible sword fencing, or they look like gorillas going through the mist.. the game nails it, and seeing other NPC’s randomly joining in on the dace floor was cool, then when I randomly decided to have a closer look at the dancers a prompt appeared for me to start dancing too, BANG ON! This is just the kind of explorative mechanic that gets me in a good game.

SO I’m barely out of the tutorial, but I’m somehow I’m already hooked. This is amaze as most games usually start out super slow and boring, especially tutorial bits. I’ve only met a couple of NPC’s so far but the ones I’ve met have been fucking amazing. One vampire by the beach I stumbled into had an Aussie accent, and a great bit of dialogue to go through. Pretty sure he wasn’t anyone special in the game, just filler, but fucking good filler at that as he was super engaging.

Really looking forward to more Bloodlines, mainly because the culture of it all feels so bang on, respectful and legit. I literally feel like I am hanging out with my old goth mates again, for real! Will post up a final review at some point I’m sure.

Official Trailer.

Entering a Cauldron. Cauldrons are very much like Skyrim’s massive underground caves.

Lara Croft moments actually got more and more enjoyable.

One skill lets you call a ride whenever you like. Riding beasts lets you travel large distances fairly quickly. It’s a lot like riding horses in Skyrim (you can even set your ride to auto pilot), great mechanics and I found myself riding around quite a lot.

You get to make choices in the game, but they don’t seem to have any consequences. I assume because it’s a much smaller game in reality than say Fallout 4 (where choices completely change the outcome of the game), but at least the choices you make let you play Aloy how you like (which is strangely satisfying).

The skill tree is super easy to max out (in comparison to Fallout 4 or Skyrim where some players still have yet to max out their skill trees years into the game). I went for all the convenience skills to begin with as usual and it played out nice.

Loved using the map (hate using crap maps in good games!). Fast travelling costs you, which is pretty cool, and end game you can buy yourself an unlimited fast travel pack (very clever as this further encourages you to discover the rest of the world).

Yup, had to do whatever it took to get the secret shield-weaver armour! I used the photo mode to capture all these shots too (nice feature with on the fly camera panning, depth of field adjustments and more).

Horizon Zero Dawn is Playstation’s latest “Hollywood Blockbuster”. The hype on this game is HUGE, with pretty much every single games reviewer out there (both big and small) giving it a near perfect rating.

I watched a fair few trailers a while back, didn’t do anything for me stylistically (even though I love robots!), and the gameplay footage of the main character Aloy climbing up a huge giraffe like robot (in reality it’s one of the more fun things to do in the game) just put me off as that kind of dynamic story telling puzzle solving Lara Croft stuff just isn’t my thing.

The game came out last week. I tried to hold it at bay for a few days as Ved and I have been playing Ghost Recon Wildlands, but the hype train got me so I pulled the trigger.

I’ve just finished the game over the weekend. I stuck to the main quests and have kept the side quests for end game play. The game is super slick, and smooth as, but felt more like an interactive movie than a true open world action RPG. Much of the praise has been on graphics, open world, gameplay and story. I never felt like I was truly in an open world, in fact I always felt like I was on a track (unlike Fallout 4’s huge open map, or Skyrim, or Ghost Recon Wildlands). And regarding RPG, it’s light, very light. I didn’t do much RNG at all and still finished the game just fine with low end gear. Regarding the action; killing various robots was pretty fun, but shooting arrows isn’t so fun. I love shooters, but with an arrow you’ve got to press the trigger to draw it back, then let go of the trigger to let the arrow go, which makes fast shooting of big robots feel really really silly (as you’re shooting every time you let go of the trigger) so I’ve ended up setting my character up to be much more of a melee warrior (it’s nice that you can).

All in all I enjoyed the game (and I’m still enjoying some end game activities like clearing out cauldrons, which are set in huge Skyrim like caves) and story (especially loved the ending scene). Lots of reviewers out there are comparing Horizon to Far Cry, but I feel it’s more like an easy/commercial version of Fallout 4 (especially with the secret suit above, it’s setting is pretty much exactly the same as the overpowered X-01 Quantum Power Armour in Nuka World DLC), except I didn’t get anywhere near as emotionally involved as Fallout (Fallout 4 really really got me, especially the soundtrack).

Graphically it’s just a huge let down as I’ve been playing games on the PC in ultra. Horizon is just full of super low res textures on the PS4 (yes the graphics are meant to be better on the PS4 Pro) and I just can’t get over that fact, but the cut scenes (typically where you talk to characters in the world) have got to be the best looking cut scenes I’ve ever seen in a game (many have complained about strange lip synching but I still think it’s some of the best), controls are great (crafting arrows on the fly mid battle actually ends up feeling 2nd nature), the detailed map, and using it (especially zoomed in) is great and the costume designs, and character designs in general were awesome (especially love how they use rope, string and leather materials to tie emblems in place).

My PC really is the “console killer” in that I just can’t look at console graphics as being anything but bad, jaggy and low res now. I’d LOVE to see what Horizon looks like on my new Sony HDR 4K TV with a PS4 Pro, but I’m not ready to buy a Pro just yet. Having said all that, Horizon is one super polished game. If you’ve got a PS4 you’ve pretty much got to buy this game. IE: If the PS4 only came with one game, this would be it!

400 in a week, WHOO!

Find your Zen.

Top of the charts (a rare instance). Early on, in PVP I thought I was getting good, but in the end game I’m horrible! The other guys are just SO awesome (PS: it’s amazing how they’ve balanced PVP and PVE in this game).

Hanging out in orbit is a thing in Destiny. The loading screens are always sequences of your spaceship travelling to your destination. They’re great! Way better than a loading bar (if anything I wish they were slightly interactive like the spinning models are in Fallout 4’s loading screens).

My first Raid (I had no idea what was going on!!!).

Now onto my Titan! Couldn’t get the character looking like me at all… no facial hair in the future apparently.

He’s armoured up nice though!

I’ve heard that getting to light level 400 in Destiny isn’t easy. Over the past week I’ve met quite a few players online who have been playing Destiny for 3 years now and they’re still stuck on 399 (or less). I googled, and youtubed, and found so many frustrated players out there who just couldn’t get to the max light level.

All along I was quietly confident that I could get to 400 in a week (when I get into something I get into something!). I love the grind plus I’m also pretty lucky in general (great for RNG!) … it’s been an insane week but I got there in the end.

1 week 4 hours 58 minutes.

For Destiny players; I did this mostly solo. I had a friend help with raids and a few story missions (and advice! Here’s looking at you Tendy!), but none of that dropped anything I couldn’t have gotten through strike chests. I got all my drops from using skeleton keys, and that left the legs and chest which I had to get through exotic engrams (not easy). I had some heartbreaking RNG moments as expected, the last piece (chest) was the hardest to get. With everything else at 400 but the chest (397) I was convinced I’d have an exotic engram decrypt at 399, which would leave me stuck forever, but luckily I got a 400 chest piece today as an Iron Banner bounty (first day of the Iron Banner week too!)

Oh noes, not fist pumps! The cut scenes are a bit cheesey, but the characters are complex and likeable enough.

Watch Dogs 2 is a game about hacking, it’s got a really fresh young vibe going on, the game tackles current affairs and it’s overall been a really fun (not so serious, scary, or full of doom and gloom) game to play.

I’ve watched just about every hacking related movie and doco there is to watch. Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, The Internet’s Own Boy (Aaron Swartz’s story on Netflix, must watch), so I was instantly curious about Watch Dogs 2; a game about hacking, and just how would the developers make hacking the primary part of the game (and how would they make it fun?).

Ubisoft has done an awesome job of re-creating San Francisco. I hope that one day Sydney will feature in an open world game of this quality.

Lots of graff all over the city.

Some worth taking a selfie with.

On loading, the game throws you into the deep end right away (Metal Gear Solid’esque action scenario), and the movie intro actually begins a fair bit later. Refreshing change from games which have much slower tutorial style intros. You’re Marcus, a chill dude who ends up hooking up with DedSec, a bunch of hacker mates. The enemy is tech company Blume and their ctOS computer system and the world is set in the Bay Area of California, which is absolutely huge, and looks amazing in game (I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and was sold).

Meet the crew.

There’s a real fun, neon punk graphic design aesthetic which carries throughout the short videos which support and break up missions.

To me, Watch Dogs 2 instantly feels a little bit like The Division; familiar HUD graphics and action mechanisms, but graphics are even better in general, especially in regards to the main character’s detail and movement. The characters you meet are quite developed (more like characters in Fallout 4) and stealing cars, bikes and exploring the streets feels a lot like playing Grand Theft Auto V, which isn’t a bad thing, right?!

Cars are pretty cool in the game (I love the in car first person mode), hardly any traffic means you have much less to hit (and cars are super easy to control so driving is never frustrating).

All sorts of clothes shops to visit!

Marcus’ phone is his primary weapon and tool to launch apps which control all sorts of stuff like starting new missions, taking selfies and playing tunes (as you’d imagine). He’s also got an RC car and Quadcopter to play with (which is essential and super fun but also crazy expensive so you’ll have to do some driving side missions and hack people’s accounts in order to cash up to buy it). Marcus can also hack terminals, cameras, cars and more. Failing a mission a few times helps a lot in getting familiar with the hacking tools, which are an essential part of the game, but then there’s shooting too.

Selfies, gaining followers and making guns with the 3D printer. How very “now”!

Watch Dogs 2 primarily focuses on moving stealthily and hacking, but Marcus can use a 3D printer to create various guns. I’m not sure the game becomes more convincing when a hacker starts shooting his way through missions, but hey the option is there to play the game how you like, and that’s a good thing I think (as I really enjoy shooting games and running in guns blazing is always more my style).

PS: I got a pre-release retail PlayStation 4 copy of the game provided by Ubisoft. At the time of review the PlayStation 4 version of the game has a major multiplayer bug. Ubisoft are well aware of this bug and expects to have it fixed by the time the game launches for the public (it’s now available!). I’ll be buying the PC version of the game when it launches at the end of this month so I can test out the multuplayer with Ved!

For more info, visit: http://watchdogs.ubisoft.com

Released 5 years ago, now remastered, it’s amazing how Skyrim holds up to the other 2 brand new games below.

Dishonored 2, this story/action/adventure style of gameplay is more new to me than the other 2 games.

BF1’s first person shooter all the way, definitely gameplay I’m more familiar with.

I’ve spent a fair few hours on the games above since I’ve been back from LA but I’ve failed to get the bug with either of them. Out of the 3 I’ve spent more hours in Skyrim where I’ve followed the main quest and finished the main storyline. I felt I needed to at least give it that much, but I don’t have the urge to keep on exploring Skyrim’s huge open world mainly because I’m just not that into the world of Skyrim (LOTR/dragons/magic etc).

Having said that I’m actually not into the worlds of any of these games and that probably plays a huge factor here. Dishonored 2 has a gothic/magic/dark mystery adventure style gameplay that’s visually spectacular (the animation sequences where you’re actually murdering someone are pretty intense), but it also left me with the feeling of not really playing the game, like I was steering more than truly being immersed in the world and free to roam and discover.

Then there’s BF1. Yup EA know how to make a game with a really polished feel. Clean menus, clean type. I threw myself into a few campaign modes and hated being in the tank, and then in a plane. I then loaded up some multiplayer and found it super frustrating as I was being one-shotted for hours at a time. I went back to campaign play but stayed out of vehicles (I played Gallipoli) and saw what all the fuss was about. The Gallipoli campaign was fantastic, great character development considering how short the cut scenes were, great music, great combat too.

I’m quite sure I’m done with Skyrim, and I’m really not keen to keep on playing Dishonored 2 despite it being the prettiest world out of the 3 games above and also having the most interesting gameplay. If anything I’ll most likely just play a little BF1 multiplayer from time to time, but one thing’s for sure; playing all 3 of these games has really left me yearning for the release of Fallout 5! The boxes I now need ticking are: rpg, shooter, looter, open world, character development & storyline (yeah not that much to ask!).

I managed to play a little bit of Skyrim just before I left for LA. Sydney to LA is a 14hr flight so I figured that I had plenty of time to catch up on movies. Once we were in the air I was hunting down a movie to watch that was in the theme of Skyrim, that failed, then I came across Game of Thrones (Season 6) and booya! I hadn’t ever watched an episode of GoT so I just dove right in and ended up watching every single episode straight in one sitting (as you do).

Loved the music, worlds, architecture, characters, death, gore and special effects; all of which set my frame of mind up nicely to come back home and play Skyrim.

Whilst I was away I got a message from my friend Amanda Sierras (who’s a DJ/Model I met through Breanna Espina/Zen/shooting). She needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks before she jets off on an Asia tour. I figured playing games on the couch would be a pretty geeky/bad guest thing to do but hey I just had a 14hr flight back home, I was buggered as fuck and needed some down time, she’d totally understand right?! I loaded Skyrim up and Amanda instantly lit up and showed me her fingers, which had games from her childhood tattooed on them.

She asked what I was playing. I said “Skyrim!” and she replied “I know Skyrim! What are you? A mage, or warrior?”. Gahhh! This girl is amaze!!!

Yup, that’s the Lucas Arts logo tattooed on Amanda’s finger (and yup we had enough of the Trump debate and played Skyrim instead!).

Trump was winning. “Stuff politics, let’s play Skyrim instead!”.

There’s SO much undulation in this world. You can climb up and over mountains if you choose to.

Apparently these Sweet Rolls are a bit of a thing in the game. I’m lucky I haven’t gotten to to know the game for long enough to know this, otherwise missing this event where Bourke Street Bakery lovingly re-created the Skyrim Sweet Roll would have been devastating.

Exploration, finding a companion and looting. So many instant similarities to Fallout 4, except you can’t really modify your home (let alone create settlements like you can in Fallout).

Lydia’s an awesome companion in battle, but as a character, she’s nowhere near as deep or developed as most main companions in Fallout 4 (which I felt I had genuine connects with).

The world sure is beautiful at times.

Entering a cave is often like entering a new world.

Puzzles like this kill me. I ended up having to youtube this one unfortunately.

But it got me my first Elder Scroll.

My character ended up being more of a combat character, lots into one-handed skill, spells with the other and shouts on top.

I’m glad I’ve gotten to play a game which SO many people out there have been raving on about for years. I’ve now got Battlefield 1 to play, and the post man just dropped off a copy of Dishonored 2 earlier today. It looks like I’m more up to date on games than I’d originally thought!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

My copy of the remastered Skyrim for PS4 is here! The game only came out today, and I leave for LA tomorrow morning so I thought I’d come home to it in a week’s time… but NO! Thanks Bethesda for express posting me a copy to play today.

Being truly done with Fallout 4 (until mods come out for it on PS4!), and struggling to get back to The Division after downloading the 1.4 update (which after a few hours play really feels like how the game should have been from launch). I’m going to give Skyrim a good go despite not being a huge fan of magic/fantasy like realms.

I’ve only spent 2-3 hours on the game but I’m enjoying it so far! Really helps that the Fallout 4 familiarity is there with the controls, and general gameplay too. Sure, the graphics aren’t as great as Fallout 4, but one thing I’ve noticed is that the game loads SO fast! Loading screens flicker past in an instant, unlike the 30+ second wait at times when opening a door into a building in Fallout 4 (worst way to kill immersion IMHO).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

They’ll make a gamer out of me yet! Care package from Bethesda, publishers of Fallout, DOOM (OG Doom is still my fave FPS of all time!), Wolfenstein, and more. I’ve not got a PC yet, but they sent me Fallout 4 for PS4 and I’ve been playing that for the past 3 days. Bit late to the party, but it’s great!