Kingdom | PC1/1/2016 There is a saying that money makes the world go around, and that rule can certainly be applied to Kingdom, the 2D fiefdom building game where coin is everything. It’s your tool, your HP, your sword and shield. After you’ve done exactly that to build the basis of a fortress, the first order of business is filling it with bodies to toil under you. Other humans can be found by exploring and their employment bought for the low price of one gold piece; once in your employ, you can assign them certain roles depending on what tools you have constructed at the time. Buy a bow for two coins for example, and any worker without a specific role will march over and pick it up, becoming an archer. The same goes for hammers and builders, scythes and farmers. There is a game winning scenario in there somewhere, but the onus is on your royal shoulders to go and find it All are key to your success as a kingdom. Archers, once armed, will immediately set about decimating the local wildlife, which are oddly wealthy, rabbits and deer dropping gold coins once they’ve popped their clogs. Archers will do this automatically and you needn’t worry about any unseen coins blinking away before you can get them, any coin earned off screen by archers is chucked your way as you pass them by like a medieval cash point on the fritz. This coin is integral to accommodating your objective - ‘build, expand, survive’. Farms and farmers are available once you’ve upgraded your home base to the appropriate level, and are quite expensive at first. The increased outlay is worth it in the long run, as having a few farms on the go will greatly increase your prosperity as they harvest coins from the land at an alarming rate. Builders do just that, build. Certain areas of the ground near your fort are able to be built upon and once somewhere has been selected by buying it with (you guessed it) coin, a builder will turn up and start fortifying your surroundings and any gold earned from the felling of trees and completed structures is passed onto you much the same way as an archer would. Rudimentary spiked fences are available at the cheapest end of the spectrum, but they can be upgraded upon completion to thicker walls made from stone and to watch towers that house archers, a necessity in order to survive the dark and dangerous nights. The nights are one of the hardest parts of Kingdom, not just because ravenous trolls turn up with the twilight intent of destroying your town, but because you are helpless to stop it. If monsters attack (which they inevitably will, despite the quiet nights at first), all you can do is sit upon your high horse, watching and hoping that the defences you’ve built are strong enough to withstand the repeated onslaughts and that the archers’ aim is true enough to hit the damn things. It can be an incredibly frustrating experience watching your hard work being torn to bits while your archers wildly lob arrows around like medieval Stormtroopers. The only intervention you can offer is giving up your lifeblood, your wealth. Smaller enemies will leave once they collect something important, whether it’s a bow or a tool or your crown (which ends the game). They're also partial to coins, so by dropping and sacrificing them you can prevent enemies from breaking further into your fort and wreaking more havok, albeit at a cost. It’s a basic tactic, and more of a last resort than a consistent strategy as coins will act as your HP too, a buffer to stop enemies claiming your crown instantly and ending the game to the rather chilling words, ‘No crown, No King’ (or Queen). If the walls do fail (and they will at some point), then you’ll most likely have to start again. Luckily the day/night cycle does not last that long, each taking only a matter of minutes, meaning there’s no lengthy grind in order to rebuild your castle up to the same point it fell from and the procedurally generated lands help to avoid any repetitiveness. This easy replay value means that it’s possible to take any lessons learned in a failed play through into your next one and it’s here the greatest enjoyment can be found. There's a real satisfaction to be had when the game clicks and you manage to reach the point where income is steady, walls are thick and archers teem over your lands, ready to rain down destruction.
Once you’ve reached this balance, pushing the boundaries of your kingdom is one of your main priorities. The limited stamina of your horse and fleet footedness of enemies means you can’t just go gallivanting into the forest searching for adventure, not unless you want to be dethroned prematurely. Expansion takes time and walls need to be built further and further outwards, a little bit each day. It’s a slow burn expansion process, but a necessary one if you want to survive to see what’s over the horizon, or the edge of the screen in Kingdom's case. A sprawling and successful kingdom can have its downsides, however, as it can become impossible to know what’s happening way on the other side of your land once night falls. Many times we found ourselves observing a still and silent night at the far reaches of our empire, only to gallop over to the other end and find a monster mash in full swing. If you’re the sort of person who needs a defining objective in their games, a natural goal to work towards, then Kingdom is not the game for you. The game leaves it up to you how to expand your lands and spend your wealth after you have laid the foundations of a home base. Expanding from your base is the only obvious objective, there are no mission’s, no persons of interest to follow, it’s up to you to build and explore, to last as many days as possible. The Roman numerals that appear at the top of the screen after every sunrise are the only indicator that there is a goal of sorts to achieve, and it adds the ‘just one more try’ element of Kingdom, as you set about trying to beat your previous record number of days survived. There is a game winning scenario in there somewhere, but the onus is on your royal shoulders to go and find it. With its easy to learn control scheme, charming looks, music and replay value, Kingdom will appeal to both casual and core gamers. The former enjoying the accessibility the game offers, and the latter appreciating the tangible sense of satisfactory discovery gleaned whilst independently unraveling the game's mechanics and penning strategies needed in order to beat the game. Just don’t get to attached to all your hard work, as Kingdom’s tag line suggests, ‘Nothing lasts...’. Pros
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Score 8/10 Fallout 4 | Xbox One1/1/2016 Trying to decide if Fallout 4 lives up to the hype is tricky. There have been a lot of high-profile releases this year, plenty with a reasonable amount of excitement behind them too, but none have taken over the airwaves in quite the same way as Fallout has. ‘What on Earth does that mean?’ You may ask, bewildered. Well, if you stop muttering on for a minute we’ll tell you. While this iteration of Fallout might not stray far from the groundwork laid in Fallout 3 to set the series on a new direction, it very much builds on it. It also takes leaves out of the books of both stablemate The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with its approach to sneaking in particular feeling familiar, and the Mass Effect series, as conversations this time around have more of a radial, conversation wheel-y feel. There’s no getting away from the fact that this game also looks a lot like Skyrim, apart from the HUD’s bright green everywhere (or blue, in the case of our playthrough), since it’s built on the same engine, which has made the jump to current gen relatively unscathed, albeit with a few very Bethesda issues. Bugs are a big deal for some, less so for others. We fall into the school of thought and feel that so long as it isn’t a game-breaking problem, and it’s not constant, then it’s not the end of the world. The Xbox version of Fallout 4 has been slated as having the most framerate issues, but in our experience there have been just a few moments of slowdown, the occasional one second pause during an autosave or quicksave for example. These sit amongst the issues native to no specific platform, like dead enemies glitching into walls, or the camera sometimes getting a bit confused, but nothing which completely destroys the immersion. Immersion is key here in fact, as what makes Fallout an experience rather than just a game, is that it offers up an extremely well thought out and realised world and then lets you figure it out for yourself. The main storyline and quests, which are more compelling than they were in Fallout 3, are all there in your Pip Boy (a handy smartwatch-like device which helps you keep track of almost everything). The beauty of the game though, lies in picking a direction and simply going off to explore it. The beauty of the game lies in picking a direction and simply going off to explore it. This is where the game can get punishing, since you can find yourself innocently straying into a higher level area without realising, and quickly finding ‘Legendary’ enemies ready to grind your bones to make their bread. This experience in itself is an important step in the journey as well though, teaching you to save frequently, since you never know what could be behind the next door. While the world is technically larger than both Fallout 3 and Skyrim, the key difference is that it feels positively stuffed with things to do. While the outskirts where you begin will see you wandering a little while before discovering a new location to explore, in some parts of the main city area (which was once Boston), there are locations every few feet - many of them even expanding substantially underground. Everything is drenched in an impressive detail. While exploring one underground station, we found a makeshift boxing arena, complete with a gambling area on the balcony and ready rooms for fighters. Sights like this are woven into the game at every turn, as you discover stories independently whilst bumbling about. If you aren’t the solitary type, then there are numerous companions to keep you company. These are introduced in a far more overt fashion than before and, of course, you are more than free to turn them away at any time. The AI leaves something to be desired and there’s a perk that requires rolling solo, so you’ll most likely find yourself doing this on occasion. When followers aren’t… following you about, you’ll find them back at one of the many settlements throughout the world. Depending on your choices, you may find yourself in charge of a number of different groups of settlers, in areas which can be built upon by using the game’s much-lauded crafting system. What’s a nice touch here is the parallel between how these areas behave and the base management of Fallout Shelter, making the latter a sort of mobile training simulator for the full game. Despite proving ourselves in Shelter, building up a settlement is still a lot of work, with not only food, water and power to worry about, but also the occasional raider, ghoul or supermutant attack. Cultivating food (with a tinge of radiation poisoning, naturally) is the hardest of these tasks, as you must assign settlers to watch over the crops, but the interface makes it extremely awkward to make sure everything is accounted for. To defend your base you can build a multitude of turrets and guard posts, but you’ll quickly find certain materials far more scarce than others. Copper, screws and oil, for example, aren’t found in as many places as you might expect, forcing you to do further exploring. Among your discoveries in the early missions are both a set of power armour and a minigun. The latter serves as a trusty companion of its own when you suddenly find yourself faced with a terrifying as ever Deathclaw, while the armour is much more customisable and readily available than it has been in the past. Getting cores to power it might prove expensive, but the defensive capabilities (and other boons) are a must for tackling some of the more brutish enemy encounters. Customisation in general is an addictive past time - constructing and naming your first pistol or shotgun will give you a warm feeling, but you’ll quickly need to think about which sorts of weapons your character will specialise in to make the most of their skills. While the points-based skill system of Fallout 3 is absent, it’s been simplified by directly relating skills to one of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L attributes which all characters are made up of. Don’t have enough Intelligence? Sorry, you won’t be able to hack robots or get enhancements for nuclear weapons. If you’re looking for a fun way to kill potentially hundreds of hours by crafting an incredibly individual experience, then it’s most definitely worth your time. While it takes a while to absorb where different skills you know you want fall on the tree, the system is a lot more streamlined and means there’s less time spent deliberating where to place points every time you level up and more time spent immersed in play. With no level cap and consciously working toward one upgrade also bringing you closer to others, players are never far from their next amazing upgrade.
Playing Fallout 4 only has one constant - time. You’re going to want to invest many hours into this experience and even if you don’t, you’ll just find they slip away regardless, one quick sitting becoming a marathon session. Plenty of people still play Skyrim four years after release and there’s high demand to see it made backwards compatible, so the addictive quality shouldn’t come as a surprise. There’s the future and first-time-ever promise of mods coming to consoles at some point, which may extend Fallout‘s lifespan even further, but it’s difficult to say without some sort of crystal ball. Perhaps we should ask Mama Murphy. There’s an awful lot to see and do here, and we aren’t going to pretend to have done it all, but from everything we have experienced we can say this is the most accomplished Fallout game to date. Whether you enjoy sneaking about or going in guns blazing, playing it straight or screwing people over left, right and centre, the game won’t judge or punish you for it (your companions might not take too kindly to it, though). So does Fallout 4 meet expectations? It really depends on what you’re looking for, but if you’re looking for a fun way to kill potentially hundreds of hours by crafting an incredibly individual experience, then it’s most definitely worth your time. Pros
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9/10 Entwined | PS41/1/2016 There's often times when AAA titles begin to feel a bit stale, and as a gamer you yearn for something a bit different, a more simple and chilled out experience; and it's usually at those times that you pick up something you probably wouldn't have considered before. If that sounds familiar to you, then I have good news - not only is Entwined (at the time of writing) free for PS+ subscribers, but it's bloody brilliant. Held back only by its lack of longevity - it only has nine levels, although there is a separate 'challenge' mode to keep it going a bit longer - Entwined is a must for anyone who currently holds a PS+ subscription. And you know what? Even if you don't, or you're reading this later, buy it anyway. You won't regret it, and it would be great to see what else these guys develop in the future. Pros:
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Score: 9/10 The gaming industry had a bit of an obsession with releasing classic games tarted up to 'high definition' in the last few years of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, some went a bit further and updated the games to modern standards. Trying to appreciate this over ten years later though is quite a challenge. That's not to say the gameplay isn't still brilliant, and throughout all four games everything plays beautifully, and incredibly smoothly, in updated anniversary graphics for the first two Halo games and new lighting and higher resolution for the two later games. Halo as a series offers wide open spaces mixed with claustrophobic interiors, which are all interconnected with minimal corridors. The missions invariably have objectives requiring investigation of areas, rescuing people or escaping, or maybe all of them at once, they tend to branch out and improve variety in each proceeding game. The somewhat basic objectives are made brilliant in how you tackle them, whilst subtly linear in design, Halo encourages you to approach problems however you want, with loads of weapons to choose from and even adding vehicles you can use to your advantage, leading to hilarity when trying to fit a banshee, an alien dog-fighter, down the interior corridors. Limiting the weapons down to two at a time means a firefight can be over quickly or get really messy, so establishing tactics are the key against some of the greatest enemies ever to grace the first person shooter present in all of the games, the Covenant. Grunts are the standard fare, but come in great numbers, Elites are much more powerful and require quick thinking to battle, they dodge grenades (as does everyone else, less effectively) and flank with ease, but are vulnerable to plasma fire. Killing one will rout the grunts too, so it often becomes a difficult choice of who to attack, risking death at the hands of the other. Rounding out the standard enemies are Jackals, who carry bullet proof shields, and intimidating hunters with 'everything proof' shields and the tiniest death star style vulnerability at the back. Another plus point for Halo was the quality of the narrative, it mixed quality voice acting and a coherent narrative correctly, allowing a basic 'save the world' story seem epic in the first game whilst also introducing some interesting lore in the history of the ring worlds. It is with great shame that they didn't include the prologue to the series however, which explained a lot about the covenant and humanity's place in the galaxy, these were included in the manuals, which seems like quite the oversight for newcomers. The sequels expand both humanity and the Covenant's story by building on the lore which leads to a thrilling climax in the third game, with the fourth introducing a new story arc. The Master Chief Collection only stumbles when you're faced with the missions that the original games stumbled with With Halo Combat Evolved, the first five levels are wonders in level design, offering wide open spaces connected with interesting interiors allowing for the best war stories to regale to your buddies later. The Silent Cartographer's fully explorable island is a real highlight, packed with secrets, exploits and lots of enemies to fight or ignore. The latter levels of the game become much more claustrophobic, with tight corridors and a vicious new enemy to face - the Flood. Fighting them is akin to trial and error, seeing what works, dying, seeing what else works...until you figure out the shotgun rules all. It's here we have the weakest level in the series - The Library, which consists of four copy and pasted floors fighting against relentless waves of the flood, as well as sentinels who laser beam everything as they see fit. After this level everything meshes together for a brutal and bombastic final charge, revisiting some locations with new areas to explore, it's you vs the Covenant vs the Flood vs the sentinels (sitting back and taking on whoever is left is probably the best tactic). The second game picks up where the first finishes, taking the fight to Earth and a whole host of other varied locations, each painstakingly recreated for Xbox One and looking gorgeous, being instantly able to change to the old graphics as in Combat Evolved shows just how far we've come graphically. The second game adds a lot of new tricks and enemies to face too, and is otherwise a solid campaign building on the foundations that made the first game so memorable, but also by throwing out the rule book and having you play as the enemy too, allowing their perspective to give the story some real intrigue. It is odd then that whilst creating levels inspired by the first games brilliance, they decided to include more Flood-dedicated levels that can be quite frustrating, due to the higher difficulty of the game compared to all the others in the series. When Halo 3 brings the original story arc to a close it does so with finesse, it mixes the best moments of the first two games, dials it up to 11 and adds a sprinkling of four player co-op functionality and special equipment to terrorize the enemy with including portable turrets, mines, gravity lifts and bubble shields. The result is one of the strongest campaigns in the series. Set pieces are controlled by the player and never play out the same in repeated playthroughs, making cinematic cutscene bits in other games seem tame. The only downside is the game hasn't has much work done to it, whilst displaying in 1080p the only visual improvements are slightly better textures and fancy lighting tricks, though it is worth mentioning that the game stands shoulder to shoulder with most modern games, showing just how good it looked back in 2007. 343 Industries first attempt at a Halo game hasn't had too much work done to it either, but with the game's release being quite recent Halo 4 looks simply astonishing, perhaps better than most Xbox One games. The game provides a bog standard set of missions, full of the usual staples of the series, that fails to risk anything gameplay wise and feels average as a result, though there's still a lot of fun to be had throughout the campaign which has had an aesthetic overhaul. The redesigned enemies aren't half as good (grunts aren't hilarious anymore?) and the new enemy type, known as the Prometheans, are either cheap copies of the covenant enemies, or ones that annoyingly teleport just before you deliver your killing blow. The sound has been overhauled too, all the effects are more meaty and more alien, but they lost the monks in the soundtrack and gained electronica. Whilst it is a brilliant new soundtrack, you can't help but wish they would have mixed in the old 'dun dun dun-duhn' style tracks that would kick in when the action gets going. With it being the start of a new story arc, it is odd that the plot of Halo 4 is only really understandable by reading spin off novels. There's a lot of effort been put in, but it's spread too thinly across different mediums. The Master Chief Collection only stumbles when you're faced with the missions that the original games stumbled with. Whilst all are improved graphically they all play exactly the way they did before except much smoother thanks to a higher framerate. Now everything is together, it is packed with features that make replaying them worthwhile, but does feature the levels you didn't like as well. You don't have to play them of course, just make a playlist of your favourite levels and do that. If you haven't played any in the series yet then you have over forty hours of Halo to blast through and enjoy, it's timeless fun. Pros
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Score 10/10 Dragon Age: inquisition | Xbox One1/1/2016 Last year was the year when Dragon Age really did come of age. Dragon Age 2 left fans with a bitter taste in their mouths; whether rushed by the publishers or otherwise, the game lacked in many areas (literally, who else got fed up with running through the same dungeon over and over again?) and many wanted a return to the days of Origins. The fans spoke, but did Bioware listen? From the rolling hills and coasts of Ferelden to the scorching deserts and ornate towns of Orlais, there is plenty to see and do. Setting foot in each part of Thedas is like stepping into another fantastical world; different climates, weather, wildlife, plants and resources are abundant, and the landscape is stunning. There have been moments in gaming where you take those first, tentative steps out of the 'tutorial' area and are greeted with scenery that takes your breath away, and Inquisition does this wonderfully. The game looks fantastic, especially the coastal waves on The Storm Coast (I spent half an hour alone just wandering, finding random places and waiting to see when I'd hit the edges of the map) and it feels refreshingly like RPG gaming taken back to its roots. You start with a small section uncovered, but the map quickly becomes saturated with markers for ruins, temples, landmarks, and new quests you complete to gain 'power', which you use to complete operations via the war table in Haven (and later, Skyhold). The war table itself is a nice addition to the game. You, as the Inquisitor, can summon your war council (complete with a couple of familiar faces) and use each of them to carry out missions and operations on behalf of The Inquisition. Your choices and their suitability for each mission are reflected in the rewards (I actually had one response telling me, politely, to get lost, and received nothing for my efforts), and this is also how you unlock new areas of Thedas to explore. The main bulk of your effort is with swords, staffs and bows, though. Fighting is a different experience in Inquisition, with changes being made to the way your party can be developed amongst other things – your mages no longer act as healers, taking either a defensive path with barriers and buffing defences, or offensive with a range of elemental spells instead. The mages also feel like they've been nerfed in comparison to the previous games, especially Origins, where the right combination of spells could do thousands of hit points of damage; although as you level up and come to learn the effects and powers behind each one, it gets easier to deal bigger amounts of damage to your foes. There's no health regeneration out of combat, so your party relies solely on potions to keep themselves going; on the face of it this sounds like it could be a considerable pain in the backside, however you can replenish the standard health potions for no cost at Inquisition camps (and these were all I really used throughout the entire game, anyway), and you can upgrade their effectiveness and the amount you can carry at your base in either Haven or Skyhold, depending on how far into the story you are. The worry is that Bioware has fallen slightly short of the mark in trying to offer the best of everything to please everyone in some sort of attempt to atone for Dragon Age 2 There's also the addition of a top down view of the battlefield, enabling you to take a more strategic stance when controlling the battle, although it feels as if the whole process of battle is too fast paced to really make much use of it, and you'll probably find you spend more, if not all, of the battle time in the standard view. Battles themselves are varied enough throughout the story, though none of them really require any particular strategy to get through, and the only really interesting battles are with the various dragons nesting around Thedas. Alas, the novelty begins to wear off, and after the initial awe and excitement, it all begins to feel a little anti-climactic. The threat to the world is large and brooding above your heads, yet nobody really seems to know how to deal with it, and they're quite happy for you to carry on picking flowers and collecting ore to make armour and banners first. It doesn't feel quite urgent enough, and the side quests you complete just feel a bit mundane. Worthy, certainly, helping gather blankets and chasing down goats to feed the refugees of the war brought upon them by mages and Templars, but still, it feels a bit like they were thrown in just so you had something to do. Fortunately, quests get better and bigger as you carry on, and the story picks back up as the true villain of the piece is finally revealed; all of a sudden the sense of power and urgency rises, and characters you didn't expect to see suddenly pop up in very welcome cameos. The added multiplayer is reminiscent of that in Mass Effect, and has no bearing on the game itself. A fun diversion, you play in teams of four, and tackle various maps in which you'll each need to make use of your individual skills if you hope to progress. It works well and at the time of writing, is busy enough to make sure matches are available most of the time. In all, there's no denying that Inquisition is a decent, solid game, with an interesting host of characters, stunning aesthetics and a great amount of gameplay. The worry is that Bioware has fallen slightly short of the mark in trying to offer the best of everything to please everyone in some sort of attempt to atone for Dragon Age 2. It's a great game, but it just doesn't feel like it's at its full potential because it’s trying to do so much. Pros
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Score 8/10 Chivalry Medieval Warfare | Xbox One1/1/2016 When starting up Chivalry Medieval Warfare on Xbox One for the first time, it’s easy to feel a little underwhelmed and hard to lose the nagging feeling that the game might not be the greatest value for money. Or, as some teammates tend to do, you could swing wildly to endanger friend and foe alike. Team damage is something we came across often and hardly a match will go by where someone doesn’t accidentally gut an ally. Spawn time penalties punish those that regularly offend, while the worst team killers can be voted out of matches altogether. Out of the six game modes on offer, we spent most of our time in Team Deathmatch's large, well designed maps and found the simple objective made for the best Medieval Warfare experience. Frigid is a highlight of these maps, a frozen valley featuring log traps to crush the unwary and boulders to be sent tumbling down the snow covered slopes, felling those unfortunate enough to be standing in their path. Team Objective offers challenges such as burning enemy villages and escorting allied wagons, but essentially still boils down to beating the other team senseless with your array of melee weapons. Free-for-all is a lesson in situational awareness whilst attacked from all corners constantly (switching to a third-person perspective is very helpful to counter this), whilst Last Team Standing’s one life system adds another level of tactical play to the game and Duel mode sees you going head-to-head with another player in more intimate surroundings. ...If you’re looking for something a little different in the multiplayer market, then Chivalry is most certainly that The token Horde mode also makes its console debut, having previously been a PC exclusive mode. Two maps are available at time of writing: Crypt, a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers, and Horde Town, a fittingly named castle courtyard. Horde makes for an interesting alternative Chivalry experience with monsters, ghouls, skeletons and over-sized Knights adding a touch of fantasy to proceedings. Players match the constant incline in difficulty the longer they survive by upgrading their weapons and armour with gold earned through kills. But be prepared to wait a while if joining a game in progress, as the higher waves can last for quite some time. Back on the competitive side of things, knowing weapon and class limitations is important if you hope to emerge victorious. Archers are lightly armoured but have access to a number of ranged weapons such as throwing spears, longbows, crossbows and even slings. Playing as an Archer means that you pretty much have to stick to the side-lines of battle, the lack of any meaningful armour (a shield is the only defence available for this class) and melee weapons leaving them very vulnerable to attack, fail to do so and you'll be priority target for an easy kill. The Man-at-Arms class is all about speed and can utilise a shield for added protection - this comes in handy as, like the Archer, Men-at-Arms are lightly armoured. This class is best suited to a hit and run playstyle, as going head-to-head with any of the heavily armed and armoured enemies isn't going to end well. Instead, their fleet-footedness makes them perfect for running circles around cumbersome Knights whilst attacking them on the fly (or griefing them with poke damage - MOBA playing Ed.) - they even have a quick-dodge ability that can be useful for jumping out of a heavy swing's flight path. Vanguards are the middle ground, offering a balance between speed and armour, and can utilise longer weapons such as spears, pikes and halberds. This extra reach is handy when avoiding heavier attacks from hammers and axes, as well as dominating a room or walkway by keeping enemies at bay with their longer arc. Knights are the toughest of all the classes; they're covered head to toe in steel, wield heavy damage weapons (hammers, axes, great swords) and will most likely be bearing a large shield. Realising that one of these armoured brutes has spotted you, isolated on the battlefield, can be an unsettling moment to say the least. This is where Chivalry shines like the polished steel plate of the very Knight standing before you. While a pitched battle may be raging around you, your world briefly narrows to house only you, your foe and the ground between you, making for some epic duels among the deluge of chaos. Surviving such a fight only to be struck down almost instantly is hardly frustrating, in fact it’s part of what makes Chivalry great. Picking out the weakest targets and hunting them down can be a thrilling gamble - it might leave you surrounded by enemies and spark a legendary battle whereby you dismember five armoured fiends, or, just as likely, a comical retreat with a steel brandishing host hot on your heels. It’s the right mix of gore-laden combat and dark humour that make for some memorable moments.
Torn Banner Studios have also struck a good balance between being a tactical, competitive multiplayer title and a casual, fun experience. There's depth to the game for those interested in a genuine alternative to the plethora of future-set shooters on the market at the moment, while the ability to utilise the many in-game voice functions to laugh, taunt and cry for help add a touch of hilarity to the game. The voice acting - purposefully over-the-top as it is - is very much in-keeping with the game’s whole not taking itself too seriously theme. If you’re looking for something a little different in the multiplayer market, then Chivalry is most certainly that. While it may lack its AAA rival’s slick visuals and frame rates, there’s nothing quite like the experience of leading a screaming charge towards an enemy host or battling with sword and shield atop castle walls. If you're willing to forgive the game’s simplistic visuals and get past the initial uncertainty of the first hour or so, you’ll find that Chivalry Medieval Warfare is a hugely entertaining multiplayer experience that's well worth your time. Pros
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Score 9/10 Just Cause 3 | Xbox one1/1/2016 There’s nothing original about a game built just for you to tear the world apart. Any game with a 3 in the title already has a certain expectation, particularly for a franchise which had a very successful first and second instalment, and whether Just Cause 3 is for you will rely on whether you are looking for something different or more of the same.
The map is huge, and split into a number of different areas, all of which have a number of settlements and areas of interest which need to be liberated by blowing things up. Tackling a settlement, you are offered a list of icons on the top left of the screen to let you know what still needs destroying, unfortunately though these points are often highlighted on the map as icons, you can’t toggle them as an active objective, making hunting around villages a chore more often than not. The military outposts which need levelling are a little more straightforward, with no civilians to get in the way (not that the game really punishes you for friendly fire anyway) and targets being more obvious. Despite Rico's active lifestyle, he hasn't quite mastered the art of clambering up walls... To begin the dominoes falling you have a fairly basic selection of weapons at your disposal, most notably C4, which Rico has a limitless supply of this time around, meaning it’s at times laughably easy to zip between buildings, plant C4 and then be on your way knowing that the structure’s demise is imminent. Levelled is exactly the word for the end state of most buildings in fact, since the destruction engine in the game offers something comparable to Red Faction Guerilla which really meets the standard of a new generation. On Xbox performance isn’t flawless, but considering the amount of chained explosions you can end up with it holds up fairly well. Consider the gauntlet thrown down, Crackdown 3.
As you reach certain levels of destruction, such as most enemies killed with a single explosion, for example, the game will show your total compared to your friends and other players in the top right. While this asynchronous multiplayer aspect may introduce some competition, in practice it's incredibly distracting and seemingly can't be turned off.
Travelling around the map has been sped up for this game as well, thanks to the introduction of the aforementioned wingsuit, which turns Rico into a glider in a world with a very loose interpretation of the physics of flight. This combined with the grappling hook and trusty parachute makes for a holy trinity of traversal which is surprisingly hard to master, but when it all works together the experience is fantastic. Despite Rico’s active lifestyle, he hasn’t quite mastered the art of clambering up walls though. Perhaps it’s too much time with Assassin’s Creed, but the inability to grab ledges which would be a child’s play to even the most out-of-practice assassin, is a constant source of frustration when trying to get across rooftops quickly. While it all comes together to make a perfectly enjoyable game, and there’s no need for every game to have depth or layers to its experience, you can’t help but feel that this instalment of Just Cause is a bit too one-note even for the most destruction-hungry anarchist. Pros
Cons
Score 7/10 It’s fair to say that the latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise has a mountain to climb. Most players will be going in with a certain apprehension following the widespread disappointment caused by 2014’s Unity. The only thing a developer can do in that situation is put it all out of mind and focus on making a fantastic game, and that’s exactly what Ubisoft have done. The two player characters have slightly different agendas. Twins Jacob and Evie Frye both want to see London liberated, but while Jacob has a more gung-ho approach of rousing up the locals to form The Rooks and battle rival gang The Blighters, Evie is focused on a mystical Piece of Eden, a supernatural artifact which you encounter briefly at the beginning before it takes a back seat. Modern sections make a return and are much unchanged. Essentially playing yourself playing a video game (meta), you relive the Twins' memories to uncover information useful to today's assassins. As usual, this context means that rather than dying when the baddies get a bit too much, you merely ‘desynchronize’. the experience is extremely fun, the characters refreshingly likeable and the setting visually stunning. The balance between drawing in new players and offering something for veterans is difficult to achieve, but Ubisoft seem to have succeeded this time around. The interface is easy to pick up for the former and virtually unchanged from Unity for the latter, for example, and most missions maintain the optional secondary objectives to stretch pro players, whilst noobs needn't apply. They also add a good element of variety and encourage you to stray somewhat from your established play style and comfort zone. With two characters does come twice the amount of character management however. Each time you level up you find yourself having to consciously remember to upgrade the character you aren’t currently using, since you could be suddenly forced to play as them when you launch the next story mission. In theory the two twins different personalities would suggest very different play styles: Evie favouring subterfuge and lurking in the shadows, while Jacob calls on his Rook followers (an idea not exactly lauded by Evie in cut scenes) to bring the muscle in a straight up fight. In practice though, both characters have access to the same moves, the same skills and the same gadgets. You might say this gives players more freedom to develop their characters how they like, but when a prompt comes up on screen suggesting a firearms upgrade, when you’re focusing on stealth, for example, you can quickly find yourself in a vulnerable position. This lack of focus comes across throughout the entire game, though it isn't always bad. It begins in a relatively linear way to set the story up, before unleashing you on an unsuspecting London and the broadened setting offers an overwhelming amount to get stuck into, and you can go about things in any order... to an extent. Different boroughs have enemies of varying levels, so if you fancy liberating the likes of Buckingham Palace early, you may find it isn't realistic until you've levelled up your character. You quickly find yourself progressing through the boroughs in a fairly regimented fashion - other than when story missions drag you into different areas. As was touched upon, Jacob and Evie disagree on their approach and the tension between them in story missions doesn’t marry up with the ability to quickly switch between them, or occasionally have them tag along on missions - and though from a gameplay point of view these are the most fun, they fall short of setting up elaborate double team sections which you might expect after playing titles such as Batman Arkham Knight. In fact, as we seem to be saying quite a lot at the moment, the gameplay has a lot of similarities to the Caped Crusader. As well as similar combat, the newly introduced rope launcher has a lot in common with Batman’s grappling hook. Though it does make traversing areas considerably quicker than simply free-running around, it sadly doesn’t always behave at crucial moments, like when you want to escape combat, the gadget is too reliant on you pointing the camera exactly where you want to go, and even then some surfaces just refuse to be grappled. Other gameplay elements share this inconsistency, with some Blighters spotting you despite being safely in cover, and others blissfully ignorant to assassinations happening only steps away - not to mention enemies occasionally refusing to be kidnapped, so you’re forced to brutally kill them. Just as Batman got a fancy car to play with, your assassins have some new transport too, in the form of carriages, which not only help you zip around London, but they also provide a mobile hiding place. In fact once you’ve invested in some gang upgrades, they become a force to be reckoned with as The Rooks lurk on almost every street, ready to back you up. There are also races that basically take the form of demolition derbys, with horses and flimsy wooden carriages behaving as though tanks - it's unrealistic, but fun all the same. Despite its problems, the experience is still extremely fun, the characters refreshingly likeable and the setting visually stunning. The one thing which threatened to overshadow the release, the copious bugs experienced in Unity, are in fact refreshingly absent here.
The plot may throw about historical figures like they were on buy one get one free at the local tobacconist, but is otherwise fairly light touch, letting the gameplay take centre stage. Really the biggest disappointment in the game is that Jacob’s trademark top hat from the trailers and marketing is suspiciously absent.
When a series is this established and has so many layers of complexity, with character customisation, microtransactions and, arguably, a still unbeaten free-running mechanic, to deliver this level of quality is extremely impressive. For those feeling burned by Unity, this title is more than good enough to rekindle your love for the franchise, while for beginners (especially those from the UK) there’s an incredibly rich world to dive into here and have an awful lot of fun with. Now, where did I put my top hat? Pros
Cons
Score 9/10 Traditionally, Adventure Time games have taken the form of 2D Zelda-esque dungeon crawlers. Finn & Jake Investigations is a bit of a departure, then - an adventure game akin to Telltale’s pre-Walking Dead work - but do Finn & Jake’s duo match-up to the likes of Wallace & Gromit and Sam & Max? IT’S REVIEW TIME! We do question the decision making behind a game too juvenile for most adults and too hard for most kids... We do question the decision making behind a game too juvenile for most adults and too hard for most kids, though. We also aren’t convinced a game where the bulk of your time is spent conversing and puzzle-solving wouldn’t be a tad boring for young ‘uns. There’s a combat system thrown in to help stave off boredom, which is a nice change of pace for the kids, but, unfortunately, it’ll only induce boredom in adults. It consists of mashing X to attack and occasionally tapping A to dodge in order to maintain a combo and fill the special bar, enabling the employment of an ability. Each of Finn’s swords has a unique move and Jake has four shape-shifting forms (catapult, muscle suit, spinning-top and battering-ram), depending on which you activate, combat becomes either ever so slightly less, or more, involved. Fighting waves of the same enemies over and over at the hands of such a shallow system gets boring fast, so it’s a good job combat makes up only a small portion of the game and is seemingly impossible to fail, so there’s no unnecessary repetition of failed encounters.
On the whole, Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations is a fun enough venture with great character thanks to to the original voice cast reprising their roles, a rich setting and visually pleasing style. It just doesn't quite live up to the production value of the show and the writing isn't as on-point; we've laughed out loud at the programme and only occasionally smirked at this game. Pros
Cons
6/10 Batman: Arkham Knight | Xbox One1/1/2016 Be a superhero they said, it’ll be fun they said. After beating dozens of thugs within an inch of their lives, fiddling with countless gadgets and mastering the art of a Batmobile handbrake turn - we can safely say that yes, being The Batman is indeed fun, his story is always marred with tragedy, and this game is no exception. The Knight himself comes across as a disappointingly one note character, intensely hating Batman for some past, unknown hardship - which you find out about later in the game. His knowledge of Batman’s fighting style equips enemies with a few new tricks which make sneaking around more difficult, but ultimately the reveal of the Knight’s identity is fairly inconsequential, which is a shame after all the secrecy and build up, not to mention the final encounter being more of a cut scene than an all out battle. ...the Batmobile is both a nice change of pace and a frustrating experience which becomes essential once too often to remain endearing... On the friendly side, Jim Gordon is back with daughter Barbara (a.k.a Oracle) to back Batman up, though largely they just end up being caught up in the danger.. There’s also Robin, Catwoman and Nightwing swinging around, who can be controlled briefly on a few occasions in a new duel fight mode, which allows you to switch characters and execute team takedowns at the same time. Generally this implementation of characters seems a lot more natural than Catwoman’s stint in City (providing you had the DLC…), which felt far removed from Batman and saw you going to certain places on the map to swap to the character - leaving Batman standing around in the meantime. Here there’s a strong sense that all the characters exist with their own motivations rather than being at Batman’s beck and call. The gadgets and moves remain mostly unchanged from City, in a great example of not fixing what isn’t broken. The sheer variety of enemy types can be a bit overwhelming at times, leading to a few frustrating deaths, and there’s more fun to be had in picking people off silently than engaging in a bigger brawl. Random encounters on the streets of Gotham seem both less frequent and less significant this time too, thanks largely to the game’s newest and most obvious mechanic - The Batmobile. The introduction of a vehicle which is indestructible to standard enemies is a double-edged sword. How can you make it feel like Batman is in danger when he can simply knock out dozens of thugs at press of a button from behind inches of armoured plating? The answer is escalation. The Arkham Knight’s arsenal includes a vast army of unmanned tank drones (which all have their own operators, presumably cooped up in a dark building somewhere playing something like a tank simulator game). Tank battles call for the Batmobile’s tank mode, which boasts a 60mm cannon and other countermeasures which you can upgrade over time. When you get to a certain point in the story you find all the upgrades you’ve been teased with - forced to choose one of two to unlock periodically by Q-alike Lucius Fox - are instantly unlocked anyway, making the whole thing a little bit of an empty choice. From a gameplay point of view the Batmobile is both a nice change of pace and a frustrating experience which becomes essential once too often to remain endearing. Encounters with the virtually indestructible Cobra tanks are a real lesson in patience, since their attacks are pretty devastating and a single hit can cut down your health by 50%, and the Batmobile’s awkward controls can make getting moving to escape particularly challenging. One odd design choice from Rocksteady was to have the tank mode mapped to the left trigger by default - the natural place for the break - making mastering the vehicle a struggle on default settings. Luckily after the first mission to introduce it, you can change the toggle in the options which makes everything much easier, but there’s no way to know about that option without hearing about it outside the game or stumbling across it in the options menu. The plot is probably the most grounded of the three Arkham titles, emptying the city with a massive public threat at the beginning of the game. Those that remain are thugs ripe for beating, or electrocuting if you’re using the Batmobile. Their moments seem a bit random and unfocused compared to City, where they at least seemed to stand around in groups and wore their various bosses’ colours proudly.
Some of the nicest moments in the game are short but sweet. One mechanic which sees you recreate a car crash digitally and scrub through the footage is the time when you feel most like the world’s greatest detective - similar to analysing Deadshot’s bullet holes in the last game - but these elements are few and far between compared to the out-and-out action scenes. Another element is the flashbacks and hallucinogenic moments, where you are a passenger moving through the game for the most part, but the style with which these parts of the game are executed is excellent. Despite being an open world game, the way the plot is framed makes it feel urgent to the extent that you don’t want to get drawn into the side missions (of which there are many), making any peril not handled by the main plot seem a little superfluous, since there is no consequences to leaving kidnapped characters in jeopardy or areas of the city undefended, for example. Arkham Knight set out to let you ‘be the Batman’ one more time, with this developer at least, and the team have hit all the notes they wanted to - you feel like Batman playing this game. It’s unfortunate that the PC release has brought down what is otherwise a very positive impression of the title. Those who haven’t jumped into this world will find everything they need here, and a lot of content on offer to keep them occupied. While there are umpteen DLC bonuses on offer which you may feel like you are missing out on - don’t worry, you aren’t missing anything important. Pros
Cons
Score 9/10 |
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