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Watch Dogs: Legion | Xbox One X Review

6/11/2020

 
Hacking a drone in Watch Dogs: Legion

While we're not quite living in the dystopian future that Watch Dogs: Legion predicts, Ubisoft Toronto couldn't possibly have imagined the world it was releasing its latest game into. 

James Michael Parry

​by ​James Michael Parry

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@james_parry

Watch Dogs: Legion
Developer: Ubisoft Toronto
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, Stadia
Players: 1+

Besides the impact on personal freedoms in response to global catastrophe, Ubisoft itself is reeling from substantial accusations of abuse, mistreatment and corruption along with a series of resulting dismissals. Perhaps that explains why coming into Legion's version of London doesn't have quite the same sense of wonder and escapism we might be used to – it's all a little close to home.

Ironically, the game's London setting is one of its most captivating features. Fairly comprehensive, if obviously condensed and altered, the entire map is open from the word go, and, though obscured by a shroud, navigating it is fairly straightforward thanks to plentiful fast travel points. Of course, there’s also a plethora of vehicles to forcibly commandeer and recklessly drive with little consequence.

In fact, the game as a whole feels almost bereft of consequences. Completing borough missions will turn the area defiant, supposedly signaling a public uprising against the government, oppression and surveillance, but the in-game impact is minimal. Tech upgrade points get marked on the map, in true Ubisoft open-world fashion, but NPCs still go about their usual routines and the city feels exactly the same.

Building up a team is a key element of Watch Dogs: Legion, since you'll need certain outfits and occupations to access different areas and complete specific missions. The main conceit we heard about when the game was announced is true – you really can recruit anyone just walking around on the street, or even the guards that oppose you – though characters won't be fans of you and returning hacker outfit, DedSec, if you choose to beat them up beforehand.

Fortunately, the aptitude of average Londoners seems to be exceptional. It’s straightforward to wander into a restricted area, like Buckingham Palace, and take down trained police and security officers as any old amateur.
Big Ben's clock tower in Watch Dogs: Legion
Firearms are sparse, as you'd expect in England, which favours the tech-orientated culture this series is known for. Drones of all shapes and sizes are everywhere and vehicles, as in previous titles, can be diverted with a quick hack. Environments are so interactive, in fact, that it's often difficult to focus on the small keypad in front of you as opposed to items in the surrounding area.

An option which helps to set Legion apart from the swathe of similar Ubisoft games is permadeath; if operatives die with this setting enabled, they're gone for good. Problem is, recruitable characters lack personality, so rather than hitting on a personal level it’s just annoying to lose whichever special skills or items they had access to.
Connections between characters raise questions like "Why is that construction worker being targeted by a hitman?"
One nice feature, which admittedly has the potential to get out of hand, is a HUD element that displays connections between existing recruits and recruitable characters. It raises questions like "Why is that construction worker being targeted by a hitman?" and encourages you to start to build out a wider team, members of which are connected by emergent stories. When you get into recruitment itself, however, the variety of missions is fairly limited.

​
Characters in general have a few shortcomings. Animation transitions are abrupt and occasionally wonky, while speech seems very skewed towards British stereotypes. That isn't necessarily a surprise, but, since you're hearing the same voice line or two whenever you get into a conversation, it gets old quickly. ​
Watch Dogs: Legion scanning at Tower Bridge
While cosmetic customisation is possible via numerous shops, some of the initial character designs clash with their intended roles. It isn’t a major issue, but it is another thing that highlights the shortcomings of procedural generation in Watch Dogs: Legion. It’s much harder to care about these characters than it would be a lovingly hand-crafted cast.

Watch Dogs: Legion’s core gameplay is good fun for the most part, but its procedural cast of soulless characters don’t lend themselves to helping players be absorbed by alternate London. Still, the sights and sounds of Blighty’s capital are exciting to explore - especially in lieu of being able to amble around the city in person at present!

Pros
  • Satisfactory hacking mechanics still shine
  • Exploring near-future London is great, especially as a local
  • Spiderbot and drone side missions are a nice change of pace

Cons
  • Bugs are fairly commonplace
  • Mission variety is sparse, plus flying around on a delivery drone makes most tasks trivial
  • Characters feel disposable and your actions have little impact

7/10
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In Death: Unchained Review | Oculus Quest

23/7/2020

 
In Death Unchained Review Oculus Quest - Pass the Controller

In Death: Unchained brings the VR Rogue-lite to Oculus Quest for an untethered, wireless experience after its debut on PSVR and PC. Clever subtitle aside, the procedurally generated shooter has been expanded with all-new content to ramp-up the difficulty and keep players busy for longer. Packed with religious iconography, is this trip to the afterlife destined for heaven or hell?

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by Sam Sant


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@SlamShotSam


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Developer: Superbright
Publisher: Superbright
Platforms: Oculus Quest
Players: 1
Porting In Death to Quest has been handled by Superbright, in place of original developer Solfar. Though the game might look ever-so-slightly worse without a PC or PS4 powering it, it’s not hard to argue that this is the definitive version. The additional Abyss level takes the game’s total to a healthy three, while its hellish theme makes for a more complete tour of what may lie beyond the mortal realm.

As far as a storyline goes, that’s about the extent of it. You battle through purgatory, heaven and hell - in that order - whilst confronted by challenging enemies and randomised level layouts. You’ll die over and over again until you finally get proficient enough to reach a level’s boss encounter, then probably die again. Each time you’ll head back to the start and face an altered challenge, your choice of longbow or crossbow in hand.

Levels do adapt somewhat to mirror player proficiency, but there’s no getting around the fact that In Death: Unchained is difficult. In a VR market stuffed with lite “experiences” it can be bruising to begin with, though dying does actually facilitate progress. As you play, you’ll unlock a variety of in-game achievements (unfortunately, they don’t appear on a system level in the Oculus Scoreboards app) which grant different buffs.

Landing a certain number of headshots in one run rewards you with a permanent boost to headshot damage, for example. In addition to receiving these tangible benefits, your manual skills should also develop over time; the result is an engaging sense of progression that helps to take the edge off permadeath.
 
Earning some unavoidable achievements can work against you, however. Killing large numbers of specific enemy types will summon their meaner counterparts, which prevents you from just snowballing in, power unchecked. 
Since unlocks aren’t a complete crutch, developing your physical skill is key. Aiming takes genuine finesse without crosshairs or any form of aim assist, and getting a feel for the gradual drop of an arrow or bolt also takes some time. At first you’ll be whiffing shots at close range, before eventually hitting headshots over long distances like it’s nothing.

Solid motion tracking on the Oculus Touch controllers makes things painless, which is handy, as combat requires juggling way more than just archery. There’s a defensive shield (which can also be turned to offence with a close-range shield bash), though it often pays to physically dodge incoming projectiles and melee strikes so as to not obscure your vision. The Quest’s lack of wires can really help out here.

It’s possible to briefly trigger slow motion by bringing up the real-time arrow switching menu, which helps if you’re in a small play area and need to be careful with regards to how you move. If space is at a real premium, you can even opt to play stationary and seated. Firing teleportation arrows is probably the best movement option to match, though there is also a free locomotion setting available at launch.

Regardless of your preferred settings, a short-range teleportation shard also occupies your arsenal for clutch dodges and quickly popping around corners or through doorways. You can best use it to your advantage in attracting enemies’ attention and then retreating slightly to draw them into choke points. The AI is pretty exploitable if you pull enemies gradually, though things get hairy when you mess up and they bombard you all at once.
In Death Unchained Review Oculus Quest - Pass the Controller
Special arrows can save your afterlife in these situations, doing things like freezing enemies in place and sticking them with explosives, channelling the iconic Gears of War Torque Bow. They’re an absolute must during boss encounters as well; bosses annoyingly spawn in waves of minions, so your best bet is to end the fight before it has a chance to really begin using your heaviest artillery.

Emerging victorious will grant you access to the next level, though being able to start a run from that level (i.e. opting to begin from two at the menu instead of clearing one to get back there) requires hitting an arbitrary overall completion percentage first. Gating is probably intended for players’ own good, but when we’d nearly finished the final level and died it was annoying to learn that we’d need to backtrack and earn 7% more in order to spawn there for an immediate second crack of the whip.

Still, returning to the previous level, Paradise Lost, wasn’t all bad. Cathedral architecture is elaborately laid out amongst the clouds and we found that being mobile and aggressive worked best on the armies of flying cherubs and grounded witches. It can be easy to get lost in the lavish labyrinth and cherubs in particular have a nasty habit of appearing right behind you for cheap hits, but it's still a lot of fun to play the role of ordained executioner.
In Death: Unchained features an engaging sense of progression that helps to take the edge off permadeath.
In Death Unchained Review Oculus Quest - Pass the Controller
A major strength of virtual reality gaming is the use of 3D audio, but the implementation here is underwhelming. Enemy sound effects never really cut through the bog standard atmospheric background score, which makes it hard to instinctively pinpoint their locations and can lead to missing enemies standing right by you.
 
In Death: Unchained is immensely replayable and, impressively, a grander prospect than its higher powered PC and PlayStation 4 counterparts. It’s challenging and moreish, while also being a great fit for the Oculus Quest platform specifically. Permadeath and towering reliquaries – shrines that serve as in-game shops and save points – make the game easy to play in short bursts, lending itself well to the headset’s portable nature and limited battery life.

Pros

  • Challenging, involved and skill-dependant gameplay
  • Definitive version thanks to new content
  • Progression and procedural generation make for huge replayability 

Cons

  • Bosses are uninspired and rely on spawning in drones
  • Audio is limp, with enemies being especially underwhelming
  • Cherubs can teleport directly behind you and steal cheap hits

7/10
0 Comments

Doom Eternal Review | Xbox One

7/4/2020

 
DOOM Eternal | Review | Xbox One - Pass the Contoller

Intense. That's the first word that springs to mind when you get to grips with Doom Eternal. The pace has ramped up even further from the lauded 2016 reboot and hits you right in the face so hard that, if you happened to be an in-game demon, you'd be inclined to evaporate into a pool of blood.

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​by James
 Michael
 Parry

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@James_Parry

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 Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, Stadia, PC
Players: 1 - 3
The return of the Doom Slayer has been much anticipated, with fuel only being added to the proverbial hellfire following an excruciating four-month delay. Developer id Software seemingly took that extra time to deliver visual polish so detailed you can almost feel juicy enemy giblets jumping out of the screen - at least on Xbox One X.

Elsewhere, environments stretch out way into the distance and hellacious weather effects successfully bring the underworld to the surface. Perhaps the only missing detail that’d really push Doom Eternal’s presentation over the top would be twisting real-world landmarks to fit its purpose, as seen in the likes of Devil May Cry V.

In fact, it’s possible to lose yourself so completely in the stylised setting that you mistake it for taking place on a different planet as you travel between enemy strongholds. Creatures within them are varied and plentiful, quickly forcing you to get to grips with the Slayer's arsenal in order to dispatch them with severe prejudice.

There’s once again a focus on making individual guns go as far as possible, rather than offering an overwhelming slew of options. Each firearm has one or two secondary functions - such as the super shotgun’s grappling hook, or the plasma rifle’s deadly microwave beam - and you'll most likely find your favourites fairly quickly. That being said, you have to be ready to switch weapons on a dime when different enemy types call for you to target weak points, or, perhaps more likely, you run out of ammo.

​While in Doom (2016) supplies weren't plentiful, in Doom Eternal resource management constantly demands that you efficiently balance your time between gathering health, armour and ammo. Glory kills – devastating executions you can perform when an enemy is staggered and close to death – still grant you health and the chainsaw still grants ammunition, but now regenerates one pip of fuel which is a welcome counterbalance.
The game-changer here is the flame belch, which coats your enemies in fire and causes them to drop protective armour upon death. Armor is vital to your survival, even on lower difficulty settings. Those looking for a challenge have plenty of headroom to push themselves in Doom Eternal, while slayer gates (somewhat secret combat challenges) will push those with a real glutton for punishment even further.

Getting around as the Slayer has never felt so rapid, and traversal has taken a more vertical approach in the sequel. A dash ability combines with the familiar double jump to let you traverse huge open spaces, plus there's even wall climbing thrown into the mix, although, regrettably, it contributes frustration and variety in equal measure.

Often you can see where you need to go but getting there requires a level of dexterity that takes some time to grasp. Unhelpfully, at one point, a floating platform didn’t respawn following a failed attempt and stranded us in an area before a quick restart restored it. Fortunately, technical performance elsewhere is as impressive as the game's visual presentation.

Another weaker point was the many facets of the upgrade system, however. There are runes, which modify the game experience, weapon mods, which unlock those alternate fire modes, and suit stat points, which can be spent on another range of skills. It's a lot to absorb, and even if you have an idea of your play style it can be difficult to know which elements you will and won’t use.

You can respec skills in your ship, which hovers in orbit as a hub between levels. It starts off fairly locked down, but collecting sentinel batteries as you mow your way through levels gradually lets you access more sections of the ship. One useful area you can get to straight away is the training room, which does pretty much what it says on the tin.
Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't also mention Mick Gordon’s pounding soundtrack. The world of Doom has never been so metal, and neither has its music, complete here with a growling intergender choir. Its predecessor’s OST was exemplary, yet somehow, Eternal hits the mark even harder by slowly building to indicate trouble before exploding into frantic confrontations.

There's competitive multiplayer to dive into as well, if you fancy a distraction from the campaign. Battlemode takes an asymmetric approach as two demons tackle one fully-equipped Slayer; there’s definitely some fleeting fun to be had, but the main focus of the game is clearly its campaign.

While there are a lot of similarities to the 2016 reboot, this latest Doom outing offers more bang for your buck. Some of the shots that id Software have taken don't hit the mark, but the effort and care put into the game shines no matter where you look. It’s immensely satisfying, if relentless to the point of being dizzying at times, but Doom Eternal knows what it is and wholeheartedly embraces it to great effect.
Pros

  • Gameplay builds on Doom 2016 while retaining the fundamentals
  • Environments are breathtaking
  • Killing has never felt so satisfying

Cons

  • Platforming and climbing lose their shine after a while
  • Upgrades upon upgrades fail to hang together
  • Multiplayer is limited to just one good idea, and so feels incidental

9/10
0 Comments

Terminator: Resistance | Review | Xbox One

21/11/2019

 
Terminator: Resistance | Review | Xbox One - Pass the Controller

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently returned to the big screen in Terminator: Dark Fate, showing audiences a softer side to the relentless Cyberdyne Systems Model 101. That nostalgic entry is perhaps the best film in the long-standing action franchise since T2: Judgement Day, and similarly, Terminator: Resistance puts the series’ video game output on sturdier ground than most previous efforts. That being said, getting pegged as the best pick of a bad bunch isn’t necessarily worth much.

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by Sam Sant

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@SlamShotSam


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Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Reef
Entertainment
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Platforms: PS4, Xbox
One, PC
Players: 1
Resistance is a first-person shooter in which shooting is a weak link. Conventional weapons dribble out limp audio feedback and lack almost any recoil, making for gunplay that immediately lacks punch. Robotic enemies stand stock still and whiff their shots from point blank range, letting you hit their weak spots for maximum damage without reacting. When you later “graduate” to more powerful plasma guns, despite boasting a promotion in stopping power, the firearms manage to feel even more akin to children’s toys.

To be fair, it’s still a marked improvement over the last action movie adaptation that developer Teyon and publisher Reef Entertainment produced in collaboration. Rambo: The Video Game was a bizarre on-rails effort that launched during the last console generation, earning a mauling that’s at least unbefitting of this inoffensively mediocre Terminator outing. 

The game’s set in the midst of the apocalyptic “Future War” scenario which audiences caught fleeting glimpses of in the original films. A pair of optional tie-in comics do a good job of telling the prequel story that leads up to players adopting the role of a resistance fighter in-game, but unfortunately, the war against Skynet begins to fall apart as Resistance proper takes the reigns.

Anybody familiar with the source material already knows that humanity prevails, so any drama would be derived from whether on not the largely original Terminator: Resistance cast makes it out alive. Most central characters are civilians that protagonist Jacob Rivers saves at the beginning of the game, who you might then opt to get to know a bit better by engaging them in binary dialogues. Scripting and the accompanying voiceovers are equally unenthusiastic, however, making it hard to care.

Many of these lite companions dole out side quests that are a highlight if only for breaking up all the drab shooting. Plenty of levels are wide open and engaging to explore, despite the sluggish movement controls and floaty jumping mechanics that you’ll use to navigate. It’s possible to pick locks and hack your way into hidden areas housing additional lore snippets, ammo, crafting components and valuables for trading. None of the latter elements are particularly vital, with enemies being so brain dead, but looting is nonetheless good fun for the pack rats among us.
Resistance is a first-person shooter in which shooting is a weak link.
Unfortunately, a lot of good will towards the level design evaporates when you begin to notice frequently recycled assets and even complete area retreads. In these instances you can switch vision modes in order to see through walls and very easily sneak past enemies, though in the process you’ll be sacrificing experience and the associated skill points required to upgrade abilities from three basic skill trees.

Visually, it’s about passable – outside of the distracting lip sync and facial animations that further detract from wooden conversations. Aurally the game fares even worse, with an odd bootleg of the iconic main theme being the best element for its inherent novelty value.

If you’re a Terminator fan that can embrace mediocrity with open arms - you’ve had plenty of practice, after all - spending a tenner when the price drops and around six hours of your time completing Resistance isn’t the worst idea. For everyone else, occasional flashes of a good game are likely to cause frustration as you wade through its variety of just passable game mechanics.

Pros

  • Some wide open levels make for engaging exploration
  • Choose to engage in firefights or stealth your way through
  • Optional side quests and character interactions

Cons

  • Reuses locations, at times axing the game’s strongest feature
  • Lacklustre gunplay
  • Neither sign nor sound of Arnie

5/10
0 Comments

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint | Review | Xbox One

15/10/2019

 
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint | Review | Xbox One - Pass the Controller

Breakpoint is the moment at which the tables are turned or the tides change in a conflict, forcing defenders to become attackers. For Ghost Recon, this could be the series’ last stand.

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​by James
 Michael
 Parry

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@James_Parry

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Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox One,
PS4, PC
Players: 1-4
While previous instalment, Wildlands, proved to be a serviceable open world shooter (I called it “solid” at the time), the sequel enters possibly an even more crowded and competitive gaming landscape, particularly given that it makes the decision to push into the looter genre, thanks to the introduction of weapon rarity, mere weeks after Borderlands 3 threw a gazillion technicoloured guns at us.

This Ghost Recon drops you, quite literally, onto the island of Auroa; an isolated would-be paradise, pitched in its marketing material as a self-sustaining society for its residents and their families, but of course things aren’t quite going to plan. Skell Technology has lost control and has weaponised its drone army to fight back against the Wolves, a renegade group led by former Ghost team leader Cole D. Walker (played by The Walking Dead and The Punisher star John Bernthal, who you might have run into in some late DLC missions in Wildlands), pushing the island into chaos.

Your character, who has a fairly limited amount of customisation options for a third-person title, led a team of their own, but unfortunately after a rough landing (and a point-blank execution from Walker), you’re left alone in unfamiliar terrain. Disappointingly, the game doesn’t let you scrappily fend for yourself for long, immediately leading you to a sheltered hideout which houses a lot of the quest-givers for the game, as well as tons of other things to interact with, from shops to the other players that are just running around.

​This is more of a live service-style, online world than we’ve seen before from the series, taking more than a few leaves out of The Division’s book, with mixed success. There’s other Tom Clancy DNA at play here, with the limited PvP mode Ghost War - itself a leftover from Wildlands with fewer modes, which sets two groups of four players against each other in a small map… that shrinks even further as time marches on. Obvious Battle Royale trappings aside, the mode really feels like a less effective iteration on the formula Rainbow Six Siege has worked so hard to perfect, slowly building up elements over the years since launch, and ultimately is far less compelling.
Adding in these elements has had another unfortunate consequence: an overabundance of systems. Whether it’s gun upgrades, customising clothing or crafting, every area of the game has its own system, some of which build on one another clumsily. It’s quite easy to get lost in the mission selection screen alone, which separates different types of mission by colour, as they show as little circles on the map, but you can pin several missions at once, making your mini-map a flurry of markers most of the time.

Individual weapons and gun upgrades are particularly at fault here, with the gunsmith view - heralded as a flashy innovation back in 2012’s Future Soldier - now an uninspiring slew of upgrades which make negligible difference to gameplay, and even locking higher tiered crafting a number of skill points deep into a specific shooting skill tree. The skills as a whole give you a class ability, either medic, assault, panther or sharpshooter, but it is understated and nothing like the sort of flamboyance you’d get in more deliberately class or character-based experiences.

Otherwise, the gunplay itself is one of the areas which feels sharp, and more immediate than its older sibling. AI enemies don’t pose much of a challenge however, even as they wander around the map fairly aimlessly in groups of three or four. Others will be clustered around a lone vehicle, waiting to be picked off by a well-placed sniper shot (or a not-so-well placed shot, as a round in the arm seems to do the trick).

It’s the drones and autonomous vehicles where the ante is well and truly upped, since they are ruthless in their pursuits and pack a heavier punch than mere mortals. The new prone camouflage can occasionally be used to evade these foes, but in most areas, aesthetically the effect is pretty pathetic, just a few blobs of dirt strewn across your characters arms as they lie motionless.
The rest of the visuals have their flashes of brilliance, with the sunrise breaking through the trees as the day/night cycle transforms the landscape, but otherwise it’s largely as expected for the current generation at this stage, and doesn’t leap forward in any particular area from Wildlands.

Ultimately, Ghost Recon is suffering an identity crisis. Last stand or not, the team doesn't seem exactly sure where they want the series to go, or what story they are trying to tell. A linear narrative might have been more effective in holding our attention on the journey of this character, and we get a few glimpses into what that narrative might have been through cutscenes (albeit with decidedly dated and distracting lip-sync), as it’s those images that stick in our minds more than trekking across endless kilometres of fairly samey terrain to reach another bad guy to fight or side mission to be distracted by.

Instead, the open world seems unfocused, and far from the concentrated, dense, and varied landscape we’d hoped for in a (slightly) smaller map compared to Wildlands. We find ourselves longing for that game’s open spaces so at least we can drive vehicles without bouncing them off rocks every few minutes. Guns are disposable and so upgrading them seems futile, even more so given rarity seems to make little difference to their effectiveness in combat. There’s a few nice elements on show here, but not enough to keep our attention from half a dozen other games which do all of them better, not only with more originality, but with more character of their own, and that’s what Ghost Recon sadly lacks.

Pros

  • Landscapes look the part, especially at sunset
  • Sneaking about with your drone is still rewarding
  • Gunplay is more than solid…

Cons
​
  • ...but the systems and their layers of complexity are overwhelming
  • The game is the lowest common denominator of Ubisoft open world games (and bits cribbed from elsewhere)
  • Microtransactions are baked into every nook and cranny

6/10
0 Comments

Gears 5 | Review | Xbox One

12/10/2019

 
Gears 5 | Review | Xbox One - Pass the Controller

Gears 5 continues the story thread that was started in Gears of War 4, dropping Kait into the role of main protagonist supported by Del and an upgraded Jack bot – the latter being playable for the first time in Gears' history – in both the co-op campaign (for up to three players locally or online) and returning Horde mode.

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 by Chris
​ Brand

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@SuperCrisco

Gears 5 | Review | Xbox One
Developer: The Coalition
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Players: 1-5

Boot Camp is your entry point, with series veteran Damon Baird taking you through the basics one step at a time. The short tutorial is a welcome refresher for veterans and a necessary jaunt for newcomers, explaining the game's cover and movement systems, shooting, melee abilities and active reloads (which reload the entire magazine with higher damage "active" rounds).

Once that's out of the way, the opening Act serves as an extended introduction and there's very little to differentiate it from GoW 4, visually or mechanically. However, as you push forward the game opens up, quite literally, allowing you to explore open world sections. The desolate world of Sera is at times strikingly beautiful and the skiff used for traversal, particularly in the snowy section you'll have seen in the trailer, handles like a dream, effortlessly gliding across the huge, sweeping vistas. 

Throughout the middle Acts, optional side missions allow you to acquire upgrades for Jack to further augment the abilities that are unlocked via progression. Whilst the upgrades themselves aren't mandatory, they can be handy in a pinch, offering up significant boosts to the very useful invisibility and flash abilities, for example. Bear in mind though, your upgrades won't be bestowed on Jack when he's controlled by a human player.

The short firefights to get them not only serve as a welcome, action-filled break from the quieter exploring of the aforementioned open sections, but also serve as a great opportunity to stock up on ammo, change your loadout or grab a heavy weapon to take back to the skiff.

​During our initial playthrough, we did happen to fall victim to an unfortunate bug that forced us to restart Act 2 (a hangover from the game’s rocky launch, perhaps) losing around an hour of progression, but we claimed it back in half of that time and the setback was less of an annoyance than Del's stubborn reluctance to revive us when playing solo, which resulted in many avoidable deaths throughout the campaign.

Gears 5 | Review | Xbox One - Pass the Controller
Jumping into Versus mode, the game’s multiplayer offering, for the first time can be daunting. Arcade is casual, class-based fun with loadouts unique to each character, which in no way prepares you for the competitive scene. At the other end of the scale, there's the Ranked playlist. Even with cross-play disabled, and those pesky mouse and keyboarders kept at bay, you'll occasionally run into God-like players who are capable of carrying their (and hopefully your) team single-handedly, especially in King of the Hill and Escalation. The non-ranked versus is more accessible and co-op against AI is a good way of learning map layouts and weapon spawns, while providing a safe environment in which to practice with the Gnasher, though the difficulty can be ramped up to suit all skill levels.

Horde and Escape, though very different, complement each other. The former, a mainstay of the franchise, tasks five players with surviving 50 waves of increasingly difficult enemies, whilst the latter offers a more bite-sized co-op experience. Your three-person team, having infiltrated a Swarm hive and planted a Venom bomb to destroy it from within, must escape before the deadly gas kills you, too. Beginning only with a sidearm and limited rounds, you'll want to be conservative with ammo until your party has tooled up.
In both modes, duplicate characters are forbidden, which can cause problems when matchmaking. Levelling up and completing matches will award Skill Cards to further raise your damage dealing and survivability. These Skill Cards will allow you to hold your own on higher difficulties but if someone has already bagsied your main, you're left with the choice of using an under-levelled character or re-queuing. Regardless, there's no barrier of entry and all of our encounters through matchmaking have been positive, though not always successful. 

Despite a few minor issues, the new Gears recipe is the best yet. The story has enough presence without overstaying its welcome, open world areas are a nice addition and there's adequate co-op activities outside of the campaign to complete the package for anyone averse to PvP.

Pros

  • A thoroughly satisfying campaign
  • New enemy types and weapons are designed so well that they feel familiar
  • That same Gears brand of fast-paced multiplayer

Cons

  • Horde and Escape are a little too restricted
  • The Snub pistol is more effective as a melee weapon than a firearm

9/10
0 Comments

Borderlands 3 review | Xbox One

27/9/2019

 
Borderlands 3 review at Pass the Controller - shooting

Looting and shooting may be all the rage, but with the latest iteration of Borderlands boasting billions of guns, the series that popularised the genre is back. Does it have anything new to say?
James Michael Parry

by James
Michael
Parry

@james_parry on Twitter

​@james_parry

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Developer: Gearbox Software
​Publisher: 2K Games
Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, PC
​Players:
1-4

At first glance, Pandora is much as we left it, with Marcus' familiar voiceover giving us the story context we need - though not confusing new players with talk of Handsome Jack's exploits, as he and Hyperion are long gone - and setting us on our journey across the wastelands.

There are four new vault hunters to choose from, as usual, and each of them have three skill trees, as usual, but now there's an action skill for each as well, which gives the characters more bespoke styles. As Zane the Operative, for example, you can use either a drone, a shield barrier or a doppelganger decoy. Each can be upgraded with passive buffs, such as one which makes your barrier a Halo-esque bubble shield.

In a chuckle-worthy move, which builds on the approach from the Pre-Sequel, your character now has a voice of their own and will quip back to NPCs and quest givers on occasion, as well as the odd holler in combat, which happens just enough without outstaying its welcome. The characterisation helps you to feel involved with the story but listening carefully it's clear the dialogue is designed in a way so that, whichever character responds, what they say is ultimately interchangeable.

You won't just be traversing the sandy wastes of Pandora this time around, with quests taking you to different planets as you go head-to-head with the Children of the Vault. The obnoxious streamer twins (like, subscribe and obey…) have united the bandit clans and are racing against you to harness the power hidden away in huge underground caverns adorned with the franchise's trademark inverted V symbol.
Borderlands 3 review at Pass the Controller - Zane
The plot sees you try to nab vault key parts before the Children of the Vault (or COV) do. Sister of the intergender twins, Tyreen Calypso, keeps gaining power as a siren - a class made famous by Lillith, Maya and newcomer Amara - and you'll be picking up plenty of familiar faces on your journey to help you take them down. In particular, Tales from the Borderlands' Rhys is back (though no longer voiced by the prolific Troy Baker) and brings the same endearing quirks with him, though unfortunately many of the other NPCs aren't as compelling without having had a game to set them up.
It's definitely the game to scratch that looter-shooter itch you might've been looking to satisfy.
Which leads us to an important fact – Handsome Jack is missed. He was always the pinnacle of the brand of amusement the series peddles in, none of the enemies, or the on-the-nose streamer pastiches the Calypsos themselves, have the same endearing quality. Even CL4PTR4P (or Claptrap) feels like the soul of the character has been lost from the change in voice actor, though not as noticeably as we'd feared from the trailers.
Borderlands 3 review at Pass the Controller - Lillith
A final, and unfortunate, point to make is the technical issues we came up against. Though there is local split-screen co-op, which is notable for its rarity alone these days, the performance suffers pretty consistently, especially jumping in and out of menus - which happens a lot with the loot management element. Elsewhere we ran into a bug which forced our Xbox to turn off at a certain point in a cutscene multiple times, insisting it was going to overheat, as well as other crashes and freezing.

While it's definitely more Borderlands, the game is a sequel which more than earns its right to exist, but generally plays it safe and falls back on its established rules and systems. It's definitely the game to scratch that looter-shooter itch you might've been looking to satisfy, especially for fans of the series, but, despite being a good entry point, ultimately falls short of its potential.

Pros

  • Explore strange (but familiar) new worlds
  • Gunplay is smoother and character playstyle is varied
  • Does the loot part well, with a constant sense of progression

Cons
​
  • Marred by technical issues, even on Xbox One X
  • Humour doesn't feel as fresh as in the past and Jack is sorely missed
  • Balance in co-op doesn't work as well as it should and so mismatched levels are noticeable

8/10
0 Comments

Control | Xbox One | Review

8/9/2019

 
Picture

Remedy Entertainment has a particular brand of storytelling in its games. Since Alan Wake, and even Max Payne (whose voice actor James McCaffrey returns here in a supporting role), they have done things a bit differently, holding live-action scenes in high regard and treating the experience more like a film rather than a game with some story bits thrown in.

Picture

 by James
 Michael
​ Parry

Picture

@James_Parry

Picture
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Publisher: 505 Games
Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
Players: 1
The balance feels more finely tuned in Control than in Remedy's last venture, Quantum Break, where gameplay was broken up by extended live-action sections. Instead, Control’s live-action parts are limited to videos playing on screens around the world, or found in multimedia or messages that are used to drip feed obscure morsels of lore to the player.

You are Jesse Faden, a fairly plain protagonist looking for her brother who disappeared 17 years ago in mysterious and supernatural circumstances. Her story begins at the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), which resides in an X-Files-themed mystery box called The Oldest House. The establishment collects seemingly mundane objects that are imbued with otherworldly powers, for example causing people standing near them to freeze in place.

After a ritual that saw Faden named the new director of the FBC by The Board, an extradimensional power, she’s transported back into the agency’s building to find it has been decimated by an otherworldly and hostile force known as the Hiss, which has corrupted all but a handful of the building’s employees. With The Oldest House on lockdown until the Hiss are eradicated, it’s up to Faden, along with the few survivors and a tenuous connection to former FBC director Trench (voiced by McCaffrey), to rid the building of its unwelcome guests and track down her brother.

​Gameplay features a blend of third-person shooter mechanics (you’re armed with a morphing multi-use gun known as the Service Weapon) and a range of telekinetic abilities that you’ll put to good use against an increasing number of zombie-like enemies. While combat only becomes bigger and more frantic, rather than more elaborate or encouraging you to use your powers in any special way, the simple joy of picking up a bit of floor with your mind and flinging it at enemies can't be overstated.
There are downsides to the more bombastic action sequences, however. The initial visual impression of former office workers floating lifelessly in the air, repeating the odd phrase to themselves, is extremely effective at building a creeping sense of dread, but the moment combat begins you're quickly pulled back into the fact this is a game, which lessens the impact of the otherwise excellent and foreboding atmosphere at times.

Exploration in Control is non-linear, with new areas of The Oldest House opening up to players in a Metroidvania-style fashion as they progress through the story and gain new abilities. Disappointingly, the structural changes repeatedly referred to in the lore dumps strewn throughout the building aren’t as extreme or as frequent as hinted, with the player only really getting to read about them rather than experience them.

Besides the usual gating off of sections using doors of ever increasing clearance levels, there are environmental puzzles which call on you to put your telekinetic abilities to the test to activate switches or navigate certain areas. One particular brain-teaser called The Astray Maze requires some out-of-the-box thinking, while frequent trips to the Oceanview Motel allow you to pass through the astral plane and access otherwise out-of-reach areas.
The game’s setting is deliberately bland, its harsh, brutalist architecture contrasted by the bizarre happenings taking place within its walls. As the story reveals itself, some of the initial opening intrigue dulls a little, and the vague perspective of the internal monologue from Jesse begins to grate as she's consistently nonplussed by the weirdness of the situation unfolding around her, while a few of the more interesting elements of the game seem to suffer from happening off-screen rather in front of the player.

From a technical perspective Control often struggles, even when running on Xbox One X, with substantial slowdown any time you hop in and out of menus - a frequent occurrence given the lore heavy nature of the game and the number of upgrades available to the player - and even more so when battles get hectic. While performance may suffer, Control is still a very visually impressive game, especially on PC thanks to newfangled ray tracing support.

In all, even with the performance issues, the journey is ultimately very satisfying, and a definite step up from Quantum Break, but if you weren't sold on Remedy's style beforehand then Control is unlikely to do much change your mind. Still, in these days of games as a service and battle royale bandwagoning, a strong, narrative-driven single-player experience is a rare thing, particularly if you’re a fan of Xbox, and it's one which is unlike anything else out there right now.

Pros

  • A concept that feels fresh, executed well
  • Well-paced Metroidvania with high production values
  • Throwing stuff about with your mind is so satisfying

Cons

  • Performance stutters frequently, even on Xbox One X
  • Story and gameplay feel tonally divided
  • Map isn't very useful

9/10
0 Comments

Subdivision Infinity DX | Nintendo Switch | Review

16/8/2019

 
Subdivision Infinity DX review on Pass the Controller - attack!

The trouble with space is that it's mostly empty. Venturing into the unknown in a tiny spaceship in Subdivision Infinity DX, you feel that sense of scale immediately, as enemy ships, gun turrets and collectables flicker as pixels in the distance - particularly in handheld mode.
James Michael Parry

by James Michael Parry

Twitter @james_parry

​@james_parry

Subdivision Infinity DX
Developer: MistFly Games and Blowfish Studios
Publisher: Crescent Moon Games
Platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch
Players: 1

While almost certainly what developers MistFly Games and Blowfish Studios were going for, it can make things a little difficult to pick out at first. What you do get though is a space adventure you can jump into with both feet from the word go.

With a pokey little starter ship and some tutorial missions awaiting you, you’re introduced to your avatar - a fairly standard-looking white guy - and have a little text-based chat with AV-2, your friendly(?) robot “guy in the chair” who sends you on your missions and often updates you in the field.

Before long you’ll have started to build your supply of coins, used to upgrade your ship, but sadly the better ships and upgrades are level locked. This makes even the early missions quite challenging without taking the time to replay stages in order to make the most of the upgrades you can purchase early on.

​
There are five star systems to explore, each with a few standard missions and a couple of exploration missions which have a very strong emphasis on the exploration, as you might expect, opting not to give you much in the way of direction of objectives. It’s here you’ll do the bulk of your grinding, uncovering hidden crates of supplies and taking down enemies.

​Battles can be a bit frantic, feeling like aerial dogfights as enemy ships whip past and force you to turn around in pursuit. Even your starting lasers lock on once you’re in range, simplifying the often tricky 360-degree targeting system, but enemies seem to have pinpoint accuracy from the word go, meaning you’ll find yourself running for cover (and eventual health regeneration) frequently. Manoeuvrability isn’t a problem, fortunately, with a boost for a bit of added speed and tight controls, once you’ve adjusted the sensitivity to your preference.

Subdivision Infinity DX review on Pass the Controller - exploring space
Subdivision Infinity DX as a whole doesn’t offer a huge amount of variety, and with limited progression and customisation on offer, at least early on, momentum can start to drain fairly quickly. If you absolutely need a space shooter to play on the go, though, Subdivinity offers a taste of the sort of experience you might expect from something like Everspace at a fraction of the cost. What you’ll miss out on is the depth, variety and graphical polish - though it’s a step up from something like Event Horizon or Vostok Inc. - and experience the odd bit of slowdown when things get busy. It all depends what you’re looking for in a space adventure.

Pros

  • Controls are fairly straightforward, once you get used to them
  • Simple presentation lets you jump right in
  • Flying around and dogfighting in outer space

Cons
​
  • Graphics and production values don’t really impress
  • Little variety in the formulaic gameplay
  • Often difficult to make things out playing in handheld mode

6/10​
0 Comments

Wolfenstein: Youngblood | Xbox One | Review

4/8/2019

 
Wolfenstein: Youngblood | Xbox One | Review - Pass the Controller

When Wolfenstein: The New Order came out in 2014, conventional wisdom said multiplayer was king. The hottest games were Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Destiny, yet Wolfenstein came back and blew the doors off with a gripping singleplayer narrative.

Picture

by James
Michael
Parry

Picture

@James_Parry

Picture
Developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda
Softworks
Platforms: Xbox One,
PlayStation 4, Switch, PC
Players: 1 - 2
Five years later, singleplayer is going strong and this latest installment has a lot more to compete against in order to win people's time and attention. In a misguided effort, it seems that Machine Games and Arkane took some notes from big daddy Bethesda and ushered Youngblood a step towards how the latest Fallout ended up in response.

While there is a story - the game focuses on two sisters tracking down war hero, previous protagonist and their dad, BJ Blaskowitz, following his disappearance - this isn't the cutscene-heavy, emotionally impactful experience fans of The New Colossus might be used to.

The girls quip merrily as they (repeatedly) explore fairly copy and paste areas of Neu-Paris. Products of a post-Hitler, alternative-history USA, their oddly arrested development makes them feel like bit parts from Dude, Where's My Car? rather than well-rounded characters you care about, but their schtick is enough to raise a smile.

You'll pick one of the siblings to control and level up, bagging yourself an underwhelming 2% base damage increase per level along with various other buffs unlocked with skill points, but most feel insignificant in combat.

​Shootouts in general though are an element which feel punchy and satisfying. Killing Nazis is an easy win for feel-good factor of course, but the way the gunplay is crafted reminds us why Machine Games, alongside Bethesda stablemates id Software, are arguably the standard-bearers for solid first-person shooting right now.

​Youngblood
has an extremely fun opening level, headed up with a well thought-out cutscene to introduce you to the cast, but it quickly runs out of steam as you begin to carry out Division 2/Destiny 2/Anthem-esque disposable missions, criss-crossing the same areas over and over.
Enemies respawn as well, bringing more of a Borderlands vibe, minus the loot, to exploration and quickly making you lament rather than fear running into varying sizes of Nazi. There's a sprinkle of variety in suicide dogs and endoskeletons straight out of The Terminator, but the Panzerhunde and other imposing enemies lack that flash of panic we felt the last time we came toe-to-toe with them.

There is something different about this particular release which doesn't often change where AAA titles are concerned, and that’s the price. Unlike the last Wolfenstein, you can pick up Youngblood for a mere £25, or £30 for the Deluxe Edition.

With the latter, you'll get a Buddy Pass which lets you invite a friend - as many as you want, but only one at a time. Your friend's progress is saved and will carry over to the main game if they decide to pick it up, at which point they’ll also be credited with achievements, though we struggled to get it to work smoothly during our playtime.
Arguably the main draw of Youngblood is as a Wolfenstein game with co-op, and on that front (when working without issue) it largely delivers. There's a few key things missing, like easy-to-use level maps, waypoints or pings beyond one enemy at a time, and a more significant reason to take on foes cooperatively.

Otherwise, there seems to be less here even than a lower price point would lead you to expect. The story and weight of earlier games is mostly absent, the level design feels increasingly generic the more side missions you complete, and even new features, like the RPG-lite elements, leave us wanting more.

Perhaps there are some elements, like the Buddy Pass itself, which will go on to be greater than the showing they had here, but for now there's not much more to say than Youngblood is quite good; we just wanted more.

Pros


  • Features all the sharp, weighty gunplay you’d expect
  • Killing Nazis, via some nice executions and takedowns to boot
  • Buddy Pass is a nice inclusion

Cons

  • Repetitive levels filled with missions lacking in imagination
  • Story feels watered down and content stretched
  • Even at a reduced price, it feels spare on the whole

7/10
0 Comments
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