Video Game Review: Fallout 4

War, war never... yeah, you know it, no point in repeating the phrase.

Fallout 4 is the fourth instalment in the Fallout universe, fifth if you count New Vegas which is Obsidian's and there was also Fallout Tactics. Sod it, there's a bloody lot of this intellectual property going about.

Fallout 4 is a game which introduces you to the world of Fallout, an alternate reality in which technological advances happened during the late millennium which led to technological advances such as cars with fission batteries, crazy laser guns, sci-fi appliances pioneered by nuclear technology for near unlimited power. However, this led to an all out war in 2077 with America getting nuked following the Americans nuking Hiroshima.

So it's an amalgamation of 1940's-1950's American mid-west with picket fences, sweater vests, do-wop, boxcars (albeit boxcars with tiny atomic reactors inside), ragtime music, hair bouffants and a crazy sci-fi future.

So the game begins with you in your suburban American home being told by a representative at Vault Tec informing you you've got a place registered inside a vault for you. Vaults are underground housing-estates people go in for in the event of total nuclear annihilation. Immediately after that you're informed via the TV that total nuclear annihilation is currently in progress.

With your wife clutching your infant son, you run for safety and barely scrape it, almost getting mown down by the detonation blast.

Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worst.

Fallout 4 utilises an engine called the Creation engine used to make The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a remapped version of the Gamebryo engine that birthed Fallout 3 and Oblivion, predecessors to each franchise respectively.
You can notice the similarities. In facial animation, character gestures and the VATS targeting system, this game reminds you that it's akin to its elders, but still sets itself apart.

Everything asked or outright demanded from the fans has been appeased. The level cap has been entirely scrapped and the crafting system and housing system remodelled. You can mod weapons, armour and decorate "settlements", small bases you unlock as you progress through the game. Additionally, you can move and place items and decorations around your settlement within a small area by changing to a semi "developer mode", additionally letting you scrap any item or bit of hapless scenery nearby.

Let's go for comparisons with a final sentence of how it adds to the game.

In Fallout 3, player housing was rudimentary. You bought a house for say, 5000. Then you'd choose the option of "furnish a room" for 1000 with other smaller options as well. The weapon modification system was also cruder. If you had specific parts like "a car battery", "copper wiring" and "A vinyl pressing of Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits" you could make a Cattle Prod or Electric Knife.

In Fallout 4, if you have a broken typewriter, a hubcap and a lightbulb you do not just have a broken typewriter, a hubcap and a lightbulb. You could make a laser pistol using screws and metal from the broken typewriter and a filament from the lightbulb. You can make steel girder walls to add to your settlement on to add armour padding using steel from the hubcaps.

All items now have uses.

In Fallout 3, the level cap was 20, but could be expanded to 25 and 30 with multiple level packs. You received 15  character perks, one every two levels.

In Fallout 4, you can level up as much as you want. You also get a perk each level to keep progression at a flurry. All perks now have tiers, meaning you can get 7 perks of each group, leading to 70 perks. However, these are divided into ranks leading to 275 ranks.

You can level essentially forever.

That's all people wanted, really. The game plays much like Fallout with the addition of a character dialogue wheel, which doesn't really detract from the game or add to it (Although dialogue can sound a bit soft or mumbled by NPC's) and VATS (Basically bullet-time) no longer freezes time but slows it. This adds a little bit of extra challenge on, but isn't too much of a gigantic change.

It's more of the same Fallout, but with a fresher spin showcasing that Bethesda are listening to audience and adapting to market trends.

Would recommend.











Minor other points of interest for returning players, to people unfamiliar with the game I will sound insane:

Feral Ghouls are now bloody terrifying, and are now zombies that will sprint at you like crazed demons, rag dolling and flopping over anything in the way including their own feet.

You can play hilarious video games on your PipBoy by finding special holotapes.

Comic Books and collectible items have different effects. For example, you can pick up books that allow you to change your power armour to a new colour or ones that will unlock areas on your map for exploration within the game.

Stimpaks no longer restore health immediately but instead give a minor health boost and then restore health over time, same deal with food and drink.

The Mysterious Stranger perk is entirely overpowered.

Falling with Power Armor no longer hurts you. Power Armor acts like a tank, only you need fusion cores to stay in them for extended periods of time.

Video Game Review: Dying Light

Fuck, it's been a while hasn't it?
I'd like to say there's been a reason why I haven't been posting for about two months but there really isn't. I've just been slacking off.

So Dying Light is a open-world first person action-adventure game from the Polish studio Techland. It's not really an RPG and not really a shooter, but I spent a damn long time considering putting those words in the heading because shooting zombies and exploring both feature, but aren't really integral to the experience. Although they sort of are.

Wait, what the fuck am I playing here?

There's parkour and a lot of free-roaming elements that'd be familiar in Mirror's Edge, a crafting system of Far Cry 3, an experience and level up system similar to your normal RPG, weapons combat  that's reminiscent of Dead Island 2 and some sort of story as well but I'm damned if I know what it is.

You play as Kyle Crane, not to be confused with Nathan Drake.

Or the protagonist of Infamous or Gears of War or Spec Ops: The Line or Max Payne or Prototype or most games. Frankly he looks like a fusion of all male video game characters. 

You're dropped into the infected city of Harran, a Turkish city filled with people who speak perfect English with barely a local inflection in their voices. You're there to stop a corrupt politician for reasons that aren't explained to you very clearly because I have absolutely no clue. 

Also you start helping the locals, especially the sickish locals which kill people, lie to you and offer you things they can't provide. You do not get a choice in this, the titular hero of this sodding game just rolls his eyes and sighs emphatically as if to say "grr, you pesky people, oh alright fine."

Even after the third fucking betrayal mission. I am not even lying.

So a mysterious viral outbreak has contaminated the city and now everyone's a hyper-aggressive zombie and can we just stop? Right. okay. What?

Mysterious zombies in a mysterious city with the rest of the world mysteriously okay we're here doing something confusing to aid someone who isn't mentioned. 

Fucking PACMAN HAD MORE EXPOSITION.

The game plays like a dream sometimes, with optimal fluidity between the parkour segments, combat segments, scavenging segments and crafting segments. However, only sometimes. The environmental design is mildly clunky and too often a jump kick to knock a zombie into a spiked fence will go through him or around him or the zombie will get stuck in the fence and rag doll around for five minutes. Often the combat becomes repetitive, even after weapons upgrading. In addition, the weapons themselves degrade very faster with no option for weapon permanence, leading you to lose your favourite electric shovel or toxic cattle prod or flaming beer bottle. 

Which doesn't make sense. Why have a system of weapon degradation in a game where flaming beer bottles are normal weapons to be using against the unwashed zombie hordes? Why? 

Often you'll be left with broken weapons you have to break down to craft newer ones, a cyclical process which will leave you wondering why you bother.

Dying Light, or Mirror's Island Fallout Cry, is a perfect example of a game that shines in many respective fields, but oft will leave you yearning for the deeper glow of a pure game. Jack of many trades, master of none rings too true. 

Whilst I think this game is a stellar improvement over Dead Island or Dead Rising or the many swathes of zombie games out there, showing graphical enhancements such as dynamic weather and a nifty draw-distance, it still lacks a focus that makes so many other games beautiful.

Satoru Iwata - A Tribute.

I don't usually like making memorial blogs, but I felt compelled to due to the fact that the passing of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata hasn't made the news as much as someone criticising an Instagram picture of Kylie Jenner. That fact almost makes me physically ill.

I think it's really important that you know who Satoru Iwata is. It's incredibly vital. You don't need to have enjoyed some of his games like Mother 3 or Super Smash Bros or, heck, ANY Nintendo game.
You still need to know about him.

Iwata raised up Nintendo, the fourth person to run it and raise it, since its original creation as a playing card company in 1889. He was also the first president who was entirely unrelated to the founding Yamauchi family. That's sorta rare for Japan. They like passing on company's to their children to the point that they'll have multiple children until one of them is a boy or even adopt fully grown adults.

He championed both the Nintendo DS and the Wii. Both were absolutely groundbreaking, but, if you have a good memory, neither of them looked like they'd even make it out of the gate.

The DS looked clunky, with two screens, which confused a lot of people. It was the first touchscreen I ever used.
People were unsure.
Until they found the little slot underneath the DS for all your Gameboy Advance Games. Don't worry, you can still play all the games you used to. You don't have to blindly trust tech. In the meantime, we're going to make you Animal Crossing Wild World, A New Super Mario Brothers with incredibly addictive multiplayer, Zelda, Layton, Pokemon, all the titles you know and love and some new ones we think you'll like too!

And the DS is the second most popular console of all time.

And what's up with that Wii? Who would want one? It's so gimmicky!
Then people started playing Wii games with friends, throwing Wii parties and having a whale of a time.
The Wii console outsold BOTH PS3 and Xbox 360 because there was an ENTIRE UNTAPPED AUDIENCE of older people who might not want to be seated for hours on end and younger children who want to play with their friends and don't want to play anything gory.

Those consoles along are reasons you should not only remember, but respect Mr Iwata.
But even without those, there so much more.

Firstly, he was at an age where most CEO's are worrying about spreadsheets and charts and numbers and sales and demographics.
They'd announce games with crazy showgirls and music and whatever flavour of the month quote was around.

Here's Iwata announcing a new Donkey Kong game.

He just held those bananas for about ten seconds before swerving and continuing with the conference.

He didn't need to do anything. You saw those bananas, new Donkey Kong game. Then he just started showing gameplay and all the new features instead of showing the dreaded pre-rendered cutscene.

Here he is, at the age of 54, last YEAR, announcing Mii characters for Smash Bros for the WiiU.

The pictures don't really do it justice, but essentially he's having a physical fight with Reggie, CEO of Nintendo America.

Again, 54 years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdDYoCU2kv0

He wasn't a suit. I mean, sure, he had a background as a businessman and knew his tech. He was someone who loved to play video games with his two best friends.

I guess if I had to summarise, I'd say that history will remember Iwata as:

When really, he was much more:

Video Game News: Steam Sells Skyrim Mods.

And it's a pretty awful thing.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365237576574

Why?
Mods are traditionally free from Skyrim Nexus or hundred of modding sites where they are made and downloaded without cost.
But now they're being monetised, it is widely assumed that many of the most popular game models will abandon the free sites in order to make a profit on Steam Workshop.

That isn't a problem.
What is the problem is that the person who made the content doesn't necessarily have to do that.

There is absolutely nothing to stop me from downloading a bunch of game mods and reselling them on Steam Workshop. I could easily make quite a fair amount of money from literally stealing content from hobbyists and enthusiasts.

There is no site moderations, no support, absolutely nothing to stop me from downloading a bunch of content, not even repurposing it, and then resell it to lots of less-than-intelligent consumers who don't quite understand that mods are free and always have been (Essentially, children with their parents wallets.)

I could get banned from Steam, but the content creator has no proof I stole their content they spent weekends of downtime from work painstakingly building. And anyone can snatch it up and make a quick buck.
And Steam are not going to check the Nexus to see if the mod is officially yours. The site contains great mods made by veteran developers, weird/cheap/broken mods made by teenagers and people who just enjoy Skyrim and... adult ones made by people with too much time on their hands.

The author makes a 25% cut from the mod, 75% goes to Bethesda who then take a 5% morsel and throw it at Valve. 5% may not seem like much, but if you don't think they'll make money, you're underestimating just how many people are still playing Skyrim.

Which is sort of weird. It's a game from 2011, four years ago, that people are still making lots of money off today despite the fact they were just enjoying the game and creating new parts of it yesterday without making a red cent.

It is, as PCGamer summed up thusly:  Bethesda and Valve are inviting the rebels into the boardroom—come in here, dear boy, have a cigar—and a lot of PC gamers are looking on in disgust.


I'm just a bit blown away by the oversight here. No curation? Half the mods barely work with each other and what if it crashes your game or corrupts it? You'll have to pay for the game and mods all over again!

Jeez.

Video Game Discussion: The Most Successful Games With Microtransactions.

One blog post a month. That's how it's worked, right? I never could really do bi-weekly. Sorry, I suppose.
If I were being paid, I'm sure I'd care. But YOU tell ME if you see any adverts on here.

I mean sure, I would have twenty-thousand pop ups and three adorable dinosaurs holding min-billboards about car insurance and pills to expand your johnson if I could but I have no way to enable them currently. On the subject of monetisation, the topic today is microtransactions in video games.

Here's the definition of microtransactions stolen straight from Wikipedia.

Microtransaction (also referred to as in-app billing or in-app purchasing) is a business model where users can purchase virtual goods via micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers.

Essentially, there are many games that are free-to-play or "freemium" games which have no entry cost at all, but enable the player to purchase bonuses within the game using actual money.

The most successful games, such as mobile game Clash of Clans, can easily generate close to a billion dollars in financial revenue from such transactions.
Funnily enough, it's more than enough to bankroll an entire game.
The people who pay in a freemium game amount to about 0.5% to 6% of the players dependent on the games quality and popularity.
Those players essentially fund the free ride that everyone else is getting.

So which console games make the most money from microtransactions? The ones where you have to pay for the main character to wear a yellow suit instead of a blue suit? The ones like Call of Duty where you pay for weapon packs and certain player emblems?

Trick questions, actually.

Mobile games and handheld games make the most from micro transactions.

And here's how you go about making the most successful game.

1.) Make sure your game relies entirely on luck

Notable examples.) Crossy Road and Pokemon Shuffle.

Pokemon Shuffle is, in essence, Candy Crush with Pokemon. You can have five goes then another one every thirty minutes or buy more. You can also buy coins to buy upgrades or jewels which allow you to take extra turns if you're stuck on a level. Using money to buy money to buy money.  

Also, Candy Crush takes no skill and entirely hinges on luck.

As does Crossy Road, where you make an animal cross a road whilst cars go backwards and forwards.

If your game relies on luck the player will play it indefinitely. They'll get frustrated, but never frustrated enough to stop.

                         2.) Make sure your player can't stop. (Even if the game is turned off.)

                     Notable examples.) Crossy Road, Pokemon Shuffle and AdVenture Capitalist.

What do all the games above have in common? You can turn them off and they will continue to function when offline. Pokemon Shuffle will, after thirty minutes, renew your number of goes and add one. Crossy Road gives you a gift every six hours that is almost always coins that unlock you new characters for the game and idle game AdVenture Capitalist continues to generate in-game money even when the game is off using general calculations of how much you were earning per-second when you clicked off it.

                                         3.) Make sure that the non-payer players pay too.

                                                      Notable examples.) Crossy Road.

In Crossy Road, you unlock new characters through a coin system. You can buy coins, collect coins in the actual game or..... watch adverts.
For each advert watched, you get 20 coins. Watch five and that's a free character.
They're all adverts for other mobile games, usually. Know your audience and all that.

Crossy Road made $7 million from players who bought more coins using in-game currency.
$3 million came from other players who were content to watch 14 seconds of something they didn't want or need. Turns out those 14 seconds added up.

The mother of all mobile games is still Candy Crush Saga, which raked in $3.6 million a day to the tune of a cool $1.33 billion dollars. (That's billion with a "b')

Still, it just goes to show.

What does it show?

I don't know.

Make a game on Facebook and put a button involving paying on there and you're rich, I guess.

Bye.

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Most widely known for the creepypasta story associated with it, Majora's Mask was initially released on the N64 and received high praise from gaming critics.

You play as Link (No, not Zelda, that's the princess.) who falls prey to a prankster and japester by the name of Skull Kid who steals his Ocarina of Time. You then fall down a hole and confront him. It doesn't end well and he turns you into a Deku Scrub. (Sad plant that shoots bubbles.)

In a quest to find a cure, you find yourself in the land of Termina, a land parallel to Hyrule.

There's just one problem. You have 72 hours of game time to do anything you wish, which equates to 54 real minutes or the meth-face moon will smash into Clock Town and you'll be obliterated by the apocalypse.

Obviously, not great. So to avoid that you have to retrieve your Ocarina and learn a special song that stops the moon from falling. 

Well, I say stop. What I mean is, reset the the clock.

So essentially when you're on the final day, you have to reset the clock. You will lose all items and rupees and stray fairies, but keep all key items and masks.

And you do that forever, playing the game in 55 minute segments, trying to get all you need before the clock chimes the final night of the final day.

In Dead Rising 2, you may remember that I hate it when the game times you, but here it only serves to add pace to the gameplay and make sure you're hurrying along.

THEN WHY ARE THERE THOUSANDS OF MINI-GAMES AND SIDE-QUESTS TO TRY AND STOP YOU FROM HURRYING, NINTENDO?

Jeez, it wouldn't be so bad if the game was easy to understand, but some of the tasks are literally impossible to think up. I was lost in a forest for half an hour before realising that I have to go in at a certain time, in order to talk to a witch who flies out on the second day to look for her sister, talk to her sister first and then talk to her for the item to give to her.

It really isn't a game that's accessible to younger kids. For gods sakes, this is not a children's game. And not just because half the models will give them nightmares but because it's just so needlessly complex.

In order to fix the complexity, there is a large stone you can crawl into near the starting point of the game which will tell you what you need to do in order to progress.

You'll be visiting that stone a lot.

And it will judge you and call you a loser as you climb in.

But it's pretty, the textures are awful but colourful and diverse, so the graphics generally shine.

It's only given a disservice by it's complexity. Each character has a timeline so you know where they'll be for each minute of the 54 minutes.

With many masks to collect, many side paths to follow and many things to collect, Majora's Mask is an overall fun game with interesting fights, different mechanics based on what mask Link is wearing and a fun soundtrack.

It also has a fairy who's a middle aged Asian man who sells you maps. So there's that.

Video Game Review: Child of Light.

Child of Light is a platform RPG developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the wonderful baguette people who made our beloved Far Cry's and churn out twelve Assassin's Creed games per year.
In Child of Light, you play as Aurora, a young princess who is taken away from her home and, in her return home, must bring back the stars, the moon and the sun. These are all held captive by the mysterious Queen of Night.

It's an absolute charmer of a game, using the UbiFramework engine, which gives the platformer a very 3D atmosphere. This is the same engine, I might add, that was used for Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, games that were critically acclaimed but publicly ignored.

A thing I particularly liked about this game is that all the lines in the game, every single one, were rhyming couplets.
Because of this, the story takes on a rather relaxing and yet dark fairy tale atmosphere.
If you have ever heard a hack-job on a story, that's because there was far too much exposition and unnecessary telling instead of showing. If all your lines rhyme, you literally have a limited framework to frame the storyline and it leaves it open for artistic interpretation, drawing you in further.

As for Gameplay, this game is interesting.

At the start of the game, you meet a raindrop called Igniculus. You can then control him using the right stick, usually to open otherwise inaccessible chests, solve difficult puzzles, collect flowers to restore HP and MP by hovering Iggy over them and blind enemies to either get past them or sneak up on them for a surprise attack.

However, during combat Iggy has another role. Combat in Child of Light, is turn-based with a "timeline" system at the bottom of the screen to keep track of turns. (Similar to Final Fantasy, walking into an enemy changes the screen to the classic combat screen.)
In each combat screen, there are two bushels which replenish Iggy's light. By holding down L2, you can slow down enemies, making them attack less slower.
During combat, it is important to be aware of the position of enemy turns and slow them down accordingly. If an enemy attacks you whilst you have an attack lined up, you are immediately interrupted.



So Iggy is important.

You can also level up and set skills, collect items that permanently increase stats and craft Oculi (Basically, you get multiple gems and put them together to get weapon/armour/ring enhancements in certain orders with certain colours offering certain bonuses.) You can also fast-travel easily using the map.
Later in the game, you meet other characters, including a Jester.
New party members have their own differing skill levels and some are suited for combat where as others are suited for magic or healing.

The art is simply adorable, the combat is simple and addictive and the added exploration facets are perfect. An elegant game with incredibly neat menus, polished visuals and defining characters whilst keeping everything minimal and simplistic, an idea that most RPG's fail to grasp.

Child of Light is £16.00 from most retail stores, but my copy was given to me for reviewing by a third party.

(Thanks Murray.)

Video Game Review: Max Payne 3

Max Payne 3 is a game hailing from a long time series of Max Payne games. The name itself is enough to make people raise eyebrows, but the original title was made in 2001, a time in which snapshots made up the faces of characters and their heads were always hilariously blocky.
Here's the protagonist of Max Payne. Mr Facey-Constipatey.

Ever played a PS1 games? Very straightforward, linear shooter with basic puzzle elements. Max Payne 2, released on PS2 and Xbox in 2003.

Fast forward to 2012, and we get Max Payne 3.

It is important to remember that this is incredibly close to the revival of Duke Nukem  in Duke Nukem Forever.

What sets Max Payne 3 apart is the fact that it has taken a concept, moved it from PS1 to PS2 to PS3 and added story, concepts, more intricate plot details, more harrowing imagery of Max's painkiller and alcohol abuse which, in the PS1 era, would simple have been plot distraction to explain away why he was shooting everyone and/or running as if he had Parkinson's disease.

The story of Max Payne 3 is that Max is a disgraced cop who nurses his sorrows at a bar after his wife and daughter were murdered. 

He gets a job offer from a man named Passos which he then turns out. After a drunken argument, Max accidentally kills the douchey son of a local mob boss who then puts a bounty on Max's head. After killing most of the mob boss's men with Passos, he finally takes up his job offer.

After that, Max and Passos work for the Branco family, working as the families security before he's double crossed multiple times in events that would involve far too many spoilers.

If you're unfamiliar with Max Payne, then you may not recall "bullet time", 

That thing from The Matrix? Max Payne did it first. 2001. Before the film came out.

In Max Payne 3, bullet time can be activated at any point and uses "adrenaline" which drains as bullet time continues and ticks up as you kill enemies. During bullet time everything slows down but you can also leap back, forward, left and right whilst firing for evasion purposes. Obviously, it is most fun to do this over ledges, but the cover system also allows you to bullet time down the side of long desks and use the environment to throw yourself around with great, deadly, success. However, if you are me, it is also possible to bullet time yourself in a non-heroic fashion into walls and furniture and then get shot to bits when time speeds back up.

I still like having free reign of jumping though. It makes the worthwhile bullet time activations feel all the more cooler.

You know, unlike some games which insist that you do things in a certain way to progress.

There are also events every level where you'll be near a conveniently breakable window, on a moving fork lift, on a high ledge underneath something soft and in various places whereby the game says "You don't have to, but the opportunities are all there."

Also, the last enemy alive, outside of bullet time or not, is killed in super slow motion.

You then see the enemy fall down, getting a lovely glimpse of where you've punctured Mr Unfortunate.

This gameplay element is so popular it has been seen in Skyrim, Sniper Elite 1,2 and 3 and multiple other popular games in its own unique combat system.

Max Payne 3 is £3.50 to £4 in CEX and in GAME, £3.99.

Until next time, namaste.