End of the Line.

Unfortunately, I've found myself playing video games more and more without reviewing them and also trying to cut down on them.

This means I will no longer be posting rants and blogs. Instead, I do have a website: www.charliechitty.com which you can go to if you want to read my writing and also hire me to read at events or act at events.

I just feel that this would be a more productive use of my time than complaining about video games now that I'm twenty three.

Thanks guys, it's been one hell of a ride.

Video Game Review: Just Cause 3.

Just Cause 3 is the third expansion in the Just Cause series, aptly named due to the entire ethos of the game that allows you to blow shit up, attach people to telegraph poles and demolish bridges that happy vacationing families are trying to cross and then ride around on tractors for twenty minutes, running over farmers.



Why? Just 'cause.

You play as Rico, a Spanish revolutionist trying to overthrow a corrupt dictator called Di Ravello who owns Medici, a hypothetical country that has a strong Sicilian/Greek/Albanian spirit.

It plays very similar to the second game, in that you are allowed free roam of the entire island but with two noticeable differences.

1. You have a wing suit.
2. You have multiple grapples.

In the second game, Rico navigated the world by throwing himself off of cliffs, deploying a chute and rappelling onto terrain to pull himself across the landscape.
You can now deploy the wing suit if you're near a sheer drop which gives you added speed the closer you are to the ground and is quite a rush to use.

The multiple grapples were originally a mod for the second game that the developers s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶ borrowed for the third instalment.

It allows you to attach things together and use the tether to smash them together which leads to hilarity.

Tether a screaming person to a gas station pump and slowly pull him into the volatile square of gas and explosive as they try to get up and run. Tether two people to each other through a chain link fence and pull them together. Attach a helicopter to your car and then drive off a cliff and jump out. Attach an explosive barrel to a Di Ravello dictator statue. Person to car, vroom vroom. Person to person, shoot person in leg, watch them hobble off dragging a hapless person behind and try to stop laughing.

Basically, it's Psychopath: The Game.

You progress by taking over settlements, made up of destructible buildings, gas pumps, gas cylinders, electricity generators that need the panels shot off, speakers that need all the megaphones knocked off, billboards that can be pulled down and police stations that need to be overrun. The more you destroy a place, the more of your allies turn up, the more the tables turn and the more likely you are to take over the settlement.

The only problem is: If you die, nothing gets reset and there's absolutely no drawback to dying whatsoever. 
Whilst this encourages the player to be near suicidal, it's unfortunately very poor game design to not reset the place, offer save points or otherwise a life system.
Otherwise you're just throwing yourself at the problem again and again until you inevitably win. And there's no fun in inevitability.

You can upgrade Rico's capacities by getting mods that are given to you by completing side challenges. Whilst this offers some nice RPG elements, it unfortunately isn't expanded upon.

For example, as you blow things up you get Chaos Points which is a number that just goes up and up and up and up to millions and billions and trillions and does nothing.
With a bit of work, the developers could have made certain fortresses and towns impenetrable unless you had a certain number of Chaos Points which you could spend upgrading your weapons, grapple strength, wing suit span, etc.

It's a little bit of a shame to see such an opportunity squandered.

The main thrust of the story involves the army and a weaponised mineral called Bavarium which can by synthesised into unlimited energy OR weapons grade shields for tanks and planes that made them essentially invincible.

"The person who controls the Bavarium, controls Medici."

However it's hard to get involved in missions when running around just fucking about is so much more fun.
For example, holding down "O" (No clue what button for Xbox Ones or PC's) the player rag dolls. If you hit something, the player will continue flopping around until you stop holding circle, even laying completely motionless when they hit the ground.
This sounds like a small thing, but when you fail at wing suiting, crash into a building, hit another building, fall off of that one, smash through a bus stop and roll out onto the road and lie there, looking dead whilst pedestrians remark "You should be more careful." and cars either honk their horns at your still body or drive around your cadaver, it's sort of morbidly funny.

Another point I like about this game is the lack of immediate loading screens. For example, as soon as you put the disc in, the player is placed on "Boom Island." which is a tiny map without citizens, cars, police or much else but racing dirt tracks, explosives and sheer drops on the furthest corner of the game, unable to get to the main game area.

Since Medici is so big (No, seriously, it's absolutely huge. It would take over half an hour to fly to the other side of the map in the fastest jet you can find.) it takes a while to download. In the meantime, being sent to a pre-loaded demo area to just mess about in is a god send.

The menu also seamlessly transitions into the main game, which is also sort of neat.

Unfortunately, the game does have a number of bugs and my save game file was unfortunately corrupted after a good ten cumulative hours of gameplay which is irksome.

Some bits are also a bit strange. If you wing suit directly into the side of some constructs like military towers, you'll be absolutely fine but the entire stone fifty meter mini-fortress will crumble because of the impact made with your head. You will also find it a bit repetitive in parts if you're not a simple creature like me.

If you're looking for a game to play after work, for five minutes, to relax and unwind, I'd recommend this game, currently down to £29.99 on the Playstation Store as their Deal of the Week.

But at the same time, if you wait about two more weeks it'll be down to fifteen. And I'd understand waiting two weeks too.

Like, 8/10. 6.9/10 considering the unfortunate corrupt save file.

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. 

Video Game News: 25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male.

You know what? I'm bored, I'm having a quiet night, I may or may not have been drinking.

Do you know what that means? Let's go for the low-hanging fruit again and let's keep taking a crack at it until the back pain causes me to collapse.

Feminism. Feminism in video games.

So Anita Sarkeesian, my complete BFF, has made yet another video called:

"25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male"

So she wants all male gamers to check their privilege whilst playing the video games.

In this episode/review/whatever the hell it is that I do, I'm going to refute all 25 dumbass points like a shaolin monk displacing backhands thrown by a toddler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47-FMmMLy0

Here's the link, so feel free to play along at home by laughing.

1. "I can choose to remain completely oblivious, or indifferent, to the harassment that many women face in gaming spaces."

Well you're kind of making it hard, actually. You should probably stop. Like, I love how this one doesn't refer to "players" or "developers" just "women in gaming spaces" as if there is an actual place, somewhere in the world, and women who are either playing video games, making video games or being near video games are being attacked by men. Stay away from those gaming spaces! 

Also, what harassment? 

2. "I am never told that video games and the surrounding culture is intended for me because I am male."

Hey there, lil Johnny, just remember that whilst you play that them there interactive games there, you remember those corporate boards who went through a list of demographics and made games that catered to males solely because a large proportion of males were playing those games and would thus appeal to them!"

"Gee whiz, pa! I sure will."

Fucking retard.

Like, I mean really? Are we honestly doing this? Girls don't play videos games. At least not in the sense you're referring. They don't. Hands up for who plays video games. Everyone, good. Now put your hand down if it's Angry Birds. Now put your hand down if it's an iOS game. Now put your hand down if it's not on a home console. Now put your hand down if you don't sink lots of hours into those games.

Mostly men and a cluster of women.

Good, grand. See how many people I made put their hands down proving the fact that video games are less insular than ever? Lots! And the main community hub of console gamers playing their triple A titles (who aren't even a main gaming hub) is mostly men. 

They are and I'm sorry. No wait, I'm not sorry, fuck you.

And the women don't particularly care anyway, nor are they constantly victimised. 

They just want to play Call of Duty until they are completely sleep deprived because it's fun and they're probably good at it too.

3: "I can publicly post my username, gamer tag or contact information online without having to fear being stalked or sexually harassed because of my gender."

Why the fuck would you put your contact information online? I don't care what goolies you have where, it's just dumb as a bag of rocks to do that, you madman.

And c'mon, really? Wanna know my original username for my first PS3 that I shared with my brother? Sniperwolf24.

Is that male or female? 

Exactly, you don't know.

If you want to make a gamer tag or username with your name and gender and then chat on the mic, then there are going to be some dirtbags who will give you a hard time. Strangely, people who are in the comfort of their own bedrooms, are socially ruined and have problems talking to normal males will react negatively to you putting your gender out there.

Just, why do you need to? I'm not a male online. I don't make my username Blokedude32 and talk on the mic about what a man I am and how I do manly things. Just.... why be anything online? Why not accept that the online world of gaming is supposed to be largely gender-neutral grounds? 

Am I wrong? Yes?

No, you're right, I'll round up every strange and socially-ostracised neck beard I can find and turn them into well-rounded gentlemen of distinctive character.

4. "I will never be asked to prove my gaming cred, simply because of my gender."

Nobody does that. Nobody who actually has any relevance in the world says that. 

But I get asked to prove my cred all the time. In Warcraft, I'm not allowed to raid with my guildies unless I'm Level 100 and my item level is i600. You're not alone, lassies.

5. "If I enthusiastically express my interest in video games, nobody will automatically assume I'm faking my interest just to get attention from other gamers."

Sometimes, women do.

This is because video games are now more socially acceptable, gaming cons sometimes hire floor models and lots of women can make money from doing so.

Have some links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAeW4GjuSw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT5bcpuWtYM

But nobody who is sensible will attack smart businesswomen or female gamers who genuinely are enthusiastic.

They will say "Ok. I like the video games too and we should play some now because I haven't played video games for thirty minutes and need to play one right now."

6. "I can look at practically any gaming site, show or magazine and see the voices of people of my own gender widely represented."

Went on all my favourite gaming websites, went on all my favourite forums.

Oh look, unisex usernames and default pictures. 

Let's assume they are all male anyway.

It's fair enough, I guess. Males buy video games, shareholders look at stats, game sites cater to males because they have the money.

I'm sorry society is its own reflection, you bunch of whining pansies.

7. "When I go to a gaming event or convention, I can be relatively certain that I won't be harassed, groped, propositioned or catcalled by total strangers."

You can, although it is incredibly sad that one or two male gamers let the side down by being jerks.

Just like you guys let your side down by being radical feminists.

This is too easy, I may have to stop or take a break.

8. "I will never be asked or expected to speak for all other gamers who share my gender."

That's great 'cuz I'm not going to. And neither is anyone going to speak for a large group or be asked to.

Because that's not even about sexism, that's just plain insanity.

I want to know if there are any female gamers who have been stopped in the middle of gaming, or at a convention, by a large rotund male with sweat patches who asks you to tell him why all women are all plotting on all ruining video games from a two-year old girl in Massachusetts to a fifty-year old Incan tribeswoman.

That person is not just a sweaty neck beard. They need serious psychiatric help.

9. "I can be sure that my gaming performance, both good and bad, won't be attributed to, or reflect on, my gender as a whole."

Basically, Anita is mad she can't quickscope.

I don't think anyone actually has said that my kd ratio on a shooter, DPS recount on an MMO or just about anything else, has anything to do with the junk currently located in or around my trunk.

Again, nobody worth listening to.

10. "My gaming ability will never be called into question based on unrelated, natural, biological functions."

"You can't kill the enemy because you're too busy having a vagina."

"I bet you wouldn't have failed that escort mission if you'd had a mastectomy."

Again, only the words of the crazed and the lunatics.

11. "I can be relatively sure my thoughts about video games won't be dismissed or attacked based solely on my tone of voice. Even if I speak in an obnoxious, aggressive, crude or flippant manner."

If I talk aggressively about video games, that is a mere bitter blossom from my passion towards it.

And people do talk shit about the way I talk shit all the time.

If I go on any message board right now and express my views, I will have someone who calls me a dickhead and that my views are wrong and then I call them something flavourful and we exchange slurs and ideas until the thread 404's.

Nothing to do with gender. You have a view? Defend it or you get no sympathy.

12. "I can openly say that my favourite games are casual, odd, non-violent, artistic or cute without fear that I am reinforcing a stereotype that men are not real gamers."

I love the imaginary female in this scenario, flustered over how her affinity with Spore is somehow stopping all women from playing video games forever and banning them from every form of media entertainment.

If you're a woman and you're a gamer, you don't wait around for some sort of letter of acceptance, some sort of accreditation. You're probably already playing video games, looking up bewilderedly from your controller like the rest of us and wondering who the hell these people are and why they are so offended and oppressed.

13. "When purchasing most major video games in a store, chances are I will not be asked, or assumed to be, buying it for a wife, daughter or girlfriend."

Picked up Little Big Planet 3, was immediately asked if it was for my girlfriend.

Chances were against me, next question.

14. A vast majority of game studios, past and present, have been led and populated primarily by people of my own gender and, as such, most of their products have been specifically designed to cater to my demographic.

Yeah, buy more games then.

Yeah, develop more games then.

Yeah, you're already doing that.

Not you, person who is making this list of 25 asinine "benefits", person who didn't ask petty questions and actually wanted to play video games in the first place, went in headfirst without a care at all and is probably in the same boat as me in hating these people who are can't even brush their teeth without getting offended/triggered/mentally raped.

15. "I can walk into any gaming store and see images of my gender widely represented as powerful heroes, dastardly villains and NPC's alike."

Kinda looks like a big library of stories made by people who cared very much about issues very dear to them. Maybe you should stop telling those people how to tell their stories as they clearly know much more than you. =')

16: "I most always have the option of playing a character of my gender, as most protagonists or heroes  are male by default."

Remember the time I took Portal, Mirror's Edge, Chainsaw Lollipop, Bayonetta, Metroid, Tomb Raider, Oni, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Catherine, Alice: Madness Returns, Left 4 Dead and 105 other games back to the store because I had to play as a woman to advance the plot?

You don't? Is that because that didn't fucking happen? You are right, friend.

17. "I do not have to carefully navigate my engagement with online communities in online gaming spaces in order to avoid or mitigate the possibility of being harassed because of my gender."

Stay away from those online gaming spaces on that dastardly world wide web on the video home console, kids!

Seriously, for most questions "Because of my gender" seems a little bit tacked on.

are you sure you're not just being really difficult?

And I have to navigate carefully too. I was on Warcraft and accidentally repaired my armour using the guild bank and had to explain to the guild leader that I misclicked.

It was fucking intense, but I didn't decide to become a minority out of spite.

18. "I probably never think about hiding my real life gender through my gamer name, my avatar choice or by muting voice chat from fear of harassment for my being male."

I do! I want to escape! On earth I may be Charlie, but online I can be Priscilla, Queen of the Araqniqids in Call of Skyrim in the League of Legends and I will wear beautiful petticoats and refuse to take this question seriously.

19. "When I enter a game, I can be relatively sure I won't be attacked or harassed if and when my real life gender is made public."

When you presumably plan for it to go public, remind everyone multiple times on voice chat, spam messages insisting that you're female and tell everyone to stop hitting on you when they start to complain about migraines from the incessant "I'm a girl gamer please respect me in specific ways that I like."

20. "If I am trash talked or verbally berated whilst playing online, it will not be because I am male. Nor will my gender be invoked as an insult."

Of course it will, they'll insult the size of my manhood like everyone online has always done ever since the first ethernet cable was hooked up. 

Any gender can be insulted. Deal with, yo.

21: "Whilst playing online with people I don't know, I won't be interrogated about the size and shape of my real-life body parts, nor will I be pressured to share intimate details of my sex life for the pleasure of other players."

"Show us or we don't believe you and think you've got a tiny tackle and can't please any women." - Any male gamer to any other male gamer.

22: "Complete strangers generally do not send me unsolicited images of their genitalia or demand to see me naked on the basis of being a male gamer."

I wish they would sometimes though. I think we all do.

23: "In multiplayer games, I can be pretty sure that conversations between me and other players will not focus on speculation about my attractiveness or sexual availability in real life."

I once joined a lobby in Call of Duty in which an Iranian tried to tell me about how his orange plantation would make him a billionaire and how he'd hire hitmen on every other person on the matchmaking list once he'd become a billionaire.

Expect anything.

24: "If I choose to point out sexism in gaming, my observations will not be seen as self-serving and will therefore be seen as more credible and worthy of respect than those of my female counterparts even if they are saying the exact same thing."

said the man in the video, who was given that script specifically to say, by a woman who gave the man the script because she personally believed that if she read the script out herself she'd be seen as self-serving.

Calling the kettle black, indeed.

We don't think you're self-serving anyway, Anita. You don't even play video games.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI

25: "Because it was created by a straight white man, this checklist would likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by any female gamer."

No.

That is my final argument and magnum opus.

No.

No, feminism in videogames in not a thing. Good day.

Browser Game Reviews: Idle Games.

I thought I'd do things a little differently today by mentioning three games that you can play right now, in your browser, without downloading anything.

I thought, why the hell not? I waste enough of my time playing them so surely the fact that I do not need to put a disc in a machine, wait an hour for downloaded content and hotfix patches like LittleBigPlanet 3 this afternoon and spend inordinate amounts of time staring at loading screens shouldn't stop me from writing about them on my blog.

In this special feature, I'm going to be covering Idle Games.

What are Idle Games? They're rather games that you don't play. Games you buy upgrades for and then wait as an incremental score ticks up and up and allows you to buy more upgrades to get the number higher and higher.

You have probably already heard of Cookie Clicker and given that a good go, so I will keep it off the list. The titan deserves no more credit until it gets a few more updates.

In any case, here they are.

#3: Progress Quest: www.progressquest.com

Progress Quest is, in essence, a text-based idle-game RPG. Once you're on the site, click play and you'll be taken to the character creation screen where you choose attributes and random names and all that gubbins. From then on, you're pretty much done. You then watch as Progress Quest plays the game for you as you kill random enemies and receive random loot of various rarities before heading back to town to negotiate the purchase of better equipment.

It comes complete with a Windows '95 background and won't progress if you alt tab or otherwise open another browser.

#2: Kittens Game: http://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/#

Called the "Dark Souls" of the Idle Game genre due to its extreme unending length and harshness, In Kittens Game you are a Kitten and you press a button to harvest Catnip. You can then either make Catnip Fields by planting the Catnip to make more Catnip or Refine the Catnip into Woods to make Huts.

Fields do well in Spring but poorly in Winter and your Kittens will die due to Catnip shortages if you do not plant enough.

You then do other things including learning science for cultivation and other things with Scholar kittens once you have room for them, or you could get more Wood with Woodcutting Kittens and so on, but you'll have less Kittens to haves Catnip so they'll all die in Winter if you haven't thought long and hard about your Catnip resources.

The official wiki is endless. 

http://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/wiki/index.php?page=Main+page

#1: Clicker Heroes.

www.clickerheroes.com

Dun-dun, duddah duh duh. Stuck in my head since early this year.

Maybe it's the cutesy graphics or the way its made but it's just so frackin' addictive.

This game is just the bomb. You click enemies and they die and you get coins. with the coins, you buy heroes. Heroes give you upgrades which lets you kill bigger things. Get a certain number of Heroes and you get Hero Souls, reset the game and you get +5% damage for each Hero Soul you have OR you can use them to get Godlike Powers from Ancients which give you permanent buffs throughout all subsequent playthroughs. Get over Level 100 and every five new levels you will receive a random buff to a Hero which changes their art style and makes them twice as powerful, a buff that also remains through new playthroughs and there's a bunch of achievements as well which gives you extra permanent bonuses.

It's amazing.

But the best bit? When you save and click off it, the game keeps killing enemies and gathering coins for when you next turn the game on due to your save being saved in a cached script on your computer.

The wiki has thousands of helpful tips:

http://clickerheroes.wikia.com/wiki/ClickerHeroes_Wiki

It also has an Official SubReddit and community if you're the type of person who frequents those lesser sorts of websites.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/

Enjoy gaming, folks. I'll be back with an instalment of the best free browser MMO's after the cut.