Game Pages
Check out the latest news, reviews, articles, guides and videos for all your favorite video-game releases on all the biggest platforms. Our game pages have been designed to make it easy for you to find anything video-game related in just a few clicks. The entire list is organized in alphabetical order; expanding each game will bring up some basic information as well as the links to a variety of the content we have on that specific title.
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Alien: Isolation, about to be released in the last months of 2014, is a first-person survival horror with elements of stealth. According to the trailers, this is the first time we are going to get a really good Alien game that truly reproduces the feel of the original Alien movie. The game is set fifteen years after the film with the player controlling officer Ellen Ripley. As the original protagonist’s daughter we visit Nostromo yet again, trying to discover the truth about the first meeting with Alien. The game is supposed to be a true survival horror. The player won’t be able to put up much of a fight. Alien, his continuous follower is invincible and equipped with realistic senses like sight, hearing and smell. The only way to oppose him will be not to do that, with the player constantly trying to run away from the predator.
The game is meant to get people emotional with its scary, dark corridors and cramped spaces of the space ship. Amanda will have to hack the ship’s systems, find supplies for herself and the ship’s crew, and craft all the items needed. She will be able to use the series’ flagship, move detector that will save her life more than once. The technology featured in the game is meant to look like imagined by people living in 1970. You will find yourself struck by the unique atmosphere rendered by a team of designers who used everything they could find from the original set of Alien to create a strikingly similar location. The Creative Assembly has produced a lot of great games, but it was never specifically known for stealth and survival type. With all the information we’ve been getting on the new Alien, however, it seems that they will be able to deliver a great new game for those who have waited decades to finally be able to feel that atmosphere again.
Anarchy Reigns is a crazy third person perspective action game meant to be played over the internet. Players control powerful, ripped guys and impossibly flexible chicks, ruthlessly fighting each other on special arenas and using mighty weapons. With a publisher like Platinum Games, who is known for spectacular games like Bayonetta or MadWorld, to which the described game is a follow-up, Anarchy Reigns simply had to happen. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic, futuristic world where rival fractions continuously struggle for dominance.
Single player story talks about the chase of a Maximilian Caxton, an ex-boss of the elite unit Strike One. We get to know the story thanks to two separate characters, both of whom get their own set of missions. We’ve got Jack Cayman, a mercenary known to some from MadWorld, and Max’s apprentice, Leo Victorion. Both have their own motives to find Max and each has a story to tell. In single player, the player has to fight piles of enemies on a big area. Killing monsters get us points necessary to unlock new missions and secret rewards. However, Anarchy Reigns is mostly about multiplayer. Up to sixteen players can play together in more than ten highly diversified modes like Cage (duels), Tag Team (team fighting), Battle Royal (chaotic, enormous battles played on one big area) and Death Ball, which looks like a… rugby match. The game is action-packed with a fast, demanding fighting system.
Every character has three types of attack and, additionally, a special one, for example Jack, one of the heroes of the single player campaign, has a chainsaw. To use it, the player has to save up enough energy collected through killing enemies. The great thing about the game is that this way of fighting is great both in single and in multi. It’s not a typical fighter, you can’t just keep mashing the buttons, you have to think about your movements, about blocking, dodging and hitting. Thanks to that, Anarchy Reigns is a satisfying game you will be able to enjoy in both modes. You always know that if you die, it is your fault, and not the games.
Anna is an independent psychological thriller you can download for Windows, OS X and Linux. It looks like a typical adventure game, equipped with fully three dimensional graphics. Set in Italian Alps, the game takes place mostly in and around an old, abandoned sawmill located near the village of Champoluc. As a man continuously plagued by nightmares about this place, the player has to discover the secret of the sawmill haunted by the title Anna, a bizarre ghost. The plot is very unclear with the atmosphere extremely dark, quirky and unique. It is also ambiguous. You are never sure whether the sawmill actually exists, whether the main character is mentally sane and stable and whether it all is actually happening. The story is really based on true, old legends that the developers heard from the real life village’s inhabitants.
Anna is a point’n’click type of adventure game in which we see everything from first person perspective. Thus, the game is mostly about exploration and solving various puzzles. We can interact with the items found around the sawmill, collecting them or using in order to advance. The puzzles are quite demanding, but never too much so. We can say that Dreampainters were able to find a perfect balance. The puzzles often have something to do with disturbing symbols and ritual, which helps make the atmosphere even more unsettling. We can visit four major locations, all of them meant to be scary and changing with the advancement of the story. The gameplay itself is quite short, but it is recompensed by the possibility of getting three different endings depending on our choices made thorough the game.
Anna received very mixed reception, with Metacritic average of 55/100 and criticized for unnecessary complexity. However, in 2013 and Extended Edition was published. It fixed many bugs and added many new features like locations, puzzles, music pieces and, most importantly, an all new character.
Though it has a three in the title, Assassin’s Creed III is actually the fifth installment in the Assassin’s Creed series. It was named number three because it introduces the third main character. After Desmond’s ancestors from different times, Altaïr ibn La-Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the time has come for Connor. The game is set in North America over the years from 1753 to 1783. Thus, what first comes to mind is the American revolution. In Assassin’s Creed III we can be witnesses of the siege of Boston, the great fire in New York or Paul Revere’s night ride. Though the player is thrown into an absolutely new age, the basic mechanisms of play stay the same. Yet again, we can freely explore vast urban areas, using Connor’s skill and flexibility to move from one place to another swiftly, effectively and spectacularly. However, there have been included some major changes. Eighteen century’s American cities were not nearly as full of high buildings as Rome or Venezia with their cathedrals.
That is why Connor spends more time with his feet on the ground, hiding in the elements of the environment like a real stealthy assassin. Assassin’s Creed III is more offensive than the previous installments, too. Connor can counter two attacks at once and he also gets a new useful weapon, a tomahawk. With many minor fixes implemented, fighting feels the same, but has a much better flow. Connor, son of an Indian woman and a British man, feels great in forests and, generally, in nature. In Assassin’s Creed III the player is not confined in the cities. For the first time in the series, natural environment is actually important and full of interaction possibilities. Our assassin climbs rock and trees, jumping from one branch to another and hunting animals in order to get fur and leather. Apart from forest, we get sea, too. In spectacular sea battles we can directly control a battleship, sinking or taking over enemy units. With all the new options, Assassin’s Creed III is a true sequel.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a yet another installment in the Assassin’s Creed series. A follow-up to Assassin’s Creed III, it should continue the story, but you might say it is a prequel. Its main character is a grandfather of Connor, Assassin’s Creed III’s hero. Edward Kenwey is a pirate. This fact actually defines the game and brings the biggest change in the series. The pirate learns about Observatory, a mystical place which lets you observe what every last person on earth is doing, and he decides to find it and use it for himself. This decision makes him fall right between the Assassins and the Templars in the conflict over the Observatory.
Assassin’s Creed IV takes place on Caribbean Islands during the best years of piracy. As in all the previous installments, we will be able to meet many historical persons like Edward Teach, Benjamin Hornigold or Charles Vane. The world featured in the game is divided into fifty unique locations, the major ones being the cities: Kingston, Hawana and Nassau, each of them remarkably different from the others in terms of atmosphere and architecture. We can also visit many beautiful, climatic places like tiny fishing villages, antic ruins and hidden lagoons. Edward Kenwey sails between the various islands using his own ship, which he can modify to make it faster or a better weapon in sea battles.
All the typical Assassin’s Creed activities have stayed mostly the same, but there are a few novelties, too. Edward can dive in order to look through old, sunk ships, trying to find treasure. In comparison to Assassin’s Creed III, sea battles have got greatly improved, especially the AI. Fights are pretty similar to what we’ve already seen. Edward can be equipped with two swords and up to four pistols at a time. Traditionally, the game includes typical multiplayer modes. The biggest novelty is GameLab which lets the players modify the available game modes in order to create new ones.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue is the final Assassin’s Creed game to be released for seventh-generation consoles and was released side-by-side to Assassin’s Creed Unity. Assassin’s Creed Rogue takes players to the Seven Years’ War, and follows Shay Patrick Cormac as he switches his allegiances from Assassin to Templar and controls the ship Morrigan in an attempt to undermine the Assassins’ plans.
Cormac, a new member of the Assassins, is working under Achilles Davenport when he is handed the ship Morrigan to track down a Precursor artifact that can lead the Assassins to a piece of Eden. Cormac is dispatched to Lisbon to retrieve the artifact, but following the events that transpire there, Cormac turns against his Assassin comrades and joins the Templars instead, in and attempt to wipe out the assassins and become the most feared Assassin hunter in history. The game lets players control a Templar for the first time in the series’ history, and depicts the Assassin-Templar conflict from the other side. Shay Cormac comes armed with his traditional Assassin skills, but also a variety of new skills and weapons, such as the poison gas, or the air rifle, which is useful for both short and long range combat. Eagle vision becomes critical as Cormac must use it to detect assassins hiding in wait to eliminate him, and dispatch them before they can carry out their plans. As is tradition in the Assassin’s Creed series, the player can engage in a variety of side-missions, including new ones such as Assassin Interception, in which Cormac must prevent assassinations of Templars by finding the Assassins and stopping them before they can commit the assassination.
Set in Victorian London, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the sixth mainline Assassin’s Creed and continues the eons-long saga of the war between the Assassins and the Templars as they wrestle for control over the Pieces of Eden: artifacts that can change shape the course of the world once and for all.
Players take on the role of Jacob and Evie Frye, twin siblings who have only just moved to London: a city completely under Templar control. Deciding to unite the the city’s criminal underworld against the Templars, Jacob and Evie are aided by some of the most famous personalities of the era, including Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell and Karl Marx.
Assassin’s Creed Unity takes the series to Paris in the late 18th century, during the French Revolution, and follows the adventures of Arno Dorian as he fights the powers of the Templars while the French Revolution rages around him.
Arno Dorian, born in Versailles, is the son of a nobleman whose father is killed when he is only a child. He is adopted by another nobleman, and upon coming of age, learns that his birth father was in fact an Assassin, while his adoptive father is a Templar. Uncovering the mysteries of the Assassins and Templars, Arno finds himself entangled in a grandiose power struggle between the two, with his love interest, Elise De LaSerre being on the opposite side of the fence. The game traces the French Revolution from its eve and follows such important moments in the Revolution as the storming of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror, extending all the way to the Thermidorian Reaction in 1794. The game also features ‘time anomalies’ embedded in the game world, which take the player on brief tours to other times of Paris’ history, such as the Belle Époque and World War II.
Batman: Arkham City is the second installment of successful Batman series by RockSteady Studios. As everyone can probably imagine, it is based upon Batman comic series, and is the sequel of Arkham Asylum, the first decent game featuring Batman. A great action-adventure game, it tells the story of prisoners from Arkham set free, enabled to roam through Arkham city’s slums on the condition that they will never try to escape. And they don’t. They organize themselves in gangs, each led by one of Batman’s biggest enemies… And that’s how it all begins. In the sequel, Batman meets even more cult characters from DC Comics’ series, including the Penguin, mister Freeze, Harley Quinn or Hugo Strange.
Actually, Batman is not the only controllable character. We can also use Cat Woman, who possesses many abilities inaccessible to Batman. She brings a lot of novelties into the game, fighting with a scary whip. She is equipped with many futuristic gadgets, too. Cat Woman also has her own set of challenges and achievements and can be used for a few additional missions from the story arc. Fighting, one of the most important parts of the game, is as good as in the previous part or even better. Depending on your personal choice, you can kick, punch, dodge and combine it all or try to stay hidden and eliminate the enemies quietly. However, fighting is not the only thing our characters do. Batman must also explore his environment and solve various puzzles in order to be able to move freely. The area is much bigger and more open than in Arkham Asylum.
There are also much more quests, both important for the plot and less so. All the gadgets from Arkham Asylum are available for use in Arkham City, some with new functions or adjustments. There are also many new devices to discover like a grenade that freezes parts of the environment or a machine sending electric impulses.
Batman: Arkham Knight is the fourth and final main installment in the Batman: Arkham series and the third to be headed by veteran developers Rocksteady Studios. Players once again take the role of Batman in a story set after the end of Batman: Arkham City.
Following the events of Arkham City, the citizens of Gotham rest easy: only to bring about an alliance of super villains. As Scarecrow terrorises the city of Gotham with his mysterious ally the Arkham Knight, a city-wide evacuation has taken place, and the entire rogue’s gallery of Gotham super villains has been mobilized to end Batman once and for all. Batman must now use his skills: both physical and mental to overcome this combined force, consisting of age-old foes Two-Face, The Penguin, The Riddler, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and the Scarecrow. Batman is, however, not alone: as he finds himself aided by his comrades Nightwing, Robin, Catwoman and Barbara Gordon.
Batman: Arkham Origins is the third installment in the spectacularly successful series created by Rocksteady Studios. Critically acclaimed, the series has become the studio’s major achievement. It is an action-adventure game seen from third person’s perspective. And, good news, Arkham Origins is the perfect game to begin your adventure with the series: it is a prequel to the previously published parts. The plot is inspired by comics such as Batman: Year One and Legends of the Dark Knight. We enter the world of Batman as a beginner superhero. The game takes place during Christmas Eve a few years before the events of Arkham Asylum. Black Mask, one of the most dangerous villains from Arkham, marks Batman as wanted and offers a reward for his death.
Thus, poor superhero has to face up to all the enemies wanting him dead, in the meanwhile trying to discover why he is hunted. The scriptwriters made everything they could to explain all the complicated relations between Batman and his enemies which we were able to witness in the previous installments. The game does not lack new character, too: we can meet villains like Deathstroke, Shivy and Firefly. Fighting generally looks like it did in Batman: Arkham City. It is worth noticing, though, that the younger and inexperienced Batman is not as skilled as his older self. There are noticeable imperfections in his fighting skills and he has much to learn. We can fiddle with new gadgets, though, like Remote Claw. It is an interesting device, a rope that lets Batman connect two enemies or items in order to bring them together.
Previously seen modes like Predator and Challenges are still present together with a new one, The Dark Knight. It mixes challenges directly into the main gameplay, letting the player experience even more fun at the same time. The game lets us explore an area that is much bigger than it used to be, too. With two districts of Gotham to explore, it seems impossible to get bored, and very possible to get lost.
Beyond: Two Souls is an adventure game that aspires to be more than that. According to its producers, it is an interactive drama, a true work of art. Quantic Dreams is known to have produced many games deep in meaning like Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain. With Beyond: Two Souls, they try yet again to create something dark and unsettling, something that will move the player. The game tells the story of Jodie Holmes, a girl who possesses the ability of contacting the other side. We can see fifteen years of her life as she struggles with being different from all the other people in her life. Her face and voice actually belong to Ellen Page, an American actress and an Oscar nominee. Jodie has a mystical bond with Aiden, a mysterious being who came to our world from the other side. He is a burden that makes Jodie ostracized, but he also hold the key to the answer we all want to know.
He might be able to tell us what happens after we die. Another major character is played by Willem Defoe: professor Nathan Dawkins serves as Jodie’s mentor, helping her understand her environment and the home world of Aiden. The game is very similar to above mentioned Heavy Rain, though here the main character cannot die due to plot limitations. Beyond: Two Souls, though, focuses greatly on the story and is very similar to an interactive movie. The moral choices that the player makes are extremely important and provide a reason for afterthoughts. Both Jodie and Aiden are controlled and in the case of the player having any problems, the game solves them itself so as not to distract a casual gamer from the story. The graphics are absolutely photo-realistic, with motion-capture used to provide real life animations. The sound is also great, both the voices of above mentioned actors and the musical parts meant to create a unique atmosphere.
BioShock Infinite is a yet another installment in the great shooter series from Irrational Games. The series have managed to become worldwide known thanks to original, maverick stories and well-developed gameplay. This game, however, is not a direct continuation to BioShock and BioShock 2. It is a spin-off previously known as Project Icarus. The story is set in the beginning of the twentieth century. As detective Booker DeWitt, Pinkerton Agency’s employer, the player has to establish himself as an independent detective after getting fired. He works on well-paid, but dangerous and complicated investigations. One of them makes DeWitt end up in Columbia, an unusual flying city.
The town is supposed to have been a peaceful place, but it has ended up as a true fortress. It was taken over by a unknown group that kidnaps people and is a threat to the whole world without ever getting caught or penalized. As detective DeWitt, we have to get a woman named Elizabeth free. It’s not going to be easy, because Columbia is ruled by two rivaling powers, and each of them has their own plans of using the girl. Thanks to the developers creativity, we can use various weapons and special powers. Like in the previous BioShock’s we can throw lightning at the enemies or use telekinesis. Elizabeth also has many helpful abilities: she’s a telekinesis master and can take advantage of the Tears, which are places where the reality has been torn.
Thanks to that she can summon helpful items from the other side. With the areas bigger and more open than in the previous installments we can use different weapons like a sniper rifle, and there is also much more room for exploration. Enemies are equipped with advanced AI and they can use elements of environment in order to hurt the player as badly as they can. They can flank and get stealthy, too, overall doing a lot for the fun of playing. Created with Unreal Engine 3 with many improvements, the game has a climatic graphics and lets us interact with the objects in the locations.
From veteran developers FromSoftware and visionary creator Hidetaka Miyazaki comes Bloodborne, a dark action role-playing game set in the decrepit gothic city of Yharnam. The player takes on the role of “The Hunter”, who must embark on a quest to retrieve “Paleblood” in a city ridden by a blood-borne disease. As the Hunter journeys deeper into his quest, they discover intriguing mysteries and find themselves fighting to rid the city of its plague.
Carrying the hallowed legacy of the Souls series of games, Bloodborne retains its predecessors’ notorious difficulty and game mechanics, while innovating in other ways. Armed with melee weapons and firearms, players must overcome hideously plagued enemies and fight frightening bosses as they journey through the streets and environments of Yharnam. Bosses, as is common with the Souls games, remain a central focus of the game and players are forced to adopt inventive strategies to counter their devastating attacks. Grunt enemies on the other hand, range from mobs of formerly human enemies to dark, twisted beasts that will spare no quarter. The game also features the return of the intricately interconnected level design of Dark Souls, requiring players to find connections and shortcuts to make their own traversal safer.
Once again, immerse yourself in the loot-ridden, excessively dangerous world of Pandora. In this sequel to 2009’s Borderlands, you’ll play as a rookie group of Vault Hunters pitted against the newest tyrant on the block, Handsome Jack.
The plot of Borderlands 2 begins five years after the events of the first game, where Roland, Lilith, Brick, and Mordecai defeated The Destroyer. Now, the leader of the Hyperior Corporation is determined to secure a powerful resource known as Eridium. He says he wants to bring peace, but we all know what that really means. It’s the job of the new Vault Hunters to stand in Handsome Jack’s way, squashing both his plans and his face.
Borderlands 2 utilizes a similar gameplay and story system as the original Borderlands. Create one of four unique character classes and travel across Pandora, completing both main story missions and a variety of unique side quests. The four new character classes include: Gunzerker, Assassin, Siren, and Commando. Each class comes equipped with an action special action ability. Maya the Siren, for example, has the ability to Phaselock enemies, temporarily suspending their movement. Additional customization allows you to pump points into skill trees that add specific effects to these action skills.
Borderlands 2 also comes equipped with an extensive series of DLC missions, bringing new characters and new story content. Enjoy these missions with the tried and true four original character classes, or play as Gaige the Mechromancer or Krieg the Psycho.
Borderlands 2 released for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in North America on September 18th, 2012 and for Japan on October 25, 2012. The OSX version released worldwide on November 20th, 2012. The PlayStation Vita version will be released in Spring 2014. For the latest news, reviews, guides and more, click the button below.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is the third game in the Borderlands series and serves as an interquel between the events of Borderlands and Borderlands 2. The game was originally only released for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, but was later included in the Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for the PS4 and Xbox One. The game is notably developed by 2K Australia, while previous games in the series were developed exclusively by Gearbox Software.
The game follows Handsome Jack, who would later become the villain in Borderlands 2. During the events of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, Handsome Jack is merely an employee of the Hyperion Corporation. When the company’s Helious space station is targeted by a military organization known as the Lost Legion, Handsome Jack commissions a group of four characters to regain control over Helios and defeat the Lost Legion.
Bound by Flame is an action RPG from French studio Spiders, developers of Of Orcs and Men, and Mars: War Logs. The game is set in a world ravaged by seven Ice Lords and their Dead-Army, and has players control Vulcan, a mercenary who finds himself possessed by a flame demon. The player has the choice of letting the demonic influence consume the player character and welcome the dark talents that come with it, or rejecting the influence and retaining the player character’s humanity. Vulcan is customizable and the player can choose to make the default male character a female if they wish. The game features music by Olivier Derivière, the award-winning composer behind Remember Me and Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry.
The game features three skill trees for players to explore: the Fighter, who wields heavy weapons and has the ability to interrupt enemies by pushing or kicking them; the Ranger, who uses dual daggers and can dodge to evade enemy attacks; and the Pyromancer, who uses flame spells to deal heavy damage when attacking enemies and enchant weapons found in the other two skill trees. Skill trees also provide access to various traps and abilities that allow players to deal with enemies in ways other than simply striking them with a weapon. The game features a crafting system that allows players to improve on their equipment, or to create new equipment entirely, such as armor or weapons. The player is also aided by a host of companions who can like, love or hate the player and fight alongside the player against the creatures of Vertiel. The real-time combat of the game demands swift reaction, and sharp tactics.
Brink is a first person shooter produced by Splash Damage, the authors of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It takes place in year 2045, in a world nearly destroyed by an enormous flood. The story is set in a floating futuristic metropolis, a collection of hundreds of small islands and islets called The Ark. The Ark used to be a peaceful place, safe and beautiful, built from genetically modified coral. Now, however, it is at brink (I think they did it on purpose!) of a civil war. It is caused by the fact that the island is an asylum not only for its creators and their children, but also tens of thousands of refugees. Those are looking for asylum, too.
The Ark seems to be a perfect shelter from the violence omnipresent everywhere else in the world. It was meant for five thousands inhabitants, though, and now there is ten times more of them. Lack of supplies, empty magazine and absolute lack of security make people do unspeakable things. The player can affect the fate of the whole human race by putting in his oar. How we build our character affects greatly the actual gameplay. You can combine uncountable options of changing your looks, which doesn’t matter all that much, but what does matter a lot are the skills and weapon modifications. How you choose them will make your character different from all others.
Experience points will let you develop the actual character and a special challenge mode lets modify and unlock new weapons. In Brink you never fight alone. There always is someone to accompany you, be it AI-controlled bots or real people’s avatars. The game is constructed so as to make the differences invisible. At any given moment someone may enter our own game and fill in for a computer steered ally or enemy. The battles are long and complicated and require a lot of planning. There are many missions to complete during the fights, some of them obligatory, needed to push the plot forward, and some simply optional.
Call of Duty: Black Ops launched to wide critical acclaim in 2010 and quickly became one of the best selling first-person shooters of our generation. Developed by Treyarch, Call of Duty: Black Ops is the seventh addition to the award-winning franchise and the first set during the infamous era of the Cold War. The fifth Call of Duty title to embrace the technology of World War II was quick to impress with over 5.6 million copies sold in the first 24 hours. Less than two months after release Activision announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops had earned over $1 billion in global sales, totaling over 25 million copies.
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There’s no need to introduce Call of Duty to anybody. The shooter series is known to virtually everyone, and so is probably Black Ops, a sub-series to CoD. Call of Duty: Black Ops II is the ninth installment in the most popular series of shooters. It was created by Treyarch, a highly experienced studio responsible for Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: World at War and the original Black Ops. In Black Ops II, we will have to fight our way through year 2025.
In the futuristic world a new cold war ensues, this time with the United States and China being the main opposing forces. Their rivalry is based on the need to get rare ores needed in order to produce electric devices and alternative sources of energy. In this game, as it is a true continuation, the main character is a descendant of Alex Mason. We will witness many flashbacks from the eighties and meet returning characters like Frank Woods. David Mason’s, the above mentioned descendant’s, main enemy is Nicaraguan Raul Menendez. Why would you set your game in the future if not to lay your hand on all the new gadgets and novelties? In Call of Duty: Black Ops II we can use all the crazy new technologies that won’t be used during next decades, if they ever will. New types of rifles, grenades and various addition bring additional fun to the game. Except for walking through the battlefield, we’ll also be able to fly over it in choppers and fighters. Controlling them is much easier, more free and more fun than in the previous installments.
Strike Force Operations, a brand new game mode lets us play Call of Duty as if it was a real time strategy. Our losses and victories affect the international situation which will change the final outcome of the game. One of the most important parts of Call of Duty has always been multiplayer. Here, in Black Ops II, it hasn’t changed a lot, but many improvements and adjustments are clearly visible. There is a new system of character development, there are many new weapons and new, interesting maps like destroyed Los Angeles or an abandoned village. The multiplayer mode is highly connected to social sites like Facebook.
The twelfth edition of the long-running Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Black Ops III takes the fight to the distant future, in a world full of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and cyborg super-soldiers. Set 40 years after the events of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Black Ops III features a world where ground warfare has made a comeback after the development of high-tech air defenses. As before, players take on the role of a Black Ops operative working on deniable ops in a world of Cold Wars along multiple axes.
The player, who can now be male or female and visually customizable, is savagely mutilated during a mission in Ethiopia, and is left with no choice but to be modified using cybernetics to save their life. Armed with a new Direct Neural Interface, which allows the player to interface not only with their cybernetic enhancements, but also other machines, the player must now return to participating in black ops while uncovering a dark mystery that can change the balance of the world forever, all the while aided – and perhaps opposed by a cast of other black ops operatives. The campaign is playable with four-player co-operative play, and features a “Realistic” mode in which a single bullet is enough to kill the player.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a continuation of the events from Modern Warfare 3, and, as we can see in the name, in as installment of Call of Duty shooter series. As a specialist soldier, the player will yet again set out on a journey to save the international peace and safety. Set in near future, Modern Warfare 3 almost directly continues the events from Modern Warfare 2. There are sixteen missions which will take the player on a journey around the world – he will visit India, the United Stated, the United Kingdom, Somalia, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and that is not everything yet! Some locations are highly specific and will be remember by generations of gamers: Russian president’s private jet, Kremlin or a Czech castle nestled among beautiful mountains. The player can observe and affect the events from many different perspective.
He is not only an infantry soldier: there are episodes when he will enter a tank, a plane or become a bodyguard. The fans will be happy to hear that many cult characters make a comeback. However, there are also many new people, creating an interesting mixture of personalities. The actual gameplay is not very different from what Call of Duty players could experience before. Everything is based on solutions created before. Among the novelties, there are pretty much only new weapons, vehicles and devices.
Multiplayer modes have been changed a little, but there is not much worth mentioning in comparison to the previous installments. A new cooperation mode called Spec Ops is the only brand new idea included in Modern Warfare 3.
The name Call of Juarez rings a bell for many gamers. The new game of Polish Techland is very different to the previous installments, though. In Call of Juarez: The Cartel there is not a word about Wild West. Everything happens in the present now, the atmosphere of cowboys and cattle raids got filled in for by gangs, drugs and jocks. The Cartel is a story about drugs and well, the title pretty much suggests that. The police, unable to deal with drug-dealers on their own, decide to create a new special unit meant uniquely to fight the Los Angeles’ cartels. Its three members are the main characters of the new Call of Juarez.
Ben McCall is a typical cowboy, thrown into the present as if accidentally. He also seems to have something to do with Ray McCall, and important character from one of the previous games… We also have Eddie Guerra, a fan of semiautomatic rifles, and the only lady on the team – FBI’s Kim Evans. In Call of Juarez: The Cartel we can freely choose the character we want to control at any given moment, and the choice is extremely important. Every person has their part in the story, has unique side quests, and can await a unique ending to the game. With three characters, the game seems perfect for cooperation, and, as we all know, every game is better with alive allies than with AI-controlled ones. And in this particular game, AI tends to be bugged and our companions unhelpful.
Thus, you might want to consider getting a friend or two to buy their game, too. In the game, you will mostly be able to visit Los Angeles and the Mexican City of Juarez, both with their specific locations like clubs, parking lots and harbors. There are also desserts and old towns like taken from a western movie; those, however, cannot be explored as freely. We can enter vehicles, too, with the controls not quite realistic, but you don’t expect it from a game like this. Every character has their own set of weapons and can carry three of them at a time.
Child of Light is a side-scrolling role-playing game from Ubisoft Montreal, the developers of the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series of games, featuring writing by Jeffrey Yohalem, writer of Far Cry 3 and music by Montreal-based musician Béatrice Martin, better known as Cœur de pirate. The game is based on the UbiArt Framework engine, which was previously used for such 2D titles as Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends. The game’s art design was inspired by Studio Ghibli and Yoshitaka Amano, while the presentation of the game were inspired by Vagrant Story and Limbo.
The game is set in the mythical land of Lemuria, where players control Aurora, daughter of the Duke of Austria in 1895. Aurora goes to sleep on a normal Friday night before Easter 1895, when she turns cold as ice and is presumed dead. Instead, Aurora wakes up in Lemuria, where she discovers that the land of Lemuria was once ruled by the Queen of Light, who vanished one night. The Queen of Dark, Umbra, spread darkness over the land of Lemuria and sent her daughters to steal Lemuria’s light from all of its sources, as well as the mirror that links Lemuria to Aurora’s world. Over the course of her adventure to return to her world and end the reign of darkness of Umbra, Aurora is aided by various allies, such as the firefly Igniculus, Rubella the jester, Finn the crybaby and among others, Norah: Aurora’s second eldest sister, who was also dragged into Lemuria through the mirror. The game features art and storytelling inspired by fairy tales, and a story crafted in verse, where every piece of dialogue is intended to rhyme. As Aurora journeys across the world of Lemuria, she comes across many different creatures, such as spirits of the forest, talking mice, wicked witches, evil sea serpents and more.
Dark Souls is an action RPG set in a dark, fantasy world as if taken out of a nightmare. It was created by From Software who had also created Demon’s Souls, the predecessor. Have I mentioned nightmares? What Souls series are known for is their almost impossible to master level of difficulty. If you are not prepared to die… and die… and then die again… In order to be happy that you managed to kill one monster more than the previous time… If you’re not ready for that, no use in reading this! Dark Souls takes place in a dark, unsettling medieval realm inspired by motives like kings and knights, death and dungeons or fire and chaos. Dark Souls is a lot more of a sandbox than Demon’s Souls was. There are some bits of loading, but the game is not divided into separate levels. Thanks to that, exploration is both more complicated and interesting, with more rewards awaiting the players in the places he least expects. We have to roam long corridors of complicated dungeons without ever having them mapped out.
This is not the type of game with colorful quest markers and happy exclamation marks over NPC’s heads. You’re in for a real deal here. You can create your own character choosing from many possible combinations, but your initial choices are not all that important. It’s more about what you do afterwards. Like in real life, you master the things you continuously do. Like in real life, when a monster hits you hard on the head, you die. There are many weapons to choose from and many various pieces of equipment, too. It’s important to focus on the shield. While you might think you’re going to look bad-ass with two swords, you might also end up dead way too fast. You can also use various spells and cause miracles, everything in order to survive. Not everything is easy. Well, nothing is, but some things are more reckless than the others. Everything is possible though and everything can be mastered. It’s just that… Do you have the power of will required?
Dark Souls II, as the name itself suggests us, is a direct continuation of Dark Souls from 2011, a game hated more than loved, yet still a famous hit. It is created by the same developer that took care of the first part. We visit the same dark and upsetting realm that we saw in the first installment. This time, however, we can explore another region, being another character. The story is not told to the player directly. Those interested in getting to know more about the realm’s history will have to pick up all the small clues from dialogues and item descriptions. As in the first Dark Souls, we have to explore the vast area of the land, trying to find a medicine for a terrible curse thrown at our hero. We fight our way through scary dungeons and disturbing, dark locations typical for a medieval country, just a bit more… horrible.
Every battle is a challenge, and even having played for hours you might find yourself sadly defeated by the simplest enemy possible. You gain experience with every fight, trying to develop the character into a powerful one. What you do and choose and what weapon you decide to use greatly affects the gameplay and the difficulty. Some ways of playing are more difficult than others, but each and every one can be mastered. Apart from typical weapons, your character can also use various spells, miracles and enchantments. In comparison to Dark Souls, the multiplayer mode has been worked upon a lot. Quality of play has been greatly increased and new features added. One of the most important features is the system of clues and hints, special messages left by players themselves for others who may visit the same location. Thanks to a brand new engine, the game’s graphics are a lot better, too.
Dark Souls III is the third installment in the widely-lauded Dark Souls franchise of games and marks the return of director Hidetaka Miyazaki. Bringing back the classic unforgiving difficulty for which the franchise is known, Dark Souls III explores the saga of the Lord of Cinder in what is believed to be the final installment of the franchise.
Dark Souls III notably features faster combat than its predecessor, including faster movement and faster weapon swings, allowing the player to deal a large amount of damage in a short period of time. Of course, the enemies aren’t slacking either, and features brutally difficult AI systems, including enemies that can change their tactics during the course of a fight. The game also features a completely revamped Magic system, this time featuring a Magic bar that will be consumed as the player casts magic. This prompts the introduction of the ‘Ash Estus Flask’, which refills the magic bar.
The Darkness II continues one of the best games of 2007. The extremely violent shooter was produced by the studio Digital Extremes, creators of Dark Sectors and co-developers of BioShock 2. The Darkness’s script was written by Paul Jenkins, a famous comic author of works like Hellblazer and Spider-Man. In this installment the main hero is Jackie Estacado yet again. He is still haunted by old nightmares and memories and the power hidden inside him that doesn’t let him normally live. He is the godfather of Franchetti family, but he simply cannot live up to the role. An attack unleashed at Jackie and his family initiates an enormous conflict between various gangs. And everything suggests that it’s not just a typical gangster war. Everything might be steered by the Brotherood, a mysterious organization led by powerful Victor Volante. The Brotherhood wants specifically Jackie Estacado: they want to get his power of Darkness for themselves.
The gameplay hasn’t changed much between the installments. Jackie fights his enemies using various kinds of weapons like rifles and pistols. That isn’t all, though. He is also able to use his unique powers of Darkness like long, demonic arms. His tentacles can serve for various things: one of them is sharp enough to cut through objects and enemies and the second one can grip, catching things. That all creates the system of quad wielding. In some moments Jackie can use up to four limbs at the same time! Estacado can also collect Darkness by killing enemies in effective manners and tearing their hearts out. He uses it to develop various skills. The games graphics have been critically acclaimed as extremely appropriate for the overall atmosphere. Multiplayer modes, however, have not lived up to the expectations. The campaign is also believed to be too short and the AI, unsatisfactory.
Darksiders II by THQ, the famous studio gone bankrupt, is a continuation of praised original Darksiders. It greatly balances elements of action and role playing games, with everything seen from third person perspective. The story is still all about Apocalypse. We can experience it as one of the four dark riders forecast by apostle John: Death. The protagonist begins his adventure in the nether world. There he tries to find out how he could help War, another rider who did things he should not have done in the first installment. Death is more nimble and faster than War, so his fighting style is different than the one we could experience in Darksider. The hero is always accompanied by his faithful horse and crow. The areas we can visit and explore are much bigger now than they used to be. We can find ourselves in very differentiated places like old, upsetting ruins, glaciers, demonic caves or forests.
The world is four times bigger than in Darksiders and each instance contains as many dungeons as the whole first installment had. Death is not quite like War was: he’s more like Ezio or Prince of Persia, jumping and running, overcoming obstacles in an acrobatic way. The quests he needs to complete can be divided into main and side quests, with the former needed for the story to advance, and the latter enabling Death to discover hidden locations and obtain rare artifacts. Some places can only be reached when the character has come into possession of a certain skill like for example the ability to activate portals. Death has to fight both traditional enemies and logical puzzles. Paradoxically, sometime it is the enemy that requires the most thinking. Thanks to the RPG value, there is a lot of strategic thinking included into deciding on your skills and weapons of choice. The graphics have improved noticeably in comparison to the first part. Jesper Kyd, a famous composer, created music for the game, ensuring of its withstanding quality.
Daylight is an action-adventure horror game. It was self-financed and self-produced by the Zombie Studios, an indie studio known mostly for Blacklight. We play as a woman and quite a helpless one. She wakes up one day in an old, abandoned mental hospital. The place has been taken over by ghosts and monsters and the player’s only task is to… survive. As the layout of rooms and corridors is randomly generated each time the game is initiated, every new gameplay is a brand new adventure for the taking. In the end, what we want to achieve is to find a way out of the building. A single escape usually takes about thirty minutes, but thanks to the randomly generated levels, no one will stop at beating the game once. Only by beating it many times can one get to know the whole history. The maps, documents, recordings and generally clues strewn about the locations are also put in there in a random way. Thus, you can never be sure about the nature of events, not until you have beaten the game several times, all the time concentrating on what you find.
The story is well-developed and interesting, but the player has to work hard to get to know it. The game is seen from first person perspective, there are no fighting sequences though. The heroine is physically weak and can’t get any weapons that could hurt her enemies. The player needs to hide from the ghosts, trying to remain undetected, and when detected he gets, the only salvation is escape. Our heroine has a smartphone, though: it is her biggest ally on her quest, serving as a simple flashlight and playing out tracks recorded by dead people. The phone can help navigating, too. Daylight is one of the first games to have come out that use Unreal Engine 4. Thanks to it, the game is highly detailed and has a realistic light system which helps create the unique atmosphere.
Dead Island is a yet another zombie game. A great, action-packed first person perspective survival horror, it lets the player choose among four characters imprisoned on a zombified island. Polish studio Techland created a violent game full of spectacular encounters with zombies seen as if through your own eyes. The four characters mentioned above are highly differentiated. We can choose amongst persons of both sexes and various backgrounds. They also possess different skill sets which strongly affect the gameplay later on. The story tells us about a beautiful exotic island, a holiday resort, that suddenly got invaded by zombies.
Why? No one knows, but what everyone does know is that they have to survive, escape, and maybe along the way find out why everything went crazy. Zombies are not the only kind of enemy. As during every extreme situation, there are also people who want to use the circumstances and won’t stop at anything. Being ordinary civilians, our characters do not have a lot of firing weapons. They will mostly use regular things, turning them into deadly weapons. We begin with an oar, later on finding things like knives and hatchets and trying to combine them with other objects in order to take advantage of the crafting system. The story leads the characters into many interesting places, where the contrast between beautiful sights and dead bodies is impossibly striking. They visit luxurious hotels, tropical forests and beaches as from paradise.
The game lets us take part in 150 quests received from various NPCs with whom we can interact. One of the most fun parts of Dead Island is cooperation. With four interesting and useful characters, it still is easy to find someone to play with you over the internet. Splashing zombie brains around is the best in company! Dead Island offers classic multiplayer modes, too, but they are less populated than good old cooperation.
Dead Island: Riptide is a continuation of 2011’s successful Dead Island. It is an action-adventure game in which we fight zombies, looking at the amazing massacre from first person perspective. Having barely escaped from the island of Banoi, the four characters from Dead Island (Sam B, Logan Carter, Xian Mei and Purna) find themselves in the middle of slaughter yet again. Their helicopter crashes and a series of unfortunate events finally makes them end up on another exotic island, Palanai, also invaded by zombies. A John Morgan joins them – a brand new hero, ex-soldier great at martial arts and a great addition to Dead Island’s fighting system. He fills up the hole there was in the first installment as a person skillful in the art of bashing zombie skulls from up close. He actually doesn’t even need weapons.
Those are pretty common on the islands, but you can still find yourself with none. That is when you need John. Cooperation between all the characters is crucial for their success as every one of them has different abilities. Apart from brainless (see the pun?) zombie killing, we can also engage in various kinds of side quests. One of the novelties is defending your base from incoming waves of monsters. You need to set of various defense systems and blockades and repair them as soon as something happens to them. Cooperation was the best part of Dead Island and it is so in Riptide too. Up to four people can beat the main campaign together and it is definitely the best way to do it. The graphics haven’t changed a lot, but the new weather system is worth mentioning: now weather dynamically changes, making the islands even prettier and more vivid. Dead Island Riptide cannot be called a real sequel though. It is only a good pack of additional content.
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round is the third updated version of Dead or Alive 5, and features a complete graphical upgrade for the new generation of consoles. Featuring all of the content from the previous updated version, Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round adds new costumes and customisable hairstyles, along with new characters and stages exclusively for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The new graphical upgrade also allows for 1080p, 60fps play across the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, allowing for more fluid actions. A brand new graphics engine allows for more detailed “softness” of the characters’ bodies.
The new characters in the game are Honoka and Raidou. Honoka is a teenage Japanese schoolgirl using her own unique fighting style, known as Honoka Fu, and uses a mysterious power in her fighting style. Raidou on the other hand, is an evil ninja and Ayane’s biological father. He returns in Dead or Alive 5 as an undead cyborg, copying fighters’ fighting skills.
Dead Rising 2 is the second installment in Dead Rising series, a game not quite ambitious, but highly enjoyable. It generally is an action game seen from third person perspective. A serious person can’t call it a survival horror though. Here, it is zombies who is trying to survive, and they don’t really stand a chance. Capcom’s work continues the story from the first Dead Rising, talking about a scary virus that turns people into mindless zombies. A few years after those events, the virus is prevalent in all of the United States, including Fortune City, a place strikingly similar to Las Vegas with its hazard and immoral fun. Our main character is Chuck Greene, an ex-motocross master, who goes to Fortune City in order to find some kind of medicine for his small infected daughter. And so we fight hordes of zombies yet again. And by saying hordes, I literally do mean it: there can be thousands of them visible on the screen.
And Chuck gets them all on his own. Well, nobody promised reality. Because of the above mentioned Las Vegas similarity, the zombies tend to be quite funny: we have dancers or croupiers in form of dead bodies trying to get us, and there are also many other types of enemies. As in many new zombie games, here, too, everything can serve as a weapon. Chuck can fight with the stupidest little gadgets, but he can also combine them to create truly deadly weapons. We can connect two chainsaws to an oar or stuff a grenade into a football. The game is not quite serious, but it is a great playground for creative minds. There is also multiplayer and a cooperation mode. All the locations are very detailed and… very Las Vegas. There are clubs and stores, every one of them full of appropriate objects which our hero can use to fight or craft.
Dead Rising 2: Off The Record is a yet another installment of Capcom’s bestseller series. The simple story is, as it is always, based on a straightforward principle: there are zombies. This time our protagonist is Frank West, a photographer known to the fans of the series as a character from the previous games. Frank mostly visits well-known locations, as this game is set in Fortune City just like the previous one. There is, however, a big area added on to the map, so it is not all old and boring for a person who has beaten everything there was to beat from Capcom. There are also many new types of zombies, new weapons and new combinations manageable to get thanks to the crafting system. Some new, unique quests have appeared, too, using Frank’s job as a pretext for new sorts of fun. What you can say about the graphics is that they are decent.
Thousands of enemies can be shown on the screen at the same time which is impressive even though they all just walk slowly and never do too much. Some bugs have been fixed, too, in comparison to Dead Rising 2. The cooperation mode has gotten much better and can be played over the internet or locally. The whole games is not much different than its predecessor, though. There is not much sense in getting it for the full price as it isn’t really a full game either. If you can lend it, go for it, but otherwise… It’s better to start Dead Rising 2 all over again.
In Dead Space 3, we can play as Isaac Clarke for the third time. The survival horror set in a science fiction world continues the plot revolving around the engineer. His most important companion is his armor RIG: Resource Integration Gear, and as in every game of the series, he has to fight necromorphs, people infected by an unknown space virus that turns them into monsters. His weapons are often pretty random. Isaac is not a soldier, ha has to use his tools and items found along the way to stand a chance against the necromorphs. In Dead Space 3 we can visit Tau Volantis, a freezing planet where Isaac hope to stop the infection once and for all. After his escape from Sprawl, he is joined by sergeant John Carver, a new character in the series. A lot has been changed in the gameplay. The key elements are still here: interface based on holograms, strategic thinking applied through cutting off enemies’ limbs (every limb or head can be shot off). In comparison to the previous installments, however, the game has turned more in the direction of an action-packed one. It used to be a stealthy, scary survival horror, now it’s more of a slaughter and it’s us who can cause it, not the monsters.
The new drop-in drop-out system lets the player drop into the game at any given moment to play together with sergeant Carver. Playing with him or on our own actually makes for two very different games, for each of them there are separate plotlines, dialogues and troubles planned. Dead Space 3 has no multiplayer mode other than cooperation, and that of two people at most. Defending the station or attacking it in the skin of a necromorph, which was present in Dead Space 2, has disappeared. Among the novelties, there is the ability to dodge attacks or take cover. Using the Worker’s Bench, Isaac can both construct new weapons and combine existing ones together. Visceral Engine is what enabled the game to have beautiful graphics. Thanks to the change of scenery, this time we can see beautiful icy sights, and not only dark, boring corridors of spaceships.
Deep Down is a brand new franchise, Capcom’s first game created for PlayStation 4 and its new possibilities. The action RPG uses a new engine, Panta Rhei, which is supposed to deliver a new quality. In the game’s world, there are both fantasy and science fiction motives. The clock is set for 2094, but during the gameplay we will mostly travel into the future that lies even further ahead. The future is written down on mystical artifacts. The player can visit it in order to look for treasure and fight monsters. Gameplay is meant for the cooperation mode which enables up to four people to play together. The players can choose among medieval character classes like knight, warrior, sorcerer, in order to go down into a randomly generated dungeon. The dungeons are where the fun is supposed to begin: they are full of surprises like traps and scary monsters, but also invaluable rewards waiting there to be found. The characters are of course is possession of many various weapons, both those physical like swords or spears, and those magical, with spells and enchantments. They can also develop different skills that define how they are of use for the team.
Actual fighting is quite similar to the system we can often use in typical hack’n’slash games. Players can attack in various ways and also try to block the incoming attacks. All the activities can be combined into stronger ones. The enemies whom we are going to fight are randomly generated, both in terms of their looks (armor, colors) and their weapons and abilities. Deep Down is going to be deeply connected to social media. It will let us challenge other players or lend or borrow items. Panta Rhei is able to create a high quality look of the game and it supports many modern technologies having to do with light, tessellation or textures. Game is going to be free-to-play one, but there are of course some things you can buy for real money in order to make the game easier or fuller.
Destiny is the first game set in a new realm out of many that Bungiee Software has already planned. The popular studio, famous mostly for their bestselling series Halo, creates a new shooter which is in many things different and similar in as many to their previous work. In Destiny, we also fight using weird, futuristic weapons, and we have whole rival civilizations to overcome. Here, however, there is a strong focus on playing together with other players, not on our own. The story is set in century 28, when the human race suddenly finds itself on the brink of becoming extinct. Our Golden Years ended abruptly with the coming of Traveler, an enormous, mysterious alien spaceship. It began floating over the Earth like another Moon. The remaining survivors got together and built The Last City on Earth to have a base in which the remnants of civilization could stay. Now, however, the aliens are getting more and more aggressive. It is visible that what they want is to totally eradicate the human kind.
The player will be able to become a Guardian, a person who can use superpowers thanks to the presence of Traveler. The Guardians are divided into three classes: Titan, Hunter and Warlock. Titan is something like a tank with his heavy armor and mighty weapons that fire thousands of bullets at once. Hunter is very skillful in the art of using a sniper rifle and tends to stay hidden from his enemies and Warlock is a specialist in using the above mentioned power which serves as magic of the series.
In Destiny, you are meant to play together with other people. Theoretically, you can just go ahead without caring about finding companions, but the targets the game sets for us are much easier and more pleasant to reach when we are together with someone of another class. Traveling is the best in a group of a few people, with the additional possibility of new players coming across us. We need to have a stable connection to the Internet maintained at all times in order to play Destiny, even if we wish to play alone.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution in another installment in the famous action RPG series. The previous game are already very old and this one is studio Edios trying to give rebirth to the franchise. We get to visit their cyberpunk, futuristic vision of the world in years to come yet again. The studio is not the same on that was responsible to the previous parts, there are, however, some members of the team that stayed the same, like scriptwriter Sheldon Pacotti. This connection between what is old and what is new lets have hope for a great tribute to the original Deus Ex. Human Revolution begins in year 2027 in Detroit. Our hero is called Adam Jensen. He is just a typical guy, working as a boss of bodyguards for Sarif Industries, a company that researches biological and mechanic augmentations for the human body. Those are that will later became nano technological implants know from the prequels which were actually set later in time. One day, the life of Adam Jensen totally changes. A special forces unit attacks his laboratory and slaughters ruthlessly everyone inside, and they do so thanks to building’s map created by Jenses himself. Adam gets seriously hurt and falls into a coma.
Having woken up, he discovers that augmentations and implants are the only thing that saved him. He has been operated on and augmented without having a choice. After the interactive part with massacre, Adam recovers and needs to find out what actually happened. Many disadvantages and stupid solutions from the previous installments disappeared thanks to the developers listening to the voice of the fans, the game is still about four main activities, and those are sneaking around, hacking systems, interacting with other characters and fighting. Thanks to that, Jensen solves his problems however he likes, he can assassinate a guard, sneak around him or engage in a huge fight with half the soldiers of the mission. The player gets experience in order to buy new augmentations for Adam. Thanks to them he can develop his character in a particular direction, trying to become a good spy, soldier or explorer.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution and serves as the fourth main installment in the Deus Ex line of games. Set two years after the events of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided marks the return of Adam Jensen, who, following the events in Panchaea, finds himself in the middle of a conflict between augmented and non-augmented forces. With augmented people now being segregated and discriminated against in what is termed a “mechanical apartheid”, some of the augmented have chosen to fight back and have begun terrorizing the non-augmented.
Diablo III
Diablo, the most famous game franchise of all time, is already here with its third installment. Even though the first game was published is 1996 (so almost two decades have passed!), Diablo is still about the same monster killing, hack and slash fun. Blizzard entertainment keeps some solutions used in the previous parts but also implements many new ideas. In this action ROG the player can visit the world of Sanctuary. Why? To no surprise, in order to defeat all the possible powers of will and, as the title suggest, even Diablo himself. The game starts twenty years after the events from Diablo II, on which the main character managed to defeat the evil. It seemed to have been eradicated once and for all, but now we know it was not. A mysterious asteroid falls down on the cathedral of Tristram, thus waking all the dark powers and freeing demonic monsters. The world of Sanctuary finds itself in need of new heroes yet again. We can fight as characters of various classes like a monk, a war, a barbarism out a demon hunter. Each of them is very different than the others, both in terms of skills and weapons and of the plot.
Everyone has a story to tell. The story generally is much more important than it used to be. You can find out many things about the realm through keeping track of all the notes and journals you can find along the way. There are also cut scenes between the acts. Thanks to that, the fans are able to get too know many new facts about their favorite realm and the history of the conflict between good and evil. We get to meet many heroes, old and new ones, which also is a great possibility for the player. Over the course of the history we get to visit different lands divided into for acts. In each of them, a new horde of monsters is waiting to be defeated.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth is the fifth game in the Digimon Story series and follows 2011’s Digimon Story: Super Xros Wars. Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth is the first of the Digimon Story series to be released on home consoles, and features music by veteran composer Masafumi Takada.
In Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, players take on the role of either the male protagonist, Takumi Aiba or the female one, Ami Aiba, both of whom are teenage amateur Japanese hackers. The chosen protagonist receives a device called a Digimon Capture, which allows them to capture and befriend Digimon, who are creatures that inhabit Cyberspace Eden, a next-generation version of the Internet that players can freely enter. The protagonist travels to the lowest level of Eden, where they are attacked by the “Eater”, a data-based entity who leaves the protagonist’s body half-digitized, and making them able to freely travel between the real and virtual worlds using special terminals. The protagonist is then visited by Kyoko Kuremi, head of the Kuremi Detective Agency, who then recruits them to join the agency’s cyber division.
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance is the sixth entry in the long-running tactical role-playing game series Disgaea, and is developed by Nippon Ichi Software exclusively for the PlayStation 4.
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance is set in a universe with many Netherworlds, each ruled by an Overlord. The emergence of the Demon Emperor Void Dark leads to the oppression of many Netherworlds, under the boots of 10 billion soldiers known collectively as The Lost. To oppose him, the Overlords have begun an alliance to exact their vengeance. “Revenge” being the core theme of the game, the player follows Killia, a lone demon who stands against the forces of the Lost. After saving the life of the Princess Overlord of Gorgeous, Seraphina, Killia grudgingly agrees to become her servant and sets off on a quest to overthrow Void Dark and end his reign of terror over the Netherworlds, all the while making new allies and forging friendships.
Dishonored is a brand new game franchise, an interesting mixture of first person perspective and action, all in a fantasy world. The realm we visit mixes stream punk and nineteenth century’s aesthetics. The choices that we make as a player influence the world, both the outcome through our voices that have to do with the story, and the moral ones change the overall atmosphere: music, reverently appearing colors and civilians attitude and numbers. In Dishonored we play as Corvo, the bodyguard of an assassinated empress. Her assassin throws the guilt at Corvo not knowing how dangerous he actually is. Corvo ends up imprisoned. Our first mission is to escape, and afterwards, we set out on a long an difficult journey during which Corvo tries to get his revenge on corrupted Lord Regent, the one who threw him into the prison in the first place. Corvo is an expert fighter. He can use a series and a crossbow and he does that well, but what makes him stand out from the crowd are his almost magical powers.
He can teleport on short distances which helps him move between various covers without being detected. He also knows different spells, some of them effective helpful in direct encounters, and some good for the players who enjoy doing everything stealthily. Corvo has a friend who is similar to Da Vinci in assassin’s creed 2. He crafts various new weapons and gadgets for Corvo, enabling him to apply new and interesting tactics with every new item received.Our main goal is to assassinate a series of carefully planned targets, each of them more important and closer to Lord Regent, the final nemesis. Along the way Corvo will make many choices. He will also be able to kill his targets in many different ways, cutting his way through legions of guards or sneaking behind their backs.
Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is the enhanced version of the award-winning isometric role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin, and features numerous enhancements, such as an expanded storyline, new gameplay options and updated graphics, as well as support for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Enhanced Edition is free to all owners of Divinity: Original Sin on PC and Mac.
Being a prequel to Divine Divinity, Divinity: Original Sin features two heroes, male and female: a condemned warrior now imprisoned, and a mystic heroine given life once again. Together, the two are “Source Hunters”, members of an organization dedicated to hunting out a dangerous power known as “The Source” and the adepts who practice it, the “Sorcerers”. Starting off on what seems to be a routine murder investigation, the players end up uncovering a conspiracy with deep roots and deeper consequences.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the sequel to Larian Studio’s 2014 surprise hit, Divinity: Original Sin. Once again crowd-funded over Kickstarter, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is set in a world where the Bishop Alexander has declared all sorcerers to be criminals, prompting a group of 4 sorcerers to set out to defeat him.
This time around, players can choose their character’s statistics, race and origin story at the start of the game. Compared to the original game, Divinity: Original Sin 2’s narrative is described by the developers as more ‘serious’, and features writing by veteran RPG writer Chris Avellone. A prominent theme in the game is that your origins affect what choices you get in life, making the choice of an origin story all the more important. The character can then pick up to 3 companions, all of whom are playable in multiplayer mode, allowing for 4-player co-op.
DmC: Devil May Cry is Capcom’s idea of a reboot on the series. The game is set before the first Devil May Cry and Dante doesn’t even have white hair in this one. You and your brother are trying to stop the evil demon Mundus from killing all the humans.
Developed by Ninja Theory the game is action packed and the combat is a ton of fun. How high of a combo can you get in this beat em up slaughter fest? Don’t think it is all action thought because you will get a puzzle here and there!
Dragon Age II is the second installment in BioWare’s Dragon Age series. The studio is known for cult ROG games like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. In case of Dragon Age II they yet again try to win our hearts with an rpg, this time action rather than a tactical one. We go back to the fantasy world full of dwarves and elves. This time we play as Hawke, a poor refugee that seeks shelter after the events from Dragon Age. Our character is customizable only when it comes to looks and gender. We cannot choose the race, we’re stuck as a human, but we do have three classes to choose from, each with a different set of skills, using varied weapons and tactics. We get to know Hawke story through tales told by future storytellers, so that we know that the ten years from Hawke’s life already happened. We witness and affect his journey to become the Master of Kirkwall.
Depending on our choices, we find different allies and companions. What we do changes greatly the final outcome, who lives and who dies. During the journey, our character has various quests to complete. He meets new characters and some of the old set, too. Some stories featured on side quests are really moving and worth knowing. The game is the exact opposite of a sandbox. We are forced to walk through linear corridors, never able to go where the developers didn’t want us to. That wouldn’t be a big problem, but half of the locations are almost copied. All the places you visit make you feel an unpleasant deja-vu. The combat system is much more dynamic than it used to be. It is very nice to look at but it lost a lot of its tactical aspects, the enthusiastic fans are not going to feel content. The dialogue system has been affected by major changes, too. Now we can’t choose the exact wording our character will use, we can also decide on his general attitude, like whether the response will be sarcastic, mean or good-natured.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third major game in the Dragon Age series of games and blends elements from both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II into an action role-playing framework.
The game returns to the continent of Thedas, the same setting as the previous two games, but covers a considerably large tract of territory, including the entirety of Ferelden and Orlais. The game is set after the events of Dragon Age II: a civil war has broken out in Orlais between the Empress and her cousin, the Grand Duke Gaspard. Meanwhile, the Circle of Magi has gone rogue after the events in the ending of Dragon Age II, and the Templar Order has seceded from the Chantry to hunt down the mages. In this backdrop of strife and war, a conclave is established to bring about peace under Divine Justinia. The conclave however, proves to be a failure, as a massive explosion destroys the conclave, killing the Divine as well mages and templars both. The player is an attendee of the Conclave, who finds himself or herself with a mark on their hand, capable of closing rifts. The player is roped into the Inquisition, an organization planned by the late Divine, with the goal of ending the Breach that was created during the explosion at the Conclave. The player is soon made the leader of the Inquisition, and referred to as the Inquisitor.
Dragon Ball XenoVerse is a fighting role-playing game set within the long-running Dragon Ball universe, and the first Dragon Ball game to be released on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Developed by Dimps and published by Bandai Namco Games, Dragon Ball XenoVerse takes players to familiar locations in the Dragon Ball universe and revisits iconic fights from the franchise.
Dragon Ball XenoVerse allows players to create their own custom avatar, who fights alongside Trunks, and participate in famous battles from the Dragon Ball series. Apart from this, the game also features a completely original storyline that focuses on the villains Towa and Mira, and their attempts to manipulate history. Towa is an android trying to becoming the strongest creature in the universe, while Towa is a dark scientist from a demonic world.
Relive your childhood of gaming with Dragon’s Crown, a 2D beat-em-up brought to you by Vanillaware. In this fantasy world of knights and wizards, you’ll hack and slash your way through a series of dungeons, collecting loot and vanquishing evil.
Choose from one of six character classes, each with their own fighting styles and dangerous combinations. The Fighter is your typical melee-heavy character, equipped with swords and axes. The Dwarf is similar to the fighter, but equipped for more offense and able to throw enemies across the screen. The Amazon is the final melee character and focuses exclusively on relentless offense. If you’re a magic-oriented player, choose from the Wizard or the Sorceress. The Wizard primarily utilizes devastating fire magic and can create wood golems from crates, while the Sorceress combines offensive magic, defensive magic, and the ability to raise skeletal minions. Finally, the Archer shoots enemies from afar with a bow and arrows.
During the main story of Dragon’s Crown, you’ll explore a variety of hand-drawn dungeons, full of monsters and loot. But don’t worry, you won’t go at it alone. Choose up to three additional AI characters to follow you into battle. Additionally, Ranni the rogue and Tiki the fairy will follow you on your journey, unlocking chests and doors and guiding you toward hidden treasure. Speaking of treasure, each dungeon features a series of treasure chests and one major boss to provide you with more loot than you know what to do with. After each quest, you’ll be given the option to appraise your loot, and either sell or keep it.
Dragon’s Crown also provides an intense multiplayer experience. Fight your way through the game with three close friends or three complete strangers. To expand this experience, a patch unveiled in October 2013 added cross-play capability, allowing PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita users to play simultaneously.
Dragon’s Crown is playable on both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. It released in Japan on July 25th, 2013; North America on August 6th, 2013; and Europe on October 11, 2013. For the latest news, reviews, guides and more, click the button below.
Dragon’s Dogma is an action rpg created by Capcom. Among its developers were Japanese producers responsible for great games like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry 4. our main hero in the game is the chosen one, a type of character typical for fantasy games. Our young hero’s village gets attacked by a horrible dragon. It is not deaths or riches that he wants, however. In the end, he wants our character. The dragon tears his heart out… But the story is not over, the boy does not die and no one knows why. He decides to embark on a journey to understand his fate. We can choose among a few classes which let us fight in different way and choose from many types of weapons. Gameplay is generally about fighting monsters, usually inspired by mythical features. We have to battle gryphons, hydras and hordes of harpies. it is also frequent to have to find various items and artifacts.
One of the interesting novelties implemented by the developers is the system of pawns. Those are like AI controlled companions for out hero. The Player can upload them for other players to use. It is also possible to download pawns created in another world to use their experience gained by another player. Dragon Dogma’s combat system is very dynamic. Its creators wanted to make it more realistic than it normally is. That’s why they put focus on the hand to hand combat, usually ignored in role playing games and here greatly developed. The game’s graphic engine is the same that was used in Lost Planet 2. All NPCs are fully voiced by their specific actors. The dialogues are not too complicated though. The player doesn’t have a lot of choice in terms of the story’s advancement. You are also free to go and do side quests instead of the main ones.
Dragon Quest Heroes, also known by its full name Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below is an action role-playing game published by Square Enix. Designed by famed artist Akira Toriyama, Dragon Quest Heroes features a story in which the protagonists must rise up in the face of insurmountable odds.
After a powerful dark shock-wave rips through the peaceful city of Arba, causing the monsters there to turn on the people of Arba, prompting the hero Luceus and the heroine Aurora, both of whom are captains of the Royal Guard, to take up arms against the monsters and save the kingdom.
Driveclub
Driveclub is another game brought to us by the producer of Motorstorm. This time, however, Evolution Studios enable us to drive realistic sports cars. In Driveclub, there is a big focus on the social aspects. The game lets us socialize with real or virtual friends in order to create, as the title suggests, clubs. After you join a club, every race you compete in is counter into your clubs points to put you in a ranking. Its not only about who wins and who losses, though. The races are made to be fun for everyone. Points can be gathered by driving in a certain way, attacking and pushing other players or doing various kinds of side quests. You don’t have to worry about getting bored with the game when you find yourself at the very end. There is always something for you to do and a way to help your team win. The game had really good graphics.
The developers concentrated on the looks of the cars, both on the inside and on the outside, and thus provided us with highly detailed textures of cars. The game was published in two versions. One of them is a typical publication, paid and in a box, but the second one is available for free for those who have PlayStation Plus. This version is, however, limited in a certain way. The Gameplay is not to original. Driveclub will not probably be able to become Sony’s Forza. The clubs system is very interesting, but the rules of the game and points can be quite confusing, so not everyone is going to enjoy the game. Another original thing about Drive Club is that it’s all played from first player perspective. We truly do feel like the driver. We walk around the parking lot, open the doors and enter the car as we would in real life, and then we can control the car as if we really were inside.
Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever is the game everyone had been waiting for for years. The king is back? Well… Gearbox created yet another fast, dynamic shooter. In Duke Nukem Forever, as in all the previous Duke Nukem games, we have to fight hordes of aliens. We will meet many old enemies, but among the aliens there are many new types to kill. There have also been implemented many kinds of bosses awaiting us in dangerous places. Battles with them are one of the best things about the game, they are quite original and interesting, with funny fatalities to perform. During the game we visit extremely differentiated locations. We explore a city, with all its interesting buildings and streets, but we also visit the nature in form of canyons and desserts. There are also factories and industrial regions. Generally, Duke Nukem’s world is highly differentiated and fun to explore. Usually, we walk, but there are also moments when we can ever a vehicle and drive sound the locations. To bring some variety, the developers have also implements short episodes during which Duke has to defend himself from waves of incoming enemies, using big, stationary guns and cannons.
Duke, being a true bad-ass, does not have a life bar, he has an ego bar. It suits him well. The whole system is based on the principle that Duke cannot be physically hurt by anybody, only his pride can be hurt. Duke is equipped with a whole arsenal of weapons. He has weapons old and new, among which can be found the cult ones like Devastator, Pipe Bombs and Shrink Ray. An interesting novelty is sniper rifle, with a first time appearance in the Duke Nukem series. Thanks to the typical atmosphere of the game, its use often ends with limbs flying and blood splashed everywhere. There is a lot of interaction possibilities. The game is full of crude humor and Duke can engage into various stupid, immature ways that some will find funny and some, pathetic.
Dungeon Siege III is the third game in the interesting hack and slash fantasy series. Created by Obsidian Studios, it is an excellent mix of action and rule playing set in a fantasy world. There, the kingdom of Ehb is beginning to fall into decadence with various alliances fighting to achieve the rule over the realm. Our character is a descendant of the Tenth Legion, a mystical unit that used to keep peace until it was accused of treason and got almost totally eradicated. Now he is the only person who can bring the Tenth Legion back to life in order to save Ehb from its incoming fate. In the game there are many mechanisms that define it, some of them already used in the previous installments, and others very modern and typical for the games of this decade. One of the novelties is the cooperation mode in which players can work together, helping each other in defeating monsters.
There are for classes from which the player can choose. It doesn’t seem to be a lot but they are very flexible, so that every person will be able to construct their character exactly how they want it to be. There are many special abilities and specialties that can define our hero. The plot is well develop and interesting. Its advancement depends not only on the actions of the players in terms of pushing everything forward. Player’s actions also influence the events, if and how they happen, and other characters’ attitudes. Our companions have their own opinions, too. If they don’t agree with our style of feeling with problems, they can even decide to leave or party and set out on their own. Unfortunately, the game suffered some damage during the conversion to pc. The controls are not intuitive and some people will have problems. Only decide to buy the game if you are sure that the controls won’t spoil all the fun.
Dying Light is a survival horror game set in the quarantine zone of the Middle-Eastern city of Harran, where a mysterious viral outbreak has caused a plague of hyper-aggressive, zombie-like creatures. Set in a vast open world, the player takes on the role of Kyle Crane, an undercover operative sent to infiltrate the quarantine zone and secure a file stolen from them by one Kadir Suleiman, a political figure gone rogue. Once on the ground, however, Crane is torn between helping the other survivors of the viral outbreak, or completing his mission successfully.
With a first-person perspective, Dying Light involves traversing vast stretches of a cityscape plagued with zombies using fluid parkour mechanics, allowing moves like climbing ledges, sliding, zip-lining and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. The quarantine zone, however, is far from harmless, and the player is forced to fight their way through both the infected and other desperate human survivors hunting for precious supplies. Unusually for a first-person game, Dying Light has a heavy focus on melee combat, and features over 100 weapons such as knives, bats and axes, as well as over 1000 possible new weapons that can be crafted. The weapons however, degrade very quickly and must be repaired, or replaced. Guns, while present in the game, feature limited ammo, requiring judicious use of them. Moreover, guns are loud, and can attract other infected towards the player.
Elite: Dangerous is the fourth game in the Elite series, and the first game in the series since Frontier: First Encounters back in 1995. The game is set in the far future, starting from the year 3300, and has players controlling a spaceship in a 1:1 scale, open world rendition of the Milky Way. For the first time in the Elite series, Elite: Dangerous introduces massively multiplayer gameplay, and player actions affect a persistent universe shared by other players of the game. The game is also notable for its support of virtual reality devices, taking players straight into the action.
The game is set 45 years after the events of Frontier: First Encounters and retains key elements of the franchise with players piloting a spaceship, forced to their own devices to carve a path through the galaxy, and furthering their own ends, whether by abiding by the law or breaking it. Players can engage in trading, bounty-hunting, piracy and assassinations in a vast, open world, online multiplayer environment, whether player choices can affect the balance of the overall galaxy. Events in the galaxy are determined by the actions of these players, with emergent battles taking place frequently and the narrative of the galaxy being shaped by players’ interactions with the galaxy and with each other. Although the game is meant to be played in its multiplayer element, Open Play, it also features a Solo mode, in which players can explore the galaxy alone.
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is an interesting action game in three dimensions, but with some two dimensional levels, too. The graphic style of the game is very original and pleasant to look at. Generally we play as Enoch, God’s servant. Our boss sends us to earth where we have to chase down and destroy all the fallen angels. The game is brought to us by the creators of Okami and Devil May Cry, so its omnipresent atmosphere is not a surprise. The story is loosely based on the Biblical Book of Enoch. Enoch, How’s ancestor is the only human that was let a place in heaven as a servant and a writer. Some of the celestial inhabitants, angels, get fascinated by the human kind. They decide to move to earth, where they have children with mortals and adapt themselves to the earthly way of living. The children are called Nefelimes and God is very much against their existence.
He decides to bring a Great Flood to Earth to reset the situation. Enoch, however, receives the last chance of saving the human world. He can go down there in order to try and eradicate the fallen archangels. Archangel Lucifel is his connection with God. He gives Enoch his missions and helps him save hits progress by using a mobile phone. The most of the game is spent fighting the servants of the angels. Levels are quite linear, but interesting, with occasional breaks from grinding in form of boss fights. We can also play through two dimensional levels that are quite Mario like. Sometimes we need to choose the corridor we wish to follow in order to find an important item in the end. The controls are very simple, there are actually only four buttons serving for jumping or attacking in various ways. In order to achieve attacking in a more complicated and powerful manner, though, you have to push version buttons in a specific rhythm. Thus, the system is easy to learn but difficult to master. There are three available weapons, but we can only carry one at a time. Each of them is good for specific encounters, but useless in the others.
Evolve is a new shooter from the creators of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Turtle Rock is going to bring us an all new production, trying to create a new universe while using their rich experience gained during the creation process of their previous games. Evolve is another shooting game that concentrates on cooperation. However, at the same time collaboration it is strongly mixed with rivalry. You never stay a predator or a hunted for long, the roles constantly fluctuate, enabling the players never too feel secure. In Evolve, there are two rival fractions, one of them quite solitary. this one only consists of one player who controls a big, powerful beast, much faster and stronger than the other players’ characters.the beast is opposed by a team of four soldiers. Although they outnumber the monster, they can never feel secure: one reckless action can cost them their lives. All the Hunters from among whom we can choose have their own background and represent a different class, each of them meant to be able to help the others in order to defeat the monsters. There are many monsters to choose from, too.
While the exact number remains unknown,there will probably be more than ten, each with different powers and weaknesses. The Gameplay, unlike that in typical shooters, is asymmetric, with each side of the conflict experiencing a very different type of game. The monster, as the title suggests, needs to evolve. When the game begins it is not strong enough to defeat the soldiers unless the player controlling it is a great tactician.
The monster needs to feed on wild animals in order to grow in size and power, gaining new dangerous abilities that grant him new attacks or moves. The soldiers, on the other hand, need to stick together, at all times aware of their surroundings. Being surprised by the monster personally renders them helpless. Evolve is created specifically for multiplayer. It has all the typical mechanisms, we can unlock new Hunters, monsters and items. The design and implementation of these features is one of the games biggest advantages.
Fallout New Vegas is an addition for Fallout 3, not a whole new game in the series, but still an interesting installment full of content. It was created by Obsidian Entertainment, a good developer that has already proven to be worthy. Some of the people from this studio also co-produced Fallout and Fallout 2. Thanks to this fact, the universe has stayed consistent thorough the series. The story is about three fractions, New California Republic, Caesar’s Legion and the inhabitants of New Vegas fighting for dominance. Our character’s traits are determined by a sort of psychoanalysis. He is traveling messenger who dearly dies but for help of a befriended robot. Pip Boy is back, too, of course. The main hero receives him from the robot’s proprietor. The gameplay is exactly like it used to be in Fallout 3. We control our character who is constantly developing, seeing the world from either first or third person perspective. V.A.T.S. system is back, too. It lets us aim directly for a certain body part of our enemy or stop time, depending on the number of our action points at the time.
There are not many novelties in Fallout New Vegas, but we do get a new set of perks and skills. There are also some new weapons and new possibilities for modifying them. Depending on what we do with our abilities, our karma changes, but it’s not the only thing affected. Each side of the conflict has its own view on us. We can make some like us and some, hate us, or try to stay as indifferent as possible, but usually, in the end we do have to make a choice. Dialogues are connected to our skills, too, and determine how we can solve a problem. In New Vegas, however, there are also additional possibilities for characters that are not very erudite. The biggest additions in comparison to the previous installments are a new hardcore mode meant for fans of high difficulty and a complicated and rewarding crafting system.
Fallout 4 is an open world action role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic Boston in the year 2287, two centuries after a nuclear war wiped out the American mainland. The player takes on the role of a ‘vault dweller’, the resident of a special vault designed to survive nuclear war. Returning to a wasteland after spending 200 years in the vault, the player must now explore a completely changed Boston.
Fallout 4 is the fifth game in the long-running Fallout series of games and is a direct successor to Fallout 3, which was also developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Many of the gameplay elements from the previous game are retained, with players exploring the nuclear wasteland, interacting with characters and fighting off the many terrors of the wastes: from raiders and bandits to fearsome, mutated creatures to ghouls: people mutated by the radiation from nuclear blasts.
Fallout Shelter is a free-to-play game in which players take on the role of the Overseer of a Vault-Tec Vault from the Fallout universe. Players are responsible for building and extending the underground Vault, taking on new residents and managing the Vault’s various functions.
Viewed from an “ant farm” perspective, Fallout Shelter tasks players with managing their own vault, rescuing survivors of the wasteland, directing them to jobs, protecting them from threats both external and internal, providing them food, power and water, and ultimately trying to make them as happy as possible. The game brings back the signature S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system from the Fallout games: each vault dweller is assigned a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. score, which must be taken into account while assigning them jobs in the vault. Each vault dweller is optimally suited to different jobs, and so finding the right person for the right job becomes a crucial responsibility for players.
Far Cry 3 is the third installment in Far Cry series of sandbox shooters full of beautiful sights and groups of intelligent enemies. Yet again, the game was produced by Ubisoft Montreal with help of their branch office from Shanghai. We play as Jason Brody, a man who had his holidays abruptly stopped. He jumps on a parachute and it doesn’t end too well for him. He lands on an island which, although exotically beautiful, is taken over by psychopathic pirates. Jason’s friends are kept prisoners and all the island is full of ruthless, unstable murderers. In order to save his friends and relatives and get away from the horrible place Jason will have to adapt to the situation quickly by learning to kill before he is killed. Far Cry 3 is a shooter seen from first person perspective, so it’s no surprise that we will spend most time on eliminating the enemies any way we can. However, there also is a strong focus on exploration. The island is big, beautiful and, what’s most important, open.
So are the particular levels than need to be beaten. The player can choose his own strategy of dealing with a problem, stealthily assassinating particular enemies or going for an all-out attack in Rambo style. For our advancements in the campaign we gain points of experience. We can invest them in three varied skillsets. Each of them is perfect for a person playing in a particular style and helps play that way even better. Thus, Far Cry 3 is also a proud owner of well-applied role playing elements. Multiplayer created by Ubisoft Massive is an interesting addition. Gameplay is quite simple and easy, there are some available scenarios with targets to achieve and a well-developed system of expanding the character’s possibilities. There are also six additional cooperation missions for up to four players, with the level of difficulty continuously increasing.
Set 12,000 years before the present in the Mesolithic Age, Far Cry Primal takes the Far Cry formula to the Stone Age and plunges players into a world of limitless danger and adventure. Players take on the role of Takkar, a seasoned hunter stranded in the land of Oros after his hunting party is ambushed. Alone and defenseless, Takkar must rise to become the apex predator and lead his own tribe.
Being set in the Stone Age makes this the first Far Cry without guns of any kind. Instead, the player is limited to melee weapons such as spears, clubs and axes, as well as bows. As in previous Far Cry games, survival is the top priority, and players must contend with both the dangerous wildlife of Oros and other tribes. As Takkar gains power and builds up his own tribe, he can drive out other tribes out of Oros and establish his supremacy. Of course, at the same time, Takkar is also responsible for protecting his own tribe from other attackers.
FIFA 16 is the 2015 edition of EA Sports’ long-running FIFA series of football simulators, and features a realistic simulation of football, covering the latest teams and kits from the football world. FIFA 16 is notably the first FIFA game to feature female footballers, representing 12 national teams: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. Players can choose to play friendly matches both online and offline, or engage in a tournament mode based on the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The game brings with it brings with it numerous improvements to the long-established franchise, including an increased control in midfield and new, improved defensive moves. The game features 78 stadiums, which includes 50 real-world venues. This includes Fratton Park, home of Portsmouth, added as a tribute to the former creative director of the FIFA series and Portsmouth fan, Simon Humber, who died on cancer in 2015.
Final Fantasy Explorers is an original Final Fantasy game developed exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS and features job-system based combat against classic monsters and summons from the Final Fantasy series. The game is set on Amostra, an island whose abundant crystals have attracted many explorers. The protagonists of the story are explorers from the town of LIbertas, who set out hunting the world for crystals, which are the source of life and civilization for the world. The crystals are, however, guarded by fearsome beasts that must be defeated so that the Explorers may obtain the crystals.
The player’s 4-member party may be filled with other human players for a multplayer experience. The player can traverse the island of Amostra freely and have defeated monsters join the party, making it possible to have two players and two monsters in a party at a time. As opposed to traditional Final Fantasy games, the gameplay of Final Fantasy Explorers is more in line with the Monster Hunter series of games. The game also brings back classic Final Fantasy summons such as Ifrit and Bahamut, who may be defeated in battle.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a high-definition remastered version of Final Fantasy Type-0, originally a Japan-exclusive title for the PSP. The game is a part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis sub-series of the Final Fantasy franchise, which includes the Final Fantasy XIII series as well as Final Fantasy XV. Apart from support for HD resolutions, the game features updated graphics, an expanded color palette and drops the multiplayer functionality from the original game in lieu of additional difficulty levels, including an “Easy” option. The game also features miscellaneous other changes, such as an improved in-battle camera, increased blood levels from the original game as well as a customisable, dynamic screenshot mode. The game features brand new costumes for the player characters, as well as including costumes from the original game’s DLC content, now included as unlockables. Other than these changes, the game remains faithfully similar to the original PSP title.
Final Fantasy is an extremely successful series of Japanese role playing games. It is famous for long, developed stories: the plot of Final Fantasy XIII was too big for one game to handle and that’s how Final Fantasy XIII-2 happened. It does not have its own characters or story, it’s a direct continuation of the story arc from Final Fantasy XIII. We meet the same characters over again. The main developers, Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase, have also stayed the same. The story begins after Lightning and her companions have saved Cocoon. Gran Pulse is beginning to be repopulated and the destroyed world decided to start rebuilding. Unfortunately, Lighting is pronounced dead with everyone believing it. The only person unsure whether it is true is Serah, Lightning’s sister. She, together with a certain time traveler, forms the most important duo in the game.
The young heroine seems to recall a version of the story much different to that of the others. She is sure her sister is alive. Her version is confirmed by Noel, the time traveler who appears when the city of Neo Bodhum is attacked by monsters. His lack of knowledge about the events of Final Fantasy XIII lets the game explain some parts of the plot to new players. One of the most important objects in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is Historia Crux, a mystical artifact that lets the characters travel in time. The mysterious phenomenon is formed by various portals, all of them interconnected and leading to different times and places. The worst thing about Final Fantasy XIII was the lack of freedom. The game mostly consisted of boring, narrow corridors and identical quests full of grinding. With XIII-2, the developers did heed players’ advice. The locations are now much bigger, they at least give an illusion of freedom. Cities have become more developed and are full of citizens. There are many optional locations where we can get additional information on the universe or even an alternative ending.
Final Fantasy XIV is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game: unlike the previous installments of the famous Japanese series, it lets many players compete together in one world. We can play as mighty heroes living on the continent of Eorzea that is located in a mysterious, fantasy world called Hydaelyn. The game was in production for more than three long years, so it has every right to be a success after all the adjustments implemented by the developers over the course of the years. As the above mentioned heroes, the players need to help save Eorzea. It has many problems: both locally interior and connected to the dangers from the outside, like from the empire of Garlean. Before that, Eorzea suffered even more, barely able to recover after a horrible calamity when Bahamut, an evil monster was summoned there. Final Fantasy XIV is pretty much a typical MMORPG game.
Each player has his own avatar he develops traveling through a world full of monsters, items, artifacts and quests to complete. The game also has all the typical mechanisms common in MMORPGs like instances, player versus player and special dungeons for groups of players. One of the original aspects of Final Fantasy XIV is Fate, a system of repetitive “levequests”, randomly generated events, and the three big companies in which the players can try to get promoted to higher and higher levels. We are free to choose our character’s sex and race. We can choose from among Hyur, Eorzea’s humans, Elezen, which are elves, short Lalafell similar to gnomes, big and powerful Roegadyn and animal-like Miqo’te. The race is not as important as the class, however. This can be freely changed. A player can develop even a few at a time, choosing from amongst combat classes like Gladiator, Pugilist, Marauder, Lancer and Archer, and magical classes, like Conjurer, Thaumaturge and Arcanist. Unlike other MMORPGs, Final Fantasy XIV can be played on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 and furthermore, all players use the same servers, no matter which device they are using.
Final Fantasy XV is the fifteenth main installment in the decades-long Final Fantasy series of games, and the third game in the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries. Originally announced as as a spin-off title named “Final Fantasy Versus XIII”, it was later confirmed to be a full, numbered installment in the series. The game is set in a realistic world and features darker characters than previous games in the series. In the game world, multiple nations once held a crystal each, but ended up waging war against each other, leading to them losing their crystals. The only nation to retain its crystal was Lucis, and the rest of the nations regressed to medieval-like societies. The protagonist of the game, Noctis Lucis Caelum, is the crown prince of the kingdom of Lucis. When the empire of Niflheim invades Lucis, Noctis escapes with his newly-awakened magical power and sets himself towards defeating Niflheim and rescuing the crystal from their control.
Fire Emblem Awakening is the 13th main game in the Fire Emblem series, and the first Fire Emblem to be released on the Nintendo 3DS. It is set on the continents of Archanea and Valm from the first two Fire Emblem games, 2000 years after the events of the first game. Players control a customisable ‘Avatar’ suffering from amnesia in a continent divided into the nations of Ylisse, Plegia and Regna Ferox. Of these, Ylisse and Plegia worship opposing deities: while Ylisse worships the Divine Dragon Naga, Plegia instead worships the Fell Dragon Grima. Taken in by the Chrom, the Prince of Ylisse, the Avatar joins Chrom’s personal army, the Shepherds and fights the forces of Plegia, as well as dark monsters known as the Risen.
Fire Emblem Fates is is the fourteenth game in the Fire Emblem series of games, and the second to be developed for the 3DS after Fire Emblem Awakening. It is a title split game, meaning that it was released in three versions, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation, the latter of which was released only as downloadable content, while the former two received physical releases.
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright shares the first five chapters with Conquest and Revelations. In Fire Emblem Fates, the player creates a fully customizable Avatar, who is also the main character of the game. The player character is born to the Hoshido royalty, but find themselves raised by the Nohr royal family. Upon coming of age, the Avatar is dispatched by the King of Nohr, Garon to fight the Hoshidan army. While fighting the Hoshidans, the Avatar’s party ends up captured by Hoshido, and the Avatar is recognized as a member of the Hoshido royal family. The Avatar is brought to his relatives in Hoshido, but is the victim of an assassination plot that they survive. With both kingdoms engaging each other in open battle, the Avatar’s loyalty is split. In Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, the Avatar chooses to ally with their Hoshido kin, in order to fend off the invasion by the Nohr.
Fire Emblem Fates is is the fourteenth game in the Fire Emblem series of games, and the second to be developed for the 3DS after Fire Emblem Awakening. It is a title split game, meaning that it was released in three versions, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest and Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation, the latter of which was released only as downloadable content, while the former two received physical releases.
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest shares the first five chapters with Conquest and Revelations. In Fire Emblem Fates, the player creates a fully customizable Avatar, who is also the main character of the game. The player character is born to the Hoshido royalty, but find themselves raised by the Nohr royal family. Upon coming of age, the Avatar is dispatched by the King of Nohr, Garon to fight the Hoshidan army. While fighting the Hoshidans, the Avatar’s party ends up captured by Hoshido, and the Avatar is recognized as a member of the Hoshido royal family.
Horizon Festival is back in Forza Horizon 2, the sequel to 2012’s Forza Horizon, as players travel to Southern Europe to race in an enormous open world set in picturesque locations such as Provence, Tuscany and Côte d’Azur. The game features a day-and-night cycle, and races can take place at any time. A dynamic weather system makes for unexpected twists in weather conditions and marks the first time a weather system has been added to a Forza game.
“Bucket List” is a new feature to the game which sets forth a group of challenges for the player to complete, in a manner identical to the 1000 Club in Forza Horizon, with separate lists for France and Italy. There are also Co-Op Bucket Lists, available when the player goes to the online version of the game map. These can be completed with either random strangers or with friends, online. Furthermore, Car Meets is an online mode in which players can meet up online to compare their cars in a way similar to that of the Forzavista mode in Forza Motorsport 5. The online version of the game features such races as circuits, sprints and cross-country, as well as special game types like infected and king. The Xbox One version of the game brings back the Drivatar technology that fills players’ worlds with their friends even when they’re not online. The player can choose to create their own ‘Car Club’, which can include up to 1000 members.
Gears of War 3 is the final instalment in the extremely popular shooter trilogy exclusive for the console of Microsoft. It ends the story of the great war between the human race with Locusts. Yet again, we play as the famous Marcus Fenix, trying to bring the conflict to a fortunate end. It still is Cliff Bleszinski with his Epic Games studio who are responsible for this bestseller. With many new enemies to fight, the COG coalition is still trying to hold, outnumbered by the enormous enemy divisions. After the city of Jacinto is sunk and destroyed, Marcus Fenix and his best friend Dominic Santiago set out on a journey to fight Marcus’ father.
Not only is he dear to Marcus: he might also hold the answer to the question on what the human race should do to defeat the Locust once and for all. The single player campaign can actually be beaten with friends in a cooperation mode available for up to four people. It’s a big improvement in comparison to the previous parts, where you could only play solo or in a duo. Overall, the campaign offers thirty one missions with fifty seven secret objects to look for. One of the most important aspects of the game has always been multiplayer. It is so now, too. The most popular game mode, Horde, is replaced by Beast Mode, which is pretty much Horde all over again, but with the players playing as Locusts against the human soldiers.
There are also many new maps and locations to play on like Trenches where you can barely see anything due to a horrible sandstorm. One of the most recognizable traits of the Gears of War series is Lancer, a characteristic weapon that includes a chainsaw. In Gear of War 3, we also get its classic version, Retro Lancer, and many different weapons like One Shot, a heavy sniper rifle, and Incendiary Grenades. Every weapon requires playing differently and has its specific kill animations.
Grand Theft Auto Online is actually an addition to Grand Theft Auto V. It is a multiplayer production meant to let the players have fun together in the world of GTA V. Rockstar Games promised it would continuously develop the game, adding more content. This can also be done by players themselves thanks to a mission creator made available by Rockstar. In Grand Theft Auto Online we don’t play as the three main heroes known from the original game. Instead, every player can create their own gangster character whose looks can be modified. The characters, up to sixteen in one world, can travel Los Santos and its suburbs together, playing with all the attractions left there by the developers and undertaking various activities. There are simply many things to do: players can wrestle, play golf and tennis, do car racing and jump with a parachute.
The gameplay itself is not very different in comparison to GTA V. We have many missions meant to be completed by a group of players. The quests are usually given to the players by interesting NPCs. Each of them has their own voice, quirks and personality and is usually highly likeable. Amongst the missions we have to complete are such as an attempt at robbing a bank, an assassination or acting as a squad of bodyguards for a specific target. Typical multiplayer modes like death match are also available. They can even be created by players themselves and then, shared with the whole community. Money can be earned like in the other installments, through completing missions, robbing people, stealing cars and gambling.
The dollars well-earned can be exchanged for various things like new hairstyles, tattoos and clothes, cars and motorcycles and modifications for them. We can even buy an apartment when we can later invite our friends. Grand Theft Auto Online is generally very similar to GTA V: they are graphically identical and based on Rockstar’s RAGE engine.
Grand Theft Auto V does not have to be introduced. Awaited by every gamer in the world since the very day the previous installment was published, it is both critically acclaimed and controversial: controversial enough for even the seniors to have heard its name. The next game from Rockstar North is located mainly in Los Santos, one of the major cities of the state of San Andreas, which is inspired by California. The city, the country it is in, the whole modern population get harshly criticized and made fun of in Rockstar work that possesses big comedic values. Well-known products, franchises and celebrities get ruthlessly bashed… And it is all really fun. In Grand Theft Auto V there are as much as three main characters: much more than there ever was in the series. Michael, an ex bank robber serving as a witness in a court case, Trevor, mentally unstable aircraft pilot and Franklin, a typical ghetto boy who works for an Armenian dealer. They are all very different, each of them having a different background and social status and character traits.
The plot is constructed so as to enable the player to be able to choose which character to play as at any given time by only one press of a button. Los Santos is big and interesting enough on its own, but we can also visit all the beautiful places located around it. There are mountains to climb, deserts to cross, fields and valleys, military bases and even Los Santos’ coastline with its coral and underwater canyons. The enormous are is the biggest ever created by Rockstar North.
In the city itself, everything is alive. We can be witnesses of thousands of ordinary lives. The car traffic is natural and depends on the hour we’re looking at it, and the general organization of the city life was based on detailed investigations conducted in California. As in every Grand Theft Auto, the player can engage in tens of funny minigames like playing sports, wrestling or doing yoga. Typical missions are very diversified and original, especially thanks to the three characters that let the game be even more varied. There are also many vehicles to enter, many weapons to fight with: Grand Theft Auto V is simply full of everything and cannot be properly described.
Guild Wars 2 continues an epic saga initiated in 2005. As the previous installments it was created by an American company called ArenaNet. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game is pretty similar to the first part: some achievements can even be transferred from the first game to the second. The veterans can get additional weapons, pet companions or prestigious titles for their characters. Unlike many productions of this genre, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t require us to pay a monthly fee. It does possess a system of micro payments though, enabling us to buy small additions or decorations for our account for real money. Some of the elements of original Guild Wars like its well-developed plot or strong support for player versus player battles have stayed and found their way into Guild Wars 2.
The universe, however, is not divided into small instances anymore. Now it is formed by a one, big, stable world accessible by all players from every country in the world. The story of Guild Wars 2 begins in two hundred and fifty years after the events from Eyes of the North: the last addition to original Guild Was. The realm shown in the game had changed and advanced a lot, mostly because of the return of ancient dragons. They destroyed many cities and locations know from the first installment and put the human race in a big trouble. The other fractions, Asur, Norn and Charr are also affected negatively by the disturbing situation. While playing we can get to know all the aspects of each fraction’s history and the technological advancements they achieved during the two and a half century, like the firearms construed by the Charr. In Guild Wars two we are not limited to choosing the humans. We can choose from all the races above mentioned and also Sylvari, an ent-like race born from a magical tree. There are also many classes, weapons and skills to choose from.
Hitman is the sixth entry in the Hitman series, and serves as a prequel to the series. Developed by series veterans IO Interactive, it is, as with previous games in the series, a third-person stealth game in which players control Agent 47 and use creativity to dispatch targets however they please.
Agent 47, the titular Hitman, is an operative of the International Contract Agency, supported by his handler, Diana Burnwood. Over the course of the game, he travels across the world, taking on assassination contracts to eliminate his targets. Hitman features a completely open sandbox for each level, including a completely reactive world where the actions of non-player characters and the environment matters a great deal. A news report might innocuously aid Agent 47 in discovering the location of his target, for instance. The level design of the game hearkens back to Hitman: Blood Money, as opposed to the more linear level design from Hitman: Absolution. The game also features maps 6-7 times bigger than the biggest levels of Absolution, and which accommodate around 300 non-player characters, of which every non-player character has a name. Another notable change is the dropping of the checkpoint system of Hitman: Absolution, instead allowing players to save their game whenever they wish during missions.
Homefront: The Revolution is a sequel to the 2011 shooter Homefront and is set in 2029, four years after the events of Homefront. Players take on the role of every-man protagonist Ethan Brady, a revolutionary fighting against the invasion of the United States by the Greater Korean Republic. Set in Philadelphia, the game features a vast open world sandbox in which players fight a dedicated guerrilla war against the GKR.
After the events of Homefront, the Greater Korean Republic loses the western states of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, and in turn, strengthens its presence in the Eastern United States, making Philadelphia their main base. Citizens live in fear and oppression under the boots of the Korean People’s Army, sparking a rebellion led by Dana, leader of the resistance and Ethan “Birdy” Brady, an untrained, ‘average guy’ protagonist. With open warfare against the technologically superior Korean People’s Army no longer an option, the resistance must now work together, using guerrilla tactics to fight the KPA and take back Philadelphia.
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is the newest work of Brian Fargo, a true legend in the gaming world. He created The Bard’s Tale, one of the most kindly received role playing games of all time, and this time, too, he brings us an action RPG set in a fantasy world. He gathered a team of true enthusiast of the genre in order to create a truly old school game the hardcore fans would enjoy. Hunted is a perfect game for a couple: it features two characters and a decent cooperation mode, making the game ideal for two people and kind of boring for a solo player. The characters have very different styles of combat. We have E’lara, an archer who is not too tough, but can deal great damage from afar using her bow, and Caddoc, a mighty warrior, even a tank, who wields his giant sword and specializes in close combat.
The weapons I mentioned above are their specialties, but both have alternative ones: Caddoc has a small crossbow and E’lara can use a short sword. Both of them have some magical abilities, too. Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is mostly about combat. It features an interesting system of taking cover and sends big waves of foes against the characters. Our heroes develop their skills in a role playing kind of way, raising stats and trying to find and equip more and more powerful items. When we explore the realm, we also come across many logical puzzles. The game can be beaten solo without any problems, but cooperation is the main course of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. The characters complement each other and having company enables more strategic thoughts and less of mindless slaughter. Thanks to it being based on Unreal Engine 3, Hunted has decent graphics and ok requirements that will not make your computer melt.
inFamous 2 is the second sandbox game by Sucker Punch. The dynamic action game features a main hero who has developed various fun superpowers. He visits large metropolis, completes diversified missions and fights outnumbered by his enemies. When the first inFamous was nearing the end, Cole McGrath, the protagonist, was the strongest being to ever have existed in Empire City. Everything changed, however, with the arrival of the Beast. It came out that all the previous events were carefully planned in order to direct Cole towards his final opponent. He was too weak to win, though, and nearly died in the encounter. In order to get ready for another round, Cole seeks a place where he could augment his powers and decides on a journey to New Marais. The Beast, however, does not want to peacefully wait.
It follows McGrath destroying and killing in every place it goes to. In New Marais, there is a military organization led by Bertrand, its charismatic leader who is not going to let a freak wander to the streets of his turf. That is why Cole does not receive a warm welcome: the Beast is not his only enemy. New Marais is much more interesting and culturally diverse than Empire City, the main location in the first installment.
It’s mostly due to the fact that it was inspired by New Orleans. We are not limited by the city itself. As Cole, we visit the suburbs and various locations places around the city like bogs and cemeteries. In inFamous 2 Cole manages to get many new skills, abilities and moves. The game is interesting from the very beginning because McGrath keeps all the powers he learned in the first game. He doesn’t stay that way, though: there is a lot to learn in inFamous 2. Thanks to induction, the player can simply jump onto a roof of a skyscraper or slide along the walls of buildings. Among Cole’s new offensive powers is, for example, an electric typhoon that turns the battlefield into hell. Cole also gets new weapons that use the power of electricity.
InFamous: Second Son is a brand new installment in the inFamous series, about to serve us all-new quality on the new generation of consoles. Like the previous games, it is an action-packed, dynamic game which we see from third person perspective. The super hero atmosphere of the game will be a great treat for the fans of science fiction. In inFamous: Second Son we must say goodbye to Cole McGrath, the protagonist from the previous games. We welcome Delsin Rowe, a young boy from Seattle, the city in which and around which the game taken place. Rowe gets spotted by a special government unit meant to eradicate those in possession of superpowers. The poor boy, a street performer and graffiti artist, discovers his powers because of an accident, which causes him problems with Department of Unified Protection.
This new hero’s powers are not based on lightning and electricity: Delsin uses the element of fire complemented by power sucked out of neon advertisements around Seattle. He does not engage in building climbing like Cole did. His main means of transport is the transformation into smoke which lets him simply fly through barred windows or ventilation grates. Delsin will mostly have to fight local guardians of peace and specialized soldiers of the Department of Unified Protection. It will not be a boring slaughter: some secretly trained members of the special unit also possess unnatural powers they will be more than glad to use against Rowe. Delsin will also have to deal with various invigilation devices and security systems located around the city. One of the most important aspects of the game are its great possibilities of exploration. There is a whole metropolis to visit and there are almost no limits of exploration: thanks to his powers, Delsin can visit virtually every place he wishes to see.
Just Cause 3 is the third game in the Just Cause series of games and is a sequel to 2010’s Just Cause 2. Like previous games in the series, Just Cause 3 is set on a fictional Mediterranean island named Medici, where the player takes on the role of Rico Rodriguez. Set six years after the events of Just Cause 2, the game follows Rico as he attempts to take down the brutal dictatorship of General Sebastiano Di Ravello and his plans for world domination.
As with previous Just Cause games, Just Cause 3 features an enormous open world in the form of Medici, covering 1000 square kilometers of space. Although the map size is similar to that of the previous game in the series, increased vertical allows players to explore subterranean caverns and scale buildings with increased realism. To traverse this vast open world, players use the signature Just Cause grappling hook and parachute, along with a new wingsuit, which allows players to glide across the world. Apart from these, the player can naturally use vehicles, including fighter aircraft, ships and exotic cars. The vehicles can furthermore be customized according to the player’s whims. Over the course of the game, the player can liberate hostile military bases and towns, turning them into fast travel locations. The game features five vast biomes, each featuring its own unique landmarks and landscapes.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning combines the work of writer R.A. Salvatore, artist Todd McFarlane, designer Ken Rolston, and musician Grant Kirkhope. Together, they have imbued Amalur with rich history and powerful lore.
In Amalur, you’ll play a mortal human known as the Fateless One. You’re the only person to have ever been successfully revived in the Well of Souls, and therefore serve as a walking defiance of fate. Of course, you’ll be opposed by powerful and merciless enemies known as the Tuatha.
True to its RPG nature, KOA: Reckoning features a deep and highly customizable skill system. You will choose from one of four playable races and three class skill trees. Each skill tree is populated with 22 different abilities, allowing for a variety of powerful and unique character combinations. The three trees are known as Might, Finesse, and Sorcery – each represents the character classes of fighter, rogue, and mage. This system frees you from the restraints of playing a single class. Feel free to play as a jack of all trades combination of the three, a through and through fighter, or a sword mage. Additionally, you will accumulate fate points during combat, allowing you to enter Reckoning Mode and unleash absolute and utter hell on your enemies.
KOA: Reckoning takes a unique approach to the Action-RPG genre. While twitch skill and button mashing are certainly helpful, they won’t get you through the game. Be prepared to rely on skill and strategy. You’re encourage to experiment with the skill system to create a powerful and effective character build, and then approach combat with cold, calculated caution.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is available on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It released in North America on February 7th, 2012 and in Europe on February 9th, 2012. For the latest news, reviews, guides and more, click the button below.
L.A. Noire is an adventure game whose production was supported by Rockstar Games, the legendary studio responsible for Grand Theft Auto. It is also the debut of the Australian Team Bondi: thanks to the mix of freshness and experience, it is a truly unique game based on interesting premises. L.A. Noire is a mix of a Mafia-like action game and a typical adventure game about detectives. As the title does suggest, the story revolves around Los Angeles set back in time into 1947. The city is full of drugs and corruption, with not one peaceful day. In L.A. Noire we play as Cole Phelps. We can witness his whole career as a policeman, completing first missions as a member of the traffic patrol to continuously increase in ranks later on. Cole, a second world war veteran, is great at his job and quickly gets noticed by his superiors. We pass through the murder department and the one dedicated to preventing drug use, also taking part in events that have to do with Cole’s past in the marines. Over the course of the game, we undertake two main types of activities.
We have to explore and investigate the crime scenes searching for evidence and other important items. Having done that, Cole needs to cross-examine witnesses and suspects. Thanks to a modern technology used in the production of L.A. Noire, facial expressions of all the people Cole talks to are extremely natural in order for us to be able to deduce whether they are telling the truth. The conversations themselves are pretty complicated. The player has to carefully choose his attitude: some people will get scared if we push them too hard and some, on the other hand, won’t say a word until we do. Whether we have gathered all the possible evidence greatly affects the outcome of a cross-examination. In the game there are also some action parts: Cole has to chase suspects or fight bandits in the streets. He can also engage in many side quests.
League of Legends, to describe it in a general way, is a strategic game. If I said it to its avid fan, though, he would probably kill me. League of Legends mixes elements of a game of skill with a real time strategy and a very specific map layout to create an all-new genre: MOBA (massive online battle arena). It is not the precursor of course and it is not the only game of this kind, but it surely is the most popular one. It is all inspired by Defense of the Ancients, an old, popular map from Warcraft III. The game, though the plot is not the thing that has addicted thousands of people, is set in a typical fantasy realm called Valoran.
That world is full of countries that disagree on everything on which you can possibly disagree. After years of wars that were crippling the nations, all of them decided to create the League of Legends. From then on, all conflicts would be settled by duels or small battles of the legendary heroes, without the whole nations having to suffer. As the above mentioned legends, the players fight on closed arenas similar to typical maps from real time strategies. In every battle, there are two teams. Depending on the size of the map chosen, each team consists of three or five players, with the latter mode being much more popular and one game, much longer.
We can choose our character between every single battle. It is only our account that can level up permanently: in a normal battle, all players start out with a level one character, only leveling up during the battle to start all over again in the next one. During a match, we can also gather gold that falls out of killed minions. In a store located in the middle of our team’s base, we can buy potions and pieces of equipment that can help us on the battlefield or further specialize the character, raising some particular stats useful for our attitude to the game.
Left 4 Dead 2 continues the previous Left 4 Dead game, a bestselling hit of 2008. Valve South delivers even more of the content enjoyed by every player. The four characters from the original Left 4 Dead get replaced by a new quartet. The story directly continues the plot from Left 4 Dead, beginning right after it had ended. With our new survivor friends we have to try to stay alive attacked by new hordes of zombies. We get to visit Georgia and New Orleans. In Left 4 Dead, the most important way of killing the undead was through the use of firearms. In the sequel, Valve implements the use of melee weapons, adding a whole new side to the battles.
Instead of pistols and rifles, we can use chainsaws, axes, baseball bats and… a frying pan. The game was intensive enough before: now, with the addition of a whole new set of weapons, the level of dynamics got squared. Valve has done all they could to make every game different from the others. The weather is dynamic and changeable, and so are… the maps. Some of their elements can vary: for example, you can suddenly find your only hope, the last passage… blocked by an old bus. This makes the game even more fun and unpredictable. You can never be sure of what happens next, just like you would in real life. You never know what is behind the corner. It also affects the enemies: they have various hiding places and unpredictable scripts, so that they can come at you from the most unexpected direction. The four new characters are Nick, Rochelle, Coach and Ellis. Everyone will find their match. As usually, Left 4 Dead 2 is perfect for cooperation. In includes even more campaigns, modes and scenarios than the first installment, being a perfect choice for a group of friends.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is the third and final game in the Final Fantasy XIII saga, and brings back protagonist Lightning 500 years after the events of the previous game, Final Fantasy XIII-2, into a world that is sinking into a sea of chaos, with only 13 days remaining. The game is a part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis sub-series of the main Final Fantasy series, and was directed by Motomu Toriyama.
In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the world of Gran Pulse has been consumed, leaving only a few islands called Nova Crysalia. With the Chaos halting human aging, human population has started to stagnate and shrink. Two religions have come to dominate the world of Nova Chrysalis: the Order of Salvation, which worships Bhuniveize, and the Children of Etro, who worship the Goddess. Lightning is awoken from her crystal stasis by the Bhuniveize, and is made the savior of humanity, who must free the souls of humanity from their hearts and guide them into a new world that Bhuniveize will create after 13 days, when the present world is consumed by Chaos. Characters from the previous games in the sub-series also make their appearance, including Hope Estheim, who aids Lightning using a wireless communicator and Snow Villiers, who becomes the leader of the region of Yusnaan after his fiance Serah Farron dies.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is an action role playing game: quite typical a genre for a Lord of the Rings adaptation. The tribute to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s best trilogy was created by the Snowblind studio, known for amazing Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norath. Thus, the studio did have a lot of experience with hack and slash games: did they manage to apply it to this project? Taking place at the same time that the event from the Lord of the Rings, the game’s story is a great treat for the fans of the book. Here, the player will have to fight the powers of darkness just like the well-known heroes. However, he will play a different role, engaging himself in a military campaign against the forces of Sauron in the northern regions of Middle-Earth. You character can be either an elf, a human or a dwarf, with each race having different special abilities, for example dwarves are at ease in dungeons, being able to see magical runes and secret passages.
You can also choose one of three classes: a wizard, a rogue and a warrior. The rogues can turn invisible and attack from under cover. The warriors make the enemies focus on them, saving their weaker companions from dangerous encounters, and the wizards are in possession of powerful offensive spells connected to the elements of ice and fire. They can also cast buffs like a protective shield and heal their companions. The most fun part of the game are all the abilities we receive when our characters get more and more experienced. During the game we gather items and talk to NPCs. The system of conversation is identical to that from Mass Effect and influences the world and the availability of certain side quests. We will see many characters that were not originally planned by Tolkien, but the producer of the Lord of the Rings movies helped in their development, so they might be believe to be a part of the canon.
Enter the post-apocalyptic wasteland in the official video game based on the Mad Max franchise, titled Mad Max. Players take on the role of the series’ titular hero, Max Rockatansky as he sets out to the Plains of Silence in search of fuel. Just then, he is attacked by a group of War Boys, led by Scabrous Scrotus, son of Immortan Joe and ruler of Gastown. The War Boys steal Max’s clothes, supplies, weapons and car, leaving Max alone in the baking wasteland sun. Max sets out to exact revenge on the raiders, while at the same trying to build the ultimate car of the wasteland: the Magnum Opus.
Mad Max puts a spin on the conventional action-adventure formula by introducing vehicular combat, which takes up about 60% of the campaign. As Max assembles the Magnum Opus, the player can add various modifications and enhancements to it by scavenging materials from the desert, hijacking enemies’ cars and collecting car parts. The Magnum Opus is fully customisable, allowing players to modify its chassis, wheels, body work, paint job, engine and more, with each change having an effect on the overall car. Of course, the player can add weapons like flamethrowers, mounted cannons, grappling hooks and more to the Magnum Opus, making it the most lethal vehicle in the wasteland.
Madden NFL 16 is the 2015 edition of the Madden NFL series, and features hectic American football action based on the National Football League. Developed by series veterans EA Tiburon, the game features numerous enhancements on the previous entry, including improved aesthetics, new player spotlights, dynamic goals and achievements, and cameras that are both on the field and off it.
The game features a collection of features dubbed “Air Supermacy”, which revolutionizes passing and catching, featuring over 400 two-player catch animations. In Air Supremacy, hand off and blocking have a tighter timing, and each play type has a captured hand off specifically designed for that play, making for hundreds of animations. Players can now “roll to pass”, which is integrated with the boot and roll out plays. One of the bonuses to the roll out is that players don’t suffer the same accuracy penalties as throwing while on the run. Scramble is also now more responsive. A new AI architecture named the “Behavior Coordinator” now makes for a more granular set of behaviors, allowing the CPU QBs to be extremely challenging compared to previous games in the series. Based on their traits, every style of QB will react differently.
Mafia III is the third installment in the Mafia series, and the first in the series to be developed by the newly-formed development studio, Hangar 13, for whom it serves as the first title.
Mafia III is, like its predecessors, a third-person action-adventure game set in 1968, in which players take on the role of Lincoln Clay, a biracial orphan and Vietnam War veteran as he returns to his hometown of New Orleans after the war. His friends murdered by local mobs, Lincoln Clay decides to set out on a quest for revenge. Joining the “Black Mob”, Clay becomes an enemy of the Italian Mob, who attempt to murder Clay. Surviving the murder attempt, Clay decides to start his own criminal organization and take on the Italian Mob and work his way up to defeating the criminal boss Sal Marcano, a quest in which he is aided by three allies: Cassandra, Burke and the protagonist of Mafia II, Vito Scaletta.
Mario Kart 8 is the eighth edition of the Mario Kart series and brings back the action of cart racing with Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser and the rest. The game continues traditional elements of the Mario Kart series, in which Mario and characters from the Mario universe race each other in go-karts and other vehicles while trying to disrupt opponents and using power-ups to improve their own position in the race. The game marks the return of 12-player racing from Mario Kart Wii, as well as motorbikes and hang gliders. Returning Mario Kart 7 features include underwater racing and vehicle customization.
The game also introduces new elements to the franchise, such as anti-gravity racing, allowing players to drive on walls and ceilings. The player can bump into other racers to trigger a Spin Boost, giving the player an extra speed boost.
In the second installment of the Mass Effect series, Bioware returns you to to the 22nd century Milky Way galaxy. Once again, take on the role of Commander Shepard, an elite human soldier locked in a tight battle with a dangerous alien race known as the Collectors. Your job is simple: recruit a top-notch team, gain their loyalty, and lead them into battle against the threat to humanity’s existence.
During your journeys, you’ll meet a variety of memorable characters, some human and many alien. Prepare to encounter a new organization known as Cerberus, a deadly Asari warrior, and a number of old friends. Play and equip Commander Shepard as you wish. Choose you own path by selecting between different responses to intense situations, and select one of six character classes: vanguard, sentinel, infiltrator, adept, soldier, or engineer. The soldier features a head-on, combat-oriented play-style, while the adept wreaks havoc with a collection of bionic powers.
Players of the original Mass Effect will enjoy the ability to upload your save files to impact the story in significant ways. Your choices, both old and new, will follow you throughout the game. Think carefully as you make decisions…will you follow the path of the altruistic and selfless Paragon, or play the role of the ruthless Renegade? Additionally, Mass Effect 2 brings you the same action-RPG combat you experienced in the first game – with a few tweaks. Limited ammunition and health regeneration put an emphasis on the third-person shooter aspects.
While the first Mass Effect was heavily centered on the plot of the main story, Mass Effect 2 allows for more flexibility. In addition to challenging the Collectors head-on, you’ll experience the universe through a series of optional side missions. Don’t worry – they pack just as much punch as the main content. Explore the planets of the solar system and investigate areas of interest as you please.
Mass Effect 2 released for PC and Xbox 360 on January 26th, 2010. The PlayStation 3 version released on January 18th, 2011. For the latest news, reviews, guides and more, click the button below
strong>Mass Effect 3 is the third installment of the Mass Effect series. Additionally, it’s your final chance to play as Commander Shepard, the legendary human soldier. This time, you’ll lead Shepard and his elite team into battle against the paramiltary group known as Cerberus and a dangerous race of machines: The Reapers. The Reapers are a synthetic-organic race of machines that culls the galaxy of all advanced life every 50,000 years. Once again, it’s time for the Reapers to rise.
Similar to Mass Effect 2, the you can carry over your previous save files from the first two Mass Effect games. The decisions you made in each playthrough combine to give each player a unique experience in the world of Mass Effect 3. To be more specific, over 1000 variables combine together to shape your individual story. For players new to the Mass Effect universe, don’t worry – you can choose an origin story that pulls together the major choices you would have made in the first two games.
Mass Effect 3 ushers in several new changes to the combat system. A brand new cover system allows for more precise offense and defense, while the ability to score instant melee kills gives you additional flexibility on the battlefield. Most importantly, the artificial intelligence has been greatly improved and is more responsive than ever before. You’ll also enjoy an expanded leveling system that allows you to distribute points among varying skill trees, further individualizing the gameplay experience.
Additionally, Mass Effect 3 allows you to choose from one of three pre-set campaign modes: RPG mode, story mode, and action mode. RPG mode represents the typical Mass Effect experience with a normal combat difficulty and player decisions. Story mode also allows for manual replies and decisions, but decreases combat difficulty. Finally, action mode minimizes the story aspects with automatic conversation replies.
Mass Effect 3 released for PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U on March 6th, 2012. For the latest news, reviews, guides and more, click the button below.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is another instalment in the bestselling Metal Gear Solid franchise created and leaded by Hideo Kojima. It is a prequel and a prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It is mostly meant for the faithful fans of the series. It is a perfect production for those who wish to buy The Phantom Pain, but want to get to know the new gameplay mechanics before they do so. Ground Zeroes happens a year after the events from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Paz and Chico, characters well known to the series’ aficionados, are held prisoners by Omega in their high security prison camp. Snake and Kaz Miller need to infiltrate the enemy organization, enter the camp and save the hostages.
Their reason is not really their good heart: both Chico and Paz possess information regarding snake and his military organization. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a stealth-action game like all the previous game published under this franchise. Dynamic, action-packed sequences are combined with moments that require staying quiet and hidden for long minutes. One of the most important changes are those in regard to the interface. In Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes it is much clearer and easier to understand and it provides the player with loads of useful information, never showing anything unnecessary, which helps the visibility. In previous installments, the locations used to be quite small. This time, however, they are not as closed as they usually were. The world has become much more open and the player is free to explore the locations and choose which missions he wants to complete and when. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is one of the first games even to have used Fox Engine, a brand new engine meant to take advantage of the technology implemented into the new generation of consoles.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, players reprise the role of Big Boss as he builds up Diamond Dogs, a Private Force of elite soldiers taking on mercenary jobs in battlefields all over the world. At the same time, Boss’ thirst for revenge has not ended: after the destruction of the MSF as depicted in Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, Big Boss and his accomplice Kazuhira Miller seek out to find and eliminate Skull Face, leader of the notorious elite ops unit that was responsible for destroying all that Big Boss sought to build up.
Keeping with Metal Gear tradition, players stealthily infiltrate enemy bases to eliminate targets, obtain intelligence and discover the location of the notorious Skull Face, but with a twist – the vast open world of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain allows for an unparalleled, open stealth action experience. Players prepare for missions with an extensive range of equipment – from rocket launchers to tranquilizer pistols – which can further be developed at the Mother Base, and then set out to accomplish objectives by attracting the least attention as possible.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third person perspective action game based on the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. It was produced by the experience Monolith Productions studio, a team that has created games like F.E.A.R, F.E.A.R. 2 and No One Lives Forever. The story revolves around Middle-earth, the fictional world created in the Lord of the Rings, but does not follow the story from the book closely. The decisions of the player can strongly influence important events in the plot, changing the outcome of the story on which the producers did greatly focus. The developers collaborated with Middle-earth Enterprises and the special effects studio Weta Workshop, both of which were engaged into the production of the Lord of the Rings movie saga. Thanks to their input, the game suits the overall atmosphere of the universe perfectly and remains similar to the visual style of the films.
Our particular hero in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is Talion, an experienced scout. He and his whole family are murdered by Sauron’s servants, but for the scout the history doesn’t end there. Instead of dying, he is resurrected by the ancient Ghost of Revenge and rewarded with horrible powers. Talion decides to embark on a journey to Mordor in order to kill everyone who had a part in his family’s murder. He can also find out why and who exactly brought him back to life and get to know the exact history of the creation of the Rings. In the game, we mostly focus on engaging in epic battles. The combat system is based on that from Arkham series. The enemies are very intelligent. Every monster is somehow different from the others, he has his own character traits, rank, strong and weak points. Some enemies can learn and remember our tactics or even begin to hate the hero and try to take revenge on him.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is the reboot of 2008’s Mirror’s Edge, and is developed by the same development studio responsible for Mirror’s Edge, as well as the Battlefield series and Star Wars: Battlefront, DICE.
Set in the futuristic city of Glass, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has players taking on the role of Faith Connors, a ‘runner’ who servers as an illegal courier in the city. As opposed to the previous game in the series, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst explores Faith’s origin story, as well as her eventual attempt to take on the totalitarian conglomerate of corporations who maintain a stranglehold over the city of Glass.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is an extended version of the bestselling Monster Hunter 3 published in 2009 for Nintendo Wii. The most popular game in Japan is an action role playing game based on the player engaging in huge encounters with hordes of horrible monsters, oftentimes of enormous sizes. The player needs to invent and implement his own strategies, preparing carefully for every single battle. He needs to choose an appropriate weapon from amongst twelve of them, wear a good piece of armor and gather all the ingredients necessary to brew mixtures. You also need to get to know everything about your enemy’s weak and strong points and his habits. Sometimes, you don’t actually need to defeat the beast: in some missions you are needed to chase him away from a place he has taken over or to catch him. In the enhanced version, the bestiary clearly did get extended. Among the new monsters there are Barchydions, Jhen Mohran, Gold Rathian, Silver Rathalos, Nargacuga and Lagiacrus.
Some of the previously existing beasts also received new types of attack and animations. Capcom has also put a lot of focus on improving the graphics and using all the advanced possibilities of Wii-U. The versions for Wii-U and 3DS have shared save files. The plot is not much different in comparison to the previous installment. The player controls a hero employed by a guild. Following its orders, he has to defeat various monsters that pose threat to the harbor village called Janjia. In the game there are as much as two hundred quests and mission, but unfortunately only a small percent of those is new in comparison to the previous, not extended version. The game, though, is simply huge. For a fan, it will be a pile of content worth of a year’s gameplay, but a newbie may find himself unable to find himself in the world of the game.
Mortal Kombat otherwise known as Mortal Kombat 9 is a side scrolling fighting game with 3D graphics with options to move ( or maneuver ) in 3 dimensions. It is considered to be a reboot of the Classic Mortal Kombat Franchise , Developed by NetherRealm Studios. Formally known as Midway. The game was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems in April 2011, and a PlayStation Vita port was released in May 2012.A Special edition of the game, titled Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition, was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in February 2012 and for Microsoft Windows (PC) in July 2013.
Due to its extremely violent content, the game was banned in Australia and South Korea.On release, Mortal Kombat received Extremely positive reviews and won several awards for fighting game of the year.It was also a success, selling more than two million copies in the first month of Release. Set directly after Mortal Kombat: Armageddon this installment focuses on the original trilogy of the series. The storyline involves the God of Thunder and protector of Earthrealm, Raiden, attempting to change the events of what happened at Armageddon by traveling back in time and tactically changing the past to benefit the future. Key to achieving this is to contact his past self as he faces his demise at the hands of the evil emperor of Outworld, Shao Kahn.
Mortal Kombat 9 is closer to its roots with its design as it is more a 2D experience than a 3D one. Also the choice of characters is still broad as well as the “Kreate a Kharacter” being removed from the game. Unlike previous Mortal Kombat Titles, four buttons on the game controller represent attacks and are each linked to a designated limb. Also A new feature makes its debut called the “super meter”, which can be charged by various actions during battle such as performing special moves. Getting hit by your opponent or getting blocked by them. At level one of the meter, it can be used to deliver a more powerful version of one of the character’s special attacks. At level two it can be used to interrupt a combo attack, and if all three levels are filled this will allow for the delivery of a special attack called an “X-ray move” where we see your character breaking the bones of your opponent in an X-rayvision filter over the screen. Not to mention hearing the bone crushing blows as they make contact. Gruesome…
Mortal Kombat X is the tenth Mortal Kombat game, and the second Mortal Kombat game developed by NetherRealm Studios. As with previous Mortal Kombat games, Mortal Kombat X is a fighting game in which players control a member of the Mortal Kombat roster: stretching up to 29 characters, both new and old, including such series veterans as Scorpion, Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero and Sonya Blade. After picking their fighter, players compete in a fighting duel against either another player or the CPU in grueling, ultra-violent combat to the death. The game features several play modes: Story, 1 vs 1 Ranked, King of the Hill, Survivor and Test Your Luck, as well as Living Towers, a brand new play mode. Another new addition is Faction Wars, in which players choose one of five factions and join a persistent online cross-platform competition with other players, earning rewards as they go. Each character has three different variations: as an example, Mortal Kombat’s signature fighter Scorpion has one variation in which he wields dual swords, another in which he relies on fiery special moves, and a third in which he can summon hellspawn minions to assist him in the fight.
Murdered: Soul Suspect dives in to the age old question, If a serial Killer plunges you out of a five story window, can you seek vengeance by solving your own murder from the Afterlife? Well, that question may not be asked very often but in soul suspect you can follow the clues and team up with a psychic to find a way out of lingo, also known as ‘the dusk’. This stealthy, detective like, adventure game, developed by Airtight Games explores the more dark side of a fictional version of the town Salem, Massachusetts.
Play as detective Ronan O’Connor who is brutally murdered after tailing a brutal serial killer, known around the town as The Bell Killer. Explore Salem and help out other lost souls on your way to redeem your own. With several areas to explore including a church, jail, apartment, and the town itself, all the while picking up clues to whom this mysterious Bell Killer may be on your journey. Find and entrust the help of the young lady who apparently witnessed your murder and is also the only living person in game who can actually see you.
Natural Doctrine is a Japanese RPG directed by Atsushi Ii, director of Patapon and featuring music by Noriyuki Asakura, who has previous composed for Rurouni Kenshin. The game also features an ending theme song by King Crimson.
Natural Doctrine follows the main protagonist Geoff, and his companions Vasily and Anka. The game is set in a universe in which humans combat other races with magic and swords. The humans built the fortress city of Feste as their home as they fought against species for survival. These other races include minotaurs, goblins and orcs. Geoff, the player character, is a guard solder dispatched to clear out goblin dens in order to grant access to resources that are crucial to mankind’s survival. Over the course of his adventure, Geoff meets other allies, such as Zekelinde the warrior, or Mel, a young girl able to control giant stone golems. The game is focused around the concept of natural selection.
Need for Speed is the twenty-second game in the Need for Speed series of racing games and a full reboot of the franchise, bringing back the series’ focus to the import scene and tuner culture previously seen in the Need for Speed: Underground sub-series. As with other notable EA games, Need for Speed is built on the Frostbite engine.
Need for Speed features a storyline told through FMV sequences that seamlessly integrate with gameplay elements. The story itself is based around the player a small group of racers hoping to impress the game’s five main racing icons. Over the course of the game, the player character comes to meet other drivers and faces challenges that test his friendship with his comrades: Spike, Amy, Robyn, Manu and Travis.
Need for Speed: No Limits is the twenty-first installment in the Need for Speed franchise, and the first title in the franchise to be made exclusively for mobile devices. As with the series reboot game Need for Speed released in the same year, the game features an emphasis on street racing and vehicle customization, while also including elements from other Need for Speed titles, such as escaping from the police. The game is developed by Firemonkeys Studios, known for developing other mobile racing titles such as Real Racing 3 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
Set in the city of Blackridge, Need for Speed: No Limits has players competing in “Underground races”, which serves as the game’s story mode and a “Car Series races”, in which only certain cars may participate to win in-game rewards. The player can additionally participate in time-limited special events, for which the player will be given a special car temporarily for use, specially for the event. If the player can finish the event before the time runs out, the player gets to keep the car for themselves. The game features over 1,000 races and allows players to win additional cars as they go.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a beautifully animated Japanese role playing game set in a fantasy world. It was created by Level 5, a well-knows studio, authors of games like the newest Dragon Quests, and Ghibly, the most famous Japanese creator of animated movies. One of their movies was even awarded with an Oscar: that surely is a promise of withstanding graphic quality. The game looks like a big, interactive animation. Thanks to how beautiful it looks and how moving the story is, one may forget that he is actually playing a game. The game was published on PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DS. Both games begin in a similar way, but the story goes in a different direction and the outcomes are not the same.
The main character is Olivier. The thirteen-year-old boy and his loving mother Allie lead a peaceful live in the City of Hotroit. One day, because of an unlucky accident Olivier falls into a river. He would have drown but for his mother, who barely manages to save the boy. No one knows why, but a few days later his mother dies because of an unexplainable disease. Olivier is left alone, with only his teddy bear to serve him as a companion. Suddenly, when he cries, hugging the toy, it comes to life and invites him to visit a magical realm. In the mysterious world, every person from other universe has a second self with whom they are deeply connected. On the other side, Allie happens to be a mighty witch fighting an evil wizard called Jabo. Olivier suspects that his mother’s sudden death might have something to do with the battle taking place on the other side. He decides to set out on a journey to defeat the evil, hoping he might be able to bring his mother back. The gameplay is divided into two parts: battles and exploration. Typical fantasy locations are full of inns, stores, towns, NPCs and quests. We also meet many monsters with which we fight by a system that mixes turn based strategies with those played in real time.
Nintendo Land for WiiU is a fun, casual game for the whole family to enjoy. It is a collection of twelve mini games, all of them based on the characters and events from Nintendo’s most popular franchises (for example Metroid, Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing). They are all implemented as attractions in a fictional amusement park. The game is free for those who buy a Nintendo WiiU and is meant to show them the interesting functions of the new gaming system. It particularly exhibits asymmetric gameplay, a concept according to which every players have a different gameplay experience according to which controller he happens to be using. The particular games are of various genres: we can find platformers, racing games, action ones and even some logical puzzles.
In some of them, you can invite friends or family to play together in a team consisting of up to five people. Four of them can control their characters using Wii Remote and the fifth one needs to make do with Wii Pad. Some of the games are: Metroid Blast, a dynamic shooter inspired by Metroid series, Pikmin Adventure, a logical platformer inspired by Pikmin series, Yoshi’s Fruit Card, a logical game with Yoshi turned into a go-kart, Captain Falcon’s Twister Race, a racing game based on F-Zero. The players can play together using split screen together with only one gaming system. The game is a perfect choice for parties or to help kids pass time, especially considering the fact that it is actually a free piece of content for the WiiU owners. The graphics are in high definitions and very detailed. They are bound to be enjoyed by small kids, but they are not pathetically exaggerated.
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Paper Mario Sticker Star serves as a tribute for the Paper Mario series which had its debut in times of Nintendo 64. In the newest installment Mario has to save princess Peach yet again. The way he does it is pretty similar to what it was in the previous parts. Even though the game is published on Nintendo 3DS, a part of mechanics has remained from a console decades older. In order to retrieve princess Peach, Mario will have to cross various differentiated and colorful locations overcoming challenging obstacles. The places he visits are inhabited by characters both good and evil, some friendly towards him and some visibly hostile. The levels use either two or three dimensions. There are big and open, there are many possibilities of leaving the main route in order to search for hidden coins, treasure and achievements. Just like in Epic Yarn and the other installments of the Paper Mario series, the material from which the characters and the realm is created is an extremely important element of the gaming experience.
In this game, the world is created almost exclusively from paper cut-outs. The characters we meet along the way are just two dimensional pieces of paper. Mario collects special stickers which enable him to reach new locations as soon as he sticks them on the world map. They can also give Mario an advantage over his enemies in the battles he has to do. The fights themselves are fought in turns. The player and his enemies undertake actions variably. It is visible that the developers simply wanted the game to be as happy and colorful as possible. 3DS is the perfect console for this title. Thanks to the possibility of viewing the locations in three dimensions, we can see them as even prettier and equipped with more depth.
PayDay 2 is a shooter that continues an extremely successful game of 2011. The Swedish studio it belongs to, Overkill Software, decided to heed the advice of the game’s faithful fans and put their suggestions into practice, thus creating what everyone truly desired. PayDay 2 is a gangster shooter played from first person perspective. The players play as members of an organized gang in the city of Washington. The plot revolves around the series of difficult and dangerous missions the gangsters receive from the CRIMENET system. The quests and targets are very differentiated and never get boring as every game turns out to be different than all the previous ones. Apart from typical robberies and assaults, the players can also engage in kidnappings and drug transportation. Up to four players at a time can play one mission and, which I think is a match, there are four classes to choose from, all perfect when combined together.
Mastermind, Enforcer, Ghost and Technician each have their own set of skills to develop and a specific type of equipment to use. Before you set out on a mission, you can visit a special store to spend the money earned through the robberies. You can buy things like pass codes for the doors you will encounter or a quick helicopter escape from the scene of crime. PayDay 2 is mostly about cooperation. You can barely achieve anything without a well-knit team of friends or at least a decent, communicative set of strangers. Communication is crucial for developing strategies and sharing the work in order not to get caught. It is not only poor civilians who our bandits come across. They also have to face guards, policemen, FBI agents and even SWAT units. Sometimes they will even meet rivaling gangsters unwilling to share the loot. Many events are randomly triggered, helping the game to stay fresh and unpredictable even after long hours of play.
Persona 5 rings in the fifth edition of the Persona series of games and is the sixth installment in the overall Persona series. The game once again features a one year in the life of a high school student, who gains the ability to summon Personas, special facts of his psyche that can be used to attack or defend him in battle. The game’s sixteen-year old protagonist is transferred to Shujin High School in Tokyo, where he is staying with friends of his parents, in a cafe. In Tokyo, he meets up with a cast of characters, including the problem child Ryuji Sakamoto, the more withdrawn Ann Taramaki, the art student Yusuke Kitagawa and a mysterious shape-shifting cat-like creature known simply as “Morgana”. The protagonist and his four friends collectively form a group called the “Phantom Thieves of Hearts”, with the goal of the group being to explore the “Palace”, a mysterious castle created from the hearts of people. There, the group intends to ‘steal’ ill intent from the hearts of others, all the while having to confront adult authority figures and a greater enemy that is eventually revealed as the game progresses. This way, the protagonist is a normal high school student by day, and a phantom thief by night.
Pikmin 3 is the third game in the Pikmin series and is a sequel to Pikmin 2. The game, produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, was originally slated to appear for the Wii, before its development transitioned to the Wii U. Pikmin 3 has players controlling three alien captains who explore the surface of a planet called “PNF-404”, the setting of the previous Pikmin games. The aliens come from the planet of Koppai, which is currently suffering from famine. Alph, Brittany and Charles, the three explorers arrive on PNF-404 hoping to find cultivable seeds to bring back to Koppai and reverse the famine. As they reach the planet, however, their ship crash-lands, forcing the three to separate. There, they encounter the Pikmin creatures, who can be guided and commanded as a horde to explore the world, uncover treasures, destroy barriers, build bridges and defeat enemies.
The Pikmin show up in various colours, with different types of Pikmin having immunities to various hazards. For instance, Red Pikmin are immune to fire, while Yellow Pikmin are immune to electricity. This version of the game introduces two new types of Pikmin: grey “Rock Pikmin”, who can destroy tough barriers such as glass or crystal and are immune to being crushed by heavy objects, and pink “Winged Pikmin”, who can attack airborne enemies and carry items through the air. While the previous game in the series only allowed players to control two leaders of the Pikmin, Pikmin 3 allows the player to control three, between whom the player can switch freely at will. The game takes advantage of the Wii U GamePad to show an overhead map of the game environment on the touchscreen at all times.
The Pokemon series does not have to be introduced to anyone. Pokemon Conquest is one of the last Pokemon games published on Nintendo DS before the focus switching onto Nintendo 3DS. The game developed by Tecmo Koei studio mixes action with tactical elements. The story is placed in the popular anime’s universe, but it also includes samurai warriors. The players needs to defend the Ransei region from the ruthless army of Nobunaga, its leader. In order to defeat Nobunaga, a mythical powerful Pokemon is needed. However, it can only be summoned when all the arguing kingdoms are united to fight for the same cause. The game is divided into various chapters. In each of them, we control a different Warlord with specific stats and attributes. Thorough them all, we need to conquest seventeen kingdoms, and having done that, we must finally stand up for ourselves and face Nobunaga and his army.
The combat system is complex and interesting. We fight in turns using all the Pokemon we have already managed to gather. The maps we play on are varied and the tactic we need to apply highly depends on them. As we conquest the kingdoms, we gain access to new Pokemon which enables us to create new strategies. Unlike in the classic Pokemon game, every creature can use only one move, usually representative for a particular species. Depending on the Warlord we are playing as at that moment, the creatures can even have different powers than the normally would. There are a few modes in Pokemon Conquest. We can play the main campaign or a quick battle with the AI, but there is also the possibility of an encounter with another real player over the internet. After completing the main story line, the player can also play thirty two varied special episodes, each featuring one of the Warlords and having an offbeat objective.
Probably everyone has heard about Pokemon at some point in their lives, either about the anime or about one of the tens of Japanese games about those creature. Pokemon X/Y for 3DS begins the series’ sixth generation. The world is the same it has always been. So is gameplay: the game is all about catching them all. As Pokemon trainers, we travel the world trying to find and catch even stronger creatures than we have at any given time. Having caught them, players train them in order to use them for battling other owners. This edition of the cult series introduces seventy four new Pokemon including three brand new starting options: Chespin, Fennekin and Froakie.
There is also a whole new Pokemon type: Fairy. A new form of Evolution, Mega Evolution, lets us further evolve those Pokemon which would have remained unchanged in the previous installments. As in the previous games, we have to explore various interesting location strewn about on a big area. This time it is the Kalos region based on France. The main goal of the game is defeating an evil organization called Team Flare while trying to challenge the Pokemon League Champion. We talk to other characters, trying to learn something from them or completing tasks they hire us for, and we fight. The latter looks pretty much traditionally, we fight in turns, using our Pokemon’s attacks and techniques, sometimes having to make use of mixtures, Pokeballs and other items. The main change and the most spectacular one is the graphics. This is the first Pokemon game realized in full three dimensions. It applies to the world we explore, characters’ models and battle animations. The new design let the developers fully use the potential of Nintendo 3DS’ three dimensional screen.
Prototype 2 continues a critically acclaimed action game from 2009. In the first installment we were able to freely explore the island of Manhattan closed off from the rest of the world because of quarantine caused by a horrible virus infecting people and turning them into monsters. We could play as Alex Mercer, a powerful, dangerous mutant: one of the only people only partially affected by the virus. Alex gained superpowers and the ability to transform his own body but stayed mentally sane. This time, we will not control him: we will have to catch him. In Prototype 2, we return to Manhattan as James Heller, a former soldier who believes his wife and child to have died because of Mercer. It was his fault that all Manhattan became infected. Fourteen months later, New York has been divided into three zones: infected, transitional and free of the virus’ influence. Heller explores the city, getting to know more and more about the infection and trying to get strong enough for a confrontation with Alex Mercer. In Prototype 2 the plot flows better than it did in Prototype.
Even the side missions are strongly connected to Heller’s main goal and let him find out more about mutations and the virus. Witnessing events caused by an organization called Blackwatch, we fall further into the intrigue. In the meantime, James gathers experience and exchanges it for new skills, attacks and combos. In the combat, what has changed are the controls. Now we have bigger control over what is happening on the battlefield. There are also many new monsters for us to come across, some of them very disturbing and surprising. The audiovisuals haven’t changed a lot since the original Prototype, but everything was made a bit better. The animations are visibly more realistic and spectacular, and the textures more detailed.
Rage is the first new franchise created by id Software since… 1996! They surely needed a lot of time to get at least a bit creative. The production of this brand new action game was directed by John Carmack, a co-producer of popular series like Doom and Quake. The world of Rage seems to have been inspired by movies like MadMax. The universe is post-apocalyptic, visibly destroyed and in ruins. Earth has been heavily and, unfortunately, negatively influenced by an asteroid that crashed on it.
Now, the carefully selected humans live in the Ark, a special shelter which let the lucky few survive the calamity. The main character is forced to leave the Ark and survive on the outside. He quickly meets and befriends other ragged people who managed to endure. He has to start the fight for a better future, facing terrible mutants, ruthless bandits and a military regime. Though shooting is the most important part of the game, RAGE is not a typical first person perspective shooter. The vehicle belonging to the hero is as important as the battles. The car has to be modified and adapted to traveling through the destroyed, dry and empty land. It is our main means of transports and the most important property.
Through the course of the game we encounter up to four vehicles like that, each having different statistics and varying in the number of slots for weapons. They let us quickly move from place to place and take part in races. RAGE pretends to be a sandbox, but does not do it too well. The gameplay is divided into a series on short, simple missions. RAGE also has a system of crafting which lets the player create useful gadgets thanks to the schemes found along the way. The game has two poorly realized multiplayer modes: Fury, a death match played in vehicles, and a set of missions projected to be play by two players.
Resident Evil HD Remaster is the high-definition version of 2002’s Resident Evil, which in itself was a remake of the original 1996 Resident Evil. The new HD version has a vast slew of features and upgrades intended for both modern-day gamers and veteran fans returning to the franchise. The game features a resolution boost to 1080p, a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 and support for 5.1 surround sound. The much-criticized controls of the original game have been replaced with a new control scheme, allowing players to move their character in the direction of the analog stick or direction key. Players can, however, choose to play with the original control scheme if you they wish, with the switch being possible in real-time. Apart from these basic enhancements, the game features considerably detailed graphics, non-static 3D models, post-processing effects such as bloom filters and high-resolution background environments, as well as animated 3D models.
Resident Evil 6, also known as Biohazard 6 in japan, is a Puzzle solving Action based Survival Horror game. It was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 2, 2012 and for Microsoft Windows on March 22, 2013 with four playable storylines, each with their own unique style designed intentionally to be different from the others. The story arch’s are all connected and in some instances cross over.Each story follows a separate Protagonist.Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Jake Muller and Ada Wong.
It is also a Co-operative Multiplayer game meaning that each of our heroes have a partner that is a playable character.the player can allow another player to join in online at any time and inventories are now kept separate from each other. The game also features the Mercenaries mode, where players fight hordes of enemies together.Also the Agent Hunt mode which allows players to take control of enemies in other people’s games.
Resident Evil 6 features Context sensitive button sequences with visually pleasing actions. A Wide variety of weapons to choose from each with customizable options. For example you can level up accuracy or Damage etc. A welcome addition to the players arsenal was the Tablet form of the classic healing herbs which featured in all previous Resident Evil games which now allows players to heal themselves at the press of a button.
Resident Evil 6 was met with mixed reviews upon release. Scoring as low as 60% by some critics. The game was in development since just after the release of resident evil 4 which gave the fan base reason to have high expectations for this installment. Pre release there were several stolen Polish and English copies released in German packaging for sale in Poland which Capcom refereed to as “An unfortunate incident”. Pre ordered copies of the game include all three bonus maps for The Mercenaries mode, “Rail Yards”, “High Seas Fortress” and “The Catacombs” also in addition, included in a DLC ( Downloadable content ), a new difficulty mode named “No Hope” was released for a more challenging take on the game.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a spin-off to the popular Resident Evil series created by Japanese Capcom. Unlike the other instalments in the series, Operation Raccoon City is a team shooter in which our main objective is to eliminate everything that remained after Umbrella’s experiments with the T virus. While fighting, the characters collect experience points which can later be spent on various new skills and weapons. USS team consists of a few members we can choose before each mission. Every person has a completely different set of skills and different preferences when it comes to the style of combat. The story of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City happens during the year 1998, hence it is very connected to the events from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. In Operation Raccoon City we play as members of Umbrella Security Service, which actually are enemies of the characters we controlled in the older instalments. We take part in a conflict between USS, American special forces and the genetically modified monsters created by Umbrella, mostly in form of hordes of regular zombies. It is a treat for fans, but Operation Raccoon City does not require a lot of knowledge to be able to enjoy it. There are many characters new both to newbies and the most hardcore fans. We can even change the history of the games that are canon in the series. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City lets us beat the campaign alone or in a cooperation mode for up to four people (on-line only). There are also some interesting multiplayer modes in which we fight other players and zombies at the same time. We can also control all the classic Resident Evil characters in order to fight our way through waves of AI-steered zombies. The graphics are like they used to be in the very first parts: dark, sad, and unsettling, as if taken out of a nightmare.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is the tenth installment in the Resident Evil franchise, and is set between the events of Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6. Like its predecessor, Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is an episodic game comprised of four episodes. The game features Claire Redfield as the main character, with Moira Burton being a supportive character: Moira being Barry Burton’s daughter. Other playable protagonists include Barry Burton and Natalia Korda, a girl with supernatural abilities.
Claire Redfield, a survivor of the Raccoon City incident, now works for an anti-bio-terrorism organization named Terra Save. While Moira Burton is attending her welcoming party, they are attacked by unknown armed forces. Claire and Moira wake up in an abandoned detention facility on a remote island and must work together now to find a way out and to discover who took them and why. Meanwhile, Barry Burton heads to the remote island in search of his daughter and meets Natalia Korda, a little girl with a secret ability to sense enemies and hidden items. Together, the two must try to find Moira and survive the mysterious island. The game features co-op gameplay, allowing one player to play as a gun-wielder, and features heavy stealth elements. Alternately, a single player can alternate between the two characters.
Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure, known in Japan as Rhythm Thief R: Emperor Napoleon’s Legacy is an interesting adventure game for Nintendo 3DS which uses rhythm as its main principle. The game tells the story of Raphael, a young boy that has to investigate his father’s mysterious disappearance and Napoleon Bonaparte’s resurrection of unknown reasons. Raphael leads a double life as an art thief called Phantom R. The game features an interesting, comedic yet complex story which tells us about French culture and history and is an amusing way to get to know a little about this country. In Story Mode, the player can explore various places in Paris and around it, solving puzzles and revealing hidden rhythm games and story branches.
All the mini games use Nintendo 3DS’ special features like the touch screen, face buttons or gyroscopic controls. Many games require the player to feel a certain rhythm and touch the screen or swipe along it in order to match it. The game generally is very musical, with records helping us solve the puzzles and interesting, additional samples to unlock. The game features multiplayer modes in which players can compete for the highest score. It is all done over the internet. Thanks to the Streetpass functionality, a player can challenge those passing by to beat his high score.
Lara Croft returns in Rise of the Tomb Raider, the follow-up to the 2013 reboot Tomb Raider. Rise of the Tomb Raider is a scheduled Xbox exclusive, coming out first on the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and in the following year for the PC and PS4. The game follows Lara Croft, heroine of the Tomb Raider games, as she sets out on her first tomb raiding expedition to discover the secret of immortality.
One year after the events of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is researching an explanation for the events that she saw transpiring in Yamatai and stumbles upon her own father’s research into the lost city of Kitezh and the promise of immortality. Croft sets off for Syria in order to uncover the tomb of the Prophet of Constantinople and discover the secret of immortality. Later in her quest, Croft finds herself traveling to Siberia as she further delves into her father’s research, aided by her friend Jonah. Along the way, Croft finds herself battling both the environment and its many ravages, while also dealing with human foes, as in the previous game in the series.
Risen 3: Titan Lords is the third game in the Risen series and marks the series’ return to the medieval theme of the first game, ask opposed to the pirate theme of the second. The game is set in a world abandoned by its gods and scarred by the rampage of the Titans. While humanity struggles to regain its strength, the player takes on the role of the “Nameless Hero”, who replaces the protagonist of the first two games. The Hero’s life is shattered and he is forced to set out and reclaim what is lost while battling the darkness that is spreading throughout the world. The player has three ways to rise up against the Titans, and is free to choose whichever one.
The Nameless Hero is the brother of Patty Steelbeard, son of the deceased pirate captain Gregorius Emanuel Steelbeard. The Hero finds himself exploring a Skull Cave, in which they find a magic portal made of crystal, which spawns a Shadow Lord. The Shadow Lord consumes the Hero’s soul, killing him and leaving him to be buried by his crew. The player is rejuvenated from death by the witch doctor Bones, who reveals that the Hero’s soul is still trapped in the underworld and retained by the Shadows. The player must now set out to reclaim his soul from the Shadows while battling their threat to the world.
RuneScape is a massively multiplayer online role playing game and an extremely successful one. Over the twelve years of its history, as much as two hundred twenty million accounts were created. The game is still supported by its creators with patches, fixes and additions. The current version is RuneScape 3, featuring better graphics, major changes in the gameplay and the support for mobile devices. It is a typical game of its genre. Its fantasy world is called Gielinor. The players create their heroic avatars and travel through vast areas, towns and cities, fighting monsters, developing their skills and gathering more and more equipment, each piece better than the previous. RuneScape is very simple and cliché in terms of… everything. The world is so typical it hurts, so is music, graphics and controls: but people enjoy it, so why would that be bad.
RuneScape is actually very easy to control and can be played on every browser. Now, being also compatible with mobile devices, the game is the perfect choice for a casual gamer. The game is also full of gags and jokes and is not as pompous as other MMORPGs. If you were to begin you adventure in the world of RuneScape, you would be explained all the basics of the game. After a simple tutorial forming a part of your story, you are free to go wherever you like and do whatever you want. There are hundreds of activities to undertake, the world is full of quests, challenges and monsters. All the skills you can develop are divided into four categories among which they are such as combat and crafting. You can develop your magical skills, combat skills, the ability to mine for ore, fish, cook or craft. Basically: there are tens of ways of playing with everyone free to choose or create their own.
Saints Row IV is the fourth instalment in the Saints Row series which are Grand Theft Auto’s biggest rival. Volition brings us another sandbox full of gangsters and craziness. Saints Row IV directly continues the third part. Its story starts exactly when the previous one ended. The evil alien Zinyak is preparing his scary armada for an invasion on earth. He wants to control the planet in order to get its gold and women. Only the Third Street Saints gang can stop him. That is why the evil general decided to imprison the player, the gangs leader, in a virtual simulation of the city of Steelport, all in order to guarantee that he can win. The virtual location is strikingly similar to the real one, but it is projected specifically so as to make our character a slave. Steelport is not the only place imagined there for our use, we also visit a typical American city from the 50’s, an enormous spaceship and even the inside of a computer program.
The campaign is very develop and it includes a rich set of missions, both those revolving around the main story arc and side quests. The game is generally similar to the previous ones, but thanks to being inside of a virtual reality, our hero possesses a set of fun superpowers like inhumane strength and speed and the ability to perform super jumps. This changes the possibilities and makes the gameplay much more diversified and fun than it used to be. Now the game is even more enjoyable and the destruction grand and omnipresent. The game is also full of stupid, immature jokes and idiotic missions. Let me know if you find anything serious in Saints Row IV! The weapons are absolutely illogical but that’s the best part of the game. Nothing can compete with Grand Theft Auto in terms of quality, but Saints Row series managed to find its niche in the fans of humor without ambitions and paradoxes.
SimCity 2013 is the fifth instalment in Maxis studio’s series of economic strategies. The famous simulation of human life and a city’s development seems to be a tribute to the longs and successful series that have already been here with us for two long decades. The player is a mayor of a newly founded city. Holding that function, he needs to ensure that everything in the town remains intact, so that it can develop without any problems. The mayor needs to make all the important decisions about where to build what, on which targets to focus, with whom to trade. Everything in order to make the city attractive for newcomers so that over the course of years it can develop into an enormous metropolis. We had to wait ten long years for this game, but the developers did try to make the game worth the wait. They implemented many new functions and features and based the new game on a whole new engine.
Glassbox, the engine, lets us move the camera freely and zoom in and out without any limits: we can even turn into a regular inhabitant’s view. There is a new lightning system and building of curvy roads was enabled. Now, the particular elements of a city are connected in a way much stronger than before. The simulation of a city’s functioning is much better, too. All decisions we make influence the direction in which our agglomeration develops, changing the density of the population together with things like the quality of education or prices of apartments.
The traditional division into three types of districts is back. The game has also a strong focus on multiplayer functions. Players’ cities can be placed on the same area in order to trade and enable the citizens to commute. Like other productions of EA, SimCity can use CityLog similar to Autolog and Battlelog.
Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is an interesting new game featuring Spyro, a cute dragon who is already 16 years old. There were a lot of games published under this franchise but Skylanders is a truly fresh and original one, connecting a typical video game with the use of plastic toys. It took more than 2 years to complete the game, previously planned as Spyro’s Kingdom. Alek Sokolow and Joel Cohen, scriptwriters of Toy Story, took care of the story featured in the game. They collaborated with Activision who owns the rights to Spyro. The game is supposed to serve as a connection between the real world and the virtual one. The main story arc revolves around evil doings of sneaky Kaos. Using one of the Portals of Power, the bandit manages to transfer Spyro and all his friends into the human world, where they got changed into action figures.
Their only hope of going back home is a burden of the Masters of Portals: in this role, the player. As in a typical platformer, the game is full of elements of skill and logical puzzles. Abundant enemies serve as a challenge, too, trying to impede Spyro from completing his missions, finding the hidden treasure and gathering gold. There is as much as thirty two action figures and they are the main thing about the game. Each of them lets the player unlock one hero who uses one element like fire, water or earth and lets us enter his specific locations. When you buy the game, you get a Portal of Power, a special docking station you plug into your console. A figure put onto the station automatically unlocks a new character. Inside of it, our game’s data is saved, too. Putting a second figure on the docking station lets us play in a multiplayer mode.
Sleeping Dogs was about to be published as True Crime: Honk Kong, the third installment in that series, but the title had to be changed because of an incoming lawsuit. However, the game itself remained untouched. This time the game takes us far into the East. The plot is inspired by Asiatic movies of John Woo of the type of Hard Boiled. In the game, we play as detective Wei Shen. He needs to infiltrate a dangerous bandit organization called Sun On Yee. In order to win the gangsters’ approval, respect and trust, Wei Shen will have to complete various tasks for his evil superior, trying to reach higher ranks in the hierarchy. Along the way, he will do a lot off roof jumping, hand to hand fighting and fast cars driving, all of that adding up into an action-packed, dynamic game. All the activities I mentioned above are the main part of Sleeping Dogs.
Our character quickly gets a good grasp of martial arts and begins fighting everyone he meets. He also learns to use firearms and many other ways of destroying the city and its inhabitants. Everything happens in Honk Kong which is divided into some highly diversified districts, from extremely rich ones like Central Hong Kong to some that look like slums, for example Aberdeen. As we explore the city, we come across many interesting side quests and challenge that let us relax and rest from concentrating on the main story arc. It is very difficult for the player to balance his actions: the detective can’t become evil, but neither can he risk his gang losing trust in him. This part of the game is inspired by Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The general inspiration by American and Asiatic action movies is very visible, we could say the game is stylized even too much, but it all suits the atmosphere.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is based on the animated series South Park and is developed by Obsidian Entertainment in collaboration with South Park Digital Studios, including considerable involvement by series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who initiated the production to begin with and were responsible for writing the script, consulting for design and voicing many of the characters. The game was published by Ubisoft after its initial publisher, THQ ended up bankrupt.
The game follows the silent New Kid, nicknamed “Douchebag”, who has recently moved into the town of South Park and soon becomes involved in a role-play fantasy war with humans, wizards and elves, all fighting for control over the Stick of Truth, an adventure that takes place throughout the town, the surrounding forest and even into Canada. Soon, however, the group finds itself in conflict with the likes of aliens, Nazi zombies and gnomes. In his quest, the New Kid is aided by main characters from the series like Cartman, Butters, Stan and Kyle, although only one character may be active at any time. The game also features Timmy, who functions as a fast travel system. The game features a number of historical South Park characters such as Randy Marsh, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Mackey, Al Gore, Mr. Slave and so on, as well as locations like the South Park Elementary, South Park Mall, the Bijou Cinema, City Wok restaurant and Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse.
Released in North America on August 20, 2013, Australia on August 22, 2013, Europe on August 23, 2013, and Japan on September 5, 2013. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a Multiplatformer Action packed Stealth game written by Richard Dansky and Matt MacLennan Developed and Published by Ubisoft. This Sequal was held in controversy as it is the first in the series to feature a new leading voice actor Eric Johnson who replaced Veteran and well known Actor Michael Ironside.
The fans did not respond well to the news when the game was announced. Not only was this the first of many Complaints but some would argue the most important. Other such Critical responses include Tom Bissell writing that he felt “sick and infuriated” after watching a demonstration of the gameplay at E3, which featured an interactive torture sequence. Because of the negative response, Ubisoft decided to remove the torture sequence entirely from the final product.Although the Game had negative responses during its pre release. Splintercell Blacklist ratings were hitting the 80% mark Post release. Some fans argue that this was due to the remarkable graphics and excellent story writing.
A familiar Multiplayer mode made a comeback with the release of Blacklist known as “Spies v.s Mercs”. A Fan favorite introduced in the game prequel Splintercell Chaos Theory for Xbox.
Blacklist also features co-operative gameplay in which each mission can be accessed by talking with your crew inside Sam Fisher’s mobile Headquarters known as “Paladin”.
The plot is simple yet effective. Sam Fisher our Faithful Protagonist, is asked to Lead a task force known as Fourth Echelon to stop a series of terrorist attacks targetting the united states. The President herself gives Sam Fisher the reigns of this operation and it is upto him and his team to stop the terrorist threat known as the Engineer’s.
Another Cannon trend with the Splintercell series is the hi-tech Gadgets and weaponry and if that is your thing you will not be dissapointed here. Although somethings have changed. Blacklist stays true to the previous games with alot of the aspects in the series.
Star Wars Battlefront, the third game in the Star Wars: Battlefront sub-series, is also a reboot of the series. Set in the Original Trilogy of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars Battlefront has players re-enacting iconic battles across planets such as Endor, Hoth, Sullust and Tatooine. The game can be played in either first-person or third-person perspectives, with players being able to change the view at any time during gameplay.
Players take on the role of a Rebel Alliance soldier or an Imperial Stormtrooper as they participate in battles across 15 multiplayer maps, featuring up to 40 players in a single map. Players can choose their characters’ gender, weapons, gear and abilities. Players can also control notable heroes from the Star Wars universe, including such iconic figures as Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Boba Fett, Han Solo and Emperor Palpatine. Other important characters from the franchise, like R2-D2 and C-3P0 make appearances as well. Players can also choose to compete against bots, either in singleplayer or multiplayer modes. Apart from foot traversal, players can use vehicles from the Star Wars franchise, such as AT-ATs and speeder-bikes. Another critical element of the game is the dogfights the players can engage in while in the air, controlling either a Rebel X-Wing or an Imperial TIE fighter. Over the course of the game, players earn “Star cards”, which can be used to utilize additional gear, such as thermal detonators, or new weapons.
Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR for short, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Bioware. The same developer’s of hit games like Mass effect and Dragon age, as well as being the Development company that produced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Knights of the old Republic 2 on Xbox. The video game was released for PC on December 20, 2011 in North America and part of Europe.
Financial analysts have estimated it to be between $150 million and $200 million or more, making it.The game had 1 million subscribers within three days of its launch making it one of the fastest growing MMORPG’s ever made.
Based in a fictitious universe created by George Lucas, where the Sith Empire has re emerged and is at war with the Galactic Republic. You have the choice to be a member of Either side. Each with four unique classes and each with 2 of their own subclasses attained at reaching level 10. As well as a wide variety of Species to choose from including Human , Zabrak , Cyborg , Twilek , Chiss, Sith and others. Each class has its own Story line to follow , Each class has their own starship, which serves as the player’s base of operations and a full set of abilities to learn as you develop your Character.Much like LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online ) or WoW (World of Warcraft ), The Players can Train their Characters and learn new abilities at the specific Job Trainers.
SWTOR has a massive roleplaying community and PVP ( Player v.s Player ) community and Bioware provides separate servers for those that wish to do one or the other and in most cases neither.
Like with most MMORPG’s , Star Wars The old Republic is free to play, However Subscribers receive benefits that Free to play users do not. Also available is an online shop refereed to as “the Cartel”. Here players can buy and unlock extras including new species, clothing and consumable items. Definitely highlight in PVP is the introduction to “Warzones” or as most of us would call it “King of the Hill” Style playmaps.
Complete with thousands of different Items, Weapons and armor combinations, SWTOR give the player an environment to live out their dream of becoming a Jedi Knight or Sith lord with so many different customization options that it allows the player to feel unique. The “Companion” system allows you to also gear up your NPC ( Non Playable Character ) Friends in any gear you can equip and more Unique “Companion only” Items. Each Companion also has an ” Affection ” gauge that fills up or empty’s itself depending on the actions and choices your character makes in your story arch and other random missions.
Unlike other MMORPG’s, SWTOR introduces ” Space Combat” where players can use their customized star fighters in PVP and PVE styled encounters.Once you get your ship, you will be able to undertake space missions. They are available from your ship’s galaxy map. There are also daily space missions available from the communications terminal on your ship’s bridge, which reward Fleet Commendations.Your ship can be equipped with new items just as you are able to equip your companion. Each space mission has a primary objective the Player has to complete in order to win the battle.Each space mission also has a set of three bonus quests, which will not show up on the objectives tracker until you make progress on one of them.Each bonus quest will reward the player with experience points ( used to reach to the next level) and Credits ( the basic currency of the Star wars Universe).
Star Wars: Uprising is an action RPG set between the events of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, the game is set in the Anoat Sector, which includes ironic Star Wars locations such as Hoth and Bespin, home to Cloud City as well as such previously unexplored planets as Mataou, Burnin Konn and Hoth. Following the Battle of Endor, Imperial Governor Adelhard refuses to acknowledge the deaths of Darth Vader and Palpatine, and refuses to release his grip, instead locking down the sector with a blockade and maintaining an iron rule. The Rebel Alliance has a limited presence in the sector, forcing the sector’s many smugglers, assassins, crime lords, nobles and crime cartels to come together and form an uprising against Adelhard’s rule.
The game has players taking on the role of one of many different kinds of classes, such as Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Rebel Guerrilla, Diplomat, Gambler or something “completely unique” using the Open Class System. Players can choose to create their player avatars from up to 4 species: Zabraks, Twi’leks, Humans, and Mirialans. Furthermore, players can also customize their player character’s first and last name, gender, hair style, facial features, and skin tone. Furthermore, players obtain abilities and gear that will further give depth and personality to their characters. By playing the game, players earn XP, which translates into level ups, allowing characters to grow in strength over time. The game also features various factions: groups united by a common interest. These include the Trade Spine League, the secretive Ivax Syndicate, the Rebel Alliance and of course, the Galactic Empire.
Street Fighter V is the fifth main entry in the Street Fighter franchise, and features more of the classic side-scrolling fighting action of the Street Fighter series: two players enter, and one player leaves in a brutal fight for greatness. The game features a group of World Warriors fighting in stages set across the world fighting for supremacy.
Street Fighter V includes 16 characters on launch day, of whom four are brand new to the franchise. The game also features such Street Fighters veterans as Ryu, Chun-Li, Charlie Nash, M. Bison, Cammy, Zangief and Dhalsim. The new characters to the franchise include Necalli, an Aztec-like warrior seeking a strong opponent soul; Rashid, a Middle-eastern man capable of manipulating wind and searching for a missing friend; Laura Matsuda, a Brazilian fighter who uses Brazilian jiu-jitsu and electricity; and finally, F.A.N.G. a new member of the Shadaloo Grand Masters, who uses long-range attacks and has the ability to poison his opponents. More characters are expected post-launch, such as Guile, Ibuki, Alex and Urien.
Super Mario 3D Land is the first instalment of the plumber’s adventure series on 3DS. The game is a three dimensional platformer using solutions proved to work well in all the previous games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 64. It was created by the same team that took care of Super Mario Galaxy with Shigeru Miyamoto, the famous father of Mario, overlooking the process of production. The player travels through three dimensional, linear levels which are very similar to those from Mario’s previous two dimensional adventures. Some of them are even seen from the side as if it were still New Super Mario Bros. Meticulously construed levels are full of interesting traps and simple logical puzzles.
In the meantime, the player has to fight various enemies, among whom are many bosses. There are also many fun items and achievements to find, like coins and power ups extremely typical for this series. In Super Mario 3D Land all the classic items are back: the mushrooms that make you bigger, invincibility starts and flowers that let you shoot fire balls. Mario can also wear different costumes that let him use new fun abilities, for example the Tanooki costume which lets him fly.
Tales of Xillia is the thirteenth game in the Japanese role playing games series by developer studio Naco Tales. The main story arc revolves around two characters whose fates intertwine. The players have a choice between Jude Mathis, a 15 year old student of a medical school, and a 20 year old summoner of elements called Milla Maxwell. Depending on the chosen character, the player gets to know the story from a different perspective and in a specific way.
The gameplay is mostly about platformer like battles between the duo of the characters and the monsters they come across. In each battle our heroes can use a specific number of technical points and action points. They are necessary to attack in special ways and combine attacks and spells into lethal combos. Thanks to this solution, Tales of Xillia remains a platformer like game without turning into a brainless slasher. One of the characteristic traits of the game is its audiovisuals. The characters and the world are presented in a very specific way. The game was created by designers that collaborated in the production of the previous installments.
This way, Tales of Xillia is unique while remaining connected to the previous games. However, in contradiction to the previous installment, in Tales of Xillia we observe everything from a third person perspective behind the character’s back and not from somewhere up above them.
Tales of Xillia 2 is the fourteenth “Mothership” title in the Tales series of games and is a direct sequel to 2011’s Tales of Xillia. The game is set a year after the events of Tales of Xillia, in world of Elympios, which subsists in harmony with the world of Rieze Maxia. While Elympios is a highly advanced, modern nation; Rieze Maxia relies on nature and ‘spirit artes’. The cultural difference in both worlds threatens to put them in disarray and opposition, even as they work together for piece. A girl named Elle Mel Marta is dispatched to the mysterious Land of Canaan by her father when the train is hijacked. She is rescued by Ludget Will Kresnik, but the train ends up crashing and Ludger is put into debt due to medical treatment by the Spirius Corporation. Ludger must now work for the Spirius Corporation while searching for his brother Julius Will Kresnik, who has been named the instigator of the train hijacking. Over the course of his adventure, Ludger finds himself joined by protagonists from Tales of Xillia.
The game uses the Cross Dual Raid Linear Motion Battle System (XDR-LMBS), which is a system similar to that seen in Tales of Xillia, the Double Raid Linear Motion Battle System. Four player characters head off into battle, with the player controlling one at a time while the others are controlled by an artificial intelligence and can be given specific instructions on how to conduct themselves while in the battle. XDR-LMBS also features a “Weapon Shift” system similar to the Style Shift system from Tales of Grace. Ludger can switch between three weapons: dual blades, a sledgehammer and dual guns. As opposed to the Lilium Orb, the game features an Allium Orb, which players can use along with Elemental Ore, which is harvested from battles and special harvest points. The Allium Orb features six elements, which can be leveled up, unlocking points, stats, skills and artes.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a sequel to 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Its various editions were developed by different developers, with Beenox handling most of the platforms, High Voltage Software handling the 3DS version of the game, and Gameloft handling iOS and Android versions of the game. In keeping with the Spider-Man franchise, the game follows Peter Parker, also known as the vigilante Spider-Man, who now sets out to find the killer of Dennis Carradine, the man who murdered Peter’s Uncle Ben. In doing so, however, Peter comes across a much larger threat to New York City that has turned the underworld upside-down. Although the game is not based on the movie of the same name, it features villains from the film, and other characters from the Marvel universe.
The game is set in a vast, open-world Manhattan city-scape that has been made more expansive, detailed and spacious than the previous game in the series, The Amazing Spider-Man. The player is free to roam in this world as they see fit throughout all versions of the game, excepting the 3DS version, which is a side-scroller. The city is divided into districts and features new crimes such as arson and hostage situations that Spider-Man must put an end to.
The Cave is a game about puzzles and adventures. Returning to the game industry Ron Gilbert, most known for Adventure games from the early 90’s, has built upon a 20 year old idea to bring The Cave into existence. Much of the game is built upon the large resume of Ron Gilbert’s previous achievements in games with Tim Schafer and others at LucasArts including Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and much more. Many older fans of the point-and-click adventure games made quite a lot of noise before release of the game because of the affinity for the older games.
Players pick 3 different characters out of 7 to walk around in a terrifyingly humors magic talking cave. Gameplay usually consists of using the three characters in tandem to solve puzzles and find objects to complete areas of the cave. There is also some light platforming elements strewn in throughout the game but a majority of the platforming is not difficult. Each of the characters have a different power or element to them that makes every area feel different even if players have seen it before. Each character also has some sort of dark secret attached to them in hopes of giving players a reason to play through the game multiple times.
The Crew is a brand new racing game. The franchise was created by the studio Ivory Tower in collaboration with Ubisoft Reflections. It is interpreted and Ubisoft’s reply to Need for Speed. As in every modern racing game, the players can control car drivers and try themselves out in emotional races organized on the streets of big American cities. Thanks to the creators’ thoughts, there is a lot of vehicles to choose from, some of them being licensed models of real life critically acclaimed producers. On the whole, the game contains more than a hundred cars created skilfully and with attention to detail. The developer’s ambition was to make the players never race alone. The games main features revolve around social media, letting the players fluently transfer between single player and multiplayer.
The Crew offers many highly differentiated modes of play meant to let us play alone, with personally chosen friends or with random people from all around the globe. One of its most important features is the open world, almost five thousand square miles of American terrain to explore. The area is full of various attractions: missions, tasks and regular races to compete in. The game also includes a single player story mode which is supposed to give us around ten hours of gameplay. One of the characteristic traits of the game is that the vehicle modification system is highly developed. The players can change the car’s looks as in every racing game, but they can only change its statistics and parameters in order to make it suit their preferred driving style. The Crew’s audiovisuals are excellent. The cars look extremely detailed and the places we can visit are varied and interesting.
The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online role playing game placed in the universe we know from other games of the series. It has been in production for more than seven years. The story is set a whole millennium before the events of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It tells us about a pact signed by Thern family and a powerful necromancer called Mannimarco. Through this agreement, the Empire is trying to regain the power it lost and extend its influence over additional territories. However, the aristocrats from Tamriel do not know than Mannimarco has allied with a powerful demon, Molag Bal, who wants to win dominance over the whole world. Thanks to the dark alliance the killed heroes can be brought back to life and return in order to fight more battles. According to the developers, this is only a beginning to a much more complicated history.
The players can choose among three might alliances, all of which have a big army which they use to fight the Empire. The fractions are Ebonheart Pact, Aldmer Dominium and the Daggerfall Alliance. All of them want to capture the capital in order for their leader to get crowned as an emperor. The world is much bigger than it was in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and we can explore it freely. While we do so, we can come across many randomly generated events like a bandit attack. The combat system is almost identical to the one implemented to single player The Elder Scroll games. The dynamic controls are much more attractive than typical mmorpg ones, where all you do is click the same button over and over again. In The Elder Scrolls Online you need to put some thought into every attack, combining the weapons or spells you have equipped in each hand.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is another instalment in the The Elder Scrolls series. As usually, it was created by Bethesda Softworks. We visit the continent of Tamriel yet again, but this time the story revolves around the return of dragons. The story happens in two hundred years after the events from Oblivion. Our character in a Dragonborn called Dovakhin. He finds himself in the middle of the epic plot that will change the realm forever. We can create our character choosing from amongst various races, well-known to all fans of the series. The system of skills has been completely rebuilt and for the better, now being much easier to understand. The combat system on the other hand is tactical and complex, definitely more fun and rewarding than it used to be: we have to skilfully maneuver the character, using two buttons to create attack combinations.
The world is really vivid and beautiful, full of extremely diverse locations filled by interesting characters, each with their own story to tell. Everyone reacts to what our player does. People’s attitudes change and they interact with our character, helping him or standing in his way. The Elder Scrolls V also has a crafting system that lets us work in a smithy, mine for ore or even cook. In this enormous world full of cities bursting with life and additional activities you will never be bored.
The Evil Within marks the return of Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil franchise and delivers survival horror as the debut title for the Tango Gameworks development team. The game follows Detective Sebastian Castellanos, who is investigating a gruesome mass murder when his fellow officers are slaughtered and he is ambushed. When he awakens from unconsciousness, he finds himself in a horrific world where bizarre, terrorizing creatures wander among the dead. Sebastian must now fight for his survival while trying to uncover the secrets behind the evil force that is consuming him.
The game, set in third-person view, is divided into chapters that the player progresses through linearly. The player is forced to scavenge for supplies in order to survive, and encounters horrific enemies against whom the player may choose to fight or run. The world of The Evil Within is also layered with traps and dangers, such as bear traps, bombs, spike traps and barbed wire traps, which the player must avoid in order to survive and make it through the level.
The Last of Us is a great, innovative survival horror brought to us by Naughty Dog, the creators of Uncharted series. The game mixes dynamic, action-packed sequences with elements of an adventure game. The story is quite unsettling. It takes place in near future in which our civilization has been practically eradicated. A mysterious disease took over the world, killing the majority of the human race. Murderous plants and infected mutants roam through the abandoned cities and the survivors that are still left fight each other to get the remaining food and weapons. This particular history is about a couple of survivor, a forty-year-old smuggler Joel and a teenage orphan Ellie. They try to live to see another day in the world full of dangers waiting at every corner. We mainly control Joel, while his companion is steered by AI.
Ellie assists us during fights, suggests where we should go next and warns us of incoming enemies. The players will have to fight both alive people and the victims of the infection. We can use firearms which can kill and opponent with one good shot, but such good weapons are really scarce. Usually, we use improvised weapons like bricks. Apart from fighting, sometimes we need to play platformer style or solve simple puzzles. The game features a simple crafting system, too, which lets us create useful, though not too complex objects. In The Last of Us, the enemies are really intelligent. They can dynamically react to the situation on the battlefield. They hide behind covers or take advantage of their number. They also know how powerful firearms are: some may even decide to retreat after they see us with a pistol or a rifle. Apart from the story mode, the game also includes some well-developed multiplayer modes in which we can make further use of the crafting system known from the single player mode.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is the seventeenth game in the Legend of Zelda series and is a sequel to 1991 SNES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The game is notably the first original Legend of Zelda made for the 3DS and takes advantage of the 3DS hardware to deliver 3D, which, apart from a graphical effect also has gameplay implications, such as granting a greater awareness of dangerous ledges and giving players a sense of their position relative to flying enemies.
The game is set in the “Sealing War” timeline and takes place six generations after the events of A Link to the Past, which means that players control a different incarnation of Link than that game. After the events of A Link to the Past, the royal family of Hyrule splits the Triforce, causing each part of the Triforce to return to its elected owner: one part goes to the dead demon king Ganon, one part stays with the Royal Family, while the third part goes to Link and hid descendants.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is a refreshed version of the classic action-adventure game first published on Nintendo 64. It was developed by Nintendo especially in order to utilize all special features of Nintendo 3DS. The new game lets us return to the universe of Link, this time rendered in three dimensions. We play as the said hero, a cult protagonist who is a young boy living in the Kikiri village. Link needs to find three Soul Stones. Their place of hiding was unfortunately cursed by the evil wizard Ganondorf. The need to find the stones is only a pretext for the story to start: later, it begins to get more and more complicated, making the player completely absorbed by the adventures of Link who quickly finds a new objective. The gameplay can be called traditional. It is very similar to that we can experience in the other installments of The Legend of Zelda. We visit beautiful, fairy-tale-like realms in which we often need to find and cross labyrinths full of monsters to kill and puzzles to solve. The latter don’t only require creativity: sometimes, skills and appropriate items are also needed. The objects we have to find are usually guarded by powerful bosses.
All of them are unique and each requires us to come up with a special strategy. Special items usually grant us entry into new locations and everything repeats itself, with the game inviting us to next and next beautifully rendered realms. Thanks to Nintendo 3DS’ unique features and the possibility of using three dimensional graphics, every location we visit is even prettier than the previous one, all of them worth a moment of admiration. Graphics themselves were made much better than they were on Nintendo 64 and so was resolution. The developers also fixed all the elements that were criticized after the original game was released. Some levels’ difficulty was readjusted in order not to make the player feel frustrated. The biggest novelty is Nintendo 3DS’s touch screen which can be used to control map and equipment. We can also see the world through Link’s eyes by turning on first person perspective, which can be done thanks to 3DS’s gyroscope.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D is an enhanced remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, originally released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. As with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D before it, Majora’s Mask 3D offers a slew of features added to the game that take advantage of the 3DS hardware to deliver stereoscopic 3D graphics, touchscreen controls and gyroscopic features. Numerous other features make the gameplay smoother and richer.
Players take on the role of Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Months after events of Ocarina of Time, Link is searching for his lost friend Navi when his Ocarina is stolen by a mysterious, masked kid known simply as the Skull Kid. Chasing him, Link finds himself trapped in Termina, a parallel world doomed to the apocalypse as a moon will crash into its surface in three day’s time, bringing doom upon the entire world. Link must now find a way to stop this three-day apocalypse by traveling across Termina with his new fairy friend Tatl. Over the course of his adventure, Link must wake the sleeping Four Giants to stop the moon’s descent as well as defeat Skull Kid and the mask that is possessing him. In order to accomplish his goals, Link must obtain strange masks that grant him new abilities, help the people of Termina, and use his ocarina to travel through time to repeat the three-day cycle over and over until he can make things right.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the second installment in the cult series meant for Nintendo Wii. It was thoroughly planned by Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s biggest star. In Skyward Sword, typically for The Legend of Zelda, we play as Link. He comes from an extraordinary place called Skyloft. It is a realm composed of small island floating in the air. This game is a prequel to all the previously published installment. Link peacefully grows up and lives like an ordinary boy until the day he discovers the Goddess Sword: a powerful weapon with a spirit living inside of it. Links gets to know that there is another realm under Skyloft and that it is ruled by the powers of evil.
Thanks to the power of Skyward Sword and to the useful advice provided by its inhabitant, Link sets out on a journey through both realms, trying to save his childhood friend, Zelda, who was kidnapped by demonic forces and thrown into the dark place below the clouds. The game features a fun, complex control system that uses all of Wii’s special traits. Generally, we control Link with Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Wii MotionPlus can also be used for sword fighting and Wii Remote for targeting. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, as usually, is an action-adventure game that also features role-playing and puzzle elements. We get to control Link from a third person perspective. He engages into many fights, mostly using a sword and a shield. Among Link’s secondary weapons we can find a bow, clawshots and bombs which become available as we advance further into the story.
Link can also receive new, useful items that enable him to explore the world more thoroughly. One of the novelties in the series is an interesting crafting system. Link can gather crafting materials from his enemies or by collecting natural ones scattered around the locations. Thanks to them, a shopkeeper can upgrade our items. Link can also catch bugs to have his potions upgraded with them. In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword inventory got divided into three separate parts: equipment for weapons, an adventure pouch for other items like potions, quests items and shields, and an item check which is located in a bazaar and stores objects that can’t fit into Link’s pouch, which has a limited capacity. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword can be bought in a limited edition bundle that features a CD with orchestrated tracks of iconic music from the series.
The Order: 1886 is an action game set in a steam punk world. It is being worked on by Ready at Dawn, the studio that has published two critically acclaimed God of War games for PlayStation Portable, and by Sony Santa Monica. The story mode is set in an alternative, steam punk version of Victorian era. It is very different from what we know from history books due to two crucial events that had an enormous effect on the shape of the world. The first happened hundreds of years before the game actually takes place: a small percent of people began to undergo bizarre mutations that made them acquire monster-like traits. Eventually, there was a war between normal people and mutants. The Order, based on the Knights of the Round Table, helped humans survive. Its members use Black Water, an extraordinary mixture that heals their wounds and slows down their aging process. Thanks to that, those who belong to the Order can go on with their missions during centuries. The second even was the technological revolution based on the innovative use of steam engines.
After centuries of experimenting with ideas better or worse, when the game actually begins, the humankind can begin an efficient counterattack and try to defeat the mutants. In the campaign the player can control sir Galahad, the most famous knight of the Order, who is beginning to get tired of a long and exhausting life full of constant fighting. All his adventures take place in very well planned London. It is highly detailed and many characteristic buildings can be recognized, so The Order: 1886 will be a treat for the British. Many of them are even placed in the exact same locations that in real life. The game is played from third person perspective, with typical, linear level layout.
We get to shoot a lot using varied kinds of weapons. Sir Galahad is able to take cover just like the soldiers from Gears of War. An interesting addition are the quick time events in which our character can try and avoid an attack or use a piece of the environment as a weapon. Some cut scenes in the game are also interactive: they let us control Galahad, sometimes even shoot at others. The game is full of interesting weapons which seem to be realistic, but at the same time possess many untypical additions. The graphics can only be praised. Ready at Dawn must have focused greatly on capturing important details, delivering a product that must be admired.
The Walking Dead is an excellent adventure game created by Telltale Game, a studio famous for their critically acclaimed Sam and Max, Wallace and Gromit, Tales of Monkey Island, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. All of them probably ring a bell for an adventure fan and can guarantee excellent quality of their new creation, too. The game is based on a identically titled, popular comic by Robert Kirkman. The game is divided into season and further, into episodes, just like the famous TV series is. It begins right in the moment of the zombie apocalypse outbreak, when Rick Grimes, the original protagonist, falls into coma. We do not get to follow the comic or TV characters, though. We play as a brand new hero, Lee Everett. When the walkers (zombies in the series’ slang) begin to attack, Lee is handcuffed, sitting in the backseat of a police car. He was arrested for murdering a man with whom his wife had had an affair. Even though the group of characters we get to meet is different to the original one, we get to visit places from the comic and meet a few original characters for a short while, getting to know more about them: thanks to this, The Walking Dead will be a great experience for every fan.
Season one is divided into five episodes (respectively: A New Day, Starved for Help, Long Road Ahead, Around Every Corner, No Time Left). Each takes us around two hours to complete. As in a typical adventure game, our main activity is exploring various locations, conversing with NPCs, gathering items and solving puzzles. Sometimes, we also have to get through simple sequences that require manual skills, mostly in form of quick time events. Unlike in typical zombie games, we do not get to kill hordes of the undead. We mostly need to stay quiet, trying not to alarm them of our presence. One of the most important things about the game is how our decisions affect the development of the story and other characters’ attitude towards Lee.
We need to choose what to do under pressure of time. A stupid decision we make in the first episode can prove to have been remembered by the game in the last one; badly chosen wording can leave us unsupported by offended companions. The puzzles that await being solved are not really typical for the genre; they are quite realistic and show what we would have to deal with in a zombie apocalypse. Our surroundings are quite interactive, too, which helps us feel the reality we have entered. The Walking Dead’s graphics are stylized to resemble those of the original comic. No multiplayer mode was featured. The game is only distributed through download services like Steam.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is a first person perspective shooter based on The Walking Dead TV series. Unfortunately, it cannot be praised as much as the well-known adventure game based on the same license. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, a prequel to the TV series, begins soon after the zombie outbreak. It lets us follow the story of Dixon brothers who are traveling to Atlanta, supposedly a safe shelter for the remaining survivors. Unfortunately, the game’s plot lacks depth, interesting characters and emotions. The story has nothing in it that could get the series’ aficionados. We control Daryl, the character beloved by The Walking Dead fans. His older brother, Merle, is controlled by artificial intelligence. While we play, we can choose whether we want to engage into direct encounters with the walkers or try to sneak past them. We need to be very careful: shooting can attract a whole horde to come for us.
We constantly need to be aware of how much ammo, food and fuel we have as under the circumstances finding supplies is difficult. During his journey, Daryl will come across many survivors. He will have to decide whether he should help them out or leave them with nothing. If he does accept them into the group, they will have to be taken into account when the supplies are being given out. As he travels, he can use either the highway or smaller roads, with each choice having its advantages and disadvantages like the possibility of a breakdown. The route we choose affects the places we will visit and the characters we will meet.
Daryl’s vehicle can also be changed. When he runs out of fuel, he has to scavenge for it or he won’t be able to advance. Unfortunately, the levels themselves are poorly planned and the controls are very crude and unintuitive, not letting us enjoy the great ideas implemented into the game. The areas we visit are very linear and absurdly so: we get to hit invisible walls and explore locations that seem identical to the previous ones. Having finished the game, we can play through the story mode yet again, this time with various bonuses unlocked: we can enjoy unlimited ammo or new, special weapons.
The War Z, also called Infestation: Survivor Stories, is a MMO game with elements of survival horror. It is the debut of Hammerpoint Interactive, a studio that, though inexperienced, seems to have a lot of potential. The developers openly admit to having been inspired by DayZ, an extremely popular mod to ArmA II. The main similarity is the ever present feeling of loneliness while the player explores the game’s area. The War Z takes place five years after the outbreak of an epidemic which almost eradicated the humankind, changing people into murderous zombies. In a short while, the survivors discover that a special species of the undead contains stem cells which can be used in vaccination against the zombie virus. Since that crucial discovery, the remaining people focus on hunting down those important monsters, selling their cells or using them to save themselves from getting infected. Before jumping into the world of The War Z we need to create our character, the survivor we will be able to control. Having done that, we can explore all the area, trying to find rare items, food, medicine, weapons and ammunition.
Our character feels thirst and hunger, so we have to stay well-supplied in order to endure on the wasteland. Medicine, especially above mentioned vaccines, are also extremely important: they let us heal our wounds and protect ourselves from turning in case of being bitten by a zombie. During the gameplay, we come across various quests, usually pretty typical like: “find this or that item” or “kill a specific number of the undead”. For those, we always get rewarded. We can also run into special notes left by NPCs or other live players. Thanks to the information that they include we can find hidden places or treasure. We can leave such notes ourselves, which is a very nice system that lets us send letters, create missions or even set traps for other, naive players. While we are playing, our character gains point of experience that can be used for learning new skills from a few different categories like distance fighting, healing, tracking or survival. All locations are big, with an area of 200-400 square kilometers (75-180 square miles), and based on real cities like New York, Paris and Los Angeles.
Apart from those, we can also visit safe shelters in which there are stores and announcement boards. Inside of them, fights are prohibited and there are peacekeepers that will attack every player that tries to hurt someone inside the territory. Up to 250 players can play on one map together, which makes the game more realistic and lets us form alliances or find companions. Our surroundings were meticulously planned so as to show the world changed by the epidemic.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the third instalment in The Witcher series by CD Projekt RED. The continuation of the previous, critically acclaimed games is similarly based on the fiction of Andrzej Sapkowski. Just like we have done before, in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt we control Geralt of Rivia. The story arc includes a few complex subplots like Geralt’s search for his lost love and Nilfgaard’s invasion on the kingdoms of the north. In the game we will also have to try and stop the Wild Hunt which haunts the Witcher both in the books and in the games. We will be able to follow the story through impressive cut scenes and well-directed sequences, always sure that our choices will have grave, unclear consequences. We can even ignore some objectives and decide not to try to approach them. However, such attitude will also lead to repercussions.
Overall, including the side quests, we can count on over a hundred hours of gameplay. The challenges will be very diverse: we will visit caves, villages, ruins, and many other places. We will be able to hunt monsters for money, rewards or simply for glory. Some quests will also take form of investigation: this diversity assures that no one will get bored with the game. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we will also be able to relax with various medieval mini games that add to the fantasy atmosphere. In The Witcher 3, we are free to make the story develop in the direction that we prefer. The choices that we make affect both the plot and, dynamically, our surroundings: lack of action on our part, for example, make the inhabitants of a village abandon it if we do nothing about repeating bandit attacks. Yet again, like in the previous instalments, we can freely explore a huge, open world. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt the available area is actually forty times bigger than it was in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which was quite an impressive game.
Thanks to the new REDengine 3, we will never have to watch loading screens: the data in constantly loading somewhere in the background, but we never experience it. Getting from place to place is easy thanks to horse riding. If our horse is fast and healthy, crossing the whole area from one end to the other takes 30 to 40 minutes. We can also teleport to the places visited before. The combat system of the game has undergone serious improvements: while Geralt had 20 animations in The Witcher 2, now he will fight using 96 different moves! During fights, he will also be able to use elements of environment to his advantage.
Thor: God of Thunder is a third person adventure based around the Marvel smash hit of the same name. Boasting an all-star cast including Tom Hiddleston, Jaimie Alexander and Chris Hemsworth. Thor: God of Thunder was released on May 3rd 2011 and available on all major consoles on launch. Players take control of the powerful Norse deity Thor, wielding his famous hammer the iconic Mjölnir over a number of worlds including the main films set piece Asgard. Players will use an array of melee combinations, elemental attacks as well as solving a few light puzzles along the way, battling an assortment of monsters including both the movie’s Frost Giants and Trolls there is some fun to be had however the problems with the game show up from the start and continue to the very end.
With uninspired voice acting, dull cut scenes, a bad control system and awful camera cuts the game feels more of a chore to get through than a challenge. Players can also level up and upgrade the Norse god which truth be told can result in some pretty satisfying attacks with the Mjölnir but nine times out of ten these moves although look pretty cool, the sluggish controls make them awkward to pull off. Thanks to all these continued problems you never quite feel in the game, in control of Thor or even part of the Universe they have tried to recreate. In hindsight there are just better games out there to play and spend time on but if you really must get your Thor itch out of the way surprisingly go for the Nintendo DS and Wii version over the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, these are actually a lot better albeit still suffer the same fate in the end.
The Witness, being developed by Thekla, Inc. since 2008, is a game by Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid. The game is inspired by Myst, and this influence is seen in the game’s setting of an open world island on which the player is free to explore and solve puzzles, all within a first-person view. The island of The Witness is divided into ten sections that are arranged around a mountain, with the mountain itself being the overarching goal for the player. Completing all the puzzles in a given section will unlock a turret that will shine a light towards the mountain.
Players solve puzzles based on mazes presented on panels, however the rules for solving the individual mazes is part of the greater puzzles that the player will learn through visual clues and audio logs found throughout the island. The game is designed to feature as little instruction as possible, leaving it to the player to figure out the puzzles and how to solve them.
Thief is a reboot of the classic Thief series of video games and is created by Canadian developer Eidos Montreal, developers of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game was ported to the PC by Nixxes Software, also responsible for the PC port of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Thief brings back master thief Garrett as he slinks into the shadows of The City, a place inspired by Victorian, steam-punk and gothic aesthetics.
With The City ravaged under an illness called The Gloom and coming under oppression of the Baron’s Watch, Garrett must sneak past his uniformed foes to steal from the rich and take the most well-guarded possessions for himself. Using his highly advanced skills, Garrett traverses The City in silent secrecy, traveling both horizontally and vertically, across rooftops and through the streets to find the most treasured loot to steal and conduct the most audacious heists. The dark and lonely Garrett, however, soon becomes involved with an uprising led by Orion, the “voice of the people”, who is fighting back against the Baron’s oppression and break down his tyrannical rule.
TitanFall is the next eagerly awaited big game of 2014. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic arts. TitanFall follows a “strict online multiplayer-only format”. Players will take command of Titans and their souped up pilots. With the ability to transition from one game mechanic to the next, it has fallen upon some impressive reviews and ratings including over 60 awards at the most recent E3 event. TitanFall allows the use of mech-style combat mixed with FPS action and parkour style ability to complete team based objectives and a linear story. Up to 12 human players can duke it out in any giving match type and with the use of the Microsoft’s new cloud services offloading battle gameplay to servers in hopes of combating lag and overloaded server play found in most MMORPG, fans are most excited to see what is next.
With a diverse selection of load-outs from the start and multiple types of Titans at the player’s disposal each with its own individual actions and animations each match played is said to be a fresh experience from the first to the last. Players command either the Interstellar Mining Corporation (IMC) or the insurrectionary militia. Pilots also interact with these mech-warriors in a mixture of ways. Not only can you jack an opposing titan similar to Grand Theft Auto but a player can blast away at its head casing, wrecking it before it can shake you off which results in a fair trade of pilots being able to destroy the titans and titans being able to destroy the pilots, although the latter is the more powerful of the two this dynamic already pushes the boundaries to the fast past action taking place. TitanFall is a crazy anything goes mashup with elements from both COD and Battlefield to please most fans has something for everyone.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical, multiplayer-only first person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Created after the cancellation of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots, the game puts an emphasis on environmental destruction and player co-operation. The game is set several years after the deactivation of the Rainbow Program. With the program being reactivated under the leadership of a person known simply as “Six”, players take on the role of a Rainbow team operator who must confront The White Masks, a new type of enemy causing chaos across the world. The game features various game modes, such as Hostage Mode, in which attackers must extract the hostage from the defenders’ grasp, while the defenders are tasked with stopping that from happening.
In Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, every operator has his own nationality, perks, abilities and equipment. Additionally, players have access to the “Recruit” operator, who has customization gear and gadgets. Players choose their operator at the start of the match and are not allowed to change while the match is active. Teamwork is absolutely crucial to the game, as players are required to pool together and integrate their various abilities to maximum advantage. Communication is essential throughout as the game as players must work together to bring down their targets. Teamwork, tactics and tension taken together, form the “three main pillars” of the game, according to developer Ubisoft Montreal.
Tom Clancy’s The Division is an upcoming coalition of not only one but three genres spanning an RPG, third person adventure and massive-multiplayer online. Utilizing a whole new Snowdrop engine player’s take control of a group called the “Strategic Homeland Division” or “The Division” for short. Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian New York City, the very definition of interactive freedom will be redefined. Ubisoft never shy of taking on extremely ambitious projects are looking to tip the scales for this next-gen outing on both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This third-person multiplayer hybrid not only combines elements of survival adventure but that of tactical combat as well. The main objective will see a player attempting to locate and save as many survivors as possible while trying to restore clarity to a disease ridden world – no easy accomplishment.
How a player decides on doing this is the strongest point of the game, you find your objective through the use of a fancy VR wristwatch but you’re than allowed to tackle anything you wish, any time you wish with complete freedom you would come to expect from most sandbox games. Character progression and the RPG element is followed through via the common trend of skill tree’s but the saving grace no one player is constricted and can opt to change your tree at any time. You rebuild your abilities on the go, and players can even custom-tune classes to their hearts desires. The elements combined into one neat package is making it one of the hottest titles to be released this year and although there haven’t been any complete playthrough’s on the market the anticipation for Ubisoft’s next big thing is tenfold.
Tomb Raider does not have to be introduced. The cult series featuring a pretty as ever Lara Croft is believed to be the definition of an action game. In the instalment of 2013 Crystal Dynamics, developers that created previous three Tomb Raider games, try and restart the series, letting us play as a young, inexperienced Lara. Her adventure begins as the ship she is conducting research on wrecks. Our heroine finds herself on a mysterious island located somewhere near the coasts of Japan. The young lady will pretty much have to… survive. It is no longer her who serves as the predator. While Lara will have occasions to hunt others, she will be the one hunted just as often. A new, brutal combat system concentrates on violent hand to hand fights and offbeat ways of utilization of typical weapons like a bow. In order to stay alive, the player will have to use everything he can find. Ropes, grapple hooks and machetes will prove to be necessary for us to be able to explore the island freely.
A great new system lets us perform every movement we can think of, making Lara Croft an extremely flexible heroine. Tomb Raider has always been known for its platformer elements and in this installment, they are better than ever before. Another novelty is the system of character development thanks to which we can decide which of the Lara’s skills to invest in. The game features a crafting system, too, thanks to which we can collect and combine various items scattered around the island. In the new Tomb Raider we also get some more shooter elements: automatic aim is no longer present and we have to put some effort into actually hitting our targets. Thanks to Crystal Engine, Tomb Raider lets us admire picturesque views, high quality textures and beautiful, detailed character models. The game also features a modern, advanced physical engine. Animations have become much more realistic, too.
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Total War: Attila is the ninth standalone game in the Total War franchise, and like Napoleon: Total War before it, is focused on the exploits of a single character: Attila, leader of the Huns.
The game begins in 395 AD, at the cusp of the Dark Ages. Attila is not yet in power of the Huns, but will soon be able to become the leader of the Huns. Meanwhile, the Roman Empire has descended into chaos and uncertainty, and a prophecy foretells the ‘scourge’ that will soon sweep Europe. The Empire is divided into two: with Honorius controlling the Western Roman Empire while Arcadius controls the East. Players can choose to play as the Western Roman Empire, in which case the player will have to deal with waves of barbarian hordes attempting to invade and pillage the borders of the Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire, meanwhile, has transformed into an economic powerhouse.
Total War: Rome II is another game from the critically acclaimed Total War series belonging to a British studio called Creative Assembly. The experienced team of developers have also created all the previous installments including Shogun, Medieval and Empire. Now, after their last affair with the Japanese shoguns, they let us come back to Rome: Total War: Rome II is already the second time we get to control Roman legions. In the game, we control the leader of a nation of our choice (it can, but does not have to be Rome itself) in order to fight for territorial domination and power. In an open campaign based on a system of turns we can choose how we want to rule and conquer rival provinces in order to expand our own territory. We have centuries to bring fame to our name, with the game beginning with the year of the Republic of Rome’s coming into being. The area featured in the game is divided into hundreds of small regions grouped into bigger provinces. Each region needs to be separately conquered, but it is administered together with others as a part of one single province. Thanks to this, the player doesn’t have to focus on every tiny fragment of the map, instead simply controlling bigger areas.
As usual in the Total War series, we can personally lead our army to the victory, controlling the troops in real time. We can use our fleet together with regular soldiers. Battles are very diverse and they can begin in different ways like for example a beach landing. We also get new siege machine to use. As the general, we can move camera however we like which enables us to both admire our soldiers or get into a more tactical view. Cities are so big that holding the central square is not enough. We have to control the fights in various districts in order to capture them all. In Total War: Rome II Warscape engine, a modernized graphic engine was used. Battles are highly detailed: we can even observe the battlefield from behind a soldier’s back. All the cities are meticulously planned with architecture appropriate for the specific nation.
Players can also engage in multiplayer mode, fighting for dominance with alive opponents from all around the globe.
Switch between robot and vehicle as you battle your way through both Earth and Cybertron in Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark. Developed by Edge of Reality and published by Activision, the game is a prequel to both Fall of Cybertron and the movie Age of extinction. This game is the forth installment in the game series. The console and Windows version of the game is a third person shooter, that features a single and multiplayer campaign. The 3ds version of the game is a turn based RPG developed by Wayforward Technologies.
Transformers: Rise of Dark Spark, takes you on an epic ride as you try to save the universe and secure an ancient Cybertron relic known as the dark spark. Rise of the Dark Spark has over 40 playable characters including the legendary Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Air Raid, Cliffjumper, Jazz and Drift. Megatron, Soundwave, Shockwave and Starscream make a return in the game as the Autobots arch enemies the Decepticons
UFC Undisputed 3 is the third game in the sports series based on the licenses from the Ultimate Fighting Championship federation and the already featured PRIDE. Yet again, it was developed by Yuke, a Japanese studio which was responsible for the previous installments in the series and also games like WWE SmackDown vs. Raw and WWE Wrestlemania. The well-experienced studio fixes all their previous mistakes and extends the series’ featured, trying to provide us with the best game that lets us fight mixed martial arts style. In UFC Undisputed 3 we can punch and kick controlling as many as 150 different fighters from the UFC federation including its biggest and most popular stars like Brock Lesnar, Anderson Silva and Tito Ortiz. Before the game was released, UFC has absorbed the WEC federation. Thanks to this, for the first time in the series’ history we can also control fighters like Dominic Cruz and Uriah Faber who are featured in lighter weight classes. UFC Undisputed 3 lets us compete in a traditional boxing ring or in a special closed cage called octagon. For the first time, players can fight under the rules of the disbanded PRIDE federation which used to be the most violent in the world.
Fighters can, for example, keep kicking an opponent that is lying on the ground, even aiming for his head. Thanks to the variety of the techniques features, the duels never get boring. The fights are very realistic and can by mistaken to be recorded on a real boxing ring. The control system has undergone some minor changes that have made it even better, putting even more control in the hands of the player. Some elements of steering have also been facilitated in order to draw more casuals players to the game. UFC Undisputed 3 features a well thought out training system that slowly introduces a newbie to the world of mixed martial arts. In comparison to the previous installments, what has been greatly upgraded is the graphics. Every player has his own presentation animation and realistic face expression shown during fights. While competing, we can hear both an official announcer and our character’s friends shouting advice. In UFC Undisputed 3 you can fight live opponents over the internet or on a shared console.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is the third installment of the Uncharted series. A third-person action adventure game developed by Naughty Dog released for PlayStation 3.
Released In the U.s on November 1st 2011 and in Europe on November 2nd 2011, Drake’s Deception is a sequel to the Award Winning Masterpeice Uncharted 2: Among Thieves , Written by a famous script write named Amy Hennig.A Game of the year Edition was released the following year on September 19th which was released in Europe.
In this New chapter, we follow Nathan Drake along with his Mentor and Friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan, around the world for another Mysterious albeit Deadly adventure in pursuit of the Loct City ( Iram of the Pillars ). Elena Fisher and Chloe Frazer also make a return in Uncharted 3.
This Third-person Adventure draws similarities to other Well known games such as Assassins Creed for example Drake has a large number of different animation sets, enabling him to react according to his surroundings. Drake is physically Adept and is able to jump, sprint, climb, swim, scale narrow ledges.Also in addition a new Contextual melee combat system allows for facing multiple opponents at once.
As well as being a Puzzle Solver and Shoot’em up rolled into one, Uncharted 3 has a multiplayer mode similar to its prequel Uncharted 2 Among Thieves featuring competitive and cooperative modes of play. The Multiplayer introduces several new features, such as new mechanics that allow for the losing team to catch up through various gameplay situations and The all new “Buddy System” that allows players to join each others teams mid game as well as perform Co-Operative Taunts over your dead enemies that you have killed together.
In the event of ties, a new elimination mode begins as the match draws to a close, in which the players are restricted to one life and must compete to wipe out all of the opposing team’s members first within the allotted remaining time
Being one of the best Rated games reviewed in 2011, Uncharted 3 won Several Game of the Year awards and was praised for its Writing , Graphics , Voice acting, Story and the Cinematic Quality. On release day 3.8 million copies were shipped Worldwide.
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is a remastered compilation of the first three Uncharted games, rebuilt specially for the PlayStation 4. It includes Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, appearing for the first time on the PlayStation 4 and featuring brand new trophies created exclusively for this collection. The Collection also features the new Photo Mode, allowing players to freeze gameplay at any time to take screenshots that can then be customized using graphical filters, camera controls and other options, and then shared with friends.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune follows the adventures of Nathan Drake as he is tipped off by a clue in a 400-year old coffin and sets off to find the fabled treasure of El Dorado in a remote, forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Drake ends up getting more than what he bargained for, however, and finds himself trapped on the island and hunted down by mercenaries. Drake and his companions must now struggle to survive against the mercenaries, while trying to uncover the secrets hidden in the island.
Until Dawn is a PS4-exclusive survival horror adventure game in the interactive drama style. Players follow a group of eight friends on a trip to a remote mountain cabin when they find themselves stranded there, and experiencing sinister events. Fear and tension runs amok as the eight search for clues to discover the killer’s identity and make it out of their perilous situation in one piece. The game features a Hollywood cast, including Hayden Panettiere and involves indie horror creators Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick.
The game is notably based on what is called the “Butterfly Effect” system, which means that a choice made can have unforeseen consequences later in the game. Over the course of the game, players are forced to make numerous such choices and decisions based on moral or ethical dilemmas. For instance, players may choose to save one character by sacrificing another. There are no right or wrong decisions in Until Dawn, as the range of possibilities stretches from having all eight characters survive to all eight characters dying. Reloading previous save files is also made impossible by the game’s strict auto-saving system. Due to this considerable variation in story and the numerous possibilities that can arise from it, the game is not meant to be experienced just once, but multiple times, as it is impossible to see all of the content in a single playthrough. An in-game system allows players to keep track of all the clues discovered in Blackwood, even across multiple playthroughs.
Watch Dogs is a new, exciting franchise brought to us by Ubisoft Montreal, the creators of games like the Assassin’s Creed series. The innovative action game is set in a semi realistic, futuristic world. Our hero is called Aiden Pierce. He is not a good person, more of an anti hero: he is an expert at hacking security systems and overcoming antivirus programs and firewalls. Thanks to his extraordinary skills, he can play with all the technology that surrounds him however he likes. He can cause an enormous crash by manipulating with the traffic control system our find out everything about a random pedestrian. This possibility enables Aiden to take part in various sidequests: he can follow a person that I’d going to get mugged in order to help them or assist someone who is preparing a revenge.
Aiden can influence almost everything in the city of Chicago full of modern technology. Everything thanks to CtOS, Central Organization System which connects all the infrastructure present in the city into one big common program. Chicago’s subway, traffic control system, electricity and CCTV at all controlled in the same way, and Idem knows exactly how.
The districts of futuristic cities are controlled by super computers owned by enormous corporation. When Pierce manages to hack the company’s security, he gains access to the inhabitants’ personal data and the city control system, becoming like a God for Chicago. In those circumstances, almost everything is a potential weapon for Aiden. If he is being chased, he can make the traffic drive into his opponent it make him Hal into water by manipulating a bascule bridge. Or, when hiding behind his smartphone gets boring, he can also engage in physical encounters with his foes, using various findable firearms, from a small gun to a big bazooka, and using a well-developed combat system featuring a cover system and hand to hand combat. Aiden can also plant mines and bombs for his enemies to step on. Although Watch Dogs is mostly a single player game, there are also some multi player modes. Most of them are pretty typical, but the game also features an innovative mode in which those players playing over the internet can use their skills to try and impede the players in single from completing missions. Also, a mode is planned in which up to eight players will be able to explore the city together.
Wolfenstein: The New Order marks the return of the Wolfenstein franchise, for the first time being developed by Swedish developer MachineGames. The game is set in alternate history 1960, in which Nazi Germany successfully defeated the Allies to win the Second World War. Now with access to highly developed, advanced technologies, the Nazis ruling the world under a New Order, it falls on war hero Captain William “B.J.” Blazkowicz to join the surviving Resistance, find other allies and fight the Nazis to bring down the New Order and its Nazi supremacy. The game marks the second time the id Tech 5 engine has been used, after Rage in 2011, and the first time the engine has been used by a developer outside of id Software. The game notably only features a single-player campaign, and no multiplayer, co-op or otherwise.
Wolfenstein: The New Order introduces a section-based health system, in which each section regenerates as health is lost. The player is forced to use health packs, however, if a section is completely depleted. Players can use stealth to a limited degree, using melee weapons to take out enemies without being detected. The game also implements a cover system, which B.J. can use to hide behind and lean out of to fight enemies with a greater tactical advantage. Players can use weapons found off the ground, scavenged from dead enemies or even removed from stationery posts. Players can can carry as many weapons as they find, hearkening back to old-school first person shooter games. Players can also dual wield some of the weapons to double their firepower, while trading off the ability to aim down sights. Players can further customize weapons using upgrades as well.
WWE 2K15 is the 2014 edition of the WWE 2K series of games published by 2K sports. Focusing on the “new generation”, the game places a heavy emphasis on more relaxed gameplay, as opposed to the arcade-like gameplay of the previous games. There are a slew of new features in this installment of the franchise that serve to overall bring about a more realistic edge to the gameplay to emulate actual WWE matches. The pace of the matches has been slowed, and the game features a brand new stamina bar. WWE 2K15 also features a presentation overhaul, a new MyCAREER and 2K Showcase game modes. The game’s soundtrack has been curated personally by John Cena.
The game’s three-tier stamina meter controls the pace of the match, with each move performed by the player draining a part of the stamina meter. In the first tier, the player’s wrestler can perform moves with ease, while in the second, the player wrestler begins to slow down, while in the third tier, the player wrestler is completely exhausted. The player wrestler will be unable to perform their finishing movie if the stamina point reaches too low. The game also features a completely revamped submission system, which uses a two-part circular gauge. “Charged Finishers” allow the player to perform taunt and finisher combos by having them blend seamlessly into a single animation. Fighting styles and skill sets have been brought in so that the game’s wrestlers are identical to their real-life counterparts. For instance, giants like Big Show cannot climb the turnbuckle.
WWE 2K16 is the 2015 edition of the WWE 2K series of the games and serves as a follow up to WWE 2K15.
The game features a slew of updates to the series: reversals have been changed so that players only have a set amount of reversals they can use per match, and can no longer spam reversals throughout the match. Players can now also have their wrestler attack other wrestlers during their entrance. Artificial intelligence for referees and managers has been improved, and the chain wrestling minigame has been completely reworked. More enhancements have been brought in on pins and submissions, and a new set of animations have been added that include dirty pins and canceled pins. Online matchmaking has been further refined and improved, and the game will also feature rest holds that the player can use to regain stamina. Three match types removed from WWE 2K15 make a comeback in WWE 2K16: ladder tag team, handicap tag team and tornado tag team. Numerous graphics improvements have been committed to the game, featuring new cloth physics and animations, making for more realistic attire. Crowd variety has been improved, as well as hair physics and sweat features.
Xenoblade Chronicles is a Japanese action role playing game created by Monolith Software. Its name is supposed to be a tribute to Tetsuya Takahashi’s Xenosaga series, but the franchises are not connected in any other way. Xenoblade Chronicles is set in a very original science-fiction world where all the life forms developed on the immobilized bodies of two dead giants. There are organic life forms and mechanical ones called Mechon. Our protagonist is Shulk, a 18-year-old orphan. When his home colony is attacked by the Mechon, he receives Monado, a mythical, powerful weapon capable of defending the humankind’s opponents once and for all. Once in possession of such a great artifact, Shulk decides to embark on an adventure to help save the organic world from the threat. He is accompanied by many interesting from different backgrounds and races. The players can choose between controlling him with the Wii’s Classic Controller or the Wii Remote with Nunchuk. In Xenoblade Chronicles, the battle system is real-time.
The player cannot control the party members on his own except for launching their special attacks, but he himself moves the lead character on the battlefield. The characters can chain their attacks and focus on specific enemies. Shulk can also see tiny bits of the future which helps him predict enemies’ attacks. The character development is based on the experience points system, with the player choosing which skills to invest in. The world of Xenoblade Chronicles is vast and full of diverse areas. We are not limited by typical locations: we can climb the mountains visible in the distance and swim in the featured waters.
However, we will never get bored by excess travels: there is a teleportation system in the game which allows us to quickly move from place to place. The game also features a day and night cycle that does affect the gameplay: the locations are visibly different depending on the time and some NPCs can only be met during certain parts of the day. The graphics are realized in full three dimensions. Those who have enjoyed games like Kingdom Hearts or Parasite Eve will be happy to know that the music in Xenoblade Chronicles was also composed by Yoko Shimomura.
Yakuza 4 is the sequel to Yakuza 3 developed and published by Sega. It was released on March 18, 2010 in Japan.The game was Later released in Europe and North America in March 2011.Yakuza 4 received an Award for Excellence from the Japan Game Awards in 2010.It currently holds a rating of 80% on GameRankings based on 39 reviews. it was also released under Differant Titles
such as “Ryu Ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu o Tsugumono” and “Like a Dragon 4: Successor of the Legend”.
Set in Kuamurocho city, Inspired by “The red Light district of tokyo” Yakuza 4 takes you from back alleys to rooftops and even underground areas following Shun Akiyama and his Maffia friends.
Shun Akiyama is an Infamous Loan shark well known for lending out money with no interest fee’s or collateral. The Games begins following Shun to collect on several debts that are due. Sidetracked by a bar brawl , Shun manages to get himself into trouble when he defeats a mid ranking member of the Ueno Seiwa Clan, Ihara. Shun is then accompanied by Arai, a high ranking Yakuza member, and Kido, a friend who works at a rival loan office.intent on revenge, Ihara holds up the group with a gun but makes an escape before Kido can punish him for shooting at Arai. Later Ihara is found dead which could potentially start a gang war and Arai flees from the scene of the crime.
Yakuza 4 has two modes. “Adventure mode” and “Battle mode.” Adventure mode features a series of mini games such as pachinko, fishing, onsen bath, table tennis, hanafuda and karaoke. Each main character also has their own side-quest that they must complete to earn 100% completion, most of which are rewarded with a trophy.
Each character has a unique style of fighting and special moves. The game features an Improved Chase Battle and it is now possible to use items as weapons during the chase sequence. The player no longer needs to hold down the R2 button to sprint as the character will now automatically run at full speed. Yakuza 4 has a deeper fighting system than its predecessor and the “Heat” Gauge once filled allows for special fighting moves to be triggered once certain parameters are met. For example standing over a grounded opponent. For those of you that are new to the Yakuza series. Think Grand theft auto without the cars and more focus on its combat system.