PlayStation 4 | Sean Cleaver

Destiny – By The Numbers

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

So it’s almost upon us, that time we’ve been waiting for since E3 2013. The time when Destiny comes to us and the Traveller will occupy our time solidly for the next 3-4 months.

So how many of us are actually waiting for that? And what is the deal with the numbers behind it? Let’s have a little run down, shall we?

Publisher Activision have said, although developer Bungie have disagreed with this in part, that Destiny has cost up to $500 million to make. That would make it the most expensive video game ever developed. A record that is currently held by Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V. Take Two and Rockstar reportedly spend around $115 million to develop the game and $150 million on marketing it, making a grand total of $265 million in total development cost. That figure would be nearly doubled if Activision’s account of costs are true. Bungie have said that the development costs went no where near that figure and that Activison would need to tell you how much they’ve spent on marketing. Although Take Two’s Q3 profits for 2013 thanks to GTA 5 were $1.62 billion so I’m sure they’re happy.

GTA 5 also shifted 32.5 million copies to make that figure. Destiny has already got a lot of pre-orders going for it, more than Watch_Dogs. The figures suggest that Destiny has beaten Watch_Dogs previous record of being the most pre ordered game for next-generation consoles and is the most Pre ordered new IP (intellectual property) in history. So how does this work out? Time for some maths:

The Pre Order chart for the US (dated the week ending 23rd August) shows the Destiny pre-orders at that time. That was three weeks ago though so this could have grown quite exponentially. The next-generation console pre-orders total up to around 1,584,897 copies in the US alone. (we couldn’t find the EU figures unfortunately). All format pre-orders make that total 2,016,517 units. Now looking at Amazon.com, the prices of the two most readily available copies, the standard edition and limited edition, are priced respectively at $59.96 and $99.99 for all formats. Some numerical jiggery-pokery makes that an average price of $79.98. So how much have the pre-orders potentially made them? Well that would be a cool $161,281,029… That’s just over $161 million.

That figure is of course conjecture and not at all official. That does not however show any figures for the EU and other territories and obviously cannot legislate for how many people will actually buy it on the day of release either. Those records are currently held by Grand Theft Auto V.

The records that GTA 5 holds are incredible and it would take some monumental effort to beat them. The Guinness Book of Records shows that GTA 5 sold 11.21 million units in its first 24 hours. For Destiny to do that pretty much everyone that owns a PS4 would have to buy it and at least half of the people with an Xbox One if console sales figures are to be believed. GTA 5 made $815.7 million in the first 24 hours which is more than Marvel’s The Avengers and Guardians of The Galaxy films made in their opening weekends combined. Destiny has that potential but we’ll have to wait and see. The three records Destiny could potentially break at launch are: Best selling video game in 24 hours, Highest grossing video game in 24 hours and Highest grossing entertainment product in 24 hours.

It is something that Bungie have done before however. When Halo 3 was released way back in 2007, it completely smashed then record holder Spider-Man 3 as the biggest US entertainment launch in history, making $170 million at launch. That also beat the final Harry Potter book as well and was helped by the 1.7 million pre-orders of the game.

The figures will be interesting given that, except for Watch_Dogs, this is the most high profile next generation release. It will dictate how many other games will go about their business in the years to come of this generation. I’m pretty sure the pre-order figures for the US also don’t include any console bundle pre-orders nor do they count the digital download platforms of Xbox Live and Playstation store. We’ll know for sure at the end of the week but one thing for certain is that the business end of Destiny will be talked about for as long and in as much detail as the game playing side will be.

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Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham – Interview

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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While we were at Gamescom, we got to have a look at Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham. The next instalment in the DC universe from TT Games and Warner Bros does exactly what the name suggests, goes beyond Gotham City. You will be travelling in to space to save the Earth from Brainiac and visiting far flung planets along the way to add new and interesting environments to the normally dark gothic concrete palette of Gotham. I managed to have a chat with Philip Ring, an executive producer with TT Games and talk about the upcoming chapter in the DC Lego universe.

The universe is greatly expanding with the introduction of space flight missions, reminiscent of the Star Wars franchise, and a whole host of new characters, which is what Philip says they were trying to achieve.

“We really wanted to big on the DC content this time around, add a whole host of new characters, new locations, new gameplay styles even with the space combat and VR missions. Just really cram this game with as much content as we can.”

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The content is indeed huge with over 115 characters including Beast Boy, Plastic Man, Catwoman, Bat Cow accompanying the traditional set of our caped crusaders and, my personal favourite, a complete remaining of the 1960s television Batman with levels, characters and Adam West voicing the titular character! TO THE BATCAVE! I asked how good it’s been to have been given the freedom of so many great franchises.

“It’s been absolutely fantastic. We’ve been so privileged to work with the franchises that we have and to go back and really dig in to the DC world. We started off with the Batman story arc and DC have been fantastic that we’ve got that freedom to do things like the 1960s level and the bonus content that comes with that like the speech, Adam West giving a voice over for it, and the modern universe too.”

Of course this isn’t just the television universe or the movie universe in the game, this time it’s going deep in to the lore of the DC universe.

“We have massive DC fans in the office so as soon as the design team start looking at what to include, everyone comes out with “I love this character, I want to include this” and so we’ve got everyone chipping in with the kind of content we’d like to include. And we listen to what the fans like to see. So when Blue Beetle and Beast Boy gets the kind of reaction from what the people want to see, we want to include that in this big DC experience.”

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The release date is close but there’s no sign of the development of the game stopping until the very last minute. Not because it’s not ready, but because TT keep finding things they want to put in the game.

“We’re really still putting stuff in and we really want to make it the best experience it can possibly be. So the whole team is still working and people are still coming up with ideas which you think ‘That’s too cool not to include’ so we’re constantly revisiting and adapting to make it really special.”

So does that mean there will be DLC if they run out of time to get it all in to the main game?

“Who knows? We’re really focusing on making sure the game is the best it possible can be. If there was something we wish we could of included or that didn’t really fit in to the main game then maybe we will do it further down the line.”

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be released on PS3, PS4, PSVita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, WiiU, 3DS, Mobile and PC on 14th November in the UK and three days earlier in the US.

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Magicka 2 – Preview

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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Magicka was a surprise hit written by eight university students from Sweden (what is it with that country and break out hits?). Magicka 2 not only promises more of the same but an inspired improvement on our multiplayer wizard blasting fun.

The wizards are gone, all but extinct thanks to the Wizard Wars. This has left co-operation between wizards rather tense and firey to say the least. Evil however is returning to Midgard as the folklore of the Nords is once again tapped to set a very atmospheric environment. You could imagine this kind of crazy situation being more suited to the table top antics of Acquisitions Incorporated (bonus points if you get that reference), but the ridiculous nature of your incredibly trigger happy wizards is more than suited to the top down view of the snow laden world.

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I think maybe a good way to describe the Magicka games, and this one in particular, is as an incredibly fun and easy co-op cast-and-slash (rather than hack). I don’t mean easy as in the difficulty. Oh no, the game is as tricky as it possibly can be when two or more crazed wizards are firing their deathly beams in every direction to beat the oncoming hoards of fantastical creatures. What I mean is the ease of how to play the game, the learning curve if you will. It completely adds to the fun whilst you are accidentally killing everything whilst you are learning and not accidentally killing everything once you have learned.

Friendly fire and casual friendly trolling has never been more fun than it is in Magicka 2. Yes you are kind of supposed to work together, because that’s the entire point of co-operative teamwork. But one snatch at a spell and the repercussive fall out is not only vicious but hilarious. This is a game meant to be played by people in the same room or over a voice chat and, having played it in the former capacity, it excels in creating that amusing, anecdotal gameplay. Especially when you start summoning demons. Having done that, it made for a very crazy 30 minutes of hilarity and constant death until we realised that teamwork actually works.

Speaking of the gameplay, it is very easy pick up and play. I played it using a PS4 controller which felt incredibly natural, something the development team was surprised by given their preference for mouse and keyboard controls. The gamepad support makes the spell selection and movement surprisingly fluid and easy to pick up and master. So now, if you’ve had previous experience of the game and want your friends to get involved, this will be a great way to get in to it. The spells themselves are fun. All based on the elemental system (fire, water, etc), the spells combine excellently with multiple people, especially with the healing and the speed at which everything unfolds, it causes a cacophony of light and a hectic firefight. It’s incredibly fulfilling when you cross the streams to combine these elemental powers, almost rewarding yourself for the several moment of derping around beforehand.

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The game itself has moved on from the previous incarnation with more customisation options for your wizard and many different spell techniques to get the hang of that really gives yourself a bit of a personal style. The newest thing however is the Artifact system. There are special artefacts to find during the game. The best relation I can give to this is Halo’s Skull system. There are things that add to the replay ability of the game like difficulty enhances (extra health for enemies, less for you, etc) and these can be combined. So whatever crazy hardcore self-masochistic difficulty you like to inflict upon yourself and others, it can always be worse. There are more comedic ones too like the sitcom artefact that adds audience laughter, boos, sighs and the like. Certainly makes for some more laughs.

Magicka 2 is coming to PC in 2015 and, as you might have guessed by the controller use, PlayStation 4. Given the strength of the console’s online play and given the amount of units sold AND the more to be sold with the oncoming release of games like Destiny, there could be a lot of demand and take up for this game on the PS4. It ticks the main three boxes I have with co-op based gameplay. 1) Online multiplayer. 2) Easy to pick up and fulfilling. 3) Absolutely hilarious gaming experiences. So there will be lots of interesting and engaging whooping of evil’s hoards by four dysfunctional and explosive wizards, controlled by you, riding from the ruins of Aldreheim in 2015.

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Mortal Kombat X – Preview

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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One of the first things I did when I started writing about games was I did a review of Mortal Kombat, the release from 2011. So naturally I was very excited to get my hands on the new Mortal Kombat X and see how exactly the next generation power has managed to add to the already smooth and visually opulent violence.

In truth, it adds quite a bit. The level of detail and the smoothness of the frame rate is making this one of the most fluid fighting games to date. Not just in its own genre but fighting across the board. The solid 60fps (a phrase I am sure to have worn out by the time I’m done covering Gamescom) makes not only the motion of the characters incredibly smooth but also completely unaffected by the particle effects from attacks. Sub Zero freezing will give you no lag.

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Speaking of Sub Zero, the gameplay has changed a little bit. Nothing has changed in a huge way but enough in a freshening way. There are three subclasses to the character you pick. Each one of them has something that adds a buff to some of your moves and attacks, or resistance to the oppositions attacks with defence rebuffs. These variations add another element to the game that makes you think a little differently about how you approach a fight. Scorpion, for example has a demon that he can summon to grab them from the ground in one variation. Another can set himself on fire so that his opponent will also catch fire and the final one will have swords to slice with. These traits are on every character and not only add the tactical element, but also some kick ass new moves.

When it comes to new, there will be new characters. Without spoiling any story, and the lore of the Mortal Kombat universe is being expanded quite nicely with this, 25 years has passed since the last instalment. This means that some familiar faces may be gone but legacies remain. Such as Cassie Cage, the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya, and Kotal Kahn, a man who has profited from the conflicts by taking over the Outworld. Don’t fear though as roster DLC will be coming.

The environments where you play the game have also expanded too with the brand new Jungle area (thanks to Kotal Kahn) but the expansion is not just in the choice. The environments are all very smooth with excellent depth in the animations. But it also is immersive and has breakable areas and places that can be used for attacks and defence. Not just the branches of trees or rocks, but the style of the environment can also aid certain players attacks. I got some great freezing action in with Sub Zero in these areas.

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Of course you haven’t heard me say anything about the violence and the excellent X-Ray system from the last game. Well it’s here, it’s back and it’s expanded. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it and it certainly wets the appetite for the old ‘ultra violence’, as A Clockwork Orange’s Alex would call it. The three tier power bar mechanic is back and it is smooth and deliciously gory. Some new X-Ray animations have been added, no small part in thanks to the new characters. But the animations are bone crunchingly, spine crackingly vile, repulsive, bloody and impossibly painful… Excellent.

This also means the fatalities are given the next generation treatment too and live up to the face slicing promise that you’d expect (there’s a hint there). The game is coming out on all consoles, so you don’t need to upgrade to enjoy the continuation of the new Mortal Kombat lore. However I would certainly say you are missing out on the smoothest 2.5D fighting game I’ve ever laid my hands on and until later in the week, it was definitely the best looking fighting game regardless of style (more on that in WWE2K15).

The release date is, predictably, 2015 and will definitely be worth waiting for. It has the potential to go unchallenged in its genre for quite a while as well in the next generation market so if you’re a die hard fan waiting for Tekken or a next generation Street Fighter, then you might want to explore this first.

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Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor – Preview

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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So not a lot was really known to us about the new Lord of The Rings RPG, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Thanks to GamesCom, we now know a lot more and does it look deep, stunning and exciting. Who knew that Sauron could be this cool?

Set before the famous book in three parts by J.J.R. Tolkein that we all know and love, but after the last stand of the evil Lord Sauron against the alliance of elves and men. You take the reins of Talion, a Ranger of Gondor who, despite being dead, seems pretty animated to find things out. He also shares his dead body with Celebrimbor, a wraith who is currently experiencing a bout of amnesia over who he is, what his past is and what role he had to play in a bigger plot.

The duo travel around Mordor from mount doom to the newer previously unknown places further south, to uncover the secrets of the wraith and the world around them. Especially when they come upon a strange creature who speaks simply and has recently lost possession of a shiny gold ring to an adventurous thieving Hobbit. Along the way you will find artefacts that trigger memories as well as give an ‘eye’ on Sauron and his descent into the darkness.

The face of it, which is a good looking third person RPG is actually hiding beneath it a deep word that is continuously evolving and, by using Mordor, is completely open to creating new areas outside of the Middle-earth we are so used to playing in. It plays very easily, much like a good hack and slash in places but that would be insulting to its rich and intriguing enemy mechanics.

shadowofmordor2 Each enemy, from the Uruk grunt you hit to the to the commander of the troop, has a levelling system that remembers your battles. If you die, you are not reset to a point but placed further down the line in time so those individual soldiers gain more skill points and move up the pecking order of rank. They’ll also remember what you did that they didn’t like, especially if they have fears. Some are scared of fire and they will flee if that comes near them, or some might hate wild animals and do the same.
This chain of command structure, evolution and AI memory is indeed very clever and puts a nice spin into the gameplay of smashing as many orcs as you can. You feel you know these guys, that they have a place or character in the fiction of this world, without having any kind of impact on the games main plot. It’s this detail, despite how graphically impressive it is, that really immerses you in the the game. Each commander has a place in the world, whether they work the slaves, are the executioner or just have a reputation for death. Even down to each commanders bodyguard who will give you a quick pep talk before trying to kill you.

There’s quite a few cool things your duo can do. As a wraith you can possess people to stun them or make them fight for your side. Or explode their head. Your weapons can create an awesome combo barrage of slicing and dicing, especially the slow motion kill cams that appear. Firing arrows gives you the chance to slow down time so you can really hit six or seven Uruk in the face, Legolas style, before you need to start slashing away. The artefacts and weapons in game also contain vast amounts of lore so as with a lot of modern games, there’s good reason to go out and find all the things you can and learn more about the history of this time.

shadowofmordor3 You will level up and develop as well of course and your characters have traits, such as Talion’s ranger skills allowing him to climb up big walls and our wraith being able to control others. There is a puzzle element to it too, when presented with the wild landscape of Mordor and how animals and monsters can be manipulated to let you pass whilst avoiding costly combat.

The open world itself is very immersive, from the slave driven farms of Nurn to the ashen landscape of Mount Doom, Tolkein’s fantasy environment has been brought to live vividly and imaginatively. And being Mordor and not being limited to the canon of what is established, it is also quite big. You could probably make a small comparison to Dark Souls in the way that it looks but for once we can truly say that it certainly is its own game.

Not long for this one in the big wait. The game comes out on September 30th on every platform, including PC. Of course that means it has quite the release schedule to go up against but keep your eye on it as it will definitely be worth your time, Lord of the Rings fan or otherwise.

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E3 Recap – Sony Press Conference

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

You may have heard us talk about the Sony E3 Press Conference on TheGameJar podcast this past weekend. If you haven’t then go and do it, but read this at the same time. Because, you know, multitasking right?

You could argue that Sony certainly had the most invested in their conference in terms of delivering. Their console is still outselling the Xbox One (for the fifth month in a row now) and whilst the big name Christmas stocking filler battles over Xbox DLC exclusivity, Sony have very quietly bagged themselves some big names.

destiny-alpha-screen-night-time Since the conference, two games have had some early release testing. The much anticipated Bungie original IP, Destiny, had an early exclusive Alpha release and an exclusive PS4 beta announced. As quick as that happened, Battlefield Hardline also released a multiplayer beta for the PS4. But sticking with Destiny, Sony are obviously investing a lot into the potential this game has and I think, having watched a lot of the early access videos, it is the right decision. The white PS4 console bundle with the game could be just what the people debating how to enter the current generation console market need to convince them.

The big names that Sony unleashed with gameplay certainly felt a lot more conclusive than the Xbox conference, to me personally. Sony are obviously very confident in the power of their console and that’s evident by the amount of gameplay that was shown. There was a certain confusion and potential trepidation at the gameplay reveal of The Order 1886 in my eyes. The gameplay looked interesting and atmospheric but it felt a tad confused and there wasn’t enough to excite me.

Then there was Entwined. The immediately released game that feels like the bastard of Child of Eden and After Burner. It was interesting, especially as a debut game, but again not enough for me to jump straight in to it. Then more inFamous spin offs and I zoned out a bit… Until Sack Boy appeared.

If you don’t love Sack Boy, regardless of your thoughts of Little Big Planet, then you are morally bankrupt and dead inside. As I said in the Podcast, it always confused me how amazing some of the levels created by the community happen so quickly and so effectively. But it is definitely encouraging for the PS4 community to have a truly co-op creative platformed.

far-cry-4-fc4 We can skip to Far Cry 4 and how excited everyone is about this game. It’s certainly no secret about how powerful the Cry Engine is. The amount of corners and performance possibilities that the previous generation of consoles couldn’t deliver is now behind us. Far Cry’s gameplay is always great, but the environments especially are spectacular and always have been. Far Cry 4 has nailed it already. Plus elephants. Elephants dammit!

Then there was the Dead Island 2 reveal. A game I’m excited for as the promise of Dead Island (despite the lacklustre end game) was enough for me to enjoy it.

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Let’s skip ahead to the big Naughty Dog reveals. The Last of Us Remastered looks great and for those of us who have ashamedly never played it, we get all the goodies at once. Then the reveal for Uncharted 4, presumably the final saga of Nathan Drake, but the excitement was enough to end the conference in style.

Batman… BATMAN! Wow, how good did that look? Gotham has always been the most dark and atmospheric place in the ‘open world’ genre and the PS4 certainly looks like its got it going on. It was always going to be impressive but it looks great.

It may feel like I’m rushing through these and I am. Because I want to get to the two things that greatly impressed and surprised me. Firstly, Grim Fandango. I remember the original release and anyone who’s played the Monkey Island remasters will know how great the original games are, let alone the graphical upgrade they had. If there is anything that deserves the re release and the updating then it is Grim Fandango.

NoMansSkyField Finally it is my place to talk about the most impressive game at E3, although how well it actually runs and how smooth it is going to be interesting, is the debut game from Hello Games. No Man’s Sky is an FPS exploration game come flight sim come combat sim that is procedurally generated. The promise of practically infinite gameplay and exploration, especially with how diverse and colourful it looks, makes this game an incredibly generation defining title. Plus Sean Murray, despite being having the same name as me bias, looks like a guy who’s really invested in creating something special and inspired by great things. Part of me worries that it could be too big and too ambitious and that delays and setbacks could halt it. Although that’s a hangover of my experience of many games too ambitious for the technology and too stuck without an end purpose. This I feel will combat that, and I hope it does because for all the big titles and particle effects and grand big sellers, this game looks to be what gaming is all about and what Playstation was all about from the beginning. So, here’s hoping.

Finally I shall leave you with two pieces of information you wanted to know but didn’t know how to find out. The music for the Metal Gear Solid V trailer was Nuclear by Mike Oldfield and The Last Of Us trailer was a cover of Nirvana’s Something In The Way by a band called At Sea.

Oh and Grand Theft Auto V looks good enough to bury Watch_Dogs and I’m going to be silly enough to buy it.

What do you think about the Sony conference? Why not leave a comment or talk about it on Facebook and Twitter. We don’t bite!

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Watch Dogs – Review

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

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So the thing you might be thinking, especially if you’ve read other reviews of Watch Dogs or if you’re hearing stories whilst waiting to buy it, is that Watch Dogs is disappointing to the hype it created. Of course there was a huge amount of hype, it was a delayed next generation launch title! But ultimately it’s created a large amount of expectation that you think it won’t deliver, given what everyone else has already reported.

That was something I agreed with for the first couple of hours of playing. To start with the game drops you right in to the action. Actually, narratively, it’s a bit too deep in to the action. So let’s address the issue of the story, as I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about it.

The story of the game is that you’re a lone technologically advanced ex-hacker who has become a vigilante in the Windy City, otherwise known as Chicago. However this occurs because your character, Aiden Pearce, carries the weight of guilt in being indirectly responsible for the death of a family member. His actions and setup make him a man on a course for redemption and satiation of said guilt, which leads you on the path of destruction and death in the name of justice.

watch dogs review 3 Now the criticism of Pearce, the vigilante apparently known as ‘The Fox’ but that’s hardly ever mentioned, is that his character is unlikeable and the empathy for him is hard to come by. Which is partially correct, but there are reasons for that. Firstly we don’t know enough about what Aiden has done after his trauma and secondly, the open world nature of the game doesn’t direct us in the vigilante path unless we wish to.

This means that a very important part of this character is essentially redundant, depending how you play it. As reviewers we spend as much time as we can working to complete the game as fully as possible which means we’ve all kind of ignored the crime fighting sub-plot element of Pearce in favor of gunning down many bad guys on our lone ranger redemption fest. It’s also very weird how even with this crime fighting persona, you’re still a criminal actively stealing vast sums of money from unassuming innocent people, which further reduces the belief in Pearce’s confused psyche.

But as you go on further in the game, Pearce does become a tad more emotionally accessible and, by the end of it, you are invested in his story. The entire situation he is in is a mess and unless you appreciate the finer points of the past decade of television drama, it may completely gloss over you.

In fact the past decade of television drama has an awful lot of sway in the story of this game. I recall a preview video somewhere that said one of the villains of the piece, Iraq, is someone the voiceover referred to as Iraq Barksdale. The reference to The Wire is not amiss either as a fair portion of the game owes a lot to the gritty projects portrayed by that show.

In fact, if I was to sum up this story I would class it as this: Robocop’s OCP meets 1995 movie Hackers, interspersed with Wire-esque gang warfare and a hero based on The Punisher that, all in all, tries a bit too hard to deliver a serious message. And it does try very hard to deliver an Orwellian style nightmare of a surveillance state, ala Blair CCTV, and the dangers of integrated networked automation.

Sadly though this is let down by the fiction of the world being very repetitive and poorly constructed and acted. The random stories you find along the way hacking into other people’s conversations and phones (a device intended to humanise the world round you) very quickly become repetitive and tiresome, and the random jobs/salary and recent activity information can get a bit silly at times. The tertiary elements such as radio news pops and television broadcasts as well as the occasional DedSec interruption are incredibly wooden and far inferior to the rest of the game’s acting. Which is strange as they’re actually crucial for plot exposition but feel casual and almost throwaway.

But we’re gamers, right? We don’t give a shit about story and my dramatic criticism of the narrative construct. You want to know how it plays and want me to stop twatting around like this is an literature essay. Well, alright then.

watch dogs review 2 As I have touched up on the fiction of the world, let’s discuss the world itself. It is, quite frankly, magnificent. The open world Chicago is designed very much like the original Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. There are the ropey areas, the slightly middle class areas, the big city, a more desolate backwater area and several ways to get around. The inner city is sadly a bit dull though. Apart from the enjoyment of checking in to a place on your phone and finding out some history regarding the area, the city itself is not very interactive except where the game has its set pieces. The metropolis is effectively a built up road maze with many obstacles and tools for you to escape the police, or the prying eye of the ctOS.

However, Pawnee, an area you grow very accustomed to in Act III is one of the most beautifully realised places I’ve seen in gaming. As a rural gaming environment, I’d put it up there are one of my favourites next to Bright Falls from Alan Wake. The colours are rich and deep and, regardless of the resolution blah de blah (I was playing it on a PS4), it is a lovely place to just walk around and it arguably has more interesting things to check out than Chicago itself. Even the old wooden bridges, appear in excellent detail and add to the atmosphere.

Pawnee is also one of two places that you can see the beautiful sight that is Chicago from afar. When it hits night, you can look over the largest expanse of river and see those skyscrapers lit up. The only other place is on a boat out in the water expanse on the east side of the map (presumably Lake Michigan). Whilst the game doesn’t compare at all to Grand Theft Auto V in its fiction or depth, it does portray the metropolis from a distance that GTA wasn’t able to do effectively, in my opinion.

Now, the hacking… I’ll be honest; the game revolves around this apparently jailbroken iPhone being the Excalibur of hacking and it does get a bit old quite quick. There is almost an over reliance on it. It’s far too easy to do things and, especially when earning (stealing) money, it makes the economic part of the game entirely redundant. I never once, apart from the mission where I had to, purchased anything from a shop. I brought one gun as part of that mission. The rest, the ammo, the component parts for grenades and distractions, were all found in game. I’d amassed over $200,000 and spent none of it except for a gratuitous coffee or beer. Even the clothes are just different colours of the same clothes and I think Watch_Dogs missed out on a great customisation opportunity here.

The weapons are not as comically violent as others in the genre and are very functional. Mostly sub-sets of themselves but they are all easily handled and the weapon wheel is easily used. You get by without really getting annoyed or frustrated at weapons or their selection which I am guessing is the plan for it. Driving is relatively simple but very sluggish in the early stages of the game and as soon as you can get a motorcycle and your hacking skill tree is good enough to manipulate any potential chases/ramming sequences, then it’s again far too easy. The motorcycle is in fact incredibly overpowered. It is, unless you make the mistake of going head first into something, practically accident free.

The online part of the game is relatively fun although I found it quite a distraction from playing the storyline of the game or a side mission. The game occasionally prompts you into going online, thinking that someone is actually already trying to get you. Which is fine, except that it takes you very off course of where you were initially heading. I wouldn’t say that the online is an successful expansion for the end game or between missions necessarily, but it does mix it up a bit. Although there are rewards for winning such battles of hacking prowess, there isn’t really any punishment to drive you to defend yourself.

watch dogs review 4

If I was to describe the gameplay like I did the story then it would be thus: Metal Gear Solid stealth meets logic puzzles in engineering kills/data retrieval, combined with an overused Driver-esque-ram-someone-off-the-road mechanic, and if you want you can just shoot the crap out of everything anyway. Apart from frustrating take down missions where you have to get close up to a guy and knock him out. Which is quite annoying, as you’ve previously murdered 90% of the people before him so why do you need to keep him alive? No one knows.

The other game modes are quite interesting too and there are plenty of mini-games around even though exploration is a mini game in itself. Finding cars, intercepting convoys, doing take-down hits are all fun little distractions. The two stand out games though are the Digital Trips and The Cash Run game. The Digital Trips are kind of psychedelic digitised acid trips that are games in themselves. Madness is basically Carmageddon, Alone is almost a game version of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg movie ‘The World’s End’, Psychadellic is a trippy free falling trampoline bouncing game involving flowers and points rings and Spider Tank is a tank designed like a Spider destroying the city for points… Enough said. Cash Run however is my favourite. This turns the game in to an augmented reality, free running 3D platformer to collect coins and is great fun.

watch dogs review 1 One thing I must mention is the portrayal of women in the game. Now I’m not defending GTA at all in this, but GTA is intended as a satirical look at society and its problems. Watch_Dogs is not. There are points where the portrayal of women is absolutely misogynist to the point of screaming at the game and thumping my Caitlin Moran books in its general direction. Our companion in the story, Clara Lille (with her wobbly accent), has a massive chest tattoo that highlights the fact she’s wearing a top that is unnecessarily revealing. It’s almost comical how low cut her top needlessly is. She is completely over-sexualized, especially compared to our hero Aiden who is wearing more layers than a space-walking astronaut.

Also there is an entirely random storyline involving human trafficking (The Wire season 2 anyone) and the sex slave trade. Now I get that it’s trying to be edgy, but it just felt like gratuitous exploitation and left a sour taste for me. Even the girls in the drug labs were wearing bikinis and as you first hack your way around the projects, sexual assault and sexual acts are rampant and completely pointless. It doesn’t need to be there. The entire sex trade thing didn’t even leave a message; it just felt like it was there to spice things up. If the entire sequence were a drug-based enterprise, I’d have been fully accepting. But this just feels vacuous and needlessly objectifying in an already testosterone filled game.

The thing is I actually started to enjoy Watch_Dogs a lot more towards the end. To start with I had to plough on and, much like everyone else, remind myself that this wasn’t trying to be a usurper to the Rockstar crown. And whilst I had my reservations and criticisms, I also enjoyed the game and some of its stand out moments. But this should have been a launch title and at times, it feels like it should have been. That’s not to be derogatory to it, I’ve had fun playing it and I’d rather a game be delayed so that it is ultimately ready when we get it. Watch_Dogs delivers a good impression on what a next gen console can be capable of whilst not really getting the basics right.

Summary

Watch Dogs has a lot of strong moments and is an interesting take on the open-world genre, but ultimately lacks the punch and direction to make it great.

Good Points

– Chicago looks excellent, especially at night.

– Weapons are easy and powerful

– Hacking is easy

Bad Points

– Hacking is too easy

– Story line isn’t very well set up to start (poor exposition)

– Doesn’t further the genre into the next gen like we’d hope.

Why a 7?

Well, going by the idea that other recent examples in this genre are an 9 or 10 score, this has got a lot of work to do to get that far. But it is still ultimately an enjoyable game for a time and is visually great.

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_q-s3QdmU8?rel=0

The Evil Within – Preview

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Sean Cleaver

The weight of expectation on The Evil Within is certainly on some broad shoulders. Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami happens to own those shoulders.

Annouced two years ago and almost finally upon us, the game follows a modern day Police Detective, Sebastian Castellanos into a deeply disturbing psychotic environment filled with zombie like creatures, shifting environments, evil monsters and the pairing of a mysterious boy and his doctor.

the evil within preview 1 Playing through the two demo levels I got the chance to experience, the atmosphere is certainly one reminiscint of the iconic survival horror of the PS1 era. Even at this early stage the classic over-the-shoulder view, dark colours and foggy outlines are effectively imposed here. As you walk in to the first level, you are almost paranoid of everything and desperate for supplies, smashing all the boxes you can and getting as little ammunition as is available. There are several other options you can use including a multi faceted crossbow.

In fact, that’s one thing that I was surprised by, the weapons. So far they are incredibly effective, almost too effective. The only thing that really stops you from going quite run-and-gun at this stage is the amount of ammo. Something that will change as the difficulty increases especially. Quite an interesting dynamic is the way that you can‘t fight off multiple enemies forever, or just simply mow them down in a haze of bullets.

Eventually you will get swamped and overrun. You can slow them down but until you take a flame to them, they’ll keep coming. You have to be precise with your shots to put the down in the first place and you have to be conservative. Your gun won’t always be on target, so no panic shooting. Melee will only buy you a bit more time. But the game employs some clever, and tense, devices to help you with dealing with the mobs. Plenty of objects are around that are easy to use as explosives, traps to set, corners and corridors to funnel them in to, but the best has to be the weapon wheel.

the evil within preview feat 3

The weapon selection wheel (think any Rockstar title of recent times) has quite nicely been implemented but unlike most games where it either pauses the game or continues it, it slows the action down, quite conveniently buying you some time to think, plan and execute you next moves.

The visuals of the monsters (known as The Haunted) are, to be honest, as you’d expect for a zombie monster horror. Everything is as gory as you’d also expect with blood, guts, flesh, and Shining-esque set pieces. However the star of the show already, by far is the audio.

From the first moment that you hear the opening bars of Clair De Lune echoing from the save points, you already know that you’re in for a scary ride. One of the things you notice when playing with headphones is how much the audio design is completely surround sound biased. The little sounds and the use of echoes and reverbs resonate in your ears and creep you out.

If one think has come along the furthest in the days of the PS1 survival era, it is sound options available to game developers and this game takes full advantage of that. At the games developmental stage, the audio is the biggest winner and the thing that needs improving the least.

the evil within preview feat 2

I must stress that this is an early stage, so there is definitely no criticism. This will be an incredibly atmospheric horror with many interesting subplots and twists along the way. But there will be some work needed along the way to make the visual and the weapon balancing just right, then it will certainly be a game to play with the lights off.

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