I understand everyone wants to praise indie games. I get it; I really do. It’s a middle finger to the corporate world, and developers can explore interesting new ideas without the weight of a watchful eye. A Mortician’s Tale kind of explores this exact idea, but with a funeral home.
The game starts out well and gives me an idea of how the game will progress. A mortician named Rose gets a new job right out of medical school at a family-owned funeral home. You slowly perform different ways to prepare bodies, from embalming to cremating. It’s a cool concept, and things started getting weird when the game walked me through every single body’s preparation. I thought I was in for a long game, as I thought it would take a while to see everything the game had, thus the extended tutorial times.
The story is told through emails on your computer between employees and Rose’s school friend. The sad, morbid music painted an atmosphere I was starting to get into, and the emails told me that something was going to happen. Of course, the tides turned when a corporation bought the funeral home, and I was thinking this was when things would start picking up, but they didn’t. Then the game ended. Yeah, just like that.
I really admire indie games and the unique little adventures and stories they tell. Some are the most memorable I have, such as Soma, Observer, and even Journey, but this isn’t how you do it. Don’t drag the player through tutorials; build an entire game system; create characters and an atmosphere; and end the game when most would start picking up. I hate this so much, and I refuse to give these developers any credit for what they did. They literally skipped to the end of the story, and everything leading up to it had no meaning. I also understand short games; I’ve played games this short and felt very satisfied with their ending. This tale is not worth a second of your time.
First-person military shooters have received more controversy than any other genre in gaming history. Going from WWII games every few months to modern military shooters and then to futuristic, gamers just can never be happy. DICE decided to change things up for the first time in a decade and release a historical military shooter that other franchises are now coat-tailing.
BF1 is also the first AAA World War I shooter to date, and it was a nice change of pace. There is a lot of history behind WWI that never gets talked about, and DICE could have easily just made another WWII shooter. The weapons, historical figures, battles, and politics behind WWI were brutal and fascinating at the same time. WWI was a kind of limbo between modern technology and the warfare of old; it was an interesting time for sure.
BF1 doesn’t follow the traditional sense of telling a tale of a fictional squad and one hero trying to get through the theaters of war. We get to see different mini-stories with quite interesting characters throughout the entire war. These mini-stories are anywhere from 5 to 3 levels long, and they allow us to get a taste of everything rather than bore us to death with a 6-hour campaign of the same thing over and over again. There are five mini-campaigns, to be specific, and they all play differently. One has you running a tank down French frontlines, while another has you gunning enemies down in a jungle, and then you’re in Italy as a heavily armored soldier mowing down opposing soldiers on a mountaintop. Then you get to follow Lawrence of Arabia and a small part of his story in Constantinople. It keeps things interesting, and I felt like I was able to experience all the weapons and various ways to play the game. BF1 actually incorporates a lot of stealth, which is unheard of in this type of game, and it’s completely optional.
Once you’re done with the campaign, BF1 truly shines in multiplayer. Battlefield 3 was already my favorite multiplayer game of the series, and BF1 picks up the baton and carries it with pride. The multiplayer mode has a personality all on its own. Thanks to the many modes, there’s so much fun to be had in multiplayer, and to prove this, it’s one of the few shooters I still play online months after release. You have a few typical modes like Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, but it’s the Campaign mode that really pushes BF1 to the top of the list. The campaigns are loosely based on the maps of the single-player mode, and these are vast maps that have several objectives that each team needs to complete. Depending on skills, the Allied team will push through and complete them, sweeping across the entire map of 100 players. The Axis players need to keep them back using planes, tanks, motorcycles, and any weapon they can pick up. The tug-of-war aspect is so addictive and allows for a lot of strategies and the feeling of being a small part of a big war.
Multiplayer is just so amazing, and with all the expansions, there’s nearly endless fun. However, the weapons themselves make up half the multiplayer. The WWI-era weapons are predecessors to WWII and feel almost ancient, but not really. From the giant scopes on weapons to various melee weapons and rough-shooting machine guns, BF1 nails weapons down perfectly. These feel so good to shoot and are so satisfying to just try out and mix up. The various classes you can pick incorporate a good balance of weapons and abilities. From medics being able to revive teammates and using single-shot rifles to heavy-mowing down enemies with highly inaccurate machine guns, it’s just a blast to experience. The only letdown is grinding to unlock new skins, and weapons take forever. You earn rare cash for unlocking items, and I highly suggest only spending these on weapons. There are loot boxes you can earn to unlock stuff for free, but it’s a grind, for sure.
Lastly, the visuals are absolutely stunning. Some of the best ever seen in a shooter, and the game actually takes on its own art style rather than looking like a bleak, dry historical shooter. There are lens flares, darkly contrasted visuals, and the various lighting effects are stunning. The audio experience is just as powerful as Battlefield has always excelled in that department time and time again.
Overall, Battlefield 1 is a fantastic historical shooter and one of the best to come out in over a decade. The campaign is refreshing and fun, and the multiplayer will keep you busy for months after beating the campaign. I just wish the campaign was longer, as I wanted more unique stories to play through, and that feeling is always a good sign. Hopefully, Battlefield 2 (?) will expand upon all of this and maybe even jump-start wars.
Good campaigns are kind of rare in FPS games these days, but 2016 brought back a ton of great FPS campaigns, and it was glorious. Wolfenstein II is another game that focuses more on its story and characters than its multiplayer, which is always a welcome change.
You play BJ Blazcowicz as the story picks up right after The New Order. It’s 1961 in America, in which Hitler and his Nazi regime have dug their roots deeper into the world. BJ and his cohorts from the last game are trying to start a revolution and gather the last remaining scraps they can muster. It might sound like another typical FPS, but this game has heart, soul, and character. Every character is memorable, loveable, and downright awesome to experience. The entire cast just works so well together, including the villains. The Nazi villains are ruthless, deadly, and just despicable, and it takes good writing to feel that way about a character.
The story kept me going through the whole game, as there were plot twists and sudden shock moments that had my blood boiling. One moment, I thought everything was over, only to have the story take a turn for the worse or better. It’s so well written and something you will talk about for a while. Outside of the story, the awesome shooting action is back and slightly improved and streamlined. One important thing to mention is that the boss fights are gone, but this is kind of a blessing as they were mediocre in the last game.
There’s a weapon upgrade system, collectibles, and new contraptions (that you acquire halfway through the story) to change things up. Each weapon gets three different upgrades, and they are all extremely useful. From less recoil to suppressors, some even alter the ammo and dynamics of the weapon as a whole. The arsenal is broad and strong, from energy weapons to grenade launchers, three-round auto-shotguns, and assault rifles. Every type of weapon is covered, and they all feel great and unique. You will constantly switch up weapons for different enemies. Enemies are well thought out this time around and are evenly balanced with health. I felt like the difficulty didn’t jump around so much like the last game; the entire game was challenging, with a hard section towards the end of each level.
The gameplay also changes with each level as you enter different environments. On some levels, you’re underwater a lot; on others, you’re wearing environment suits; and on some, you’re weaponless. The entire campaign is mixed up and feels so smooth and well organized that I just couldn’t get enough. Each enemy takedown feels satisfying, and I wanted to go out guns blazing, but stealth is easier to do in this game, so taking down commanders without sounding alarms was so awesome. Using takedown moves, ax throws, and silenced pistol shots was the way to go when you were heavily outnumbered. These areas in the last game were a chore to navigate, and the enemy placement made it nearly impossible to get through a whole section without being detected.
My biggest complaint would be the level design. While the ideas were great, I got lost often and didn’t know where to go. Hallways all looked the same, and there weren’t many landmarks to figure out where to go. The environments are beautifully created, but the layout is a bit dull. There’s at least plenty to do with the optional objectives on the hub base, Das Hammer, and some endgame content to work through.
The visuals are stunning, especially on PC, with all settings cranked up to the max. Great lighting, textures, and highly detailed models made this game come to life. I honestly can’t recommend Wolfenstein II enough; it’s one of the greatest FPS games made in the last decade.
Titanfall was a highly anticipated title for the Xbox One but disappointed everyone with an online-only component and no campaign. Titanfall 2 completely changed things around with a solid campaign, better gameplay, and improved multiplayer.
You play as Pilot Jack Cooper, who was part of a squad tasked with finding a super weapon called the Ark that a warring faction planned to use on a human-colonized planet called Typhon. You gain control of a Titan (you normally shouldn’t, as you’re just a rifleman) called BT, and you storm off to save the day. It sounds like a typical Call of Duty-style story, but it’s a bit more than that and actually has some heart and soul.
BT and Jack are a great pair as they banter back and forth with each other. Jack is sarcastic, and BT has a sterile robotic sense of humor. It kind of reminds me of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The best part of the campaign is the level of design. Each level is completely different and incorporates the pilot’s abilities, such as jetpacking and wall running. One level is comprised entirely of a fabrication factory, and with walls and pieces still moving around, it gives Jack the ability to wall run and maneuver his way around the facility, unlike most other shooters. My favorite level was when Jack got ahold of a time-altering device and had to reconnoiter a facility for information on the Ark. At the press of a button, I could jump back in time to create new ways to get through the level, but this included enemies in that time period as well. It was an awesome wall running and switching back in time to latch onto a wall that was present then. Very cool stuff.
The shooting in Titanfall 2 is satisfying, with awesome weapons and various grenade types. The shooting was punchy, with heads popping and limbs flying off. The action was intense, and going from ground to the Titan kept things fresh, and the entire campaign felt solid and entertaining. The boss fights were fun, as each one was weaker against certain Titan loadouts, which required strategy, usually not seen in shooters today.
The visuals are stunning, with fantastic lighting effects and highly detailed textures. A lot of time was put into this game and some love as well. I only thought some of the indoor environments were dull with too much sterile steel and blank walls, but the outdoor environments were awesome. The sound design was packed with explosions, crunches, and various action-oriented effects that made me feel like I was in a war.
Multiplayer is where you will end up after the 6-hour campaign. It’s fun, for sure, but it just didn’t keep me interested for more than a couple of weeks. Fighting other Titans is fun, as it works just like the campaign but doesn’t seem to register as well against other players. There’s nothing unique that stands out over other shooters outside of the Titans, and the player base is fairly small. I won’t get into too much detail, but your typical modes are here, such as capture the flag, team deathmatch, pilot-only mode, titan-only mode, and deathmatch. It’s fun for a while, but like I said, it just doesn’t seem as satisfying as the campaign does (which is quite replayable, by the way).
At the end of the day, Titanfall 2 is a solid and well-made FPS that isn’t getting the attention it deserves. With amazing sound and visuals, a surprisingly interesting story and characters, and edge-of-your-seat gameplay, this is hard to pass up. I would like to see a Titanfall 3 with a longer campaign and more build-up of the unique level design.
Okami was one of my favorite PS2 games growing up. I got the game for my birthday and was amazed by the beauty of the visuals and the unique gameplay of the Celestial Brush. It may not seem like such a big deal today, but back in 2006, this game sold PS2 units like hotcakes, and it helped the PS2 stand out as the best console of the generation, something the Xbox and GameCube didn’t have.
Fast forward 11 years, and the game still stands out and holds up as if it were released yesterday. You play as Okami Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, with your Poncle pal Issun, as you embark on an adventure to rid Japan of darkness and evil. It seems like a stereotypical Japanese action-adventure story, but it’s a bit more than that. The characters have depth, and they all feel unique in their own way, with overexaggerated characters and personalities.
The game starts out simple enough by introducing you to basic game mechanics, including the celestial brush, by learning your first brush technique, rejuvenation. By pressing a button, the screen takes a snapshot and turns it into a black-and-white drawing right before your eyes. You then take an actual brush that you control and paint the correct stroke for each technique. This is such a beautiful and amazing game mechanic that works so well and yet has not been matched to this day.
As you progress through the game, the world opens up with larger hub areas that you can explore. Besides going for the main story, you can partake in item collection quests, praise gathering, and finding hidden chests that contain various items. Praise is used to upgrade your health; ink pots; an astral pouch (used to resurrect you when you die); and a money pouch. Praise can be gained by rejuvenating dead areas, feeding animals, and helping villagers in small, yet sparse, side quests. However, 90% of the time, you will be heading ever onward toward the end of your journey.
Combat is actually where the Celestial Brush comes into play the most. You and the enemies are surrounded by a cursed circle, and you can use your various brush techniques to defeat the enemy. There are many enemy types in the game, and they are all based on ancient Japanese myths and legends and look fantastic as well. Each enemy is completely different and weak to different techniques. Enemies are introduced slowly throughout the entire game, all the way to the end.
Boss fights are also unique and fun in their own right. Outside of brush attacks, you can also attack physically and with items. Amaterasu can equip three different types of weapons: mirrors, glaives, and beads. Mirrors are good for quick, rapid medium-range attacks; glaives are for heavier and slower close-range attacks; and beads are for rapid long-range attacks. You can also equip a sub-weapon for a secondary attack that is either close range or projectile. Combat never got old, but it is rather easy. I actually got through the entire game without dying once, and after you start getting a lot of money, you can just buy heavy-damage items and use them over your techniques and weapons. It’s a little unbalanced, but still fun and challenging nonetheless.
As a whole, Okami is beautiful, adventurous, memorable, and unique. However, it does have some flaws. The dialog is the most irritating part of the game, as characters talk in muffled simlish gibberish, and it just gets grating after a while. You also can’t quickly skip through dialog during some cutscenes, so it takes forever to get through. I also found the last 25% of the game long-winded and unnecessary. There’s also a lot of backtracking towards the end and repeated boss battles, which drove me nuts. The game clocks in at about 25–30 hours, which is a little too long for this game. Towards the end, it just felt like the developers were extending the playtime by making you repeat things and dragging things out. I loved my time with Okami, but those last 5–10 hours drove me insane.
Outside of all this, the remastered version looks amazing in widescreen and 1080p and even has 4K textures if you own an appropriate console or PC. It’s nice to see Capcom supporting current tech with their updated games as Okami pops to life on 4K TVs. The price is also a steal, as it was released at a budget price of $20. There’s no excuse not to play this classic.
I never thought I would play a game about sentient corn, but that’s what’s great about games—there’s always an idea someone hasn’t done yet. This is a typical adventure game with puzzles and hallways where you wander around, finding objects with cutscenes thrown in. The game is simple, funny, and has an ending that will leave a smile on your face.
The game starts out with small, funny hints on what to do, like “Pressing Q doesn’t do anything,” which helps open up how this game is going to be. As you wander around the maze-like cornfield, you realize you need to pick up highlighted objects. Most of them are for puzzles, but some are added to your folio and add little story bits. Slowly but surely, you will exhaust each area, as there are only so many areas for you to explore and only a few items in each room.
I made my way underground to the laboratory, where most of the story unfolds. The place is littered with sticky notes from two scientists at each other’s throats, and it also helps add to the story of what’s going on. Most of the puzzles were fairly simple, as they were highlighted with outlines of what items went where, but the problem here was getting lost all the time. The hallways all look the same, and once I searched every new area, there was always the problem of missing something. I had to search each room again several times to figure out what I missed, but this is common with adventure games.
The game looks really nice, and while it won’t smoke your GPU, it uses Unreal Engine 4 to bring the game to life. The sentient corn characters are funny, and each character is interesting and has a personality. I was surprised the developers pulled this off with a playtime of about 5–6 hours. The story kept me pushing forward, as I wanted to know what happened to all these characters and why I was there.
Overall, Maize is a great indie game with funny characters, lots of detail, and a funny story worth seeing through to the end. There isn’t much gameplay here outside of picking up items and wandering hallways, but it’s all for an evening well spent.
The original Walking Dead was a fantastic adventure game. It was well written, tense, memorable, and had amazing characters. The dialog choices kept the game moving, and you always felt like you were in control of every moment. Season Two adds to this while taking place moments after the end of the first game.
This time around, you play solely as Clementine. Right off the bat, I can tell you that your choices from the first season hardly impact Season Two. I imported my save, but I didn’t see many changes or choices I made from Season One affect anything here. We get an all-new cast, setting, and goal for Season Two that kept me going until the end.
Clementine is a child, but her raw character shows this season thanks to what she went through. Going from an innocent child to a hardened killer isn’t easy, and it makes Clementine such a likable character. Adults respect her for how mature she is; she can make adult decisions, but she still has some vulnerabilities that a child would have at her age. The new characters come across as strong, just like in Season One, but I felt a slight disconnect from them. Something about these new characters didn’t quite click as well. A lot is introduced early on, so this might be the reason.
Throughout the game, we are seeing Clem get to a word-of-mouth safe haven called Wellington as she meets new friends, makes new enemies, and has to escape dire circumstances. I feel that this time around, the game is more of an interactive movie than a game. There are hardly any gameplay moments, and there is zero puzzle solving. The action sequences are somewhat entertaining, but the horrific moments of terror are far and few this time around. The few spots where you can walk around an area feel pointless, as all you do is go to the only interactive object to progress. The gameplay is seriously lacking here, but that’s not really a bad thing.
The dialog options are still strong, and many choices had me wanting to go back and change my choice, but that’s good. I always thought about what would happen if I chose something else, as some choices are designed to unfold later and some are immediate. The pacing of this game is also slower and less balanced. There are many slow moments of downtime and dialog build-up. Sometimes 20 minutes would go by with nothing but dialog options, which is a stark contrast to the first game.
I did notice the visuals are slightly improved with better lighting and more detailed textures, but overall the game engine is seriously aging and doesn’t hold up to other games. Season Two is still a memorable game with great characters, excellent writing, and tense moments. If only it were paced better and had more gameplay.
Game of Thrones is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and for good reason. It had memorable characters, well-written scripts, fantastic actors, and so many gripping plot twists that will make your head spin. How do you copy this in a 5-hour game? Telltale somehow managed to do it, with some flaws, and I left wanting more.
You play House Forrester, who are aligned with the Starks in the North, not seen in the show. They are trying to come out from under Roose Bolton’s foot, as the Boltons were assigned as wardens of the North after Ned Stark died in the first season. Ramsay Snow is constantly coming back to the house to “babysit” them, and this is some of where the major turning points happen.
You follow five characters in the game as our viewpoints change. Mira Forrester is in King’s Landing, trying to gain Lady Margery’s favor before she becomes queen. Then there’s Ethan Forrester, who is the new lord of House Forrester after his father dies in the hands of Frey’s ambush. Then there’s Edward Tuttle, who was the original Lord’s Steward, and he gets sent to the Wall. Asher Forrester is off in Essos, trying to gain Daenarys’s favor for an army. With all these different viewpoints, it feels just like the show with everyone spread out.
This is a much more story-driven Telltale game, and I know that sounds silly, but there’s maybe 5% gameplay here and not even any puzzles. There are some combat quick-time events, a few times where you walk around an area looking at things, and then the many, many dialog options, with some being meaningless and some having a full swing of the entire story.
I won’t get into details about the story as that will spoil it, but I was kept in for the whole game. The acting from the original characters who do appear is nice, as is the acting from the new characters. The new characters are memorable, hold their own, and feel like they would fit right into the TV show. As the episodes pick up, you spend less time with each character as all the choices you make culminate in the finale. Some choices were rather difficult to make as you decided who lived or died or how you acted towards someone. This was especially brilliant, as I thought I was doing the right thing sometimes, but it turned out it was hurting me more.
In the end, the point of the game is to gather a large enough army to fight back the Whitehills, whom the Boltons assigned to watch over House Forrester. All your choices will mean the difference between a house that lives or dies. I didn’t find the game really dull, but the scenes where I had control felt pointless. Rarely did it ever feel relevant, such as in a scene where Mira is searching for a letter in Tyrion’s office and guards are running down the hall, and she was trying to not get caught.
The game does end with a sequel in mind, but I don’t know if that’s ever coming; not all the characters’ stories were fulfilled, which is a shame. The visuals are downright ugly and still use Telltale’s decade-old engine, which needs an overhaul. The mobile version of the game is still riddled with bugs and poorly optimized, with frequent slowdowns, crashes, freezes, and bugs. The audio was terrible, as in the last 2 episodes it was somehow compressed to sound like PS1 audio. Overall, though, the game is well worth a playthrough for fans of the show; just don’t get the mobile version.
Monument Valley is one of the most memorable mobile games I have ever played. The game helped show that mobile games have a place with many of the great console games. It was smart, beautiful, unique, and a blast to play. It felt like a mix between Echochrome’s (PSP) gameplay and Journey’s (PS3) art style.
With Monument Valley 2, I got really excited to play this. I expected more and something new at the same time. That’s not entirely what we got. We just got really new. MV2 is an extremely short game and not very challenging. The MC Escher-style puzzles were a breeze to get through, which is a shame, as the first game had a few head-scratchers. Using various switches, you push, pull, spin, and align the various platforms through optical illusions to get the character to the door. At the end of each stage, the player can swipe their finger around to create a star that goes into the heavens; the meaning of this is unknown.
In the first game, we understood it was a journey, but this time around, all I know is that the character is a mother who is seeing her child off for her adventure, and they reunite. That’s it. I like subtle stories, but this one was too subtle. At least a few new elements are thrown in, such as controlling two characters at once, which creates a tad bit more of a challenge.
The game still looks amazing, with gorgeous art direction, music, and heartwarming colors. It’s just a shame it’s in such a short package with no challenge. I still recommend playing this game, but I sure did want many more puzzles than the dozen we got.
Netherrealm Studios made a name for themselves in the comic scene with Injustice: Gods Among Us. It was the first 3D fighting game that featured superheroes in a long time and was actually good, some even considered it the best ever made. With the backlash for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, NetherRealm decided to keep the MK universe out and go for its own thing, and the results were well received.
Injustice 2 is a continuation of the first game in terms of story and content. The gameplay is more refined and feels tighter and punchier, and there’s just a lot more content. The story revolves around Brainiac trying to destroy every civilized planet in the universe for his own entertainment, but the Justice League and other DC heroes are fighting it out, trying to control their rage, and getting into moral dilemmas. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the Injustice storyline. It feels like a straightforward comic book when it could be so much more. Instead of taking the smart ideas from the movies, it sticks true to its form, which is, I guess, a good thing if that’s what you’re looking for.
After the story was finished, I felt it was long-winded and didn’t seem to really go anywhere. The characters weren’t changed or progressed in any way, which is what I would have wanted. Outside of the story, the game is fantastic and plays very well. Every character got an upgrade from the last game, and the new additions are interesting. Bigger names like Super Girl, Swamp Thing, and Scarecrow are present, while many lesser-known heroes such as Captain Cold, Gorilla Grodd, Black Adam, and Cheetah are here. It’s a very diverse cast of heroes, with every fighting style imaginable. The characters punch and kick with force, and the game is fast-paced and a lot of fun.
The interactive arenas are back with bigger and better things to do. Whacking your enemies with various items and kicking them off into the background is a lot of fun, as is knocking them out of the arena and into another level. Each character has a special meter and a unique power that ranges from attack to defense to passive. One of my favorite features is the new special moves, which are epic scripted moves that are unique to each character’s powers.
The biggest addition is the Eye Vault and the various unlockables to customize each character. There are hundreds of items that are unique to each hero, and they are unlocked through the story and multi-verse missions. Skins, colors, and parts go on every part of the hero’s body that add RPG stats, which is a blast. I didn’t feel buying loot boxes was needed as the unlocks came at a steady pace, and I found some epic gear fairly frequently.
Other than this, there’s an online game that is always fun, which is why we play fighters. I didn’t experience lag, and I got to show off my customized character, which is always keeping me going back. Outside of all this, not much has changed from the last game, but it does feel like an actual sequel rather than an upgrade.
The game looks and sounds great, but you can clearly see some overly shiny textures and some details washed out, even on the Xbox One S upscaled to 4K. This was probably to keep the game at 60FPS, which I’d rather have.
Do I want Injustice 3? I don’t know, honestly. The story doesn’t really do much for me and is forgettable, so the only reason I want another is for more superheroes and new content. Injustice 2 is one of the best fighters to be released in this console cycle, but it’s not for everyone.
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