As if zombie games weren’t already in abundance, we get yet another crappy indie zombie first-person shooter. This game caught my eye due to the live-action cut scenes, and the screenshots looked decent, but man, I was wrong. Not only are the story and the main character, Jack, laughably bad, but the live-action cut scenes are just downright hilarious.
The game starts out with you ejecting from a spaceship for some unknown reason and then crashing into a plane on Earth. You need to stop the plane from crashing, but on your way are zombies. As I picked up the revolver and started shooting, I immediately knew what I was in for. The aiming is bad, the guns feel awful to shoot, the AI is bad, and the physics are stupidly overexaggerated. Sure, some of the zombie models look decent, but this looks like a first-gen Xbox 360 game at best. The textures are muddy and pixelated, the models are awful, and the overall design of the levels is just plain bad and cramped.
So, let’s have an open mind and overlook the bad gameplay design, overly stupid story, bad AI, and awful gunplay. But if you do that, there’s nothing left to forgive, right? The game is already too long, clocking in at about 4-5 hours, but I couldn’t make it to the third level; it was so bad. Even if you just want to enjoy the awful live-cut scenes, that’s not even an option. Hell, even the menu is bad, and as soon as I booted this game up, I knew what to expect. Could this game even be a little good? Maybe for a laugh with a couple of friends, but you won’t get any value out of this game at all.
Overall, Chasing Dead may have had something with live-action cut scenes if it was done right, but there’s not a thread of hope for any part of this game that the developers could build off of. It’s a typical bad zombie shooter to please 12-year-olds who have $10 to blow on Steam.
Have you ever wanted to time-travel and change the past? How about just the last 30 seconds? You get that option in Life is Strange. You play Maxine Caulfield, who discovers she can rewind time by saving her childhood friend from a fatal gunshot wound in the girl’s bathroom. This changes Max’s life and everyone around her, but it’s up to you to decide if it’s for good or worse. Life is Strange tells a fantastically beautiful story with wonderfully written characters. The game will keep you hooked and have you playing all 8 hours with barely a blink.
Life is Strange tries to build on the revolutionary point-and-click adventure genre that The Walking Dead revived from Telltale Games. The game is a little more open-ended, but not by much. There’s more to explore and items to “look at,” which gives you a bigger insight into Max’s own thoughts and mind. Honestly, by looking at all these objects, you get to know Max better and the world around you more. Besides this, you just walk through every area to the next character that advances the story. There are some “time puzzles” that require you to select certain dialog choices and then rewind time to use that information to your advantage. It’s an interesting idea, but Life is Strange’s storytelling is a bit of a mess and requires you to pay attention very closely or you will miss something.
The game is broken up into 5 episodes, and each one has a cliffhanger ending. The game goes on at a good pace except for the final chapter, which is a roller coaster and kind of a mess. Without spoiling everything, you kind of “review” everything you have done through the game, which involves an awful stealth sequence. However, through the entire game, I couldn’t help but realize that no matter what I chose, the final outcome never changes, which is odd. It’s not until the last two chapters that all your choices start to unfold, but I feel they are just detours rather than different outcomes. Despite that frustration, the story in Life is Strange is amazing.
I have to talk about the atmosphere of this game. It’s so nostalgic and really reminded me of my adventures as a kid growing up, and it really makes you think about your family, friends, and what’s going on around you in your life. That small country life is something I grew up with personally, and the game really hit home with me. It sucked me in every minute, despite the slow start I had to push through. The entire game is so touching and full of emotion; it’s one of the best video game stories I have ever seen, but it still doesn’t top Soma. This is a story you will talk about long after the game is over and ponder over. The only thing that really annoyed me about the story is that it tries to turn this innocent teen drama “Where did my best friend go?” mystery into a serious murder mystery, which is kind of jarring. I loved exploring these areas out in the middle of nowhere and getting into shenanigans with Max and her best friend Cloe through their time travel events. Once the murder mystery stuff hit, it was a bit of a turn-off, but it wasn’t until towards the end.
Life is Strange also isn’t the prettiest game to look at; it’s rather ugly. The game has a nice watercolor art style, but the game’s technical level is a first-generation Xbox 360 game at best. The textures are muddy and awful, and the character models are terrible. This is just a downright ugly game, but the story and characters keep your head out of that. Overall, this is worth every dime and all your time invested.
Well, 2016 seems to be a great year for the comeback of shooters. First Overwatch, now DOOM (well, in reviewing order). DOOM could have gone so bad, so quickly. However, ID Software went back to its roots, updated it for 2016 technology, and gave the middle finger to all the rest of the stuff plaguing the genre. DOOM is by far one of the best FPS games I have played in over a decade. It’s fast-paced, challenging, fun, full of secrets for veterans, and just plain old shooting.
The game actually does have a bit of a story, and it’s done just right so that it won’t get in the way of the shooting. You play Doomguy, a UAC Marine who has to help a robot scientist named Hayden stop another researcher from bringing Hell to Earth. Amanda Pierce let the tech and religious aspects of Hell get to her, and it overran the advanced Mars facility. Most of the story is told through logs, which are actually the best way to keep the story from getting in the way or becoming a train wreck. There are few cutscenes in DOOM, and when they play out, they are a nice break from the challenging gunplay. It’s light and crisp and isn’t stale, which is great for the genre. Too many games—Battlefield and Call of Duty, in particular—try to do this Hollywood sci-fi script of I don’t know what the hell to impress the edgy gamers out there. It doesn’t work; it’s a train wreck, and those stories are a complete mess. The FPS genre relies too heavily on story and not enough on gameplay.
With that said, DOOM is just like you remembered all those years ago—forget about Doom 3. As soon as I took control of Doomguy, I was in heaven. It’s fast-paced, controls amazingly well, and the guns feel fantastic. The slow build-up of your arsenal makes you smile every time you acquire a new weapon. Seeing Doomguy pick up the shotgun brought a “hell yeah” smile to my face. Seeing the chainsaw rip through enemies just gave me satisfaction as a shooter I haven’t felt in years. There’s a strong arsenal, and not all classic weapons return; a majority are new. The chaingun is fun, the heavy assault rifle is fun, and the gauss rifle is just so much fun. DOOM starts bringing the series into 2016 with weapons mods and Praetor Suit upgrades. These seem unnecessary at first, but with the way the enemies are balanced and maps are laid out, you feel you need them. Each weapon has two different mods, which are incredibly helpful. The shotgun can get an exploding buckshot or a three-round burst. There’s no reloading ammo in the game, so the R key is used for switching between mods. To keep things balanced, there’s a mod switching animation, so going into combat with what you want is necessary.
Let’s talk enemies. The game is chock-full of them, and all the classics return. Pinkies, Hell Knights, Cacodemons, Imps, etc. They look fantastic, blow up great, and the game is so gory and full of detail. The game isn’t the most technically impressive as some textures are lacking, but the game has incredible lighting, and the game runs at a nice smooth clip at 60 FPS. It does require the latest PC hardware to run at maxed-out settings, with Nightmare textures needing a GTX 980 or higher as it requires 6GB of VRAM. If you have the rig, you’re going to be in for a visual spectacle. I also have to commend the audio. The explosions, gunfire, enemy sounds, and gory splats are fantastic. The game also has a good ‘ol heavy metal soundtrack with a techno twist. This is one of the best video game soundtracks this year.
DOOM’s level design is actually very old-school, and it works well here. Each level is made up of arenas with linear hallways in between. 50% of the fun in DOOM is finding all the secrets, thanks to the excellent map. Once you find the Auto Map, all secrets are revealed, but they are still challenging to find. You might see a collectible floating in the air, but you have to find the right switch or path to get to it. I haven’t had this much fun finding collectibles and secrets in a game in a very long time. It was done right here and was not forced. Everything you miss can be reacquired by replaying levels. DOOM also features a new Rune Trial mode, which is a super fun mini-game of sorts that is quite challenging. I was able to beat them all through the first play-through, but a few proved tough. You get timed to complete certain goals, such as killing a certain number of enemies under certain circumstances. They change up the pace and are a warm welcome to the series.
Multiplayer is a bit of a disappointment, but it’s not awful. It’s fun for quite a while, but it won’t have you coming back months later like other shooters. You have your classic modes, and it’s just plain old run-and-gun fun online. It just feels like it’s lacking something or something that needs adjusting. Hopefully, the next DOOM will address this issue, or we will get a stand-alone DOOM multiplayer suite.
DOOM is a fantastic shooter and one of the best to come out in the past ten years. It does have a few flaws; I forgot to mention glory kills, which are melee kills used when an enemy is stunned and flashing. Pressing F can launch you towards the enemy to acquire health and ammo, but it’s overused quite a bit. Thankfully, it’s totally optional, and towards the end of the game, the novelty wore off, and I only used it for health and ammo. The game does get repetitive towards the end, but not in an overly bad way. It’s just part of the genre and series and is a staple that will never go away. Outside of these issues, the game is worth a full purchase.
Point-and-click adventures are a dying breed. They used to rule in the 1990s, when computers weren’t quite powerful enough to fully render beautiful and detailed environments. Instead, they would be pre-rendered images or animation that played out with triggered scripts. This was carried over to consoles with games like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, and even Final Fantasy. You won’t see pre-rendered graphics anymore, but there’s a novelty about them. Stasis is a modern game but is built like it was in the 90s, which gives it a certain charm. I have to say this is one of the best I have ever played and is so memorable.
With this kind of game, it’s all about the story and characters, as well as the atmosphere. Without those adventure games, life is pointless and uninteresting. There’s very little gameplay involved with just you guiding your character around and solving puzzles, as well as unraveling the story. Stasis does all this perfectly with very little inventory management. You just use your mouse to guide John around on the screen and click on things. Puzzles are actually quite good and make sense most of the time, but occasionally you get the one where you have to finally break out the walkthrough. This is an unfortunate staple of the genre, and there’s no fighting it.
With the controls and gameplay aside, let’s talk about the story and atmosphere, and man, does it have a lot of that? The atmosphere is so scary and incredibly detailed that it trumps some AAA games today. John wakes up on a desolate ship that’s been torn apart. He wakes from stasis sleep and must find his daughter and wife. This involves talking to a character through radio content who guides you the whole way, and the whole story folds out mostly through PDA log entries, which are perfect for this kind of game. Without reading these logs, you won’t care much about the story, but the logs are written so well that the characters come out. They are small entries that take a few minutes to read, but they really stick with you through the whole story.
Each area of the ship has a set of characters that were fighting about something or going through some sort of psychological issue prior to the ship being overrun by hybrids. This tells you how life on the ship was before and during the disaster. The Groomlake is a mining vessel turned laboratory run by a corporation that specializes in human cloning and genetic research. This, of course, goes awry as their experiments break out and kill everything on the ship. It sounds cheesy, but it’s unfolded slowly and very well. The atmosphere is pronounced with the great voice acting, sound design, and music that go along with it all. Gore is everywhere, as are some of the most disturbing imagery scenes in a game that would give anyone nightmares. The horror and ambiance of this game are bar none and really set some standards in my book.
When John screams or is in pain, you really feel it, despite it being a pre-rendered animation on the screen. The sound effects are just blood-curdling and make your skin crawl. From the weird robotic voices of the announcers to the blood splatters and screams you hear, it’s sound design on a whole new level. The Brotherhood really mastered the adventure genre, and this game would have made headlines back in the late 90s and early 2000s. I don’t want to spoil anything but say more scary or horrifying moments, but I played this straight through and didn’t stop, and that’s an accomplishment. Like I stated before, the gameplay is lacking, but that’s okay as the atmosphere and story keep you sucked in, and you don’t want anything too complex that would detract you from that.
In the end, come for the story and atmosphere. If you don’t like adventure games, this may just change your mind, and anyone who loves the genre has to play it. It sets a new standard for the genre and brings it back to my eyes.
I love games that are emotional roller coasters, as they bring out emotions that AAA games just can’t achieve these days. The indie games are usually the best when it comes to story and characters, and That Dragon, Cancer isn’t a good game, but a good story. Seriously, gameplay-wise, this game stinks, but if you come for the story, you will feel some heavy stuff.
I personally took this game to heart, as I have my own son on the way, and the things that this family went through brought out some emotions I’ve never felt before. A little boy named Joel is battling brain cancer with his family, and you go through the emotional turmoil mostly through metaphors. The game captures most of the parents’ (the dad is part of the development team and helmed this game) memories that are both good and bad. There’s literally zero gameplay involved as you click through levels with flat-colored textures and listen to audio recordings of the family or read letters from other people that are actually real. The emotions didn’t really kick in until about halfway through the game, when you really start to feel the parents’ suffering with this battle.
Outside of clicking to the next area, there are little mini-games, but games say a lot. There’s no objective to various “tasks” like having Joel dodge cancer cells in space, clicking on constellations as they turn into animals and he rides them, etc. These are timed and don’t have any clear goal; you literally just wait it out. As a game, this is one serious piece of a turd, but I didn’t care as I wanted more of the story, and that’s hard to pull off. The best (or worst) part of the game is walking around a hospital and reading real letters in the form of cards from real people; there’re a good hundred of them. The biggest memory was of the dad sitting in the hospital room with Joel with what seems to be a real recording of him wailing in pain as the dad goes through emotional battles in the form of visual metaphors that you listen to him narrate. The crying hit a nerve with me as the dad told him to stop crying, and Joel was bashing his head against the crib. It’s honestly disturbing, but great at the same time.
The game is only about 90 minutes long, and everyone will walk away with this as a crappy game but a great story. I wish they concentrated on the gameplay elements more, as you can tell that was on the back burner. The father was so anxious to get this out that he forgot it’s actually a game. Most children won’t play it as it requires patience and a soul and heart to understand; anyone going through cancer or who survived it should relate, or anyone who adores their children. If you’re a typical heartless gamer, stay away.
Tomb Raider (2012) was a revolutionary game for the franchise and the genre as a whole. It took the game industry by storm with its cinematic gameplay, fantastic visuals, huge open world, and realism. What could Crystal Dynamics do to top this, you ask? It’s pretty hard to top that, and they didn’t quite top it this time around. Rise of the Tomb Raider is more of what we got before and not much else, but that’s not a bad thing.
The game doesn’t focus so much on Lara’s survival to get back home but more on her treasure hunting. There’s an item called the Divine Source that grants people immortality. It’s something that her father became obsessed with and ultimately got him killed. A mercenary group called Trinity wants this source, so it’s Lara’s job to go and retrieve it before anyone gets their hands on it. The story is a little predictable and cheesy. It’s the typical generic mercenary bad guy plot, which I found uninteresting as Lara’s character development was the center of the story in the last game. It’s disappointing, but entertaining nonetheless.
The opening scene in RotTR is a fantastic set in Tibet, where you get to feel just how dangerous Lara’s treks are and the environment around you. It’s probably the best scene in the whole game, as the developers slowly forgot what made Tomb Raider…Tomb Raider towards the end of the game, like they were running out of ideas. You will notice right away the huge visual upgrade over the last game. Fantastic lighting effects, tessellation, gorgeous textures, and character modeling are some of the best I have ever seen. The individual pores can be seen on Lara’s face, which is 10x more detailed than in the last game.
After the opening scene, I realize not too much has changed from the last game control-wise, and the gameplay elements are nearly untouched, just fine-tuned. After I start trekking along in the first area, I divert by exploring and finding all the hidden stuff. TR has a lot of hidden secrets to find, and it’s all about using your instincts around you to find all the secrets that glow gold and finding the maps to reveal them on your map. I spent the majority of the game finding these secrets, which are a blast to find; however, there’s a Metroidvania feeling to this game. I had to acquire new equipment before I could enter certain areas, especially the tombs.
While just playing the game in general, I realized a few disappointing things about this game. Leveling up completely and upgrading all your guns, just like in the last game, means less this time around. The game is fairly easy; the mix between exploration, combat, and stealth is very random and spread out. I could honestly play the entire game with the pistol, and I would be fine. The last game had enemies that required different weapons, but this time around, Crystal didn’t think about that. All the enemies are generic, and there’s no need to switch weapons. This is a huge blow to the strategy of the game, which was so great in the last game. Ultimately, this meant that all the side quests, gathering, and exploring could ultimately be skipped, and it wouldn’t make a difference. That’s a really bad thing here.
Thankfully, all the gameplay holds up to redeem this issue. Mainly, this is here for completionists or anyone who wants to explore this gorgeous world. I think the developers forgot what was so great about TR between development cycles, and it really shows here. The world was focused on so much that the stuff to fill it was pretty much forgotten. I have all these awesome weapons and upgrades, but…what do I do with them? I can craft special ammo for each weapon, but it didn’t make a lick of a difference in combat. The only ammo that did was the new arrow types, such as poison, explosive, and flame. Using them to take out a large group of enemies helped, but that was it.
Lara also doesn’t really develop much in this game. I thought the psychological stress on her from the last game would affect her here, but it’s like it never happened at all. Her character is awesome as usual, but there’s no more development, and I feel the next game really needs to pick up on what made the first one so great. Franchise fatigue is going to set in quick here, and many players may not be so excited for the next game if this keeps up.
In the end, RotTR is a fantastic game with a huge world to explore, a generic yet entertaining story, and more Lara Croft, which is what we want. The biggest disappointment is that there’s no more character development for Lara, and all these great upgrades and weapons feel useless due to the combat and enemies that didn’t get any attention. The game is really easy and lacks a good challenge. The game is gorgeous, one of the best-looking games ever made, and continues to push PCs to their limits, just like back in 2012.
I just played this game in one long four-hour sitting, and I’m a little emotional about it. The game is completely story-driven and not one of those shitty Steam Early Access survival games that are becoming a plague. Instead, we get a linear adventure game with no combat and just beautiful visuals and a great story. You play a man named Henry who’s suffered the loss of his wife’s mental state due to Alzheimer’s. The game starts out with just some text about how Henry came about to take this job as a fire watchman. In just a few minutes and several lines of text, you develop feelings for Henry and his wife, which is really tough to do. The words are carefully chosen and arranged in just the right way.
In between this text and the segment is a mini-tutorial with Henry making his 2-day hike to his watchtower. unobtrusive and feel natural and organic, so when you take full control of Henry, you’re ready to start playing. When you do, the game starts out with simple missions from the head watchtower, Delilah. Your only communication with her is your walkie-talkie, and you never actually see her in the entire game. It’s a sense of mystery that allows the player to paint their own picture like a book would. The first missions have you setting out to stop some teens setting off fireworks, and this is where you get oriented with the map and compass. There’s a dot where you are, so there’s no need to memorize anything or do aimless guesswork.
Once you get to the site, you realize it’s two female teens who are completely naked, drinking beer, and blasting music. They get upset with you like any rebellious teenager would and threaten you. The first three days of being a fire watchman are played out; however, the game gets darker and tenser as you progress. There are little subtle things that freak you out, such as seeing a man on your way back to your watchtower, discovering someone’s watching you and listening to your conversations with Delilah, and so on. It’s all very organic, and the fact that it is subtle makes it scary and gives a tense atmosphere without using cheesy ghost stories and jump scares.
There were several moments where I wasn’t sure what kind of story this was. Supernatural? After an hour into the game, I figured it wasn’t that. Was it a slasher flick-type story? Not when I realized there’s actually no violence in the game. Was this a murder mystery? Maybe something with aliens? Not at all. It was great to go down this twisting path to finally discover what the true threat was, which I will not spoil here.
The only lighthearted nature of the game is the relationship between Henry and Delilah growing through conversation; however, I was never completely trusting of her due to certain dialogue exchanges and slip-ups on her part. Firewatch is a roller coaster ride of emotions and story-driven feelings that most games can’t get right. In fact, Soma was the last game to make me feel this way.
Overall, Firewatch actually has a few flaws that keep it from being perfect. Outside of the story, there’s a lot of aimless backtracking, as after the second hour, you have already discovered this entire area. The Metroidvania-style gameplay to recover equipment to get to new areas seems natural, but it just exaggerates how much this game relies on backtracking to extend game time. Firewatch does have some excellent visuals, though, but nothing that will make modern PCs sweat. I personally had a small connection with this game as I grew up in this area of Wyoming, where the game is based. They mention the cities of Casper and Gillette, which I grew up in both throughout a lot of my childhood. I also visited Yellowstone, so the environment is very familiar to me and made me feel like I was back at home as a kid.
Play Firewatch for the great story, but don’t come in expecting a slaughterfest, survival game, horror jump scares, or any of those cliches. The game is quite mild gameplay-wise, but the story will have you thinking days after finishing.
Lara Croft has made a huge comeback thanks to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot. With her spin-off top-down series, Lara was bound to find her way onto the mobile market. Feeding off the success of Hitman GO, Square Enix takes another popular franchise and ups the ante on the GO series. With fantastically designed puzzles, great graphics, and easy controls, Lara Croft GO is the best mobile game released this year.
If you played Hitman GO, you will be in familiar territory. The levels are comprised of squares that Lara moves along; these squares have dots on them, so you know which ones you can land on. There are various puzzles that will make you really think before advancing to the next level. From pulling switches, avoiding enemies, killing enemies, moving platforms, moving stone pillars, and various other gameplay tidbits. It’s not just as easy as pulling this switch over here and having that switch be done. Enemies play a huge role in this game, and movement is key here. Every time Lara moves a space, so does an enemy. You must line up your moves to avoid the enemy or go around them. The puzzles are brilliantly laid out here and will constantly keep you in check.
The game also felt progressively balanced in difficulty. I started off clearing levels quickly and then slowly had to start thinking. Once I thought I had mastered certain gameplay elements, another was thrown at me and made me think all over again. I can’t stress enough how well these puzzles are designed; they feel like they were made with care and delicate thought in each and every square. In between solving puzzles, there are hidden vases throughout the level that hold gems that will unlock outfits for Lara if all are found in the level.
The game is also quite decent in length. It took me a good two weeks to finish the game, and there is replay value here. Throughout the whole game, I never felt like it was impossible or too hard. It was always something that stared me right in the face, and when I figured out the puzzles slowly, I had a lot of “Aha!” moments, which are so satisfying. Some puzzles I really had to work on, and some were quite easy, but the easy ones in between keep it from getting too frustrating.
The graphics in Lara Croft GO are beautiful papercraft models with great lighting effects and high-quality textures. This is a high-end mobile game at its finest, and I firmly believe every Tomb Raider or puzzle fan must own it. I hope to see more games in the GO series, as they are addictive and so wonderfully crafted. This is a hidden gem and an oasis among awful and ugly free-to-play games.
Well, I finally did it; I actually beat ODST. I rented the game when it was first released, and it was so boring that I nearly fell asleep. I turned it back in after the first mission. In retrospect, I realized I just didn’t know enough of the Halo universe to understand the story of ODST, as non-fans won’t quite understand this little slice of the story, and that’s exactly what ODST is: a slice of Halo.
You play as an ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper), who are the grunts in the warfighting most of the fights while the series is mainly focused on Master Chief. In ODST, you are dropped into New Mombasa, which is now completely overrun by Covenant and devoid of life. You were supposed to meet your fellow teammates for a mission, but everything went to crap, as usual, and now you have to figure out what happened to them. You are supposed to find clues as to what happened to each member, and these result in flashback missions. After completing the game, I realized how short it actually was, with only about 8 missions or so. Outside of these missions, finding 30 audio logs ends up being filler content, as I spent most of my time with the game hunting these down for achievements.
If you don’t bother hunting these down, you’re in for one short game, but this was just to help tide people over before Reach was released and for the inevitable release of Halo 4 that everyone wanted. Wandering around this hub is actually quite boring, with the occasional Covenant firefight breaking out. The city is devoid of everything and felt like an unnecessary filler to add a couple extra hours of aimless wandering. There are objective markers for each clue, but getting to each one is tedious and has no point. The audio logs serve as a side story of what happened to the city and a particular inhabitant, but the actual story outside of this doesn’t pick up until the end of the game, which is really weird.
The mission is to retrieve the data of the superintendent, which is in a huge data hive that is underneath New Mombasa. It turns out this was extracted by an alien species that becomes an ally, and you must bring it back to Earth. I will actually praise ODST’s missions for being of decent length and mixing up the gameplay a little bit. While it’s the same Halo stuff we are used to, it’s in shorter bursts. Vehicle sections mixed with highway sections mixed with on-foot stuff work well here, just like in any other Halo game. There is some better balancing over Halo 3 (it uses the same engine), with better weapon handling and tighter mechanics. It still feels like Halo, which is what counts, but this is obviously a diversion. I honestly asked myself in the end: if this game was never released, would it have mattered? No, it wouldn’t have, as it’s not the main Halo game, and most people actually never played it.
In the end, we get a mediocre Halo game with characters we really don’t care about due to a lack of character development. The graphics are decent and look even better on Xbox One, but what does it all mean in the end? Nothing we couldn’t have gotten out of a novel or comic series proves that ODST is just a diversion to stem the tide of anticipation for Halo 4. With a boring hub world and a broken story, ODST isn’t a necessity for anyone, fans or non-fans alike. Play this if you just want to finish the whole series or feel like you need a break from the main road.
Borderlands is well known as a shooter-RPG hybrid, but with little to no story. There’s a lot of potential in a great Borderlands story, and Telltale Games finally delivered that. TftB is a fantastic story-driven game with memorable characters and enough Borderlands lore and quips to make a fan faint. The visuals are great, and there’s a lot to walk away from after completing it.
You start out by playing as two characters in this game, Rhys and Fiona. Rhys is a Hyperion corporate employee, and Fiona is a Pandorian con artist. The whole goal of the game is to open the Vault of the Traveler and find its hidden treasures. The entire point of any Borderlands game is to open a mysterious vault. The game is mostly comprised of flashbacks, as a man is dragging you two through the desert and having you retell your story leading up to the point of capture. This mysterious figure is well hidden, and I couldn’t guess who it was for the life of me. The unveiling was so surprising. Telltales are masters of surprise and plot twists, and TftB has plenty of them.
Like most Telltale games, there’s not much gameplay involved, just enough to make you feel like it’s a game. However, the stories are so fantastic that you won’t care much. There are a lot of quick-time events and moral choices in the game. These choices are the key components of any Telltale adventure and are what make them memorable. Some choices don’t matter so much, and some can change the course of the entire game. TftB doesn’t have as many story-changing choices as, say, The Walking Dead, but they do make a difference and can be tough to decide on. Putting your own moral compass in the game is what makes these games so memorable, and I love it.
Each episode usually switches back and forth between Rhys and Fiona, from Pandora to Hyperion and back. The game truly felt like a long adventure and was very satisfying and fulfilling all the way to the very end. The game has a large scope, and there is plenty of Borderlands stuff in here for fans. Opening loot crates can give you cash to use in-game; there are various jokes and even cameos of Vault Hunters from previous games. I also felt that the story was told at a decent clip and never got slow and boring or felt rushed. Each episode probably doesn’t stand on its own, but as a whole, the game is wonderful.
I want to complain about the exclusive quick-time events being the only thing that consists of gameplay, but I won’t because it works for the game. There’s action, drama, and plenty of comedy thrown in that any Borderlands fan will love. The visuals aren’t technically impressive, but the meld of Telltale’s art style and Borderlands is a perfect match here, and it feels like an actual Borderlands game, which is what counts.
In the end, no matter what console you play it on, TftB impresses on every level and tells a story that any fan will love and approve of. Even non-Borderlands fans will like the game. TftB is a perfect formula for how you do a franchise spin-off and do it right.
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Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…