Horror games that are truly scary are far and few these days. Neverending Nightmares actually helps change that idea with an extremely intense atmosphere, which is what horror games are all about. Neverending Nightmares has you playing as a boy (or man?) named Thomas who roams the pencil-sketched hallways in his checkered pajamas trying to find his sister (or wife?) that had been murdered (or she killed herself?). There’s a lot of open interpretation of the game’s story, but that’s kind of the fun part.
The game’s pace is at a crawl; let me just say that right away. Thomas trods along the hallways with a limited—and I mean limited—sprint button. The slow pace is supposed to add to the tension, but sometimes I wish he moved just a tad faster as the game got repetitive towards the end. The point of the game is to continue moving left (or right) through the hallways, opening doors, and interacting with anything that’s colored and stands out from the black and white background. These give hints at what may have happened to the girl that Thomas is looking for. While there’s no inventory system or even a combat system, there’s really no other goal than to head downward. Sure, there are enemies in the game, but your goal is to avoid them or hide from them. The toughest of them all are the big ogre-like monsters that require you to hide in closets, or worse, run from them. I found these segments frustrating as Thomas’ sprint is limited to about three seconds, and I had to exploit this to escape from these ogres and make it to the next door. I had to tap rapidly to stretch out the sprint or time when I started perfectly. This isn’t fun, and it doesn’t add anything but frustration.
The game has three possible endings, but there are no clues as to how to get them. At the end of each level, you are approached by this girl in different ways, but it all kind of blurs together. When you die, you start off in bed again, leading to the fact that Thomas might be asleep and can’t wake up. Is he insane? Is he a ghost? Who knows, but the endless hallways are probably the worst part of the game. Sometimes I thought the game was glitching because I would go through 5–6 hallways that I swore I went through earlier, but somehow I was progressing.
Thankfully, the game is actually scary; use headphones, and you will be in for a scary night. The music is haunting, and so are the sound effects. I applaud the game for the atmosphere, but the gameplay is really something that’s lacking and needs more polish. I’m fine with just wandering around places, but give me something to do while I’m doing that.
As it stands, Neverending Nightmares is a great horror experience, but as an actual game, it’s lacking mechanics, and the story and progression need work. I shouldn’t be playing a game thinking I’m not going anywhere or giving clues as to how to get a different ending.
The Batman Arkham games are some of the greatest things to grace the video game industry in the past decade. With the most advanced combat system since God of War, and not to mention the best superhero video game series ever made, Arkham Knight continues this trend. While Origins was a bit of a snag, I don’t count it as part of the Arkham trilogy. Arkham Knight is another masterpiece that any Batman fan will love.
Scarecrow and the new Arkham Knight are the main villains in this game, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of Joker as well, despite being dead. Joker is a manifestation in Bruce’s mind, and he constantly appears everywhere, putting his two senses into everything Batman does. It’s great to hear him again. Arkham Knight is also probably the best-structured Arkham game yet. Instead of a hodgepodge of little repetitive missions everywhere, the game has a Most Wanted mission wheel. Known Batman villains are to be stopped and captured through mission branches that are a blast. Firefly, Penguin, Two-Face, and various other villains have their own little subplot. This brings Arkham Knight to a meaty and well-balanced mission structure that the game desperately needed. The only other side things you can perform are AR missions that include fight and batmobile challenges and Riddler trophies. Oh yeah, I said Batmobile.
It’s finally here! The one and only Batmobile. It plays just like you think, controls like you think, and is as badass as you think. The batmobile can transform into a tank, allowing you to engage in battles with enemy tanks, but the best use of the batmobile is puzzles. Sadly, the tank battles are probably the worst thing in the game. While they work, they are the same thing over and over and over again; nothing changes. Enemy tanks will have a white line go across the screen, showing the trajectory of their shot. This allows you to dodge enemy missiles and shots. That’s great and all, but why does combat have to be this slow? Towards the end, the battles just get bigger with 50+ tanks in one area; that’s not exactly fun in my book. While the tank battles aren’t very frequent, they are happening often enough for you to sigh and wish it was over. As for the puzzle-solving, the Batmobile fits better here. Using the power wrench to crawl the downsides of buildings, using the wrench to power things up, ejecting out of the Batmobile to glide into a tunnel. All of this feels just like in the movies and comics; there is no disappointment there.
Combat has been perfected in Arkham Knight with added moves to make an extremely complex fight system that is so simple to learn. Outside of the counter system that we are all used to, new knock-out moves are introduced. Using your gadgets is much easier, as the button combos for them are easier to remember. LT for Batarang, LT+B for an electric shock to enemies with taser sticks, LT+Y for Batclaw, and RT+RT for Freeze Blast. It is very easy to remember, and the controls pop up on the screen to help you out when the option is available. The same goes for the knock-out moves, as well as fighting heavy enemies. These guys have their own system all to themselves. Do a fast punch combo, parry a guy behind you, a red exclamation pops up at a guy with a taser stick, LT+B, he’s down, continue pummeling the heavy, three more counters, then knock the heavy out. All of this is one big combo, and it’s so fluid and fast and one of my favorite fighting systems I have ever used.
The second combat system in Arkham is the stealth part. This has been expanded exponentially in Arkham Knight. There are more gadgets introduced that allow for more ways to take down opponents. The stealth areas are much larger and allow for multiple ways of taking people down. We’re used to stealth takedowns in various ways, including hanging, grating, and gliding behind people. Multi-level grate combat is introduced, as well as enemies being able to destroy grates so you can no longer use them. Using a voice synthesizer allows you to give commands to enemies and set up traps with your electric gun or disruptor. The disruptor allows you to sabotage weapons and drones to knock out enemies (yeah, I can’t say kill since Batman doesn’t do that). The stealth combat is fantastic and so much fun, and it allows for strategy over beating everyone up.
Outside of these new gameplay elements is the story. Arkham Knight has a long and well-told story that you actually care about. There are some great moments in the game that really get you hooked, and the ending is satisfying. I really felt the strengths and weaknesses of Batman come out through the story several times, as well as the other characters. My favorite part of the game is the ending with Scarecrow, but I can’t give it away except that it’s a first-person shooter sequence. WHAT?! Play it to find out!
Let’s talk about visuals. I know that the entire world knows how terribly optimized the game was for PC; however, if you have a powerful rig, it is very playable. Not perfect, but enough to not be really noticeable. This requires tweaks (there is a tool available on the Steam forums) to the game settings to get it to work. Out of the box, the game won’t run very well at all. There are some nice new effects, like RainWorks, Interactive Smoke and Fog, and various other effects. They look amazing, and Arkham Knight is one of the most detailed and good-looking games in a long time. However, a game should ship working, and this is just unacceptable. Most people don’t know how to tweak a PC game and will get frustrated and demand their money back (which happened and suspended the sales on Steam). The other issue is that you need a very new and powerful system to get the game to run well. I tried a GTX 670, and while I got 60 FPS when I was above the city, it dropped below 30 on the ground. Interactive Smoke and Fog dropped the game to 5 FPS; however, on a GTX 970, there were a few issues. The frame rate will vary constantly. You will jump between 60 and 30 a lot, but the tweaks available make it less noticeable. Anyone running a GPU older than a year will have issues for sure and should play the game on a console for now.
As it stands, Arkham Knight is a fantastic game and the pinnacle of the Batman video game franchise and superhero games in general. Taking all of what made the series great and optimizing and compiling the best of what everyone loves. More villains, more stories, more Batman. That’s what we came to see, and we got what we wanted.
The New Order was a fantastic game. It oozed atmosphere, excellent action, weighty guns, and a decent story. It was the best Wolfenstein since Return to Castle Wolfenstein on PC, which was released over 10 years ago. The Old Blood returns to give us a little extra snack with a nice prequel leading up to the beginning cutscene of The New Order. The Old Blood is all about finding the documents to Death Head’s compound while also fighting one of Nazi Germany’s many paranormal agendas—zombies. Yes, thankfully, they don’t overstay their welcome. They only appear in the final chapter, but it is a nice pace from the broken stealth and gunfights.
While The Old Blood’s story isn’t as fleshed out as The New Order, it’s not bad or awful, at least. The same storytelling mechanics are used here, such as BJ’s narration in his head and some excellent voice acting all around. The game is literally the same outside of a couple of new guns. All the action from the previous game is here, and it just feels great. It shows why Wolfenstein is one of the better shooters in recent times. It’s satisfying to shoot everything, and it’s also extremely challenging, which most shooters don’t offer. You have to use strategy and actually use cover, or you will die quickly.
There are a few boss fights in the game, some of which are the hardest I have fought as a shooter in ages. The challenge alone is enough to bring hardcore shooter fans smiles, even if they don’t like Wolfenstein. Despite the game’s short length (about 4-5 hours), there are a lot of different locales, so things change constantly. My biggest gripe about the game is the stealth. It never really worked in the last game, either. You know you are in a stealth area when the commander’s location shows up on the screen. You are supposed to sneak around to silence them, or waves of enemies will keep coming until you kill them. Most of the time, the areas are set up in a way that you just can’t sneak around. This drove me nuts in The New Order, and I’m saddened to see it return here. I don’t know why stealth would be put into such an action-heavy game; it ruins the flow and pace of the game.
Outside of the gameplay, the graphics are pretty good, except for the textures. Even on PC, with all the bells and whistles of DirectX 11 graphics, the textures look muddy and ugly up close. I don’t know if this was to squeeze them onto consoles, but I don’t like it. This game requires a monster rig to run at full settings, some of which are questionable. 32x anti-aliasing, really? It makes the game run at 8 FPS and under 30 FPS even with a Titan X. Some other settings, such as the 8196 shadow map, just slow things down with no noticeable upgrade. I honestly think this is just crap to make PC gamers feel happy and to shut them up. The game isn’t optimized too well with texture pop-in either. Yes, I know there’s a setting for texture to fade in, but it doesn’t work. Outside of that, the game looks decent, but with all these options available, it should look better.
The Old Blood is well worth the $20 price tag. We get a lot of quality games for that, and hopefully this isn’t the end of Wolfenstein.
I first want to say that Ryse isn’t as bad as critics made the game out to be. However, I can see why it was bashed so much. It was the most anticipated Xbox One launch title. When you throw down $500 on a new console plus $60 for a game, you expect to get your money’s worth. Ryse would have pissed me off if that was the only game I picked up for the console. Is the game awful? No, it is just very repetitive and feels like a typical rushed console launch game.
The story and characters in Ryse are fantastic. You follow a Roman centurion named Marius Titus who is fighting the barbarian tribe known as Britain’s. Marius’ family gets murdered by the barbarians; however, there are quite a few plot twists that left me wanting more of the story. I actually love how the story and characters play out. It felt very authentic to the Roman Empire era; I felt like I was playing a piece of history, and you can’t say that often about games. The architecture and the way the characters dressed just sucked me in. Even the fighting styles are brutal and authentic to Roman culture. The excellent facial animations and voice acting help drive the story even further, but it’s just so sad that the story was taken down by the repetitive and bland gameplay.
The game actually seems really awesome in the first chapter. You get to order soldiers to fire volleys at enemies and control a Scorpio, but you don’t get that much control. You literally pick where your soldiers go to make the scenario easier or harder for you. There are several instances where this happens, and I felt like it wasted potential. Swordplay is just so boring by the end of the game. I actually avoided execution moves because they made me nauseous just looking at them (from repetition, not the gore). When you execute an enemy, the camera sweeps around in a cinematic frenzy. This is just so cool at first, but then you realize the quick-time events don’t do shit. The enemies will glow yellow, blue, red, or green, corresponding to the face buttons on the controller. This quick-time event concept is actually great because it’s non-intrusive, but if you miss the quick-time event, there are zero penalties. The animations don’t stop, the enemy doesn’t get the upper hand, there is no loss of health, nothing. It doesn’t even interrupt your combo, which is pretty much blasphemy in the action/adventure genre. Imagine playing God of War and failing a quick-time event; after that, the kill continues and nothing happens. What’s the point of the QTE, then, right?
There is one interesting mechanic that forces you to do QTE’s, which isn’t too bad. There are four different things you can acquire from these QTEs: health, XP, strength, and focus. I used the health drain and XP the most. I never even used my focus except for a couple of fights in the entire game. That’s not a good sign. To top it all off, the boss fights are just boring and awful. Each boss uses the same two move sets throughout the whole fight, and it becomes just a yawn-inducing repetitive hit-and-dodge game. What makes the combat the worst of all, out of everything, is that the same 10 execution animations are used on top of the same 5 enemy types that are just reskinned. It’s a lazy move that cost the game its legs and character that it got from the story and characters.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is worth a weekend rental, and it’s quite enjoyable thanks to the frequent locale changes and fast-moving story. Thankfully, the game doesn’t overstay its welcome by clocking in at about 4–5 completion times. I was able to get nearly all the upgrades before the end of the game, but this game is not worth a second playthrough, not one bit.
Let’s talk about visuals. Ryse is actually one of the best next-gen console games to be released, looks-wise. On PC, there are some enhancements like AA and SSAA, as well as better shadows and higher-resolution textures. However, this game requires a monster rig (GTX Titan) or SLI 8xx-9xx cards to run at 60 FPS maxed out. My i7 4770 and GTX 670 dropped down to the teens in some areas. Ryse uses the CryEngine 3, which looks freaking amazing, and next-gen consoles finally have the power to use it. If you don’t have a rig that was built in the last 18 months, you should probably play it on Xbox One. There’s even an option to use insane textures for 4GB VRAM GPUs. Ryse is one of the few games out that really pushes new rigs to their limits, so this is a good thing for PC gamers.
The screenshot was taken directly from my game
To top it all off, Ryse isn’t an awful game. It’s a game that has strong legs that are weakened by repetitive combat and awful boss fights. Many of the locales are just awesome, like the Colosseum, but they don’t overstay their welcome, which can balance this out a bit. If the game was pushed back another year, we could have had the best gladiator-type game ever made (Shadow of Rome and Spartan: Total Warrior still remain at the top). It’s a great weekend rental or bargain bin purchase, but nothing more.
When I first heard about Ground Zeroes being released, I thought of one other game: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. A glorified demo that showcased the tech behind the game. This usually happens when games take way too long to release and the developers need some feedback. So they release a chunk of the game for about $30 and get the world’s reaction. Ground Zeroes is actually a glorified demo of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. If you aren’t a Metal Gear fan, well, what the hell are you reading this for?!
Ground Zeroes is actually taking place after the PSP game Peace Walker, which really surprised me. The game is made up of one giant mission in a large military compound. You must rescue two children, Chico and Paz, who were the main characters in Peace Walker. The first thing I noticed about GZ was how much everything has improved, from visuals to controls and animations. The entire familiar gameplay is streamlined, like it should have been years ago. No longer do you have the radio menu where you dial in and talk to people with long dialogue sequences. Just press a button to get hints on what to do, genius. The aiming is also a lot better this time around, as is inventory swapping and interacting with objects. Again, it’s all very familiar but just more streamlined. My favorite combat feature is that when you alert a guard, the game will slow down and turn towards the guard you alerted. You get about 10 seconds to put the guy down before he raises the alarm. Thanks to the more open environments, it’s much easier to see where everyone is. Climbing up a watchtower and using your binoculars to tag enemies is just what the series has needed for a while.
That’s another thing some MGS fans will not like: the open-endedness of the levels. The compound is huge, with many rooms, areas, and buildings. A new feature in MGSV is to interrogate an enemy while sneaking up on them and grabbing them. They will tell you where something valuable in the area is, like armor, a weapon, or enemy placement. You can choose to kill enemies or knock them out with your tranq pistol (like the good ‘Ol days). Figuring out where to go wasn’t too difficult. My first objective was to get Chico from a prison camp not too far from where I started. The second objective, finding Paz, was a real pain, as I had to use sound clues from a cassette recording to find out where she was. I finally figured out what area, but getting to the right building was tough. Silencers in this game eventually break, so I was stuck with just a tranq dart and couldn’t disable cameras. I had to run around finding armor that had another silenced weapon to continue, and I died many times doing so.
Once I got Paz, I called in a chopper to pick her up. I jumped on an AA gun since her being missing was discovered and the whole base was on alert. Thankfully, no one took the chopper down, and I was able to squirrel away to the starting point to end the one-hour mission. After the final cutscene, the game ended, and I thought that if I had paid for this game, I would have been really pissed off.
With that said, Ground Zeroes shows us just what Phantom Pain will be like, and I also have to mention that Kiefer Sutherland pulls off a better Snake than David Hayter. Yes, I said it; bite me.
I absolutely love short games that tell beautiful stories. A game that really doesn’t have much gameplay but just enough to get the story across and help you feel for the characters. Toren is one of those games; it has so much potential but is extremely rough around the edges. There’s actually more negative than positive in this game, but for some reason, it’s worth a playthrough, simply for how the game is told and unfolds.
The game starts out pretty simple. You start as a baby girl who is waddling toward a sword. I had a pretty strong image of gaming when I was a baby. It tends to be a sensitive subject, but Toren pulls it off just fine. After grabbing your sword, you get segments of jumping puzzles and are faced with a dragon. This dragon sits in one spot and will shoot out waves of black that will freeze you. See, the game is a little bit like Infinity Blade in a way. Failing is the only way to go forward (of course, the failing bits are scripted). The girl will try to reach for something or solve something, and the dragon will get her. She is reborn and thus can use her frozen body as a stepping stone or something to climb.
The whole point of the game is to climb this large tower called Toren to bring back the night. A dead man tells a story about a man named Solidor who tried the same thing and failed. It’s a little confusing in words and makes more sense in pictures and cutscenes. Between trying to fight off the dragon during weak puzzles, there are platforming segments that are set in strange dream-like areas that are just really great to look at. They aren’t tough, but this is where the flaws come in. The jumping mechanic is very floaty, there are a lot of collision detection issues, the sword fighting is barely waving your sword around aimlessly, and even controlling the girl can be a bit difficult as she feels like an ice cube walking around a frozen lake.
The visuals are even rough, and while there are some nice lighting effects, the game has texture quality that is all over the place. The framerate is also everywhere, but anyone who enjoys the subtly of indie games will look past all this. The game can also be finished in one sitting—about 2 hours. While it lasted, I enjoyed the game. It broke up the dragon fights with the platforming segments well, but the issues with the game make it more difficult than it needs to be.
With all that said, Toren is an interesting game with a beautiful story, but it is encased in a sloppy game with rough graphics and slippery controls.
Zombie games are everywhere now, but they have also gotten better over the years. Zombies are probably the most iconic horror character ever, and almost everyone is fascinated by them. However, a new fascination has started coming around: What would happen if we truly and honestly were hit by a zombie apocalypse? Gone are the campy days of old horror films where zombies were just scary and cool. People are even getting down to the nitty-gritty science of zombies, and it’s now showing up in video games. Dying Light is probably one of the better zombie games out there and, for sure, the best open-world one.
You play as a man named Kyle Crane who is working for the GRE, a group tasked with finding a cure in ground zero of the zombie outbreak. The story actually doesn’t get interesting until towards the end of the game. The actual story missions are quite entertaining and well put together. My favorite moments were chase sequences as these got very intense and pretty scary. Despite all this, the characters are a little weak and disappointing. The main antagonist, Rais, had potential in the beginning by being a sick twisted ass with a God complex, but in the end, he became cliché and it all went downhill. Other characters are bit parts and aren’t as strong as other open-world characters such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, or even Mass Effect. They feel generic and forgettable, and honestly, nothing all that interesting is going on in this world besides zombies.
That’s what I have to gripe about the most. Dying Light had a lot of potential to create some great lore around this fictional area and develop some memorable characters, but instead went the route of just getting as many missions out there as possible and relying on the open world itself. There is just so much potential here. The world itself is well put together and huge. There are some unique areas where pieces of the story could be told, but the developers just bypassed this all together.
With that said, the combat is actually quite satisfying. This isn’t a game in which you kill everything in sight. The whole point is to run away and survive. Sometimes you will run across a bridge that has nearly a hundred zombies. It’s best to just run on top of the cars and stay away. The whole game is in the first person, so the combat is similar to Dead Island or even The Elder Scrolls. There are many different types of weapons you can create or buy, and the ones with mods are the most fun to use. Slicing off a zombie’s head is satisfying, as is jumping over a zombie to escape an entire horde. I actually like how the game forces you to only fight when the opportunity is right. Nighttime is the most dangerous, and fighting is probably mostly avoided. Dangerous, volatile zombies that are extremely hard to kill will chase you down in the dead of night. I mostly avoided the nighttime unless a quest required me to be in it. It also helps add to the atmosphere, and I was usually scared and very paranoid when traveling at night. There are guns in the game; however, using them is very dangerous since faster, more deadly zombies will hear the sounds and surround you. Shooting is very satisfying in the game, but it’s best used in isolated areas where runners can’t respawn.
Once the player reaches level 12, they can unlock a grappling hook, which is essential for traveling vast parts of the game. It has a two-time use rather than a 10-second cooldown, but it sure comes in handy when escaping hordes of zombies or traveling large distances. With all this combined, Dying Light has a great world to explore, despite how generic it may feel. Everything does get better towards the end of the game as you can use more powerful weapons, and fighting zombies (even the more powerful ones) becomes easier and less like a chore.
Graphically, Dying Light looks fantastic. There are some awesome lighting effects, and the draw distance is amazing. The textures are a little sketchy, as are some of the zombie models. However, the game really shows off the power of the next-gen consoles and is probably one of the best zombie games to date. Outside of the generic story, the combat is rewarding, as is leveling up your character, but I just can’t help but feel that there is something missing from this game. It feels empty and lonely, but not in the way it’s supposed to feel. When it comes to multiplayer, it’s nothing special and will probably be forgotten quickly. It’s fun for a little while, but you probably have other multiplayer games that are much better.
MOOORRTTAALLL KOOOMMBBAATTT!!! Mortal Monday made gaming history when the original arcade game hit the Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, and Super Nintendo in 1992. Fast forward 23 years, and people still get just as excited for every new Mortal Kombat game. MKX is a near reboot of the reboot from 2011 by improving nearly every aspect of the game, including online. This is the first Mortal Kombat game for next-generation consoles and has set the bar for fighting games in terms of production values.
The first thing you will probably play is the story; it’s needed to unlock Shinnok as well as earn a slew of koins for the Krypt. The story is fantastic and the best one in any fighting game to date. The story has finally evolved past MK3 and takes place 25 years after the last game. Naturally, the original fighters have aged and are older (but still kick ass), and new generations or kids of these fighters are introduced. The story is actually shorter and more streamlined than in MK9. Instead of every character being shoehorned into the story, you only play as the good guys and select characters. There are about five matches for each character, and the entire story just evolves naturally. Earthrealm is past Shao Kahn and his BS (as the players are), but Shinnok returns to claim the Komidogu amulet and take over Earthrealm. After about 4 hours or so, you will get the hang of the entire fighting system and start kicking ass.
Once you finish the story, you will most likely go into the krypt to spend your koins. Introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the Krypt is a fan service full of goodies and unlocks to prolong the game and make you earn everything. Character art, fatalities, costumes, and fan art are many among the Krypt, but they have evolved. Instead of just a large room, you unlock coffins in a first-person adventure that’s its own mini-game. Players can walk around an entire set of levels, finding hidden objects to unlock new parts of the mini-game and find more koffins. At certain times, koffins will appear (think of the concept from Deception in Konquest mode), and random enemies will attack when a quick-time event pops up. Succeed, and you will be awarded a few hundred koins. This new Krypt idea could stand on its own if it were fleshed out more. It is actually quite atmospheric and can be tense.
After the Krypt, you will most likely check out the Faction Wars. This is a whole new online concept by Netherrealm that extends the tower concept that was enacted in the first game. There are many different tower modes, with the first being living towers. Using the match modifiers that were introduced in MK3 and reimagined in MK9, Living Towers will mix up a random modifier as well as tower goals. Certain matches will award koins for accomplishing certain things during a match, like jumping 25 times or finishing a match with more than 50% health. There are three types of living towers. Daily, hourly, and premier, which are every 5 days. This adds to your Faction War points, which will help you when an invasion starts. At the beginning of the game, you get to choose from five factions. Lin Kuei, Brotherhood of Shadows, White Lotus, Special Forces, and Black Dragon. Faction XP can be awarded during an invasion as well as by fighting an immortal boss. Players have 30 seconds to do as much damage as they can, but the difficulty of the boss is set to Very Hard. Invasion towers are another way as well.
These towers also carry over into single-player Tower Challenges, which is a randomized tower with modifiers and Test Your Might matches. Your final score is set, and you can send that tower to a friend to have them beat your score. It’s a lot of fun and extends the longevity of online play.
With the modes out of the way, let’s talk about the actual game. The control and responsiveness are so much better than any other MK game. MK9 tried to recreate the feeling of the first three MK games, but it got stale after a while. MKX is a whole new beast with the core familiar mechanics at play. Balancing is also nearly perfected in MKX thanks to combat variants. Each fighter has three different variants they can play as, and this sets their special moves. Instead of some characters having a long list of special moves to spam you with, they are limited this time around and cut down. Every player will have their favorite variant after playing for so long.
Outside of variants, the fighting is a little more cinematic. The camera zooms in on throws, and the new X-ray moves. X-rays are now three hits instead of two, and the models are much more detailed. More bones break, individual organs are modeled, and fibers on the muscles have depth. It looks fantastic, and this is by far the most brutal MK game to date. The fatalities are the best in any game and are just awesome. New tech allows for facial animations with twitching eyes, lips, and overall detailed gore. Organs are split in half, and they actually look like their organs, unlike previous games with generic gibs. Brutalities made a return, but they are no longer the complicated button presses like MK3. Certain requirements must be met in a match, such as having 50% health remaining, connecting a number of certain moves in a match, and hitting the right button combo during the final hit of the last round. Brutalities are now variations of special moves but have a twisted, deadly ending that throws opponents off guard and is extremely satisfying to pull off and watch.
The new characters are actually the best new fighters in the series. All are fun to play, and all are distinctive, unlike previous entries where new characters felt like cheap rip-offs. Among them, Cassie Cage, Jacqui Briggs, Ferra/Tor, D’Vorah, and Erron Black are my favorites. Kung Jin and Takeda aren’t exactly the unique characters they succeed, which are Kenshi and Kung Lao. They both look and feel nearly identical, despite having different weapons. Takeda is actually more similar to Scorpion than Kenshi, as he uses dual whips and Kung Jin has a bow and staff. Unique weapons, but their characters aren’t fleshed out much in the story mode.
With that said, MKX is an evolution of the series that it so desperately needs. The longevity that’s smart and isn’t bloated content, more online features, and the variants are hopefully here to stay. This is one of the best fighting games of the decade.
Kollector’s Edition: For $90 more, you can receive a special box, a Scorpion statue, the Kombat Pass, and a Scorpion skin. The statue is made by a sculptor named Coarse, and the skin is of the statue. It’s beautifully made and well worth it for collectors. It also comes with a certificate of authenticity.
Hotline Miami was one of my favorite games in 2013. It was violent, fast-paced, had tight controls, and rocked a retro 8-bit art style like no other game has. The music was fantastic as well, but the best part was the “just one more level” appeal. Hotline Miami 2 brings back epic music, great art, violence, and, well, some other things we didn’t really want.
Wrong Number starts out by giving us some backstory. Well, it tries and miserably fails at it. The story does not make one lick of sense because you are being flip-flopped between time periods and so many different characters. Each level just starts, and the story is just there. There’s some dialog with no connection to the previous scene. It’s frustrating and makes you want the storyless original back. However, and it pains me to say this, the story isn’t the worst thing in Miami 2. The game is excruciatingly difficult. Miami 1 was hard, but satisfying. It had great replay value because it was the perfect challenge. Miami 2 is a near-frustrating mess of endless restarts and trial-and-error.
You could say it’s a worse-level design, but that’s not the case; I feel it’s more like poor enemy placement. There are so many enemies in each level, and I mean tons. They all have a variety of guns and melee weapons, and a few can only be taken down with certain weapons. I feel the placement is haphazard; we used strategies in the last game that were way overused here and ended up being used to exploit the game to advance, which is not fun at all. Enemies will see you if you can see them; this is how Hotline Miami works. If you can pan the camera further away, you can get a quick sniper shot at them and a free hit, but for fewer points. One good strategy is to move in and out of a doorway really quickly, let some enemies see you, duck back into a corner, and slice everyone up as they enter the doorway or around a corner. That was an infrequent strategy in Miami 1, but in Miami 2, this has to be done to just get partway through one area. Miami 2 is also full of long-winded levels that seem to never end.
Abusing Miami’s strategies is a crying shame here since this game could have had so much potential for more enemies and new strategies. After halfway through the game, the levels become large and hard to navigate with traditional Hotline Miami controls and gameplay. It’s almost like the game tried to go in a new direction but didn’t evolve its gameplay for it. Miami 2 is also twice as long as the first game, but it overstays its welcome after the second act. I literally felt like the game had become a chore and just wanted it to end.
However, that’s not to say the whole “one more level” thing is gone. I was hooked, and the constant trial and error had me restarting levels dozens and dozens of times to try a new strategy, but it wasn’t really an enjoyable “one more level” feeling. A lot of times I had to exploit the enemy AI. Only certain levels can really be completed one way, and if you start a level with the wrong weapon, kill the wrong guy first, or even kill all the enemies in the wrong order, you’re pretty much screwed. More often than not, I was restarting a level not because my strategy wasn’t sound, but because the enemy AI screwed everything up because he wasn’t patrolling the correct corridor or left a room he’s normally in and blindsided me when I least expected it. Usually, this is a good thing, but not when you’re forced to kill enemies in a certain way due to poor enemy placement being overwhelming.
With that said, I hate to say that there’s really no reason to come back to this game after you finish. Do I want to spend an entire week restarting level after level again and again? Of course not. I’d rather re-download the first game and enjoy the excellent Miami-ness without all the hair-pulling. All in all, Miami 2 is not really a must-play, even for fans. If you end up never playing this, you’re probably better off sticking with the first game.
Call of Duty has had a steady downfall since Modern Warfare 3. Ghosts was a great change for the series, but it just wasn’t enough. Advanced Warfare is the first CoD game to be developed outside of Treyarch and Infinity Ward, and this is probably one of the best things for the series. The fact that Advanced Warfare is completely fictional and original is a good change as well.
You play Mitchell, a soldier who is working for a private military company called Atlas. Atlas is bigger and better funded than the entire US military, so they also have more power. I love the way the pace of the story is, and the characters are actually pretty likable and memorable. Gideon is a tough Brit who you grow to like, and he is actually my favorite of all the characters. The story is all about stopping a bad guy named Hades, who nuked parts of the world years ago. However, the good part is that the story takes a huge turn when you go after Atlas’ founder, for reasons I won’t say to avoid spoilers.
With the story being solid (probably the only good story in the CoD series), the gameplay holds up well. Yes, it still feels like CoD, but it’s a bit different. The guns have more weight and feel better, despite being completely fictional and futuristic. The weapons are based on real-world weapons, but with a twist. There are some really awesome new attachments and features. The new grenade feature is amazing. Your tactical grenade allows you to switch between EMP, Threat, and various other types. The threat grenade is my favorite, as it lights all the enemies up red for a short time. There’s also a threat detector attachment for guns that lights enemies up red when you have your reticle over them. The lethal grenade can switch between Frag, Smart, and various others. The smart grenade is my favorite, as it shoots into the air and homes in on the closest enemy. These features may seem subtle, but they fit the futuristic universe and advance the traditional CoD gameplay quite a bit.
A second major feature is the ExoSuit. There are three abilities that you can have, such as a jump pack, stim pack, a temporary shield, grapple, and various other features. Rolling this over into multiplayer is a blast and really changes things up, forcing you to forgo your CoD multiplayer routine and traditions.
The multiplayer suite is great, and the customization is even deeper than Ghosts. Choosing your gender, clothing, and even a different face is a step up for the series. The weapon customization is extremely in-depth, allowing you to hand-tailor your perfect CoD loadouts with various attachments, perks, weapons, and weapon paint. While the basic CoD suite is still here and hasn’t changed much, the added features of Advanced Warfare pretty much change the entire thing for the better.
Lastly, the graphics are absolutely fantastic on next-gen systems and PCs. The character models are gorgeous, the animations are beautiful, and the lighting is some of the best you will see this year. High-res textures and amazing sound keep you engulfed and trekking on. CoD had always been something to laugh at graphically due to the previous console’s aging, but now the series has one of the most advanced graphics engines available.
With all that said, Advanced Warfare is a great departure from the tired formula, and anyone who has been holding out should jump in now. It washes out the foul taste of the stigma that the series has created for itself and the FPS genre as a whole.
thebinarymessiah.com 
ORC is probably the worst game in the entire series. It's objectively awful. Being bad isn't different. Different is Outbreak…