True Reviews, Updates and Common Sense Opinions
This game felt like a genuine Spider-man game. Insomniac Games did a spectacular job giving Miles his own identity in the Spider-man universe. Not only are we introduced into Miles’ world by seeing him as Peter Parker’s pupil, but we also get to know Miles as a fun-loving, caring teen who is invested in his neighborhood and the people in it.
Continue reading “Is Spider-Man: Miles Morales game of the year?(Review)”
After reading about the leaks for Naughty Dogs sequel to one of the best games I’ve played in my adult life, I have to admit I was thrown off. In my opinion, the leaks caused me and other fans of the franchise to think this installment would be unrelatable.
Continue reading “The truth about The Last of Us Part II”
I knew that playing Resident Evil 3 Remake would not be too off the mark of what gamers experienced with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 Remake.
Continue reading “Resident Evil 3 Remake: Nemesis (review) and Resident Evil 4 rumors”
This first impression is based on the story mode, not online multiplayer.
Continue reading “One Punch man: A Hero Nobody Knows | First Impressions (Review)”
Here is a cautionary tale about an app I downloaded in the past.
Continue reading “An honest experience with Choices | Mobile App”
I didn’t play the first Luigi’s Mansion or the second one, but I heard many good things about the most recent game, most specifically on Twitter, so I decided not to pass up the opportunity to try it out. This post is my first impression of Luigi’s Mansion 3. Keep in mind there are minor spoilers below.
Continue reading “Luigi’s Mansion 3: First Impressions (game review)”
Now that we are a full month into Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, it’s time for a well-rounded opinion regarding the latest addition to the Destiny franchise.
Continue reading “Did Bungie find the balance between hardore and hobby with Destiny 2: Shadowkeep?”
When I logged into Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, I was excited to return to the moon. There is a lot of nostalgia in returning to the moon in this game and it’s obvious as soon as you load in that Bungie was wisely aware of that.
Continue reading “Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is nostalgic and enjoyable (story review)”
River City Girls is reminiscent of games like Fighting Force and Streets of Rage and firmly finds its place in the River City world. It’s a beat-em-up video game where you fight through levels completing mini objectives while pursuing the main objective.
In this case, your main objective is to recover your boyfriend who is presumed to be kidnapped from school. During your hang out session with your friend in detention, you get word that both of your boyfriends were taken. The plan is to break out of detention, punch your way out of the school and embark on an adventure to save your boyfriend’s lives.
You play as either Kyoko or Misako. I chose to play as Kyoko (she doesn’t even go to the school she is trying to escape from). As you’re breaking out of detention the principle puts out an APB out for you and makes all the high school students (excepts the ones who are just standing around for some reason) attack you to stop you from leaving.
I won’t spoil the full story of the game, but you eventually get out of the school and make it to the place where your clues lead you only to find out it’s a dead-end. Plus, your relationship with those boys is not what it seems. Which is hilarious because there is a foreshadowing of that at the beginning of the game.
Cool features:
This video game plays like earlier games where you have to constantly pick up items to heal yourself. For instance, an apple or a salad replenishes your health. Leveling up also gives you a full health bar.
You can also recruit NPC’s to briefly help you while you are engaged in a fight. They complete one attack and then go back into your pocket dimension until they are needed again. If they get knocked down more than 3 times they are no longer available to help and you have to find someone else. You can only recruit the NPC if they beg you to. This sometimes happens if they are the last man standing during your fight.
This is a two-player game, but I played solo. The narrative still moves forward as though two people are playing though. Your partner goes through dialogue and drops hints or blatant direction to help you progress in the game.
Combat/ Boss Fight:
You can pretty much get through the levels without knowing many combos, so feel free to button mash. Knowing the combos, of course, will help defeat easy mobs quicker. Plus, my favorite heavy move in this game is Kyoko’s dab. It’s cheaky, but I loved it. You play about 5 1/2 hours to find a dead-end, but the end boss fight is the most challenging part of the game with multiple layers. The boss has sword attacks, clone decoys of herself, and fire cyclones attacks that take down your health very fast. This fight is all about patience and combos. It was my favorite fight in the game.
Bonus:
Once you beat the game, you unlock your boyfriends as playable characters to rerun the story.
I enjoyed this game a lot. Although I didn’t take part in the co-op feature, I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I played on PS4, but this game is available on Steam, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The soundtrack is fun and honestly, I like these types of games so I went through it again. I think you’ll have a good time with this game if you give it a try.
We are just over a week removed from the release of Wolfenstein: Youngblood. It comes from a storied franchise that a lot of people love, you may be of those people. During E3 2019, Bethesda made a big deal about the release of this game with its huge selling point being the cooperative feature.
The co-op feature made me excited because I like to play with my friends. Sure, I’m able to enjoy a linear story by myself, but playing with friends is always a plus. That’s why I appreciated the co-op mode and eagerly wanted to experience it.
Story:
Playing the story mode was fine. It had its moments of excitement and once you’re leveled up enough you can put together some cool strategies to take down your enemies and have fun running rough shot on your enemies as well.
I’ve heard complaints that the enemies can be bullet sponge-like. And to that, I pose a question. Aren’t a lot of enemies in games these days? I just figured you and your partner were supposed to work together to take down the boss.
But that’s just me.
What I can say is that artificial intelligence is not the best. If you get unlucky enough to need to play with the computer as your sister, she will make your experience infinitely harder due to her lack of common sense.
Welcome to hard mode folks!
Let’s shake that off for a moment. The story itself was cool. You are playing as one of B.J Blazkowicz’s daughters. The goal is to find him because he disappeared in the ’80s. You travel to France to find him and end up working with the Resistance because Nazis are in control there.
Surprise, dad is still alive and there’s a lot of stuff going down that you knew nothing about (that I won’t spoil) and you find out there’s a multi-verse (that I will spoil). You figure out who is causing the trouble, stop them and then plan to push back against the big baddies of the world.
Pretty straight forward.
I will say this, Jess and Soph are not funny. They make jokes that adolescent boys would make and it’s not entertaining. That’s my biggest gripe with this game. I can’t relate to the main characters. I found myself cringing every time they laughed. I felt bad about it, but I have to be honest. I didn’t jive with those characters at all.
Thoughts:
Overall, I don’t think this game is as bad as a lot of people are saying it is. But, I’m pretty sure with the addition of microtransactions, the opinion of this game has drastically dropped in the gaming community. Microtransactions will always be a sour point no matter what game they are in.
I suggest you do what I do. Disregard the microtransactions and just play the game. Now, if the game becomes so wrapped up in in-game purchases that there is no way around it, then run the other way. But, if you can enjoy the game to some level without it, please do.
This is an average game. Unfortunately, it will be remembered much worse than it is due to corporate decisions, but hey that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I made an interesting choice for this exotic questline. I started the quest on my hunter, but it’s account-wide which will come in handy later. It’s simple enough to start the quest.
Start the Quest/ Boons:
You’ll see a huge statue of Calus. When you approach him you’ll see four daily bounties that you need to pick up and complete in order to get purple Boons.
Go to Werner on Nessus and open the chest to the right of him. It will give you the Invitation exotic envelope in your pursuits and you’ll need to visit the Visage Tribute Hall by clicking on the icon on the Nessus map.
These boons will be turned back into this Calus statue in order to give you a discount for buying your tributes.
Your invitation bounty will turn into the Golden Hero bounty and prompt you to turn in tributes in order to make progress. You’ll need 18 in total to get the Bad Juju mission to open for you.
You’ll open up a door behind the statue and you’ll open up all of your tributes there.
Discounts:
Now, here is the discount workaround. If you only do 3 Visage bounties on each character, you’ll be able to get more than 4% discounts a day.
For instance, I did 3 on my hunter and 3 on my warlock. Please remember not to do more than 3 bounties per character per daily reset because you’ll get glimmer instead of your discount boon.
This is how you’ll be able to use fewer resources to fill up your tribute hall.
Once you have turned in 18 tributes, you’ll get a Pest Control message and then a Reality Shutters prompt you next to the chest in the middle of the tribute hall.
Once you click that, ‘The Other Side” adventure will be available at the chest with the Bad Juju’s Ahamkara’s skull in the case.
You can rally the flag once you start the mission.
This mission is based in the ascendant realm. You can solo it if you’d like. It’s not a timed encounter and you can always use your optimum loadout to melt majors in the encounter.
My loadout included Outbreak Prime, Calus Mini Tool Submachine Gun, and Bane of Sorrow Machine Gun. I ended up swapping my loadout around during the final part of the mission. I chose Blast Furnace, Beloved and 1K voices.
I played it slow at the end especially because of the axion darts and shriekers.
Once you finish the mission you’ll be able to open the chest and your Bad Juju is yours!
Yay!
Catalyst:
You need 45 tributes for the catalyst to be available for you. You can use the same method to earn your discount as before. It will save you time and resources. After the catalyst is available, you’ll pay 7 legendary shards to buy it from Calus statue.
Materials and Resources:
Here’s the thing, this mission can certainly feel punishing to the players that don’t store up resources. Players who don’t have a wealth of materials and resources to buy tributes outright will feel like they are left behind. The everyday player won’t feel the squeeze so much. Most likely because they have a wealth of materials to use without running out.
Glimmer will deplete very fast because the cost of the tributes is very high. But, it’s time to get used to this type of game in Destiny 2. As we phase into the MMO era of Destiny, it will be the player’s responsibility to predict the necessity of materials to make headway in the game.
I predict even the hardcore-est of players will feel the materials squeeze at some point during Shadowkeep.
Anyway. Good luck in your quest!
Over the last year, my interest in Formula One racing has really ramped up. My official introduction to the sport came in 2001 thanks to Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, but more on that later.
My interest in Formula One has led me to watch every race in the 2019 season, so when I realized a new racing game was being released, I figured I’d give it a try.
Game Play
This being my first Formula One gaming experience, I didn’t know what to expect from the career mode. I honestly appreciated the Formula Two introduction to the circuit. It was a nice starting point for the game.
There were little story elements that made the game interesting, plus the opponents that you come into contact with had some personality.
The racing component started off simple enough in F2, but once you accepted your offer with an F1 team a whole new world opened up. I’ll compare it to the Batman: Arkham series. Once you choose your team, you are able to see what upgrades your car needs in order to be competitive.
As you play through the game with practice and qualifying, you gain points that allow you to unlock upgrades to have a better pace during the race.
Opinion:
This game is so involved! Your engineers are in your ear letting you know what to do in order not to botch up your race. You have to choose what strategy to accept to give you the best chance during your performance. You have to pay attention to your tire health and your engine health. And depending on what team you choose, you may still suffer on the circuit.
I was completely and positively surprised at the amount of involvement from the player character. I actually have even more of an appreciation for the sport since I assume that it’s much harder to plan all this out in real life.
I also think my dad will really like this one. He’ll enjoy unlocking the legends and classic cars, so he’ll get a copy for sure.
In case you were not aware, Borderlands 2: The Handsome Collection is free if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription or the Xbox Game Pass. It’s also free on Steam. During E3 last week, Gearbox announced a free DLC to get players pumped for the next installment in the Borderlands franchise.
It’s called Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary. Seeing how all of this content is free right now, I decided to jump in and check it out.
First, I do have one confession. I needed to use the newcomer boost to get to level 30. I wanted to play the new content, and even though grinding power levels is a wonderful pass time, I chose the most effective route to get to the new stuff. So thank you Gearbox for the option.
Don’t judge me.
Once I got into the game, I was very impressed. The gun-play feels so good and your character feels very powerful. Plus, some of the commentaries by the NPC’s made me absolutely belly laugh at times. Whoever wrote the script much be hilarious in real life.
Story:
In the campaign, Lilith and the rest of the Crimson Raiders are discussing what their next steps are going to be. They currently have no commander and their ship, Sanctuary, is falling apart.
In the midst of their confusion, Colonel Hector attacks Sanctuary with his Pandora soldiers. He commandeers the ship and steals the vault key.
During the attack, Colonel Hector floods Sanctuary with gas causing people to turn into “Vine Freaks”. Lilith can’t even teleport into the area because it’s so overcome with gas. This prompts her to lean on you, a Vault Hunter, to help get back control of Sanctuary.
You go through your mission complete a set of tasks to help Lilith get back onboard the Sanctuary.
Here’s a broad overview of what you are tasked to do:
Thoughts (some spoilers):
Overall I had a good experience. With this being my first real experience in the Borderlands world, I liked it. I’m familiar with the post-apocalyptic vibes so getting into the gameplay wasn’t too jarring.
Again, the writing was great to me. I thought most of the lines from Vaughn, Cassius, and some from Hector were hilarious. Tannis made me laugh the most during my play session.
While explaining how the gas is causing humans to mutate, Tannis compares the human mutation to plant mutation. Basically calling us dumb, she says, “Gas makes plant go Big Big and do the ouch”.
Did you laugh? Maybe I’m simply pleased. Maybe you had to be there.
At the end of the story, your player character does face off with Hector. It’s an interesting encounter. He infects himself and grows vines. You have to shoot some pus bulbs off those vines to make him vulnerable.
My only hesitation to be fully satisfied with the end of the story is the very end.
Instead of your player character being the one to give the final blow to Colonel Hector, a cut-scene starts and Lilith takes over.
I get it because the story is about her becoming commander so it makes sense. However, I’m used to getting rid of the big bad so a cut-scene didn’t do it for me.
That being said, it was a good cut-scene.
Cut-scene spoilers:
Lilith destroys the Sanctuary to kill Infected Hector because his vines grew deep down into the ship. Everything explodes. Tannis reveals that the ship was probably going to blow up anyway. And no one is really bothered by the demise of the ship. The Crimson Raiders are just glad Lilith is cool.
Lilith sends the remaining Crimson Raiders out into the world to find vaults, while she stays because to rebuild, recruit new members, and look for the vault map that she believes is still intact in the area despite the explosion.
And that’s how we enter Borderlands 3. I’m actually excited for a fresh start going into the next saga of Borderlands. It comes out on September 13, 2019.
A lot of anticipated games were shown at E3. And it’s expected for people to be excited about them. But, beyond the critically acclaimed franchises, there were some gems announced as well. I’ve listed a few games that have piqued my interest beyond the main titles that have been showcased.
Twelve Minutes:
Twelve Minutes was shown off at the Microsoft Xbox E3 conference. It has such an intriguing concept. You have 12 minutes to figure out how to not die while you’re stuck in a time loop. The trailer gives off this psycho-thriller vibe. While trying to figure out how to change the events predetermined in the game, I expect to have an intense experience filled with absolute concentration and frustration.
Another exciting thought about Twelve Minutes surrounds the distractions and roadblocks in the game. How will the game respond when the player almost figures out a way out of the loop?
Developer: Luis Antonio /Publisher: Annapurna Interactive / Platforms: Xbox One, PC
GhostWire: Tokyo
The GhostWire: Tokyo trailer debuted at the Bethesda E3 Conference. It was actually one of the most interesting upcoming games mentioned during the conference. It had a brand new feel without any preconceived hype. Planting its feet firmly in the horror genre, GhostWire: Tokyo looks like it will rival The Evil Within which was created by the same developer.
Players will roam a ghostly version of Tokyo after mysterious happenings force you to uncover the reason and purge the city of evil. This sounds like a great opportunity for those of us who faithful play Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and even Parasite Eve.
Developer: Tango Gameworks /Publisher: Bethesda
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein: Youngblood has the potential to be the best Wolfenstein of the franchise. Why? Because you are able to play in online co-op with a partner. It’s the first Wolfenstein with co-op. If this set up works well, I can’t see co-op not being an option in future Wolfenstein titles.
Another reason why this game is on the list is due to the release date. It comes out on July 26, so it’s an option for some summertime entertainment.
Developer: Arkane Studios, MachineGames /Publisher: Bethesda / Platform: Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation
Death Loop
Death Loop seems cool. It’s two assassins going head to head to see who can get the kill first. The premise of the game is that you are at a constant loop to kill the other assassins while evading other enemies as well. I may have missed this in the presentation, but the trailer does not mention if this is a co-op experience. If it had a co-op mode, that would most likely be the highlight of the game.
Develper: Arkane Lyon, Studios / Publisher: Bethesda / Platform:
My Friend Pedro
My Friend Pedro is the most unorthodox game that I’ve seen so far in E3. Not only did Devolver Digital have the most memorable showcase, but this game developed by DeadToast Entertainment also stood out among everything else. It reminded me of Super Hot. If you recall Super Hot, you’ll remember its a game where you can slow down time to shoot your enemies. Well, this game reminded me of that, but on a train with parkour.
Developer: DeadToast Entertainment / Publisher: Devolver Digital / Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows
Which games stuck out to you?
I started playing Rage 2 two weeks ago. I wrote my initial thoughts piece about it the same week it came out. I posted my thoughts just as I reached the leveling part of the game for your Dagger faction in order to progress in the story.
My initial opinions of Rage 2 were positive. You can read the entire rundown about the beginning of the campaign in my previous blog – I’m playing Rage 2 and… (review).
Update:
The grind of leveling up the faction allies was fine. It’s what you can expect. The level requirement to continue forward with the main story was level five for Lily, Marshall, Kvasir, and Loosum.
After you reach level five with all of the Dagger allies, you can continue with the main campaign. You end up fighting with General Cross, the leader of the Authority before the final boss encounter.
Boss Fight:
It’s a complete fake out. It seems like you are in the final boss fight, but it’s actually the fight before the final fight.
Cross is a bullet sponge at first, but then a cool mechanic kicks in where you need to destroy his tech to stop his immunity.
Quick Tip:
In between killing the enemy mobs and shooting at Cross, you need to shoot the tech hanging from the machine.
That allows you to go straight for Cross. However, he was baiting us all along. He was only buying time while he prepared his new clone body.
Do you know what this situation reminds me of? The Sixth Day. Not plot-wise, but the way Cross keeps cloning himself to make himself “better” and transferring his memories into a different host in order to take over the world. That reminds me of the ending of The Sixth Day.
Cross ends up getting away in his new clone body, but we acquire his old head as a DNA sample to help Dr. Kvasir. Kvasir makes the Nanotrite serum to stop Cross from being able to clone himself.
The Authority Stronghold and Final Boss:
The final mission of Rage 2 involves infiltrating the Authority stronghold and killing General Cross. That’s the main goal. There are two parts to the break-in. The first part involves driving and the second involves going through mobs of enemies in a mini maze on the way to Cross.
This part felt a little unnecessarily prolonged, but I understand why it was there.
When you finally get to General Cross, he activates his gigantic body ogre beast extension. There are three phases to the fight. The mechanics mirror the same actions that you use to kill the regular ogres throughout the game.
Phases:
Be mindful:
After you finish the encounter, a cut-scene makes our player character stab Cross in the eye with the Nanotrite Virus and it infects us as well.
Lily comes to save us and it seems like the player character is probably going to die from the virus.
Roll credits
Dr. Kvaris is able to save us somehow. We wake up to all of the Dagger allies telling us there’s still work to be done and then we are inserted back into the open world to finish up side-missions and level up factions.
Final thoughts:
General Cross’ entire plan was to wipe out humans and replace them with clones. Our mission was to stop the creation of said clones and kill Cross because he killed Lily’s mother. In the process, I think we saved the world too.
That’s a pretty straight forward goal.
You have the option of keeping the game going after you finish the main campaign. And if you are like me and only did the minimum leveling for your Dagger allies so that you can move on with the story, you have plenty left to do.
The gun play feels great in Rage 2. It’s fast-paced and the combat is the best part. It’s a pretty solid and entertaining game.