True Reviews, Updates and Common Sense Opinions
Black Desert Online released in December 2014 on PC, rolled out its console version in August 2019 and followed up with its mobile version in December 2019.
Continue reading “4 reasons to download Black Desert Online for Steam”
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.
Early access is available now for $19.99 .
I joined a group of my friends in the beta test for Black Desert. At the time of this writing, the beta is coming to a close. It’s a Fantasy MMO RPG adventure game. The initial release was in 2014 but the PS4 release is coming out on August 22, 2019.
So what about this game?
If you are a fan of Skyrim, World of Warcraft and other games like that, you will enjoy yourself. I played with a party of four people and we laughed the entire time and enjoyed leveling up.
My favorite aspect of the game is the amount of customization. I chose to be a sorceress, I made her hair blue and her skin bronze. She’s amazing.
I went to YouTube to find out a little about the classes available and as I unlocked her move set, I really started to get into the game-play. The combat is fluid, hard-hitting, and pretty to look at.
Yes, I said pretty.
In my group my friends played, Ranger, Wizard, and Bezerker. They all seemed to be having just as much fun as me.
Any Drawbacks?
There are some drawbacks. The biggest peeve in this game is the boss fights. You have to disband your party to fight them.
Every other instance, like grinding quest steps and gaining experience points you can play with friends. But as soon as the quest step requires you to defeat a boss, you need to disband your group and defeat it solo.
This could be a beta thing, but then again, the game has been out on PC and Xbox for a while and I was told that the situation is the same.
Action?
When the action is high energy and you are constantly fighting mobs, Black Desert is a joy. However, there are low points when you are traveling from village to village talking to different people just to complete quest steps. It’s a bit monotonous.
I understand it the RPG way, but that doesn’t make it any less dull.
There was also a point in our game-play that we tried to tame a horse. We tried for 45 minutes and failed. But it was fun trying. We ended up buying our horses from the stable keep for $15000 currency. I also realized you can fish in this game, but I didn’t get to try. I just watched a player for a little while. However, I did end up getting my fishing license after killing a boss. I’m sure there are a lot of activities to try within the game.
Overall, this game is fun to play with friends. I never played alone, so I can not tell you how the solo experience is. I’m told there is a strict RPG community that you can join if you are into that. I’m interested in trying that out once the game launches. But other than that, I had a lot of fun playing with my friends and enjoying this game.
Black Desert releases on PS4 on August 22, 2019.
I mentioned this game earlier this month in my blog about games that should pique your interest from E3. My Friend Pedro looked so fun during the Devolver Digital showcase. In my brief overview, I mentioned that the game reminded me of Super Hot because of the slow-motion mechanic. And since I really enjoyed Super Hot, I figured I’d enjoy My Friend Pedro as well.
It released on PC and Nintendo Switch on June 20, 2019. I finally had a chance to experience it this weekend and I was not disappointed.
Game Play
It’s a side scroll format and it has a few cool mechanics. We knew about the slow-motion mechanic, but you can also split your bullet directions while you’re full hardcore parkour! You end up hanging upside down from zip lines, balancing on barrels, and shooting while skateboarding. Plus, you run up your damage output the faster you put down enemies.
On normal difficulty, the game is forgiving to an extent. If you get sloppy, the game will call you out for it at the end of the level. At the end of the level you are shown your best moment, so that will make you feel good.
The most difficult level is called Bananas. I may not be able to survive on the hardest level, but I’m sure eventually someone will be able to. I can’t wait for speed runs of the highest level to pop-up on YouTube. I really hope they do.
The talking banana does throw me off sometimes. There’s one point where the banana is talking about how he used to go to parties and how wild it was. In my mind I’m thinking, this character has to be hallucinating. How else would a talking banana make sense?
But seriously, My Friend Pedro is a chill game to play through. It’s like you are in the world of the Matrix or John Wick, but you’re a random street runner. It’s fun to play, it has manageable controls and it has a great soundtrack.
Usually, I’ll mute the game soundtrack and play my own music. But, the soundtrack in My Friend Pedro has a great mood that adds to the enjoyment of the game too.
You could lose track of time while playing this game.
The only thing that would make it better is a competition mode. Maybe players could go head to head to see who can clear the level the fastest and get the best score.
Overall, I’m really glad this game is as entertaining as it seemed to be at E3 and I’m going to keep playing!
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.
