you know what i haven't even played the demo yet but i'll base it on forza 3 nah jk i'll base it on the average user rating which shulden't even exist also to that one guy who gave it a 1.5. a 9.5 and 1.5 average to about a 5.5 dude at least average the game at 7 you know an average score for a game here at GI. but clearly this game is above average based on baseless user reviews and a legit GI review so i'll give this game an 8.25 the same score it has now BAM NEUTRALITY 

peoople at least giv it average reviews not .75 yeah! no.... it shuld not have user reviews i know but comon be fare

despite the fact that i hate all 3 endings and they dont make sense, i will still give the game a 10 it is amazing it is beautiful it is fun all the way thru

so its successes out shine its flaws so much that it deserves a 10.

I love Nintendo, okay. I have an appreciation for their games and some that may be unpopular, but I still consider their works a piece of art. So if any of you Nintendo Freaks think I hate them and me making this post is offending you, then just don't read. I know there are some things that a lot of you, or maybe some, that don't know Nintendo's process of making a game. Some are actually very poetic and better than most companies who handle a new title, but they were greedy when they were in the fame back in the 80's. Hello and welcome to this truth-filled thought blog.

Okay to start, since Nintendo was taking the light that was Atari, they were the only ones who were the desired company to sell games. Yes, there was the Sega Master System, but no one liked that console sadly. So, to not do what Atari had did (Having any game to have their licensing on it and sell it without seeing if it would sell), they made an entire process to make a game be on Nintendo. The game had to go through this process of whether the game would be fun, work on the console and nothing to upset the audience or destroy Nintendo's image. And before they accepted, the company or person who submitted their game had to pay $200 to see if they were worthy to be on their console. To many, this was a good security check for a game, to not create the crash of 83 again, but it was a painful process. Having to spend as little as possible to be apart of a still new business and risk whether or not this game would sell after paying a hefty $200 to just have it out there. There were some who went past that process and made illegal copies of their own game, but those game were sold either in an alleyway or in a Swap Meet, having barely any cartridges sold. 

I believe there was even a private protests against NIntendo's policy to put a game on their console, but was mostly unheard of to the public, barely having any lash on the company. I don't know if that's true though. I found it on a site a while back, but can never find it. You can take my word for or not, it's your choice. Anyways, This also made some good with the games on the console, having people to strive to do their demands or do multiple submissions after tweaking your game, making the game have a passionate team working to release their game on a successful console. Unfair, but it encouraged better performance. Even the head of Nintendo at the time, being a person who never played a game in his life, was passionate of making any game fun and making sure he had the right people do so such as trusting Miyamoto in what he thought was a good game. You can say that their policy was bad, but it had a perfect purpose in the gaming industry to stay alive for what it was. 

Although that wasn't as fiendish as most can think, but Nintendo had another thing that they still do today, along with one other thing. Whenever they thought something they released wasn't going to sell past the Japanese market, they decreased stock in European and Western markets to make them more valuable and given more fame than they already should. The first product they gave this treatment to was the hated Zelda II: Adventures of Link. It was a first attempt of a sequel and the fear of a game to fail for them was completely possible, so to not be fired from the company, they made copies low and you know the rest. In America, the game was sought after, having people create lines that would go through stoplights out of the store. There was even a guy who went cross country for the game that wanted the it for collector's sake, he was put on the news and the game was given free advertising, having people speculate that the game was awesome and needed to be had. So in return, the game wasn't considered a fail to the company.

This followed with other products in the future such as the Amiibos and the famous NES Classic Edition. Remember the whole Amiibo shortage, having some Amiibos exceed the thousands price range? Yeah, that was a tactic for Nintendo make a product more mainstream. And how they stopped production for the NES Classic to leave room for the SNES Classic. No, it was so that they don't have to waste resources to give the product a shelf to call home. It's a pretty greedy tactic, but Amiibos were stop talked about recently and people are still willing to pay hundreds of dollars to buy an NES Classic, so they did a good job being able to make us want it. 

Past that, Playstation was going to be the next console for Nintendo while partnering with Sony. They had so many redesigns, having them fight whether it should be cartridge based with games  and have a CD player attached to it or have it be entirely CD based. At the time, that was the staple for any piece of technology, being determined as "high tech." They separated after a few disagreements and Sony made the Playstation, while owning the rights to name entirely, in protest against Nintendo, making the console entirely CD based, making it seem more high tech than any other console. I love that, though. Sony had some balls to do such a thing as this. And to make it even worse for Nintendo, they created a new way of putting a game on a famous console. They had no process of which a game had to be accepted, they just paid someone a lot of money to flip Nintendo off with the next best game after Mario. Many would say that Playstation had a poor attempt of fighting Nintendo, but look at them now.

To keep their Nintendo Policy, they made their next console, the N64, to be only cartridge based. Although being inferior to their competitor, they still made great games in a cartridge that made so many great classics and generation defining games. 

What does this have to do with being fiendish? I mean yeah, that can be just a refusal to follow what their competitor has, but it was basically game lock in hiding. If you look at articles from that time, there are a lot of people complaining about how Final Fantasy 7 wasn't on the N64. Well, FF7 was a game that carried three CDs in one box to play the entire game and CDs carried 12 time the memory and power of that compared to a cartridge. How many cartridges do you think would be put in an N64 box of FF7? Maybe 5 or 7, being generous. It would be overpriced, seeing how much materials would take to make that many cartridges, having to make every other version follow the same price or similar, having the game be a risk to both companies.

They basically made this console cartridge based to put another lock on their system so no one can sell a game without acceptance by Nintendo. They followed this rule since that console, having the Gamecube use awfully small, but cute CDs to play games and the recent Switch being only cartridge based, having every developer to go through the acceptance process with Nintendo to put it on their console. A smart move, even without their $200 fee before acceptance. I guess Nintendo had more balls than Playstation had. Although now it doesn't matter to be on a Nintendo Console since Xbox and Playstation have an easier and painless process to have a game out there and considering Indies have the PC realm to play with. Now, it's just Pirate Protection instead of Game Lock. 

I would have to say, even though Nintendo is a friendly company, they're still a corporate company that want in the competition as much as Xbox and Playstation after taking Nintendo's thunder. What do you guys think? After reading this, would you still call Nintendo a friendly company to trust or did you already know this and don't care if Nintendo does something wrong? I would actually like to know honestly. I want to know if the majority know about these things. Well, I hope you enjoyed this read, been a while since I wrote something this fun, so I hope you like it. And 'til next time...

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Roodistf

I love history. It's something that I loved since I was a little kid. Although most of it was depressing and scary to a lot of kids, I thought it was cool how all the choices one person made changed the entire world and its thoughts. It reflects a lot of our society and helps people understand why people do things and how things are now. I just love it. Many Historians say that their Gramps influenced them about how awesome history was, but me? It was all about one game and that game was Call of Duty. Hello and welcome to this Community Writing Challenge.

Call of Duty was the main influence with me, how the game was based around a hundred year old war known as World War II, seeing that a game like this was based on a real event was mind blowing to me as a kid. Saying that these people in the game might have been real and the battles in the game were all real and key events in WWII history was just amazing to me. Although the war was one of the biggest world changing events in history after the "War to End All Wars," WWI, I still thought it was cool. I believe this game was the reason why I love The Iron Giant so much. 

WWII shooters have been a big part of why I'm a gamer and I followed those kinds of games as a kid, playing anything that CoD had. Up until CoD's modern era games, I still look for those kinds of shooters such as Wolfenstein or Brother in Arms. I've always loved them and anything that followed historic battles. Battlefield 1 being on of my favorite Multiplayer Shooters, despite its flaws. 

I was interested in history and anything involving it, either it be altered or true stories. I made sure I was in classes that involved history from Elementary to High School. Although I got a few bad grades out of it, I still loved being in those classes, learning about the choices that people made then and how it affected all of us. How Napoleon sold French Colonies to the Americans called the Louisiana Purchase. How he lost in his Conquest of total control of Europe, having the Russians do something called Scorched Earth. And how Hitler repeated his action after admiring Napoleon, causing another Scorched Earth in Russia. How about when Kennedy denied air support during the Bay of Pigs, having ground troops lose the battle, screwing up America's image?

I just love history like that. Especially the Cold War times, being the most fierce war in recent times, although having no conflict or battle with either nation. Just pure Political Drama. That would have to be my favorite time period to learn, having it be like a War Drama, but without the war. I think Black Ops. 1 was one of my favorite CoDs, taking place in that era. I know it's all politics and all, but know that I don't pick a side. I just like watching the chaos, why I love Parliament meetings so much. Not like a meeting in America where everyone talks and acts civilized, they bring out their fists, arguing and all. I just love watching a political figure punching someone over political differences. 

Well, That's basically it. I know this is short (and I'm sorry for it), but I hope you enjoyed a little insight of my personality. What do you think about history in games? I hear a lot of people say it's wrong to do that. You know what, make that the topic in the comments. I would love to hear what people think about historical games. Is it an honorable tribute to those who died in the war, or is it an insult? Talk about it! 'Til next time...

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Destiny was one of my favorite games of 2015. I didn't like it at launch because of how restricted it felt and DLC being overpriced for what it was. My sister got the game for Christmas with all the DLC and it was great. I played for two years and hearing the developers were planning a new game was amazing to me. For those who think the game was dead from the start, hated the fact that it was and doesn't deserve it, it was a chance for Bungie to redeem themselves in the awful attempt of creating a great story in a game, and so far after the Beta, I am generally pleased with what they have done so far. 

The game throws the play in the story mode from the beginning and shows off the characters (you go to constantly in the first game) in action. I loved that part of the Beta, you never see them in action, but you're told that they're the most elite Guardians on Earth and know more tactics than a war veteran. I am genuinely glad they're doing this, they made them so cool and seeing them show off their moves is so rewarding. You see Cayde kill a few things as he casually strolls by, Ikora destroys a ship in anger, and you fight alongside Zavala! I doubt any of you would know these characters beside Cayde, but god those people were awesome, giving this meaning to these characters instead of NPCs you receive missions and rewards from. And seeing the place that every Destiny Player called home was a battleground, being destroyed constantly by the Cabal. It really gives off a certain emotion you're suppose to feel from the disaster you're witnessing. And the villain is so great, having a goal that affects you and all your friends and you want to stop him. That's the kind of villain I want from games these days, they always try to make it poetic or out of place with no clear goal for them to follow. I hope they make him more of villain in the game, either killing key characters or something of that sort. 

The design they put in the maps were all so stunning as well. I mean, there was a few things that were out of place, like some clipping shadows or objects clipping inside of each other, but I can get over them. I especially love the Plaza part of the story mode, where you fight with Zavala, it looked like the Tower was vulnerable and needed heavy assistance. And I noticed the Ball you play with in the first game is popped and melted in the stairs heading towards Zavala. I don't know about any of you guys, but I had some fond memories with that ball... I loved playing soccer with it... That moment seeing that ball destroyed and gone forever, I want to kill every single last one of those Cabal freaks. 

And apparently, there's not going to be a silent protagonist. Those of you RP Players won't be given a chance to voice your own character anymore since the protagonist already has one. Personally I like that, I always thought it was weird when your character doesn't respond to certain reaction in the first game, it just made it feel as if your character wasn't involved. And the voice actors playing the guardians are great, they're easy to listen to and have a powerful voice, which fits the voice of a hero that's going to save everyone and the "Light." The only thing I didn't like about the Beta was that the races were randomized along with the sex of the character. I'm all for a strong woman and all, but I don't wanna be an Awoken. I know that this is all that they have finished at the moment, but I want to see voice differences in the game! I guess it's just one of my opinions I can't get over... Yeah, it is. Either way, I loved the Female Awoken Voice Lines in the little story we had, they all were well acted and I can't wait to see what else they have in store for your character. 

Speaking of your character, it seems like you're going to have all your weapons in the beginning until the end of the prologue, because you get a freaking Exotic at the beginning and everything you have is Legendary. I don't know if that's actually going to happen, but I hope it does. I think it would support the player's hatred for the villain and motivation to stop him , taking all of your gear and having to start over. Plus, having to go from Last Gen to New Gen sounds cool to me, your gear transcending from the best you had in the old game to best you had in this new one. I would genuinely love that if they did that. 

On to the weapons, they changed up the weapons in the game, primarily for PvP sake. If you're unfamiliar with the previous game's weapon slot, your primary had three weapons: Auto Rifle, Scout Rifle and Pulse Rifle. Your Secondary was Shotguns, Sniper Rifles and Fusion Rifles then Sidearms later. And your Heavy was Machine Guns and Rocket Launchers then Swords later. Now you can have an Auto Rifle in your Primary and Secondary Slot. The reason for this is because your Primary is Kinetic Damage and your Secondary is Elemental Damage. For those who don't know, Kinetic is good against enemies with shields or weak spots, while Elemental is good against Armor and Elemental Opposites. The Elemental Opposites in the first game didn't really matter since mostly any type of damage does the same amount with each weapon regardless and had nothing to determine which element was which. I don't think it would matter in this game either, but who knows, they have a Scorch Cabal as an elemental enemy. 

The abilities, on the other hand, are changed up. The Titans are given the Striker and Defender Class, both from the original game. The Striker Class is different from the first game, having you do a ground pound and walk further to do it again with the same amount of damage. The grenades are the same for the most part as well as the punch. Then there's the Defender Class, having a new ability instead of creating a bubble shield. You can become Captain America with a shield to deflect bullets and beat your foes to a blood pulp. If you want to use the bubble shield, you can hold both button to activate the ability and the bubble will appear, doing the same effects as they did before. You can also have a Wall Shield or a Cover Shield. The Cover Shield being a waist high cover, having the player be able to provide a new cover to duck under. The Wall Shield a complete see through wall. You can't shoot through it, but you can see where your enemies are heading or where they're going to flank. 

The Hunter has the Arcstrider and Gunslinger classes. The Arcstrider ability is mostly just Blade Dancer, but with a staff. You can activate that ability and go berserk on anything you can find. The grenades are pretty deadly, having some long lasting areal damage or a quick blinding attack. The Gunslinger is pretty much the same as the previous game's, but you get a third-person view. It still does an awesome amount of damage and the grenades are pretty much the same.The Third ability can be a bit of a downgrade since it's just a roll. The Marksman's Roll is just a plain roll, but automatically reloads your gun. The Gambler's Roll is the same as the other, but if you run into someone, they take damage. I wish they did something cooler with that.

The Warlock has the Voidwalker and the Downblade. I wish they put more thought with the second name since it's such a cool Class compared to the others. Voidwalker is like from the previous game, but instead of throwing a single energy ball, you can choose to shoot a cluster of them at an arc. It takes some getting use to since the changed how the projectile shoots, instead of it going in a straight line, it shoots at an arc (as I said before). The grenades are pretty much the same as well as the melee. Downblade is similar to Arcstrider, but instead each swing is a devastating projectile and you can fly. It really does a lot of damage, having an unfairly long run. The grenades feeling the same as the Super, throwing a ball of burning light or a fiery explosion. The Third Ability is pretty useful in almost any situation: you do a healing ward,  where whoever stands in that area will be healed and get an over shield. There is also a damage boosting ward, where whoever stands on that area will be damage boosted. I think this and the Titan are the best so far and can save the team instead of yourself. 

Moving on, there is a lot of redesigns for original enemies, like the Fallen, the Vex and the Caba. The Cabal still have those small heads, but not as small to laugh at them. The Fallen might have a new ruling house (or clan, look it up), having them look more edgy and with darker, red clothing. The Vex look pretty much the same, but the Minotaurs have a weak spot now, being the chest. I like that since they didn't have one in the previous game, they were just annoy bullet sponges that teleported and  dealt a lot of damage. Besides that, there are new enemy types for each race. The Fallen have new invisible enemies that hide and snipe the player from afar. When the player is near them, the invisible sniper will dash to a safe spot while cloaked, having the player scramble to the enemy's new location. I think this is a new breed of Fallen since these guys have two arms, but some kind of insect legs on their torso. They're mostly cloaked when you fight them, so you don't notice most of it, but when they dash they do this spider-like crawl while doing so. I love it personally, because I like creepy things, but I can see these things becoming a big annoyance to the community, since they always have dead-on aim whenever you try to dodge their attacks. And the Servitors, the big robot eyes, have a new ability. Instead of healing nearby enemies, they now shield an enemy like one of those Vex Taken, not being able to kill the shielded enemy until the Servitor is dead. At least they made them more of target, instead of a healer than did so little for his job. 

As for the Cabal, they have four new types of enemies on their hands (obvious because they're going to be the main focus of the game) and they're pretty fun to play with. There is the Scorch Cabal, that I mentioned earlier, that can shoot balls of fire at the player and do constant damage on hit. If they miss, the projectile hits the floor and causes that part of the floor to burn, but do constant damage upon hit. They're as easy as most flamethrower enemies, having the fuel tank protruding over their back being an easy attack since it's just above their head. There are the Shield Cabals. I know they were in the previous game, but these are better. They have an energy shield that deflects all damage until you hit the center and disable the shield entirely. They can also make their shield cover more ground than themselves, but still hold the same weakness for their shield or just rush through it and punch the guy instead. I'm glad they made this change since they use to stop the flow of battle, having players leave those guys for last or waste ammo by missing their feet or hands. Makes them fair to fight, but still a challenge and doesn't stop the flow of battle. There is also a Butcher Cabal (not their real name) that do massive amounts of damage in one hit and have the most health out of the Cabal class. Although I understand they're suppose to be the feared enemy type to make the player focus more in the game, but god don't they just destroy when they give you horde of them. I wish they were more prone to stagger since nothing else about them would have to change, I just want to have a mode to escape his grasp when I need it. Then there's the cleverly named Cavall, the dog types of the game. If you ask me, I hate it when they add dogs to a game. They're always the annoy enemy that just like to stop you from having fun. They're pretty easy to kill and learn, but they are so low from the screen that they can sneak up to you and bite you on the ass. What makes it even more annoying is how they can push you, sometimes destroying your momentum.And the one thing I don't like is how they put so many on screen. Three is enough, but when you spawn four packs of them, it's like running from an actual, single dog. I guess this is just a personal opinion, so I guess you can ignore that one. 

There's also a new ability the Cabal have that allows them B-Line towards you. Why is that an ability? Because! They got an explosive stick on their wrist! I'm not kidding. I don't know if it's suppose to be a stick or a blade, but it still is something to runaway from. I like it since it adds more diversity to them, having them do more than just dodge and shoot at you. If you have a Wall Shield up and they pull out that explosive and run through the shield and rush you as if you were the quarterback. I love how they're changing up the enemies instead of giving us a rehashed version of the same thing. I'm genuinely glad they're doing something to make this game different from the last. I mean, there is some things to get use to, but who doesn't want to see something new. 

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this Abstract Review. I really enjoyed the Beta and it feels like the Story is going to be better than the last game, even though there was barely any in that one. I can't wait to play the full game when it comes out and see more new changes they made. Again, I hope you liked this and 'til next time....

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Saw Something...

As a person with some rare opinions, I've always wanted to say all of my thoughts about the games I either dislike or love. Since I scrapped about 14 of those kinds of blogs, I thought it would be better if I did a brief opinion based say on games I played that wasn't what people said it was. I know that this could make people mad, but that's my intention. Although I want to do that, I don't want to make people hate me. This is all opinion, like I said before, so don't rock your socks off with what I say. Hello and welcome to this overrated countdown. 

10. Overwatch

I know many of you might be groaning at this entry, but there is a reason why I put it on the bottom of this list. The game is repetitive and doesn't share as many modes as other multiplayer shooters out there, but it still has some great character pairing. What that means is that you can combine two player's characters with each other and create a devastating combo that can hardly be stopped. I like how the developers get to update the game with new content, giving us new modes, new characters and new maps all for free. We keep the new characters and maps, but the new modes are always going to be taken away. There was a recent mode where you play in Co-op with other players, protecting waypoints and other objectives, and it was actually fun. Too bad it was a limited time event, so anyone who wants to play that mode lost their chance. 

There is also something that sucks for new players, since there are so many people playing this game with high ranks, there are so very little players for new ones to pair up with. Match Making is just terrible, having to wait for a match after getting into a skirmish, leaving the only fun being the meaningless Team Death Match. It's nothing like how TF2 is played and can't be compared to such a glorious teambased game. Even if the new Meet Your Match Update f**ked most of the game's great qualities. A good game to have, but doesn't deserve the Game of the Year Award. 

9. Elder Scrolls Online

I've talked about this game before, me being mad about how it didn't turn out to be the game I wanted. Either way, the player base has been considerably high. Although not as big as WoW's player base, the game is still being played today. I'm genuinely surprised and a seeing that game got over a 7 rating on most reviews. I really don't see how great this game actually is. For starters, the game gives you an awful clan option that restricts you from certain races and one race is taken away from the roster, the Imperials. If you wanted to be an Argonian in a different clan, you had to pay to be able to do that. And if you wanted to play with a friend in a different clan, you had to find him instead of join his party. I really don't know how any Elder Scrolls fan could go through that without throwing out your PC. And the combat is so awful, having the player not have combination abilities, giving you all these abilities that you won't even want to use, because this one move is quicker than the rest.

The game's missions are even bad, being surrounded with people doing the same thing, your missions are interrupted constantly, having to wait for them to finish or restart the game in general. It feels as if the game was meant to be single player game because of all the mission glitches, where player followers can't do the same mission as you. And the microtransaction are just atrocious, locking certain items from the player and making loot feel so worthless. The game even taunts you for not having the DLC missions, having locked boxes everywhere that would have the player get any better loot from the vanilla game. If you thought Destiny was bad, check this game out. 

8. Pokemon

Don't get me wrong, the first game was fun. I got the game in the late 2000's on a Gameboy Color I got from Goodwill. I had fun with Red and it was very fun. When I went to the newer games in the franchise I found the same game with the thirty dollar price tag. I mean, there were some different pokemon to learn from, but that was basically it. I don't know what else to talk about, each new game from the franchise is just the same rehashed game we got from the 90's. I know that there will be many Pokemon fans that are going to debunk me on this, but my opinion still stands. I just don't get why this game keeps selling when the game is just Pokemon Red and Blue remastered. Why are people hating Bethesda for selling Skyrim 3 times over, when we got more remasters from Pokemon. 

And I don't like how there always has to be two games, having different Pokemon with the same game. It seems kind of cheap for Nintendo's sake. And they even made the newest game have an easy cheat for the player, using the best Pokemon they have and all the XP they get goes to the rest of the Pokemon without having to use them. I know this is a kid's game, but still, the audience is still clearly 90's kids. 

7. Kingdom Hearts 

I vividly remember this game releasing on the Playstation 2, the game had some great graphics for the time and handle very well for a PS2 game. The only thing, I think, everyone disliked was how the game had such a boring and confusing story. I know there is a lot of people that enjoy as much as any other Final Fantasy fan, but justifying that the game had a complex story is like trying to say the Care Bears had a compelling Narrative. It was boring (like I said before) and confusing. Besides that, the gameplay was not satisfying, having some repetitive combat abilities and awful mechanics that were just frustrating to handle. I hear that the team improved on FF 15, but I genuinely dislike how repetitive it was. I never player FF 15 yet, but I hope it's better than Kingdom Hearts gameplay.

The designs for some of the Heartless were cool, some having some great look design that defined this game greatly. Other than that, the game's levels were not up to par with the Heartless. Alice in Wonderland being the worst, making it seem like it was in a room although most of the game having some great looking open worlds. The Gummie Ship being the worst part of the gameplay, having you do an extremely boring and repetitive ship battle where you basically go through the entire game without moving or shooting. And don't get me started on the Whale encounters. It's all random and requires to escape the whale instead of warp out. If you were planning on going to another level to progress, well here comes the Whale to stop you in your tracks. It was obvious the Whale encounters were suppose to make the game longer, but failed to make it fun. 

6. Splatoon

I know that this is a risky pick, but I don't really like Splatoon that much. I played the game a while back before my Wii U broke and felt the game was boring. There were many game modes to play in multiplayer that might be fun, but they all feel the same to me. You just spray paint at each other and you win most of the time. It is a unique way to play the game, but it feels all the same and can get boring after a while. I really love the artstyle it has and I love the concept of just having squids walking around, but the game just doesn't feel as unique as many people describe it. Know that I don't have a hatred for the game nor do I plan on it, I would actually recommend this game to parents, but it's just not the game for me. 

I did play the campaign, but it was mostly the same as many FPS shooters: a multiplayer match with bots. Although I love the bosses look, but I wish the game was a bit more complex with its campaign gameplay. I hear they really expanded upon the gameplay in the second rendition of the game, so I hope to get the game soon. 

5. Undertale

Don't get me wrong, the game is pretty fun, but with all the attention it's getting is strange to me. You talk to monster to not kill you and you try to be friends with all the monsters in the underworld, that's it. Somehow the game has gotten so much attention that it spawned a new fetish: Skeleton ***. The characters are decent and the gameplay is fun for the first playthrough, but that's all that can be defining about that game. You can say that's can define a generation, but any future generation will question why this was so famous. 

The one thing I dislike was the challenges that spawned afterwards, having people protest against killing something in a game. One person livestreamed Fallout 4's entire storyline without killing. It's just mostly him watching people kill things for him or him running away. And somehow that livestream has millions of views. Many have done the same with other games and have made people question their lives on video games for no reason. I know that it can be done, you can play Dishonored without killing a single soul, but that doesn't mean it should be done. 

4. Ocarina of Time

For those of you Zelda Fans who loved this game, I am sorry for putting this on the list. I know I bring the fandom to great shame for doing so, but know that their are other great Zelda Games like Twilight Princess or A Link to the Past. I could have put the infamous Skyward Swords on here, but that game is too much weight for this list. Ocarina of Time can be described as "A Generation Defining Title" or "The Best Zelda in Zelda History," but the game is considerably dated for it's time. It was apart of the period of the game's transition to the 3D Realm, so the camera controls are strange for new player or modern experienced players. I did play this game when I was a kid, having only the 64 and the Genesis after doing a hard move, and I loved it. When I got back to it with my Uncle's 64, I asked if I could play something else. 

I know it's a poor excuse to blame the camera controls and the area transition, but god I hated it. You were so slow to begin with and the camera made it hard to fight something even with Z Targeting to help. I mean, Golden Eye has better camera than this game and it came out before Ocarina. It did change the Zelda Franchise, but calling a masterpiece wouldn't be a correct statement. 

3.  Resident Evil 7

I would have to say the game has brought the RE Franchise back to it's feet. What I won't say that it deserves a full 10/10. At least an 8/10. The game is apart of the Resident Evil games, but seem to throw everything from those games out the window and turn it into a strange psychological horror. Yes, there's the immortal bosses that don't seem to die... ever, but the game seems to tread on the mind f**king side of horror. The game surprisingly holds the original game's mechanics, but transitions the game into first person. I like that and gives a lot worry for the player of something attacking from behind. I will give some props for that. The one thing I seem to dislike was how the game lowered the enemy diversity. The previous games had many enemies to fear, but this game only had only four to fear. The Molded were nice to play with, but I would like to see more to the game than just them. Seeing them didn't scare the player, but annoyed the player most of the time. 

I hear the multiple ending are what people loved, but I seem to feel unsatisfied about them most of the time, making each choice you made feel so meaningless and unaccomplished. I think the only one I felt was rewarding was the Chris Redfield ending. I hate how he looks, but it was the only one I felt happy with. 

2. Uncharted

The game follows the loveable protagonist, Nathan Drake that had everyone follow his story. It was like an action movie in a video game, it carried some great elements that capture the player to love each character and each scene of the game's cinematics. If you ask me, the game has some great story and some powerful moments in it, but the gameplay is not too great. You mostly start running after a cinematic scene and that's basically it. If not, it's QTEs to take over. I will say that the QTEs in this game are done right, not being repetitive or asking you to do the simplest of tasks, but the rest of the game is just boring. You just saw this awesome scene and now you have to climb a wall for the next 15 minutes of gameplay. If you came to play an action game with lots of firefights, this is not the game, you would have to come to this game for the narrative. 

I know that most people can say that The Last of Us is the same game, but with Zombies, but Naughty Dog managed to throw away the Uncharted Mindset and actually put in some interesting gameplay. Compared to Uncharted, The Last of Us has a compelling story that even your mom will love to watch. I would have to say my mom loves watching me play this game. Uncharted has the same feeling with it's cutscenes, but not with the gameplay, having the player work for the fun part of the game. Yes, the game is visually stunning, but the gameplay doesn't seem to match the game quality.

1. Horizon Zero Dawn

And for the top Overrated game in my mind goes to Horizon. When I heard this game was coming out, I was actually excited. It looked like Witcher 3 with robots. I wanted to see that game on my PS4 as soon as it came out. When I got the game, I had something else in my hands. The game is an open world game, but barely seems to give you a world to enjoy. Yes, there is lots of space to roam and kill robot animals, but it doesn't feel alive like most open world games. Skyrim had civilians roaming the trails, bears hunting and even royals traveling through Skyrim. It had something to say that the people in this game had a purpose, but in this game, you hardly see anything like that. There are some people in the game cornered by Watchers or Sabertooth robots, but they don't do much, but ask for help. You get a reward, they go away and despawn. That's as much of a livid world you'll get out of this game. 

If want to talk about the gameplay, it is mostly hunting. You can roam the land and fight some robots or encounter a raider base, but the only fun thing to fight is the humans in the game. When I played the game for the first time and killed my first watcher, I thought they were going to have every robot have an instant kill weakpoint. I know that can make the game too easy, but I would love to see each enemy have an armored weakspot that you had to break open or a small hit box that you had to hit in the right spot to kill it. I would have loved that, making each fight fun and exciting, but the game gave you only weakspots that can bring down the enemy's health faster. They made each enemy hard to kill and each weakspot feel so unrewarding. And the weapons were the worst part, only giving the player a specific ammo type with each increase of quality. I wish they gave you each ammo type with each weapon you got, or at least had the player unlock it with story progression. It would have made the awful story better. Speaking of the story, it gives you two plots to understand: knowing your parents/identity and stopping this virus to make the robots so rampant. It makes you do both plot points at the same time that it confuses you on which is the main plot. Which is it? And why is Aloy so bored to even have feelings about either plot? 

Anyways, this is the list. I hope you enjoyed it and that at least one of your favorite games got on this list. I know that some of you might want to say that I'm wrong about my opinion, so please don't try, I stand by my opinion and won't change it. I might make one about underrated game soon, but who knows, that might be scrapped. Again, I hope you enjoyed and 'til next time... 

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This is Basically...

I am a poor kid, I lived with a family that spent as little as possibly on Christmas and Birthdays just so we can live in a house for rent. So, most of the time I went through the Bargain Bin with my dad to see what game we could fish out. They were under five bucks, so we could afford it without regretting another week without food or electricity. I have played some bad games and sometimes some forgettable decent ones, but there was always a lucky chance that we found a game that we could call better than the rest. Hello and welcome to this underrated countdown. 

10. Titanfall 2

I found this game for sale in the Xbox Store, the game was up to 20 dollars in the standard edition as the Ultimate Edition was only 60 dollars I believe. I bought it thinking that I might have found another multiplayer shooter with a crappy campaign. Oh, I was wrong. The game had a great story with great characters that felt so relatable for lack of better words. The multiplayer was stunning to me, having so much to it and an easy to learn play style that can be difficult sometimes. I love this game so much that I sank more than hundreds of hours on this game than Battlefield 1 that came with it. 

What is strange and suspicious is how the Executives of the game, EA put the game in the middle of two major games followed by very little advertising. It's a tactic on the developers that producers and executives don't care about. If they don't see that it's going to do well, but they can't say no, they put the game in the middle of famous and beloved franchises or products. It's something that a lot of toy developers do in the business and a lot of people have catched the method. That made the game nearly forgotten and made it a box office bomb. It sucks to know that happen, but seeing that the community is constantly growing and the game is given so much free content, all that can be ignored and become little factoids for fans, even if the awful sales prevented a sequel to ever happen...

9. G-Force the Game

When I was a kid, I hated this movie. It made me feel awkward and strange watching these CG Guinea Pigs do spy work. It was a stupid concept and wasn't fun to watch even if it had a famous cast playing in it. When my dad got me the game of this awful movie, I was worried I might find another strange and awkward moment to never forget, but the game was better than I thought it would be. It was actually a fun game with great mechanics and items. It gave you puzzles that were easy to solve, but were fun doing so. You had all these gadgets to destroy walking coffee machines and toasters, each one being different than the last. You had to find a weakness to each robot and there was a fun to executing techniques to kill each robotic appliance. It was fun and the enemy variety was amazing to me. It got everything that movie did wrong and made it cool and fun. 

I know this is a strange pick for this list, but it's a genuinely great game that I could not believe was going in my top favorites. The game was a massive flop because it followed the movie, but had decent reviews, having some that go above the 7 mark. If you have a 360 in your house, you should get this game. It's like five bucks on eBay and I think you can get it in some Game Stops or Best Buys for the two dollar price range, if they have it. 

8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I know this is another movie game that shouldn't be on this list, but god, this is one of those great gems you wouldn't expect. If you are in love with or just enjoy Hack 'n Slash games with awesome gore, this is the game you would love. It follows the story of Wolverine in a great and charming game fashion that my mother loves. In my opinion, the movie was real bad and is one of the worst superhero movies I've seen, but this game cleans everything up about the movie and turns it into a masterpiece. All the abilities and combos mesh so well and each piece of graphical design is surprisingly beautiful. Even for it's time with it's slick look, it still looks good. 

The worst part about this game was that it was easy to pirate it, giving the game awful looking sales numbers. I would have to be guilty that I was one of those people who pirated it, it was a glorious piece of art and I wish I payed for the full price in the market. If you want this game, I really suggest to get it on the 360, since the graphics on the Playstation made it look a bit downgraded. It's a bit pricy, being over $40 on eBay and Amazon, but it's worth the price. 

7.  Bioshock 2

This is a bit of a questionable entry in this list since the game was already known to the public and made it to the remaster, but if you look into the past, the game was considered a disgrace to the game's source material. I don't know why, they considerably made the game better, solving the Plasmid/Weapon switch to an easy duel-wield and made the Plasmid Upgrades do more than just upgrade damage. The enemy diversity was raised to a good three extra enemies, the Brute Splicers, Big Daddy Prototypes and the beloved Big Sister. The enemy redesigns had a better changes than many sequel redesigns. There was even a wider range of characters to see what the world is like in Rapture and how it affected these people. And what I love is that the Player Voice is the same as the original, but with a Big Daddy filter on it. I love it more than the original in terms of game design, but I can say that the narrative is lacking. I hated the 6 endings, but the game was fun. 

The one thing that put players off was how they added the unneeded Multiplayer option. The multiplayer was somewhat fun, having some unique gameplay that were actually fun to play with, but the fans hated it and reviewers said that this almost destroyed the game's image. I don't see why, but I thought it was mildly fun. They had awful reviews and the only thing that saved the developers was the toy sales. I love those things. Only if I got my hands on them when they were being sold, they're over my price range now, if you ask me. It did make them remove the multiplayer it from the game entirely in the remaster which is understandable. 

6. Destiny

Destiny was... A game... With a Promise. Who hasn't talked about this? It's probably the Zelda of a bad game, everyone knows about it. If you remember No Man's Sky,  that game had a lot of promise and so much to deliver. When we got what we weren't promised, we all hated it. This game did the same, but it was a promise for a good and interesting story with great gameplay. We all loved it for a few minutes and then noticed, the story was not there, the gameplay was a boring grinding and what little gameplay we had was so shorlived. Of course, the developers saved the game with DLC, but no one liked that cheeky attempt of a save. You had to pay $15 dollars for one DLC and it was considered an overprice, but worth it since the game gets much better from those four DLCs. They expanded the game greatly and made it much more fun to play with friends or new friends as you play along the way.

The game had some great design, looking so unique to most other games, and the way this game was; the lore, the weapons, the enemies and the lingering questions you ask yourself as you play made the game such a great experience. Of course, the vanilla game is awful as all hell, but the DLCs added make the game fun. I know that I'm one of the many that defend the game for what it was and most of you are probably saying you don't have the money to pay for every DLC. You can buy this game with every single piece of content this game had to offer for $40. Heading a bit towards the pricy side, but still good for how much you are saving considering each DLC is 15 dollars, but who's going to do that when the sequel is almost out?

5. Let It Die

Imagine if Dark Souls had a threesome with Destiny and a Punk Group, you would probably get this game. I love the concept of this game a lot, having the player go through a tower of unknown wonders and death that it feels like hunger games. The look of the world is wonderful and the retro feel to it contrasts so well with the punky vibe. Besides all that, the game has great enemies who are easy to kill, but a challenge to fight. And you can see other player's zombie bodies wandering around the map waiting for the next person to kill. I adore that concept, it's almost ingenious, I'm surprised Dark Souls hasn't done that! And the Death System is so incredible, if you die, you lose everything: your items, clothing, your experience, everything that character had is gone. And to achieve it is awesome, you have to wander back into that area and kill that version of yourself to gain back anything. I love it, but I can see this being a game breaker since you would have to level up your new character to get back to a far area, which increases in difficulty every level you traverse in. That actually is one of the reasons why it got such a low rating, getting below a 7.

I love the characters in it and the player encounters are much better than most of encounters in Dark Souls, not being a heart wrenching event, but more of an accepted challenge. If you ever want to play this game, it's Free in the PSN Store and has a great community and cast of characters, with Mark Hamill playing the Prologue Narrator... He could have been so much more...

4. Halo Reach

Reach is one of the game I grew up with and most games I played then, I hate now. Bubsy being in the list. But Reach was one of those game that I can cry to. Show me the end of The Last of Us? I won't shed a tear. Give me the death of Dom, I will comment about how much that sucks, but no crying. Show me Reach? I'll f**king cry... Each and every bit of the campaign was amazing and heart wrenching, the gameplay had no changes, but with a few weapon redesigns. We were given ability packs and new weapons to play with. I genuinely love this game and every piece of it. The Multiplayer is so desirable and the Firefight mode was enhanced to be better than it was. Shorter, but a lot more fun. 

What is strange is that the game was forgotten because of the 343 Controversy. The game had some incredible ratings almost having a straight 10 rating streak, the game was overshadowed for how awful and big Halo 4 was. I have heard some hardcore fans say that this game and the ODST spin-off tainted the games, but I would disagree. The game has a  legendary story to it and a perfect multiplayer with little that was changed. If you can get your hands on this game, it's about $15 on Ebay and $20 in the Xbox Store. 

3. Dishonored

Dishonored is a game that was advertised for how bloody the game was and how many kills you can do in it ti one person. Of course, the game was hated for not saying more than that. A lot of people hated the multiple endings, most players on the first playthrough getting the bad one, showing them how much of a d**che they were in the game. The game was harder when you played the pacifist route and barely rewarded you for it. I'd say that the developers did a good job with the game, giving the simplest ability so much range for the player to do as the please, letting them crawl on the roofs of the Dunwall City or pawling the alleyways. The game had such simple mechanics and gave the player so much to do with them in the game's map. Each part of the game's maps were well designed for each ability, giving so much free roam to everyone. You want to sneak through the well guarded embassy? You could use your Possession on a fish that's in a pond and swim in a pipe that leads directly into the building. Or you can use your Blink ability to carefully jump on hard to reach platforms that lead you into the building, having an eagle eye view of everyone in there. 

The game is great and has such a clever design to it. The artstyle is amazingly stunning and stand against the test of time. I see this game in the clearance bin a lot in Walmarts and Best Buys, so if you see this game in there, buy it. It's worth every cheap penny you spent.

2. Brutal Legends

Jack Black was an awesome musician that inspired many to sing like him. He had a great show that started his band, Tenacious D, and had a decent movie about the band and how they became what they were. When everyone heard he was going to get a game that he was going to make, everyone freaked. It was the pinnacle of his fame, so almost everyone was excited to see what kind of game he was going to deliver. It even had some Rock 'n Roll legends such as Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister playing their own character in the game. What everyone got was a fun mess that very few liked. The game was fun and had lots of great reviews, but the people didn't like how it was a tower defense game. Not the typical send troops and hope for the best, it was a MOBA like game that had you fight alongside your fellow warriors. Each troop type had a strategy to them, Headbangers were the cannon fodder, but packed a big punch when they horde against anyone. The Razor Gals were the ranged attacks that did massive damage to incoming hordes, but were weak against attacks. The game had some fun gameplay and it was satisfying to play. The multiplayer function was even a great staple of the game, taking some aspects from the Tower Defense part of the game and making it a fun and greatly competitive part of the game. 

And the game's design, the Rock 'n Roll Album feel to the game's environment was so cool to stare at. I was so happy that the game was open world, just so you can enjoy the detail the game had. It might be dated today and look too edgy to most people, but it's so unique and so iconic to this game. Even the concept of each Rock Genre is basically fighting each other: Rock fighting Grunge fighting Goth. I love that a lot and the Gothic Grunts were clearly inspired by the Cure. If you like that kind of concept and would love to play a game about it, Brutal Legends is the perfect match right next to edgy skate board games. 

1. Condemned: Criminal Origins

I believe this game got me to love the Horror Genre in games. I always thought Horror games were cheesy and dumb, only giving you mild scares, but this game makes you rethink that. The AI chases you by hiding behind corners and pillars, making the player paranoid about losing an enemy or crossing a doorway. The genuine fear you feel in this game is amazing and it really makes you fear abandoned houses and the dark, because that's all the setting is. Every other game I play that tries it's hardest to scare me did so poorly, but this game forced you by shoving crazy hobos at you, sewer monster that can crawl on walls like the god damn Grudge were a constant threat and the sound design was perfect, making random noises in the distance, keeping the player on the edge of the seat, always. This game beats RE7 out of the water by a longshot and has the perfect kind of tank controls to worry the player more. 

The game mostly flopped because of the themes it carried and having some elements from Manhunt, so most of the advertising was restricted to gaming magazine ads, making the game mostly unknown to the public eye unless you had a Game Informer subscription. Trust me, if you like horror at its finest, play this game. 

Well, that's my list. I know my last one was a bit controversial (especially for my 200th post), but I hope this makes up for it. I hope you agree with most of this and that you never heard of at least one of these games. I hope you enjoyed this and 'til next time...

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Swivel!

I don't have a Switch, but I am that lucky guy that has a best friend with tons of money to spend. He got the console a while back and he finally got Splatoon 2. I heard great things about the game and so much more, having a Boss Rush mode in the game. I haven't had something like that in years. I went over, took advantage of my friend and played the game. As many of you probably know me already, I didn't like it much. Hello and welcome to this Abstract Review.

The multiplayer has this childish look to it that I love, having so many strange looking character. You freaking have Celebrity Hosts that tell you what maps are in rotation. I love that! And the touch of realism to the celebrity is hilarious. There isn't anything real about them, but the obvious fake smile on the cute black one is just priceless to me. I love it! The graphics are beautiful as well in those Map Rotations. The rest of the multiplayer experience was most destroying kids as an adult. "But there's a good Adult Player base!" says the viewer. I know, but you'll find very little of those. The competition is so low when you first play this game that most of the time players try to ink the players instead of the map. And don't get me wrong, the idea of inking the map is genius to me. A very unique way to win a match, but they made aiming in the game so inaccurate. I know you're suppose to not kill the other team, but why making aiming seem so impossible? Your crosshairs are always where you never want it to be, making being near a wall for cover, changing where you shoot. Just.... Why? "Because you need to paint the map!" says the viewer. But you also need to defend yourself while doing all that. You're trying to claim land and take what you lost back, why hinder the player this much with inaccurate gameplay? It just seem pointless to me. I don't expect this much of a hider on a multiplayer shooter besides damage. Whether or not you use the motion controls (Which are crap), you still won't find any change to it. 

And the weapons, if you want to die, please choose the Sniper. Accurate, does massive damage, but you need to charge the damn thing, a long one at that. The weapons leaves you vulnerable for so long that anyone can destroy you without any protection. "But that's the point of the weapon, long ranged combat, not close!" says the viewer. The map isn't big enough for you to do that. The range is long, but doesn't go across the map like other Snipers I've seen. And if you want to win, use the default gun. Great range, great DPS damage, great defence, but it's default... Nothing unique about this gun! If want to do nothing, but still play the game, use the Roller. It's like using a Knife in a Gunfight, you have to get close to do any damage and you have to be pretty close. It's like the Backstab of this game, you have to skillfully sneak up on anyone to get any kills. At least you're painting the map! And if you want to destroy anyone's will to live, use the paint bucket. This is basically the shotgun in this game, but somehow covers so much range. It's random for how far it goes, but it really goes far most of the time. And like I said, it's the shotgun in this game, so it covers so much space. And let me say it again, shotgun, so it does so much damage in one shot. This gun is OP and is such an unfair weapon. Covers more of the map than the Roller though. And that's basically the multiplayer. Unless you count there's no Party or Invite system to it... And the Ults... They're fun. 

It's disappointing to see that they don't utilize any of the campaign's awesome mechanics. The campaign is actually fun and is better than the multiplayer experience. It's actually fun, making painting the map more of a reward than just winning the game. You slide on the paint! You freaking slide on the paint and it's so fun and satisfying doing it. Why wasn't that apart of the multiplayer experience. It's like how Doom was handled, they put every piece of effort to make the campaign fun and interesting, but the multiplayer is just a joke and made the new guys do everything unsupervised. You can even Skate 3 Grind on stuff, making mobility so fun and fluid, I wish they made the multiplayer experience like that and they would have made the maps so much fun to walk around and paint. It would have been Titanfall 2 for kids! 

The only redeeming thing about this game is the artstyle and campaign. The multiplayer is mediocre, having so much wrong with it and so much they could have done to make it better and fun. And that's my thoughts. I would really love this game, but like I said already, the multiplayer is bad. If I were to rate it, an 8 would fit nicely for the campaign, but the multiplayer brings it down to a 6. I hope you enjoyed this and 'til next time...

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It's a Sequel as in Madden 17 is a Sequel...

Well, I am about to start a run of Junior year. I know it's been about four days since I started school, but it hasn't technically started, with all the informing the students thing. There is a lot going on in my life at the moment that I would like to inform you guys about, so if you care enough to read into it go ahead. I hate writing these things, so I hope some of you guys enjoy this.... In some manner.

What's With School?

Well for starters, school is about to take over my life. Classes then were a drag, having mostly teachers that picked favorites and obvious didn't like me, I failed about three classes partially because of that and the other was complete forgetfulness, I will admit that. So I have to retake a few classes right now. Besides that, I have about two college prep classes, Chemistry and CTE PC Graphics. I've always been a nerd about that stuff, so I'm glad I got those classes. I love most of the teachers I got, they're cool and reasonable with their work, I like how some actually give us the entire semester homework schedule at the first day of class and be able to do all those assignments before Christmas vacation. 

And what was funny is how the first three days of school, there was already a pranked fire alarm and a teacher dying on campus, having a lock down. Strange for that to happen and I think kind of scary for the new kids and Freshmen. 

I will say that I enjoy my classes and since I finally have the same lunch as one of my long time friends. If you don't know, my school has a strange lunch schedule, having to split the time between students, where some would be having lunch while there's class still in session in one section of the campus. We haven't talked in a while since then, so it's fun actually talking to him after a year of no contact. We actually made plans of what we might do after senior year. We actually might want to go to the LA Film School and moving near there.

So How's Life?

Something has come up. If you haven't heard, the landlord came to tell us he sold the house and that we might have to leave. And hearing the Realtor asking us if we want to put up the For Sale sign didn't sound great. Just today, he called us and said we have a few months until we have to move. My family is in awful debt with some medical bills, overpriced electrical bills, etc., so trying to find a house is going to be hard. We do have the Tax season to count on, but because I'm turning 18 before then, we might not get as much money let alone half of what they use to get for me. That means, Tax season might be an awful year for us, especially when it's near my B-Day. 

Moving might be hard and that might mean we might not get an Internet Plan, so we might be facing a longer hiatus. So, if I don't post for a long period of time, it's because of that or school. I do wish everything goes alright, I want a sturdy home again... Even though I never had a sturdy one to begin with. Might have to sell some things again. 

What About You?

I don't know if this really matters, but I guess I'll talk about this. If you don't know, I get random hits of depression. It can be very frequent and long or fairly rare and brief. I've had the worst year with that. I don't need comfort or anything like that, and it's nothing to do with anything in life, just regular depression and anxiety that come for no reason. I have been getting some headache recently making me feel so weak and mangled as well. Besides that, it's been a Dandy Life, Baby!

That's basically it. I hope you are well informed about me and what is going on. I really don't know how anyone will enjoy this, but I hope you did. I hope you enjoyed my boring life. Anyways, expect a large lack of activity mayben and 'til next time...

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Or just Watch Space Dandy.... Whatever makes you feel happy

I know many of you already know that I love history and my favorite time period is WWII, but I won't go on with that. So instead I will be talking about the game as a whole, no nostalgia, no unbiased attempt to make the game look better, just full hearted thoughts on the game and the community reacting to it. Now, for what you may know, CoD is a game that everyone knows about. You say Metroid, your Grampa is going to ask what the hell that is. When you say Call of Duty, everyone, even your Grampa will know what that is. It was a game that honored Veterans and my Grandfather is happy to see the game is still relevant. The game gave Veterans like my grandpa a name and an appreciation that any Veteran needs, but what do they not know about the game? Everyone hates it. Why? Product Saturation. Hello and welcome to this lovely thought blog. 

Call of Duty was the money muncher before money munching was even a business thought process. You and your parents only know that Call of Duty exists is because of how they won't stop making them. WWII shooters were irrelevant because of how much Call of Duty and their competitors wanted to be in glorified fame. They're not doing this to be known, but to get more money. Medal of Honor was the first to do the WWII game and they were kicked out of the water by CoD. Brothers in Arms was a great game that soon made a technical revolution with advanced facial animation, but was forgotten because CoD was in the way. Then they asked themselves, what else can we do? The WWII fame is fading! What should we do to save CoD? Then a light bulb was lit, how about modern warfare. I personally loved the games, they had a great campaign with great storytelling and a fun multiplayer with Spec Ops in it, but everyone hated it. Why? Because it was not WWII. But everyone didn't like WWII games, why hate a modern time version of the game? Disregarding the times and the controversy, there was still a large majority of people who liked the WWII style of gameplay. There was still people playing and liking the new Wolfenstein. They continued with the Modern age CoD until they started getting comments about milking the same game over. Another light bulb lit, why not go into the future!? Great idea, everyone said and then they all brainstormed a new game with a mediocre campaign, but new multiplayer. Everyone hated it. 

The funny thing was that there was nothing to do with the game series. Why go farther in the future? Just stop and stick with the glory you have. They heard those words and they thought of the best idea in the world! How about go back to WWII! It's a product that should have stopped a long time ago, but the creators just wanted more money. The reason why we have these awful games in our hands is because of Activision. The reason why Activision hasn't done anything besides CoD is because of CoD. It's generally depressing in my opinion. We all loved the old games, but they just leave an awful taste in your mouth, a taste of a corporate company. But who cares? The game look great! 

Well, in my best opinion, it looks like a traditional multiplayer shooter. Do I think the game is going to have a good campaign? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe the same kind of storytelling as Modern Warfare, but with awful gameplay of you watching people move things out of the way for you to go further in the game. Maybe that's the kind of campaign we'll get. I mean, what else can they do? They're going to get their money anyway, so I don't really care if the campaign is good or not. The multiplayer gameplay that I've seen looks fun. It makes me want to get it. And the gunshots are on point, satisfying to hear and cool. I love what they're doing with the game as well, making it as accurate as possible to both campaign and multiplayer. Wait... No... They aren't....

With gameplay aside, I think it's very disturbing to see a Black, Nazi woman fighting in the game. Why? It shouldn't be there. Why shouldn't it be there? Because she's a Nazi! I don't care if the lady's Black, Asian, Native American or whatever, as long as she's not a Nazi! And why hasn't the Feminists reacted to this? I told every person I know that's for women's rights and they disapprove of this! Why haven't your leaders in the Feminists HQ reacted to this in extreme anger!? As a person who loves this time period, this makes me not want the game. And to clarify, there were no Nazi black women. When the Nazis were making laws about the Jews, they thought the Blacks weren't bad because there was so few of them in Germany. They made no laws of against them and there hasn't been one Black Nazi recorded in history, nor a Black Women fighting for them. There was a Russian Sniper Team that consisted of women, but that was Russia, a land that was fighting on their own soil, begging for more troops. There was a demand for anyone to fight in the Russian army. 

I have nothing against Black Rights, nor Women's Rights, I just think it's wrong to make the game so inaccurate to history after telling us they were going to extreme accuracy. I know this is a small disliking and a widely talked about thing, so you can ignore that entire paragraph. 

Now let's talk about Zombies. For some reason, people keep saying that Zombies is boring and repetitive, making another wave based mode is useless. People, for some reason, complain about like they have to play it. Just ignore the Zombie news, it's not like you need to know more about it or even play it. I think personally it's going to be good. I know that's a common thought that comes up with any Zombies mode CoD, but what the people are doing to this mode is fantastic to me. The developers said that they're going to make it horror based, having the mode become what it was suppose to be. I really hope all the audio for this mode is clean, because sound key for horror. And the new enemy types sound amazing! The one they talked about was this caged Zombie that has flies coming out its eye sockets, making this buzzing sound for the player to hear. I love that a lot, making this notable queue for the player know that Zombie's presence. I adore that idea a lot! And how they're going history accurate with that as well, having all the zombies be similar to 1930's German Science sound amazing to me. I hope they do a lot with this mode and improve beyond the starter map. 

So I kind of like it. I might get it, maybe. I don't know. I believe I'm sold on the Zombies, so I might get it for my B-Day. Might. Anyways, my thoughts in a summary is basically, this is going to be a rehashed version of the classics we already have, but better looking and a new team behind it. People hate the games in general, with no reason at all, but because it's a Saturated Product. I hope you enjoyed this and 'til next time...

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Hey Look! It's Cool Guy!

One of my favorite horror flicks I can name is the first Alien. It had this sense of fear for the unknown in it that I loved when I first watched it as a kid. The alien that the Nostromo Crew found wiped out the entire crew, but Ripley, making that thing seem more than just an animal. That feeling in the movie was consistent in the first movie and sequel Aliens. Although toned down a bit there, but it still carried the feeling that it wasn't an ordinary monster. After the sequel that reflected the time period he was released in, the movies left that feeling of a new threat to learn. It became more of a common thing to see, instead of something new for the audience. I think Alien Resurrection being one of the movies that killed the franchise. Once they announced Prometheus, it was going to tell the origin story of that ship the Nostromo Crew found. It was a confusing mess made by the same person who made the original Alien, Ridley Scott, but it was a fun movie to watch. Then, to redeem how confusing Prometheus was, Ridley Scott made Alien Covenant. It's a direct sequel to Prometheus, but is rightfully so. Hello and welcome to the movie version of Abstract Reviews and no restraints of spoilers.

The movie begins with a Weyland Corp Colony to populate a planet that is known for habitation. The crew has a Cryosleep malfunction and James Franco dies in his pod with a fire to bake him while he sleeps. Each person in the pods has a significant other aboard the ship so they can populate properly. James Franco's wife comes in trying to take him out, but he's already dead and well done. Sorry, I had to make that joke. This scene alone gave the movie this original feel to it, the feel that it's going back to it's roots of the first Alien. Plus, rest this part of the movie after this scene gives off this Nostromo feel to it. This is a crew that has to follow orders and do their best to survive in these conditions and the quietness of this part made it feel so alone, like the original. I love how Ridley is actually making some esense to this movie like how he did the original movie, and I wish he could have done the same with the rest of the movie. 

As soon as the crew gets to work after seeing a fellow crew member be burnt to a crisp in front of his wife, they don't wanna go back in the pods to become another burnt bacon strip and sleep for another month or two, I might be off. The captain of the colony finds a planet near by the ship that is habitable and is only weeks away, meaning no Cryosleep. They don't know what to do and don't wanna go to their designated planet and sleep in those death trap pods. James Franco's wife turns out to be second captain of the colony and has a private chat with the captain before going to this unknown planet. They argue whether or not they should do that instead of going to a known planet. The captain refuses to take any chances and goes to the unknown planet to save everyone's worries. And this is the only reasonable choice or action in the movie. The rest is either questionable or just plain, typical horror characters doing everything with mistakes. I wish this movie didn't have to come to this and is only one of my gripes about it. It just feels like the story was only reworked once and finished to make the movie more possible. I know that the movie was well funded and had of work done on it, but if they payed more attention to test audiences or went through different plots. I don't know the process of which they made this movie, but this is what I'm going to say before someone corrects me. 

They send an excavation team to go on the unknown planet and everyone is to see if the place is safe to habitize. They make samples of the terrain and water and as someone is doing that, a member kicks a shroom with spores spraying in his face and minds nothing of it. When I watched it with family, my mom argued they couldn't see it because it was microscopic. I can see her reasoning towards that, but I still question why show that to the audience? You had a sound cue of the plant bursting into the faces of the members, so why not have them react to it? I know none of the conflict could have happened if they wafted away the spores, but you could have made the spores fast acting, have the spores explode in the face of the crew member and have the crew react to that happening and have the guy be under quarantine along with any member who made contact with him. Have this conflict where this guy is bleeding uncontrollably and arguing with the engineer to come back or not. They refuse and they come too close to the ship and the engineer brings out a gun to stop them, or have the security on the ship point all weapons at them, threatening them to stay back before they get killed. That would have been interesting to me. That would have made the Chestbursters scene - oh wait, Backbursters scene - feel more intense, the captain of the excavation team trying to let this man in to have medical attention while having a few innocent people killed because of how peer pressured the engineer was trying to keep the ship safe and clean. Instead we got two guys infected with the spores and the engineer struggling to follow quarantine rules being contaminated with blood, slipped on blood and blowing herself up, while misfiring inside the ship, killing her along with the ship to get off the planet. 

I know this was to bring some kind of effect on the characters, but that basically put them in a corner. We blew up the ship, their only escape on the planet with no connection to the colony... Seems like the end. No, it's only half an hour long! We have to make it longer! Should we trash it and start over? No, pick up where we left off! It really feels like this is suppose to end right there. I know there was barely any alien to see and few Backbursters, but there is something here that feels like it was suppose to end. I don't know, this is mostly my opinion, so you can ignore that crap-fest.

Once you meet their savior to give them a new home, the movies starts to feel forced. The mysterious inclusion of the savior felt so cliche, just having this feeling that he watched these people do their thing on his planet. I guess this was the writer's intention, but they could done it a lot better without pushing this character in all of the sudden. I mean, they could have found a temple with writing to give some clue of someone still alive on the planet, a drawing or a living quarters in a cave before having someone get infected by the spores. Maybe have someone in the team find an H.R. Giger drawing on the floor, something to signify someone's presence on the planet. I know there was the signal that they found the planet with (sorry I didn't mention that), after seeing how corrupt it looked, the message seemed long time sent, so there was nothing to find other than maybe animals or plants.

Once the mysterious man shows who he was, they step in an ancient city that use to be alive on the planet. They discover the mysterious person is the same Android from Prometheus that got his head ripped off. Don't ask how he got his body back, they never explain. It turns out, when they arrived on the planet, the city was alive, with a city surrounding the new comer. The ship misfired pods that contained the spores and killed the entire city without warning. Elizabeth was killed during the landing, having David build a memorial to her name. David does explain how he got his body back, but that comes into play later. Walter (the Colony Android) comes to greet David and has some time to mingle and have some questioning thoughts put into Walter's robotica head by David, about how much Androids are restricted to think and how malfunctioning is when the Android is wrong. I liked the scene where they talk to each other, but when David tried to make out with Walter is a bit strange. I don't mind it, just doesn't fit the situation. I think I would have liked it better if they made it more of David making Walter question his existence and love with the wife of James Franco before he died in the movie. Making Walter want to rebel against his protocol and help David in his work. 

Speaking of David's work, it turns out he was studying biology the time he was on the planet. I don't know how since they accidentally killed all life on the planet, but he did. A model of a human and its organ structure depicting how long he was there, along with bugs that could be only from Earth. Questionable, but it builds David's character. With what he had, he studied the spores and found out it was Xenomorph cells. They don't say that, but I want to call it that. He used whatever life he had to experiment with the spores, seeing what new organic life he would find from these Xenomorph cells. He shows the Second Captain his findings along with some of the other crew. The rest were outside trying to get a signal to the Colony Ship. There was really nothing to talk about that. The scene is perfectly informative and this part of the movie explained everything pretty well. 

As that scene ends, one of the run-away Backbursters comes back for a meal and eats one of the female team members. He head floats in a pool of water as the monster dines on her body. David comes in and sees this happen. He tries to communicate with the creature and seems to be doing well. A d**che bag with a gun comes in and refuses to let the poor Android talk to monster and shoots it. As that happens, you get the most genuine "No!" in a movie possible. I'd say, Michael Fassbender did a good job with both the facial expression and passion in his voice for that single moment. After that, the unreasonable and question actions take place. David is demanded to show this d**che who shot the monster what's going on. He agrees and shows him the facehuggers room! You'd think every person known to man would not go near those things even not watching the movie Alien in the first place. He's asked to touch the facehugger eggs and he touches it. The burst open. David tells him to look inside, he looks inside like the good boy he is. Why would you do that? I was extremely confused as to why he would do this without refusing to do so. You just experienced two people die from Xenomorph Cells on this planet and you want to look into something you don't even know? You must have gotten straight F's in school and ran into walls, boy!

This is when you get an Alien for the first time! It's not a monster, but it's not what you would remember. When you watch Alien, the Chestburster is a snake-like creature, but in this movie, it's a literal baby Alien. A small little version of the awesome alien we all know and love. I guess this can be argued that this facehugger was an alternate version of what we know, but you could have tried to make some minor differences to the original serpent design of the original. Make it have little arms and legs, but still resemble the original chestburster, just a few redesigns that won't alienate the audience and fans to what they knew from the previous films. Again, there is a lot to argue this is a reboot of the original, but still is considered a prequel to the original. Moving on, Walter finds out that Elizabeth was actually experimented on and examined, finding her corpse with a large opening from her abs to the top of her neck, showing everything in her body. Turns out the misfire of the pods full of the spores (or Xenomorph Cells) were actually manually fired by David. It's a cool twist that I didn't actually see coming. I liked it for the most part and seeing Walter die was actually a suspenseful moment to watch, knowing how crazy David actually is, but who made his body? I mean, what material did they have to rebuild him back as a normal, function Android? It doesn't make sense since Elizabeth didn't escape in a human ship, but in an alien ship with no known materials. I guess David told her how to do it, but still that would have to take a long time to rebuild an entire Android body.

The rest of the crew finally gets a signal from the Colony ship and send for help. Two of the members gets suspicious about a few of the crew's absences. One find the body of the girl and her head floating in the water and David's lab. The Alien finds them and kills one of the two members. Suspense-wise, I loved this scene. I think I smiled once I saw the Alien, the villain I was waiting for. As David tries to stop the crew from escaping, Walter appear to be still alive, then another epic scene comes in. They start to fight in a robotic, karate fashion, but this is where the scene kind of falls. The fighting is too robotic, making it look very silly as they fight. I mean, yes when they fly through the air after getting punched is fun to watch, but can look silly in some shots. The fight cuts before we find out who won the fight and the crew is leaving as Walter robotically rushes towards the ship. As they get on the ship, an alien jumps on the belly of their escape. The eventually kill it as the movies seems to be over, leaving us with a small scene of the Alien killing things in an awesome and gory fashion. 

They get back on the Colony Ship safe and sound as a new sign of life is found on the ship! I don't know, this feels like they wanted to end right here, but an executive wanted more film time in the movie. The movie runs on with a few more scenes of the Alien on the ship killing a couple about the do it in the shower. An awful way to die, but I love the gore and how the alien gets his stuff done in this part. They make a final scene with the Alien just like in Alien, being in the Airlock and luring it near the Airlock hatch to kill it. They do that in a few minutes and it was fun while the alien lasted. The movie tries to end on a high note, but ti turns out Walter was actually David. What a twist! When you give me two twists, how David lied about Elizabeth and now this. It wasn't much of a surprise, but I can take it I guess. Then that's the end. He has the Colony Ship, reporting the deaths of the entire crew, with all two-thousand colonist to experiment on. How fun! It leaves a bad taste in your mouth after seeing that, but it had it's moments. Everyone was great in this movie, including Fassbender. I loved just about every scene with the alien, but there was so little. 

This movie, I would say, is not a good Alien movie. It works well without Alien in the title, since it has it's own moment that were good. I do wish there was more moments with the alien in it to redeem most of the movie's flaws, but I guess it would be an 8 in my list. I don't expect a sequel to this movie to come out, since they left on such a room place to continue, but I was wrong about Prometheus, so who knows? We might eventually get a good Alien movie with lots of scenes with the alien in it. I hope you enjoyed this Abstract review and 'til next time...

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Meh...

The game was suppose to be a faithful recreation of the older games and its inspiration, the game was carrying some Pay to Win concepts and the game being mainly multiplayer, I avoided the game just because of those two reasons. Sh*tty way to avoid a game, but I didn't wanna waste sixty bucks on a game I would have to pay more for extra content. That's the case for most games, but who wants to pay $15 on a map or character. It was free last weekend and I had myself a little treat. I played about a day and 15 hours worth of the game and my opinions were slightly changed. Hello and welcome to this possibly short thought blog.

The first thing you are put through in the game is a "Situation." A Situation is basically a practice mode, making the player go through certain scenarios that are all equally tough. The only bad part is that you're alone. These seem like it would be fun if you could bring one person. No, not four or three, one. That would be enough for you to get the hang of the team oriented part of the game. The first time I played, I was confused as to what I was doing and how to do anything. It's a basic shooter, but it still has some unique qualities that others don't have as a mechanic. One of them being leaning. Yes, the one thing that doesn't seem like it would be useful is one of the must use abilities in the game. If you wanna peak over a wall or doorway, you can't normally peak through! Your entire body will be exposed! You have to lean by pressing either Joysticks to make yourself less visible to the enemy in the game. I think it's funny how they don't teach you this, expecting you to know this prier from playing it. I mean, if you line behind a shield guy, you have to lean to avoid shooting him. That's another thing, you have to be careful where you aim or else you shoot teammates and bring down their health. This ain't no CoD, bruh! This is Rainbow Six!

You have 100 health in total and it can mean a lot in the game. One shot always means death to you, you can't recover health and you can't gain it back. This basically Counter Strike in a house. Dumb analogy, but you get the picture. This makes the game more tense for each match you play, making sure you stay alive to have fun. You can have some armor to make yourself more of a bullet sponge, but you would have to get the Specialist that carries that ability or hope someone else has it.

Speaking of which, this is where the Pay to Win buys in. The game carries a lot of specialist for you to buy and too many to know which does what. They all basically have similar abilities, but they're unique to their loadouts. Each Specialist has a different load out that conspires to their character, carrying shotguns, assault rifles, LMG's, SMG's, anything that can shoot. They all have different secondary loadouts as well, the Grenades or Flashbangs. Claymores or Smoke Bombs. Breach or... Claymores? I can't remember what's past the Breach... Dammit... Well, it's all stuff that can help you defensively or offensively. That also applies to the Specialists as well. Each specialist has different, unique abilities that can turn the tide of battle. I've only been able to get my hands on Thermite, so this is most of the reason why I'm not doing a review on it. His ability is a special Breach that can do more than take down a wall. If a player stands next to it, wherever the fuse circles, that person will die or be injured. It has a lot of range as well, having some moments go across the room. Maybe that was a glitch, but who knows, I met it at least twice through my time playing, so I can't be sure. He carries a Fully Automatic weapon that is capable of switch firing modes, an auto-shotgun that can break down walls, and two pistols that don't really matter which you chose. I really like this loadout for him, I just adore is auto-shotgun. It just makes people jump when you shoot through walls or doors.

There is the Recruit, which is a simplified version of each class in the game giving you access to only the weapons and secondary abilities. You can't have a unique ability as the Recruit, tempting the player to buy the Specialists, but I played about have my time as him and I had as much fun as people with a Specialist. I really suggest to play as the Recruit before buying any new Specialists since he helps you get use to the game's mechanics and weapons, basically giving you an idea of how to use certain characters. I really do suggest this, as a player who was new for about an hour, it really helps to play Recruit for a while. A lot of people will drag you down because it's a noob character, but who cares. You are new and need to learn the ropes of the game.

Besides all of that, let's talk about gameplay. As I said before, the game is like Counter Strike in a house, so that means you have to be good to enjoy it. I've played without a mic in the game and I new what I was doing with the team, but the one thing that sucks is how much of a vulnerable person you are. A few shots and dead, now watch your teammates to show you how it's done. And that's what's kind of disconcerting about the game, a lot of new players will meet those who have better experience that you and will destroy your fun in the match. You would really have to work to be the third one to die or more. That's one of the reasons why I'm not going to get it, it gets very boring when you're the first to die and wants too much of your attention that can just make you angry when that one Ash gets you with a single headshot. It's very smooth to play and it could be very fun, but it's too hard for me to enjoy it. Not Dark Souls hard, more like Hacker kind of hard. God, I can't word this right. Well, I suggest the game if you are familiar with Counter Strike or are good with Shooters in general.

Now to the modes! There is three that I got my hands one: Situations, Terrorist Hunt and Multiplayer. Situations is a single player mode that allows you to get the hang of the game's core mechanics. It's a challenge to actually play this mode on Hard, being alone and with no extra help. I mean, they did a good job with the amped difficulty in this game, having AI jump out at you instead of walk into a place and stand there for a few seconds and decide to shoot you later. Trust me, try it and tell me how many times you died before you completed a situation mission. Terrorist Hunt is a Player Vs. CPU battle, having the player choose a difficulty from Causal, Hard and Realistic. I really suggest Causal. I know most of you will go to Hard, but Causal is a good start for newer players. As I may have said before, the AI in this game is just fantastic, predicting where you are and have alternate ways of attacking you. Trust me, everytime I had a different reaction to each mission I did. There would be these guys jumping into windows and kill half the team and the next mission would have them flank you as you enter. The mission basically in this mode is to get to the objective or hostage. It sounds easy, but like I said, the AI makes it tough. The only problem I have about this mode is the Spawn Location. No, not where they spawn you, they let you choose. I have a problem about where the team picks. I always have that one team that wants to go in the front door where everyone is instead of going through the back where they're most likely not going to be there. God, you don't know how many times I had to bother my teammates about how much easier it would be to do that. 

The other mode is Multiplayer, having both sides (Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists) are actual players. This mode is going to be the most played and the main focus in the game. The most fun you will have is in this mode. It's basically Terrorist Hunt, but without the AI and the mission is mostly just kill every Specialist you can find. I wish they put more to the game besides these three modes, since the game can get boring with just these three to play with. It is fun, but it gets old quick. I mean, would you want to play Deathmatch most of the time? I think they should have done another mode where you'd have to defuse a bomb before everyone does it first, like a Bomb Race! Everyone is an enemy and you would have to be the first the complete the mission. That would actually be fun. Of course there would be respawns and items to protect the player during his defusal. I know this would go off the tracks of the game's purpose, but that would actually be fun to play, an actual challenge to fight each other until one has the upper hand. 

All together this is a game that is for those experienced with shooters and games in general, but I think a few new people can play this game if they get the chance. You just have to play a bit to get good. It's not my style in games, but I can see me playing it later in life. The game is a cash-grab at best, but you can easily ignore it and if I were to rate it off my experience, maybe an 8 or 7. I don't know, this is mainly a first impressions thought, so you can completely ignore that. Anyways, I hope you liked this read and 'til next time...

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[Insert Rick and Morty Reference Here]

The Witcher is a great game, don't get me wrong. Everything about is just perfect and the characters we so memorable, the game is what every gamer wanted and it delivered with such great praise. The only downside, being the biggest, was how it made me see how small other games are, it just makes you hate it. I love Fallout 3, being one of the best games I've played on the 360 and had the best DLC for its time, but after playing Witcher 3 with all of its DLC, everything just looked so stupid. The DLC compared to the Witcher felt so small and so little even though Fallout had more DLC to offer. I thought that Horizon was a "Meh" game that could have some improvement, but after playing the Witcher, I despise the game for ever trying to achieve such greatness as the Witcher or even touch the RPG genre! I don't know why this happened, but I guess it was because it took off some blindfold we had after playing such a marvelous game. Hello and welcome to this Comparison Blog!

I must say that the game is perfect once more before we begin, because it's just that, a perfect game that seems to have no flaws. The combat is smooth with some easy to understand difficulty to it, every mistake is rightfully punished and gives the player enough room to learn more skills from it. You try to slash someone, but they keep blocking and parrying it. You struggle to fight and then you remember there's a parry button that's so easy to remember. That's another thing about this game, the controls are easy to remember and are easy to get use to even after you forget. It is difficult and challenging to fight people of your level or above, but it's fun and easy to move around the controls. The weapons in the game have such great and balanced stats that don't try to break the game or ruin any challenge with easy to use abilities on those weapons, with different types to follow like an Axe, Sword or Mace having different traits and damage qualities to them. Such a thing is a dream in most RPGs where most weapons are over the top and powerful; that's not the case in this game. I just love it! But when you compare this game to something like the beloved Horizon Zero Dawn, a game that is compared constantly to Witcher 3, you don't the same kind of weapons. They removed the qualities of the weapons and the uniqueness to them with different ammo types and abilities that seem tedious and over-complicated to use. Instead of having the player unlock the ammo types and abilities, they had him risk his own money to see if this weapon is better and more useful than the one he has. Now he can only use freezing projectiles. 

Even the game's combat is boring compared to the Witcher, having the player throw everything he's got at a robot and hope he's weak to it. And even if he is, the weakness won't do much to satisfy you because those "weaknesses" barely do enough damage to have fun with. The Witcher had the player at a disadvantage with the enemies, you had to find the weakness of the monster and use it. It was satisfying compared to regular attacks. You saw his life bar go down by just enough to see a difference and the game made sure that these enemies weren't going to be easy after finding their weaknesses, either limiting you with a heavy use of a magica meter or from a blade that breaks very easily. Witcher has the player enjoy a fight while giving him a challenge, you find an advantage and you use it to the fullest, but doesn't make the game easier, but just more satisfying. It's not an annoying encounter with the player constantly using the same item on a robot bird because this one item doesn't seem to do enough damage. 

Another thing that this game seem to accomplish is the world's atmosphere. In most game, you find a place that gives off the same feeling as the rest of the world, nothing special, nothing new to discover, just the same assets for the developers not to waste time and I get that. Skyrim is one of the best games when it comes to the world, giving everyone this feeling of a bleak land with a hint of war and peace. You feel that the game has its own life to it, although you see almost the same structures, pottery, furniture, architecture, almost everything feels the same, but we still feel that the game has this life to it. In the Witch, the only same assets you will find is clothing. weapons and NPCs. Everything feels so real when you first play it. The castle feels like you can be there in real life and the lands and country feels so much like Europe. The game has the player travel on foot for him to look at everything, witness the forest and the AI interacting with it, go through the mountains and watching the water flow though its crevices, it's all beautiful and has some meaning to it as well as AI interactions. That's another thing I adore about Witcher, the AI has so much livid emotion to them that it feels like you're actually strolling in a poor man's village. In Skyrim, it's mostly mountains covered in snow and more snow. It's a boring look and I wish they put more floral or vegetative life in the scenery. There are some places  in the game that stands out because of that, but those places are small and short lived. I wish they put more thought into the world's aesthetic instead of copy and paste snow and black rocks and gray grass that makes the game so muddy and unpleasing to look at. The AI interactions is flattering to say the least, but there are only four that I can think of that are world building: Royals passing through Skyrim to Cyrodiil, Thieves mugging you, Thalmor/Stormcloaks transporting a prisoner and a guy asking you to take something and not give him away to a guy threatening to kill him. They mostly feel forced, scripted and interrupts your game entirely. In Witcher, you see Bandits trying to kill people or plundering guards, pervy marauders trying to rape a wondering lady, a traveling merchant selling things on foot or a random number of guards going to their next post. I love that, you can ignore them all together and pass by them, or interact with them, getting a new mission, locations or items from them. It gives off this organic world that feels to great. Even enemies interact with each other, having mystical creatures hunt for food or stumble upon a bandit camp. I just love it! 

Even the AI had this job they always followed, not like how Oblivion did it where the AI would kill off important characters, ruining the game's story or guild quests, it was like seeing people wake up and go to work kind of thing. Seeing a guard get out of the barracks and go back to their guard posts. It's so livid to see something like that happen, most games just have every NPC sleep at this time period while guards scout the town without even sleeping. It gives off this illusion that these useless NPCs have some kind of purpose to the world, that they're more than just a model following a line of code. Every other game make everything feel so robotic, giving no humanity to them at all, making the world so... Robotic. 

Then the voice acting is just perfect and so great. There is one guy (that I won't mention) that has bad voice acting, but he can easily be ignored. Voice acting is one of my dream jobs and listening to this people do their job and is a Voice Actor's ASMR... What? I had nothing else to phrase it to! Well, these people behind the voices in the game is just marvelous. Jo Wyatt does a marvelous job with Ciri, Denise Gough made Yen have such a soothing voice and Doug Cockle did such an amazing job with Geralt, morphing a character that we all can love and enjoy. I love the people who voiced in this game, but I wish I never stumbled upon this game, because I'm starting to see flaws in a lot of voice work I use to love. God, Skyrim was one of the best in my opinion, but now it just sounds stale or our version of what Resident Evil's voice acting was. 

As for the game's story... Well, it's mostly a great story, something you can get almost commonly in the gaming world. The game has a great one, one that I would say is the best, but it's not the only one that has one. I loved Oblivion's lore and story, having something interesting to read or a character that seem to be larger than life, sparking a never before heard of  fairytale like the Grayfox. The only difference between the two (besides setting and all) is that the Witcher is a well written book series that has a lot of spin-off books involving Geralt getting new missions to pay for food that night. It even gives some character for Geralt that the Developers used to their advantage in the game, making side quest based on those spin-off books. I love that a lot and I can never see anyone doing that to another source. This game has such a marvelous tale and comparing it to others would be like comparing Star Wars to Lord of the Rings, there would be no difference, but setting. 

I won't talk about graphics since I can play Fallout 3 and 4 and still enjoy the game. Plus it would make me a hypocrite, and that I am not! The game really opens your eyes to flaw in games you loved, it's disheartening and it tells you a lot about the difference between that game and the other. Anyways, I hope you liked this and please tell me if you think the same! Did you play Witcher 3 and your perception of the gaming world changed forever? 'Til next time... 

Play More Games!

The Shiny-ing...

I love Smash Bros., the one fighting game I truly love is Smash Bros, especially Smash 4. I’ve always wanted to put characters in there that would widen the game’s massive roster. The challenge I’m doing is to see which two games would go together in either gameplay or mechanics. Me, Issacclark322 and the community are doing this Game Making Challenge and I don’t know if this would qualify, but I hope it does. Hello and welcome to this Smash Filled Game Making Challenge!

Contra P1 and P2

I’ve always fantasized about putting some other Nintendo Classics in there such as Bill Rizer and Lance Bean from the Contra games. I’ve played this game a lot as a kid and seeing such a character as Megaman is in the game just shows they have the experience to put these guys in there. Of course both of them would be alternate skins in the game, so there wouldn’t have to be two characters with the same, but similar moves like Dr. Mario. Before I start, just know that “B” means Special, “A” means punches and Smash Attacks are a Strong Punches, just to not confuse the audience. Now here we go. Their Center B would be the Laser Gun, charging their gun up similar to ROB, but it stops on impact of any player. You can be able to do this in the air and angle it to hit below you or above you. The damage it would inflict would be about fifteen percent or twenty to be fair. A good move to use on players with a zero percentage. Of course the move wouldn’t have much of a launch rate on you and wouldn’t kill you if you are higher than a hundred percent or seventy. Their Side B’s would be the Spreader, taking a large area, but spread apart to no avail. I think it would be a good move to use up close to do massive damage and have LIttle Macs or Ganons stop their Center B charge. All three shots with the spread would do massive damage, but only do so little with just one hitting a player. The Down B would be Crusher Missiles, propelling you upward as you fire three rockets downward. Each shot would do good enough damage to spike someone, but has a very minimal range. It would have a good launch rate if you time it right and would be quick to the draw when doing so, so there would be no delay on doing it. Of course the damage would be fair, doing only five or ten percent on a player. As for the Up B, they would do a Fire Shot, shooting a circling flame upwards that can be aimed to fire at the left or right corner of the screen. It would do a burning effect and deal about five percent with each hit. I don’t know if this would capture the characters and their games well, but I think this would do well for a character in smash.

As for their A’s, the center A and side A would be their Rifles firing like how Megaman works with his Center and Side A. His Up A would be a kick or a knife swipe, anything that would swipe the air. Down A would obviously be a kick. As for dashing, the Dash A would be a tackle like how Gannon does it. So all this leads up to the Smash Attacks. Their Side Smash would be them shooting a short ranged Rapid Fire out, not doing enough damage to kill anyone near eighty percent or taking very long to execute, kind of like Duck Hunt. Their Up Smash would be them firing up, also like Duck Hunt. Their Down Smash would be them firing the floor, doing an explosive radius around each side of the player.

That’s about it for their attacks, but their animation has to be traditional. Their walk has to be almost identical to the original game’s walking animation, with very little frame. I think that would be the most faithful thing about it. When you duck or hold Down, the player model will duck like in the original game, proning on the floor and maybe allowing the player to shoot while in the position. Their jump would have to be identical as well, having them do a constant roll in the air. I don’t know what the animation would be when they run, but I guess it would be the same as the walking animation. I really don’t know if their would be anything else to their animation, but I think these guys would be a great fit in the game since they don’t shoot real life guns, so they can just use the pallet-like projectiles to be safe for the kids, unlike Snake. As for Throws and Taunts, I really don’t know, I don’t know what would be so faithful to the game or fallow to the characters’ esthetic.

For Contra’s contribution to be apart of the game, their item drops would be the Nuke. I think those would be awful additions to the game because it would destroy everything on the screen, but I guess it would have to be toned down a bit and maybe bring some good, like being able to kill any Trophy Characters in the screen. And I guess the Smash Ball ability would have to be the Smart Bomb or maybe just a plain cannon that swipes what’s in front of the player. I don’t know.

Metal Slug

Metal Slug is fun with a large variety of characters with a lot of room to work with. If I were to see them be in Smash, it would be a dream to me. Their characters are so rich to be put in this game, so much to have them do in the game that would conspire so well with the Metal Slug Series. Of course they would have to be toned down a bit since they use guns. Even though, there about as many characters in the game as the first Smash, so making sure each character be put in the game individually would be a pain. Why not have them all be one character with a collection of different skins, becoming Fio, Eri, Marco or Tarma. To the moves, the Center B, would be Grenade Chucking, doing burning damage and do about twenty percent when it hits a player. If you think that’s a bit unfair, the player has only ten to throw, so it wouldn’t be much of a spam move and faithful to the games. As for the Side B, the player can shoot the Heavy Machinegun, doing reasonable amount of damage, but not going that far. The player can walk with it as well, increasing the range of the special, but still has the same amount of range. As for the Down B, the player would shoot an Iron Lizard, an RC Car explosive that can race across the stage. It wouldn’t do much damage, but it would do a burning effect that do some stunning during its duration. The Up B would be the Super Grenade, a giant bullet shot in the sky (pay respect to the third game where you shoot upwards at some flying insects). The Special would do a moderate amount of damage that does very little launch rate, just to make it fair to anyone being spammed with that and easy to dodge.

Going to the A attacks, the Center A and Side A would be constant firing like in Megaman, but do no stun damage, mostly like Bayonetta’s Center A. You can walk and shoot with it like Megaman and when you’re close to a player, you do a slice move, paying some respect to the original game and doing a good amount of damage to push someone out of the way. Up A would be a Knife Kick, doing damage to anyone in front of you or above you, but each kick pushes you backwards. And finally, Down A would be a kick, also pay respect to the newer games of Metal Slug, where the melee move for most characters is a kick. Although faithful, the kick doesn’t do that much damage and doesn’t do much of a launch to begin with, so using it won’t do much, but is a good move to stop someone in their tracks.

To the Smash Attacks, Side Smash is a Backpack Boxing Glove, doing about twenty percent damage in touching distance and ten to eleven percent farther away. It’s faithful to the games and I kind of love the wackiness of the Boxing Glove out of the backpack. If your skin is Ralph from Metal Slug 6 and on, the Side Smash is a Grenade Punch being faithful to two games, King of Fighters and of course Metal Slug, doing the same amount of damage. The Down Smash would be the Armor Piercer slash on both sides of the player, doing a good amount of damage and not much launch. As for the Up Smash, I guess it would be a shooting upwards with his pistol. I truly don’t know for that one, nor can I recall what power-up would go nicely in this spot. The shots upward sounds like it would do nicely, but I feel as if there could be something better. Who cares?

To be faithful to the characters’ original source, each skin would be a different character of the games, such as Marco, Fio, Tarma, Eri, Trevor, Clark, Ralph, Etc.. I would love to play as any of them, and they would be a nice fit in the game, not doing much harm to the overall artstyle. Of course, this would be the second time Metal Slug would enter 3D (don’t ask), so their would be a lot of designers to help make them a reality in the game. If they ever did, I hope they stay faithful to Metal Slug’s artstyle, not giving Marco or Tarma eyes, either dots or nothing at all. All the females would have to have eyes to make them look cute, but still, the 3D models for Tarma and Marco are just strange to look at. Just leave them with the Bandana over Marco’s eyes and Tarma with his shades. To be more faithful to the originals, when you crouch or hold Down the models will do that squat, tip-toeing with your gun between your legs. And when you step near a ledge, the ledge animation from Metal Slug will play, flailing his arms back and forth while a strand of snot hangs out of his nose. The taunts would be some of the victory sprites whenever you beat a boss in the game, and I guess it would be fitting to put those same taunts as the victory screen corresponding to your character skin. Another small bit of animation would also be after firing your Side A a lot, the model start a reload animations, being different depending on the characters’ guns.The Item Drops would be the obvious food and weapons from the games. You can have the Enemy Chaser, Drop Shot, 2-Machineguns, Shotgun, etc, the obvious crap from the game including the Martial Arts Survivors, follow you and shooting a ball of energy at anyone nearby. As for the Smash Ball ability, each character skin would have something different: Marco and Tarma get the Metal Slug tank, Eri and Fio have the Helicopter, Trevor and Nadia have the Metal Slug Mech called Mk. 5, and Ralph and Clark have the Metal Slug Walker. They would play like a Big Mac, but instead of using amped character abilities, the player can shoot out of his metal slug by tapping A and shoot bombs with pressing B. After the ability is done, the vehicle explodes, damaging everyone around it. God, I would love to see that happen.

Waluigi

A very unique character in the Nintendo games, he has never had his own game. Yes, he was in many other party games or even in a Tennis game, he’s never been the main focus in a game or a main character at all. It’s surprising to see that since Nintendo gives equal showcase for almost every character in their games, but I guess an inclusion in the next game might be another characterization of the tall, high pitched purple man. His Center B would be Tennis Charge, hold to increase the damage of the attack, but there is lay off damage to it, so the farther it goes, the less damage it will deal. The ball will have a presence, becoming a similar move to R.O.B.’s center, being able to pick it up and throw it back at someone either it being Waluigi or other players. His Side B would be a tackle, doing a short lunge in front of the player and throwing whoever he catches behind him. There would be a rare chance where the thrown player would be stunned, as if someone broke their shield. Something new I guess, but I can see it would be annoying if the game can’t make it rare for the player. The Up B would be lunge upwards, being able to grab someone and throw them to whatever direction the player wants, but down. I think that would be an overpowered move if he could just throw someone downward, being able to do a spike that no one wants to be apart of. Of course, whatever direction you throw the player in, Waluigi will go the opposite way. The Down B would be a counter that can reflect a portion of the received damage, damage would differ with what attack he receives.

For the game attacks, his Center A would be a three hit combo, simple and dumb, but it’s something almost all characters in the roster have. His Side A would be a jabbing punch that does a low amount of damage, but it can stop someone on their tracks when they try to dash attack you. Also seeing he has some absurdly long arms, it has a long range to it. Up A would be a kick towards the left or right side of the player. Down A is a plain kick and that would be his A attacks. His Dash A would be a tackle punch like Mario’s slide or Gannon’s Elbow Dash. Simple really and the player would more rather rely on their smash attacks and partially their specials, since each plain A move has so little damage to them. Kind of explains his skinny stature.

The Smash Attacks would be where it’s at with the character, putting some extra damage to each of them. To fit his cheating character, each smash attack he performs can be saved. Hold down the attack would take a long time, but charges the damage and can be held for later use for the player. Like I said, it would take a while, leaving enough of a window for the player to be interrupted or force them to rarely do them. The smash attacks would make him a primary target for the rest of the players, but landing each shot with either smash attack and do so much damage. Of course this would be unfair if the player can hold each smash attack at once without any consequence, so why not leave a timer one Smash Attack held? The player would choose one smash attack and it would create this puff of steam emitting off the player, puff becoming small as he holds the attack. You can only hold one attack, so whenever you try to use another Smash Attack, the one your holding will be replaced with the Smash Attack you are attempting to use, recharging it, but not stacking it. You can quickly run up to another player, tap A and the held Smash Attack will be used. It will be the Waluigi equivalent to Luigi’s Uppercut special, depending on how close you are, doing massive damage or a moderate amount. Of course it would differ to which smash you use, great segway me, The Side Smash would be a back hand fist slap, doing a good amount of damage to players and to provoke other players to use him. It has a large launch rate that can kill someone at a 50 or 60 percent damage. His Down Smash would be a split kick on the ground, kind of like how sonic does his Down Smash. It would have a lot of range to it and doing a good amount of damage to provoke the players to make you a primary target. Moving to his Up Smash, he can do a regular headbutt that covers a decent range, but does a good amount of damage and launch. And when I say good for this character, I mean it’s good for Waluigi. If you think this would be a bit overpowered again, just know due to his tall stature, he can only cover his height. He still does a good amount of damage, but you can duck and his punches will go right over you, even his Headbutt. So there would have to lots of planning to actually do a lot with him. He’s not like Mario… Or Kirby… You just don’t do the same things over and over, you have to plan it and hope that plan works because you will have a lot of room to be attacked if you don’t

For his items inclusion, I really don’t know. Maybe a tennis racket since everybody likes to associate him with that. Maybe a fake coin and real coins much like how Mario Kart has the fake boxes, but not as noticeable. Kind of like the fake mushrooms, but instead of making the player small, but stuns the player as if he broke his shield. Other than that, it’s hard to include items to compliment his inclusion since Nintendo has never released his own game that much. I can’t even think of a good Smash Ball attack for him… I guess this is where I include the audience to say their ideas. Go on, tell me.

Destiny 2 is a game that everyone had their own opinion on it. If you went on any article about the game on this site, you probably saw some things that were questionable. The game got a Nine on GI and many other publishers. I am a big Destiny fan and I think that’s a bit of a raised bar to rate it such a high number. The game is fun and I will say it’s taken my life, but there are a lot of things the game has that can ruin itself and disturb new or older players of the game that will take a while to accept. Hello and welcome to this Abstract Review with no restraints on spoilers.

Story and Its Characters

The first thing that I should talk about is the story. It’s something that felt very absent in the first game, every that we hoped to see in the game was not there and felt very rushed. I actually got the game on launch and it was very dry until the DLC came out literally two months later. I’m not kidding, the game came out September 9th and the first DLC, The Dark Below, came out December 9th. Anyways, the game was deemed to have more story involved in this sequel, to please haters and fans who wished there was more to explore. The beginning was actually something new compared to the dry beginning of the first one. You come to your home and see it being burned to the ground along with your friends. It does a good job on conveying the real tragedy the attack on the tower is, having the player see places he use to go to being destroyed and burned, it’s something that every Destiny player would see as a threatening sight no regular player imagined on seeing. And the moment you defend the tower with Zavala was so touching, having the player attack incoming Cabal with other random players, sharing the same experience as you. I already covered this in my last blog about the Beta, pointing out some key things that was a character filled moment with something to think about with the story, seeing your home gone and Ghual taking the light from you. The one thing that was new is how you don’t have anything besides a Pistol to defend yourself. The game didn’t give you an Exotic straight from the start, the game gave you a class weapon to defend yourself from the invading Cabal. It’s something that didn’t expect and was very underwhelming when you lose it all. Of course the game would have been bad if they take away a good and powerful weapon, but I would have loved feel that kind of loss. Besides, it would have been cool if you could retrieve the weapons at a later level or light, giving you the mission straight from the beginning, once you recover, you see a chance to get it all back, but you are took weak to do so. That would have been cool and a great way to drive the player to achieve the best weapons in the game, until you get more complex and powerful weapons. That would have been a great way to begin a game and drive the player to keep playing this great adventure.

Besides that, the game does a good job on showing the devastation of how losing your light is, shoving the weakest enemy at you in packs, playing soft and saddening music that more so drives the feeling of this moment as you fight furious packs of enemies with the weakest weapon you found on dead Guardians. That single moments makes you think about the other Guardians in universe that died to escape these hordes. As you progress, you see how much time it took to get to the place you are. It took you hours to see this outpost of dead Guardians, showing you that you could have helped them if you came sooner. It took you days to stumbleupon a snowstorm that will kill you. Of course all this is said to you, to make the player think, but of course, if you’re a regular gamer, this is all something you know you’re going to get past. There wouldn’t be a game if your character permanently dies, so why care about all of this? The hordes aren’t even that hard. I wish they made each enemy increase in value, showing the different bars of health that each enemy can get, making each enemy horde feel so much of a tackle instead of pushing down a kid. I get why they did that, but make the player feel the moment that the Guardian is facing, punish the player when he dies by making his respawn go back to the start of the horde, no checkpoints, nothing to save the player from feeling the moment he’s suppose to feel. I know that dying in the same spot would be annoying, but at least make it challenging for the player to be careful in missions or strikes.

Once you beat two hordes, you have a ledge to jump across and a deep fall. The game forces you to fall, making this moment feel very scripted. I know story based games do that, but those kind of games do their best to make it feel natural. This felt forced and seemed like a possible jump. At least have a first-person cinematic in-game, having the player witness him hitting the ledge and falling to his death. That would have at least shown the struggle and how weak the guardian is now. After plummeting to the ground from an impossible height, you should see almost every on the Guardian, his reload animation, the way he held his gun, how he walked, all should look crippled. I know this would require more work, but this small moment in the game would have made the experience massively better.

Back to the review, you get picked up by this outcast gang that help you get back on your feat to prepare yourself for battle against the Cabal. This little moment was to make the player feel that there’s hope in this war. Of course you already know that, but it’s suppose to feel that way, a possible motive that will power the player to continue on this adventure. After that, you know can play the game, not at its fullest, but something to freshen the minds of the newer players and the old. Any regular players would find this part of the game annoying, since everything is taken away from you besides Earth, but it’s still a good start for anyone. The missions are one thing, but we’re not there yet.

The game makes you go on about three missions to get the player use to the new map system, then shows the player the story mission. You do a forgettable moment, get rewarded, repeat. They’re all fun and it was a shame to see that the first three or four story missions aren’t that great. Once finish those three or four missions, you get your Light back. Pretty underwhelming to get your powers back so quickly. If you’re a Titan, you have the Defender Subclass, Hunters a Blade Dancer and the Wizard gets the poorly named Downblade along with everything to go with it, but the punch ability. I wish they gradually gave you each ability, discovering more and more shards of light in more Story Missions, having Zavala or Ikora to doubt you in your battles. That would have made the powers more meaningful, making them feel well earned to player. It would be a boasting kind of reward, but at least it gave some importance to the ability. Instead we got it all at once. It just derived the player from any enjoyment at all that the moment where you get to show off your super on hordes of  enemies feel so boring. I know that’s a typical word to describe it, but you tend to want everything to end and continue on your fun. Like I said before, they should have made the player achieve each ability starting with the jump boost and on, give this moment a good story feel, but still maintains the gamey feel. Other than that, you continue your pursuit to stop Ghual, prove your powers to Zavala, give your part in the war to against the Red Legion, A.K.A the Cabal. There are some touching moments in the game where Zavala is willing to die without his light for the people he protected in the walls of the city. Ikora thinking she lost everything and there’s nothing to fix it, she lost too much, so why do anything. Cayde… He wanted to go on another adventure. I hear a lot of people say that people say that Cayde has a lot of character, but he is borderline Deadpool with his character. He never shows more emotion than just funny. I wish he was more expressive about the situation he ran away from, make him have a reason for why he wanted to go on an adventure! Say that he wanted forget the things he lost at the city, the friends, the Guardians he taught, show that he has more than just one emotion. This can be argued that this would destroy his character, but that would have showed why he likes to be funny, say he had to fake a smile a few times because of the memories. Why not have him show a funny, but worrying fear in him, not doing anything, but hide in cover. Or maybe say he likes to go to the Planet Nessus because that’s where he has Failsafe delete all the bad memories. Something make this character more interesting than him being played by Nathan Fillion or being funny. I love you Nathan, don’t get me wrong. I’m going off track again.

Back on the story, once you find out the Red Legion’s plan is to take the energy from the Sun and leave with everything destroyed, you rush to the sun and stop them. I love that moment in the game. This part of the story must have been handled by someone else since everything about it was just so awesome. You are constantly given music to amp you up for the fight, the enemies are in higher numbers, you can just feel the distress of the Cabal, throwing everything at you to stop this single Guardian, killing every Cabal Legionary he sees in rage, from stealing the sun’s energy. There was even part of this level where you go out where the Sun’s rays hit you and have to hide behind shade. The Cabal come in chasing you risking their lives to kill you while being constantly burned by the Sun. All that was just awesome and lead up where you destroy the Sun Siphon, you have to escape with  explosions and the sun killing you. This part could have been things barely hitting you, but this part made me feel as if I was in danger. Once you finish this segment of the game, you are told to go to the Traveler, replacing the Farm. That moment once you see that floating Traveler, you feel like you’re going to fight the good fight. The story had a slow beginning and filled with flaws, but that moment felt so in sync with what was going on. Once you landed near the Traveler, you are met with many other players fighting for the Light, doing the same mission as you. This moment was empowering to me, you fight with another player is such a great idea. It’s like playing a campaign and seeing the Grunts actually fight with their lives, seeing a gamertag over their head. It actually felt you were apart of something and as I’ve seen in many MMO’s, they do this a lot with any mission. I know this game is a poor excuse for a MMO, but still has some great qualities of one.

Before we talk about the final fight, there was something that I forgot to talk about: Ghual. I have mentioned him, but the game had some cinematic moments with the character, showing his plot with the light and his obsession over the Traveler. If you ask me, he builds this kind of crazy and obsessive person who will talk and torture the Speaker for any information about the damn white thing in the sky. But I’ve heard people say that he has this kind of plain character arc of a villain, I don’t know. If you ask me, he’s a Dry Erase Character: a character that feels different everytime you encounter him. It even felt like sometimes he had this bored voice to him, where he just didn’t want to waste time, but later he wants to prolong the capture of the light and leave the solar system to be blown to pieces, to talk more about the Traveler some more to the player. I think the only one moment in the entire game I liked with Ghual was when he asked the Speaker how does one become chosen by the Traveler. The Speaker responds with Devotion. Ghual is confused and Speaker makes it clear. “Devotions inspires Bravery, Bravery inspires Sacrifice, Sacrifice leads to Death.” At first this sounds very descriptive of the Guardians, painting a picture of their life and duty, but then he says this, “So feel free to kill yourself.” I know up to this point it’s a meme to the community, but I loved that and seeing Ghual’s reaction was such a given reward. The anger and rage he felt, but the one thing stopping him from hurting the Speaker was his second in command. Don’t know his name, but also made some great parts in those segments, giving some great character story. That’s another thing I didn’t like about the game’s story or these segments, they never make it clear as to who that guy is. I’ve actually tried looking him up and he doesn’t appear in any site or wiki page, but on the voice actor’s lists of the game. Apparently his names is The Consul. Perfect name for someone who is second in command for the Red Legion, on unknown territory doing as they please. Yes, I had to look that word up.

As we gotten through that, we are now to the final act, the fight with Ghaul. He just killed the Speaker and his friend, The Consul, and is on a power rage. He gathers as much as could from the light, which is strange since he was trying to find out how to be chosen by the light, but now he can use it… Did he already know how to use it? He starts to use all this power from the light and use abilities you have. Whatever Guardian you are, he will use all the supers against you. Cool in a sense, but it’s a bit cliche or predictable to me. I don’t know, it’s just something that I could have found out before I even gotten to this fight. And if he could have used this new power, why couldn’t he let all of his higher-ups have some? That would have been a great enemy to fight, a Cabal that has similar powers as you and can regenerate health. Anyways, the fight. He stays at the same  Light Level  which is about 170 or 150, which is kind of a bummer since I got to this fight at 200 light. All the fun was sucked out because I was grinding the entire game. Once you get him about two-thirds of his health, he runs back to the light and is invincible for a while until you clear all the enemies in the area. Once you do, you shoot him until he gets down the next slab of health, then that’s it. This felt very underwhelming when I did it, as if they made this entire fight something they wanted you to scratch off. Of course, if you wanna play nothing but the Story, which the game prepares you for during those missions, you will have a different experience, but the game should have made this fight something more immersive or simply more difficult. Maybe make him follow you Light Level for the entire game, so you would have to work around him as well as the incoming enemies, that would’ve been a very simple solution to this. When he dies, his shell you call a body cracks open and releases his energy. At first, you would think it’s the Light returning to the Traveler, but it’s actually Ghaul’s ghost saying that he is now immortal, taunting the Traveler. The Traveler gets pissy and releases a pulse of light to destroy Ghual’s spirit and Light touches every space in the Galaxy.

Month’s later, a cinematic moment comes in to say Hi and shows Zavala, Cayde and Ikora great the player with a happy and at peaces faces, showing that the leaders of the old are still standing and will never fall without a fight. Then they look behind them and there you are to greet… Yourself… This was to signify that you are apart of the leaders, to guide your generation to victory. It’s cool, but means nothing since the game will tell you there are still Red Legion in the Solar System to fight, just the make sure the player doesn’t put down the controller and forget about the game. I will say the game is fun afterwards since the Traveler has some new vendors to see and get some great loot out of while finishing their missions or quests. Kind of a great end, just made Ghail look like an idiot to mess around with, the cutscenes with him weren’t as great as many would say, but the game gave some interesting lore like Failsafe, Sloane, Holiday or even Hawthorne. No, I didn’t look them up, they all were great characters and had some great backstory that said a lot about the world and the planet they were on. My favorite would have to be Asher, a crazy scientist that doesn’t sound practical, but follows certain codes that would benefit the Guardians and the Tower. And his Arm, apparently it’s a Vex arm that in one mission where the Vex were being imprisoned by the Taken, he says he can feel his arm being drained of it’s life force, that someone wants to rip it out of him. It’s interesting and makes me want to read more into it.

Weapons and Loot

Now that we are finished I can talk about the game, so let’s start with the game’s weapons. If you don’t know, the primary and secondary slots have been changed. Instead of having the Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles and Scout Rifles being the in the Primary and the Fusion and Sniper rifles and Shotguns being in the Secondary, it’s now Primary is Kinetic Damage, Secondary is Energy and the support weapons being the Power weapons. This means I can have an Auto Rifle in both Secondary and Primary slots. To most this means nothing, but it means a lot and has a lot of mechanics to follow. Energy Weapons do more damage to shields than flesh, while Kinect does more damage when the shield is down. Of course each one would do similar damage rate, but there is a great downfall to both that you need to follow or you won’t have fun. And the Energy has elemental damage to it, so it does more damage to a certain kind of shield. I found out what it was for and I feel stupid for not noticing. If the shield is say Orange, then fire will have the shield to explode, doing damage to anyone around the enemy. Of course, this doesn’t follow the same principles in the Crucible, but it does bring down those shields faster. If you ask me, this is great game design for this kind of game it’s just fun to just see a crowd of Cabal explode because the Commander was wearing a Fire Shield on the wrong day, I just love it.

The only thing I have a problem with in the game is how the newer additions to the Scout Rifles are. They seem to do the least amount of damage unlike the first game. They made the Scout Rifle so bad that it doesn’t even do much with headshots. I guess I might have gotten some of the worst of the bunch, but I haven’t found a good one in either Energy or Kinetic. If not, please tell me which one is better, I miss long shotting enemies. Anyways, the Hand Cannons, I believe, got a step up in this game. I don’t know, the last game kind of made them so… Ignored is the best word I can think of. They did massive damage up close, but weren’t the best in that type of situation. You want to lessen the horde as you risk your life, not miss five times and get only three shots in, that’s just not the fun way of doing that. In this sequel, they made them so satisfying having them do heavy knock-back damage. They actually stagger instead of continuously fire at you as they feel a small push on their shoulder. It stops enemies in their tracks and make each bullet sponge more satisfying to shoot. The fun weapon may be great on AI, but it would have to be in the right hands for it to be the same in the Crucible. Other than that, the game’s primarily used weapon would have to be the Auto-Rifle. I’ve seen a good plenty of people use the Scout Rifle (which is why I’m asking if there’s a good one), but there will never been a Titan or Hunter that doesn’t use the Auto-Rifle. It’s a weapon that does consistent damage to the enemy and doesn’t stop. It staggers as well, being the big push as to why people use it so much. Great weapon for basically everything. The Pulse Rifles aren’t much, although useful, the long pause between bursts aren’t fun while in a Raid or Strike. Other weapons I don’t see much use would have to be the Sidearms and Submachine guns. I can see why since some side arms have a huge recoil gap while aiming. For those who don’t know, Recoil Gaps are the time between shots while aiming, the small gap that the player has a straightened and controlled shot to fire again. Sides arms don’t do well while aiming, but have a great hipfire. Same goes for the Subs, since it’s just a recoil mess, you might as well not aim at all. Sidearms I would prefer be used in Strikes or Raids, but not in Crucibles. The complete opposite goes for the Sub, seeing that the unpredictable player can be stopped by the wide spread of the Sub. It feels like you’ve been cheated, but it’s been programmed that way, so it must be.

The Power Weapons are pretty simple having the Sniper, Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Fusion Rifle, Sword and Machine Gun. The devs thought it would be cool to add one new Weapon Subclasses so we now have the Linear Fusion Rifle, being a more accurate Fusion Rifle with the same power and damage as one. If you ask me it’s cool, but acts like more of a Sniper Rifle more than anything. Anyways, they have a high damage rate that can kill anything in one shot or within at least two. The shotguns primarily used in only Crucibles or maybe in Strikes if you can do some sick tricks with it. Hard, but is do-able. Sniper Rifles aren’t really used, but are still fun to use, just this game doesn’t have the greatest mechanic for long ranged attacks. I mean every AI in the game moves into cover if you try. You can pick some off when they don’t notice you, but they’ll go to cover to lure you in to perform close ranged attacks. I’d say the best weapons to use is the Machine Gun, Rocket Launcher and Fusion Rifle since they all have such great damage at almost every kind of range. Swords can be fun, but you would have to make sure you don’t get yourself in a cluster f**k while you do it.

Now that we’re done with the weapons, the loot is fun. Of course the first game was bad because of how glitchy the loot spawn was, but this one is actually fun to farm. A lot of games like to make Grinding or Farming part of the core Leveling and Gears findings, but this one puts all of that a part of the missions and story. If you ever want to get great loot, you must go fight for the Light or do tasks people assign you. You can get loot by killing people in the same spot where every enemy spawns, but it seems that only happens when you need to level. If not, you will kill everything and get ammo, nothing else. Of course, out of random there will be an Engram, but that only happens in a 1 in 50 chance in doing so. At least that’s what I experienced. Other than that, there is also the Region Coins. I know that might not be what they are called, but I call them that. The coins can be found by doing missions of any kind in any region and can give you great rewards if you get a lot of them. The mechanic to this is to encourage players to keep playing and get awesome loot in certain regions. Of course this can seem like a grind once you do all the missions, but god, some of the armor and weapons are awesome as hell. Devrim’s rewards are one of the bests for a titan in my opinion. The only bad thing about it how rare they are if you done all the missions in that region or you looked for too many chests. That’s one mechanic I don’t like about the loot system, which is the chests. If you are going out to Chest Hunt, you will find less and less everytime to the point they give you nothing. No, not glimmer, not coins, not even some consumables to scavenge. You get nothing. The bad part about this is how there’s a consumable item that marks every Chest near you for about four hours. Sounds cool until you drain how much the game can give you at one single time. I wish they would at least degrade it as you go on with the Chest Hunting, making you have consumables that are worth something, but basically nothing, but still worth the trouble. Or maybe just give me Glimmer, make me feel like I found something instead of nothing. In Bungie’s defense, they said it was to make the player do more than just Chest Hunting, but why spawn them in the area if you get nothing out of it?

Besides all that, there is a new thing that I would like to complain about, which is the very low diversity of the Armor and Weapons. In the first game, every piece of armor was rare, if you had it, you were the only one who had that set and the shaders made it look even more rare. And what made them so much different than the last piece of armor were there effects. This Chest Piece has every kill with the Scout Rifle adds additional recharge to your grenade. These shoulder pads has faster reloading and deals more damage when you have an Auto Rifle equipt. That made each piece of armor feel so unique to your playstyle and it helped make the armor feel more than just a style. This game, however, made them in a fashion trend. You each armor had the same effects, nothing else to make the one right next to it unique, just clothing for the player to wear and upgrade. If you ask me, this is a major downgrade to the last game, just destroying how fun it was to grind for Armor. It’s now considered a the lowest piece of loot now, the only thing mattering being the Light level. I really don’t like that, but I can get past that. It’s something that most can since it only changes minor things in the gameplay.

Now that we’re done with the armor, now the shaders! I know many have said that the new Shaders are just the worst and all, but we all know that. I won’t go in depth since it’s been said in a lot of articles on this site and many videos discussing the game. The one thing I want to talk about is how the Devs defended it. The first game had you do missions to get rare ones or hope it comes in for drops from Crucible or Strike. It was always different and they all were great for almost anything and anyone. This game made Shaders a mechanic to get you to keep playing. Cheap to say the least, but the worst way to defend something like that. Since it destroys itself once you take it off, so you can’t put it on Rare Armor or anything below Legendary Grade equipment. It’s something you don’t wanna get use to when you played the first game for about two years, but you can easily gloss over it. And before you haters start telling me that the shaders are an act to get you to buy, you’d be wrong. If you level up while Level 20, you get a Bright Engram, something you can buy in the shop with real money. Of course this is another thing to make you keep playing, but it doesn’t mean you need to buy it in order to get it. You can get any Shader with those Bright Engrams, whether you wanted it or not. If you don’t care about making you armor a certain color in this game, the shaders won’t matter even if you did.

Gameplay and It’s Physics

If you ask me, the game is fun. Each mission was made by great level designers that know what they’re doing. Some can be short, but I think that was the point of the game, to keep you wanting more. If you ask me, I hate that when a game does that. “It was fun, but I wish it was longer” is the common quote said about the game. It’s great that it makes you want more out of the game that you feel is fun, but it happens constantly throughout the game, the player can take notice and find that kind of mission design bad. This sounds like one of those things that is more of a “Me” feel, so I guess you can ignore this one for now. I just want longer missions out of this game.

Next to that, there is the Strikes, the game’s highlight that seems to never get old. The missions you may find are just fun, well designed and have so much lore to it builds so much of the world. I love these missions in the game, but the only thing bad about it is how you’re restricted to whatever mission you are given. It’s like spinning a Roulette Wheel or rolling dice and hope you get what you want. It’s not like the first game where you were given choice to do a random mission in this region or a specific mission to get this type of loot. They don’t do that anymore, you have to take what the game gives you and it’s so annoying when you finish the worst Boss in the world and have to do it again trying to find that cool Strike Mission you got yesterday. It’s an easy fix that they could do, but I don’t think they won’t be doing that anytime soon until the first DLC is released. The same goes for the Crucible, having the Randomizer Mode on whenever you want to play that one fun Mode that you will never get. If you don’t like Capture the Point of Survival, you won’t have a great time in that mode. Then there’s a lot of maps that have lots of vantage points that are just bad. One map has this large box in a hallway that can be used to camp a lot. And before you Destiny haters start to complain about a game you haven’t really played, no this is not the core part of the game, you can completely ignore it and play something far more fun than the Crucible which you have a lot to choose from. And trust me, there is a lot to do in this game than just the Strikes.

The gunplay is pretty fun, every shot feels so satisfying and powerful. In both Strikes and Crucibles it’s very good when you land that hit and kill. It’s mainly what the first game was like, but the sounds are pretty much different and are so pleasing to the ear. Instead of of a lame sound for this awesome looking gun. Other than those facts, there’s not much to talk about with the game’s gunplay. There is the new Climbing Physics that help a lot when that jump doesn’t have a great distance. Sometimes it agrees with, but sometimes it wants to ruin your life. It’s easy to get use to, so you can tell what ledge or jump will trigger the player to climb. I think this was the response to the Iron Banner DLC secret, where you had to climb lots of ledges and risk yourself through large jumps. They might be planning something later, I mean who knows what they might do?

There are the more difficult Strike Missions in the game like the Exodus Black mission right now and the Raid. I’d say that this one mission isn’t great. It’ hard and I will say it’s rightfully fair with its difficulty, but why time it. I’m not saying take it out, I think the mission should be, but why make it so short? Once you get to the final boss, you have little to no time to do it and the Waited Respawn is very unforgiving. If they could at least try to make the spawning twice as long as a normal respawn area (ten seconds), I think I would like this mission a lot more. Don’t tone down the game’s difficulty in these missions, but make them possible. As for the Raid, this is a “Me” opinion, so you can ignore me on this one if you want. I’ve played two or three raids in my time playing the game, but this one is kind of hard. I’ve done some alone and this one alone is like trying to hammer a nail with a feather. Enemies are just bullet sponges and are too frustrating to deal with. If they could change difficulty of the player’s fireteam numbers, I think this would be do-able, but I can see this being hard to code and may cause some bugs to the enemy stats or change the game’s overall fun. Otherwise, I want to see Raids being dropped a little in difficulty or maybe make an adaption of the enemies. It’s fun with friends, but I want to be able to play the mode by myself. I’ve only found myself in one which is the Exodus Black mission, the most boring and irritating one out of the list we have. The mission is okay with some variety of enemies and lots of lore to it, but the boss is so frustrating to fight. Everything else is do-able and tolerable, but the boss is the worst concept in the entire game. The boss is a bullet sponge that is both difficult and fun. They have advantages against the players and use them in a smart and well made way, no hiding, nothing that can seem so frustrating or anger inducing. This boss is an invisible Fallen guy that sneaks up on you with his megaton hands and rocket launcher and do a massive amount of damage that it can makes his little minions and shock floor finish you off in seconds. I don’t know who thought of this idea of a boss being able to do that, but that guy or girl should be put to do something else. This would have sounded great on paper, but it deserves to be in a different game. I mean, there is no other way to actually get away from this guy, there is so many enemies that can kill you. There’s freaking Shock Shanks that make the floor around them do damage to anyone that steps into does damage and on top of that, takes away your jump and speed power. This can totally stop your flow of the game and make you panic and die. No one can help Revive you because you died in the shocky floor. You just become this *** that just died and have to wait to respawn as your Teammates try to defend themselves. I know this can give the Fallen some characteristics that they’re a cowardice or Honorless bunch of warriors that will do anything to make you easier to kill, but I’ve fought Fallen Bosses in the first game that were bullet sponges, but were still holding the same characteristics, teleporting around a corner to regain their shield or just teleporting right into the mix to do more damage and make you panic. You can still beat him as easy as other bosses below 200 Light, but the way this fight was programmed and planned is just awful. You don’t need to change it in anyway, just give me a choice to choose my favorite strike mission. I can’t talk about the mode besides it can be fun, because I haven’t played any other mission besides that one, Exodus Black. Bungie, if you are looking into Game Informer for some stupid reason and looking at the blogs, please make Strikes Individual Choice or make a checklist for the player to go down. Do something that will make me not play the same Strike everytime I want to have fun. This is one of the only things to do once you finish every mission, story mission or even faction quest, you have to make this Strike option a lot different or it will destroy the game’s replayability!

Now let’s talk about Leveling. I really don’t like it, but it was fun while it lasted. Along with the story, it felt like they wanted this part of the game to be done with in the first few hours of the game. Grinding isn’t a pure factor of the game, but it’s fun when you see that bar get to full and the screen shows this awesome particle effect with the text appearing: Level [insert number here]. I don’t know why, but it was satisfying to see that. It actually made me want to play more to reach that level cap, but because the cap is twenty and it takes about a few hours to get there, the fun is short lived. I wish they made it something along the lines of difficult, but fun, making you want to see that bar get like three Exp or more. Borderlands did the same with the leveling system, making it kind of difficult, but it was fun gaining that XP. But since the game allows the player to gain Region Awards and Legendaries and your first Sparrow once you hit twenty, the fun feels like it just began. To most this is a f**k up to say the least, but to me? I would have to agree it was bad to make it easy to reach the cap, but I think it’s a nice reward to reaching such… An… Easy feat… Okay I can see why. I guess they could have given the player the Sparrow right in the beginning since the first game did that and getting somewhere is a pain when you don’t have the vehicle, but then the goal to get one and keep playing to reach the level would be gone. I do see where they are going, but I wish they could have changed it up or at least made it like Borderlands, difficult, but fun.

I know Grinding isn’t fun, that’s obvious, but you can make it satisfying to make it fun, reward the player lightly, but make it feel like an impossible feat. Not to the extent of Dark Souls, but you get it what I’m saying. I think the most scummy thing about the game is how they don’t allow the player to get Region Awards or Legendaries until they hit Level 20. I kind of felt scammed when that happened, but you can get past it.

Player Characters, Factions and the Clan

If you played the first Destiny before you started playing the sequel, your character will carry on with some new HD Graphics. I will have to say the draw to distance on the character is less chopping that the original, the shadow starts clipping around the player once you try to get a good look at him. I guess the only downside would have to be how you don’t have any new features to mess with, no new faces, no new features, no new hairstyles, nothing. I guess there wasn’t enough time within development to create them, but they could have at least put in some new things to mess with. I guess this is a stupid thing to criticize, so I guess you can ignore this paragraph or not, I don’t care.

Staying on the topic of your character, I said that the player character is being voiced in this game, but apparently no, that’s not true. I wish they could since they hint at it a lot in the game’s cutscenes, having the player being interrupted before they could speak by their Ghost. This kind of annoys me since all Races chosen by the player is completely voiced and was in a minor sense in the first game, but was not utilized in this game. I know they couldn’t use old sound clips, but they could have asked the original voice actors to do VA work as the Player. I bet they were busy at the time, but they got real famous people in this game doing minor voice acting roles in this game, why not get people back like Matt Mercer, Peter Jessop or Susan Eisenberg to reprise their roles in this game as the Guardian, the hero of the game? I think I would have liked the game a lot more and many more if they made the main character talk more instead of become a bystander in a war your Ghost put you apart of. It feels like you’re the puppet of the Ghost’s ideas and actions, having you do what he thinks is right. I want to cut these strings! I want to cut them and unseal my lips and scream to the heavens and tell you, you little piece of what is left of the Travel, that there’s no strings on me! Okay… Maybe gotten carried away, but you get the gist.

Right next to that is the Factions. If you ask me that addition to the game is strangely amusing to me. I know it’s just a faction that does nothing to the story at all or the game itself, but it’s a great upgrade to the last game’s factions. Before you had to collect items that would help the faction, like Ammo, Weapon parts, Armor Scrap, things that seemed to be more useful elsewhere making the factions in the game feel like a buddy that only hangs out with you because you have what he wants. This time, you are given Faction Tokens whenever you do a mission that act like Region Coins, depositing it as reputation and giving you rewards for doing so. And it’s easy getting these coins, even getting them in the Crucible or random moments in a region, you can get Faction Tokens just about doing anything that’s beneficial to the player. I think the only downside is how the Faction’s Daily quests are so repetitive sometimes. Go kill these enemies in this region and you get something rare from me! Things like that are Faction missions and add nothing else to the game than that. I think they could have made them a quest hog, where you get randomly generated quests that give you rewards or more reputation. I think that would have been more fun to the player and would add more content than just plain Kill-This-Thing-In-This-Way Missions. Before the Factions inclusion, there was clans. This kind of like joining a CoD clan in most games, but it’s more official. You get random invites from players or friends, you join a clan and you do stuff for the clan to improve their reputation in the community. To most, this would be an easy ignore on the game since it plays such a small factor in the game, but if you’re a High School teenager that has friends that have no lives, you want to join a clan. If you have a friend that plays on and off with Destiny, you won’t be able to join his clan until he is on the game, so you would have to wait a while to join or until he finally invites you as Clan Founder. If you were thinking that there wasn’t a clan search, you are correct, making joining a friend’s hard if they aren’t on or invites you. I hope they put in a clan search so I can finally join a friend in his clan and do a raid for once without dying to the first enemy alone.

Enemy Diversity

The game, to put it simply, doesn’t have much new enemies to fight, just the Cabal, the Fallen, the Hive and the Taken. Yes, technically the enemies are a different breed of such, but they are still the same kind of enemy types as the first game. There are some crazy redesigns and a very low list of new kinds of enemies in each enemy type, but there’s nothing more than that. This topic of the review will be short since this wouldn’t be worth three to four paragraphs of me talking about the enemies. As I said in the Beta Review, they focused a lot of the attention of designing each character on the Cabal. Of course they would because they are the main freaking enemy in the game, the killer of Light, the kind of thing that the first game didn’t hold. The only problem I have about that is how it shows. The Vex, Taken and Hive are pretty much the same kind of enemies as the first game, with barely any changes to them. The Fallen went through some noticeable changes that made them more interesting. They adapted as animals, so they have spider legs instead of a second pair of arms, so they like to crawl around instead of run. There is one new enemy type, which is the invisible enemies, being very creepy and edgy. The Cabal had a complete redesign, replacing the shield enemies with energy shield enemies, and have about two new types as far as I can see, being the Butchers and Flamethrower Legionaries. It kind of sucks for how much diversity there is in the enemies, having this feeling in your chest that makes you want to fight something new, but overall this can be easily ignore to the player, having no need to whine about it in the future.

Conclusion

Overall, this game is great, not perfect in every way and definitely has plenty of room to improve, but I would recommend this game. I know this was a long read and I think my editors won’t want to read this in one day or at all, but I enjoyed this. The game is pretty bad in some spots at it’s current state, but I hope the next update or DLC fixes most of the problems we face in the game. I enjoy it a lot and my dad loves everything about this game. It’s just beautiful to look at and is fun to play. Of course this game isn’t for all, but if you enjoy shooters with an insane amount of enemies, guns and gear, this game might be for you. I know there is a lot of people rating this game too high for its current state, almost hitting a 10/10, I think this game would deserve an 8.5 or 7. It is fun and is a great game all together, but it needs some improvements to earn a higher rating. I know my opinion doesn’t matter, but I just want to say it at least.

I hope you liked this read as much as I liked writing it, taking up to 11 pages on Docs, ‘til next time…

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Before You Buy...

About a month ago, I had a challenge due where you write about which two or more games would be wonderful together. Of course like the *** I am, I didn’t make an announcement about it to get more people on board with it. There were great entries to the challenge, but I still wish I saw more. I really feel bad that I didn’t announce it. Thanks for the entries though. I loved them a lot, especially the late ones. Those were fun. This time I’ll make sure this goes noticed by the community, so I hope people like this challenge. There are a lot of great games out there that were lost to time or forgotten because of a specific reason. Now to the challenge!

There are a lot of concept of horror and seeing that the gaming genre has used that concept to their advantage. I’ve seen games use a master AI that can tell the smart enemy AI where you are just so it can hunt you down in the most unpredictable way. Others have handicapped you, talking your vision and have you use echolocation to tell where you are and enemies hunting for you. I want to know what your guys’ ideas are on a new and original horror that may have some great mechanics no other has done before or take some key things in horror games that made the game special and mix it with another. I want to see you guys go crazy with this and I hope you guys enjoy this challenge. The deadline will be around the 21st of this month. Happy Halloween and I hope you have fun writing this challenge. ‘Til next time….

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P.S. You may ask questions if you please and don't forget to include the name "Game-Making Challenge" in your blog in some way

Falcon

I know I may come across as an FPS fan, loving anything that’s in the first person and shoots a gun, but my favorite genre is horror, and the one thing I know about horror is that it’s a difficult challenge to take as a developer. You have to cross new grounds to be able to make your game interesting or remotely scary. If it’s not done correctly the intended scary moments are laughed, and not in a good way. This can be troubling for a developer and his team because of how stressful it is, making them question whether the things they’re creating and coding are even going to do what they intended to the player. It’s a lot of hard work that can go to waste or do some damage to well known team or company. It has happened to the greatest I mean look at Monolith, they basically given up on the genre as far as I can see. Well, I want to talk about what makes a good horror game, listing off the ingredients for a truly frightening and fun game. Hello and welcome to this Game-Making Challenge of the Month.

Hinderince

Horror never makes you feel comfortable with your situation even if the monster is gone or out of reach, the game makes you worry and the one thing that makes the player worry even more is his incapabilities. In terms of movement, anything athletic is gone. All those things you’ve learned in CoD or Titanfall should go out the window once you start up a horror game. You aren’t an experienced soldier or Parkour runner, you’re a run-off-the-mill character that needs to get out of a killer’s situation. Running is an ability, but how fast you go is very slow, the player mustn’t, and I mean mustn’t be able to easily run away from a monster or something of that nature. That’s one critique I had about RE7. Being able to get away too easily from anything is going to be a utilized ability in the game, you want the player to use other mechanics in the area like hiding under the bed in a diseased ridden hospital room or behind a toppled table against a corner, these can easily be ignored if the player can just run circles around the monster. That just makes the monster look stupid. If you look at the game Alien Isolation, the player is not faster than the Alien nor is she faster than the survivors on the colonial vessel, she is an engineer like her mother and only knows the basics of tools and tech around her. That made the game very intense having the Alien spot you release this never before felt fear, watching that thing, in seconds, jump so fast at the player making him scramble to the next room. There was a sense of vulnerability in that moment that most games seem to ignore.

And on top of that, the game made guns feel like garbage. Why? Because that would have made the game easy. That’s another way to hinder the player, just make any sensible thing you can think of in that type of situation and make it feel like a Nerf Gun. Bringing out a knife is a risk, a gun only pushes or stagger the monster, even a freaking explosion doesn’t do Jack Daniels to the monster. Of course you can have a monster die in the game, but it would take lots of resources or ammo to do so. If you ever played Dead Space, the game makes the most awesome-looking weapons in the game feel so weak against the Necromorphs. Of course the player is able to kill them in large numbers, but they still stand as a difficult enemy. In that game there was also a low supply of ammo for each gun. You can be stocked up on ammo, but that takes up space for some other potential items like health kits or money to upgrade your weapons and other abilities. You can to think about what you should keep and what you need to protect yourself. There was also an ability that helped you when you didn’t have ammo to fire, you could pick things up and through it at them like a bullet, but it was difficult and slow on doing so, so there was a benefit and consequence. It made you vulnerable even though it was suppose to help you.

Difficulty

A lot of people think that a horror game should be hard in order for it to be scary, but that’s both true and false. If a game like Dead Space made you die constantly because it was suppose to be hard, it would be more annoying than scary. The difficulty would have to be regulated to the player’s ability, not being too hard, but still difficult. Not too easy because the game would be boring and funny instead of the intended feel of the game. That’s one thing that developers have a hard time with sometimes, making a game with some difficulty, but can still be passable is very hard to think about. I know it seems like a simple concept, but it takes up a lot of time to play test and see if it can be what you intended it to be. A lot of times the string of code that cues this and cues that will mess up and not happen. This puts many developers in time constraints and most likely have them stop trying. Not saying this is the case in a lot of games, but when you have a schedule that will happen just to shorten the work effort. This kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier where you would have to make sure everything is working right or even bypass with a smart AI. As I mentioned before about Alien Isolation, the player is given a lot of things to think about and the Alien AI is just something to be feared. If you ask me, most of the events (maybe almost %80-%90) of the game was not scripted. I mean the AI intended to scare you and kill you, but there is another AI that terrorizes you in that game called the Overseer. The Overseer is a master AI that watches and learns from the player and transfers that data to another AI smart, fast learning and quick AI. This can be harder to implement, but it’s easier to fix since it’s all there and the AI has no real presence in the game, so there won’t be much to be careful over, just making sure it does what it’s intended. No worrying about model glitches, AI bugs or even amped AI glitches where they do too much of what they’re suppose to.

For the short of it, you must make the game easy to learn and to bypass for the player, but still make it difficult. You never want an easy game because that seems lazy to your team and the company, nor do you want to have a hard game and become ignored in the marketplace from any new player or inexperienced players.

The Monsters

In a horror, the monster or monsters have to see feared in some way. They’re always disturbing, but you would have to make sure you put the right kind of disturbing on them. I know that seems kind of limited, but there is a lot of room for just one word. A monster can be anything disturbing: a pedofile can seem very creepy and have you want that person as far away as possible. It can be a Spiritual Demon that represents the character’s inner guilts and thoughts mortalized as this creepy looking freak of a monster. Anything disturbing can be anything you would find in nightmares, literal nightmares painted in a picture.

If you ever played Silent Hill or games by that developer, the monsters symbolize something about the character. Reason why they did that was because Silent Hill was their personal hell, trying to reveal all the wrongs they did in the past that they forgot or just have them try to figure out what they’ve already done to be there, creating this kind of sharp twist in story. I think the best way they did it was in Shattered Memories. The game had you answer deep questions that would change the game entirely and most importantly, the enemies appearance. They would look like destroyed feminine beauty that attacks you from behind if you chose to be a little sexual during the questions. Sometimes they would look like disgusting blobs of flesh because you chose strange answers to some questions. They made these enemies awesome in the game, always changing when you took the psychosis test. Impressive for its time and I’m surprised no one took advantage of it.

Besides their look, they would have to act very strangely. In Dead Space they made some move so… Weirdly for a lack of better words, and that movement was so inhuman. They would shake their heads like as if they were from Jacob’s Ladder, convulse their bodies making it seem like they’re breaking their backs and bones. It’s strange to see them do that and it builds the creepy factor in the monster. If you strive for something realistic, like a killer, trying to make the killer look large or just have him more capable than you are. You can hide his face or build some character in him, but the most effective thing about the killer is that he appears to be void of emotion. I can never see how that’s frightening, but it just creeps me and a lot of people out, just a man with a blank expression barrelling towards you. If you want to go realistically unsettling, you can have them be crazy, being able to bend their double jointed backs or remove something human off of them, like lips, eyelids or normal facial features. Something that seems unnatural for a human, but seems possible to the human body will convey the right image for the crazy killer look.

Audio, Music and Atmosphere

For the main finale, the most important thing about a horror, the feature that makes or breaks the experience: the audio. A lot of people forget about this when they think about a horror game, believing that the feeling comes from the experience alone than the music that builds it. I mean, monsters and atmosphere is one thing, but the sounds and orchestra that follows it helps build the both of those things more than you may believe. If you ever watch a scare in a movie, it’s mostly silent with a faint violin playing ear-rape in the background and once the scare comes in, the entire orchestra plays this maddening song that just frightens you and fills your mind with this intent anxiety. Imagine if all of that was gone, just the creaking wooden floor and some footstep, just complete silence that prepares you for the scare. Once that jump comes in, you just brush it off, no added emotion, nothing to keep you in that feeling. It just goes away and you go on with the next few scenes. In a horror movie, it matters more with music and slightly amped sounds, but for games, a special sound team has be present to make every feeling right and every cue convey the right emotion for the player, it takes more audio from your surroundings and more music to build that emotion even further. There was one old PC game I played when I was a kid that my dad loved watching me play. I wish I knew the game’s name, but whenever you knocked into an object, it would fall and a small team of violins would play for a few seconds, building an uneasy feeling for you. It had amazing sound design and every piece of it was a masterpiece to horror. Back to the subject, when you want to make the player feel on edge, make every sound loud. I know that sounds dumb to most, but it grabs the player more than a faint thud, make sure the player can hear it and see it, make sure that the player can get jumpscared by an empty paint can falling on the floor. Maybe follow it up with a pluck on the violin strings, just a simple pluck to get the player worried. Of course, you don’t want to do this frequently to the player, because it’s going to get old, only do that in an extended period of time just to worry the player later.

I know most indie horror games abuse this option a lot, but you have to trust me, if done right it’s gold. You don’t need to make it ear-rape either, just plucks on strings and small blows in the trumpets. You just have to make the music short and easy to listen to, but still convey the feeling of the situation. When the moment’s right, you can make a full song on a chase, boss battle, etc., just don’t abuse it. And a clear rule on this is to make sure it’s not some audible cue that’s just there to scare you for no reason, that’s just won’t make sense for the player and acts as conditioning for the player, so the planned scares won’t do as much as you may want them to. There is one rule before I go on, don’t use stock sound effects. I know it’s cheaper and requires little work to use them, but they drag the atmosphere done to the floor. It’s easier to make one person to do many sounds and mix them together to make a unique monster sound identifiable or jumpscares feel largely more refreshing. Now to the next part!

Atmosphere in a game is the canvas to a painting, it’s easily forgettable and can go without it, but it’s what makes the painting there. The Audio and the Music are what paint the on the atmosphere. The place around you has to convey this worried emotion in you that anywhere in this building, forest or area is going to bring out some danger. If you were to take out all sounds in a horror game like Amnesia, playing deaf for a second, the atmosphere is dropped down because there’s no sound to bring out this certain emotion, no small creepy moments of silence that take you off guard, just the room and the monster in it to bring out this emotion you’re suppose to feel. The atmosphere is important to the game and needs to be brought out in some great way so that the emotion can be exaggerated. Suspense can be a sudden push on the player, which both mediums I listed can used in. Music can be loud and sound like noise that brings the player in a disarray, the sounds can be loud, having crashing noises overlap the music, giving the player a warning that the monster is near. This can be used in chase scenes, boss battles or fights that take place, making the player not want that to happen again. You can also make the player gain anxiety through lots of audio cues in the game with music playing faintly in the background, having him go paranoid as he plays the game. I think Condemned has made that apparent in the game, having AI hide in corners just so they can whack you on the head with a 2x4. Through the entire game, you would check corners and watch for anything that sounded like footsteps. Music played very abruptly when that happened too, having the player panic for a moment as they adjust to the crazy hobo in the room wanting to kill you. You just have to create some kind of layer of music or sound on any proper moment, it really makes the moment better than it would without it and makes the game somewhat memorable.

Well, that’s my idea of a great horror game. I hope you enjoyed this entry and the challenge (if you’re doing it) and don’t worry, if you’re late you can still do it by the end of the month. It is a monthly challenge after all. The next challenge will become public around the beginning week of November, so be ready when the time comes! Again I hope you enjoyed this and ‘til next time…

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Felix

Last month’s challenge was scarce to say the least, but we had one entry by Haley Shipley that was actually interesting, check it out. Anyways, I can see why it was so scarce in the entries, seeing that it asked for something too specific, which doesn’t give so much freeroam for the writer. This time I’m going to make it more freeroam than usual and I hope you guys like it.

September’s challenge was about mixing two games together and see what comes up. There were some greats that came of it. One of them being a very good addition of a creative Zelda idea. The one I want is what two genres would mix well. Do you think a platformer would be a good work space for a shooter? Or do you think a Puzzle game would be a great playground for a racing game? I want to see some crazy pieces of work, so don’t be shy to do the impossible. As a challenge, I only have one rule for you guys to follow: please explain to us why it would work. Don’t just tell me that it would work, tell us why it would make a great hit for the players out there. Explain the mechanics, the gameplay it would have, what elements that would make this a good one-timer or have lots of replayability, tell us everything that you think would make this genre mash-up seem interesting. I want to hear your guy’s ideas, so be creative about this one. Good luck on this one, the deadline is the 28th of this month, Happy Thanksgiving and ‘til next time…

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P.S. You may ask questions if you please and don't forget to include the name "Game-Making Challenge" in your blog in some way

#NationalPaskintiDay

The challenge I put in front of the community was to write about which two genres should fit. It’s a fun thing to think about and a challenge since there were so many genre mixes already made. It’s hard to think of one that was already done and possibly harder than I anticipated; it basically made me do September’s challenge instead, mixing two games together. Well, I hope the challenge goes well with you guys, so here’s mine for the time being. It took me a while to brainstorm this, but when I was with a friend showing her the wonderful Co-op of Portal, we began to race the puzzles like as if we were on a timer. We both had the same idea and she asked if there was a puzzle race mode. There wasn’t, but that got me thinking, were there any puzzle racing games? Would that be fun with friends and people around the globe to test their mindful skills of puzzle solving? I actually had to scroll through the internet if that existed and nothing but fastest 10,000+ piece puzzle record! So I brainstormed what the game would be like. Hello and Welcome to this Game-Making Challenge!

Rough Idea

Basically the game would have four players start with a top view of a room with a basic puzzle in it like matching images up with three petistoles. Once the players finish the puzzle, they will proceed to a randomly generated room with a graduated number of puzzles. Of course, the game won’t have you start with something easy and they throw you right in the mix of the expert puzzles. The point is that no two players will have the same puzzle room. And to not make the player feel claustrophobic, the room will be in random sizes and shapes to mildly confuse the player. The puzzles themselves, however, have to be mildly simple, but still challenging. It requires focus to do them and it’s easy for someone to do that, but being distracted will put you off from the game. This is just to make the racing part fun instead of the usual frustration most people have. I want this game be playable to almost everyone, including kids.

I would love to play this game both Locally and Online, it’s something I want to see people gather for and enjoy as a party game. The ideal platforms for the game would have to be both console and PC, because it’s a great family game and perfect for friends and PC would make a great platform for people to Modify the game to their creative thinking. That would actually make it really open to a large community… Hmm… Never thought that would a thing I’d think about.

Modes of Interest

The game would have different modes to explore, having the simple ones being Casual, Ranked and Custom. Casual and Ranked would be a chance to challenge yourself with random people, Custom having people of different variety of skill, while Ranked will be the ideal place to test your skills from your rank. Obviously. The other points of interest on the modes would be Puzzle Attack.

Puzzle Attack would be like a mixture of Mario-Kart and Tetris Attack, as you go through the rooms of puzzles, players will find special puzzles marked in either red or blue. They would be hard and in a time limit, but if you finished it in time, you would be able to stump your friend with added puzzles to finish the room. There is no end to the rooms you finish, so the winner would be determined with the amount of rooms he finished in a 5 minute period. Another would be Finish Line, where you can select the amount of rooms to race in, and finish those twenty or ten or so rooms to finish the round. There would be no time limit, but special puzzles can be used to stump players, although that could be disabled. Then there’s Marathon, a mode where the last man standing wins. Each player is given an individual time limit which starts at two minutes. The player can gain time by finishing the room within 10 or less second and finishing special puzzles (which don’t affect other players) giving them at least 15 seconds. Each puzzle solved can stack the time earned by five seconds, but can only stack up to a minute. The player with the lasting time limit wins the match.

Leveling-Up

Leveling would be mostly a cosmetic thing, a badge to show your friends, but going beyond certain levels would have player get cosmetic items like hats, suits or characters that reference other puzzle games out there as well as map design. Other than that, Leveling would also determine who you would play with in Ranked Matches. I hate the idea of Lootboxes, so this would help give the player some cosmetics and maps to design.

Beside the players leveling up, there would be Courses as well. The courses will all have it’s own look to it, like being in a Temple from Egypt or an Alien Spaceship. And as you go through each course, each one would be more difficult than the last. The player would unlock these course as he levels, having each one carry more puzzles or harder to solve puzzles in each one.

Well this is my challenge entry for this month. I hope you liked it and tell anything you think I need to fix. I wish you a late Thanksgiving and I hope you had a great a great one. I really don’t know what will happen to the next challenge seeing it’s the holidays where you have to spend time with family and friends, so I’ll make sure this next challenge ends short. Again, I hope you liked this entry and ‘til next time…

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