Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
One that I made a point to go see first as it just looked so good, and even though we went straight upstairs we were still stood in the queue for about 2 hours... 2 hours well worth the wait to play this for 15 minutes! It is fantastic and was a lovely little insight to what this game could be in the full version, which was only a few days away from when we went, and I must say I do now own the game, so its obvious the demo was worth it. It highlighted lots of the key things that you can do in the land of Mordor but mainly showed off the environment. They are beautiful and so well designed showing the world in which Uruk live, which isn't that pleasant, but hey, they have to live somewhere.
The overall game play was also really nice and had very interesting movement elements. Its very much a you-can-doing-anything-you-want approach, by which I mean I you want to do stealth you can, if you want to rush right into the heart of battle which 25 Uruk you can, but good luck my friend, as they are blooming difficult to defeat. Its very much Batman: Arkham City combat as you can chain up a combo to like 100 very easily, but to begin with where you have no special moves, makes it very difficult but this is what makes it great. You have to almost work your way up the Mordor ladder and gain knowledge about the Uruk you are fighting to learn their strengths and weaknesses which is a beautiful touch. There is also the hierarchy system of the Uruk's that change and shift as you not only slay them but they challenge each other and if one of them kills you they can be promoted and challenge other Uruk, which is fantastic because even things that don't involve you in the world makes them stronger. This is also the way to defeat the Warchiefs, you should defeat the Uruk that are under them who act as their body guard, as its much easier to them go after them when the lesser Uruk isn't their as well. Overall this game is brilliant and definitely worth the money, and even the trip to London to play it as it has so much to offer and so much game play even though there are only 20 main mission altogether.
Bloodborne
This game was actually a bit of a disappointment for me, but then again maybe it just wasn't my kind of game. I loved the H P Lovecraft look to it, and it really did look beautiful, but I guess you have to be a Dark Souls fan to like this kind of game. I loved the initial start to the demo where you get to explore and find things in the starting point, but did take me rather a long time to be able to figure out where to go next. There were many gates leading into other areas, all of them locked or inaccessible from where I was, also I did not see a well hidden ladder until I had been stood in this small (and I mean it, it was tiny) area for about 15 minutes, of walking around. As soon as I found it, I felt like an utter idiot as it had taken me so long. Climbed the ladder, there was an enemy at the top, went up and 3 more appeared, died instantly. Kind of disappointing as this is where the demo ends.. as soon as you die.
Kind of annoying when you have been stood in a queue for 45 minutes waiting to play it, but yeah. Even if I had played on, the initial loosing my way had already kind of made my mind up. Having said that I did like the art style, it was all very mystical, and you could choose from 4 different classes with different weapons, maybe if I stop choosing rogue-types and go with heavy armour I may make it further in these games. The game looks great, I just don't think I could bring myself to play it, I would get so frustrated with the deaths.
The Order: 1886
Again, another game that did slightly disappoint for me. Apart from the fact that once again I got stuck in a room for 10 minutes I did enjoy the time I played on this. So once again I felt rather stupid to be stuck in this room which this glowing object, which of course would make you think that it has something to do with that, but of course all I had to do was go over to a beam blocking a door and press the action button to move it. Stupid distracting glowy things.
But that aside what a beautiful game, the cut scene seemed to merge seamlessly into the the game play and the character design and environments that are set in olden London as stunning and really make you feel like your living the game. My only problem was the gun I was given to use. Apparently the character ultimate death machine doesn't do aiming and only fires out around 20 bullets in a strange circle around the enemy and like one bullet manages to hit him in the foot. It was definitely infuriating, especially when the only other option is to first shoot some kind of bullet of liquid and then use the 20 bullet circle to burst it and set fire to them, something which acts like an RPG shot, which does not appeal to me. When given the option in the game to use an RPG or a pistol, sniper or simple rifle I will never pick an RPG, sure it does loads of damage but I like to be accurate, and that was something that wasn't possible in this demo so it really did fall short for me.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
This was a strange one, as I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It obviously wasn't part of the series that they are currently developing, which was a shame as I really want Tomb Raider 2 to come out like now! But this was more like a bad Diablo III. It was an isometric view on the 4 characters and as soon as I didn't get to be Lara I kind of didn't want to play it anymore. There were puzzles to solve, but they were simple and didn't offer much challenge, also it was infuriating playing with 2 people you didn't know and where bad at it as it made your experience worse. If it had just been me and Stuart it may have been better, but the graphics were mediocre and didn't offer much in level design and just wasn't very exciting, not to mention the isometric nature makes jumping onto ropes and ledges very difficult as you can't line yourself up very well.
Adventure Box
Then we come onto the Indie games, which I thoroughly enjoy playing as they are so diverse and can offer so much in terms of game play, but it didn't really get off to a great start with Adventure Box as it pretty much was just a straight up Minecraft copy. It used the same blocky nature and creativity that Minecraft does and doesn't really have that much more to offer. Although it was in very early Alpha and didn't even have a playable demo, it wouldn't have really been my kind of game. It just seemed very basic and didn't have a lot of imagination behind it, as I could have gone downstairs and played Minecraft and probably have enjoyed it more.
Mendal's Farm
This was a very strange game, but I actually really enjoyed the idea of it and the simple gameplay that I had a go at. Its a very simple concept that mixes up a game of Farmville with genetics and you can create some pretty crazy things. I already quite enjoy games like this where but where you don't have to wait a certain amount of hours for something to develop or hatch an egg like Farmville or newer games like Hayday. This game seemed to do this differently and there were no micro-transactions present, that I could see anyway, which made it heaven as it looked like that kind of game. It was a simple concept that involved building up a farm and buying animals, crops and so on and then breeding them to make more, the twist with this is that they are very weird looking animals and have almost alien features, feathers in all the wrong places, antenna and strange features that farm yard animals shouldn't have, but I really liked the look of it especially the cartoon and stylised look, I feel that once out of beta it could really kick off and be something great!
Never Alone
What an absolutely brilliant little game that we found here. Never Alone is purely about two player co op which is something that I believe all games should be! It features a girl and her arctic fox that helped each other get through the dangers of the Arctic by themselves and purely working together as a team to overcome everything. It reminded me a lot of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, in the art style and how light paced but sincere it felt. It was beautifully mesmerising and I wish I had been playing it alone with Stuart in a quiet room so that I could have appreciated every tone of music that accompanied it as it just looked beautiful. The art style was also beautiful and the game seemed to float along and carry you on a journey between these two characters so that you can learn their relationship and where they are going and what they are doing. It just seemed to be one of those games that you'd want to play to relax at the end of a stressful day and it really made me happy to play even though you saw the terrors of the arctic trying to capture them. Definitely something I want to get when it comes out in November.
Poncho
This was a brilliant little game that really reminded me Fez due to its very stylised pixel art look and then fact that its called Poncho and the characters wears a poncho.. (Fez, the character wears a fez...) but it did have a very unique style to it and played very well, unless you hit a bug as it was a very early playable alpha. But what I experienced was very nice. It was based around playing in 2D planes but you could access another 2D plane in front of you and one further back making it slightly more 3D, a bit like Fez does with its different cube sides. But this means that you can teleport between the 3 planes to be able to navigate the environment, which was very well designed and had a really nice feel to it. The game did lack something for me and that could have been the fact that I kept think about Fez when playing it and maybe because it did have a lot of bugs, which is obviously expected. The game was on kickstarter and had about 3 days left when were at EGX to get funding but has since failed so this could have possibly been the only chance anyone got to play it.
Quest of Dungeons
This was a very nice little game that I played. It is already out on Steam which does make it very interesting and exciting to know that I could play it again as I did enjoy the look to it. This rogue-like dungeon crawler is what I look for in Indie games and I really enjoyed this fast turn based combat system that they had in place. The game is meant to be turn based and can be played slowly but it did have the capabilities to be played faster meaning that it doesn't feel sluggish and slow. It had a really nice pixel art style to it and had the ability to be edited so you could pick the number of floors and other options meaning that you could play just a quick game if you didn't have the time for a longer one. I really like the upgrades and customisation of it as well and think it might have to go onto my Steam wishlist soon as it keeps playing on the back of my mind and how interesting it was.
Omega Agent
The last game that we played left me on such a high for being the final one that we played. It was Omega Agent but used the Oculas Rift! I was so excited as when we got there I saw the queue for the Oculas Rift twisting round the stand about 70 times and just couldn't bring myself to stand in it for 300 hours, but when we found this with only 2 people in the queue, brilliant! When we got to the front it was such a surreal experience. The ability to create a virtual world around you is such an interesting thing and due to the fact that the game was clever in making it a jetpack experience with two points of a controller in front of you in the helicopter it doesn't feel weird the fact that your holding a controller as it feels like its meant to be there.
Now be warned, this machine should come with a sickness alert and anyone like me who gets travel sick should approach with caution as it is very nauseating. But this aside I still really enjoyed it. The world that you flew around was rather simple but worked well for what it was trying to achieve and I really like the brightness and art style of the small town you flew around. I would like to see more games like this being released for the Oculas as they work so well and can be developed so easily. Its a really nice experience.
But, what made this experience so worth while is the fact that while Stuart was playing I got chatting with one of the developers and it turned out he was an environmental designer too so I instantly took the opportunity to show him some of my work, and he took me to see Barry Meade from their company Fireproof Games. This was an amazing opportunity and he gave me some good feedback on my work and wants me to send him some more to look at so that he can see the environment as a whole and not just a small picture from my tablet. He advised me to start looking more at photographs of nature and dirt so I could see what they actually looked like and also focus on lighting as well to be able to add in more detail to an environment which was such good feedback as it is something that I can now start to work on in my work and improve it even further.
No comments:
Post a Comment