inFamous Second Son vs. Mass Effect

Happy first post of 2015! and with it being the first post of the new year, I am going to absolutely do the same content as always! Surprise! Well here's a breakdown of inFamous for no real reason.

InFamous Second Son was the game that Playstation had managed to release exclusively early in the release of the PS4 that really displayed the power of the PS4 and the extent of exclusives PlayStation had at the time. And this game was pretty darn good. The graphics are high fidelity and you can pull off huge amounts of damage and explosions in game that all look brilliant. The game play is solid with all of the abilities and upgrades making the game diverse. But with that all, I want to talk about one of the staples of inFamous games which is the Hero/inFamous choice decisions. This is because one of my other favourite games, Mass Effect 2, also had this system, being the Paragon/Renegade system. The difference being, the two games handled the system very differently. 

In both games, you play the game normally, but in several plot moments you choose to do something good or do something bad and this will affect your character’s morale alignment. Doing a lot of bad things like kicking babies will make you evil and doing a bunch of helping granny’s cross the street will make you good. This varies the game play in both Mass Effect and inFamous Second Son, but in much different ways. In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard would be more of an A-hole or hero in dialogue with other characters, allowing him to make decisions he could not have made if he was neutral. In InFamous, not only does your character change, but you can then unlock new abilities in game play that give you more options in combat (such as more AoE damage as evil and more precision damage as hero) which I would argue makes the game significantly different compared to Mass Effect. 

This is a great example of narrative storytelling vs. game play story telling. The hero/villain aspects in Mass Effect only affect the narrative of the game, whereas the hero/villain aspects of inFamous affects the game play. This tells me that the experiences made in inFamous are much more valuable to establishing your character than the narrative. This is because you can show a player who he is or let him be who he wants to be, and the second option is much more effective at establishing a character. This needs to be implemented in more games and I feel although this was a short post I’ve left at least one person thinking about this topic.

TellTale Game Of Thrones SpoilerFest

So with the recent release of Telltale's Game of Thrones hitting digital shelves a little while back, I figured I might discuss it in a Breakdown. Beware, I spoil everything you love in this post.Game of Thrones is most likely the more well known of the IP's Telltale has used since the success of the books and more infamously, the TV show, was the basis for the game. The story in the game directly parallels the TV show in the middle seasons and references several times the events of the TV show along with having several characters from the show, portrayed in Telltale style. The story does follow the classic Telltale style of narrative, which is make you feel as bad as possible, and then when you are finally starting to cheer up. make you feel more sad. It is really a a roller coaster of emotion that leaves you stunned and confused. Now with all these emotions and sadness, AND the fact that this is a completely narrative game means that there is spoilers so...

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES AND GAME OF THRONES TELLTALE GAME AHEAD, DO NOT READ BECAUSE EVERYONE DIES!

Even with the boiler plate out of the way, I still feel I need to say just how many deaths and plot twists happen in this game. George R. R. Martin is infamous for his killing of characters and the Telltale game does not let up on the death. You play many characters in this game, those characters all revolving around the house Forrester in Game of Thrones, the banner men to the Starks. You play as Gared Tuttle, the squire to the lord of house Forrester, who was given a message by the lord on his last dying breath during the raid at the Red Wedding. This message then gets delivered to the squire's uncle, who is an advisor to the new lord, and another playable character, Ethan Forrester, who is a young boy who was abruptly given the title of lord. You have to make grave decisions, including choosing who will be your advisor and who you will ask help of, because you need to look after your house, which is in constant danger of being destroyed by other houses looking for power. You even need to ask help of Mira Forrester, who is currently in King's Landing being handmaiden to Margaery Tyrell, who is currently marrying Joffrey Lannister, the king of Westeros. With Mira you need to ask help and even have the option of stealing other people's things for profit all while staying loyal and impressing the other Lannisters (including Peter Dinklage) Really the whole game starts off on a sad note with the deaths of many characters and throughout the game you have the option of killing people and are sometimes forced to. This is all pretty tame by Telltale standards, since the Walking Dead had death galore. And just like the Walking Dead, the main character gets killed off as a plot point. Wait...

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE WALKING DEAD GAMES!

Sorry 'bout that. Well, anyway, at the end of the first chapter, the main competition of the Forresters and seemingly main antagonist to everybody Ramsay Snow, kills Ethan and takes his sibling hostage. This sets the tone for seemingly the rest of the game. The game does have the benefit of making none of the characters except for the ones who don't die in the show yet able to die at any point as they would in the show or books. With that said, it is very good to have previous knowledge of the Game of Thrones mythos before playing this game, as it both helps you understand the plot a little more and can give you possible foresight to the future plot points of the game (Joffrey is still alive for example) With all of that out of the way the game has a very solid and very compelling narrative that I personally enjoyed. The art style of the game is going for a more watercolor theme than the cell shaded normality Telltale is known for. This brings the game into the more uncanny valley territory where characters from the TV show don't quite look normal. it also brings a lot of graphical errors as the depth of field effects will often blur out and make the immediate background jagged and unrefined. This makes the game look a little rough around the edges but I feel the art style was more appropriate to the world of Game of Thrones.

All in all I would recommend this game if you have read the books or have watched the television show as it really draws from both sources and adds a whole lot to the narrative. I would say for the low price point it is worth the dough.

A Dark Room & Unfolding Games

You wake up. Your head is throbbing and your vision is blurry. You see a fire on the other side of the room you are in. You light the fire. This is the beginning of a great adventure.


A Dark Room by Doublespeak games is a very interesting beast. It is a game made for browser and iOS using java and HTML. The game is of a genre only known as a "folding" game. This means the longer you play the game, the more features and game play is revealed. The folding game genre is heavily reliant on waiting and slow progression mixed with eventual discovery to drive the player to continue playing the game. This makes the player want to play the game simply because they want to know what mechanic or feature is going to be revealed next. This is not unique to games as other games have attempted and very rarely successfully managed to make waiting interesting (Farmville, many Facebook and iOS games) but a folding game like A Dark Room doesn't try and make the waiting in itself exciting. In fact, it does quite the opposite. The game makes the waiting boring, agonising. The game makes you hate the waiting, but makes the end goal of the waiting, which is that primal discovery. Even finding just one little hint that there is something more than what you are currently playing makes the player anxious to continue. But I think I have reached the limit as too what I can talk about without actually talking about the story.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR A DARK ROOM AHEAD, READ AT OWN DISCRETION!

Like I said earlier, A Dark Room is slow. This isn't just in game play, but in story. The game reveals very little to you early on and continues with the mystery until the very end. The story told to you in the beginning is that you woke up in a dark room (surprise, surprise) with a burnt out fire and a mysterious woman. You light the fire and are immediately caring to the woman, in the same we she is caring to you. The woman tells you she can build things like houses and traps and you have to gather materials like wood and furs for her so she can build them. This introduces the new mechanic of gathering materials which has a progress bar that fills, allowing you to gather materials when full. When you gather the materials to build houses, people start to take residence in them, giving you resources over time relevant to what job they have in the village which you can assign to either a gatherer or hunter. By building traps you gain another progress bar to check the traps and gather furs. You eventually can build a trading post, which allows you to trade furs for other resources needed to build like scales and cloth. You are then able to build structures like tanneries in order to make leather and such. These structures give you extra job positions to give your villagers that have them use other resources like furs to make leather. You then are given the opportunity to buy a map in the trading post. Upon buying it, you are given an extra option that is one of the most fundamental parts to game play, exploring.

Exploring lets you venture out into the wilds around your village from a top down map view. You have a food and water levels that deplete slowly for every space you move, meaning you have to come back to your village or starve to death, In these wilds you are exploring are bushes and trees and paths, all displayed through ASCII art (using letters) and when you travel through the wilds, enemies will randomly attack you, sending you into combat. Combat consists of an RTS variant of turn-based combat. This once again constitutes the waiting mechanic as both you and your opponent have progress bars that can be tapped/clicked when full to attack (the opponent auto-attacks) This is the combat in the beginning, but you can eventually get weapons that do more damage, armour to take more hits, and water/food containers to travel further. You also loot enemies or building when finished with them. You take their items and can then use them. You have to watch out, though, because you have a very Fallout-type inventory that can hold a certain amount of weight, and better items tend to weigh more. This exploration mechanic is very important to the game as it allows you to know explore and discover at a more controlled pace. There is still a lot of waiting, but now you can explore the map faster or slower depending on how confident you are. The game now starts to expand on the narrative, not only revealing character traits of the protagonist through his interaction with the mysterious girl and his villagers (whom later he calls slaves), all the while giving you items that are very interesting and mysterious, but you have to wait to use them to their full extent

So I think I have competently explained the mechanics and narrative of this game. And in doing so I now hope to talk about the second half of the title, Unfolding games. I brushed over the subject before, but i want  to go more in depth in how these games vary from triple A games of today. The games that are released yearly, let's use the example Call of Duty, vary from unfolding games because of the differences even in the first ten minutes of the game. The first ten minutes of A Dark Room consist of huddling around a fire and next to no game play. The first ten minutes of Call of Duty is usually an action packed romp through whatever setting the game has chosen, explaining all of the game play features and narrative in one big tutorial. The tutorial is meant to tell you everything, so that the game can use the mechanics it's taught you and hopefully expand upon them. Unfolding games have no tutorial as the whole game tells you how to play it simply by throwing you in the game and expecting you to know. Yet while this works in A Dark Room, if the next Assassin's Creed did this it would be crucified. This is in part because an unfolding game gives you the game play in bite-sized portions, and the next AC game will most definitely have a million and one game play features. Yet I think that games with tons of features can learn to teach game play through game play instead of tutorials. in fact a good example of that is in Mega Man X, which you can watch here. The game doesn't tell you how to play so much as you figure it out in a learning scenario. This can be a great asset to games nowadays, as instead of a "Press A to jump" tutorial, games can learn to teach you fluidly.

So I hope this post was informative and makes you want to play A Dark Room. The game is on iOS and browser, and you can find the browser version here. So go check that out and hopefully have fun. And if you enjoyed this post, be sure to leave a comment below and tell me what you think of Unfolding games.

Spec Ops The Line & Ludo-Narrative Dissonance

Just about everyone who plays video games has either played or heard of the modern military shooters like Counter Strike that have been popular since the first Call of Duty released in 2003. Since then many games have expanded upon and, well to be honest, glorified the military as we view it today. We have seen the best of the military and just how powerful and action-packed it can be. But very rarely do we see the worst of the military, the things that we can only tell stories about. And even more rarely does a game pull it off without seeming "preachy" or "anti-government," So when a game like Spec Ops: The Line hit shelves it was a fresh look at an often overused subject.

In most people's minds, games where you shoot people like (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc) the game usually gives you a reason either through the game play or the narrative to indeed, shoot people. The reason can either be "They are terrorists trying to kill innocent people" or even such things as "They killed your wife and family, kill them" but in any scenario you are usually the good guy doing the right thing by killing people. The main difference in narrative and game play that Spec Ops: The Line uses is that you are not killing people that are inherently evil or need to be killed, you are killing other soldiers in a scenario where only one of you will survive. This brings us to the plot of the game.

WARNING--- SPOILERS FOR SPEC OPS: THE LINE ---WARNING

The plot of Spec Ops is very similar in structure and delivery to most modern military shooters that we have today, but the story itself is very different. You play as Martin Walker, a Captain in the American military who has been sent with a squad of two other people to rescue Colonel John Konrad and the "Damned 33rd" Battalion that was trapped and presumed dead in Dubai, where massive dust storms have destroyed and collapsed most of the city. Once you enter the city you find insurgents that attack you, forcing you to kill them, moving forward to try and find the 33rd. You do find the 33rd, who have declared martial law and have started killing civilians and have engaged in a war with the CIA sent previously to rescue them. With this discovery you also find Konrad, who is leading the 33rd and overseeing their war crimes. Walker and his team end up in the middle of the battle between CIA and the 33rd, being forced to kill American soldiers in order to survive. Walker then starts experiencing hallucinations and in fact has hallucinated most of the events of the second half of the game. During these hallucinations it is revealed in fact that Walker has regretted the actions he has taken and that he is as much to blame for the deaths of civilians as the 33rd is. The game manages to perfectly deliver the story and makes you feel horrible for the actions you are taking. There are also decisions you must make throughout the game that revolve around either saving civilian or military personnel, and makes you question who's life is more valuable if both are innocent.

Now that I have recapped the plot, I can finally talk about the main point of this post, or in other words, the confusing term in the title, Ludo-narrative dissonance. This may sound like a word only meant in a university Language Arts term paper it simply means a conflict between a game's plot and its game play. This term is mainly used in a derogatory connotation, as in when a game mechanic or level directly contradicts the plot, pulling you out of the game and ruining immersion. I, however, would disagree and say that the ludo-narrative dissonance in Spec Ops: The Line actually immerses the player more, as the game's plot actively makes you feel horrible for slaughtering soldiers, whereas the game play promotes the killing. The way that the enemies will swarm in waves like lambs to the slaughter, and the tool tips on loading screens tell you things such as "enemies will only drop their weapons when executed" or "grenade launchers can kill several enemies in one area" suggest that the game indeed wants you to kill the enemies and use the most brutal ways to do so. This is very interesting that a game would specifically contradict itself in order to drive its story home.

 The enemies in Spec Ops: The Line are very different from other enemies, not only in the way that they are told through the story, but how they are presented through the game play. The soldiers you are fighting, as I have explained several times, are soldiers. And while they are fighting you and you are killing them, they are not enemies. Think about other FPS military shooters. Who are the main villains in these games? Middle Eastern terrorists, Russian terrorists, or Chinese/Korean terrorists most of the time. Can you see the pattern here? I talked in the beginning of this post about how most modern shooters give you a reason to kill the enemies you're killing. The way that they do this is by demonising and dehumanisation. This is because for a player to want to kill someone, they have to believe they are doing the right thing by doing so. Demonising is making the enemy seem evil in some way so that the player feels they are eliminating evil, making the player inherently good. Dehumanisation is making the enemy not seem human or trying to remove sympathy for the enemy, so that the player doesn't question why they are killing the people they are killing. This isn't just in games however, even way back in WWII and many other battles in history, both sides have to both demonise and dehumanise their enemy in order to make their soldiers actually want to fight. Even in modern America, the government is associating these Middle Eastern extremist groups as evil so that people will want to join the military to stop this evil. This is the same as in just about every FPS. The thing that truly separates the enemies in Spec Ops from normal FPS enemies other than the narrative constantly telling you "killing people is bad" is that in most combat situations in Spec Ops, you are the one to shoot first, often hearing enemies having casual dialogue or in the first level just trying to talk to you before you end up firing upon them. This not only drives that you are the instigator, but makes the enemies have entirely different motives to fighting you. They are trying to kill you not because they are evil, but because in their eyes you are evil and they are simply trying to stay alive. This brings me to the sentence that might just summarise the last several paragraphs of writing you have had to wade through. "Evil is in the eye of the beholder" This is saying that in Spec Ops: The Line, there is no clear enemy, as you are as evil to the enemies as they are evil to you. It is not a battle of good vs. evil, it is a battle of two equally flawed and equally righteous in their cause enemies.

After having read this, I hope that i have at least piqued your interest in Spec Ops: The Line as it is a very good game. Many people will say that the game is bad either because of the game play or the way the story is conveyed, but to anyone who has played a modern military shooter, it takes the genre and flips it on its head. This is why I would highly recommend Spec Ops: The Line to anyone looking for a story that can truly show you the horrors of war and it's consequences.

GTA V Just Got Better

When I heard that GTA V was getting a remake, I jumped on that hype train and rode it to release. But are some new features and a graphics update worth the purchase of the game twice? Well let's find out.

GTA V was originally released October 2013, and quickly rose to the fastest selling piece of electronic media to date. With the release of the new generation of consoles; however, Rockstar decided to rerelease the game with reinvented graphics and new features. It also added the new first person camera, which was a highly anticipated change from the normal third person view the series is known for. While this sounds like Rockstar just trying to make it's install base play the same game twice, they did add the ability to transfer your GTA Online character over to the new generation along with all of their stats and money. This really enticed me to make the switch as i knew I wasn't going to have to sink any more hours leveling my character up. But the most impressive thing to me was the graphics. The graphics of this game were already impressive on last gen, and with the overhaul of new textures and rendering capabilities the game looks magnificent. The way that water moves dynamically and the city streets are crawling with traffic and people just immerses you so much in the world that it is very easy to get lost in the ever changing  story Rockstar is trying to tell.

Along with the graphical overhaul I may as well get into the new first person mode. The game already played very fluidly so the new perspective doesn't look as natural in your movements as your character is constantly moving very erratically instead of fluidly transitioning from jog to sprint. Don't get me wrong though, the game is still as immersive as whatever first person loses in fluidity it gains in pure immersion as you see everything through the eyes of your character, making everything from shooting cops to piloting a chopper much more visceral and enthralling as you can now look down sights and play the game more like a FPS. It also adds to the interactivity being able to look around the inside of whatever cockpit or driver's seat you're in. One of the best additions to the game is definitely the PS4 controller support. It allows you to swipe up or down o change radio stations or quick throw a grenade by swiping up while aiming

As with the new content, all of the previous DLC is already in the game provided you have a constant internet connection (which was very much a problem for me last week) and all future content should support the new additions to the game like increased multiplayer player cap. There is new content coming out soon as well (HEISTS!) and all new guns and clothing added in already like the new rail gun (explosive round rifle) and such gruesome tools as a hatchet. With the new content also comes new missions to do to unlock some of the content. I don't want to spoil them as they are pretty darn cool but I will say the new car the Duke O' Death is the best vehicle and has the funniest way to get it.

So with all that in mind I would absolutely recommend buying the game again as it utilizes the new consoles features and adds a whole bunch of new content. So if you're looking for a reason to buy a next gen console, the new GTA update might just be on the list.

The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth: The Breakdown

If there are any games that can make a person more angry and tormented than rogue-like shooters, I have not heard of or ever want to play that genre. The game I am breaking down coincidentally happens to be one of these shooters.     *sigh*
The first thing that I have to say about this game is that even though I mainly played this on PS4, it was in fact first a flash game and made by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl in 2011 that quickly built up a devout following and became a classic indie hit along with Super Meat Boy and Fez. The Rebirth remake of this game, which was released in November 2014, was made with a much bigger team and included a lot of new content including new playable characters, items and enemies. It also changed the art style from the "drawn" style of flash to a more suitable 16-bit style of graphics, but I'll get in to that later.

Before I can explain the art style I do need to explain the story in order to give the art some context. The story of this game is indeed very crazy and deals with very adult topics ranging from abortion to infanticide. The story; however, is broken up as the game's levels are broken up because of the randomly generated nature of the in-game dungeons and the story is in fact more told by the game play and the art than the explicit story sections of the game. The game that is told you is that you play as Isaac, an infantile child who is all but ignored by his religious mother until she receives a message from "God" telling her to kill Isaac, much like the tale of Isaac and Abraham from the Bible. Isaac overhears his mother's plotting and escapes into the house's decrepit basement, establishing the setting of the game. The rest of the story and background information are revealed to the player through transitional loading screens and through the various enemies and bosses throughout the game. This is in fact a very creative way to tell game play and rather diversifies the story from most triple A games that have come out in recent memory. The minimal amount of story also compliments the rogue-like aspects of the game, as you will be playing this game in different "runs" or lives that will last varying lengths before you inevitably die and have to restart the game from the start in true rogue-like fashion. As much as the story goes your goal is to reach the bottom of the basement and defeat your mother to unlock 1 of 13 possible endings, but there are levels and story given after this point that will vary from run to run.

The game play of this game falls into the mechanics used in the rogue-like genre. You start the game with the goal of going down through dungeons into the seemingly final boss dungeon. You start off the game as a literal naked baby with a low amount of life and a weak attack of shooting tears at enemies. The game's dungeons are randomly generated with random rooms containing upgrades and abilities and sinister enemies and bosses that will fight you. To beat a dungeon you need to defeat that floor's boss using whatever abilities and upgrades you have found. This will then unlock the next floor down with no way of getting back up. On certain floors there are also rooms containing gambling games or shops and special Deals with the Devil, where you lower your life bar for upgrades. As you progress, Isaac becomes more powerful with either more health or an upgraded attack or even a familiar that fights with you in battle. Throughout the game you will also be given bombs, which can be used to either blow open a wall Legend of Zelda style or destroy rocks blocking your path. There are also keys, which can be used to unlock doors or chests that contain special items. There are also coins, which are used to gamble or spend on items such as hearts or bombs. The game does have very in-depth item and ability systems that make it both unique and enjoyable. The boss battles and the inadvertent stories that they tell are also quite remarkable in how fun and diverse they can be. The final result, in which you either die or defeat the final boss, is amazing in how different your Isaac is in his appearance. And even after defeating the final boss there is an infinite amount of dungeons after that not only leading to incredible amounts of replayability but the ability to be immersed in the challenging and creative worlds.

The final segment of this here Breakdown will be covering visuals and sound. The actual fidelity of Rebirth on both PC and PS4 are actually staggeringly good, with the 16-bit graphics style lending to a stable 60fps. The art style is very beautiful in the way that all of the enemies and levels thematically merge into an immersive world and a beautiful game. The music in this game also just adds to the immersion with eerie and fitting tracks to go along with the general creepy theme of the game. The sound effects also hit bulls eye and fit very well with the various enemies and blood or tear based weapons.

After having played this game as much as possible and not even scratching the surface of the game's depths I can testify to how amazing this game is and just how much love and care went into it. The game's massive replay value and amazing art style warrant a high rank on anyone's list of good games. I can recommend The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth with confidence.

XCOM Enemy Unknown: The Breakdown

I have owned this game for a long time before i actually sat down to play it. When I did decide to immerse myself in the amazing game that is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I knew I had to break it down.

This being the game franchise that has rocked the difficulty settings to the extreme, I did wimp out and play on Normal, but trying out Impossible and Classic difficulties I do have to say, This game will wreck you. just about everything on the higher difficulties goes wrong for you and right for the enemies. But I'll get to that later. For now let's talk story.

It is the near future, and mankind has been expecting hostile alien life to come to earth. That is why when life did come from outer space and start terrorising humanity, we joined together to create the XCOM Project, a coalition of countries coming together to form a defence against the aliens. You, as the player, are the head of this project and you control everything from what departments get funding to what soldier moves to cover in combat. The game doesn't really ever explain the enemies in depth and you have to perform autopsies on the enemies in order to find out what they are and what they want. This pulls from a very Dark Souls style narrative where you as the player have to look for your story. i personally love this, but a player who would want their story explained to them might not. In terms of environment and immersion, this game gives you the feeling of being in the world right from the start. You are in control of the soldiers and it is your fault if they die or get injured. You feel terrible when one of your soldiers dies in battle and you have to continue fighting. The game play reinforces this with the perma-death and the resource management.

Speaking of game play, this game has a definite theme of difficulty. There are two main aspects of game play. There is the base building part, and the turn-based combat part of game play. The base building aspect involves the mechanic that your whole operation is funded by the countries you are protecting, so you can actually fail the game by all of these countries leaving the coalition. You may be asking why they would leave. Well, there are some missions where you have to choose between several countries to save, and whichever countries don't get defended increase in "panic" levels. If their panic level reaches the full five bars of "panic", they leave. This adds a difficulty that can only be described as "you lose twenty minutes before you realise you've lost" Other than keeping these needy countries happy, you can build new facilities and upgrade your equipment. You have to research into new equipment and then start production on the equipment, as long as you have enough resources to build and enough engineers and scientists to research/build them. This is the most mellow part of the game, because even with the countries constantly threatening to leave, nothing typically goes as terribly wrong as in combat.

Speaking of combat, this game may be difficult in the base building portion, but nothing compares to the difficulty of the combat. Now old school players will remember how the older games are much more difficult. Well, I never played those games, so this game has to stand on it's own in difficulty. The combat consists of a turn-based cover shooter. You control your soldiers from a top down perspective. Your soldiers (without upgrades) can move a certain amount of spaces, and then either shoot enemies or enter Overwatch, which makes them automatically shoot at the next enemy to move at a slight aim penalty. There are also abilities such as grenades and rocket launchers, that allow you to either do some good AoE damage or break enemies cover. The combat is actually very in-depth, with strategies like flanking. The main reason that the game is hard is that your soldiers, at least very early on, can't aim. The enemies, however, have sniper-like accuracy. This means you have to be extremely careful not to rely on your character actually hitting something or the enemy missing because if you do, you will break your screen with anger. But this also means when you do hit something or manage to complete a mission with no casualties. This high risk, high reward game play can become extremely addicting to players looking for a challenge.

So as it would turn out, choosing to play this game was a good idea. The game really emphasises on the difficulty and the world is very immersive. I would have to say that to anyone wanting a challenge, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is for you.

Why The New Borderlands Game Is DLC

After having played my fair share of spooky games for Halloween, it's time to lighten up the mood with some good old raunchy comedy and big guns. That's why I played the new Borderlands game!


Borderlands games are well known for having a good comedic value to them that distinguishes them from other shooters. Between that and the RPG level of loot that you can collect and improve your characters and weapons with, the games are pretty unique. So why is it that every critical assessment of the game calls it the new Borderlands DLC? Well there are a couple reasons for that. The first reason is the same reason why Saints Row IV fell from popularity pretty quickly. Saints Row IV was originally going to be Saints Row The Third: Enter The Dominatrix before someone at Deep Silver presented it as a new game at a board meeting. And although it was a new game, they continued using the same map and graphics for all of the characters. This was the game's main criticism at it's release and why a lot of people didn't buy it. But the main selling point contradicting the game using the same map, was how different the game play was. You could run at supersonic speeds and glide across the sky. The guns were all very different and crazy in what they did. The missions and story weren't serious at all, having you complete insane tasks and spout ridiculous dialogue. You could tell what the game was when in the beginning 5 minutes you are the president and Keith David is your ally. The game used the same map and characters, but fundamentally was a more insane and much less serious game. Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, on the other hand, was too similar in game play and story to even be considered it's own game.

Borderlands The Pre-Sequel is a game that could have entirely been covered in one DLC. In the same regard, some of the Borderlands 2 DLC has more original content than Borderlands The Pre-Sequel. This is because the DLC is meant to be different enough from the main game that you would want to buy it, either in game play or in story. The Borderlands DLC has always been out there and different, from fighting robot ninjas, to playing D & D inside the borderlands mythos, The new Borderlands game doesn't do this however. This is because to create a sequel you need to include the lore and back story that the other games have set up and you need to expand upon it. This means on a fundamental level, the game needs to be similar in order to be a sequel. With DLC, you have most likely played and experienced the story of the main game and so when playing DLC, you will see little reference to the main game other than that the DLC exists within it. This means that the DLC can be much more different than the main game than a new game could be. Borderlands The Pre-Sequel has to do this, making it inevitably similar to the other Borderlands games.

The most major concept the game uses to dig it's own grave is it places itself within the first and second games, ergo a pre-sequel. what this does is make the game have to tell the story of the first game, but it constricts the game to have to set up to the next one. This is the only way the game can be canon. So by doing this the writers have given themselves a strict guideline they have to follow. This kills any ambition the writers have, which is exactly what makes Borderlands games so fun, the ambition and the spectacle of all of the bosses. But the worst part is that any boss or main character they create has to be completely irrelevant to the story of the game, because you can't kill a main character that exists in BL2 and you can't fight a character from BL1 without majorly throwing the flow of the story off. The game has no way of setting itself apart, at least on a story perspective.

The game play of the game, while adding new features, doesn't seem to improve upon or change any existing features from the last game. It adds a new oxygen mechanic and some weapon types, but really nothing to differentiate it from the other games. The oxygen mechanic is that you are on the moon, so there isn't a breathable atmosphere. You have to use an oxygen mask in order to breath. This precious oxygen can be used to double jump or ground pound, but reduces the amount you have. You have to refill the oxygen by moving into breathable atmosphere/ oxygen vents or by killing enemies. This means if you are in the middle of nowhere it is entirely possible to run out of O2 and suffocate to death. While this is cool and stands out, the only reason it exists is to push the player forward and keep you from just roaming around. It gives you an incentive to move from mission to mission, which is not dying. The new laser gun types and the new Cryo effect are pretty much what you's expect so I won't really talk about them. And the new characters are not that different, only really including Clap Trap as a playable joke. They are very much using the formula of turret character, character good with guns, character good with melee, and character with random abilities (replacing the Maya and Lilith characters with Clap Trap) so there's really nothing to talk about with them either. The game is fundamentally the same.

So after essentially writing a high school essay on why this game is DLC, that doesn't mean it's a bad game. It just isn't different from it's predecessors. So if you either haven't played a Borderlands game before or played all of the DLC for the other Borderlands games and want more, then go buy this. i would highly recommend waiting for a sale to lower the price a little bit. Trust me, you won't miss anything not playing this game day one.

Shadow Of Mordor: The Breakdown

Since I only got to play this game on the Thursday before the review I had to post about another game. But over the weekend I got to playing this and beat it. I'd have to say coming from a world with Assassin's Creed and made by the producers of the Batman: Arkham series, this game really welcomes the foretold "Next Generation" of games.



Now when I say "welcomes next gen" I mean that it introduces so many unique game play features and really shows off capabilities of the new consoles. (I played this on PS4 by the way) On the other end of the spectrum this game stretches across, there are many, many features and abilities this game "steals" from other games. Now I have been trying to steer clear of game play and go directly to story, but with so many features and very controversial game play features, I may break that self set rule. But I will at least start with the story so you can just read that and not the game play segment if you really don't want to.

 Now Lord of the Rings has a LOT of back story and I am glad for the sake of this Breakdown that Shadow of Mordor keeps the story simple and the over complicated plot to a minimum. That said...

SPOILER ALERT: SPOILERS FOR SHADOW OF MORDOR AND MINOR SPOILERS FOR LORD OF THE RINGS

The plot of this game does require a minor knowledge of the Lord of the Rings series, so I will explain everything like the read didn't know. Please excuse me if I am explaining things like you are a child. The game starts off with you, playing as Talion, a ranger of Gondor, an elite force sworn to protect the south areas of Middle Earth from the breaches of Mordor and all the evil that comes out of that place. One day the evil manifests into an army of the evil Uruks (orcs) run by Sauron, that overrun the wall and kill everyone inside, including your wife, your son, and you for a blood sacrifice. You are then "banished from death" and are unable to go to the afterlife, staying in limbo. In limbo your soul is merged with an elf also living in limbo and your souls are bound together. This elf gives you the powers of a wraith, which is someone trapped between the land of the living and the dead. These powers include mind control, super speed, and a magical bow. This wraith is Celebrimbor the greatest blacksmith of the 2nd Age, and more importantly, the creator of the rings of power. Celebrimbor was convinced by Sauron, under a disguise, to forge the rings of power for man and dwarf. Celebrimbor also forged the one ring to rule them all, the one that Frodo and Bilbo found. He also secretly forged the rings of power for the elves before Sauron captured him and tortured him to death, killing him and his family with Celebrimbor's own forge hammer. He is now on the same quest for revenge as you. You and him go out to find the person who killed Talion and set the curse upon you, the Black Hand of Sauron. Talion and Celebrimbor's quest for revenge drives them to free the slaves the Uruks are holding captive and break their hold on the land by means of killing, controlling, and overall chaos.

Now to the game play. The game play of this game is very much a cluster of good and bad. It does use mechanics from other games, mainly the Batman: Arkham series and Assassin's Creed. Because it uses a free flowing combat system, and has an upgradeable skill tree, Shadow of Mordor uses the Batman system of attacking enemies freely an being able to attack enemy to enemy without stopping.  You build up a combo meter until you can unleash a devastating special attack. The combat system, except for the added gore of using a sword, is almost an identical copy of Batman's system, complete with a stun and a vault over enemies button. You also have a bow that uses magical arrows from Celebrimbor and it has its own skills like fire arrows and skow motion focus. I honestly never really used it but it does add another option in combat. It can also be used in the other part of Shadow of Mordor aside from open combat, which is stealth, and is also similar to Batman's system, with an ability to see enemies through walls and stealth kill them using a variety of methods. You can stealth kill enemies from behind, in front, or from above them. There are also special stealth kills like Brutalize, which brutally kills the enemy and scares off nearby enemies. The only real difference in combat and stealth from that of the Batman: Arkham series is the Wraith abilities, which later in the game allow you to "Brand" enemies, making them fight for you in battle or stealth brand them and activate them as a distraction. The branding ability also works on the various animals in the game, like four legged wolf-like creatures calld Caragors and giant troll creatures called Graugs. You can ride these animals after stunning them and have them fight for you. Branding also utilizes the major mechanic that drives and distinguishes Shadow of Mordor, the Nemesis system. The Nemesis system is a complex system that creates and upgrades the in game Uruk Captains and Warchiefs. They are randomly chosen normal enemies that are upgraded and turned into mini bosses. Each one has Strengths and Weaknesses in battle as opposed to normal enemies. They are also able to upgrade and become more powerful if they kill you, survive a battle against you, or retreat from a battle. They can actually get scars and burns from battle if they have fought you and will talk about these scars the next time they fight you. They can also go on their own missions to kill other Captains or complete challenges to be promoted and become more powerful. You can actually interfere with these missions to kill the Captain or randomly find them in combat. The Warchiefs are different in that they can have weaker Captains as their bodyguards, and can fight you with these Captains at their side. If you kill a Warchief it lessens the amount of normal enemies that spawn but like with all Captains a Uruk has a chance to eventually take their position. And back to the Brand system, you can Brand Captains and make them yours, allowing you to control them and tell them to kill Captains or become a Warchiefs bodyguard and betray them. This introduces a kind of champions system where you can help your Captain rank up and get promoted so he can kill troublesome Captains for you. The Nemesis system is the spine of Shadow of Mordor and really makes it the next gen game we were promised. There are other missions than Captain missions and the story, including sword, dagger, and bow missions that forge the legends of each of your weapons and changes their appearances. You can also free the human slaves around the map to find out information about Captains and their weaknesses. Overall the majority of your time will be spent on Nemesis missions and the story, which are both very good.

After having had beat this game and exploring the story it had to offer Shadow of Mordor is the next gen game we deserve. Like the Dark Knight. Alot like the Dark Knight actually. But still its own thing. The nemesis system really helped drive Shadow of Mordor's ratings and sales home.

AC II: The Breakdown

Assassin's Creed is an absolute juggernaut of the gaming industry, having revolutionized the way games were made. These games are some of the most highly acclaimed games in the world. Also they were at a discount on Steam recently.This game has a lot of back story, so I'll skip directly to the beginning of one of gaming's most notable stories. I will tell you the story of Altair. Also I'm changing the format of the post again to be more story oriented. Deal with it.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ASSASSIN'S CREED

The first Assassin's Creed actually has two stories. In real time is the story of Desmond, and the story of Altair, which is Desmond's ancestor from the Third Crusade. The story of Altair and Desmond are tied together, but separate stories.

Desmond Miles was born in 1987 in an Assassin camp. When he was 16 he didn't want to be an Assassin and fled the camp. He moved to New York and was captured by Abstergo Industries, who was the Templars reincarnate. Abstergo hooked him up to a future device known as The Animus, saying because his ancestors (like Altair), were Assassin's, he could use his DNA to revisit their memories. Lucy Stillman and Warren Vidic both held Desmond captive and forced him to cooperate and let them revisit his memories of his Assassin ancestors. The first one he starts out with is his Syrian ancestor, Altair.

Altair Ibn-La'Ahad was born in 1165, and at a young age, his Assassin parents died. Because of this, he himself was accepted into the Order of Assassin's. He quickly rose the ranks of Master Assassin. One day, the Assassin camp was attacked by Templars, who are the people the Assassin's want to kill and the reason the Order was formed. Altair successfully defended the attack, and continued to look for the people responsible. He later found out that the Templars wanted an ancient artifact known as the Chalice. Altair goes and starts killing Templars in search of the Chalice. After some time of Assassinating Templars, Altair finds the Chalice, only to find out that it is a women, not the cup from The Last Crusade. After finding the girl, named Adha, who was captured by Templars .Altair had to fight many a Templar to find her, eventually killing their leader, Basilisk. After fighting and killing him, Altair loses Adha, only finding out months later that she is dead. This leads Altair to kill the people responsible, even though it brings him no joy.

Years later, during the 3rd Crusade, Altair and pals are in search of an artifact inside Soloman's Temple. Inside he broke two tenets or laws of the Order. He killed an innocent, and he engaged his enemy directly. By doing so, the Templars inside escaped. Altair and pals narrowly escape and go back to HQ to tell them what happened. Another Assassin entered soon after, with the artifact Altair didn't retrieve. Altair and other Assassin's wound up going to the town of Masyaf to defend it from Templars. Altair ended up having to perform a leap of faith to escape. When he returned to the Assassin's base, he was found out about is breaking of the laws/tenets and was stripped of his rank unless he could assassinate nine Templars to redeem himself.

That is the story of Altair and Desmond, two Assassins with interweaving pasts and futures. No game play today because I'm moving The Breakdown over to a more story based blog. So feel free to share this with friends and tell me how you like the new design. And have a good day, or a bad one, everyone has those. But maybe after reading this it will be a good one. That would be nice.

Prototype 2: The Breakdown

So I was going to do Prototype, but I figured that the second one is better and now I can give the story of the first one as back story. Win win. Made by Activision I can say right now that this game is maybe the most gory and adult game I've ever played.

*MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PROTOTYPE*

So to cover the second game's story, I'm just going to recap the first. In the first game you played as Alex Mercer. You were a scientist working for Gentek, a genetic research company. Alex gets exposed to the virus and gains mutant superpowers and the ability to consume people and take their form. Manhattan has become infected by the same virus that gave you bad ass powers, except to normal people it is near deadly and mutates the populous to zombie creatures and giant mutants. You go around and find your sister and beat up bad guys and kill people. You then go head to head with the military and cause them try and blow up the city. You take the bomb out over the ocean Dark Knight Rises style and you end up regenerating back on the shore. 

The opening cinematic to Prototype 2 is all I will cover so as not to give any major spoilers. You play as James Heller, a marine bad ass who served in some war that no one cares about. Your wife and young child live in Manhattan, which is now recovering from Alex Mercer blowing everything up. As it turns out, while you were off fighting in a war no one cares about still, the virus from the first game gets released again and everything goes to hell. You find out your wife and child were murdered and you blame Alex Mercer. You then work on a special op to take over a part of the city, which is now a complete war zone, when Alex Mercer shows up. Mutants take out your entire squad and you chase down and try to kill Mercer. You manage to "hurt" him, but he ends up saving you from a mutant and giving you the virus. You wake up in a government laboratory with people experimenting  on you and putting you in an arena against other mutants. You kill them and break out of the laboratory. Have fun killing everything!

Game play wise, the Prototype games have never been revolutionary, but they have made some cool mechanics. There are two forms of game play that blend quite well together. The modes are normal walking around mode and Blow Everything to Hell Everything must Die!! mode. The first mode consists of your abilities to run up walls to get places, glide through the air, and to disguise yourself. The disguise or "consume" ability actually has a lot of uses and is a very cool mechanic. The mechanic consists of you grabbing an enemy, having the option to consume them to regain health, to take their form and look like them, straight up turn them into a bio-bomb and football punt them, or to gain their memories and use those memories to get new missions to do. That's about all of the one portion. The second, more fun portion, is combat. In combat, you can morph your body into weapons that include a giant sword arm, claw fingers, or even a whip arm. You can also pick up weapons (Though with a whip arm why would you) The best part of any combat situation is hijacking. In later in the game you can choose to ride vehicles and choose to either rip the weapons out and wield them, to kill the driver and take the vehicle for yourself, or to straight up rip the cannon off a tank and smash it into the tank, evidently blowing it up. The third option is my favorite

As for the missions in the game, Prototype has the standard open world system. There are the story missions, which progress the story. There are also a plethora of not very good side missions. These involve such creative works as: Find and kill target, Kill multiple targets, Hack computer (James Heller hates computers for no real reason), or my favorite, storm military base and kill everyone inside. Another mission-like thing to do is to enter hives where the mutants are born, and from there if you can kill all the mutants inside, you can absorb the entire colony and gain new powers.

Speaking of powers, this game also has a vague skill tree system. You gain powers and forms during story missions, but you can gain new abilities such as advanced glide, or more melee damage. There are also perks tied to completing side missions. If you complete a small gauntlet of missions, you can gain a perk that helps in combat or with health.

The last aspect of the game is the art style, which is fantastic. The game's art style is very much reminiscent of Sin City, with the cut scenes being black and white and the blood and mutant glowing stuff being bright red. It looks very good and helps to give the game a vibrant life that plain grey's and brown's would not do. I personally love it.

After having owned this game for a while and nearly 100% completing it, I have to say this game is pure fun at  it's finest, from the grand epic story missions to the pure chaos of stomping around the overworld.

HearthStone: The Breakdown

So I just recently got a new laptop, and it's also a tablet, so I picked up HearthStone and started playing. And then I wrote this. Simple enough. Lets see if I can get the lore right without pissing people off (I can only hope)

Oh god. Oh. God. I realized that by playing HearthStone and giving its backstory I inedvertently now have to give the backstory of ALL OF WARCRAFT! Well crap, that blows. Wait. No, I'm lazy here's the wiki: http://wowpedia.org/Portal:Warcraft_universe Have fun with that. 

I will say when reading up on WoW I read and read for hours and that was only Pandaria. This game and all of Blizzards works have one thing in common and that is that they have insane amounts of lore. And I don't mean that just each character has his or her own page or ten of lore specifiaclly to them. I mean that the bush you pass at this one town that you never even notice once has more backstory and lore than every Call of Duty game that will ever be made. Of course that was an exaggeration but still, tons and tons of lore. It makes you understand why WoW players get mad when someone messes it up. This may seem like ramblings, and well it might be, but it is also very much reflected in HearthStone. The game is a Magic the Gathering style card game that tries to simplify some quite complicated systems and add its own unique ones. But for the simple reason that every card is a character or ability from WoW just goes to show how much effort went into this universe. I mean they could add as many cards as MtG and they might still have characters to make into new ones. Which means that this game can actually thrive and  continue as a game without "running the well dry" It also means that each card reacts and acts like the character or ability would, meaning that in a slight way WoW players and lore fans can build decks or play with combos that use abilities from WoW to win. But because it is still a strategic card game, people who play MtG can transfer and use tactics that they learned. This makes the game very interesting to play.

While I've talked about the cards and scratched the surface of playing, I need to still give beginner strategies and the jost of how. Oh, grab something to eat, this'll take a while. (By the way the game plays similar to Magic so I will relate the two or at least try) The basics of the game in the lore of WoW is that two characters from WoW, sit down to have a friendly game of cards. Both players health bars are the characters life, and both characters have a deck and a certain number of cards in it. Each special class or character also has their own ability, it costs mana and can usually do some mediocre ability that can be interweaved with decks for powerful combos. Back to the basics, however is that one player can win by either taking the opponents health to zero, killing them doing so, or making the other character not have enough cards to draw, or one player can surrender to the other, still counting as a victory. The only other thing you have without cards is your mana, which I mentioned earlier. You start from one and gain one extra crystal each turn, for a soft cap of ten. Every card in the game has a mana value and costs that many to summon or use. And those are the basics. I will explain actual tactics but I have to start with the cards before tactics can be explained properly. There are four basic types of cards in the game: Minions(Creatures), Spells(Abilities), Weapons(IDK), and Secrets(Trap Cards). The first type of card, Minions, are perhaps the most basic so I'll start with them. A minion is a monster or any living creature that can attack and be killed. Each minion has a certain health number and attack number. The health number is the amount of damage it can take before it is destroyed an attack is how much damage it does either attacking a minion or being attacked (unless special circumstances apply) Minions, unless they have an ability, do not take priority over the player in combat, meaning as opposed to Magic you can attack the player directly when he has a minion out. Some minions have abilities, such as taking priority when you are attacked (like I said) or doing something when they die. These can be combined for strategies. The second type of card is Spells, which are abilities that can affect gameplay, such as instant damage or giving a minion an ability. Spells have no health and caneither be instants that last for one turn or an enchantement that lasts for a long time. Most spells also have a secondary requirement that is either assmued through what it does or expressly told. Some spells can't be used at certain times like when the secondary requirements aren't met and some cards react better under certain circumstances. The next card is Secrets, these are played "face down" where only you know what it does and most of them are tied to taking damage. A secret is in play until it is destroyed or used and when the requirements are met it activates. For example "When an enemy minion attacks one of yours, destroy both minions" These cards are very much meant to save you when you are losing or to assure your victory. They are especially effective in combos because combined with spells they can win the battle quite quickly. The final card type is Weapons, which to explain them I'll explain the mechanic that they utilize. Your character, as in the hero you play as/ your class, can attack. But, your hero doesn't naturally have an attack stat, just health. This means you have to use a spell to give them an attack stat that they can use to attack. There is a specific card, which is a weapon, that goves your hero an attack for a certainamount of uses. For example "3 attacks and it breaks, gives your hero 4 damage" These can be used in decks where you want your hero to deal insane amounts of damage. These are the card types, and while there are only four, there are subclasses and special exceptions that I will not explain for reasons (I am lazy).

Now that we've established the cards, I will try to to explain how to use them in a deck. So I'll try to explain the deck types and the ways to use cards in them. There are literally millions of decks you can make in HearthStone. So rather than explain that I will explain the four major groups that decks usually fall into. These groups are Rush, Counter, Control, and Combo. Rush decks mainly focus on high damage and trying to kill the enemy as fast as possible. The strategies and way to build your deck should revolve around low cost minions that have damage dealing abilities and spells that deal immediate damage. Counter decks mainly focus on high defense and countering attacks to last longer than your opponent or use their minions against them. The way to build and play this deck should revolve around using secrets and the ability Taunt to deal counter damage. By the way, Taunt makes a minion take priority in battle, meaning you can only attack that minion. Control decks are focused around controlling your opponent's hand and not letting them do anything. These are by far the most powerful decks, but at the same time the hardest to play in that they are complex. Control decks should be built and played to use spells and secrets and minions to do anything from put all of your opponent's minions back in their hand to spamming them with weak minions to stop them from playing anything. The final deck type is Combo, which focuses on combining card summons to either buff powerful minions or to deal massive damage. You can build and play the deck to do either of these, but it is nigh impossible to effectively do both. Just try using cards that will play off of each other.

So after a college essay of card game strats, time to cover the graphics! The graphics in this, like WoW, are very cartoonish and humorous, combined with the voice acting and music. The best part of the graphics experience is the explosions and animations as they are both fluid and dramatic, which brings attention to them and shows you what to look at. The graphics specs, even on my tiny laptop, is 1080p 60fps and looks good for a card game.

So as for my little "go buy this" dialogue, there is something I forgot to mention. That thing is simply the word FREE. This game is free up until you want to buy expansions or card packs but there are people out there who are in the top league and they haven't payed a cent. So yeah, If that isn't a reason to get this game or at least try it, I don't lnow what is. If you like card games and don't wanna spend 100$ for a good MtG deck, get HearthStone.

Plague Inc: The Breakdown

Well I would have played an actual game, but I'm too busy getting sucked into Destiny, so I'm doing another app review/ breakdown! I would also just like to point out that even though I didn't technically review Destiny in my last post, It has been a week and I'm still playing the game so that has to be an indicator of how much I like that game.

As this is another app with no real set story or plot, I'm going to make one up, so if you wanted a serious review, skip this section.

SPOILERS?

The world has become corrupt, and political powers now control all of humanity, the world doesn't yet know this and the everyday people have become brainwashed mindless slaves, all obeying their government and it's leaders. You are a mad scientist who wants to save humanity, BY DESTROYING IT! So you took control over a secret lab in an undisclosed location and hijacked some satellites to give you an aerial view of the earth. You experiment and manage to create a base virus that you inject into a random person in a country of your choosing, you can now take control of the virus and modify it to make it a super plague that you will use to free mankind of it's freedom... and life. Good luck in destroying the world.

The whole strategy of the game is to infect everyone on earth and kill them off, using different viruses and combinations of symptoms to create a plague that kills humanity before they can cure it. New player advice would be to play on Easy and use the base bacteria to learn the symptoms and abilities and what kinds of combinations and abilities you need to evolve to combat humanities attempts to stop you. (for example a random event is a love fest, so if you evolve nausea, which gives a slight chance of infection while kissing, it boosts infection) The best thing to keep in mind is that the DNA points don't expire, so save up a good amount in case something unexpected happens so you can react properly. And as the game tells you,  this is a highly researched simulator, meaning if you're trying a maneuver that would not pan out in real life, then in the game it wouldn't work either, so be prepared for what each country's actual government would do to combat whatever disease you made.

The game came out on iOS and Android, and there are some web versions as well  as a PC variant called Plague Inc: Evolved, but I only managed to play the normal version on iOS. The game is 99 cents and it is well worth the money. You can unlock several disease types, as well as special diseases like a zombie disease, a brain parasite, and the new Planet of the Apes virus. There is also special scenarios like "Black Death" or "Humans have robotic organs" that recreate a specific challenge you have to beat. As far as I know you have to pay for these, but everything else, including the normal disease types and some disease variants, you can unlock. i would highly recommend buying this game and if you ain't got time for unlocking the diseases, then buying them is a good option (not that I endorse DLC) and it goes to the dev, who is a cool guy. The game does just about everything right and that makes it one of the best games on the App Store.

Destiny: The Breakdown

After my review of the beta I knew I wanted to talk more on the game, so I'll try to cover anything I didn't already or that wasn't in the beta. Hope you enjoy!

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy called The Milky Way, an ancient being called the Traveler emerged and helped guide humanity into a Golden Age of technology and progress. This lasted generations until a catastrophic event known as the Collapse happened, nearly destroying humanity. At this point, the Traveler's main enemy, known as the Darkness attacked. Because humanity was so weak and on the verge of destruction, the Traveler sacrificed itself to save mankind, splitting itself into miniature AI known as Ghosts, who found long dead great soldiers and revived them, bringing them back to life as Guardians. The Guardians built a last stronghold of the human race and started fighting back. You have been brought back from the dead as a Guardian, with enhanced strength, durability, and speed. You know have to find the city to bring back peace to the Borderlands, no wait wrong game.

So if you read my review (which you should have) then you know there are three playable races and classes. Humans are humans, but in this point in time they have mentally evolved to have made amazing technology like lasers and scifi weaponry. The Awoken class was a group of humanoids that survived a great catastrophe by venturing in deep space, where they were changed by SCIENCE! The Exo race, which is my favorite is a race of robots built by the humans during a period of war and became sentient, basically making them the terminator. The three playable classes are still Titan, which is a defense based tank that can ground pound. There is the Hunter, which is a long range class that can deal a lot of damage with melee and has to keep moving. The Hunters can also summon a bad ass golden revolver that deals insane damage. The final class is Warlock, which uses plasma grenades and a rip off version of the force to kill enemies. Their power attack is a plasma spirit bomb, which deals the most damage of anything in the game. They are all the scifi Warrior, Rogue, and Mage class. One of the first things i noticed having played the beta is that the game up until level 6 is exactly the same as the beta, so I will try to cover the game play after the beta. Once you get to level 6, there is a new area other than blown up Russia. THE MOON! The moon has several new missions and you unlock even more planets as you continue. There is also new weaponry and abilities. The Crucible now has more game modes other than Capture, which are Team Death match, Free for All, and a smaller team version of other game modes.

Aside from the new levels, the game play is still very similar to the beta. If you want to level up i would suggest exploring and playing story missions until level 10, and then playing the Crucible ad taking bounties from the hub to get to the technical level cap of 20 (you can level up more than that through other means)

So yeah, this review may be shorter than usual because i already covered the beginning of the game with my beta review, which you can check out here. So go do that and maybe buy this game.

Borderlands 2: The Breakdown

So with both Borderlands The Pre Sequel and Tales From the Borderlands coming out soon(ish) I thought I'd go back to break down one of my favourite games, Borderlands 2. I think I've finally figured out the format for The Breakdown so I hope you guys like it.
Borderlands 2 is the highly acclaimed sequel to the beloved loot and shoot game Borderlands. Made by 2K, best known for games like BioShock and X-COM. They make notably good games and are a trusted brand so most (not all) games of theirs are good. BUT THIS ISN'T A REVIEW ANYMORE! This is a post that will break down the game mechanics and explain the lore to anyone who wants to get into the game. So let's do that

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF BORDERLANDS AND THE BEGINNING OF BORDERLANDS 2. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

So I will start off with the lore. The back story of the word is that Dahl Corporation came to the abandoned and dangerous planet of Pandora in search of a vault containing riches beyond imagine. Of course this brings in a cities worth of bandits to Pandora trying to get the loot to themselves. Four of these so called "Vault Hunters" are the playable characters, Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, and Roland. These characters go against Dahl and other enemies to find the vault, which is revealed to hold an ancient monster known as the Destroyer, which is a monster that was held inside for millennium so to keep it from destroying worlds. As any monster that can destroy planets, the four vault hunters defeat it (somehow?) and save the world. The defeat of the Destroyer releases an ancient and powerful element known as Eridium, which can give certain animals powers and is extremely rare. In search of a new vault, Hyperion Corporation, lead by the evil and quite funny Handsome Jack, goes to Pandora to kill all the bandits and use the new vault to become super powerful. On a welcome train heading towards Handsome Jack, the new players, Axton, Salvador, Maya, and Zer0(along with DLC characters Krieg and Gaige) are caught in a trap laid by Handsome Jack to kill them. The main characters end up surviving and are found by Claptrap, a lonely helper robot who is the supposed last of his kind. You then go on a revenge quest to both kill Handsome Jack and find the vault. When going into the story just remember that comedy can sometimes take a front seat to story so a lot of missions have nothing to do with the overall plot and are there for comedic relief.

As for the game play, the game play is very different for each character, so I'll just try and explain the general skills someone should use. So first of is the gun skills. Each class has their own gun type that they are proficient with, so if you choose Axton then machine guns will compliment your class or if you play Gaige then shotguns are your best bet. The second thing to learn is what your base skills are. Each class generally has two skills and buffs for those skills. Your main skill is the first one you get, but people like Gaige have a secondary one which is either a stackable buff or a buff to their stats under certain conditions. Once you learn how to use your main skill effectively in combat, learning how to gain stacks for a skill or get the certain condition like being lit on fire as Krieg to boost his stats. Also, just keep in mind what skills you want early on in the game because you can't get them all so if one doesn't help your play style don't bother with it. The other secondary level up system is Badass Tokens, which are challenges in game, that once completed give a token that can be redeemed for small stat boosts. So make sure to spend these whenever possible and try to go for challenges if they're not too far out of your way. Another thing to keep in mind is how to use your class. All of the classes have their own play style that their skills are aimed towards, but if you really like your character but not the play style, you can invest in certain skill trees to modify your class. Either look up or figure out what skills you'll need beforehand.

Next is your load out. You can carry up to four guns in your hotbar at once, along with a shield and grenade mod. Looking for the right shield can be daunting, but just keep in mind what you'll need it for. If you constantly tank, get a shield with a ridiculous capacity. If you need to recharge faster, get one with a higher recharge rate. If you get killed by melee weapons or elemental damage, get a shield that does damage to melee attackers or is resistant to a certain element. When picking a grenade, all you need to choose from is elemental modifiers or pure damage, and if you want a bigger spread to kill a big group of enemies or a smaller fuse to catch them off guard. When choosing the guns in your hotbar just remember to have four different types of guns because if they are all pistols and you run out of ammo, you may as well have had just one. Also look for any guns you would need a lot, whether it be sniper rifles or shotguns.  

The last thing you'll need to know about thus game is the most difficult part and the best aspect of the game. The loot. While the advertised 87 Bazillion guns may be exaggerating, there are a lot and they are randomly generated. Things to look for in a gun are Model, Rarity, and Manufacturer. The model of the gun determines it's base stats, so even though technically every gun has different stats randomly generated, if the shooty pistol Mk. III has mediocre stats, they will stay in that mediocre parameter, so always try and find the guns with naturally good stats. The next thing to watch out for is Rarity, which determines if the gun has special abilities or better stats than the common type of the same gun. The rarity levels from common to legendary are white, green, blue, purple, and orange. The higher rarity guns are usually better in either stats or have certain abilities, with orange weapons having names and amazing abilities like infinite ammo. The last thing to look for in a gun is Manufacturer. Each gun maker in the game has a signature trait that all of their guns have. For example Hyperion makes really inaccurate guns that get more accurate the more you fire it. And Jakobs makes guns that are semiautomatic but can fire each time you pull the trigger, making them fire incredibly fast if you spam the trigger. After looking at all these skills you should also take into account that sometimes a completely average common gun can have better stats than your purple weapon. That's the beauty of Borderlands.

So this is technically the first true Breakdown with the new format, so I hope all you enjoyed it and let me know if there is something I missed. Hopefully to anyone playing Borderlands 2 for the first  time in prep for the Pre Sequel this helped you out a bit, that's all this was meant to do, after all