Dead Island Riptide: First Impressions

Today has seen the release of Dead Island Riptide; the sequel to the surprise package Dead Island.  If you've never played or heard of Dead Island then it simplifies itself as a Zombie survival story set on a tropical island, where 4 survivors immune to the infection try to escape.  The game is a mixture of the XP and  quest whoring of games like Borderlands with the zombie fighting of games like Dead Rising/Left 4 Dead.

So is Riptide as good or even better than the first Dead Island?  If I'm being totally honest then no.

Riptide picks up exactly where Dead Island finished off, in the story and the game as a whole.  The fighting system is exactly the same and just as clunky, the character animations and voice acting are just as wooden and unsynchronised as before.  The game still suffers from bugs and glitches much as the last game, and only time will tell as to if there are more or less.

After playing with the game for about 2 hours I've realised that this is not a sequel in the true form, instead this essentially Dead Island re-branded and repackaged in a new city with a few new characters.  Yeah there are a few new things; for example the safe camp defence quests, the ability to drive a boat (it's a car on water with a turbo button), and new camp based missions for your camp members.

This game is not going to be for you if you expected a new Dead Island with a massive overhaul with everything having been retuned and made amazing.  If you are looking for a game to play with your friends for a bit of Zombie killing and a laugh at how bad the game is, much like you probably did before, then pick this up.

I will leave you with one last thing; don't buy this game as a single player game because it's boring and I'd honestly recommend that you wait until a price drop until you pick it up.

Cosplayer of the Month: April

In an attempt to make sure I post somewhat more regularly on this post I'm working this week on some new recurring blog posts for the site. My first idea was this post: Cosplayer of the Month.  So as you probably already know this months (and my first ever) cosplayer of the month is the beautiful and amazing Destiny Nickelsen.

If you don't know of Destiny Nickelsen she is an american cosplayer hailing out of the state of Georgia.  She has been cosplaying for a couple of years now and has cosplayed as an array of characters including; Black Cat, Juliet Starling, Supergirl, Mario, Bulma and more recently Injustice Harley Quinn among others.

In her time cosplaying she has won awards for Best Craftsmanship (Expert) at the Amazing Arizona Comic Con 2013 & Miss Southern Cospitality 2013.

Not only does she make some great costumes, she's also a genuinely lovely person and more importantly finds time to interact with her many fans on twitter.  She currently has just over 2,000 followers on twitter and over 11,000 likes on her Facebook page.  Although this is quite a sizeable amount I genuinely believe that she should have alot more than this so I will link her webpages below and do go and hit those Like & Follow buttons.

I will say that the main reason I have chose Miss Nickelsen is because Injustice: Gods Among Us is out now and I've yet to see a better Injustice based cosplay than hers.  So here are some pictures of a few of her awesome cosplays and don't forget to check her pages out at the bottom of the page.

Black Cat

Harley Quinn (Injustice)

Supergirl

Juliet Starling

Destiny's Facebook: www.facebook.com/OfficialDestinyNickelsen

Destiny's Twitter:  www.twitter.com/R2Des2

Destiny's Store:  destinynickelsen.storenvy.com/

The Tomb Raider Problem

Recently I purchased the new Tomb Raider game having heard many good things about the game via reviews and word of mouth.  I initially gave it a few days before starting the single player campaign so that I could fully commit to it without being distracted by things I had to do on other games or to a lesser extent, my life.

Once started though I found the campaign extremely difficult thing to stop player, a testament to this being the first evening where it took me after 5 hours of playing to finally turn it off to get sleep.  The game looks amazing, the story draws you in and makes you want to keep playing to find out how Lara actually gets off the island, and the gameplay is as good as Tomb Raider has ever been.  I would wholly recommend this game to anyone who loved the original Tomb Raider games, and also to anyone who loves a good adventure game.  As with all good games it has it's downsides; the overall story is quite short considering the pure brilliance of the story and the other one being collectibles.  This however is a personal preference because I much prefer to play a storyline rather than spend my free time looking for obscure pointless things that are hidden around the world.  You can always extend the story playing time by hunting the collectibles during the story but I get to distracted by my quest/goal to easily.

The single player is brilliant however I have reached a major problem with the game; the as titled 'Tomb Raider Problem'.

The problem is the second half of the game; the multiplayer.  I can only point blame to the huge successes of games like Call of Duty and Halo that have made the gaming industry think that almost every game has to have online multiplayer.  It's my own personal opinion, and from what I've read from general consensus, that the multiplayer is shockingly terrible and a pointless addition to the game.  To me Tomb Raider has always been a single player game and not a game where I thought the ability to play against each other is what the game was missing.

Even though the online multiplayer has put a massive dent in the game, it has shifted over 3 million copies since release which is a reasonably solid display.  Square Enix however have seen this as a failure compared that their financial expectations for the game.  I get the feeling that if Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics had got rid of the multiplayer and instead concentrated on the single player then they could have sold so many more copies of the game.  If they had invested all that time on extending the single player campaign, enriching the experience even more then this new revamp of the series would have been a phenomenal success.

The issue is that everything has to have multiplayer nowadays and too many games companies can't just plan for a totally single player game.  The companies are too focused on trying to achieve sales of Call of Duty's magnitude to not realise that there is still a big market for good, solid single player games.  You only have to look at games like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and the Arkham series of Batman games to show you that totally single player games still have a place in the gaming world.

I still hold a considerable amount of hope that the generalised collection of games companies will realise that online multiplayer isn't required in every single game, and that they lower their expectations and stop striving for sales figures that are ridiculously high.  But maybe that is a fools hope.

TheGamesCast

Sometimes in life there are people, or groups, who really deserve more recognition and public awareness of their existence then they currently have. One such group who fit this bill are TheGamesCast.

If you don't already know of them TheGamesCast are three guys; Paul, Duncan & Phil.  These guys are what might more commonly be referred to as 'old-school gamers'.  They've seen alot of what's gone on in the gaming world over the past years, played alot of different consoles and seen the progression of gaming from the early days of the Spectrum ZX81 right up to the current Gen of Xbox360 and the like.  So what I'm basically trying to say is that they know their shit when it comes to gaming.

These guys host a 60 minute live weekly podcast where they discuss the news and hottest topics of the gaming world for the current week, whilst trying to inject a more mature take on the gaming world and to have a good old laugh and fun at the same time.  There is also the during the show Chatroom where you can discuss the points being raised with other listeners and sometimes things mentioned in the chatroom will make it into the show.

Now I'll hold my hands up and admit that I've only listened to one show and that was last night. However from listening to that one show I was able to realise that these guys are funny, that I'll be listening to alot more shows in the future and that their podcast is perfect for gamers like me.  Gamers who play mostly for fun, who don't spend hours on end scouring the gaming websites for news and have a generally more mature view of life than the spotty 16 year olds whose main interest is tea-bagging and having top kills.

The weekly podcast is broadcast every Friday night at 9pm and I do strongly urge you to have a listen. You can find all the relevant information and a bit more information on the guys on their website, and do make sure to go give them a follow on twitter too (links below).

TheGamesCast.com

TheGamesCast Twitter

The PS4 has been revealed!

So the new PlayStation 4 has been revealed, to an extent anyway. While we now now what the new features added into this new console will be and an idea of what the games will look like we still are none the wiser as to what the console itself will look like.

So the emphasis on this new next gen console would be appear to be on the social aspect of gaming and instant gaming.  New features include the ability to instantly share screenshots or video of games you are currently playing by the use of the 'Share' button on the new controller.  You are also able to watch what your friends are playing, live, and to message you friends with helpful tips of how to get through tricky parts of the game they may be stuck on.  This isn't all though, you see with the PS4 you can now remotely control your friends game from your console and do those tricky parts that they just can't seem to do.  The console and network itself is being made to incorporate social network sites like Facebook to make sharing your progress or game stats that much quicker and easier.

Also revealed was the ability to use the PlayStation Vita as a second screen to play your PS4 games on (much like the Wii U and what Sony tried to do with the PS3/PSP).  It looks good and providing it works with the majority if not all games then I can see this feature having a knock on effect on the sales of the Vita.

There are cool features like the "suspend mode" which allows you to turn off and then turn on the console and pick up exactly where you left off, without having to reload the game.  Gaikai cloud system that allows you to play a chunk of any game that catches your eye on the store. And there is also the ability to play games while their are being downloaded without the need to wait for the download to be finished to play.

Alot more was revealed but overall I am very excited for the new PlayStation and for all the features that come with it.  The social aspects of the console particularly impressed me and I'm hopeful that they will all work as they have been shown to.  My eyes are currently fixed on Microsoft and the reveal of the next Xbox because as it stands at the moment, if they don't pull something amazing out of the bag I can see alot of people going back/converting to the PlayStation 4 when it's released.

Check out the official PlayStation UK blog post (linked below) about the PlayStation Meeting 2013 for more information and for the link to re-watch the meeting if you missed it.

PlayStation Meeting 2013

Real Actors Read...

YouTube is much like a giant Library; you can go in almost every day but even after a year or two there are still things that you haven't seen.

Just recently I was browsing around and stumbled across a channel and videos entitled 'Real actors read Yelp reviews'.  The premise is that they get professional actors to read out real reviews posted on Yelp, with the idea of trying to see the emotion of the person who wrote the review.  The idea behind this series is a simple one but the reviews are made even funnier when you add emotion to them.

If Yelp reviews wasn't enough for you they also have actors reading out Missed Connection pages & posts from Christian Forums.  This is a channel that I personally will be keeping a close eye on for more of these well made and beautifully funny videos.

Check out Gotta Kid To Feed Productions YouTube channel here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/gottakidtofeed 

and check out the very first video below featuring Chris Kipiniak 

My Name is Stuart and I am addicted to X Com.

This is a confession. I have been slowly losing my life to this addiction and it has to stop. I have been hurting sentient life from other planets and dimensions for my own filthy addiction and I haven’t cared how I got my fix.

Look at this shit

I had better start with the beginning. A long time ago, all the cool kids were into turn based combat, it was the in-thing. I wanted to fit in so I tried Final Fantasy X on my Playstation 2 but it was a bad trip. The story was awful and all the characters looked like they had been designed by someone experiencing both a split personality and massive head trauma. The turn based combat itself was tedious, watching the characters repeat the same inane actions over and over for ages until the battle was won. My only reward? Pushing the annoying bastards forward to the next mind numbingly boring battle to while away the hours of my life. This was not for me!

I told my friends that I didn’t want to be cool, if this was what it took. I stuck to real time combat and I stayed healthy. Fortunately this fad didn’t last long and soon turn based combat was relegated to dingy cellars and attics where sad, hollow beings spend hours with calculators working out which stats to increase on their spiky haired personalities which have more life than their users. That was the end of it, or so I thought.

Fast forward more than a decade and turn based combat has come back in a new guise. I knew it was bad news, but a friend talked to me about it. He said turn based combat had changed. It wasn’t about stupid looking gits whining about to esoteric situation, this time, it was about fighting off an alien invasion with big burly men and big burly women. The game was getting high score reviews everywhere you looked and once again, my curiosity was peaked. The demo appeared on the Xbox live market place and I gave in, deciding that I would be just as bored as I had been before.

I couldn’t have been more wrong

Before I knew it, I was selecting a squad to fight off an alien menace, I was picking their weapons and skill sets, their armour and sending them out into battle, choosing optimal routes of attack, sending my snipers to higher ground so they have an advantage, making sure I don’t get out flanked. I was in heaven.  

You see, I was always a huge fan of Real Time Strategy games. While they had advanced, my laptop, the one I am typing this on, was a hybrid engine of steam power and hamsters on treadmills. 

Unfortunately steam and hamster power doesn’t work together very well and 8 steamed alive hamsters later, my computer can barely run basic programs at the same time, let alone a high end Real time strategy game.

There had been attempts to make Real Time Strategy games on the console market, but sadly, the controller is not suited to this, and made every battle an exercise in frustration and defeat. Xcom solves this problem by using a mixture of strategy and turn based action which is satisfying almost to the point that it would be illegal to play it in public and especially not in front of children.

When the mission is over, you return to your base which isn’t just a mission hub, it’s also a vital part of the game, making sure you keep funds coming in from countries in the world so you don’t run out of money, keeping aircraft ready in those countries if a UFO is spotted above them, making sure the base has enough power, workshops, scientists and engineers. There is a whole litany of things you can build in the base, all there to provide support for your team and hell for the invading aliens.

You raise your team members from frail humans with normal machine guns to the point where they are armoured titans, striding across the battlefields as a tightly knit team. Snipers dealing with long range enemies, assault troops being the grunts, heavy weapons soldiers to take on the tougher opponents, support troops with med kits and tasers to capture aliens. I was even giving them stupid nicknames. Mr. Cuddlebums was the name of my heavy weapons expert from the first level of the game and I have still kept him alive since then and in that, is where my real shame comes from.

You see, in Xcom, troops get stronger with each mission, develop their own specialties and tactics and soon become your primary soldiers. Unfortunately, when your soldier dies, they are dead forever. All that work, all that experience can be ruined by one berserker running up to him and tearing out his anus through their oesophagus.

Farewell Soldiers. You're killing aliens in heaven now

I could not handle that. I needed my favourite troops to stay alive. I didn’t want their names on the memorial wall  So I saved. I saved every time I thought my troops were going to be in danger. I saved before I started a mission and I saved after it. I reloaded so often if one of my team were killed, and the first thing that came to my head was “NOPE!”.

Xcom had made me something I’m not, a Save Spammer. Cowardly, unwilling to take defeat because I knew that one step back meant eight steps forward for the alien menace. I don’t need to make a game that is already pretty bloody difficult any harder.

So this is my confession, I spend hours on Xcom but do I really accomplish anything?

You bet your arse I do! DIE ALIENS DIE!