Batman Arkham Knight All the riddler trophies and the final sequence. Good end to a fantastic game it's just a shame that the trophies become a bit of a grind! Another 12 hours on top of the base game.... Quite excited about the DLC content for this (once they fix the game of course!)
Mad Max OK the fighting is iffy and driving is really rubbish but overall a good fun game. Lots to do, stuff to find, baddies to kill. You can go back after killing the final boss, who was a real easy one to beat, and still plenty to do. Not sure there is scope for an immediate second playthough which I usually do with games but I will see if I can get my first 100% with it. So far 60 hours play time so for the £12 purchase price it is excellent value.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist Let's set the scene... loved chaos theory, one of my all time favourites, never go into double agent cos it felt too hard and basically avoided conviction because of this. So Blacklist, I tried the intro tutorial level which is meant to get you used to the controls? Handled like a bag of hammers and I kept just giving up on THE INTRO!!! Anyway, quick google and there is some good advice about just bolting through this. To anyone reading this - the rest of the game is miles better! Very different beast from Chaos Theory which from memory you start out with full ability to stealth sneak up on anyone and most levels were in the dark. Blacklist requires quite a few upgrades and even then it takes a steady hand to truly sneak up on someone but this lends itself to an easier learning curve. CT was a brutally steep learning curve from memory so i was pleasantly surprised by BL. Story was actually pretty good the whole game interface was very slick. TL;DR - Very enjoyable game! Sam Fisher is the man! 11 hours for singleplayer.
Just finished my second playthrough of Mad Max and apart from the race where you need to kill someone I found it pretty easy this time around. Did not bother with the Death races or collecting all the scrap, cars and history relics as there were far to many and it became extremely boring doing this. 131 hours so bloody good value for the 12 quid I paid and great fun also even with it's faults.
Heart Of Stone Expansion for Witcher 3, it was awesome, well worth the money, can't wait for the second expansion...
Wolfenstein: New Order Where do I begin? Characters good, story good, pace excellent, soundtrack excellent, entertainment value 10/10! I had pretty low expectations of this game having been disappointed by Nuke Nukem fairly recently and after ID's Quake 4. Also I suppose CoD has numbed my senses to single player FPS. I wasnt expecting a great game and the first few levels left me thinking "Is this game serious? Is this ridiculous monologue even necessary?" but it's setting the scene for the game to take place, and it grows into an extremely well polished and entertaining game. It's no metro with it's gritty apocalyptic setting and reliance on ammo conservation etc, but it a similar game (in terms of quality at least) set in a fictional WW2 environment in a time of monsters and heroes (when does one cross the line? )..... Anyway TL;DR - One of the most entertaining single players in recent years imho Spoiler Best line in the game - Fergus Reid "Dont f*** this up, you magnificent c***"
Metro 2033 Redux Metro: Last Light Redux. To be honest I did not see much difference but I suppose you would need to play the two versions of the above back to back to notice. Still great games though and at 4 quid for both an absolute bargain..
Black Ops 3, campaign is longer than previous versions although the story line left a fair bit to be desired what with the whole squad having mental health issues along the way and then a plot twist finally that most, people would have predicted around 90% of the way through it.
This game is a perfect example of not out-staying your welcome when it comes to progression. It does exactly what it intends to and then moves on. One of my favourite games in recent years. Unfortunately, The Old Blood struggles to keep the same pacing (a limitation of the setting, I guess) though is still a solid game.
Tomb Raider (2013) Fantastic stuff!! Interesting gameplay throughout and a strangely dark story. Lots of collectibles and optional tombs to raid. Pace of the game was spot on and the score was great.
Jade Empire Well that was a lot of fun, but I can't help but feel that it was only two thirds finished. The big old world map with only two hub destinations is the give away. On the other hand smushing bad guys with the Jade Golem is brilliant.
Dying Light My second playthough after leaving for some months as to be honest it bored me. Just finished it and apart from the final bit of killing Rias by tapping the correct button I thoroughly enjoyed it. Looks like I will get the expansion pack, The Following when it is released shortly.
New Super Mario Bros. 2 Considering the amount of games I've started in the last 12 months, this is the only one I've completed, and I only started it a couple of weeks ago. T'was easy as I was playing with my daughter and she insisted we took all the 'We can see you're not doing very well so here's a power-up that makes you virtually invincible' power-ups on offer. So raced through it. It's the first Super Mario Bros. game I've completed - the others I've tried so far seem harder/longer. Despite the relative ease of this one, the coin extravaganza and the great music still kept it muchos funos.
Just did this myself. I missed a no kill run, not quite sure how unless knocking someone unconscious and having them fall over a railing kills them... (not a high-up railing...) Then did Brigmore Witches... managed a no kill run there. Decided to go back to main game and try a 'never detected' run on highest difficulty. Gave up. Some of those guards I swear are psychic.
Grow Home It's a perfect exploration game. The only thing that would have made it better is if there was more of it.
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons Reminded me of an animated Disney film in several ways. It's completely linear, often very, very pretty and the plot is quite predictable. And though it gets serious at points, there's a certain fairytale-like naivety throughout the game. The gameplay at the ending was pretty clever, but I didn't really have an emotional connection to the characters. The puzzles were very easy, though fun. All in all a nice game. Not one of my favourites ever, but not mediocre either. The only two things I can think of that annoyed me were 1. Spoiler The fact that you had to execute the by then harmless ogre/orc at the end of the mines to move on while just leaving him dangling down the lava pit would've been perfectly possible. It's a nitpick but it doesn't fit the characters IMO. 2. Spoiler The totally out-of-place crescendo and sudden adventurous music in the final moments of the game before the credits start to roll in. It should've been an emotional high point of the game: just 5 seconds before, the father had sunk to his knees knowing he would feel the guilt for his son's death for the rest of his life. I guess a fairy tale should always end on a positive note, but there has to be a less clumsy way to end the game than this.
Life Is Strange This is not typically a genre that I typically gravitate towards, but I picked the boxed set up from Sainsburys for cheap. I finished playing it last night around 4am; I'm still a little raw. For me, the story telling in this game is at another level to anything else. It's clever, it's emotive, it's hard hitting. The game centres around the idea that every choice you make has a reaction past the consequence immediately apparent. It then throws into the mix the ability to turn back the immediate past; so you didn't like the outcome of that conversation? No problem, here's the last 30 seconds back for you. Did it work out better this time? How about long term? Every time you pass a big choice, the player-character second guesses your own choice, encouraging you to go back again. The game is set in a fictitious setting of Arcadia Bay; a picturesque Costal town in Oregon, USA. Arcadia Bay feels like it could be a real location. The inhabitants and the settings could be real. The main Characters could be real. Being "could be real" is the highest compliment I can pay a fictional setting. You play as a 18 year old photography student, Max, who is struggling to fit in to Blackwell Academy. Blackwell has all the typical American Hight School stereotypes present and correct; the elitist entitled Rich Kids, the Science Nerds, the Sports team Jocks, the quiet Lone Wolves. All is not happy at Blackwell; you're reminded by "missing girl" and "don't suffer alone" flyers that are all over campus. There are dark undertones to conversation as your fellow students lament a particular missing individual. Gameplay is clever with the rewind mechanic adding (literally) an extra dimension to how you approach puzzles. There is the odd fetch quest which offer the chance for exploration. There's even a stealth section, but it is presented in such a way that it makes perfect sense from the story line. The collectable system is inventive; as a photography student, Max always has her Polaroid camera with her and certain scenes will prompt her to fish it out and take a snap. Sometimes the scenes will have to be set up through dialogue, or through chasing stuff around. Sometimes, however, the shot is just there, begging to be snapped. Choices cannot be shied away from in this game. They are thrust into your face and you cannot avoid them. There are no cop-out choices either. Whatever your path, there will be consequences for Max, short and long term. The game does a really good balancing act of making there no real right or wrong answers, but there will be consequences you will care about. As you can probably tell, I am really gushing about this game. There is so much more I want to type too, like the way the game tackles bullying, how the game tentatively explores the Chaos theory of cause and effect. The game's perfect choice of music... I could go on all day. I'll round this mini-review off with this then; If I was younger say 16, 17, 18 and still going through my formative phase, this game would have contributed to my own persona in the way certain books do. I can pay Life Is Strange no higher compliment. Some of you may dismiss that as a load of crap, but even at the hardened age of 30, this games resonated within me. Would I play this game again? Not yet. I've made my choices and I'll stick with them.
You've sold this pretty well. I've been keeping an eye on this, hoping for a decent price somewhere. How much time did it take you to play through it?
Rise of the Tomb Raider This was a good game but not a great game as it seemed a bit to easy. In fact the 'Challenge' tombs were so easy and I am usually rubbish at such things. There did not seem to be much in the way of tricky jumps or combination of jumps that I used to remember from the earlier games. Must admit there is plenty to do and some tombs in earlier you cannot do till you have upgraded some kit. So back to get of the stuff I could not get or missed on the first playthough before hitting the Dying Light: The Following. EDIT: One more thing, what are all the cards about in the Marketplace found on the options screen?
I played it at a rate or around 1.5 to 2 hours per episode, there being 5 episodes it must have been around 8 to 10 hours in total for a single playthrough. For £25 at sainsburys, the set I got came with a little hard backed book of artwork and a cd for the game's musical score. Really good value I thought.
