Adventure Gamers - Forums

Tom Clancy’s The Division

65 hours played
Level 30

The Division is very Destiny-like. It is a third-person shooter with MMO and RPG-lite qualities. Set in Manhatten NY after a biological terrorist attack. You are a Division agent sent in to help the locals and restore order from the groups that have taken over.

Pros

* Real world setting is cool. I caught myself looking for areas I visited in real life to see how they looked in game. It is also seemless to move between areas and into buildings etc with no loading unless you die or fast travel. The main missions are usually set in one of the main NY landmarks. The first main mission is in Madison Square Garden for example.

* Addictive combat. Having damage numbers and health bars on the enemies totally feeds into the OCD of tweaking your stats so that you can make those numbers higher. I spent a lot of time managing my load out of weapons to twease out the best armour and DPS numbers.

* Co-op with mates is great. Team up on the main missions or just wandering the world. Most of my playtime was played single player which if you level up regularly and do the zones in order of difficulty you find that you are always over each areas recommended level.

* Collection items like phone messages, tactical info, echoes etc provides a lot of atmosphere to the world with individual stories of normal citizens as the virus spread.

* The Dark Zone is the multiplayer section in the middle of the map. Entering here allows you to team up to extract higher level items, but watch if someone turns on the team and steals all your hard earned loot. it was cool for the little I played it.

* Loot, loot and more LOOT. Is this sniper rifle better than the one I have, what if I add these mods how is my DPS (Damage per second). What if I craft this backpack, it increases my DPS, but reduces my Tech score and Health…..decisions decisions. Even better it’s the Diablo colour coded system, I need to get more purple and gold drops.

Cons

* Side missions can get a bit repetitive. A lot of defending supply drops, initiating virus scanners and drug busts.

* Main Story is a bit thin. There are a lot of radio chatter and videos at the end of main missions, but it’s pretty forgettable and doesnt really go anywhere.

* You can still see the UBISOFT open world template shining through. Access Safe houses in each area to Synch your map and highligh where all the missions are.

* Enenies can be very bullet spongy. Given the setting shooting someone in the head multiple times and still seeing them shooting back is a bit distracting.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the game and once you hit the level cap and complete the final mission it opens up the end game, Daily missions are currently live and with the next upgrade the first Incursion mission is unlocked. (Basically Destiny Raids).

It has yet to be seen if it has the legs of Destiny, but regular upgrade and new contect could see me coming back to it in the future.

4/5

Quantum Break

Playtime - 8hs 48 mins
Completion - 97%

Is it a game or is it a TV show?

As it happens it is a bit of both.

The lastest game from Remedy is a paradox in more ways than one. It is a third-person cover shooter Where you play as Jack Joyce (Shawn Ashmore - Xmen) who gets caught up in a time travel adventure where you are trying to stop the “END OF ALL TIME”.

So visit an old friend of you and your brother to help him out with a science experiment. Of course it goes wrong and Kablooey time is fractured and you seem to have developed some need time powers.

The game part is pretty standard cover shooter mechanic, but the time powers allow you to do a lot of cool things with the word time slapped on the front of it. Things like Time dodge (short sprint to avoid bullets), Time Stop (freeze an enemy in a time bubble and shoot it a lot so they get hit with them all at once when it unfreezes), Time Blast (basically an explosion of time ???), Time shield (blocks bullets), Time Vision (basically Detective Vision from Batman)....oh you get the idea.

So combining these powers with the range of weapons you get can make for some fun combat, if a tad easy. On normal level this game is a cake walk.

The TV part.. well at the end of each act there is a short interlide where you play as the bad guy which ends in a binary choice of how ie is gong to respond to what you have been doing. It then is followed by 20-25 mins of a TV show which you just sit and watch. It is an interesting idea, but it breaks up the game play more than a Kojima game. It fleshes out a couple of throwaway side characters as the main actors barely appear in it and in the end has no bearing on the storyline. There are some minor things you do in the game that lead to slight changes in the show, but blink and you will miss the mention of that item you interacted with being talked about.

Pros

* I give them credit for trying something new with the TV show aspect.
* The combat and powers can be fun to use, but I wish they could be combined more.
* The graphics are great.
* I do enjoy a good time story and this one was ok. Gets a bit timmey whimmey head hurts occassionally.
* Acting is generally decent with a number of the actors being faces I had seen before.
* Puzzles were ok but could have done with some more.

Cons

* Movement is a bit swimmey. There is a slowness and awkwardness to the character movement that can be frustrating.
* The cover mechanics and shooting are very hit and miss. There is no cover lock, it is automatic. Stand near cover and he auto moves ito position. Then stands up like an idiot to shoot. No blind fire at all…weird. Guns also lock onto target, but frequently taget the wrong thing or just plain miss.
* The platform sequences are hideous.
* Combat is waaay too easy on normal level.
* TV show is streamed so make sure your connection is fast enough otherwise you will have to download about 75 GB of video. (mine was ok for the most part)

Overall it’s not a complete disaster, but neither does it completely work. Neither the game nor the TV show stands out for me and it ends up all being a bit middle of the road.

3/5

The Walking Dead (Season 1). Don’t know the comic, nor the TV series, but really enjoyed the story and characters. However, I often felt this story didn’t have to be told through a game medium. Obviously, as an adventure game, it simply lacked puzzles that were interesting. Many of the conversation choices don’t really matter, accept for changing the attitude of characters towards you. As such, the game is more like a dating sim.

I often see people describe TWD as a novel game, but even then it’s extremely boring. Even the first novel game was much more complex, with multiple endings and scenarios depending on your choices. This is a rough sketch, but when I think of novel games, I think of this:

(I) is TWD. Choices that don’t really change the story. (II) is a basic novel game, with the choices you make leading you down to different scenarios/endings (in this case, BBB, or CABB, or BCCB could lead you to the good ending). Here at least the choices do lead to significantly different directions, even if it’s all preset. And this is how early novel games were. Play something like Machi or 428, and you get 5 to 8 of these trees, interlinked with each other.

Ratchet & Clank (2016) - PS4

So this is a game based on a movie that is based on the original 2002 game. It’s “I am my own grandpa” the game .

A 3D action platformer made by Insomniac games sees you play as Ratchet, a Furry cat like creature called a Lombax and Clank a small failed war robot. Together they set out to defeat Drex and his army of robots and the Blarg.

Pros

* Georgous Pixar like graphics. Everything from the level design, animations and attention to detail is very polished.

* The script and in game announcer voicework is hilarious. *Mr Zurkon is Bored*

* Choice of weapons and gadgets is pretty large. Everything from your standard monkey wrench to the Groovinator (makes your enemies dance to disco) or the Sheepinator (turns them into Sheep ). Gadgets also range from magnetic boots to jetpacs.

* Variety of levels allow you a decent challenge. The Clank levels are puzzley while Ratchet gets all the action including rail grinding, space battles, Jetpacing around or doing race events on a hoverboard.

* Once you have defeated the game and collected hidden gold nuts. You can customise the game to you hearts content. It even has a built in cheat menu that you can unlock.

Cons

* Can be frustrating at times esp towards the end where getting knocked off a platform mid fight can make you scream at the tv.

* When battles get frantic the amount of particles flying around (nuts, bolts, gunfire, parts of enemies etc) can obscure the screen making it difficult to know if everyone is dead.

Overall it was a great nostalgia trip, a great remaster and a pretty decent movie tie in.

4/5

Blackwell Legacy - Ipad

Played this very short game on the ipad while I was away for the weekend with no Wifi or Phone signal.

It was a well written little fun game.

Pros

* Fun characters
* Neat little notebook puzzles and it doesn’t hold your hand

Cons

* Very short
* Linear

3/5