Kingdom Hearts - A Game I Regret Missing Out On

A GAME I REGRET MISSING OUT ON

KINGDOM HEARTS

It's November 2002, I'm 13 years old. I have a PS2 since Christmas 2001. I have a handful bad-ass games such as Metal Gear Solid 2, Grand Theft Auto 3, Dynasty Warriors 2, and I have recently gotten GTA: Vice City.

I've grown out of all those kiddie games such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Crash Bandicoot. I want to play some grown-up games now. I hate Final Fantasy and all games like it, I hate RPGs because they're so far-fetched. I love my mature, action packed "Man Games".

I'm also new to collecting magazines to see what games are out. In one of those magazines, I see an article about Kingdom Hearts for the PS2. Instantaneously I said "pfft, Disney games are for kids, I'm in high school now, I don't play these kind of games"

Wow, such a narrow mind I had as a young lad...

Fast-forward to 2017 and I have established myself as a fairly open-minded gamer. I have completed Final Fantasy 9, I have gotten as far as Sephiroth's final form in Final Fantasy 7 (And that save file has been sitting in my PSP since 2011 and I don't think I'll ever finish it.... but I have started a new game recently and I have gotten as far as.....that tragic scene, but I digress). Essentially, I now love J-RPGs - of all kinds, I might add - and as I write this, it's the 9th of April 2017 and I have recently finished Kingdom Hearts I.5 Final Mix on PS4....

.....which is:

The remaster of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Final Mix that was released on PS3;

Which was the remaster of the unreleased Japanese extended edition of the original Kingdom Hearts that was never released to Western audiences on PS2..... which I never cared for growing up because I didn't enjoy platformers, RPGs or Disney games.

BUT I digress.

As I was saying. I bought Kingdom Hearts I.5 & II.5 ReMix for the PS4 which was released about a week ago as of this blog. I bought it because I thought it was time I actually tried these games.

While I said I have opened my mind to more games and genres, I still didn't bother to try Kingdom Hearts but this time it was for a new reason: the story was supposed to be very complex and each instalment of the series looked all over the place chronologically, and it gave me such a headache that I just didn't intend on trying it.

Hell - I didn't even know Kingdom Hearts I.5 ReMix was a remaster of the original Kingdom Hearts. I thought it was another ridiculous name for a new instalment, but this is the world of the internet so I was gobsmacked when I found out that I missed this on PS3 when I had one.

Anyway - without going too much off track again - I bought this pack simply because it was time - time to break the proverbial brick wall that has prevented me from trying these games out.

So a little synopsis - Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002 and is a cross-over action-RPG that merges the world of Disney with that of another world filled with characters from Final Fantasy (moreso that of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X) and you play as a character who is out of the loop of both of these worlds, essentially playing from an outside perspective, and something messed up has happens which causes both worlds to be brought together but with a cost - there are evil dark creatures and enemies lurking around the place so you have to find a way to end it.

It's as vague a description as I'm going to put out to avoid any spoilers of any kind.

So I bought it on its Friday release (because the UK and Ireland have the best release days - the beginning of a weekend) and fast forward to Saturday night-Sunday morning and my first impressions have set in - "I am not sure I enjoy this game at all"

Here's what I did like at first:

• The soundtrack
• The discovery of various Disney and Final Fantasy characters interacting with each other

...that was it

Here's what I did not like;

• The combat
• The camera (this was more of an enemy in and of itself - very awkward to work with)
• The gummi-ship sequences (those things were boring, uninspiring, dull looking machines that had one gun and no texture to its appearance, they looked tacked on - so annoying. And they were unskippable, these were necessary to travel between worlds - no fast travel!!)
• The convoluted narrative (I kept asking "why" at almost everything)
• The enemies (thought they were dull and too easy)
• The micromanaging of your inventory (you can't stop to rearrange your items/equipment during battle, you have to wait until all enemies on screen are defeated)
• The fact that you can't tell if an enemy is nearly dead - NO HEALTH BAR
• Your weapon is a f*cking key (I know there's this thing where you have to suspend your disbelief but come the f*ck on - enemies are charging at me with staffs, swords and all sorts of deadly weapons and here's me - holding something you open your car with. Come at me!)
• The boring and sometimes dreadful level design (You're so boxed in it's almost claustrophobic. Made worse by that awful inconsistent camera)
• No map. I had to pull up a guide to find out where to go, I never usually do that - there's always an "it's obvious" mechanic to direction in games these days - even without a map it can work (look at Final Fantasy 7 - most times you just.. get it.) this game, doesn't follow that simple design. I was scratching my head a lot at not figuring out where to go. There are platforms you just can't see unless you wrestle with that camera to see it.

These were all of my first impressions after getting to the 2nd or 3rd world in the game - it started to feel a bit repetitive;

*Go to this world*

|

*Kill enemies*

|

*Kill boss*

|

*Use key to lock world*

|

*rinse and repeat*

|

*Oh, and try following this story of "I'm trying to find someone you lost at the beginning of the plot"*

By this point, my urge to finish the game was diminishing, I just decided to mindlessly grind out of boredom, and every now and then play another game to keep me occupied, because Kingdom Hearts wasn't doing it for me - I thought to myself "I have just bought a pack of 6 games and I can't even be bothered to continue the 1st game in the series"

I even went and bought the Atari Flashbacks collection on PS4 to just give me something to do (I didn't want to turn on another AAA title because that's a nasty habit I need to kick - dropping one big game to play something else and never returning to finish it) and I had a good bit of fun on it - played some retro belters like Asteroids, Centipede and Black Widow - got a few Trophies as well (a good few silver ones, too) and I was fairly happy.

I decided to give Kingdom Hearts another run. I know I sound like I'm hating on the game at this point but believe me I was trying, I played it every day during the week for at least an hour, so I didn't outright abandon it. But moving on;

After around 20 hours into the game I finally found it - the part of the game where I just said "I get it, now. This is what I missed".

This game started getting brilliant.

I learned that I could equip a "scan" item that allows me to see enemy health bars. This helped, a lot, because it helps to know how much damage I'm doing with what abilities I'm using against said enemies.

I learned how to build and upgrade my gummi ship. I turned my ship into a beast with about 6 machine turrets and a rocket dispenser, and 2 laser guns and it was fast as sh*t! It really made those sequences much more fun to do.

With that, I also learned that I could install a warp drive to fast travel between worlds I already visited. This was amazing! It made travelling much more consistent and I didn't have to wait around.

I learned that I could upgrade my Key blade - and my abilities such as combos and other special moves. Melee combat ended up being extremely satisfying.

As someone who doesn't favour using magic in RPGs (I'm the conventional, physical type) I am thankful that using spells in this game is almost a must. Because it turned into one of my favourite things to do in this game - casting Aeroga and using "charge" turned me into a god in most occasions.

I had the rose-petal keyblade that Belle handed me, it's almost the most OP weapon in the game. I was unstoppable. I was destroying bosses left, right and center.

And that's another thing I started to really love - the boss encounters. They were not too easy but not overly difficult, either. There was only ever one or two instances where I said "right, I am just not ready to fight this boss, I'll come back later" one of them was the devil guy from Fantasia (I forget his name) and another secret boss that I accidentally encountered - who annihilated me within seconds, I should add.

In order to defeat the devil character, I had to upgrade my Aero ability to it's best form (basically allowing me to take a lot of damage without losing too much health) and to do this I had to do a bit of a collect-a-thon, by finding chests containing  99 lost dalmation puppies (not as long and large as it sounds, because they came in groups of three for each chest, and the game would tell you how many were in each world. All I had to do was find the chest-locations. When I made the effort to go and get all of them, I already had about 50 of them, so it took me no more than 30 mins to find the rest)

As for the secret boss character. I haven't bothered to go back and fight him yet. Not sure if I will since it isn't story-related and I want to see what happens next.

And that's another thing I want to add - The Story.

*Spoilers Ahead*

It starts off with you, the main character, Sora. And your two friends, Riku and Kairi, want to build a raft and see other worlds away from their home island. In the midst of all this, the island is invaded by creatures known as the Heartless. You find out that your two friends have disappeared and your original task is to find them.

Parallel to this, we find out that in the realm of the Disney universe, King Mickey has also disappeared and his two friends, Donald and Goofy depart the kingdom to go find him.

You eventually meet these two and they agree to join you in your quest to find Riku and Kairi, while finding out you're the holder of the keyblade, you have the power to close all the keyholes around the world and end the reign of the heartless. At first I thought this was a fairly cute, simple plot to follow. But it only gets darker and better as the story goes on. And I won't spoil the rest of it but I will say by the latter 1/2 of the game, I was hooked. The story started getting darker and it just reminded me of a Final Fantasy game by that stage. And that's what makes this game amazing.

You start off helping various beloved Disney characters with their own troubles, and once that's all done, you end up fighting a greater evil that culminates in one of the best stories I've ever seen in a game.

I absolutely loved the hell out of this game by the end of it. I have officially fallen in love with Kingdom Hearts and I cannot wait to play more of them.

I regret not playing these games when I was younger. I now understand why they're still fairly pricey to buy on its original format. It is one of the most complex, deep and original stories of any RPG I have ever played.

And I will say this - the end of the game gets very, very, very J-RPG-esque. Talk about final forms. This was incredible..

Kingdom Hearts is a classic. And even though I have only played the first one, I am already excited to know that there will hopefully be a Kingdom Hearts 3. I say "hopefully" because even though it's in development and the first trailer was shown, cancellations can happen - but I hope with this, that it doesn't.

Great Game

Great Story

Great Experience.

Just Play: ROAD REDEMPTION

Even though this game is in early access, there is no denying that it almost plays as if it were a full release. The only evidence of it even being in its beta stages is it's lack of modes. But that will improve as the months go on.



If you ever saw, or played the Road Rash series, you should definitely check this out!!



Enjoy :)

Dying Light - A Turn of Opinion?

Allow me to begin by saying I have, for the most part, grown tired of the zombie genre in the video game industry. These are all the games I've played that sport the zombie trend;

• Resident Evil
• Resident Evil 4
• Resident Evil 5
• House of the Dead
• Dead Rising 1 & 2
• Call of Duty World at War's Nazi Zombies
• Call of Duty Black Ops' Nazi Zombies
• Black Ops II Nazi Zombies
• Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Army
• Dead Island
• Left 4 Dead 1 & 2
• Zombie Apocalypse 1 & 2
• Plants vs. Zombies (it counts)
• Dead Nation
• Forbidden Siren 1, 2 & Blood Curse
• Silent Hill
• Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

I'm sure I've missed a small few more. But these are the games I've remembered.

Dead Island was the latest iteration of a zombie survival game I bought and played (back in 2012) where I said "I'm sick of this genre" and traded it in.

Dead Island promotional poster

And I didn't pay much attention to a zombie game since then. The Last of Us is ignorantly and blindly referred to as another zombie game, but it is foreshadowed by three facts;

• It has a fantastic, gripping story
• It has amazing, solid gameplay (thanks again, Naughty Dog!)
• And they aren't technically zombies, they are infected by a virus which actually exists! (only it affects plants in real life, not humans...but What If??, et voilà, The Last of Us)

So I have not included it as a true zombie game which I have played.

I have seen so many zombie games emerge since I switched myself away from the genre, such as

• DayZ (A stand-alone ArmA 3 conversion)
• H1Z1 (An MMO Zombie Survival game)
• TellTale's The Walking Dead (this is prone to be an exception for me as it's not a survival horror in it's true sense, look it up)
• The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (Was received terribly)
• Deadlight (A side-scrolling zombie title)

These are games I paid little-to-no attention to.

Then Dying Light was released in January of 2015. At first I dismissed it as another zombie game. I was even more switched off at the fact that it was made by the same developers that made Dead Island, and that it played relatively similar, so I didn't care for it.

However, I saw the game being mentioned a few times on forums and I decided to do bits of research. Yeah, it was open-world and it had action mechanics that were almost identical to Dead Island (Customizing your melee weapons) but that was all it seemed to be: another zombie game like Dead Island only set somewhere else. I didn't find anything interesting about it, I also didn't understand why they would make a game that would near-identically resemble another game they already made. So I jumped back on the fence again and leaned away.

Six months later I can't count how many times I heard Dying Light being mention on forums, social media and other websites throughout the first half of the year. I impulsively bought it mid-July (I was so broke at the time I'm still paying money back for the game in installments :P)

So a few hours in and I finally see the difference between Dying Light and Dead Island, and why Dying Light is considered to be miles better than Dead Island as a zombie survival horror.. Because Dying Light is actually a survival horror. Compared to Dead Island, in which just brainlessly hacking at zombies with customized melee weapons was the fun factor (you can still do that in Dying Light, but it's not recommended as much), Dying Light encourages you to SURVIVE! There are some similarities to other games;

• Dead Island is the obvious one, as it implements very similar combat mechanics, with the inclusion of guns (although the guns aren't really handled all that well in the game, and early on they are pretty-much unseen) and the ability to free-roam the environment and craft your own customized weapon.
• Far Cry is also a game that comes to mind when it comes to scaling radio towers and then using the zip-line to get back to ground-level quicker and there are also loads of loot chests that are discovered similarly to Far Cry. Let's not forget there are plants and herbs you can pick throughout the game's world, also a known Far Cry mechanic.
• The parkour free-running was clearly borrowed from Mirror's Edge as I can't think of any other first-person game that implemented the mechanic as famously as that game did.
• And the behaviour of building scaling is similar to Assassin's Creed

Don't allow these similarities to take sway your head away from it, though, as, much to my surprise, this game implements some of the best solid gameplay of any zombie game I have played in the last decade and a half.

Night-Time is a lot more scarier than Day-Time, naturally.

With Dying Light's solid weapon combat comes a feature many may have seen in plenty of open world games these days, and that's the day/night cycle. But as many games have this, most of them don't provide much difference as to how you play the game. And that's where this game sets itself apart from it's genre peers. By day, zombies will aimlessly wander the game's world, attacking you on site as you can expect. But by night, the game becomes more challenging. The world will be infested by unique types of zombies that only appear after dusk, and come equipped by a field-of-view cone in the mini-map, similar to what you see in Metal Gear Solid and the Driver series. The game's world is essentially more dangerous, and encourages you to walk on eggshells around enemies. With this, the game also ups the ante by giving you double the XP when night-time occurs, giving you more incentive to play the game in the dark more often, whilst making it extra challenging. This is very dynamic, and a welcome feature, as it will force you to change up your approach, and adjust your tactics as the pace of the game will differ, completely.

With all these good points come the bad. And this game has a few of them, but are more directed towards the game's narrative, rather than the gameplay, as from what I've played, the gameplay seems fairly solid.

The game's story is heavily clichéd. You can see a few scenes coming as you watch the game's point-of-view cutscenes and afterwards you shout "I knew that was going to happen!". Dying Light also suffers from one of the most horrible type of missions you can think of - fetch quests, and there are plenty of fetch quests. Even the main protagonist gets impatient, as if the voice-actor knew the frustration of it when he lent his voice. The characters are somewhat forgettable, save for two or three of them.

And, although by this blog I'm barely past the halfway stage, the characters in the game almost behave as if the zombies are an afterthought. It's as if they aren't aware that they exist. There have been a few characters that have referenced certain types of zombies that you encounter - one set of missions will focus on finding out the identity of particular zombie but as far as I've seen, that's all that has happened. You're doing missions for people that don't seem to give two shits about whether you live or die, they just want the jobs done. But like I said, I haven't seen enough of the game's story to have that as a final opinion, so call it a preliminary opinion as of this point.

If you're buying this game just for the story, or to see characters develop, you won't find it here. This game obviously focuses on the gameplay, first and foremost.

Multiplayer is ever-so-present in this game as well. It doesn't force you into it, but it has been regarded as the mass-preferred way to play, as you can team up with 3 other players to play the same game as you, or join other players' games and tackle the campaign with them. You can pretty much do what you like, but I would say if multiplayer is your thing, play it with friends. It would seem more fun that way than playing with random strangers. Personally, I don't particularly care for the multiplayer - I do fine on my own and I don't really have any friends that actively play the same games as me. Boo hoo :'(

As far as technical jargon goes, the game holds a pretty solid 30 frames-per-second on the Xbox One version, save for a few instances where the frames drop during intense action (personally, frames don't bother me) and there have been a few cases of screen tear, but only if you look for it. Otherwise it's pretty unnoticeable. Graphically, the game looks gorgeous. Although I've recently developed a dislike for motion blurring and film-grain, and all those other camera-lens effects, and this game has them heavily embedded into the console version. It would be nice to have the option to remove those effects but I can deal with it if I have no choice in the matter (my PC wouldn't be able to handle this game for now). Since playing Dying Light, I have had one or two sensations of nausea while playing but it goes away quick. The game's highly detailed graphics, plus the 30 frames, plus the slightly zoomed-in field of view, and the fast movement that you will be frequently doing during free-running, is enough to cause anyone that suffers motion sickness easily to feel ill. But they have disclaimers on each console for that kind of thing, including photosensitive epilepsy so I'm not going to develop excuses. It is a bit nauseating to play if you haven't played any game like this before or you're just flat-out sensitive to it, but I digress.

Whether it's on your own or with others, this game is a blast to play. It's a lot better than I thought and it certainly is a very creepy game. It's the first time in a long time where I've been scared of a zombie in a video game. It's fun, disturbing, scary, solid and challenging.

Any zombie fans out there will obviously buy this - it's a no-brainer. But for anyone on the fence about the zombie genre, or are like me and got sick of it, I encourage you to get this game. It redeemed my opinion, anyway.

If I was to give this a score I would give it an 7/10, with the only cons being the story and the repetitive missions. The gameplay is enough to make it a must-buy. So go out and buy it!

Good Night
Good Luck

-David 'Gamer Bhoy' Cameron.

Gaming in the 8th Generation: Video Game Sizes

Gaming in the 8th Generation

Video Game Sizes - A Gig Too Far

I've played games my whole life. I've always had a somewhat-large collection of games to compliment the console(s) I actively use. I have owned;

• over 200 PS2 games
• 100 PS1 games
• 400 Xbox 360 games both physical and digital (as well as arcade titles)
• about 40-50 PS3 games (I got the console late on)
• about 10 Gamecube games (I got the console in 2013)
• roughly 12-13 Xbox Original games (same reason)
• Over 300 PC games to my name, including Steam purchases, which is in the +130 region, as well as Origin (20 something games) and about 60 physical games.

and I still own about 20 Sega MegaDrive games (only in recent years have I discovered buying these games off eBay, which I have been doing now and then)

I currently own over 50 PS4 games;

• 17 Physical
• ~40 Digital (Both owned and with PS Plus)

And I have a handy amount of Xbox One games. That library is growing, slowly but surely.

I imagine one would wonder why I'm putting down the amount of games I've owned throughout my life. Well, I don't mean to brag, or gloat, because believe me, there are people out there with ridiculously larger collections than I do.

But the reason I'm saying all this is, I'm here to ask: What is the difference between playing games in today's generation and playing games of generations past?

The answer is this:

Between 1993 and 2013, I have enjoyed playing my games whenever I wanted. If I felt like turning one game off and putting another game on, I could just eject the disc, place it in it's case, grab another game, insert that disc, and play away...

But recently, with the likes of my PS4 and Xbox One, I'm now becoming aware of the sizes games have become, not in scale of visible content, but rather in size of data.

What I mean is, for the first time ever, I'm experiencing having to uninstall a game I'm not actively playing to make room for another game I want to play because my console's hard drive (on both consoles) is 500GB, and I have to install every game I first boot, as mandatory.

To rub salt into these little wounds, along with large game installs comes the now-expected Day-One Patches with some of these games. These patches are the bane of gaming today, as games are now being released too early (to fit a specified target date) and as a result, the remaining fixes for the game are left to us gamers to download in order to play the game in a stable state. Now, in the previous generations, there were patches for games that were updated on a regular basis to keep the games stable, the Xbox 360's games would have regular updates that never took any longer than a maximum of 60 seconds, and some as quick as 3 seconds.

The PS3 was a little bit more sinister as any fresh game would require every patch and update to be downloaded to date, which would result in some rather long waiting times for these updates to download. It wasn't the case with every game, thankfully.

But with today's generation, digital games are becoming the norm, and large game sizes are slowly becoming common. 

To elaborate further on the difference between playing games today as opposed to previous generations, I now experience the dread of bothering to install, and update a game whenever I feel like playing it.

I'll use a perfect example of this.

On my Xbox One, I have GTA V and Halo: The Master Chief Collection on physical copy. GTA V is 60 GB, and Halo is between 40 and 50GB if I remember correctly. Those are some large game sizes. I will never delete GTA V off my Xbox because it's my favourite game on that system at the moment, and it's my go-to game if I can't think of any other game to play on that console.

But with Halo, there have been moments where I've needed to save a significant amount of space on my HDD and I have hesitated on uninstalling Halo from my HDD because whenever I decide to reinstall that game, I have to sit through that day-one patch download again, which is over 20GB.

It has gotten to a stage now where the games that I have uninstalled, I have thought about playing them another time, and when that time comes, I'm discouraged from doing so, because I have a fear of needing to download large patches for that game.

I uninstalled Forza 5 two months ago. But last week I wanted to play some Forza 5 again, so I decided to install the game. It was taking a long time to install and update the game so I stopped the installation and looked for something else.

It's bad now, when I look at this generation of games and I have to pick and choose my games carefully. Think of what game I MIGHT play again in the following week and what game I have no interest in playing until further notice.

Back in the day, I never had that problem. If I was playing GTA 3, and I felt like playing FIFA 2002 later, all I had to do was save my game, turn the game off and insert FIFA 2002 and I'd be playing it within 3 minutes of swapping the games. Then after a brief hour or so playing FIFA 2002 I'd have felt like playing some Def Jam Vendetta so I would turn FIFA off, put it back on the shelf and insert Def Jam Vendetta and fire up the Story Mode.

Nowadays, I have 17 physical PS4 games and I have to think of up to 4 games I want to have installed because of the size they are. It's worse with the Xbox One because I have 2 games installed that take up a total of ~120GB of my HDD space. I can't find myself to get into the mood to play Battlefield 4 because I'll have to download the latest patch AND download all my map packs, which is unbearable to think of considering the fact each map pack is about 4GB.

I have went from playing 10 different games a day to playing maybe two games for the whole day and barely giving myself any encouragement to play any more, all because of the thought of waiting for everything to install/download.

Digital games are worse. I might have unlimited download speeds, but if I'm in the mood to redownload and play a particular game, I can't satisfy that mood right away, I have to download this ridiculously large game which will take 6 or 7 hours to download and by the time it's done, I'm not interested anymore.

I miss being able to switch from game to game on the fly whenever I wanted with any game I had. I didn't have to take 17 games and select up to 5 to install. I liked having my options there for me. I liked looking at my shelf of games and going through all of them to decide on what game to insert and play. I can't really do that anymore. I have to look through my shelf and select a game I want to wait to play.

Right now at this moment I want to play Forza Horizon 2. But it's uninstalled and it's a digital copy and I don't want to wait to download it, to be uninterested after it finishes, or play it for the remaining hour I have left of any interest at all.

Reading back over some of my paragraphs, I realized I sound like an over-entitled little b*tch with too much time on his hands and has nothing but first-world problems and too many games, and I apologize for coming across that way.

Let me elaborate. I said I have "owned" the number of games had in the past. The present tense says different. I no longer have the 400 games for the Xbox 360 as I don't even have an Xbox 360 at all, anymore. Any games I have left for that system would be the digital arcade titles licensed to me - bought over the course of 7 years of owning the console.

I also no longer have a PS3, and I have barely any digital games bar a few PSone classics to look back on.

I still have a PS2, Xbox Original, GameCube and SEGA Megadrive, but they're mostly for collection and nostalgia purposes, and even then, I don't buy games for them as often as I could be. But I digress.

The problem I'm having with games nowadays is a problem many gamers are facing - not just me. I'm just one of few that is blogging about it :P

Bloodborne: The Game That Made an Impression on Me

This is not a review. This is an expression of genuine feeling. I'm not going into technicalities too much, I'm going into the impact this game has made on a gamer that has never thrived for a hard game.

I know fine well that I will take a long break from this game, like I do with many others, and play something else, as this is what an open-minded gamer is tormented with: so many games to choose from and play.

With every game I have played on PS4, Xbox One and PC in the last 2 years, I have been met with brilliant games - some of them are games I may have already played on previous generation consoles, such as The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V and Tomb Raider. A few new games have grabbed my attention, such as Dragon Age: Inquisition and inFamous: Second Son.

The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One was amazing and I finished all four Halo titles in the space of three-and-a-half days. The multiplayer was a disappointment but it gets better as the weeks go on.

Games I have yet to finish as of this blog are:

• Dragon Age Inquisition
• Assassin's Creed: Unity
• Destiny
• The Crew
• Watch Dogs
• Knack

While I like all of the games above (yes, even Knack, even if it is a bit cheap), none of them have grabbed my attention as much as I hoped. In other words, nothing in any of those games have kept me glued to the screen or made me leap out of bed the following morning to turn it on immediately and play.

This is where Bloodborne comes in.

I am aware of From Software's titles. I first played Dark Souls when I discovered it in my local video game store. I had never heard of it, and I didn't even know what it was (I had no internet for the best part of a year so I was out of touch). While I enjoyed it, the difficulty was too great and I found myself playing it in little increments. I have played a snippet of Demon's Souls when it was free on Playstation Plus, I wasn't in the mood for it. I haven't played Dark Souls II, currently awaiting the remastered version on PS4.

Bloodborne was released on Friday, 27th March 2015 here in Europe. I wasn't even planning on buying it. I was on my way to my girlfriend's house and I normally take my PS4 with me. I thought I had forgotten to bring my games, and as there was no way I was hiking back home, I thought "well I've nothing to play, so I'm just going to buy something". I bet you're wondering, how can I spend 60 quid impulsively. No, I do not have much money, I live on a small amount a week, I'm just a bad spender :P. But I digress. I bought Bloodborne, under the impression I was probably going to get too frustrated by it and shelve it within a few days.

Quite the contrary, much to my surprise. When I died all the time on Dark Souls, it slowly put me off the game. And I would leave it alone for weeks, months, before going back to it and trying again, to progress a little bit further then take a long break again (I'm doing it on PC at the moment. I defeated the Bell Gargoyles and I rang the first bell about a month ago. I haven't progressed since), but when I died on Bloodborne, I wanted to try again, and when I died again, I wanted to try again. Basically, when I died, I didn't want to turn the game off. I wanted to keep going, I was determined.

When I arrived at my first Boss Encounter, I was destroyed. I re-spawned and I ran through the hordes of enemies just to get back to that Boss and try again. I killed it.

Now, this is no big deal to those who are used to games by From Software. However, there is something about Bloodborne that doesn't compare to the previous instalments. It's faster, and your character is more agile, as opposed to the heavy, slow pace of Dark Souls. This suited me down to the ground. And as for the Boss - it was because of this Boss fight that I realized I have found a new game mechanic to thrive on, a mechanic I have little patience for in most games, and it is my own made-up mechanic: the Come-At-Me-Bro Mechanic. In other words, this game's difficulty and ridiculous challenge fuels me to continue. It makes me learn from my mistakes, it has a hard-but-fair trial-and-error style to it's gameplay, where it forces you to try again and learn. No other game makes me tremble after a boss battle like this game does. No other game makes me hold my head in pure relief after capitalizing on a boss like this game does. This game does more than just give you a challenging boss battle and absurdly horrific and ruthless enemies, but with every boss you fight and every encounter you beat, you are rewarded. It's like the game is telling you: "Well done, you killed this boss. Here, take this as a reward and have a rest. You deserve it".

This game punishes you for your mistakes but also gives you a chance to redeem yourself. You die, you lose all your XP, however, you are given the opportunity to trek back to where you died and get that XP back. This mechanic has lived on since Demon's Souls and it was only in Bloodborne that I learned how special this mechanic was. Bloodborne is, by far, as I write this blog today, the best thing to happen on Playstation since The Last of Us on PS3. I have finally found a new thing to look for in my games. I now thrive on the difficulty. I thrive on it's challenge. I thrive on killing the next boss. I thrive on Bloodborne and I will not be shelving this for a long time.

This game doesn't have much of an active story, but more or less puts you into the midst of something terrible and let's you deal with it your own way. You can go anywhere you want, kill any boss you want in any order you want, provided you are fully prepared. This game doesn't give you a big fat arrow to follow. It doesn't give you a map, it doesn't tell you what your objective is. There is no objective, you basically have to cleanse the world of it's filth. You can have help along the way in the form of other players, but once they die, they're gone and may never come back. You might have to hope someone else arrives that does a better job. But you're mostly on your own. Some NPC's provide direction, but it's only brief, and you have to figure most of it out by yourself.

This game is just how a game is meant to be. It is a beast. And it is not a game to take lightly. If you haven't played Bloodborne and are desperate for a challenge, you are missing out. And if you didn't like a game from From Software, I am sure this one will change your mind.

For review's sake. I give this game 9.5/10 with the only negatives I could think of are the relatively small choice of weapons, and the loading times. However, more weapons may be available as DLC in future, and the load times could be patch, I reckon.

Again, I say if you haven't played Bloodborne, you must. It's a masterpiece.

-Gamer Bhoy

Next Gen Launch: The Games

Xbox One and PlayStation 4

THE GAMES

Each of the consoles have different features (TV, Apps etc.) and some features may be unique to the console such as PSN Plus and the current Xbox Live Games for Gold. But what about the main thing that we, as gamers, all look for; that being the games themselves!

Perfect Dark Zero was named Best Xbox Live Title by
IGN in 2005.

I have done my research and I have managed to have a close look at all the games that are on the way for these consoles, and I can safely say it seems only a handful of the games appear to be rather decent. That's not to say some of the games coming out are downright terrible, I mean, some launch titles got great reviews. Look at Perfect Dark Zero. That game got great reviews on launch but look at it now. Half the generation of gamers forgot about it almost instantly, especially after the arrival of the likes of Halo 3.

The 3rd party games we are seeing for these consoles are arriving in the form of prev-gen ports. These include;

• Battlefield 4
• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• Assassin's Creed IV
• FIFA 14
• Madden 25

"Watch Dogs appears to

be compared to GTA V

in many different aspects" 

Forza Motorsport 5 is exclusive to Xbox One

There are plenty more ports, but there is a total of over 30 3rd party games between now and Q1 2014 have been announced. That doesn't include the amount of exclusives coming out for each console between now and then, either.

He doesn't look very appealing does he? Knack looks
like a bit of a mess for me

Forza Motorsport 5 hit shelves in time for Xmas as well as Gran Turismo 6 for the PS4 a week later, on November 22nd and December 6th, respectively. Killer Instinct has been announced as an Xbox One exclusive, also. Aside from all the expected games, there are a few that people don't seem that bothered about. Knack, for example, isn't getting really high review scores as of writing this blog. So far it holds a Metacritic score of 59/100. Driveclub, which was getting a fair amount of hype, and was ready to be the first Instant Game release for PS+, was suddenly delayed until 2014 which has made it somewhat  obscure.

Watch Dogs main feature allows you to hack into the city's network
including other people's phones etc.

Then there's Watch Dogs, which seems to be one of the last big titles to be released this gen (but is also being released on Xbox One and PS4). I haven't seen much of it yet, but it appears to be compared to Grand Theft Auto V in many different aspects. I haven't seen enough of the game to comment myself, but I do know it is a type of open-world action game.

Another game I have seen on TV ads has been Dead Rising 3 for Xbox One. To be honest, I'm not particularly bothered by it. I didn't care much for Dead Rising 1 or 2 despite playing them for a little while (I tried, but couldn't get into them) and DR3 will pretty much be a miss for me.

So, in a nutshell, based on the titles that are coming out, I would safely say I feel much at ease holding off and waiting until Xmas to get a next gen console. That way I will be able to see a fair comparison and what exactly I should go for. The games seem promising, but there are plenty of them on my Xbox 360/PS3 for me to enjoy for the time being. Battlefield 4, COD: Ghosts and FIFA 14 are still a big hit for me. Let's not forget GTA V. I will never sell my Xbox 360 to get a next gen console if it meant parting with that game. I will keep both my current-gen consoles and still purchase a next-gen. That way I can still go back whenever I wish.

Happy gaming!

Grand Theft Auto; Is it the most genius game series ever made?

We all love different genres of games. We love Final Fantasy VII for its extremely engaging storyline. We love FIFA for it's perfect depiction of the modern game. We love Mortal Kombat for its bold introduction to violent video games. It doesn't matter what game, you love that game for what it is. But let us be honest, you cannot compare any of these games to the outstanding greatness of the phenomenon that is Grand Theft Auto. You name a game that allowed you to do anything close to what you can do in GTA before it hit the market. Name it......... You can't, can you?

Grand Theft Auto, PS1 (1997)

Grand Theft Auto began as a budget PC game that allowed the player to do........anything. It was a game that forced flexibility, to do anything the player desired in the given play-space. Walk/Run/Drive anywhere. Steal a car, speed away from cops, start a riot, shoot everybody and every THING in sight. The mission system comprised of answering payphones throughout the city, which the player could do at any time. It was a risk and it was very violent. The team behind the game, DMA Design (now known as Rockstar North) had created a masterpiece.


 The question remains; Is it the most genius game series ever created? The biased person inside me says "Yes". But, think about it. Everyone has played at least one GTA game or has played at least ONE of its clones. Here's a quick list of games that were inspired by GTA or have jumped into the sandbox genre bandwagon;

True Crime

Saints Row

Mafia

The Getaway

LA Noire

(and to some extend) Red Dead Redemption.

All of these games allow the player to complete missions at their own discretion, and do other things. Saints Row would be the closest GTA clone out of them all, but has since then became its own style, proving that it isn't trying to copy GTA in any way, shape or form.

GTA 2, PS1 (1997)

Grand Theft Auto 2 was released two years later and followed the same style as GTA1, answering various phones throughout the game but also allowed the player to team up with or become enemies with certain gangs throughout the game, adding new weapons, vehicles and features along the way. In terms of innovation, it did a fair job. New weapons included Molotov cocktails and a new tesla gun, which would electrocute anything nearby.

GTA: London, PC (1998)

In between these games, DMA released an expansion to the first game, known as Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, with a freeware prequel called GTA: London 1961 released a short time later. It had the same engine that was in GTA1, with minor graphical updates. Personally, I think it was....okay...

Grand Theft Auto 3, PS2 (2001)

In 2001, DMA Design released Grand Theft Auto 3 for the Playstation 2. According to GamesRadar, it is number Ten in their Top 50 Most Important Video Games of All Time, stating that it "introduced us to an experience we'd never seen before". That being said, it became the first in the series to go 3D, and was also the first sandbox game series to do so. GTA 3 allowed the player to explore a fully 3D world, inside a new rendition of Liberty City, the first level in GTA 1. Cutscenes were used to tell the story, and offered full voice acting, except the protagonist himself, who would remain mute throughout the game.


According to Metacritic, GTA 3 holds an average critic score of 97/100, making it the highest-rated PlayStation 2 game of all time alongside Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.

Metacritic's Top Ten PS2 Games by Average Rating. GTA 3 & Tony Hawk's 3 are tied at 97

 out  of 100

In October 2002, Rockstar North developed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The game utilized the same game engine as it did with GTA 3, using the RenderWare game engine. Gameplay-wise, nothing changed much. New features were added such as;

• Helicopters
• Motorbikes
• Business purchasing
• Clothing stores and much more

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, PS2 (2002)

The game was set as a prequel to the GTA 3 universe, set in 1986 and starring a new protagonist, Tommy Vercetti who - unlike his GTA 3 counterpart - had full spoken dialogue presented by Ray Liotta and was much more aggressive. The game sports a vast 80s soundtrack and has many references from Miami Vice and Scarface. The game's map was larger in scale than that of Liberty City in GTA III, but in terms of density, Vice City had 2 thinner islands.


Grand Theft Auto wouldn't come into stores again until October 2004 when they released a giant. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas featured the largest map to date in the franchise, with 3 cities and a vast countryside and desert that sat between all 3, and a large mountain to climb, Mount Chilliad. GTA San Andreas went further ahead in time chronologically, set in 1992, 9 years before the events in GTA 3, the game featured protagonist, Carl 'CJ' Johnson. The story centers around his return to Los Santos (depiction of Los Angeles) and has him battle his way up the criminal ladder in order to restore his family reputation, sprawling through San Fierro (San Fransisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas). The game included a huge amount of features, including;

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, PS2 (2004)

• Dating
• Gang Wars
• Graffiti Tagging
• Planes
• Parachuting
• Vehicle Modifications
• Head-to-Toe clothing options and more.

The game's story was inspired by movies such as Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society. Personally, San Andreas is my all time favourite. I love vast game worlds, and San Andreas definitely delivers a huge map to play around in.


Rockstar Leeds teamed up with Rockstar North to develop Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories for the PSP released in 2005 and 2006 respectively. LCS was set 4 years before the events of GTA III (1998) and centered around one of the main characters from GTA III, Toni Cipriani. Vice City Stories featured Victor Vance, the brother of Lance from GTA Vice City, and was set in the year 1984, 2 years before the events of Vice City.

GTA LCS was set in the same Liberty City as GTA III

GTA VCS was set in the same Vice City as GTA Vice City

These games would serve as a lengthy distraction from the upcoming GTA game which wouldn't see the light of day until it's announcement in late 2007.

Grand Theft Auto IV hit shelves in April 2008 on Xbox 360 and PS3, with the PC version released a while later in the year and broke sales records worldwide. The game was utilized under the Rockstar Advanced Gaming Engine (RAGE) and the animation engine, Euphoria. Both allowed the game to present the most detailed, dense, and  most realistic world to date, with characters exposed to a sort-of ragdoll effect if hit or shot.

GTA IV screenshot. Taken from IGN

GTA IV: The Lost and Damned

Personally, I was rather disappointed with GTA IV. It was brilliant, and very eye-candy to look at, but I felt it was.. .TOO realistic, especially for a GTA game. I see GTA games as all-round fun sandbox games with tonnes of features. GTA IV dimmed those features in favor of the graphics. Don't get me wrong, I thought the graphics were incredible and very dynamic, but I don't think it was really needed. The game world is not as large as GTA San Andreas but it is extremely dense. Maybe a little too dense and claustrophobic. But, then again, it is set in a new rendition of modern day Liberty City after all. The game's protagonist is a Serbian immigrant known as Niko Bellic, and is over on a revenge clause. The story is very engaging, but most of th
e characters are easily forgotten about. Instead of two separate games to close in the era of GTA IV, there were 2 expansion packs that focused on two other characters that the player may have met in the original game. The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony were released one year and two years respectively after GTA IV and featured new weapons, cars and gave more insight on characters from GTA IV.

GTA IV IS good. But I felt I was playing a simulator more than a sandbox game. There wasn't as many features in GTA IV as there was in San Andreas. Taxi missions were removed in favor of a temporary taxi minigame presented by Roman Bellic, Niko's cousin. Vigilante missions were replaced with a tedious police computer feature, which only allowed you to catch up to 20 felons, with your only reward being an achievement/trophy. There were no ambulance missions, and no fire missions. These were a huge disappointment for me as they were my favorite side missions in the previous installments. Money was very scarce and worthless, just like it was in GTA III. The only thing you could really buy were weapons.

When you look back at it all, GTA is probably the most genius game to come to our home consoles. Most will disagree with me but everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But don't tell me I'm wrong. Whether you like it or hate it, GTA is a household name and if you ask anybody in the street "have you heard of GTA" you'll get a yes 95% of the time. GTA is as well known as Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario and Call of Duty. And with the release of GTA V coming out in another week as of this blog, I can assure that the game will sell double the copies in a day that GTA IV sold in a week. Okay, that's a bold statement and probably impossible, but you get my point. GTA V is innovation at its finest, based on what I've seen. As of today, GTA V is the most expensive game ever produced at $265 million (£170 million).