Left 4 Dead 2 (DELAYED AS USUAL)

Introduction

             Welcome one and all to the newest, and slightly delayed, review to grace this gaming blog of mine. I definitely have a problem with keeping with scheduled releases of these reviews on Sundays, mainly because I sometimes lack inspiration and the feeling of writing and just abandon it altogether and wait till the next Sunday, but that will not suffice, and thus I bring to you this new review, and it may be a day late, but better late than… next Sunday.

            This week’s game of particular focus is an all-time classic, with its huge fanbase (a respectable one even today!), offers spectacularly solid gameplay, had a recent free giveaway for every copy (wow!) and is part of the zombie game genre. Of course, many of you would have guessed it by now. That game is… Left 4 Dead 2.

 

Took me some time to realise the thumb is missing

            Left 4 Dead 2, also known as L4D2, is the sequel to the original L4D, developed by Valve and released on November 2007. An extremely old game, and you know the saying “old is gold”, and that is what this game definitely falls under. 

L4D2 features several maps, the maps individually are split into 4-5 subparts, with players having to battle their way through the zombie horde in order to reach a “safe-house”, where players can heal up and restore their ammunition supply. In the last subpart, however, players must usually hold up somewhere on the map as they must wait for their rescue party to arrive, which is in the form of a boat, plane and many others. There is usually a center spot within the map where players will mostly hold up in as they contain medical supplies and ammunition. If players are successful in fending off the waves of zombies, they escape and thus “win” the campaign, after which credits will roll showing the statistics of the whole playthrough. The whole aim of the game is pretty much similar to many other zombie genre games, which is to survive and be rescued.

Various load screens posters of various campaigns

The main characters in L4D2 include new characters from the sequel itself, and also the main characters and the maps of the original L4D, updated with better graphics, a bigger variety of weapons and new Special Infected.

L.A Noire (WOOP)

Introduction

            Ever watched shows like Sherlock Holmes and had that fuel and drive and motivation to be an epic investigator within a game that breaks cases single-handedly thanks to your logic and intuition alone? Well, there isn’t such a game.

            But one game that comes close to achieving this is L.A Noire.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 (FINALLY)

Introduction

            After a long and torturous month of study filled with tests and mental tears, I am finally back with more reviews! Sometimes on those long trips back home, I feel so sad that I am unable to do what I like to do, and it’s writing these game reviews! So without further ado, the game of this week is… 

Game Dev Tycoon

Overview

           This week's game review will be of..

            Game Dev Tycoon is a simulation game with the focus of allowing the player to create a multitude of games of different genres on different platforms, and also giving the player the ability to change the level of focus of different aspects of the game being created (e.g. Graphics, dialogues etc.) through sliders. Games that the player releases are reviewed by critics and scores are given out of 10, which affects sales and how people will react to your game.

Where you can't say "don't judge me"

            The game is very unique in what it does, which is giving players an opportunity to be creative, and for a person, like myself, who loves the idea of designing games, this game allows players to do so without spending actual money or having detailed thought.

            The story of the game is set 35 years back in the past, where the gaming industry was slowly forming, in a real-life comparison, this would be around where the first video games were being produced. You’re the boss of your own video game company, meaning you start off with only yourself as the sole game creator. From there, the story paces you up from being a one-man team working in a dusty old garage, to a professional team of game designers hand-picked by yourself who have the potential to create epic games to satisfy every gamer out there.

Sleeping in da garage tonite

You'll be stuck here for a while guaranteed

            The fictional platform releases in the game are somewhat tied into the story aspect, it tells the story of how certain platforms came about and in some, speaks of some controversy that did happen in real life. These platforms are all renamed versions of the SNES, DreamCast, Xbox, PlayStation and the like, all of which are released at a specific time during gameplay.

Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Introduction

            This week’s review will be of...

Food falling from outside the window, but ignore that.

            Cook, Serve, Delicious is an indie game with multiple game elements taken from multiple genres. These genres include action, simulation and strategy, making this game a tri-brid game… YES TRI-BRID. 

            The core mechanics of the game involves the player managing a restaurant (the simulation part), setting the daily menus (the strategy part), through day shifts of the player working from 9am to 10pm every day doing every possible position in the restaurant (the action(?) part) by themselves. 

No caption needed. Wait...

            Players start off as being introduced into a 1-star restaurant within a hotel, and is tasked to work their way up to becoming a 5-star restaurant. The only way the player can advance up the ranks is by completing goals set by the game (e.g. passing health inspection tests from a health inspector that stares into your soul). 

            The food the player can possibly have on the menu is 5 at the start, this increase to 6 when the player progresses through the game. These 6 (eventually) slots can be filled up with foods and drinks, ranging from the humble commoner food called pretzel to the destroy-their-wallet only-for-the-rich-and-classy 5-star lobster. Basically, selling the food is the player’s main source of income (duh!). 

The menu of nicely drawn food

             Money in the game is used to purchase upgrades and kitchen equipment such as fryers, which unlocks certain foods for purchase. Oh yeah, and food must be bought before they can be put on the menu (my middle name is Obvious).

            The main gameplay involves the player working a day shift from 9am to 10pm; the days generally last 15 minutes give or take in real-time. And in these 15 minutes is where you, the player, single-handedly run the restaurant: take orders, make the food, cook the food, throw the trash, set rat traps, and flush toilets. The part that varies the most and is not always the same day in day out is the food itself. A pretzel’s preparation is as simple as dunking well-shaped flour into a tub of hot oil for 5 seconds, while preparing something like a steak takes somewhere around… forever.

 

The pains of a 4-star restaurant

            Okay, enough with the introduction let’s go into deep-fried analysis, get it get it get it?

The Wolf Among Us

Introduction

            This week’s game review will be of…

 ******************************************SMALL SPOILERS***************************************

            The Wolf Among Us is a game developed by Telltale Games, the same company that released The Walking Dead. It is a story-based point-and-click game which tells the story of the main character, Bigby, who is the sheriff of a town called Fabletown, which is inhabited by familiar characters such as Snow White, Beauty, Beast and many more, all of which are interconnected within the game’s story. 

The game is unique as every decision the player makes playing as Bigby will result in different consequences. In other words, the story plays out according to the decisions the player makes. For example, if the player replies rudely to a character within the story, and if this character reappears in the later parts of the game, he/she will have a rude reaction towards the player. 

Various decisions the player can choose which result in different reactions.

This varied character behavior that is influenced by the player and thus varying story adds some replayability value to this game.

The Wolf Among Us consists of five episodes, and at present, only the first episode is available, while the other four will be released periodically till Summer 2014.

Having played the first episode twice over so far, here’s what I think about the game…

PAYDAY 2

Introduction
         After the successful post of the first game review covering Dota 2, there’s no time to stop. The next game review will be of…

PAYDAY 2 is a cooperative FPS game released on the 13^th of August this year. It was developed by Overkill Studios and is a sequel to the first, known as PAYDAY: The Heist.

It has improved on its predecessor by having better visual graphics, gameplay mechanics, and gunplay than the first, and also gives players new abilities that also help to improve the gameplay experience. All of this, along with a diverse amount of weapons, equipment and masks makes this a truly solid game.

Gameplay picture

Four players, comprised of either friends or random players in a lobby, are tasked to perform audacious bank heists and robberies, and when this is successfully done, the players receive their “payday”, namely, the loot stolen from finishing any of the 12 heists that are currently available in the game, and a huge chunk of the loot is sent to an offshore account (for that retirement party woohoo!), and the remaining is given to the player for him/her to spend on new weapons or masks. 

A successful heist!

In the first PAYDAY, there was a need for teamwork among the four players in order for them to pull each heist off. In PAYDAY 2, this is no different, and in fact is emphasized even more than the first, and it is in this teamwork element mixed with the gameplay elements that make this game unique from the other first-person shooters.

A level-up system is utilized in this game. Players gain experience from successfully pulling of heists, and depending on the scale and difficulty of the heist, they may be rewarded substantially more. When enough experience is gained, players level up, and are rewarded with skill points (elaboration below) and on certain levels, unlock new weapons.

Skills are also present within the game, and they are divided into four classes known as Mastermind, Enforcer, Technician and Ghost. These classes have six tiers each. Each skill has a “basic” effect (having a small/moderate impact) from spending 1 point (or 3 in higher tiers), and an “ace” effect (having a high/substantial impact) from spending 3 points (or 6 in higher tiers). As the level cap currently is 100, players are given only 120 points and it is up to them to use these points wisely, and is for them to choose what they wish to specialize in.

The four different classes.

The different classes (and thus, skills) mean there is usually some uniqueness to every player’s character, one guy might be the demolitions expert (Technician class), blowing up doors and safes but lacking in other areas such as lockpicking and evasion (Ghost class). Another guy could’ve mastered everything within the Mastermind class (pun intended), gaining unique abilities such as reviving downed teammates just by shouting, but lack the tankiness that the skills in the Enforcer class provides.

And that about raps up the introduction of this review (unlike the last time), now it is time to delve into what makes this game good (or bad)!