Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty review – gourmet remake

This remake of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee was first released on Playstation 4 last year. Us PC aficionados have had to wait another nine months to revisit Abe’s escape from Rupture Farms and subsequent liberation of his Mudokon buddies. Fortunately, it was well worth the wait, because New ‘n’ Tasty is about as good as a remake gets.

Persona 3 Review

Where do I even start with a game that took me 95 hours to complete? I suppose I had better start at the beginning. I am a HUGE fan of the JRPG genre of games so when it comes down to something like Persona 3, its obviously going to affect my opinion of the game. Well, regardless of that here we go.

I found the start of the game to be quite slow, picking up the pace very gradually, so I starting to get a little bored of it and start to think that the hype surrounding this game was undeserved. Then it happened, the dorm I was living in was attacked by a monster known as a “shadow” so my character took a gun to his head and you hear the words “persona” as he shoots, releasing his own persona in order to fight the monster. The story of this game is intense and extremely interesting, that is when the story is happening.

It seemed as though the game would go on for (in game) weeks, dragging along, before I got to the next story section, but when they did happen they were incredible. Following a group of teenagers around as they fought a battle against shadows to save the world, seems like every JRPG story you’ve played through before, but it’s the twists and turns this game takes you through that makes it so interesting.

The battle mechanics of the game could of used some improvement as having to rely on the AI to control the other 3 characters in the party, grew tedious very quickly and made the latter half of the game that bit more difficult, more so than it needed to be. Collecting and fusing up Personas to create new and more powerful ones took hours upon hours of my time as I tried to make the most powerful team possible. I spent a good long time in this game and on paper. The school mechanics may seem boring but I spent a lot of time trying to max all the games ‘social links’ which would gave me access to more powerful Personas, which I could also then, in turn, fuse into weapons or keep them. I found the game to be fantastic and couldn’t put it down.

I was coming home from work or waking up and wanting to put it straight on in order to find out what would happen to my team next. I highly recommend playing this through if you haven’t before and you are a fan of JRPGS especially the old style.

By Luke Stone

Holy Invasion Of Privacy Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? Review

Holy Invasion Of Privacy Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?

How is this a game I’ve never heard of before and how come everyone I talk to has never heard of it either? It has a clever game play mechanic, its script is in-depth and funny, it’s original and yet retro plus, it’s really addictive. For some reason, I hadn’t encountered it before except for once in my local game shop.

Holy Invasion is set in an 8-bit fantasy world whereyou play as an evil god of destruction awakened from a long slumber, thanks to the prayers of your loyal minion, The Overlord. He has summoned you to help him conquer the world, by creating a dungeon filled with monsters and traps to defend against an onslaught of RPG wizards and warriors. The idea is simple but what makes this game so clever and truly unique is the method you use to create and fill your dungeon.

You are given a 100x300(ish) grid of blocks to dig out your dungeon. most of these blocks are covered in a green slime, called nutrients. When you dig out one of these blocks, a small slime ball called a Slimemoss is born. These creatures roam around your dungeon eating and excreting nutrients on the blocks. Once enough builds up, a new block is formed and once that is dug out a new ant like creature called an Omnom is born (If even more gathers then a lizard man is born). The Slimemoss feed on the nutrients, bud flowers and spawn more Slimemoss. Omnoms feed on Slimemoss, then they cocoon themselves and spawn more little bliters. Lizard men feed on Omnoms, then make nests and lay eggs. With this functioning ecosystem, you have to create and maintain your dungeon.This is your defence against the heroes that assault your dungeon and attempt to capture ‘TheOverlord‘. There is also a magic based ecosystem that mirrors the nutrient food chain with spirits, liliths and dragons, these have to co-exist with each other. Each day you use a limited amount of digs to expand your dungeon and fight off the heroes then use your leftover dig power to upgrade your creatures. As you progress further, you learn how to use skeletons, demons and more. Its a clever RTS/Simulator, kind of reminiscent to games like the classic Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius.

I really enjoyed that this game goes a bit deeper with the actual gameplay and I’m not talking about the name (even though the name is awesome). I love how it’s reminiscent of an older era of gaming. Not only is it in a colourful pixel form which would be perfectly at home on something like the SNES or aSega. Like games that got released for these comsole, its really hard to complete, I mean really hard!

I’ve owned this game for quite some time now and I haven’t been able to complete it. Luckily there’s loads of unlockable training missions to teach the deeper elements of the game but even the later ones of those get really difficult. I’ve managed to defeat 6 or 7 of the heroes but never reached the end. Once you lose a round, you have start all the way back at the beginning, and I really love that, you don’t really see that kind of thing in games these days. Levels so hard you run out of continues before you got past them, playing a game for years before you finally even got to the final boss. I spent years playing Sonic 2 before I could beat Robotniks Death-Egg Mech, and I’ve only completed Mario 3 using the Warp Whistles and not doubt, it will be a few more years until I complete this. Can’t wait to finally finish it.

By Daniel Estephane

Batman Arkham Knights Trailer

South Park: Stick of Truth Review

South Park: Stick of Truth

South Park is a series that needs no introduction, excluding the previous remark that serves as an introduction to state that the series needs no introduction. South Park: The Stick of Truth is a role-playing game set in the South Park universe, written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

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The Saboteur Review

Do you ever see those games on the shelf that never really draw your eye? The kind of games that just seems to be there to fill the gaps between the newly released games and the best sellers. The ones that go ignored because you don’t know anyone who has played them, or even mentioned them for that matter. Well that’s what The Saboteur was for me, just another game padding out the shelf of my local store. That’s when i thought to myself, maybe I should give this game a chance, see what it holds for me. This could be a hidden gem that has just become missed, or maybe there is a reason why no one is playing it…

    I knew nothing about this game. I had a quick glance at the case to see what it was about but essentially I was going in to it blind. The case said that the game is set during World War 2 and has a film noire theme. You play an Irish rebel, named Sean Devlin, helping the French resistance liberate Paris, changing the game from black and white to full colour as you free areas from Nazi rule. The first cut scenes played through and as I expected the characters are all stereotypes. The Irish are drunks, the Germans are sadists and the French all smoke cigarettes and drink wine. But as I said, I expected this so I pushed on.

 The game centres around Sean Devlin, some dodgy character who fled from Ireland for reasons unknown and is now a Grand Prix racer in Europe. After being cheated out of a win by a German rival racer, Sean and his friend Jules get some payback by trashing his race car. Little did they know this rival racer is also a Nazi captain who captures them and, mistaking them for spies, has Jules and all his family killed during the invasion of their town. Sean and Jules’ sister escape to Paris then 3 month later, here we are at the start of our heroes journey.

   The first bits of gameplay started and I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a sandbox game in the style of Grand Theft Auto. So the first thing I did (just like any GTA player would) was steal a car, drive down the pavement through as many people as I could and find a weapon to start a shoot out with. Strangely, this all handled really naturally. The controls felt smooth and the driving, fighting and shooting all handled really well. then as the game progressed it started adding more and more features, turning it into more than just a 1940’s generic GTA-styled clone.

   Lets start from the top. There is a well thought out, yet simple, stealth element to the game using suspicion, disguises and distractions that affect the AI. There is a weapon shop which supplies guns, bombs, ammo and upgrades, and the currency is earned by destroying watch towers, armoured cars and Nazi transport bridges. black market garages where you can store, access and upgrade any vehicle you have dropped off there previously, There’s a perk system with abilities that are unlocked by completing certain tasks, like killing 10 enemies with grenades or destroying watch towers or bridges with dynamite. I have to say my favourite element is the fact that the free roaming isn’t limited to the streets either. For some reason your is able to climb buildings and jump across rooftops similar to Ezio from Assassin’s Creed. Maybe with a little less grace, but never the less this allows you to infiltrate areas, find sniper points and generally have more fun travelling through the city than just driving around everywhere.

   I was sceptical when I decided to review this game, thinking it was just going to be another third person shooter or a bargain bin fodder, but it turned out to be loads of fun. I barely got through half of the gameplay features that make this so much fun and I haven’t even finished playing it all the way through. I’m having so much fun running across the rooftops, blowing stuff up while being chased by Nazis. If you see this, pick it up and play it. I can’t believe i almost missed this game. I won’t be making that mistake again.

Written by Daniel Estephane

If there are any more games like The Saboteur that you feel has gone a miss then please feel free to comment below and maybe we will have a blast on it and do a little bit of a write up for it

Let’s Play Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition “Saw Adventure Map” Part 1

Grand Theft Auto Review

So, with the release of the new Grand Theft Auto V, I thought it would be appropriate to delve in to the origins of the game. That’s right, Grand Theft Auto; released for the Playstation in 1997. It is still one of my all time favourite games despite it beingreleased nearly 17 years ago.
Now, for the people who werent old enough to buy or play this game back then, this game may look simple and graphically crap but for those of us who grew up playing this game it will always hold a soft spot in our hearts even though it was sooooo god damn hard..

Assassin’s Creed III Review

Okay, so I’m going to be completely honest here; I don’t like the Assassin’s Creed franchise. There I said it, bring on the hate, but when this game became available for free to me, I thought I may as well give it a shot since everyone I know bums it.

We play as an assassin known as Connor, set in late 1700 British Colonial America. As usual, Assassin’s Creed 3 tells a tale of alternate history with our protagonist acting behind the scenes of actual historical events. Connor’s tale is of a young man trying to protect his native American tribe’s freedom while dealing with the centuries conflict between the Templars and the Assassins.
Connor’s world is open for you to explore and free run around, to be honest, it looks visually stunning. Connor gets to make his way through built up urban areas full the people going about their everyday lives and then into the untamed Frontier where you will be tasked with the option of hunting wildlife and defending yourself against all kinds of creatures. Yeah I know, looks like someone took a leaf out of Far Cry’s book (Ubisoft, where are you getting these unique ideas from, no sarcasm intended). Saying that, I am a HUGE fan of Far Cry 3 (as you could probably tell from one of my previous reviews), but i felt that Ubisoft really didn’t need to put that element of hunting and skinning animals into this game.