Bioshock Infinite Review

So I got Bioshock Infinite for my birthday and I was very excited! I have been looking forward to this game for more than a year, lol.  I finished it in a couple of weeks, mind you I didn't have a lot of time to play as I work almost every day and I do play games slow, I explore every single inch of the game. 

A little bit of background, you play a character called Booker Dewitt, and you have come to the floating city of Columbia to get a girl named Elizabeth and bring her back to your creditors in New York to pay off a mysterious debt.  Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it sounds, and you are pulled into a war between the city's founder, Comstock (who is like a magnetic cult leader who fancies himself a prophet of God) and Daisy Fitzroy and her Vox Populi (the lower working class folk who want to be treated fairly).

You really have to explore this game in depth and collect all the voxophones (sorta like audio logs) and really visit every inch of territory as it brings the whole game to life and adds in so much back story.

First of all, the graphics are amazing!  There are the breathtaking vista's you'd expect of a city in the clouds, and the attention to detail is stunning.  I swear, I spent more than a couple of minutes just looking at the scenery, lol. 

The way you travel in the game is fitting as well, you travel by floating gondola boats to other locations in the game, or you travel by Skyline, which means you have a huge hook in your hand and you latch onto the skyline and go fast along the line to another area.  It's very awesome, and way more exciting than my boring description made it sound lol.

The gameplay is also very good, quite simple, you use your vigors (this game's plasmids from the original bioshock) with the Left Trigger button and you use your gun with the Right Trigger button.  To melee someone with your sky hook you press Y. 

One change this game made from the original bioshock games is that you can't carry around extra salts (which power your vigors) or extra first aid kits.  Once you pick up food, health kit, or salt it's used right away, even if you have a full health or vigors bar.  I miss being able to carry around extra supplies and use them when I need them, like in the middle of battle when my health is getting low.  The good news is, you now have a shield which regenerates, so as long as you stay out of the line of fire long enough for it to come back, you shouldn't lose too much health.  And once the battle's done, the bodies of your enemies lying around should carry some food, salt and ammo for you to replenish your supplies.

Another thing I like in this game is that once you find Elizabeth, she'll toss you salt, health or ammo as you need it.  She is your companion, but you don't need to protect her, she can fend for herself! She also has the ability to open up tears in reality which you can bring out food, a different weapon, salt, a turret or cover to help you in battle.

I was worried when I first started following the game videos, as Skylines and Skyhooks and Elizabeth opening up tears, they look cool but they also looked really complicated! But I needn't have worried, the game teaches you how to use these new abilities very intuitively and simply so that you aren't confused. 

Storyline wise, this game is wonderful.  It's so layered and complicated (at times) and in depth! As I said, you really have to explore everywhere and collect every voxophone in the game to get a real sense of the story line and the back ground of the game.  It will help you understand the ending, which is a tad bit confusing lol.  I'm still a little bit confused and I did find out everything!  Even the back ground characters in this game are fleshed out, to the characters you walk by in the street to characters you never even get to meet.  Speaking of which, I would have liked to interact with the world renowned hunter Preston Downs, we only get to meet him through his voxophones in the game. 

And what can I saw about the Lutece siblings! They are twins, Robert and Rosalind, who follow around your character through out the game and offer him aid.  It may be confusing how they appear and reappear in different places so often but that will be explained!  The dialogue between them is hilarious at times and very aggravating to your character, Booker, lol. 

One thing I didn't like about the game was that you couldn't save anytime you wanted anymore, now you had to wait for an autosave.  It may have been just me, but the autosaves were few and far between! And when you only want to hop on for a bit in the evening, after supper but before going to bed, that is a bit annoying.  I'm not sure why they changed that, but I didn't like that about the game. 

The achievements were a little bit blah as well, only 5G for killing x number of enemies with x weapon in most cases, achievements for killing people with the Skyline or Skyhook and the normal game play unmissable achievements. 

All in all, it was a fabulous game, with minor annoyances, so I'm giving it a 9 out of 10.  Now I need to play it again and on Normal difficulty so I can get that achievement!

Cheers, and happy gaming!

L.A. Noire Video Game Review

I wrote this awhile ago for another site, but figured I might as well post it here too!

L.A. Noire is the latest hit from developers Rockstar Games and Team Bondi. It is available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms, with PC coming in the fall of this year. With this game they have created a visually stunning and authentic recreation of 1940’s Los Angeles, in which you get to play as Cole Phelps, a policeman. The game is comprised of different sections, which have different cases that you investigate. For example, in the tutorial section of the game, you are a normal police officer; later you get promoted to detective and you investigate different cases in the Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson sections.

The game is an over the shoulder viewpoint, and the controls are simple. You can run, walk, shoot, pick up clues and drive. You also get to play as another character other than Cole Phelps, but I won’t say who that is as I don’t want to spoil it for you. During the game you will investigate crime scenes to find various clues, question witnesses and interrogate suspects, engage in shootouts with various criminals and drive all over Los Angeles. Oh, and you will also watch lots of cutscenes which flesh out the story more fully. And it is a good storyline, if a little clichéd.

I would give the gameplay 9/10 as it is, for the most part, very well done. The controls are simple, easy to use and remember, and fine for even novice video game players. There are also mechanics in place so that if you fail at certain parts of the game three times you can skip it with no penalty, something I wish other games did. As for the bad, walking can be awkward at times, at one point I walked towards a clue, hit the button to investigate it and nothing happened because I had walked over it. I had to circle the clue and come at it from another angle to finally pick it up. Also, the controls seem too sensitive when driving, during one car chase there were many twists and turns I had to make and I ended up crashing into obstacles too many times. There was also a strange bug where a car I was walking towards just disappeared, but that only happened a couple of times.

The sound and the graphics get a 10/10 from me, as what can I say; they are excellent. It looks and sounds just like the time period, and the attention to detail is incredible. Graphics are crisp and clear, and the animations are smoothly done. The voice acting is perfect, not one sounds out of place, and the game is filled with music from the era and a lovely orchestral background at the right dramatic moments.

The replayability of the game should not be an issue as there are four DLC cases available and who knows what will come in the future. You can also replay the cases or go into free roam mode to get various achievements/trophies and collectibles. There is no multiplayer, but you can register with Rockstar’s Social Club to view your friends stats and see how they compare to yours and satisfy your competitive spirit that way. All in all, I would give this game 8 out of 10. Rockstar Games has released an exciting, addictive twist on the old style detective games, and I can guarantee that if you play you will enjoy many, many hours of fun.

Bioshock Review

So my boyfriend brought over his copy of BioShock to play on my new Xbox 360 Elite (see previous post, lol) and he was playing through it and it looked kinda interesting, so I started playing it too.

Now I'm not a fan of FPS games, I find it too hard to aim and see around me and stuff. I like RPG games the best. Yeah, I've played Borderlands, Halo 3: ODST, Resident Evil 5 and Left For Dead, but they seemed really hard (except for Borderlands, that was fun). So yeah, not a fan of FPS games, and Bioshock is a horror/survival first-peron shooter game. But it looked cool, so I gave it a try. And OMG it was the most awesome game ever! The graphics are so good, the atomosphere is creepy and scary, the gameplay is simple, the storyline is fascinating. I would definitely play this game again. :)



So you play a character called Jack, who's plane crashes in the water near the underwater city of Rapture. You start to receive radio messages from a character named Atlas, who is concerned for your safety in the dangerous city and teaches you the basics. You have a weapon in one hand, and your other hand can be used for various plasmid powers (like shooting electricity, fire, ice, telekinesis etc.) There's tons of weapons, ammo, money, health packs, eve hypos (recharges the energy for the plasmid powers) available all over the place for easy pickup. So you continue exploring the city with the help of Atlas, and you fight various bosses and do jobs for him. Some of your enemies include Splicers (insane humans who try to kill you) of which there are different types. Leadhead splicers carry guns, Houdini splicers can disappear and reappear somewhere else, spider splicers can crawl on the ceiling and do various acrobatics and thuggish splicers use crowbars or other types of hand weapons. There are also the big daddies which are like mini-bosses. They are huge, metal men who are harder to kill then the splicers. Some of them protect Little Sisters, who carry ADAM that Jack can use to buy more plasmids and upgrade existing ones, and level up his character basically. You can harvest the little sisters (kill them and take all their ADAM) or rescue them (make them human again but get less ADAM) and I choose to rescue all of them. I'm just a nice person like that when I play games, lol.



So I managed to get 44 out of 51 achievements too, I was really proud of myself. I used this walkthrough from IGN FAQs to help me get through the confusing bits, there wasn't a lot. If I had followed the walkthrough from the beginning, I would have had all achievements except for one (for playing through on hard) but oh well, I like discovering things for myself. It just means I'll have to focus on getting all the audio diaries next time, and research more security cameras, turrets and bots.

I really don't know what else to write for this game, other than the fact that it is a great game all around. The only thing annoying about it is that you can't use plasmids and weapons at the same time (which they fixed in the next game btw, but more on that later). So if you haven't played it, give it a try!

Drawn - The Painted Tower

So I finished this game recently, Drawn - The Painted Tower from Big Fish Games and all I can say is WOW!!!!!

This is a hidden object/puzzle type game where you find items and store them in your inventory to use them on puzzles in the scene and then solve other puzzles to open objects, etc. The storyline is fairly simple -- a princess and her guardian are on the run from an evil wizard, and the princess is trapped at the top of a tall tower. You must climb the tower floor by floor and solve the puzzles to find the princess. However, the plot is still compelling even if it sounds cliched! Even the cutscenes bring you more into the story. The visuals of this game is just breathtaking.....truly gorgeous art which is the main draw of the game in my opinion. It really adds to the atmosphere when you're playing it.

My only complaint is that the game is too short! It took me maybe five hours at the most to play this game.....I would have liked more puzzles and more floors of the tower. But I guess that's why they call these types of games "casual" huh? They're not meant to be long involved games. Another complaint I have is that it's annoying going down all the levels in the tower when your on one of the top levels....there's no way to go just straight from scene to scene. Oh, and the ending was sorta abrupt....you don't really know what happens. Can you say sequel? I certainly hope so! :D

But yeah, I highly recommend this game, it's so visually stunning that I was just blown away by the graphics, very detailed. I wish I had taken some screenshots to show you, but maybe you can find some on Google Images. I did need some help while playing the game, if you're in the same boat and confused by anything, check out the walkthrough by Big Fish and Jay is Games walkthrough. Here is also a short video from YouTube showing the gameplay:


Have fun with the game!

Dungeon Siege: Legend of Aranna Review

So I finished playing Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna about a month ago, and I would really like to post about it here. I am just going to copy the review I posted to Facebook's LivingSocial: Video Games application because I think I expressed myself very well.

"The game is seriously cool, I mean what more could you want? Great graphics, great storyline, great monsters to fight! This game took me 39 hours to play (spread out over probably a month) and it was well worth it. I loved the addition of the displacer pads, much better than trekking backwards because you missed a quest in a past area (yes, I'm looking at you Dungeon Siege!).

My favorite dungeon was the Mountains of the Dead (exterior and interior), and my favorite monster was the Great Krakbone....just the way it appeared out of the water like that, scared me half to death! I think my least favorite area was the swamps, there's just so much you have to wade through (pun intended). Oh another great dungeon was Halls of the Lost with the Lost Queen.....that dungeon had so much atmosphere, it was great. I just loved how the Lost Queen talked at you while you were coming to get her. Great fight as well, I must have fought 12 of those purple spiders before I realized they were coming from the tail and I had to defeat that first.

Also, I didn't think it was possible, but this game drops way too much loot. I had to drop a lot of stuff because I didn't reach a store in time and wanted to pick up something more valuable. My seven characters and one pack animal (the one that looked like a dinosaur) were always packed full. And yes, they all had backpacks. I probably should've gotten a mule, I think they had more storage space. Also, there was a lot of spells for my nature and combat mages, it was sort of overwhelming.

My other complaint was the final showdown with the Shadowjumper. It just seemed over too quickly! My characters didn't even use that many healing and mana potions. And no, they weren't super characters either. I think he should have run away....to a big massive door with maybe 10 or 15 of his Shadowjumper minions (and him of course). That would have been a boss fight!

But other than those points, the game was totally awesome, and I'm definitely going to play it again sometime with different parties and such. Very fun!"

Without further ado, here are some cool screenshots I grabbed while playing:










See the rest at my photobucket album.

Thanks for reading!