Review: Super Lucky's Tale

  Super Lucky’s Tale is the sequel to 2016’s Lucky’s Tale, a VR headset release; however, Super Lucky’s Tale isn’t a VR game at all. Instead, it’s a 3D platformer, released exclusively for the Xbox One family of systems and Windows 10 PCs. Should you pay the €30 price and pick up Super Lucky’s Tale? Find out in our review below. Story: Super Lucky’s Tale has a pretty basic story, but for a platformer it does the job. You play as Lucky, a young fox who is a guardian. One day Lucky’s sister, Lyral, finds the Book of Ages, a book which lets one travel to different worlds and rewrite history. Unfortunately, the Kitty Litter gang, led by Lucky’s father Jinx, attack him and his sister. The result leaves Lucky and the Kitty Litter gang stuck inside the Book of Ages. Gameplay: Super Lucky’s Tale is a standard 3D platformer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not on the level of say Mario or Ratchet & Clank, which have had years to redefine their gameplay. Super Lucky’s Tale isn’t a 360 degree platformer, however, the camera can be moved into three different perspectives. I didn’t have any issues with this the majority of the time, but there were instances where the camera became annoying. There are also 2D levels that offer a nice change of pace. Lucky has a few moves he can use, such as a tail spin to attack. He can also dig underground and perform standard jump and double jump moves. In terms of collectibles, you will spend your time gathering up a ton of cloves, which you need to unlock new levels in each of the worlds, as well as coins, which are used as in-game currency. Graphics: Graphics wise, Super Lucky’s Tale is a gorgeous game. The colors are bright and pop. The art style is wonderful and the animation is, for the most part, really good. I did notice some stuttering in a few parts. This wasn’t a massive issue, but it’s worth noting. Just to note, I played Super Lucky’s Tale on the Xbox One S on a 1080p TV. It plays the same on the original Xbox One as well. However, thanks to Rectify Gaming writer Daniel Hartshorn, I have information on what Super Lucky’s Tale runs and looks like on the Xbox One X on a 4K HDR TV. Xbox One X- Daniel Hartshorn “Super Lucky’s Tale is one of the 170+ announced Xbox One X enhanced titles. On the Xbox One X Super Lucky’s Tale runs at Native 4K at 60FPS. During gameplay on the X, Super Lucky seems to run at a solid 60fps with no noticeable drops in frame rate. The Graphics at 4k look sharp and the colors are bright and vivid. Unfortunately the game doesn’t support HDR, which would have further enhanced the colors on supported TVs. On the Xbox One X, Super Lucky runs exceptionally well. There’s an improvement to loading times between levels and worlds compared to when running it on the Xbox One or One S.” Final Thoughts Super Lucky’s Tale doesn’t do anything groundbreaking or change the way we see 3D platformers. Frankly, it doesn’t need to. It takes the standard 3D platforming gameplay and turns it into a fantastic and fun game. The graphics are gorgeous. It does have some issues with stuttering in some places after loading a level, but the majority of the time it plays well. The story is basic though, which while not a massive issue for a platformer, I would like to see a bigger emphasis on story in a potential sequel. I feel like the loading times could have been shorter. Some are only a few seconds long, but others felt like they were around 10-15 seconds (at least on the Xbox One and Xbox One S). Overall, if you own an Xbox One or a Windows 10 PC, then Super Lucky’s Tale is a game that you should play. It only costs €30, and if you enjoy platformers or are looking for something relaxing to play, then definitely consider Super Lucky’s Tale.  

Review: Horizon Zero Dawn

Release Date – February 28, 2017 (North America) March 1st (Europe) Platforms- PS4 Developer / Publisher – Guerrilla Games / Sony Genre – Role Playing Game Price – $59.99 Horizon Zero Dawn is finally here. It’s been in development for over six years and was first announced at Sony’s E3 press conference in 2015. The game was originally a 2016 release, before getting delayed to early 2017. Has the open world RPG with robot dinosaurs been worth the wait?

Review: The Last Guardian – An emotional journey, a decade in the making

The Last Guardian, the latest game by ICO and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda, has finally come out. It’s taken a long time – nine years to be exact, but for the sake of this review I’m just going say a decade. Story The Last Guardian is a story about a giant creature named Trico and you, the player, a young unnamed boy. The story is told back as you in the future retelling about how you met Trico when you were younger. It is an emotional journey full of heart, which we don’t see much nowadays, not like this anyway. I have decided not to talk much about the story, as this is one that you should go into not knowing much to best experience it, just like Uncharted 4 or The Last Of Us. As for the basics, you wake up after being unconscious and find strange tattoos on you which you didn’t have before. You also see a giant creature (Trico) who is tied up by a chain and who doesn’t trust you, that is until you feed it and help free it from the chain. Gameplay At its heart, The Last Guardian is a platformer and puzzle game. However, the interaction with Trico makes it something more. At the start of the game Trico doesn’t trust you, but will begin to as you try and escape the castle, which is the setting of the game. You and Trico start to bond. The AI controlling Trico is what makes the gameplay really special, because he really acts like a live animal. Sometimes he will listen to you, and sometimes he won’t. This will probably annoy a lot of people, so you do have to have patience. Another instance that make Trico feel like a live animal is that when you walk away from it and it’s unable to follow, it will start to lie down and cry out for you. Transversely, when it’s happy it will roll around in the water. Control-wise, the game feels like a PlayStation 3 game. The controls don’t fight against you like in ICO or Shadow of the Colossus (which I didn’t mind personally), but the camera can be an issue, especially in small corners or when Trico is right near you. There are some frame rate drops, but by the time I was able to play the game (it came out in Ireland and the UK a few days after the US and Europe) Sony had already released an update addressing the issue. So I haven’t experienced that much of a FPS drop, but it is still noticeable. Combat in the game is also done by Trico. Your character is unable to fight so you have to avoid being captured while Trico protects you. Graphics The Last Guardian was originally a PlayStation 3 game due to come out in 2011. However, because of development issues, the game was moved to PlayStation 4, which also put development of the game behind schedule even more as they had to move the engine and everything they had already completed to the new system. Because of the art style used, The Last Guardian still looks like a great game, especially Trico, whose individual feathers you can see. If a part of its body gets wet, such as its tail, only that part will be wet. You can definitely tell this is a game that has been in development for a long time. However, because of the art style and some impressive technology, The Last Guardian definitely holds up.  If you’re playing on the PlayStation 4 Pro, you are able to play at 1080p 30 FPS or 4K 30 FPS, while the original PS4 and PS4 Slim are limited to 1080p 30FPS. Final Thoughts The Last Guardian is a game that we don’t see much nowadays. It is full of heart. Your journey with Trico is emotional – you bond with the giant creature as you both help each other escape from the castle in which you are both held captive. Should The Last Guardian have taken a decade to be created? No it shouldn’t have. However, was it worth the wait? Definitely. When games are in development for this long, they either are a hit or a miss, there’s no in-between. Thankfully, for me at least, The Last Guardian is a hit. Gorgeous graphics which still hold up pretty nice in 2016, solid gameplay and an emotional journey with Trico are all standout aspects of the game. However, the camera issues and the patience required when Trico won’t listen to you will certainly annoy some people. While this game won’t sell as well as Uncharted or God of War, it did come in 7th in the UK sales charts, which I think is impressive considering everything the game has gone through in the past decade. So, should you play The Last Guardian? Yes. It is a game that, just like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus (it’s spiritual predecessors), show how games can be art and can invoke emotions that you did not think you would be able to feel from a video game.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Review

Here we are, Nathan Drake’s last adventure, even though this is a review, I don’t want to give too many spoilers with the storyline, as this is a game that you should go into, not knowing much about it, as it will allow you to experience  Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End in all of its glory. If you don’t know what happens. So I will only be giving the basic outline about the start of the game, with that said, let’s find out, If Naughty Dog’s final Uncharted game is worth the hype. Story: You begin the game with Nathan (Nolan North) and his brother Samuel ( Troy Baker ) Drake driving a boat in a storm. While trying to find an island and also having to fight enemies who are trying to stop you, from reaching said Island. The game then goes back into the past to when Nate was living in St, Francis orphanage, getting into trouble with a nun for starting a fight, when another boy took his book from him. Nate is then visited by his brother Sam and he helps Nate to sneak out as he has a gift he wants to show Nate. You then get to see Nate as a young man, trying to find the famous pirate Henry Avery who managed to do the biggest heist of his time,(the 1600s) which is worth over 400 million dollars in today’s money. The Drake brothers have also teamed up with another treasure hunter Rafe Alder (Warren Kole). after this, you then begin as present-day Nate, who is now retired (Uncharted 4 is set 3 years after Uncharted 3) and working for a salvage company, and is trying to enjoy life with Elena but is missing his life as a treasure hunter. One night, however, Nate is visited by Samuel, who needs his help in order to track down the missing treasure of Henry Avery. Which he was never able to find when he was younger, as his time is running out as drug lord Hector Alcazar (Robin Atkin Downes), has given him 3 months in order to find it. During the game you meet up again with Nate’s best friend Victor Sullivan also called Sully, (Richard McGonagle) after not seeing him for 2 years. You meet Nadine Ross (Laura Bailey) who you run into a few times and who is also my favorite new character, and of course Elena Fisher (Emily Rose) who is Nate’s wife. Gameplay: The gameplay in Uncharted 4 is similar to the other games in the series but has taken some gameplay elements from Naughty Dog’s other game, The Last of Us. This comes as no surprise seeing as Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann who made The Last of Us, have taken over Uncharted from Amy Hennig, who left Naughty Dog in March 2014. The elements from The Last of Us, work well in Uncharted 4 such as stealth, and even just the way you control Nate, feels very much like the way you control Joe. It’s the same gameplay as the past Uncharted games but It just feels a lot like the Last of Us, when it comes to controlling Nate, could just be me however. There is also a grappling hook which you use a lot in the single-player (and multiplayer), which gives you more choice in how you take out your enemies. Allowing you to get behind them without being seen, and also enemies no longer come after you wave after wave, so the gunfights that you do have you will enjoy a lot more, knowing that that gunfight could be the last one for a while. Gunplay is also pretty similar to the other games, but with being unable to throw grenades back to enemies, which you were able to do in past games. I found it odd that Naughty Dog didn’t put it in this game. The game runs at 30fps and 1080p in single-player and 60fps at 900p in multiplayer, the single player I didn’t notice any dropped frames so it stay around 30fps, which is fine. I don’t mind games if they stay locked at 30fps, but after playing multiplayer, I wish Naughty Dog was able to get the single player at 1080p at 60fps but even at 30fps, it didn’t take away my enjoyment of the story. The levels are also a lot more open and bigger than previous games which allows you to drive vehicles yourself, and also means fighting enemies is a lot more interesting as you have a few ways to take them out. You can just go guns blazing or use stealth to take them out. the AI has also got a lot better as well, which is good to see as it means fights can become interesting. There’s a dialogue tree in some parts of the game that gives you the choice of what to say, though it does not affect the story or the ending, unlike in say Mass Effect. Naughty Dog has also put in new modes such as a bullet time mode and more, which you can unlock by using points that you can collect. Graphics: I have two words to say about the graphics in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. mind-blowing. Unchanged 4 is without a doubt, the most gorgeous game I have seen on a console. The amount of detail in the levels is amazing and the design of the levels from Scotland (which is my favorite level of the game) to Madagascar and beyond is breathtaking. I spent a lot of the game just standing around, taking screenshots, and using photo mode because I loved the design of the areas. The only other time I have felt this way about the design of a game is with The Witcher 3 which was released last year. Naughty Dog has always pushed the level of console graphics from the first Crash Bandicoot game to Jak and Daxter and Uncharted and the Last

PS4 PlayStation Plus games for January revealed

While Sony has yet to announced  all of the PlayStation Plus games for January, thanks to emails that have been sent out to PlayStation 4 users, we now know that Grim Fandango Remaster and Hardware:Rivals, will be the free PS4 games for January. We will update you when Sony announces the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita games as well. Source:PushSquare

Bandai Namco announces new games for PlayStation 4 and PlatStation Vita

  Even though Bandai Namco announced new games at Sony’s PlayStation Experience event earlier this month such as Ni No Kuni 2 , that does not mean that they don’t have more games to talk about, now on the PlayStation Blog. Bandai Namco have announced 5 new games coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita.  Tales of Berseria for the PlayStation 4 JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven for the PlayStation 4 God Eater: Resurrection and God Eater 2: Rage Burst for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita One Piece Burning Blood for PlayStation 4 Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs-Force for PlayStation Vita Source:PlayStation

Kojima was going to take a trip to a desert island to clear his mind, before teaming up with Sony

  We will most likely never know what happened with Hideo Kojima and Konami , but whatever did happen, It put Kojima in a dark place. While talking to a reporter for the  New Yorker , He had said he  even considered taking a “ mind- cleansing” trip to a desert island but a friend talked him out of it, Kojima said “ Hearing that affirmed to me that my role in this world is to keep on making big games for as long as I can, “  That is the mission I’ve been given in life. “  Kojima has teamed up with Sony to make his next game a PlayStation 4 console exclusive, and while we may never know what went down between him and his former employer, I’m just happy he will still be making games. Source:PushSquare

Blood Bowl 2 review

  Blood Bowl 2  is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, and was made by Cyanide Studios, and published  by Focus Home Interactive. First off, before we get into the review , I just want you to all know , that I know nothing about sports and I never really play sport games. So when I first saw blood Bowl 2 I was definitely interested , I also played the PlayStation 4 version, but all versions play the same from what I have seen,and now that the game has been out for awhile here’s my review. Things to know Starting off Blood Bowl 2 isn’t a normal sports  game,In which I mean there is a lot of violence in this, Your players can be, injured and they can even die, and if they get injured they can return to the game in half time if you roll a luckily dice, or if you have a healer on your team. The game is set in the Warhammer universe and that is  something that I love, as a big fan of the Warhammer universe having played it with friends once a week and going on adventures and just having fun.So with the game being set in that universe there is  a lot of different races such as Orcs, Humans , High Elves, Dwarfs and more, there is also DLC races, such as Wood Elves and Lizardmen and more will be released in 2016. You also get 5 base stadiums with the game (you can get more with DLC), you can also customize the stadiums with a different look. There is also the Player marketplace, which lets you buy new players if someone on your team gets injured or dies, you can also sell your members  of your team to the AI or other players online. The Story The story in BloodBowl 2 is well, very lacking in a lot of things, it’s job is just to get you used to the game, which is fine but I would have liked them, to have done something more with it, but for the story that is in the game. You play as the coach of the Reikland Reavers, which has been  losing match’s for awhile now, and your job is to bring them back to being one of the top teams. The gameplay The gameplay is a that of a turn based sports game in the style of american football , each player gets 16 turns altogether which is separated by 8 turns in the first half and 8 turns in the second half,You can set the time for each turn to be 2minutes or 4minutes, and depending on which you pick and if you use the full time , each game can last between an hour to  an hour and a half. You can move each character once per turn and depending on which race you pick, and which class the character is affects how many spaces it can go,You can also do a “Go for it” which allows the character you pick to move a few extra spaces, but there is also a chance that your character will fall, which will cause a turnover (Which can also be cause by losing a battle) ending your turn immediately. When you  enter a battle with another character from the opposite team you roll a dice and depending on what you roll, can affect the outcome and depending many of your team mates, are by your side you can get plus one to your overall, for that character for the battle, You can also buy one time uses before the match starts, to help you try and win.  There is also a few different modes to play, There is the story mode which is unfortunately very boring and is very short, friendly games which let you play offline or online games, but you don’t get any XP or level up, and if you play In friendly game you will also be able to change the AI level which is nice as the AI can be very difficult at times.  The graphics  With Blood Bowl 2 being a 2D overview turn based game it isn’t a very demanding game, unlike Batman Arkham Knight or The Witcher 3, that doesn’t mean the game isn’t a pretty game, with it running at 1080p and 30fps and character models looking highly detail, I would say that the developer has made a great job with the graphics and that they have the graphics of Blood Bowl 2 covered.  Pros The game is pure fun when playing a game with a friend or In a league and just watching the madness unfolded, this game was made to be played with friends or people online, to me it’s the football version of Rocket League, which is a great thing. Being able to watch live match’s from within the game,  With twitch live streaming  being on both PS4 and Xbox One and YouTube Gaming streaming on PS4, It’s easy to not think of this as not  a major thing, but just being able to turn the game on and pick CablaVision (It is the games version of sports commentary) from the main menu and start watching live and recorded games right away, is nice and best of all the game does everything, As soon as you start playing the game, The game starts streaming It, It does take a few minutes to actually load up the game in the CablaVision but after that everything on the stream is shown in real time and there is no lag between moves.  There is a lot to this game, When it comes to playing match’s there is always new ideas to try out and new wins to win, which I feel will let this game be played for a very long time to come.  Cons And now the cons of Blood Bowl 2 , which I’m happy to say there is only two cons , but nevertheless they are still cons. The

Phil Spencer confirms that he wants to bring all possible first party Xbox 360 games to Xbox One backwards compatibility

Phill Spencer , while talking to fans on twitter has said that he wants to bring , all possible first party games, to backwards compatibility  on the Xbox One.  “We want to bring all the possible 1st party games at somepoint. Just working through them. Just a matter of timing for most.” One game I hope that gets added is Alan Wake, What games do you want to see, get added to the Xbox One backwards compatibility?. Source:PhilSpencersTweet

Microsoft teases upcoming Xbox Christmas sale

  Every year, Microsoft does a Christmas sale for Xbox 360 and Xbox One users. This year is no different and Microsoft has just posted a Youtube video teasing the upcoming sale. Some of the games that will be on sale are  Halo 5, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider and more, all of these games will be on sale for 40-60%. Xbox Store sale teaser video Source:ICXM