Here’s a review for the 2014 release of Far Cry 4 after I picked it up on sale for $20. Once a game goes on sale a lot of people ask “is it worth it?” or “does the game finally work well enough for me to play?” Taking these two ideas into account I’m going to try to review this game for bargain hunters and gamers who just want a good experience from the start.

Far Cry 4 came out for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on November 18th, 2014. This game builds on the open world and story-driven nature of Far Cry 3, a game which I found very enjoyable to play despite its problems and lukewarm story. I came into Far Cry 4 hoping I would get more of the same and unfortunately for me, I was right. Instead of taking their gaming and honing it to a perfect shine, Ubisoft went the route we take as kids – if something is good, more must be better! Ubisoft cranks the Far Cry knob up to 11 and I feel the game is worse for it unless you really like checking off boxes. If that’s you, this game will probably last you a long time.

While the overall gameplay of Far Cry 4 falls flat, it runs on Dunia Tech which is capable of some great visuals. Traveling around the fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat, you can come across a beautiful sunrise, snow fluttering in the air and of course environmental fire thanks to combat. A core issue I ran into was with wildlife and respawn rates. Ubisoft mentioned that in Far Cry 4 there would be an actual food chain with bigger and bigger animals eating each other. On the map you’re shown where specific animals should be more concentrated. You need to know where specific animals are since Far Cry 4 requires specific numbers of animal skins for upgrades. I like to upgrade as much as possible during the early game so I can enjoy the story without needing to constantly chase down a wild bear or two later on. For me, the animals rarely ever seemed to spawn where their icons on the map indicated they would. This caused me to constantly run around trying to get new groups of wildlife to spawn over and over again.

This brings the second open-world issue into play, respawn rates of items already in play. I had a great moment where I blew up a truck. It flew over my head, crashed into some more trucks blowing those up which happened to take out two rhinoceros which I needed to skin. I turned away from the rhino carcasses to finish off the few enemies left and when I turned back around the whole scene was gone. There were no blown up trucks, no enemy bodies and no rhinoceros to skin. This happened again at random times throughout the game and really took me out of the world. What made matters worse is that I could assault a large base, cause a ton of carnage at the entrance and when I returned, the trucks and wreckage would still be there but for some reason items like these rhinoceros that were like 50 feet behind me would disappear at random. It always seemed to happen for something I needed like an animal skin or vehicle I parked for an easy escape.

Every gamer who has played a few open world games knows you have to deal with some open world jank. Far Cry 4 might be tolerable if the rest of the game was solid but like I said at the start, this game was made for gamers who like to check off boxes. There are always more towers to climb, animals to skin, perks to earn, and side missions to do yet the country you’re in doesn’t seem the right size to contain all this. Everything is jam packed next to each other causing breaks in gameplay. Trying to stealthily hunt a snow leopard for that last skin you need? Good luck because I bet your posse will always be 10 feet away shooting off their guns in the air, getting into a fight with random guard patrols or getting into a fight with an eagle. Speaking of eagle’s, main villain Pagan Min should have just employed hundreds of eagles instead of all of those human guards. Those winged pests come out of nowhere and attack you when you least expect. The guards have horrible accuracy while the eagle’s swoop down with pinpoint accuracy as they claw out your eyes.

At the start of the game, I unlocked all the towers and upgraded my character as much as possible before progressing the story. But by the middle of the game, everything felt by the numbers. You go to the story icon on the map, pick which one of the two Golden Path leaders you want to fight for and then either rescue people, assault an area or find the hidden object. If the missions were fun and the stealth improved, this would be a fun open world to tool around in but I seemed to have more fun in Far Cry 3. The most fun I had was trying to only use the grenade launcher while flying a gyrocopter and raining down explosives to the enemies below. I did this because I found out it took way too many bullets to pump into a car before it exploded; even with the .50 caliber vehicle mounted guns that you think should chew through almost anything. The stealth aspects of Far Cry 4 are also just ok; don’t come in here expecting a Metal Gear Solid or Hitman-style game since it is hard to know when and why you were out of cover. Ubisoft also added rock climbing element, but only on very specifically marked areas, I feel this was another wasted opportunity on their part. Just give me rock climbing gear and let me make my own fun!

Overall I found Far Cry 4 to be more of a chore than a game I wanted to keep playing because I liked it. I held out some hope that maybe the story would make it all worth it but it didn’t. The biggest thing Ubisoft fixed was making a better antagonist and not killing him off halfway through the game. Playing out all the different endings to the game I ended up feeling bad for Pagan Min. He’s a bad guy but the Golden Path leaders you are helping really didn’t give me any hope that I had done something good for the people of Kyrat. As it stands Far Cry 4 is entirely skippable unless you are really itching for a new first person shooter with a ton of side quests. The fun high points were few and far between and having heard all the great things about Far Cry: Blood Dragon I feel I should have played that instead.

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Ever wanted to experience DooM as a sidescrolling action-fest? Calavera Studio put together this gem in GameMaker that brings your fantasy to life. Even better, instead of just ripping DooM’s sprites they went and made chibi versions of DoomGuy, Pinky, Cacodemon, Zombie Soldier, Imp, Lost Soul and the Baron From Hell. What more could you ask for? How about the fact that it’s free, so head on over and check it out today! – Thanks to Bluesnews for the heads up!

Source Link: MiniDOOM – Launch Trailer, play now! – YouTube | http://calavera.studio/en/games/minidoom/

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Did you ever have that dream where you’re stuck in someone’s home that you shouldn’t be in? What about when you just know that the old dark house down the block hides a dark secret within? Hello Neighbor seems to take that feeling of dread and ratchet up the tension 10 fold. It seems the game is at least giving you a purpose for sneaking inside your creepy neighbor’s house. There seems to be something nefarious going on and being the good neighbor you are your job is to find out exactly what that is.

TinyBuild is talking learning AI routines that will try and learn from what you do during the game to make sure they are slowly outsmarting you and you’ll need to think quick on your toes. Obviously, there’s no wat yo know what kind of sorcery they’ve actually cooked up but that sounds very intriguing, to say the least. I would put it up there like when we heard that the AI in the original Half-Life would try and use coordination to flank you and it did! Also, your neighbor in Hello Neighbor wears thick black gloves like Judge Doom from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit about to throw a toon in some dip; so you just know he’s up to no good. Alpha sign-up’s are available here and the game he a tentative release date for Summer 2017 up on Steam.

Source Link: Hello Neighbor Announcement Trailer – YouTube | http://www.helloneighborgame.com/

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Here’s a review for the 2016 release of Doom after it has been on sale for $30. Once a game goes on sale you always get people asking “is it worth it?” or “does the game finally work well enough for me to play through it?” Taking these two ideas into account I’m going to try to review the game for bargain hunters and gamers who just want a good experience from the start.

The 2016 version of Doom was released on May 13th 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and I picked it up for PC on Steam for $30 on September 5th 2016. This is definitely a shorter time between release and sale but after all the buzz I was stalking every site possible to get Doom the moment it hit 50% off. There’s a single-player component to the game along with a multiplayer component as well and I dove into both of those. Right off the bat, the multi-player was not worth it to me. Yes, there’s a neat idea where you can be a Revenant and slay other Doom Marines’ but the whole experience just felt flat. If you’re someone who loves classic free-for-all deathmatch maybe it will be the fresh air you need but it wasn’t for me. There also seems to be a handful of gamers out there putting time into the Snapmap portion of Doom so you might have some fun browsing the interesting creations others have made. However, the larger problem with the game meant that I just didn’t care when it came to player created maps.

The big problem with Doom stems from the thing people seem to be raving about, melee glory kills. The designers used this to prevent littering the map with health and ammo and I’ve seen it said that this feels like the thing Doom needed to be competent in 2016. After playing through the campaign I have to disagree, I think it takes away from the core of what Doom is, speed and power. While the melee glory kills themselves don’t take a whole lot of time to pull off they still ruin the flow in a big way for me. In Doom, melee glory kills are activated when an enemy becomes dazed, flashes orange and you can one hit melee kill them. You would think that this also signals an enemy is low on health and you can just blast it one more time as well but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Unless you get a headshot, the dazed minion can still soak up quite a lot of damage and if you’re dealing with something like a floating Cacodemon that means planning to make sure it’s near the ground since last I checked our famed Doom Marine cannot fly and has no jetpack. If that Cacodaemon happens to be floating way up in the air your best bet is to just wait until it’s lower and try again. Check out the little video below that shows both a zombie and imp in a dazed state animation and how many more body shots it takes to eliminate them.

The melee problem is only amplified by either the amount of health the enemies seem to have or the weak power of your weapons. Again when you’re running around at 100mph blasting hellspawn you don’t want anything to slow you down and you also want to feel like a bad ass. I went back and played some of the original 1993 version of Doom to make sure I just wasn’t looking at this through rose colored glasses and sure enough, the weapons just feel right. Tearing through a few zombie soldiers or an imp with a well-placed shotgun blast felt perfect. Go back and load up the 2016 version of Doom and the shotgun feels comparatively weak, most imps are 2 shotgun blasts and then a melee kill or needing a point blank blast and still a melee kill and that’s if you’re lucky. Of course, the latest Doom finally lets you go for headshots to really damage your foes but it doesn’t feel like a great trade off to me. It’s not just the shotgun that feels weak even the rocket launcher has a damage issue. Those Cacodemons that just love to be far out of range, good luck taking them down with a rocket launcher. We’re talking a rocket launcher here, something that should liquefy most of Doom’s enemies in 1 to 4 shots.

Now the level design worked well, verticle and horizontal space was used well and the atmosphere of both the space installations and hell really draw you into the story. Doom has an interesting twist on our favorite green space marine and I’m not going to spoil it but it felt perfect. That’s not to say that they have somehow made the story of Doom amazing but I did appreciate what they were able to do with what they had. Doom’s story could have easily fallen into the trap of something like explaining Batman’s backstory for the 500th time. There’s also a ton of collectibles scattered around the map and the ability to unlock classic maps from Doom’s past but unfortunately, these are populated with the new enemies so my problems with the game come shining through loud and clear here. The new 3D level viewer where you can see parts of the map you might need to visit next or backtrack to for that collectible seemed great at first but in later levels ended up so cumbersome to use so I stopped using it entirely. I’m not sure of a better way to implement a 3D map and maybe it was just the mouse and keyboard controls which never really let me get a good view of what I wanted to see but it is definitely not how your players should feel about the in-game map.

Doom did keep me occupied for 18 hours according to Steam and the fact that it already went on sale leads me to believe you’ll be able to pick it up for $30 or less with just a bit of patience. For all the gripes I have with the game I did have an enjoyable time, I just really wish I could kick ass through the game without needing to be forced to use a melee kill all the damn time. When I was just kicking ass and doing my own things a lot of times the melee kills came natural and really added to the whole experience. Other times I just wanted the enemies to die already so they would stop soaking up my precious and already limited ammunition. I’ve seen a few complaints that Doom felt just like a monster arena instead of a Space Marine on a mission. Looking back that literally the whole game but while playing through a level naturally I only noticed it less than 5 times so I’m not going to knock it for that. The other small knocks I give Doom are for static environments, trying knocking over an object and see how few react, and the gun sounds feeling a tad muted for my taste. id did see fit to give the weapons and the Doom Marine unlockable upgrades which is par for the course in the 2016 FPS world we live in, so again nothing amazing but passable. All in all shooter fans who want a sci-fi campaign to blaze through should have a fun time in Doom but it’s not the “oh my god!”, “this is amazing!” game that I seem to keep hearing repeated over and over in the mainstream.

Source Link: http://doom.com/

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Sniper Elite 4 Italia is upping the ante the previous entries in the series with more guts, literally. Judging from the trailer it seems there are now new melee kills that might even be short quick time events giving your eyeballs extra time to soak up all the gruesome detail. So far after the two proper sequels and the zombie spin-offs I’m not sure exactly where Rebellion is going to take this franchise but I’m along for the ride either way. One thing I will note, I do wish they would show the slow motion body deformation during environment and vehicle kills instead of the standard ragdoll effect. Examples from the trailer are when the box falls on the soldier and when the ship explodes. In the previous entries you do get a nice cutaway of all the major machine parts being ripped to shreds just like the humans but I think they should extend that out to the enemies caught in the blast wave as well.

Just like we’ve come to expect with a new entry in the Sniper Elite series, Sniper Elite 4 has a new DLC mission titled Target Führer where you’ll see if you can assassinate Hitler while he’s out and about on a U-Boat. You’ll also get some camo skins if you pre-order for $59.99, you know the drill, no pre-orders, and there’s even a Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition which will come with the season pass for $89.99. I really liked these games in co-op and what really has me interested is this blurb from the new feature list “dedicated co-op modes for 2-4 players”. Now they do say campaign co-op for 2 players but I’m really curious to what this dedicated co-op mode is for 2-4 players. For all we know it could be standard horde mode with wave after wave of Nazi soldiers but that still would be a nice little treat. Sniper Elite 4 is coming out for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 14, 2017.

Source Link: Sniper Elite 4 | First Gameplay Trailer & Target Führer Teaser – YouTube | http://www.sniperelite4.com

SNIPER ELITE 4 TEASES TARGET FÜHRER MISSION IN FIRST GAMEPLAY TRAILER

The debut gameplay trailer for SNIPER ELITE 4 is here and its ending has a twist in the tail – a teaser for TARGET FÜHRER, an extra campaign mission FREE to players who pre-order on any format!

With a brutal mix of stealth and bullet-pumping action set against gorgeous Italian backdrops, the first SNIPER ELITE 4 gameplay trailer showcases some of the many additions and improvements coming to the most anticipated WW2 shooter of this gaming generation.
Back by popular demand…

With many millions of views on YouTube and countless gameplay hours logged, the series’ renowned Hitler-assassinating bonus missions have been a fan-pleasing tradition since Sniper Elite V2.

In TARGET FÜHRER, players will once again set their sights on history’s most notorious tyrant, in a forgotten corner of the Mediterranean where a secret Nazi U-boat facility threatens Allied shipping. When agent Karl Fairburne attempts to assassinate the base’s commander, he finds his target already dead, executed in person by a shadowy visitor.

Karl’s mission has changed: TARGET FÜHRER!

Players must destroy the imposing U-boat base and take down Hitler in as many ways as they can in this replayable campaign mission for 1-2 players.

The post Sniper Elite 4 Trailer And Release Date Announced appeared first on Weekly Gaming Recap.

Good:

• Graphics, the Battlefield 1 Beta took place on the Sinai Desert and just like Battlefront it looked amazing. However next time they might want to go with a another map since this really made it feel like we were playing Battlefield on Tatooine.
• Horses, the horses were fun to ride, galloping in with your steed and slashing groups of infantry felt amazing. They didn’t feel as tight as something like Red Dead Redemption but felt pretty good.
• Destruction, it feels like DICE has dialed the destruction up a tad; we can crumble whole buildings but also take out some rock formations.
• Sound, I would say the sound was good, I tried every mode and they were all fine. I wouldn’t say they were up to the level of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 but I would like to compare them once the final comes out.
• Terrain Deformation, separate from destruction the bombs, shells and explosives in Battlefield 1 finally take their toll on the surface of the map. There’s some compromise so not every single thing can be blown up, but you’ll find yourself thankful for that blast crater when a tank rolls by.
• Flamethrower, the flamethrower was super fun to use and seemed to do its job of being both scary and pretty effective in medium to close range combat.
• Train, the train was fun to be in, I’m sure like the zeppelin and other map specific features, they can really turn the tide of a match if used right. All around it seemed fair, not like AT-AT’s in Battlefront, if you coordinated your efforts as a team it didn’t stand to much of a chance but if no one focused on it you could rack up some seriously good kills.

Bad:

• Graphics, yeah they were amazing but the backgrounds didn’t seem to fit in with the actual assets. Where as Battlefront has a fantastical setting of playing space war Battlefield 1 is suppose to be a real setting and it feels closer to a picture perfect diorama with highly detailed toy miniatures for me. This could be due to beta glitches but I think it’s that the map looks incredible where as the players just look good.
• Horses, holy shit do horses have insane health, seriously, we should just give up our tanks and jeeps and ride in on horses because they take a tank shell to the face like nobodies business. Clearly lowering them to far would make them a nonviable option but they need their health reduced before the final game for sure. The range of the sword needs to be adjusted and if the rider aims high I want to be able to duck or prone out of the way without getting insta-killed.
• Anti-Tank Weapons, again I think this might have to do with the non-Hardcore nature of the servers but the anti-tank weapon we have just feels super under-powered right now. Also I think slightly increasing the blast radius of the dynamite would be good since they do not stick to the vehicles now.
• White Respawn Button, DICE, I know you want this slick clean looking interface but a white button with a white progress bar is to far down the rabbit hole in minimalism.
• Melee, to go along with the horse riders sword the melee kills need some adjustment still. During a bayonet charge if you light someone up it should end their charge or melee attack. Unless you can actively kill them during the animations they will win out every time and that just feels cheap. I would say something like if an enemy is tagged three times during a bayonet charge or melee kill they should be stopped cold to give them a fighting chance.
• Weapons, I wouldn’t call them bad but they just felt ok. This could have to do with the fact that the beta did not let us play in both regular and hardcore mode opting only to allow for regular servers. I’m interested to see how lethal they feel on a hardcore server but I’m not exactly sure what they are going to do with sniper rifles since they already felt about as deadly as they should be. Basically every class felt under-powered next to anyone with a sniper rifle. Also during LMG vs SMG battles damage output seemed to heavily favor SMG’s at any distance which shouldn’t be the case at all.
• Gas Grenades, what’s the point of using gas grenades if everyone has a gas mask available to them? The gas mask needs to be an item you equip to add more risk reward into choosing what you take into a round. I get that you can’t aim down sights when using it but if everyone has a gas mask it really hinders its usage.
• Medic Revive, how do you not display to the player which one of the bodies on the floor are his teammates he needs to revive, especially on a normal server? I could maybe see that if you choose to play Hardcore you need to ask for a revive but the fact that they are now making this a separate option seems to be a huge misstep. Not to mention that the few times I saw someone drop and immediately went over to revive them didn’t always seem to work. I couldn’t tell if I just wasn’t hitting their corpse correctly with the needle or if that just spammed spacebar so fast to get back in the fight I really was to slow, it took all the fun out of playing a medic class.
• Map Zoom Respawn, I get it, the maps have always been huge in Battlefield, it’s the selling point of the franchise. However when I have no idea what the hell I’m spawning into nor how far away I’ll be from an objective you might need to rethink your options. Just like previous Battlefield games getting a live feed of what is going on when spawning on squad members would be super helpful. Also with the map so zoomed out sometimes I think a squad member is pretty close to the flag only to find out it probably would have been better to spawn at the point.

WTF:

• Mantling, still in this version of Battlefield trying to mantel over a small, less than waist high object is a crap shoot. You just never know if it’s going to work. Oddly when going over a tall object like a wall the outcome seems to be more than 90% successful but when it’s something small you can really get stuck. The worst being that if it didn’t play the mantel animation a regular jump probably would have worked just fine but since it locks you into an animation sometimes you’ll be pushed up and over an object only to be pushed right back to where you were by PHYSICS! I had hoped that DICE would have finally come up with a decent solution to this with the ever changing nature of a destructible map but I guess my hopes are dashed.
• Progression, I know this is a beta but the fact that your career rank can progress without your class rank progressing seems absurd to me. The mere fact that we have to level each and every class is bad enough. Just give me points each career rank to spend on classes as I see fit. We’re already getting war bonds to pick what weapons we want to unlock as it is just go a tiny step further. The biggest issue of all is that you get zero points for your class if your in a vehicle, I’m hoping this a beta bug and not something permanent.

All Around Impressions:

The Battlefield Beta was a decent representation of the final product however it didn’t really sell me on the game, as a huge Battlefield fan I was actively waiting to get to try it and now it’s just feels OK. Looking over everything I wrote I think the biggest issue I have is that weapon and class diversity does not feel right to me. I think the classes have gotten paired down to much and all the weapon choices just felt like different skins on the same type of weapon, pistol, shotgun, bolt action, smg or lmg. I would really like another beta on a new map, hardcore mode and weapon attachments to really get a feel of how I play Battlefield.

Source Link: http://www.battlefield.com

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It’s been a long time since we have seen some good old fashioned hockey masked serial killer action but the Friday the 13th: The Game PAX West 2016 Trailer is here to break that streak. The trailer features a home video inspired intro, 80’s hair metal sound-a-like soundtrack and some glorious kills thanks to the one and only Tom Savini. That last one where Jason hacks on a camper and the takes their arm off looks exactly like what I would expect Mr. Savini to bring to the game. The BackerKit is still going if you want to get in on some post-Kickstarter, pre-Order as well over at https://friday-the-13th-the-game.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Source Link: XIII PAX West Trailer 2016 — Friday the 13th: The Game – YouTube | Friday the 13th: The Game

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Keri has been waiting for a long time but Stardew Valley is finally HERE! If you love Harvest Moon as much as she does you’ll be delighted to watch her down on the farm making her way through the trials, tribulations and high-jinks that come with inheriting a farm and being thrust into a brand new life. Want more Stardew Valley? Be sure to subscribe to the Keri Plays Stardew Valley YouTube Playlist so you’ll always get notified when the latest video goes up.

Source Link: Keri Plays Stardew Valley – Episode 10 – YouTube | http://stardewvalley.net/

The post Keri Plays Stardew Valley – Episode 10 – Something Unexpected appeared first on Weekly Gaming Recap.

Keri has been waiting for a long time but Stardew Valley is finally HERE! If you love Harvest Moon as much as she does you’ll be delighted to watch her down on the farm making her way through the trials, tribulations and high-jinks that come with inheriting a farm and being thrust into a brand new life. Want more Stardew Valley? Be sure to subscribe to the Keri Plays Stardew Valley YouTube Playlist so you’ll always get notified when the latest video goes up.

Source Link: Keri Plays Stardew Valley – Episode 9 – YouTube | http://stardewvalley.net/

The post Keri Plays Stardew Valley – Episode 9 appeared first on Weekly Gaming Recap.

Keri takes a look at Craft the World after the big 1.2 update. Join her on an adventure, there’s no telling where it will lead! Want to know more? Be sure to check out our YouTube channel for new episodes of Keri Plays Craft the World every Tuesday and Thursday.

Source Link: Keri Plays Craft the World v1.2 – Episode 23 – The End Pt 2

The post Keri Plays Craft the World v1.2 – Episode 23 – The End Pt 2 appeared first on Weekly Gaming Recap.