Spiderman PS4 is a game that was released in autumn 2018 as an exclusive to Playstation 4. Spiderman was also one of the biggest releases of 2018 even though it did get overhadowed by Red Dead Redemption 2 a little bit. There has been plenty of Spiderman games over the yearsbut the stories do not always connect to each other and so was the case with this game as well.
Story
{May include spoilers} Spiderman PS4 brings some new wind to the well known Spiderman story. The game does not tell the origins of spiderman as a lot of the movie reboots do, instead to the overall story of Spiderman combating his arch enemies when Peter Parker has already been Spiderman for quite some time. There are many of those well know arch enemies such as Doctor octopus, Rhino, Electro, Scorpion and the vulture and some newer additions like Mr. Negative. The game takes the player all around Manhattan, battling different enemies and completing different missions and trials so the content does not run out even after the main story. The game takes bits from different movies as well. The character model of Peter Parker looks a lot like he does in The Amazing spiderman movies and the technology his suit uses is very familiar to the suit in The newer MCU movies.
Gameplay
In the Spiderman game you can swing across the streets of Manhattan and climb the tallest buildings, including the Avengers tower. Swinging around with webs that Spiderman shoots out is one of the most fun thing I have had in a video game in a very long time. Even though swinging in the game is very smooth, it does feel like the game is not always on the same wavelength with the player and accidents do happen. The combat in the game is also very smooth as long as you learn even some of the different combos and unlock some new ones. Without learning the combos the game does feel like a Mortal Kombat game to a newbie where you just smash your head into the controller and hope to achieve something. In Spiderman the combos are much simpler however and it does not take a long time for someone less experienced to learn them quite quick.
Audio design
It makes a nice sound when you punch the enemies in the face.
Open world
The open world is maybe the best part in the game. As previously mentioned, swinging around the streets of Manhattan as Spiderman is so much fun that there hasn't been something quite like it for quite some time. Manhattan is also filled with side missions and collectibles that are quite standard to an open world game of this size and those side missions are just as fun as the main mission itself as they do include quite a bit of lore as well.
Comparison to the previous game
As I have mentioned before it is always important to compare a game to the ones that came before it to see how the series has improved. In this case it is a bit difficult since as far as I know Spiderman PS4 is not connected to the previous games too much and on top of that I have not played previous spiderman games other than one playstation 2 era spiderman game which name I can't even remember. And it is easy to say that the series has improved a lot since playstation 2 era.
The Review
When I got Playstation 4 I was wondering if I should first get spiderman or Red Dead Redemption for it. However I got spiderman bundled together with PS4 so I did not have to make that decision after all and after the fact there is no question which of those games is better. I heard good things about both games but in the end Spiderman was the one of those two games that I enjoyed a lot more. After getting my PS4, I played through the main story of Spiderman in a couple of days as I just could not put it down, and every now and then I return to lovely Manhattan to do side missions and enjoy the freedom that swinging around gives me in this amazing game. Out of the games that I played that were realeased in 2018, and out of the ones that I will propably ever play, Spiderman PS4 would easily get my vote for the Game of the year award.
Even though Spiderman PS4 is an amazing game, nobody is perfect and thus I give a score of 9/10
sunnuntai 15. joulukuuta 2019
lauantai 9. marraskuuta 2019
BlizzCon 2019
This is a slightly different blog from the usual. This won't be about old games but rather about the BlizzCon that just recently took place. While I do not approve about the bullshit that Blizzard pulled considering Blitzchung and Hong Kong, I still wanted to voice my opinion about the recent announcements. I will not talk about Hearthstone since I have next to no interest in that game but will talk about what I thought about Diablo, WoW and Overwatch announcements.
Diablo 4
There isn't too much to unpack about the Diablo 4 announcement trailers other than the fact that they look pretty cool. It looks like the game is launching with 3 classes, and the maximum group size is most likely going to be 3 as well instead of the 4 that it was previously. This is a trend that can be seen in several new releases and a trend that will most likely continue from here on out.
Having only played a little bit of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 completely, I am only worried that the gameplay is going to be simplified even more to target a more mainstream audience. This in turn can make the game a bit too easy or bland to the original fans of the game, in a way that diablo 3 already did but even more.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
I did not properly play the previous expansion of WoW because it was really bad and I was hoping this announcement trailer to go the obvious route and bring back, In my opinion, one of the best expansions that was Wrath of the Lichking. From what I understood about the last expansion, Sylvanas went crazy and has now destroyed the Helm of Domination revealing the Shadowlands. Previously it was said that someone has to always sit on the frozen throne and I really wonder what does it mean now that the throne is empty.
With the Shadowlands expansion there are going to be some huge changes. One of the biggest changes is going to be the fact that level cap is going to be scaled down to 60 and all the previous expansions areas are going to be scalable and optional and if everything is going to be scalable, is now every old content going to be impossible to solo for mount and achievement gatherers?
The feature trailer also shows us that the shadowlands is going to be full of basically all the enemies that we encountered this far and more, and that you are going to have to earn every factions respect in the shadowlands, that tells me that the expansion is going to skip the usual 'new expansions lore gameplay' and go straight into the boring reputation grind late game that I always disliked.
Overwatch 2
While the Overwatch 2 announcement trailer was very emotional, I hated it. Overwatch 2 is what's called 'a massive money grab' and the fans of the franchise are going to eat it up like it's a feast. While Overwatch is suffering from a lower playerbase than it originally had, this is not the solution. I'm not saying I have the solution but this is not it. While Overwatch 2 might boost the playerbase for a short while and in the meantime bring massive profits to Blizzard, it is not going to 'revive' the game. This would have been much better as a DLC/expansion that would have been priced accordingly, but there is no way in hell I'm going to pay for a full game to get what I already had plus some extra conent, no matter how much progression carries over.
Another reason why Overwatch '2' sounds like a bad idea, at least to me that is, is just because of what it is. Overwatch is technically a MOBA and has been built as such from the beginning. MOBA market, even though almost everyone has their clear favorite, is very competitive. What Overwatch 2 is doing, is taking currently one of the smaller, but still popular MOBA, and cutting its playerbase in half. This is the reason that other MOBAs have just been updating their games, and not releasing a completely another one, is to keep their playerbase unified. In my opinion, like I said already, sell Overwach 2 as a story expansion/DLC and release the gameplay changes as a free patch. If they really need the money, they can go the hearthstone route and sell different types of stories, or different story lines as separate DLC.
Here are my thoughts about BlizzCon, I'm sure I've missed some info but I'm mainly going based on the launch trailers that were shown in BlizzCon.
Diablo 4
There isn't too much to unpack about the Diablo 4 announcement trailers other than the fact that they look pretty cool. It looks like the game is launching with 3 classes, and the maximum group size is most likely going to be 3 as well instead of the 4 that it was previously. This is a trend that can be seen in several new releases and a trend that will most likely continue from here on out.
Having only played a little bit of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 completely, I am only worried that the gameplay is going to be simplified even more to target a more mainstream audience. This in turn can make the game a bit too easy or bland to the original fans of the game, in a way that diablo 3 already did but even more.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
I did not properly play the previous expansion of WoW because it was really bad and I was hoping this announcement trailer to go the obvious route and bring back, In my opinion, one of the best expansions that was Wrath of the Lichking. From what I understood about the last expansion, Sylvanas went crazy and has now destroyed the Helm of Domination revealing the Shadowlands. Previously it was said that someone has to always sit on the frozen throne and I really wonder what does it mean now that the throne is empty.
With the Shadowlands expansion there are going to be some huge changes. One of the biggest changes is going to be the fact that level cap is going to be scaled down to 60 and all the previous expansions areas are going to be scalable and optional and if everything is going to be scalable, is now every old content going to be impossible to solo for mount and achievement gatherers?
The feature trailer also shows us that the shadowlands is going to be full of basically all the enemies that we encountered this far and more, and that you are going to have to earn every factions respect in the shadowlands, that tells me that the expansion is going to skip the usual 'new expansions lore gameplay' and go straight into the boring reputation grind late game that I always disliked.
Overwatch 2
While the Overwatch 2 announcement trailer was very emotional, I hated it. Overwatch 2 is what's called 'a massive money grab' and the fans of the franchise are going to eat it up like it's a feast. While Overwatch is suffering from a lower playerbase than it originally had, this is not the solution. I'm not saying I have the solution but this is not it. While Overwatch 2 might boost the playerbase for a short while and in the meantime bring massive profits to Blizzard, it is not going to 'revive' the game. This would have been much better as a DLC/expansion that would have been priced accordingly, but there is no way in hell I'm going to pay for a full game to get what I already had plus some extra conent, no matter how much progression carries over.
Another reason why Overwatch '2' sounds like a bad idea, at least to me that is, is just because of what it is. Overwatch is technically a MOBA and has been built as such from the beginning. MOBA market, even though almost everyone has their clear favorite, is very competitive. What Overwatch 2 is doing, is taking currently one of the smaller, but still popular MOBA, and cutting its playerbase in half. This is the reason that other MOBAs have just been updating their games, and not releasing a completely another one, is to keep their playerbase unified. In my opinion, like I said already, sell Overwach 2 as a story expansion/DLC and release the gameplay changes as a free patch. If they really need the money, they can go the hearthstone route and sell different types of stories, or different story lines as separate DLC.
Here are my thoughts about BlizzCon, I'm sure I've missed some info but I'm mainly going based on the launch trailers that were shown in BlizzCon.
maanantai 23. syyskuuta 2019
Borderlands 2
While everyone else is up and excited about the release of Borderlands 3. I finally wen't back and finished Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 (BL2) was released in 2012, so about 3 years after the first game, and it has been released on several platforms since. I myself played it on PC which is in a way the reason why I didn't complete it until now. The problem being that the game didn't run on my PC for whatever reason. Borderlands games are shooter games filled with violence but refined with a good sense of humour and with some great RPG elements.
Story
In Borderlands games you play as characters called "vault hunters." What is this vault and what does it contain? Well it kind of depends on the borderlands game. In BL2 it contains an ancient warrior that the main villain "Handsome Jack" is trying to bring to life in order bring peace and order to the planet of "Pandora" and destroy all the raiders and everyone else that comes in his way. The flow of the story is quite fluid. First you wake up on Pandora after Handsome Jack tries to kill you. You find out what he is trying to do and then you try and stop him. The only thing that disrupts the flow of the story are the side missions that you pretty much have to do in order to stay on the same level as the story missions. If you are too low level the story missions become almost impossible to complete, as they are sometimes quite hard as they are.
Gameplay
As long as you do quests that are somewhat on the same level as your character, the game is a lot of fun and very fluent. You can either run, jump or shoot your way through the levels but if you skip too much of the killing you will eventually fall behind in level. Killing all the weird and different kind of enemies that you encounter along the way with even more weird and different guns sometimes fun and sometimes a lot of fun. The role play elements of the game bring a nice level of depth to this otherwise very shooter heavy game. Sometimes I did wish that there were more those elements in the game but somewhere is that fine line when it can disrupt the shooter feeling of the game too much so maybe it was at a pretty good level in general.
Sound design
The sounds of the game were filled with shooting and chaos, at least at the beginning but when you progress more into the game sounds you come across become insane. My personal favourite was a gun that screams when you shoot it.
Open world
The world of Borderlands, the planet Pandora, is very open but it has been divided into sectors that you have to travel between. Some of the areas are very linear, and some of them are very open, all of them are equally awesome. Even the more linear areas are full of shortcuts that make them feel very open and the more open areas you even need a car to go across, making the different areas feel somewhat similar in size when you think about it. And if the place you need go is on the other side of Pandora and even a car isn't enough, you can always fast-travel to make a life a bit easier.
Comparison to the previous one
Straight of the bat BL2 is a lot more refined version of the previous game. In almost all areas of the game there are some improvements and this is something I like to see in a sequel. The world seems a lot more interesting, the gameplay is more refined and fluent and the guns are lot more crazy than in Borderlands. The story itself doesn't continue straight from where the previous game left of but you can quite quickly notice all the references to Borderlands and see how the story links up.
The review
Even though Borderlands 2 wasn't a mind blowing experience, it was still a very good game. It had pretty much everything that one would want out of a sequel and it provided me with countless hours of fun and enjoyment 8/10
Story
In Borderlands games you play as characters called "vault hunters." What is this vault and what does it contain? Well it kind of depends on the borderlands game. In BL2 it contains an ancient warrior that the main villain "Handsome Jack" is trying to bring to life in order bring peace and order to the planet of "Pandora" and destroy all the raiders and everyone else that comes in his way. The flow of the story is quite fluid. First you wake up on Pandora after Handsome Jack tries to kill you. You find out what he is trying to do and then you try and stop him. The only thing that disrupts the flow of the story are the side missions that you pretty much have to do in order to stay on the same level as the story missions. If you are too low level the story missions become almost impossible to complete, as they are sometimes quite hard as they are.
Gameplay
As long as you do quests that are somewhat on the same level as your character, the game is a lot of fun and very fluent. You can either run, jump or shoot your way through the levels but if you skip too much of the killing you will eventually fall behind in level. Killing all the weird and different kind of enemies that you encounter along the way with even more weird and different guns sometimes fun and sometimes a lot of fun. The role play elements of the game bring a nice level of depth to this otherwise very shooter heavy game. Sometimes I did wish that there were more those elements in the game but somewhere is that fine line when it can disrupt the shooter feeling of the game too much so maybe it was at a pretty good level in general.
Sound design
The sounds of the game were filled with shooting and chaos, at least at the beginning but when you progress more into the game sounds you come across become insane. My personal favourite was a gun that screams when you shoot it.
Open world
The world of Borderlands, the planet Pandora, is very open but it has been divided into sectors that you have to travel between. Some of the areas are very linear, and some of them are very open, all of them are equally awesome. Even the more linear areas are full of shortcuts that make them feel very open and the more open areas you even need a car to go across, making the different areas feel somewhat similar in size when you think about it. And if the place you need go is on the other side of Pandora and even a car isn't enough, you can always fast-travel to make a life a bit easier.
Comparison to the previous one
Straight of the bat BL2 is a lot more refined version of the previous game. In almost all areas of the game there are some improvements and this is something I like to see in a sequel. The world seems a lot more interesting, the gameplay is more refined and fluent and the guns are lot more crazy than in Borderlands. The story itself doesn't continue straight from where the previous game left of but you can quite quickly notice all the references to Borderlands and see how the story links up.
The review
Even though Borderlands 2 wasn't a mind blowing experience, it was still a very good game. It had pretty much everything that one would want out of a sequel and it provided me with countless hours of fun and enjoyment 8/10
tiistai 10. syyskuuta 2019
Red Dead Redemption 2
Red dead redemption 2 was one of the biggest releases of 2018. It was a sort of prequel to the previous game "Red Dead Redemption." RDR2 (Red Dead Redemption 2) was highly praised by everyone and most reviewers gave it a perfect or nearly a perfect score. A lot of people have also praised the story of the game as one of the best there is, but a huge open world game like this is much more than a story and a review should look at all of the aspects of the game from gameplay to the comparison of the previous installment.
Story
This part will obviously include some spoilers. I will try to keep them to a minimum but if you still haven't played the game just skip this part. The story is the biggest part of RDR2 and there's a lot of it. Only the main story takes tens and tens of hours to complete and the game also includes plenty of side missions. At the beginning the game might story wise feel like a regular wild west story but it will get more and more intense as the story goes on and just as you think you've completed it, it offers you even more excitement and a very satisfying ending. In short the story is the best part of the game and one of the best original stories in video games.
Gameplay
The gameplay can be tweaked in the options in many ways, but most important is setting the aimbot to a max so that someone like me who isn't used to a controller can actually hit something. This is very important in a game like this that is very focused on the gun play. There are of course several other aspects to the gameplay such as riding a horse, the menus and the map in general. Most of these work just as they should. The only problem being riding the horse, especially galloping. The many times that I ran the horse into a tree that the horse just seemed to be magnetized on, or galloping over a small stone that the horse trips on and falls over to the ground dying. This was especially nice during horse race side missions that you would instantly lose if your horse died during the race and these horse racing characters were not easy to find in the wast world.
Sound design
The music and the voice acting in this game is brilliant. Other sounds are quite nice as well.
Open world
The world that you play in is massive. Maybe even too massive. The world is full of empty space that of course looks amazing but doesn't really add anything otherwise. Especially the forest areas that as so full of trees that it's almost impossible to get through them without the horse aiming itself into at least one of the trees. It would be nice if I could at least get to the next town before completely running out of horse revivals. Huge worlds have their own good sides but in this case I wish that it were a bit more compact. Spending most of your time travelling in almost empty areas is not fun.
Comparison to the previous one
Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010. So 8 years before the release of RDR2 but in the end not much has changed in those 8 years. The biggest difference you can see right away is of course the graphical improvements. The gameplay is a little bit improved but mostly the same. The game obviously has a different story but other than that it isn't much different. Even the map is partially the same which is nice in it's own way. Seeing some of the places what they were a decade earlier and in improved graphics is cool but I wish they would have spent some of that time actually making a different game.
The review
After all the hype that surrounded RDR2 I expected it to be the next coming messiah and changing the way we perceive open world games. But instead we pretty much got the same old game with a new story. It isn't all that bad that the game is similar since it is of the same franchise but still. As previously mentioned, the story was amazing and the best bit of the whole game but I don't think that just the story justifies the high scores the game has been getting thus far. I still think that it is a good game just not that good.
Overall thinking about all the aspects of the game I would give it a solid 7/10
Story
This part will obviously include some spoilers. I will try to keep them to a minimum but if you still haven't played the game just skip this part. The story is the biggest part of RDR2 and there's a lot of it. Only the main story takes tens and tens of hours to complete and the game also includes plenty of side missions. At the beginning the game might story wise feel like a regular wild west story but it will get more and more intense as the story goes on and just as you think you've completed it, it offers you even more excitement and a very satisfying ending. In short the story is the best part of the game and one of the best original stories in video games.
Gameplay
The gameplay can be tweaked in the options in many ways, but most important is setting the aimbot to a max so that someone like me who isn't used to a controller can actually hit something. This is very important in a game like this that is very focused on the gun play. There are of course several other aspects to the gameplay such as riding a horse, the menus and the map in general. Most of these work just as they should. The only problem being riding the horse, especially galloping. The many times that I ran the horse into a tree that the horse just seemed to be magnetized on, or galloping over a small stone that the horse trips on and falls over to the ground dying. This was especially nice during horse race side missions that you would instantly lose if your horse died during the race and these horse racing characters were not easy to find in the wast world.
Sound design
The music and the voice acting in this game is brilliant. Other sounds are quite nice as well.
Open world
The world that you play in is massive. Maybe even too massive. The world is full of empty space that of course looks amazing but doesn't really add anything otherwise. Especially the forest areas that as so full of trees that it's almost impossible to get through them without the horse aiming itself into at least one of the trees. It would be nice if I could at least get to the next town before completely running out of horse revivals. Huge worlds have their own good sides but in this case I wish that it were a bit more compact. Spending most of your time travelling in almost empty areas is not fun.
Comparison to the previous one
Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010. So 8 years before the release of RDR2 but in the end not much has changed in those 8 years. The biggest difference you can see right away is of course the graphical improvements. The gameplay is a little bit improved but mostly the same. The game obviously has a different story but other than that it isn't much different. Even the map is partially the same which is nice in it's own way. Seeing some of the places what they were a decade earlier and in improved graphics is cool but I wish they would have spent some of that time actually making a different game.
The review
After all the hype that surrounded RDR2 I expected it to be the next coming messiah and changing the way we perceive open world games. But instead we pretty much got the same old game with a new story. It isn't all that bad that the game is similar since it is of the same franchise but still. As previously mentioned, the story was amazing and the best bit of the whole game but I don't think that just the story justifies the high scores the game has been getting thus far. I still think that it is a good game just not that good.
Overall thinking about all the aspects of the game I would give it a solid 7/10
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