Damien O’Neill's Reviews
Throw your headphones on, blast out the Iron Man version of AC/DC’s Shoot to Thrill and gun down everything in your path; ignoring your teammate’s cries for help! On the surface Killing Floor 2 looks like any another zombie horde killing FPS, but deep down it’s so much more. Yes, I’ve had issues with it and yes it’s far from flawless but really, it’s a damn good solid shooter. It’s probably not going to win game of the year but its impressive perk system and variety of maps/weapons makes up for its down falls. I’ve had issues with connectivity but that’s nothing new to video games and I’m sure once that gets fixed it’ll be well on its way into my top 10 for 2016.
After thirty or so hours, I am still no where near finished with Mankind Divided. I have spent so long completing side missions and basically just breaking into peoples homes, lockers, garages, vehicles, pants… just to hack their computers to read their emails. I have met some very interesting characters, culled a religious fanatic, raged against man, accidentally stunned naturals for calling me a "clank", accidentally stunned police officers for calling me "clank", accidentally gassed myself to death before I found the respirator augment, accidentally gassed naturals to death for calling me a… well you get the picture. I am having difficulties picking faults with this game, but if I had one tiny criticism it would be the aforementioned lack of urgency to rush into the campaign, but I suppose that's not really even a fault in itself. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is quite possibly the best in the series so far and most certainty fills those boots I mentioned earlier.
Nine times out of ten, I’ll play games that aren’t story driven with my headphones in and listening to whatever music I am in the mood for that day; however it’s impossible to do this whilst playing Inversus. The upbeat, electronica-esque style music by Lyvo weirdly enough helped me concentrate on playing the game and you’d expect it to get a bit repetitive after a while but it doesn’t, so that’s a plus. I guess whilst taking all of the above into consideration and my own personal learning curve I wish to revisit my earlier comment and reinforce how good this game really is. It’s simple – the more and more you play it, the better and better you get. The shots that you fire off take an insane amount of accuracy and timing, and that just makes the game a bigger challenge than it already is. Its hard to pick faults at a game like this but if I had a tiny bit of constructive criticism it would be more maps for Arcade mode to rival the amount for Versus. If you’re anything at all like me then you’ll find yourself silently or violently swearing to the high heavens, throwing your controller about and mentally back-flipping when you beat your personal best. Inversus is an addictive work of pure genius and well worth an 8/10
If you can look passed the rage this game generates, it’s actually quite a lot of fun at times. I had a very different experience to most of the people playing this game with a gamepad because I feel that some of the mechanics (like sprinting) work against your favor. You have to sprint at the press of a button and it’s not an automatic occurrence. Even then, (and somewhat realistically) it takes Eyas time to get from 0 to 60 if you know what I mean. The game has a long way to go to be perfect in my eyes, but if I had to one or two faults they would be the aforementioned sprint issue and the fact that the story itself lacks a require oomph to push you forward and want to see if Eyas actually makes it home not. With all that being said, the game is not bad at all. The unique gameplay/gravity mechanics make the game interesting and as I said before – it’s hard, so you just want to keep playing until you beat that annoying level and gain the satisfaction of doing so.
Seriously, can somebody check on me because one of two things has happened – Either I’ve gone insane and these are just the ramblings of a mad man or I’ve finally found a game that lets me release all of that stored up violent, face rolling, nerdy man-rage from all of the rage-inducing games I’ve been playing recently. Thankfully it’s the latter of the two and the irony of it all is that I’ve have found solace in a game called Okhlos, a rogue-like indie “angry mob” strategy game. Okhlos is set in mythological ancient Greece, a land ruled by the all-powerful, take no crap, Gods of Olympus! One vile act of carnage leads to another and the gods do not seem to care for the well-being of the citizens of Greece...
This game is so much more than just a rage simulator; it’s an extremely fast paced, action packed, hardcore indie sidescroller that has ninjas, robots and a dastardly Doctor Robotnik-esque villain called Captain Greatbeard. Told through the use of dark humor and some beautiful crafted cut scenes, the story unfolds and Greatbeard has kidnapped you and trapped your beloved forest friends (and as I am writing this, it’s just hit me…) inside his robot drones. How “whack-job” mental is that? It’s your job to prove to Greatbeard that your particular set of ninja skills make you deadlier than Liam Neeson and faster than a combination of The Flash and Usain Bolt by traversing through each of the levels killing his robot minions within 10 seconds.
I seem to be saying this more and more these days but I honestly can’t tell whether I am just terrible at games now that I am getting on a bit or whether playing games on nightmare mode is probably a bad idea… never-the-less, taking all of the above into consideration and the fact that I didn’t encounter any game breaking bugs – Deadlight: Director’s Cut is pretty damn awesome. It’s got everything that a zombie survival game needs and tonne more spoiler related hidden gems to offer. Deadlight’s story has a couple of cliché moments and was a little short for me, but the game is absolutely stunning and controls beautifully!
Overwatch is Blizzard Entertainment's newest addition to their rather eclectic game library; a class based, multiplayer, first-person shooter – which seemed strange to me at first because Blizzard has pumped out more games of the role-playing variety than you'll find in my late-night internet search history. The game was announced at Blizzcon towards the end of November 2014 and Blizzard held two x 36 hour closed beta weekend sessions for fans prior to the games release. The latter of the sessions amassed over 9.7 million users… and seriously, 9.7 million users cannot be wrong, can they?
Hands down, this game is absolutely brilliant! I had lost all hope in re-kindling my love for this type of game and can wholeheartedly say that The Magic Circle is a true testament to the story-driven puzzle game genre. There are only two things that stopped me from giving this game a well-earned 10/10. The first being the length of game only lasting approximately 4-5 hours depending on whether you plough through or not like I did the first time around and the second was the lack of the sprint function. There is a hell of a lot more to this game than meets the eye and for me to go into any more detail; it would honestly ruin the fun. The story is gripping and makes you think differently about the game development world and all of those games that are stuck in development hell that we just want to see released.