Humble bundle 4 review: Jamestown

As you may or may not know The latest Humble bundle came out this is number four and it has several games on it so I decided to review them one by one over the course of a few weeks the games in this bundle include Jamestown, Cave Story+, Nightsky, Shank,  Bit.Trip Runner and Gratuitous Space Battles.

First off on the review tour train is Jamestown now to tell the truth when I saw the name of this game I had no idea what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised it is a classic plane shooter where you side scroll towards the boss. it 4 player co-op on one machine where you can use game pads and keyboard or mouse to control the various ships unlike the classic scrolling spaceship shooter you pick the power up you want to use at the start of the game instead of picking up random power ups as you play. There is also an incredibly small hit box on your ship so you can dodge bullets as they do tend to cover the entire screen they also have one power up you get by collecting falling part which allows you to get a small shield that destroys all bullets around you then disappears leaving you with 2X damage for a period after that. at the end of the level based how well you did and the difficulty you did it on you get point which you can spend on new challenges and new ships their is also some dlc out for this game with more maps ships and challenges.

Untill next time Peace slice of Kris out also STEAM SALE!!!.

Zelda: Skyward Sword

Zelda : Skyward Sword Review

In this review their will be minor spoilers because this entire game is a gem so if I want to share any of my experiences I will have to spoil some of the game for you, you have been warned that being said I will try my best to give you forewarning. Skyward Sword is meant to be set before the other games but I prefer too look at it as if they are all parallel universes of each other that way the continuity works better and is less confusing your home town is skyloft which is the biggest floating island in this world and you are childhood friends with Zelda who is the headmasters daughter which leads to a different relationship between Zelda and Link. Today is the day of the goddess so you the young skyknights you race for the gods to win the goddess blessing you win and get first item cloth sail which slows you decent so you do not break your ankles then you and Zelda go for a ride together which is your other reward then shit hit the plan you get given a sword and go save the world.

Graphics

Zelda Skyward Sword is the best looking game on the wii not because it is HD or the best textures but the artistic direction is perfect it is a lot more cartoonish then twilight princess but not as much as Zelda Windwaker which made it compensate for the lack of performance and look better than some HD games. Everything is smooth edges and hand drawn which makes the game seem more kid friendly but the difficulty of the game is beyond what a child can do instead I think this game is more made for someone to watch my dad was watching me play and he was enjoying and "helping me play" which with most games I hate people watching me play but this time I felt it was more natural. I believe this was because the storyline is there but the temples and the puzzles were the main goals of the game and he did not need to know the storyline so that everything made sense like other games that constantly spew storyline down your throat. One thing I did not like was when you upgrade some of your items the upgraded item artistically speaking look dreadful but a lot of the time it does make it look better which reminds me why does the technology of Zelda world never advance above bow and arrow when they have robots biggest reason why I started thinking this is (SPOILER)because you get an item then you go back in time temporally and you save robot who says the romote controlled bug robot you have is outdated and he improves it seriously guys(SPOILER END).

GAMEPLAY

This is a Zelda game so you slash your sword at right time dependent on the monster your fighting to kill them with special items to get past it has changed a lot from other Zelda game by making getting to the temple as hard/ full of puzzles as the inside this also makes the inside of the temple a whole lot less confusing compared to earlier Zelda game looking at you water temples (:P by the by had no trouble in water temple in OoT). Also like previous Zelda titles their is a multitude of sidequest to get more heart pieces and new thing called gratitude stars which you get by helping people (spoiler warning) my most favourite side quest would have to be the ghost girl trapped in the toilet very similar to the one in majora's mask and it want paper the only paper you can get though is from a love letter written by one of your classmates who explicitly tells you not to give it to the creepy toilet lady. Of course you go ahead and give it to the hand in the toilet then use the toilet the moment after you do for added comedy but the next day when you tell him he runs away crying then that night the creepy hand is in his room patting his head some how this is worthy of gratitude ohh Japan you so crazy(spoiler End). Gratitude stars can best be compared with the skulltula tokens from previous games except they are more from around town then out in random places now for what you may care more about the controls.

Controls

With the one to one ratio of using wii mote like a sword is so much better than the previous Zelda game where swinging randomly was like spamming the A button to attack this made it so you could still swing rapidly fast but with certain enemies you needed to think about how you attack before you attack otherwise you will get hurt. This has it's own share of problems as I found stabbing action to be really hard to do and when ever it needed to be done to hurt the enemy I could never get it to work the first time this is most probably because I play this game pretty much laying down on the couch other than this the wii motion plus is fantastic. Even more so with the fact you do not even have to face the tv and you can still aim perfectly with the ability to centre the wii mote cursor wherever your pointing this made the controls almost not frustration at times nunchuck is still necessary and has really bad altimeter inside so it would not react when you want it to sometime and other times react when you do not want it to. These small irregularities with the wii mote did not deter my enjoyment of this game if you have a wii get this game if it had a mini sword fighting mini game that you could verse your friend with it would be the perfect game but we can still use the fencing game from wii motion plus sports.

Problems Forewarning

There is one game ending bug in Skyward Sword it did not happen to me because I did not walk off the main quest for the side quests until I mostly beaten the game and had all the items so I could do them all in a row. The bug happens when you talk to a goron who give you a key to progress further and aparantly it the save point get corrupt and game stop if you do this.

The original sequence of events is laid out like this:

1. At the beginning of the quest, go to Lanayru Desert to retrieve the song of the Thunder Dragon.
2. In the Lanayru Mine, speak with Golo the Goron.
3. Complete the Thunder Dragon’s event, and receive his song.
4. Before heading to the forest or volcano regions, speak with Golo in the mine again.
5. At this point, the forest and volcano events will no longer occur, making it impossible to continue.

source from Zeldauniverse.net

If this does happen to you there is a fix done by Nintendo you just have to go on the Internet with your wii to get your save file fixed and a patch to fix this is being released so hopefully this should not effect you.

Endgame

Zelda: Skyward Sword is the best game out one wii if you have a wii gathering dust get this game and re-realise why Nintendo was and is a giant of gaming you will not regret it. New humble bundle is out with some really good games it is worth getting just for Shank and Jamestown but the other games on there are great too  just a little to niche target market till next time peace peps.

Written by Christopher Holliman

Duke Nukem Forever I wish it would just end

It may or may not be news to you I loved all the Duke games they were one of the first games I ever played I sucked at both the sidescroller duke and the duke 3D games but I still enjoyed the humour gameplay and sound effects so I was all for Duke Nukem Forever game when 2k finally said we are going to release it screw you all you people who thinks it will never get out. Then it released and had lost all of it's charm no hoarding guns so you can pick whichever way you want to kill this grunt in the most funny way graphics being 3 years behind the curve not bad graphics just dated for the release date of the game. I still beat it and could say I enjoyed it even if it was on the easy side and had no platforming puzzles was just get from point a to point b while killing wave after wave of enemies which stagnates the gameplay and when they do put some platforming as small Duke you feel to guided to the solution and in most cases you could skip the entire section. Being a failure we all hanged up our friend Duke to dry then went to play more promising games but what surprised me even though during the press tour leading up to release 2k said we will release more duke we all hoped after the flop of the game they would give up and just use him as a joke character in borderlands 2 or something like that instead they release single player dlc and more multiplayer maps for the Duke. Quick sidebar the multiplayer had promise but their was too much of an rpg system and lack of dedicated servers that ruined the appeal in Australia at least game devs seem to forget we need dedicated server too not just US and EU. Now as much as I do not want to criticise 2K for trying to release more content for their game I just do have the nerve to spend 20$ on dlc for a game so badly made which makes me think the dlc will be just as bad so please 2K just let duke become a joke icon stop trying to give him stuff he is just going to throw off the side of a building and let him live his old age in peace or remake duke 3d with new engine both would work but just stop! please.

I hope you enjoyed my rant by the way duke nukem forever has a new dlc chapter coming out soon called "the doctor who cloned me" which is why I wrote this they also have dlc that is already out "duke hail to the icons of parody" they are also bringing back dr proton I mean they have to kill off every last hope of remembering duke in a good light. Until next time stay classy and stay away from Duke he has gone senile.

Orcs Must Die!

In the lovely daily steam sales I bought Orcs Must Die(OMD) on the soul fact that Machinma constantly said it was good I think they were getting paid I saw screenshots and read about game before I bought it on sale and went there is no way I am buying that when I already have Dungeon Defenders(DD) which is multi-player with better support. Then it came on sale for 75% 5$ down the drain and now I have a one player DD game which leaves me with no option but to compare the two games.

Comic book of Orcs Must Die

Biggest differenced besides one is one player other is multiplayer is that one was developed with the mind set of a full game one maybe two play throughs other was to get the players to keep coming back and enjoy minor tweaks and changes OMD being the former and DD being the later. This lead to both production teams with different mindsets and have differences of updates to the game DD while is constantly tweaking the experience and bring out new content is sometimes poorly done or lacks length/ ingenuity with constant updates over 200mb every other day. OMD is very polished stand alone game with lots of interesting towers, spells and unique combinations of play styles both of which you defend against waves upon waves of minions. The minions in each game are almost identical Orcs, kobolts, ogres, warrior and flying unit Orcs being your basic enemy kobolts being a fast enemy ogres being  tanky enemy warrior targeting you over the thing you are defending flying unit is flying lah. the tower set up in DD is based on placing a wall with turret to defend where as in OMD the enemies walk in a set path and attempt to stop them by killing them before they get to the goal.

In summary if you want TD with HD graphics buy one of these game but if you want a game to play with friends get DD but if you want a game to have some short quick fun bursts of  by yourself then get OMD. You may of noticed some of my new ads I am sorry about that but hey we all need to attempt to make some money somehow :P. Anyway until next time.

Skyrim screenshot edition

Here are the some of my many many many pictures from this game some of the better ones

http://sliceofkris.blogspot.com/2011/11/skyrim.html

^^ link to review ^^

http://sliceofkris.blogspot.com/2011/11/skyrim.html

Steam daily wish give away and more 4/12/11

In the past 6 months steam has been putting up a random game at 75% for a day but in the past 3 days steam has changed it to a mini daily wish deal where if you just go look at the store page of the item promoted you get put in the draw to win 10 games that are on your wishlist.  This is obviously done as test to see if this will improve sales for this game compared to the sales from random daily deal so get your wishlist sorted out to the ten games you just wish you could afford and look at these store pages who knows you may just win and you may just find a cheap 75% game that you have been waiting to go down in price for a while. This could not of come at a better time seeing as November released so many stellar titles and I know we cannot all afford them all so if you plan on buying some games for the Christmas break make a wishlist first then once it ends and you did not win then buy them wouldn't it be nice.

Now youtube has recently given the option to change your channel to look very similar to a facebook page which I find strange as google who owns youtube already has google circles why could they not do a sort of merging between them and link youtube accounts to google circle accounts so that you can easily get to both youtube and circles. If you have no idea what I am talking about because your youtube has not change go to your account/channel then switch it to the new view and all this will make sense now I could not understand the new look at all because I could not find the stuff I was subscribed to all I saw was my activity not even my friends activity but this is still early days who knows what they are thinking.

Currently playing Skyward sword will be my next review but do not expect it to be reviewed for about a week as I need to play it and zelda games are always long and full of getting lost in dungeons from what I have plays so far wii motion plus kicks ass removed all my annoying troubles from twilight princess so if you are worried about wii controls being bad do not wii motion plus is fantastic move and kennect have nothing on it until next time stay classy people.