Alyxx Thorne

Fallout 4

I'm loving it. Great work on the new site!

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Woot, love the new design and the forums are super easy to use. Great job, guys!

I recently built a new PC. Here are the specs: Case: Cooler Master HAF X Big Tower Black Motherboard: ASUS Prime X370-A CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X with Cooler Master Hyper 212 Turbo Red LED fan GPU: ASUS RX 580 ROG Strix Gaming 8GB RAM: 16GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4 3200Hz Storage: 250GB Samusing 970 EVO m.2, 5TB 7200rpm SATA drive OS: Windows 10 PSU: Corsair RM1000X

Source: https://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2018/09/pc-game-review-alpha-prime.html GAME: Alpha Prime RELEASED: 2007 DEVELOPER: Black Element Software PUBLISHER: Bohemia Interactive AVAILABLE ON: PC (Steam) Alpha Prime is a game that I've had in my library for a while. I probably picked it up at some point due to its low price (it's pretty much a $1 game at the moment on Steam). So I figured it was about time I gave the game a playthrough. Here are my thoughts on this 2007 FPS from the Czech Republic. Looks like we've got ourselves a corridor shooter. Oh boy. The game starts off on a mining colony on the distant titular planet of Alpha Prime, where a group of miners are unearthing what seems to be Hubbardium, a powerful substance that when injected into a human being has the effect of slowing down time for the user (similar to the drug SlowMo in Judge Dredd). Rumors begin spreading of the drug coming from some kind of living deity on the planet, which the miners have dubbed Glomar, and it seems the use of Hubbardium is turning a lot of the miners insane. Soon all hell breaks loose when what is said to be the Heart of Glomar is found, which seems to be the source of Hubbardium. Your mission as Arnold (who I have a suspicion is named after a certain action star) aka Arnie is to stop the wrong people from getting their hands on the Heart of Glomar while also finding out who the bad guys is as you're caught up in a conspiracy involving your ex girlfriend Livia. The story isn't really that well written in the game. It is told mostly through lengthy cutscenes that aren't particurarily engaging nor well acted and through conversations that are equally lengthy and boring. For most of the game I had difficulty paying attention to what was going on story-wise as the story just seemed to not really go anywhere until the latter part of the game. It involves an Italian (who is fittingly voiced by an Italian with a very lacking grasp of the English language), a black dude who couldn't be any more "bro", and a scientist, as well as Olivier, the leader of the mercenary group sent to retrieve the Heart of Glomar, who turns out to be the game's main villain. The side characters in the end only serve as reasons for you to go after Olivier, who may or may not be on the same side as your ex girlfriend. I dunno, it just seemed like the story tried way too hard to add twists that you could see coming a mile away or that didn't make much sense. "So. You got any porn on that computer?" The gameplay in Alpha Prime feels like very much a product of its time. There isn't much that is particurarily original about it, and a lot of it feels taken from other better games. The main gameplay feels heavily influenced by F.E.A.R. with the slowdown mechanic that was already used in games like Max Payne, the aforementioned F.E.A.R. and Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil. The slowdown mechanic becomes something you'll rely on a lot due to the game's rather unforgiving and unbalanced difficulty. Even on Easy mode enemies can fire at you with pinpoint accuracy no matter their distance and deal a lot of damage which can easily kill you within seconds of engaging the enemy unless you're taking cover. This makes the slowdown mechanic come in handy since it allows you to react faster to enemies firing at you, though it doesn't seem to boost your health in any way, meaning that you can't really rely on it too much for close quarters combat. Unlike a lot of modern shooters, you aren't limited to only 2 weapons though, and can carry an entire arsenal, similar to other oldschool shooters, with ammo for weapons being dropped by enemies and found in lockers and other parts of the levels. You start out with an axe as a melee weapon, but quickly acquire a pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle (which fires like a miniature Gatling gun), a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a flamethrower and grenades which you toss at varying distances depending on how long you hold down the trigger. Most of the weapons feel kind of underpowered and lack any sort of "oomph" to them. The shotgun is fun to use but requires you to be somewhat close to the enemy, which as mentioned already might not be the best idea given how easy you die, so most of the time I used the assault rifle or the sniper rifle and just kind of leaned out of cover to avoid taking damage. The shotgun and flamethrower probably became some of my least used weapons in the entire game due to how pointless close range combat is in the game. The rocket launcher is probably the most useful weapon since it can easily dispatch groups of enemies and take out heavily armored ones in a couple hits, although ammo for it doesn't become common until the latter parts of the game. Leaning out from behind cover is the best tactic when engaging the enemy in Alpha Prime. Also unlike modern shooters, there is no regenerating health, but also unlike older shooters there is no armor either. You have to rely solely on refilling your health using health stations and medkits to stay alive. Personally I feel the game could've used an armor system similar to Quake 4 to at least make it more balanced given how some of the later enemies can take multiple magazines from your assault rifle while you go down quicker than a horny teenager at a stag party. One of the game's somewhat more unique mechanics is that you can hack certain objects using what the game calls the ReCon (short for Remote Controller). By simply aiming at what you wanna hack, the ReCon does everything for you, making it more akin to something like Watch_Dogs where all you do is pretty much aim at something while the game hacks it for you at the press of a button. This mechanic is highly contextual though and doesn't come into play for a lot of the game, only during certain parts where you may have to rearrange objects using a lifter robot, or increase pressure in pipes to blow them up close to enemies. The game technically lets you hack some things, but not everything and it's not exactly letting you actually hack something... Some of the faults of the game come into play with the controls and physics. The game's physics can best be described as... floaty and slippery. Stairs in particular seem to absolutely hate you in the game and will refuse you to stand still on them, making it impossible to aim at enemies while standing on stairs since you will automatically move down the stairs even when you're not moving. Jumping on things is also a huge pain, given that the collision detection seems way off for how you land on things and you end up slipping and sliding all over the place. This can be particularly painful when trying to jump on top of objects like boxes to reach higher places where you may overshoot or undershoot the jump since there is no good feedback from the game on how you will jump due to how unpredictable the physics can be. Most surprisingly the final boss is... kind of a pushover. You shoot him with the rocket launcher until he becomes weak then turn on the generators in the area to fry him while he's recharging and then fire some more. His rocket projectiles are incredibly easy to avoid since they aren't hitscan weapons like the soldiers in the game are using. Given how utterly devastating the common enemies in the game can be, the final boss fight felt almost insultingly easy at that point. The movement in general feels a bit weird, especially when you have to ride anything that's moving. There is a part of the game where you have to take trams, similar to the ones in Doom 3, except in these ones, while the tram is moving, you don't seem to really follow the tram's speed very well and kind of move all over the place, which makes it particularly difficult to aim at enemies attacking you while you take the tram. Similar to Doom 3 there are sections of the game where you have to preserve your oxygen. Thankfully oxygen dispensers are plentiful during these sections. During conversations with other characters, you cannot do anything but listen to it as the game goes into third person. I was also not a fan of how whenever a character talks to you via your com, the game, for no good reason that I can tell, takes away control from you, forcing you into this view behind the character during the entire conversation. I would prefer a more fluid way of delivering exposition, again I would prefer if the game was more like Doom 3 or Quake 4 in this regard, giving you exposition without taking control away from the player. Having to sit through conversations without being able to move is really boring. I was also not a fan of how lengthy the cutscenes were. Thankfully you can skip them but if you want the story, be prepared to sit through some really awkward and lengthy cutscenes with pretty terrible acting. There are also sections of the game where you are required to control robots and vehicles and the controls for these are just awful. Straight up awful. Controlling the loaders feels really stiff and unnecessarily sensitive at the same time. The same goes for the vehicles you drive on the surface of the planet. A simple press of a direction will send you flying in that direction and the slippery physics makes driving a nightmare. It was an enormous chore getting through the driving sections, especially when having to drive on top of any object. Involving the horrible driving controls AND the wonky physics when moving on top of objects at this point in the game just seemed like a horrible idea... Dat skybox tho. Luckily there are some good things to say about Alpha Prime. Graphically the game is gorgeous and follows a similar aesthetic to games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 with a heavy emphasis on very metallic industrial corridors and brown/greyish surface surroundings. The game is fairly heavy on bloom like a lot of games from the mid-late 2000's, but the texture work is really good and the detail on the guns are also really well done. The game is no Crysis, but it definitely feels on par with other mainstream AAA shooters of its era. I was seriously loving the art style in Alpha Prime, despite it feeling at times like somewhat of a straight up ripoff of Doom 3/Quake 4 and even F.E.A.R. to an extent. But I do love those games and I guess it's true that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If anything the game could be considered a lesser homage to classic sci-fi shooters. I did encounter some minor graphical glitches, especially during some of the surface parts where the draw distance seemed very low, and parts of the terrain would glitch out into weird shapes. Also during the cutscenes, it has to be said the facial animation is not the greatest. It's not even on par with Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 which launched 3 years earlier, with characters often having a very dead eyed stare and robotic lipflaps. But for the most part, it's a really nice looking game, especially if you are into that 2000's sci-fi aesthetic of industrial corridors. With everything maxed out and running at 1080p, the game still runs at a smooth framerate with hardly any crashes or hickups. It definitely feels like a rock solid engine most of the time. I feel like I've done this before... On the audio sound of things, things could be better. As mentioned before, the weapon sounds feel a little on the unsatisfying side, and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of the time, the actors feel like they are simply reading a script and not really acting, and while the script isn't the best in the world I feel they could have done a better job. For a lot of the game I just didn't feel invested in the characters at all, especially Arnie who is meant to be the protagonist and the one you relate to. Rule number one for any FPS game with a talking protagonist is to give the protagonist a strong personality. This is why games like Duke Nukem 3D, Sin and Shadow Warrior are so fondly remembered, because they had memorable one-liners and trash talking protagonists who didn't take everything too seriously. Sure, Arnie has his moments now and then but for the most part he's just boring and completely silent during the gameplay which makes absolutely no sense given how talkative he is whenever a cutscene or conversation happens. I just feel giving him some more personality and making him more of a badass would've helped make him a lot more likeable. Especially when the rest of the cast are equally forgetable. That being said, the soundtrack is definitely one of the strong parts of the game. Ranging from orchestral ambient music that perfectly builds atmosphere as well as some pretty asskicking industrial rock tunes that play during some more intense moments, I was really enjoying the soundtrack for most of the game. It was definitely a strong point of the game for me. The game gives you a ton of ammo before the final boss fight against an enemy that is easier than even the basic soldiers you fight in the game, making the final boss fight a joke. Alpha Prime is kind of a mixed bag. It doesn't have any strong memorable story or main protagonist. It ends on a sequel-baiting cliffhanger that leaves what story there is unresolved since there has never been a sequel, and the gameplay feels both uninspired and misguided with it being too difficult to really be enjoyable since the difficulty feels incredibly cheap. It also suffers from numerous issues with the engine's physics and controls. But on the other hand it's only $1, is piss easy to get running in 1080p on any modern PC and looks really good for its time. But you could probably spend that dollar on something more worthwhile since in the end, Alpha Prime doesn't really satisfy anything for me. SCORE: STORY: 4/10 GAMEPLAY: 5/10 GRAPHICS: 6/10 SOUND: 5/10 FINAL SCORE: 5/10

Alpha Prime

Source: https://www.vgr.com/ziq-pc-game-review/ Check out more reviews at http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.no GAME: ZIQ RELEASED: 08/01/2018 DEVELOPER: Midnight Sea Studios PUBLISHER: 3D REALMS AVAILABLE ON: Steam 3D Realms are probably best known for their action titles. With games such as the Duke Nukem series, Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Max Payne and the recent FPS Ion Maiden in their catalogue, it's kind of easy to miss that some of the early 3D Realms/Apogee games often explored other genres as well. And with the recent releases of Graveball and this game, it seems that 3D Realms are doing just what they did in the past. Picking up talented developers making fun games in all genres, and giving them some attention. ZIQ is by no means an action shooter like a lot of 3DR's library, but it does still fit in, in its own quirky way. Let's find out exactly how ZIQ can be called a 3D Realms title. ZIQ is all about grabbing orbs in the right color sequence. ZIQ is straight up an arcade game. While there has been confirmed to be a definitive end to the experience by the creators, the goal is still to attain the highest score possible and rise up the leaderboards. You of course do this by accumulating points through gathering orbs on a track, avoiding obstacles along the way. The caveat is that you need to gather the orbs in a set sequence of two colors, orange and cyan. Once you've gathered one the sequence will count down before it resets until you get the next one, but the timer is fairly slow. The good news is that you yourself control the color of the orbs around you, with being able to switch the color of your runner on the fly. And thus you have full control over gathering the right colors in the sequence. The bad news is that the obstacles require you to be a certain color to pass through them as well, meaning you have to both focus on which color the orbs are, and which color your runner is when passing through an obstacle. It creates some very tense gameplay situations that require a lot of focus. You basically have 3 lanes on the path you run, at times you are required to stick to one field when there's a pool of acid on one side or either side. Pressing left on the controller moves you to the left lane, pressing right moves you to the right lane and not pressing any direction keeps you in the center lane. You can also jump to avoid acid pits or certain obstacles. As has been described by one of my friends, it can be difficult adjusting to the control scheme and I have to admit in the beginning it took a while to adjust to it, but it's something you do get used to after a while. Being the right color on the obstacles is key to surviving. There is an exception to the color rule however. If you have completed enough sequences in a row, you get supercharged for a brief period, in which you can blast through obstacles at the opposite color and gain a destruction bonus to your score. But you also run faster making you have to react quicker to obstacles and orbs which is the tradeoff for increased power. The game does a pretty good job of rewarding skilled players while punishing players for failing, and also having a voice that berates you when you do badly, and sarcastically praises you when you're doing well. It makes you kinda want to punch the guy, but also kinda makes you want to prove to him you're good, so I suppose it works as intended. Of course, from his perspective I can kinda see why he's gotten so rough, seeing an infinite amount of runner clones fail again and again. The game is very good at not being too punishing though. If you die, you do not reset to the beginning but continue where you left off. And if you fail a sequence you instantly get started on a new one. You of course lose your chance at getting supercharged but you're not terribly punished for it. However once all of your extra lives are spent, it's game over and you're presented with a leaderboard showing your final score and given the opportunity to retry from the beginning. But all in all I feel the difficulty curve is just right and I would consider it a hard game, but not unfairly so. Great. Obstacle course. Graphically the game looks pretty good for an indie title. I would probably personally like if the path wasn't constantly straight forward but maybe had turns and loops, more akin to a racing game. It probably wouldn't impact the gameplay any differently but would give you more of a sense of not just going forward but also following a path. And some variation on the things around you could also add some flair to the game. The game looks a bit boring and uniform at times, and staring at the same walls, the same patterns and the same structures over and over does get a bit repetitive. But the graphics serve the gameplay and it looks alright, especially for the cheap price the game asks. The game is made in the Unity engine and I've definitely seen worse come from it. The sound is probably the game's strong point. It features a really nice synthwave score with some trap elements, perfectly fitting the game's futuristic sci-fi aesthetic. I also love the voice actor who plays the overseer creature. While I do want to punch him at times for being such a dick, it really helps edge you on to do better. The sound design in general is pretty good though I noticed that if I turn the volume down, some sounds still play at max volume, which I think should be fixed in a future patch. Passing through gates like a boss. All in all, ZIQ is a really addictive arcade runner. The price is also really nice, being around $10 on Steam right now. There's also already a pretty competitive community surrounding the game, giving you plenty of competition when getting high scores. I definitely recommend ZIQ if you are into these type of games, though ZIQ is anything but casual, giving you a bit of a learning curve before you can dent the leaderboards. SCORE GAMEPLAY: 8/10 GRAPHICS: 8/10 SOUND: 9/10 FINAL SCORE: 8/10

lol, gotta love when you ban a spammer and delete their posts so that now nothing makes sense...

3DS? If you mean the SNES game, it's the sequel Earthbound and it's only on New 3DS...

Source: https://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2018/08/nes-game-re-review-motherearthbound-zero.html GAME: Mother (Earthbound Beginnings on WiiU) RELEASED: 07/27/1989 DEVELOPER: Ape PUBLISHER: Nintendo AVAILABLE ON: Famicom, NES (unofficial release), GBA, WiiU SPOILER ALERT! This review will spoil the story of Mother. If you haven't played the game yet, I strongly urge you to do so! If spoilers do not bother you, please go on. Recently I was attacked by a nasty cold and have been out for a few days. I took the opportunity to revisit a game that's been on my mind for well over a few years now. Back in 2013, I reviewed this game on my blog without having really finished it. But already then it left a pretty lasting impression on me and it's always been sitting in my backlog since then, always having been that game that I knew I had to finish some day. And it seems that day has come as I have finally completed Mother. Granted, I have only completed Earthbound Zero Easy, a romhack of the fan translation which decreases encounter rates, increases XP gained and overall makes the game more managable so my review will more reflect this version of the game than the original, just so it's said. But I will still be keeping the original game in mind. So here's my full review of Mother after 4 years of trying to get back into it. This game knows how to ask the important questions! Mother tells the story of three characters who's fates intertwine as their world falls victim to an alien invasion. Set in a somewhat off beat 1980's America, you start out in the town of Podunk when young boy Ninten is awoken by a loud noise. He runs to his sister's room to find her doll posessed, moving on its own, and after fighting it, the doll stops moving. But not without revealing something incredible, inside it is a music box that plays a little melody, which Ninten remembers. Unknown to Ninten, this melody is part of a puzzle he has to solve in order to stop the invasion. After finding the key to the house's locked basement on his dog, he discovers a diary from his great grandfather, George, revealing that Ninten posesses special psychic powers. At some point on his journey, he ends up in a faraway land called Magicant, where in a castle Queen Mary resides. She mournfully tells Ninten that she cannot remember anything. She can vaguely remember a song but seems to have forgotten this as well, and beckons Ninten to find all eight pieces of this song which seem to have been hidden around the world. Together with Lloyd, a nerd with a knack for science and Ana, a seemingly fragile girl with extraordinary psychic powers. The story of Mother is driven by the eight melodies and your search for them. Because as it turns out, these hold a significance beyond what you can imagine as they are the weapon you need to defeat the leader of the alien invaders, Giegue, who as it turns out, was once the adopted child of George and Maria and the melody is the lullaby she would sing to him. Reminded by the love of his surrogate mother, Giegue is forced to leave the planet and let go the people he has abducted. To me, the story of Mother is really what got me coming back to it. It's one of the games that somehow creates an entirely unique narrative and uses the game mechanics to tell the story in a way that gives it a unique feel I've never seen in other games. And I find the way you defeat the final boss incredibly ingenious. Since you play as children, despite your powers, there is no way you can defeat a foe that is so infinitely more powerful than you can ever imagine. The only weapon you have is love, and you have to intentionally not attack him to beat him which I find amazing. It's easy to see why this game has been an inspiration to so many modern game makers such as Toby Fox who made the amazing Undertale, since this too kind of took the RPG genre and did something new and interesting with it, even if it also fell victim to some of its more outdated perks. So let's get on to discussing the gameplay shall we? Mother, despite its cute first impression, has many dark heartfelt moments. Gameplay-wise, Mother honestly plays like a traditional RPG for the most part. You level up through battling enemies in turn-based combat, and each of your characters have different stats and different talents which you need to get accustomed to in order to fully be efficient in battles. Ninten uses mostly melee weapons such as bats and has mostly defensive PSI. Ana has a lot of offensive PSI, but a low health pool and cannot use most weapons other than frying pans (bit of stereotyping there). Lloyd doesn't deal a lot of physical damage and can mostly use guns and items such as bottle rockets, bombs, plasma beams and flamethrowers, but can dish out a lot of damage with those items. Much of Mother requires you to utilize the game's powerups correctly for these characters. Getting the right items can be crucial to easing the game's harsh difficulty, and there is a lot of grinding involved to make sure your characters are strong enough to tackle the road ahead. Granted I was playing the EB0 Easy hack, which cuts down on the difficulty a great deal and allowed me to appreciate the game more so I highly recommend playing this ROM if you can get it, but be prepared to deal with a lot of the typical tropes of early RPG's. This game definitely benefits from using a walkthrough so don't feel bad if you have to pay Starmen.net a visit. I used their walkthrough for EB0 for my playthrough and do not regret it as the tips and strategies in it helped a lot with easing the game for me. Granted you can play the game however you want to but the walkthrough saves a lot of time and grief from wandering around aimlessly. It's very hard to recommend Mother on its gameplay, because it is sadly very outdated and not always in the best way. It requires a lot of patience, and requires that you find that drive to keep playing even when it feels tiring. To me that drive was the Eight Melodies. As stated in my original review, when listening to the eight melodies I would feel inspired to play the game, to see it through. And I felt that the eight melodies I picked up were valuable treasures that were almost lost in the world, it drove me to finish the game and bring peace to the world. The game feels bigger than the world you see, it feels like you're on an epic quest to save the world from a threat you at first cannot even understand. And your enjoyment of the game will definitely depend on how engaged in the world you become. Well... fuck. Graphically, Mother isn't impressive. But it definitely has a style. Heavily influenced by the Peanuts comic strip, it uses a style that feels really easy to like. It's bright, colourful and uses the NES palette to greatly enhance each area's look and feel. From the green fields of Podunk and Merrysville, to the snowy plains of Snowman and the cold industrial designs of the factories and laboratories, the world of Mother looks as varied and diverse as you would imagine it to look. The only thing I don't really like the look of is the battle screen. It's mostly just a black screen with enemy sprites on it, which granted are really detailed and great to look at, but having a background would probably help a lot here in my opinion. Musically... this game has the best soundtrack of the entire NES library in my opinion. From the get-go, Mother bombards you with some of the most emotional and some of the most catchy music you may ever hear from an 8 bit system. From the mellow and soothing opening theme, to the driving beats of Pollyanna and Bein' Friends, to the dark disturbing industrial moods of factories and the sheer emotional power of the Eight Melodies, Mother's soundtrack is unforgetable. The soundtrack is varied too. There's everything from rock'n'roll tunes, to ballads, to menacing industrial atmospheric music. It feels like it never gets boring and perfectly fits every area you go to. Every time I hear the Eight Melodies, I cannot help crying, because the melodies feel like they represent pure love. The kind of love you've felt from your mother. It feels like a genuine lullaby. And it soothes me in a way few things can. When I am angry at my friends, when I feel down and depressed, the Eight Melodies can soothe me like nothing else I know. It's become one of my favourite tunes in all of gaming really for this reason and it's why I can truly believe it can make even an alien menace like Giegue break down in tears and leave. In its simplicity, in its eight little melodies, it holds immense power and hits harder than anything I've ever heard. It was one of the things that truly stuck out to me about the game and the reason I've kept playing through it. Thank you for your nice song indeed <3 Mother is flawed. Incredibly flawed. Even with a guide, the game is brutally difficult and at times is confusingly vague. It can be an infuriating game without knowing the right strategies and what the different items do. And yet, with its flaws, it holds one of the best stories of its generation, one of the best soundtracks, one of the most important messages and some of the most memorable worlds ever in a video game. It's an experience I will never forget, one I will keep with me until I die. Those moments when I sat there, singing along to Ninten, Ana and Lloyd as their song brought Giegue to tears, brought me to tears as well. The fact an 8bit game could make me feel so many emotions to me is amazing and if you're at all a fan of RPG's, or even better, Earthbound, you definitely need to play this game some day. I guess it's time to finally tackle Earthbound next. A game which has eluded me for a long time and I swore I would finish Mother before playing it. Now I have no excuse not to. SCORE STORY: 10/10 GAMEPLAY: 6/10 GRAPHICS: 6/10 SOUND: 10/10 TOTAL SCORE: 8/10

I've never had an incident where a game I own has been removed from my library, even after it's removed from the storefront. The only thing I am still worried about are multiplayer games closing servers.

Thankfully these instances are kinda rare, even if it's serious enough to make news, and I doubt it's something to worry about on a large scale.

Source: https://www.vgr.com/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-pc-game-review/ GAME: Rise Of The Tomb Raider RELEASED: 02/09/2016 DEVELOPER: Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal, Nixxes (PC) PUBLISHER: Square Enix AVAILABLE ON: Steam, XBox 360, XBox One, PS4, MacOS, Linux In 2013, Eidos decided it was time to completely reboot the Tomb Raider franchise, with the aptly titled "Tomb Raider", a complete reimagining of the franchise, offering a Lara Croft that we had never seen before. She was more human, more fragile, and taken to a different place than she previously had, a stark contrast to the kind of over the top action heroine she had been in the past. It made for a more interesting story, a story in which she would grow with the player, getting tougher as she gained more experience, ending on an iconic shot of Lara wielding two pistols after having beaten the final boss of the previous game. It seems a no-brainer that after the success of the reboot, which received almost universal acclaim, the same team would work on a sequel. And 3 years later, in 2016, we received "Rise Of The Tomb Raider", the next chapter of the Tomb Raider saga. Despite being 2 years since its release already, during which I have been playing the game on and off, I want to give my own personal opinion on this game given I already reviewed the original at my blog in 2013 and absolutely loved it. And then they saw "Lara Croft Go"... The story of Rise is more of a personal story with Lara following in her father's footsteps, looking for an ancient artifact in Siberia, that allegedly contains the "Divine Source", the fountain of youth itself. Her father was on the trail for it, but died before he could finish his work, which is where Lara decides to pick up. Hunted by an ancient group called Trinity, she travels to Siberia in search of an ancient city known as Kitezh to find the Divine Source before they do. A journey which takes her through the Siberian wilderness, cold war installations and a valley where she meets the indigenous people, who she has to work with in order to find a way to stop Trinity from getting their hands on the Divine Source. The story is told through amazing acting, both in terms of the animation and voice acting, which is absolutely stellar. The game does a great job feeling like a true cinematic experience, going back and forth between flashbacks and current events and utilizing the gameplay to also relay backstory to the player through artifacts which can be picked up and read or inspected to reveal little stories from ancient times. Throughout the game, Trinity remains a constant threat, and it becomes your main task to survive long enough to not only stop them but also clearing your father's name who was labeled a lunatic for his discoveries. The opening level in Siberia shows off some gorgeous graphics, and details like leaving foot trails in the snow. The gameplay in Rise largely follows the same mechanics from Tomb Raider. Moving around the environment is often done through climbing, scaling walls and all that good stuff. A lot of focus is put on survival and using your environment to aid you. Resources can be gathered around you to upgrade your weapons and craft inventory items such as ammunition and healing kits. Whether you are hunting animals for pelts, picking mushrooms or gathering wood, your environment is your best friend in this game. Campfires serve as spots where you can fast travel between places in the game, craft items and upgrade your equipment and skills. The combat also remains largely the same, with Lara being able to carry 4 weapons in her inventory at any given time (which can be swapped out and upgraded at campfires). Lara can automatically take cover behind stuff and in addition to shooting enemies can also engage in melee combat, where you can dodge your enemy's attacks while also landing attacks on them. Ammunition is scarce though, so often the best course of action is to either avoid combat if possible or use stealth. If you have a fear of arachnids, perhaps look away from this scene... Lara will usually (unless the story calls for otherwise) approach any enemy group already in stealth and it is up to the player if you want to break stealth or maintain it. Maintaining stealth is usually more rewarding as it conserves on ammunition and lets you stay more in control of things. Picking enemies out one by one without being seen and ensuring their bodies aren't discovered is essential to keeping stealth and on higher difficulties, this becomes crucial as enemies will deal a lot more damage to Lara. The environment is typically also offering plenty of opportunities to remain hidden so using your environment to your advantage is another crucial element to survival in Rise. The controls can be a bit confusing at times. While largely intuitive, during quicktime events and button prompts it can often catch you a bit by surprise if you're not expecting it and lead to an unfortunate death because you didn't time a button press correctly or pressed the wrong button. Granted it's a huge improvement over the previous game where quicktime events were a much bigger problem and button presses felt almost entirely random, but it's still a bit of a pain to deal with. This squirrel knows what's up. Another element of the game is exploration. As opposed to the previous Tomb Raider, in this game there are a LOT more actual tombs to raid, and they're usually hidden from the main path. Each tomb provides a unique puzzle to solve with a pretty high reward for solving them. There are also a lot of other perks to exploring the environment in Rise, such as coin caches to find, hidden pieces of lore and so on. If you truly wanna 100% complete the game, you are looking at a lot of hours spent searching every nook and cranny of the game to find all it has to offer. After my first completed game I was left with only 86% completion, and that was after a whole 2 years of playing the game on and off with a solid 20 hours of actual game time. So if you're a completionist, you're definitely looking at a pretty substantial amount of game time, even though the story itself can probably be completed much quicker than that. In addition to the main story campaign, the game has some additional challenges to play through in the form of the Expeditions mode. Here you can use cards to grant additional buffs during the gameplay. You can do Score Attack, where you are trying to get the best time while also going for objectives that grant you a better score. You can beat an earlier chapter in Chapter Replay, faced with additional challenges such as completing it without dying. Expeditions is also where you can play additional DLC levels for some extra content after completing the main game, similar to the DLC missions in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. One of the most gorgeous games of its generation, Rise features a world that feels incredibly inviting and daunting at the same time. Rise offers far more arctic conditions than Tomb Raider did, with its setting being the cold mountains of Siberia. While Tomb Raider had more of a tropical island feel to it, Rise offers more mountain areas and cold conditions, which helps set it apart from its predecessor and gives it a feel of its own. Everything is rendered with an incredible attention to detail, such as Lara's facial expression during moments of the game and animals limping after being shot. Your feet will leave realistic trails in the snow, sunlight will break up very realistically through snow and clouds. And the mountains and valleys are rendered beautifully in the background, giving the game a gorgeous world to explore. The facial animations are also something to behold with very realistic expressions that almost head into uncanny valley territory, but like the latest Call of Duty games somehow actually manages to go past that due to some tasteful style choices. You also have a variety of outfits to choose from with more being available as DLC, so if you're not happy with Lara's clothing, just change it. As previously mentioned the voice acting is superb. The entire cast is giving a stellar performance here, especially Lara's voice actress who definitely sells her role of being a young adventurer often ending up in harsh situations yet surviving them through sheer will. The rest of the sound design is packed to the brim with realistic animal sounds, as well as lush environmental sounds such as weather and water flowing. Weapons sound realistic as well, but still sounding satisfying to use, especially using the pickaxe for melee attacks which always have a brutal crunch to them. As with the previous game the musical score is sadly largely forgetable background music, which makes sense given the game's cinematic focus but compared to the classic games that had memorable themes, it feels too forgetable to be noteworthy. It feels more functional than memorable, largely just being there to build up the atmosphere than doing anything else. It makes me miss the classic themes from the older games for sure, especially when they weren't afraid to mix in some techno and classical music, which is something I feel has been lost with the newer games. And it was there, surrounded by ice all around her that Lara began seriously questioning her life decisions, and why she had decided not to bring more rations. All in all, Rise Of The Tomb Raider is a great game. The story feels more personal and thus the stakes feel much higher than the previous games, dealing with themes of Croft cleansing her family name and living up to her father's expectations. It feels like a story where Lara is dealing with her past in order to leave it behind her and thus feels very important to her. Gameplay wise it improves a lot on its predecessor without taking anything away that shouldn't be, and it's an absolutely gorgeous game to behold, even on the lowest settings. And with its sequel coming later this year, now is as good a time as any to give Rise Of The Tomb Raider a playthrough. SCORE STORY: 9/10 GAMEPLAY: 8/10 GRAPHICS: 10/10 SOUND: 8/10 FINAL SCORE: 9/10

Fuck no. I love Star Wars. I'm ecstatic we're getting more Star Wars movies now than ever.

He's retired to Twitter where he seems content shitting on Trump, tweeting about how depressed he is and ignoring anyone trying to actually help him. OT: Undertale

I remember how Spoony feels about it, lol

Yeah, fair enough. Just drop it for now.

Source: https://www.vgr.com/graveball-pc-game-review/ Check out my other reviews @ http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.no GAME: Graveball RELEASED: 07/13/2018 DEVELOPER: Goin' Yumbo Games PUBLISHER: 3D REALMS AVAILABLE ON: Steam (consoles TBA) If you've ever pondered the question: "What if goblins played sports?" then it seems 3D Realms and developer Goin' Yumbo and their new game Graveball has the answer. Given goblins are probably less known for their great sportsmanship, and more for their immense bloodthirst, it should come as no surprise they play it with clubs, massive bones, whatever blunt or sharp weapon they can get their hands on. And of course, the ball is a skull. Go figure. 5 seconds left... gotta run for it! There isn't much of a story to Graveball, if any, other than that goblins apparently love getting together at cemeteries to play their own version of rugby. Gameplay in Graveball is fairly simple and if you're at all familiar with rugby or handball, it shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Two opposing teams of 3 goblins each face each other in matches where the ultimate goal is to get the skull into the opposing team's goal zone. When the skull lands in the zone, it will start counting down. Unless the ball is moved, it will eventually explode, upon which the scoring team wins. The team that gets the most goals until the timer reaches zero wins the match. There are of course some quirks to this game that makes it a bit more interesting. As you can tell from the screenshot above, there are quite a few weapons to use and these are what makes Graveball more of an action sports game. Because you can just kill the crap out of your opponents to keep them from getting the skull into your goal, using any weapons you find laying around. You can also toss your weapons at your opponents, which will leave you unarmed until you can find a new one, but can be immensely satisfying if you manage to hit an opponent on the other end of the field. Another aspect to the gameplay is that when you get killed, you are dead for 5 seconds until you respawn as a ghost. In this form you cannot interact with the playing field and still count as dead but you have access to a unique weapon in this form, being the scythe, which you can grab and then respawn as a goblin to use as a weapon. If all of your team are turned into ghosts however, the match ends, so even if you are respawned, keep in mind it's not a safety net. Death is not the end in Graveball. He just kind of casually strolls by at times. There's a lot of customization options you can use for your player character too, such as custom hairstyles, masks and taunts which adds flavour to the game. You unlock these by earning gold in matchmaking, so there's a lot of incentive to keep playing. One thing I'm not a huge fan of is that what you unlock is always randomized, so there's no way of previewing a hairstyle for instance and purchasing it, it's always a bit of a crapshoot what you'll get. I prefer being able to pick what to customize my character with personally. And it's not like I want to stop unlocking things to customize with either, I just would prefer that freedom. Graphically the game looks alright. It uses the Unreal engine, which always looks excellent, so there's plenty of neat effects going on. I did run into some slight performance issues on my copy, so optimization might still not be 100% there, but all things considered it ran and looked great on medium settings for me. How the game runs might depend on your PC since mine is starting to get a bit old at this point. I of course have to mention the music by Brian Brennan who did a pretty great soundtrack. It's sort of synthwave with a classic horror twist that perfectly builds up the mood and atmosphere in the game while also providing some driving music for the gameplay. The voice acting is also hilarious, with the goblins speaking entirely in grunts and garbled speech. I also love the punchy sound effects when using the weapons. All around the sound isn't stellar but it definitely works. And while that is really all there is to this game, it makes for some great fun. You can either play solo against bots, create custom matches and invite friends to play, or create a party and join an existing match through matchmaking. Unfortunately it seems the playerbase at this point is kind of non-existent, which is understandable given the game just launched but I really hope that more people will get this game. Because it is stupidly fun at times, especially during those unforgetable moments where you just landed a goal and can still kill someone of the opposing team just to rub salt into that already deliciously fresh wound. And since the game is like $5 at the moment on Steam, with a console release coming later, I see no reason not to grab this game. It's not any deep or massive game, but it's definitely a worthwhile game to play with friends for short periods. SCORE STORY: N/A GAMEPLAY: 8/10 GRAPHICS: 8/10 SOUND: 7/10 FINAL SCORE: 8/10

Forsaken Remastered

Nothing to fight over. Not everyone can enjoy the same things. I had the same reaction to Zelda.

And it is my all time favourite SNES game, let alone one of my favourite games of all time, so I couldn't think of anything else to put on number one.

Hehe, I've been told Chrono Trigger is really good. I really should get around to playing it. And finishing FFVI.

No love for B.O.B.? Come on, lol

If I put those games in I would put in games I've barely played and have zero relationship with. And I wanted this to be my list so sorry to disappoint you. I do plan to play Earthbound at some point though.