Middle Earth: Shadows Of Mordor Review

Lord of the Rings gets an M-rated tie in that is... Good, Real good.

Disclosure: We purchased Middle-Earth: Shadows Of Mordor (from here on referred to as Mordor) for £35 of Amazon and played it on X1.

The underdog to rule them all
Mordor didn't look like it was going to be much. It was announced with no gameplay or fanfare, and quickly plummeted in price on Amazon and other sites (except GAME) and as a licensed game we was all expected it join the "meh heap" but then we paused as it was rated M - Mature. That was a good sign, Cash in's are usually E - everyone or T - Teen to maximise sales then slowly we started to get details and it sounded promising.

There and back again... in blood
Set after the Hobbit but before Lord of the Rings, There is no leaning on the films for support (expect one character who makes a loosely connected experience).
The mature rating is put to full use right from the get go. As our hero Talion, A ranger of Gondor and captain of the black gate watches as Saruon's followers kill his family in front of him and then give him the same extreme shave. However Talion wakes in the wraith world and discovers he has been bound to the spirit of an elven archer who also thirsts for revenge. The wraith's desire for revenge is so great it prevents Talion from passing it the next world so no matter how (or how often) you die you always comeback.

The plot is possibly the games weakest part. Not because it's bad, if you remove the Middle Earth lore the story is your usual revenge and redemption tale. It is effective and the Middle Earth's lore really dose help the story feel special. It just that the game part is better.

Game play merger!
We knew that this was being published by Warner Brothers (publishers of the Arkham Series) but we wasn't expecting developer Monolith (F.E.A.R & Condemned) to raid Rocksteady's game mechanics. Mordor's Talion borrows a lot of Batman's play book.
So combat is predictably great and free flowing allowing you to bounce from enemy to enemy using attacks, counters, Stuns and a dodge/flip over, building up a combat multiplier allowing you to unlease a speacil (usually head removal) attacks. Though the system is a little more forgiving than the Bat's as you can counter mid attack. Combat feels rewarding as you chain together hits, dodges and counters. Tailon can also enter the wraith world the same world we see when Bilbo or Frodo puts on the ring, this functions largely the same as Batman's Detective visions

The devs also borrowed from Ubisoft as the climbing and stealth mechanics are faithful emulations of the Assassin's Creed series famous abilities. however enhanced by a the ability to sneak which is handy as stealth is rather important in this title especially when it comes to the captains. Speaking of...

My captain, My rival!
Mordor's big selling point is it's "Nemesis System" and it pure player story gold.  For those who don't know this system fills your world with randomly generated Uruk (Alpha Orcs) captains (bar a few plot required ones) so not only are their names, titles, appearances are randomly picked but so are their strengths, fears, weaknesses and hatreds. Resulting in each captain feeling different from their piers. But not only dose the system give you these random mini bosses but it remembers your fights with them. Whenever you encounter an captain you'll lock blades and he'll either reference your legend in Mordor or your previous fight.

Events happen in the world where these Uruk try to move up their hierarchy and become War Chiefs. They do this by ambushing one another, hosting feast, executing rivals, beast hunts, duels, and trial's by ordeal. If a captain succeeds in one of these he is awarded power and moves up in the hierarchy. All of these events are also missions you can invade. either trying to stop an powerful enemy from rising up the ranks or try eliminating them entirely.

Now you will die, often in fact but instead of going to the last check point your thrown back into the world. Any of the above events would of passed whilst you was gone regrowing what ever was stabbed or torn off, and the captains will move up (or down) the ranks or killed off. This also extends to whether if the captain killed (or survived) you, this also applies to non captain uruk that kill you off earning themselves an name and rank. In the early game your skills are fairly limited and Talion's status as undead means you cant take much damage (even in the late game Talion isn't overpowered in health) so an unprepared meeting with an captain can be disastrous. You can discover your foes weakness by locating certain uruks that your wraith friend can vulcan mind meld the info out of or discover evidence in the world. This is important as the system can produce real monsters, Immune to most attacks. This has caused several members of the GK - UK team to have mild strokes but kept me away from the story hunting captains for about 10 hours.

I found these enemy level ups are greater punishment for death than Dark Souls' unspent XP drop system, It forced me to play smart and added a real sense of danger to the whole affair.

2nd Act Woes
the seound half of the game see us travel to a far nicer looking area of Mordor but also see the introductions of "dominations" where you can turn an Uruk (captain or not) to your side. This combined with the advanced skills see's the difficulty plummet. As hordes of enemies stop being an danger but an asset, would be assassins become body guards and so combat starts to feel like a waste of resources. The 2nd act is also here the game hit a some majore frame rate drops as one area was over filled with Uruks fighting me, each other and the wild life as a hoard of flies buzzing around and I was exploding barrels.

Conclusion 

Despite the 2nd act wobble and relatively weak plot Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor is an amazing game and an example of what Next Gen games can be, if Graphics are secondary.

Destiny might be touted as the first "Next Gen" game but seeing as it's cross gen with only a graphical not feature downgrade. Mordor stands as a true next gen game

+ Frilling combat

+ Deadly enemies

+ True "Next Gen"

- Standard Plot

- Weaker 2nd half

- Occasional Nemesis Monster

Spawn: The Eternal (1997) - Hourglass review

During the mid to late nineties, comic icon and entrepreneur, Todd Mcfarlane was pushing his character Spawn to become the next big household name. This period resulted in broad mediums being covered, some successfully such as the HBO (Bravo in the UK) late nigh animated serial and some less successfully; i.e. the field from which Spawn: The Eternal rears its cowl of crap.

Following the mistake of placing this game in your system, the "plot" is revealed in a brief opening. Here, all the elements of 90s adolescence are on display. Grave, fire, cape, bats, cape more cape, Spawn and all encompassed by a theme ripped off from the movie Cape Fear. You may assume this would be a game involving steady amounts of cape; however you would be wrong, very wrong. In fact, this game is so far isolated from what one would want from the hero, villain or majestic cape genre that you could bury it in the artic prior to leaving orion's belt for a distant alien planet inhabited by talking bongo drums only to be find yourself less remote by comparison.

The game begins in the fiery pits of graphical hell, and this is where the fun begins. Should you decide to do something revolutionary, such as turn left, Spawn cranks over to the corner with all the charisma of a block of wood while the camera stares after him in frozen, utter, miserable disbelief. The camera, perhaps knowingly, simply refuses to follow you on your quest and will only budge if either A: You collide head first with it, whereupon it  shuffles behind you and refuses to move ever again or B: you find an opponent and enter combat, which fixes it to the side allowing more than a guess at just what in the whole of hell is going on.

Should you get him to turn around, you will be delighted to know Spawn contains approximately three colours and resembles a structurally unsound Jenga tower bounded together by dying opium addicts.

   elementary, my dear Watson.

Once this monstrosity leaves hell, in a manner faithful to the animated seres, by galevantic through some automatic doors, you are transported to a subway containing his mortal enemies: white man with sunglasses and black man with ‘tash.

The state of combat goes something like this: black man with ‘tash moves forward, Spawn moves forward, black man with ‘tash moves closer toward him, Spawn moves closer toward him, following this both spam kick repeatedly until the winner is decided. Punches can be used, however they hold no range and any spells used will deplete the power meter making Spawn keel over and die. As the kick is all you will need to complete this game, I wouldn’t worry about it at all and just enjoy the dynamite feel of that action button whilst lamenting all disillusionment knowing you are involved in some horrid 3D equivalent of Rock ‘em Robots.

"fear my foot, you tashy mistake!"

Realising all too soon these challenging feats could barely contain the sheer levels of fun, the developers include complex puzzles such as unlock gate using gate key! These along with special items are found by a painstaking traversal of each level while the camera, still frozen in shocked awe, observes you scrambling to locate boxes and bins. By tapping investigate, Spawn kicks out like an angry baby, naturally, making the bin explode. You will envy his rubbish disposing abilities.


Fun 1/5 This game perfectly recreates the excitement of a homeless man wandering through his own private purgatorial hell.

Graphics 2/5 Spawn and his enemies have never before looked so hellish, so grim, so gobsmackingly bad.

Longevity 5/5 There is no more apt a title than “The eternal” there are four stages in this game and you'll struggle to find a wasted day where you're crazy enough to play through a single one of them.
 

Endpoint 2/5 Spawn stands as a monument to the philosophy that medium crosses are predestined for eternal failure by representing the very foundations on which to design a bad game. 

Hourglass Recommends:

Batman: Arkham City (2011), Shadowman (1999), Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999).

"it's Like Geek Christmas!"

We warned you it was coming, we said it was time we started branching out reviews and that time has come!

Yep today we received a loot crate, For those who don't know LootCrate is an US company who once a month will send you a crate full of loot (which the name should of warned you) all you know in advance is the theme which this month was VILLAINS!

As you can see there was some damage which considering it came from the US with at no additional shipping isn't all that bad, I suspect the damage was caused by customs officers looking for an entirely different kind of loot, fortunately nothing inside was damaged.

 As you can see the contents and the box are rather great! being greeted by Deadpool and Joker certainly makers an epic first impression.  

As you can see the box is rather cool and has been customised for the Villains theme. I am rather fond of the "Killing Joke" homage other the "document" section

 This crate contains 2 posters, 1 shirt, 1 pair of socks (yeah, know what your thinking but they are Deadpool socks), 1 Darth Vader keyring, 1 Bowser magnet, 1 comic, 1 DVD detailing DC's villains and 1 guide. A nice little cross section of loot

The poster's as you can tell are rather impressive.

Harley appears to be based on her Arkham City design and i believe her Arkham Asylum outfit is in her hand.

What to say about the Joker poster... it's disturning well thought out in an rather chaotic style... Much like the Clown Prince of Crime himself

Next up is a special super exclusive cover for Marvel's brand new Rocket Raccoon solo series. Rocket Racoon is a member of "Guardians of The Galaxy"  not to be confused with the small blue men from Green Lantern but is related to the upcoming film of the same name. This is apart of Marvel's NOW! program so i meant to be an "easy jumping on point" for new fans.

The cover is certainly an loot crate exclusive as the titular Jet Rodent is carrying a LootCrate. I'm unsure if this will be a collector's edition due to that inclusion but i'm sure appeals to fans on the service and the character.

the exclusive comic varient certainly dose make the box seem more valuable and certainly exclusive it dose however pale in comparison for me with the next item

The "Joki" T-shirt, I mean just look at it. It obviously reminds me not only of DC & Marvels "Amalgamation" series where they fused DC and Marvel characters (Sadly Joki wasn't part of that) but also reminds me the "Emperor Joker" Superman graphic novel where Joker gains reality altering powers.

Conclusion

It's hard to give this a score as it's rather subjective. 

I personally favour DC which made this a tad less great for me than it would for others.

That being said it was well balanced between DC and Marvel 

   

Will I continue with LootCrate? Possibly it will entirely depend on the next theme.

Only A little Late... Toy Soldiers: Cold War Review

Toy Soldiers is a prime example of why the XBLA program (and Indie games) are good for the industry.

Full disclosure: We acquired Toy Soldiers: Cold War Via Games with Gold.

Toy Soldiers: Cold War is an hybrid title - A tower Defence game with Third person shooter elements combining strategic thinking and action gameplay. The original Toy Soldiers was set in World War 1 but the sequel has skipped the expect WW2 era and jumped to the 80's. Complete with Top Gun styled Music, 80's action movie references and iconic 80's memorabilia littering the levels.

3rd Person Tower Defender

It's hybrid nature is fantastic. At any time you can assume control of any of your turrets, which is a great feature seeing as it basicly fixes the issues I have with tower defence games. Most TD games either have me waiting for the cannon fodder to earn me enough to build the next tower or having built a good system have to stand back and watch the AI do foolish things like using anti armour against troops as the tanks roll by unharmed. Two issues that disappear when you can control the turrets yourself.

You place towers on special areas around the map there are 6 towers Machine Gun, Anti tank, Mortar, Makeshift, Anti Air, Artillery. Each of the towers have their unique uses. combined with the limited placement sites you cant just spam AT turrets or Machine guns and hope for the best. The Anti Air and Artillery require larger placements and so are limited to a few spaces per map increasing the need for forward thinking. Towers can be upgraded that improve their functions and at their highest levels allow you to damage thing they wouldn't E.G. A upgraded machine gun gets an secondary grenade launcher that can do damage to tanks, While it's not as effective as an Anti Tank weapon it dose help out on the larger enemy types.  

There are also special units that only work with you in control. There are various Tanks, Helicopters and Jets, all with different on-board weaponry. These vehicles are free to move around and attack enemies as long as you have the battery power. running low on power? either pick up some spare batteries or park on the charging plate. They are powerful and an enjoyable change of pace. They however pale in comparison to the Commando unit. Unlocked via the games combo system. A powerful unit who wields an RPG in one hand and an LMG in the other. He spews Action movie one-liners like a drunken Rambo impersonator and always brings a smile to the face when used

Toy Story
Almost everything in this game is in fact a toy and all the battles take place on scale model environments on a table top. Little details elude to the fact everything is a toy, a wind up key here or an battery there, even summoning the powerful commando who comes in his own little action figure box . Littering the battlefield are 'full sized' items like playing guards, aviator sun glasses and Rubix cubes. Outside the battlefield is an normal room so you can see desk lamps and wall paper. Its not original but its rather uncommon enough in games to make this feel fun and refreshing. The toy aspect really comes into play against the bosses which can range from flying aircraft carriers to giant plane-tank hybrids that also carries smaller tanks with in

Ways To Game
Toy Soldiers features an Campaign mode, Survival mode, Challenges and VS mode. All modes support local/online multiplayer, Leaderboards and challenges. Co-op is pretty much required on higher difficulties which makes it weird that you have to access level select to invite another player (online or off). Co-op is a lot of fun, both players have free reign to place and control turrets and better yet also earns their own money

Conclusion

Toy Soldiers is an easy recommendation for anybody interested in tower defence games.

Local Co-op and unit control make it a great game to convert a friend to tower defence.

+Plenty of replay value

+Co-op is fully integrated

+Direct control fixes Genre issues

+80's-ness

-Missions can be short

-DLC only adds Levels

-Co-op is hidden

Only a little Late.... Sleeping Dogs Review

Only a Little Late Review of 

Sleeping Dogs

Little Late Reviews - a review of an older title we only recently played

For disclosure I acquired Sleeping Dogs via Xbox Lives Games with Gold Promotion.

Sleeping Dogs was a surprise. A free title that made me regret not buying it. For a game with such troubled development having started life as True Crime 3 before being canceled by Activision (along with Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend) and bought by Square-Enix you'd imagine it be terrible as often the case (Duke Nukem Forever Aliens: Colonial Marines) but other than an issue of length it is an great game.

Hong Kong Nights

I never thought about Hong Kong being an setting for an open world Crime game before. Whilst i'm sure Hong Kong may have organised crime you never hear of it but it turned out to be a fantastic setting.

The island whilst a little hollow in the middle feels alive and lived in with all sorts of collectibles to be found.
The attention to detail spreads over to the population of Hong Kong there is less repeating civilians in a crowd. Some of them only have part of an arm !?!?!

Combat

Open world crime game you know how it'll play right? We'll you'd be surprisingly wrong. Guns are rare and you cant keep them after missions. Which forces you to use the wonderful Fighting, seemingly inspired by the Arkham Games. Your granted an attack button, a counter button and grab button whilst the first two are fairly straight forward but the last brings the games most visceral moments. 

Ancient Art of FACE BLENDER

You can pummel away at your enemy, (with upgrades) brake arms and legs. You can Judo throw and toss your enemies about and drag the to various environmental hazards; cars, phone boxes, AC Fans, phone boxes, buzz-saws and many more.

Brum Brum

Driving is a fairly standard arcade affair. Well with one exception - Action hijacking. you can leap from your car to another, Whilst not original certainly fits the game and helps out during missions. The cars and bikes aren't licensed but are clearly "inspired" by real world cars. 

The car physics can be a bit wonky but are fantastic during chases. Shooting out the tires of a pursing car or bike cause it to flip over and with the rag-doll physics lead to some amazing biker deaths .

To Do List

There is a host of things to do and Find. Shrines that increase health, Lock Boxes to find for money and clothing, CCTV cameras to hack, Drug dealers to bust, Martial arts fight clubs to unlock special outfits (bruce lee, Onk bak), the For-mentioned Jade statues, favors, Girlfriends, Karaoke bars and Races

On the Main missions front there is the primary Triad missions but also Police cases; whilst the Cases don't change the ending they do add more scenes more to the ending.

Actions during missions award (Triad) or subtract (Cop) XP at then end of missions. Increasing you Cop, Triad and Face (overall/general) levels allow you to unlock abilities from various skill trees 

And finally; Shenmue !?!?!  

I spent a small portion of the game collecting the Jade Statues that unlocm new moves, doing 'favours' (open world side missions) and beating on thugs dressed as Ryo Hazuki the star of Shenmue games. 

lets pretend its shenmue 3

The outfit is spot on and I have to believe was done intentionally as certain members of the Gaming Community (including us here at Game Knights UK) are crying out for a new Shenmue or even an HD port

Conclusion 

Sleeping dogs was a treat to play and i whole hardheartedly recommend it. 

Having played this after GTA V, I prefer this in some ways. 

There is an fantastic little Karaoke game that plays like Rock Bank/Lips 

+ Amazing Fighting

+Living Hong Kong
+Limited Use of Guns

+ Shenmue Patch

+Die Hard Level

-Smallish World Map

-A Little Short for an open World Game
-Stiff Wild Animation

Sleeping Dogs Classics (Xbox 360) £14.22

Himaru's Take

This game surprised me, I was expecting something along the lines of True Crime LA or that awful Vin Diesel game, but it turned out to be very refreshing. After playing GTAOnline it was nice to have something a bit different, whilst being familiar. The first thing i noticed; was the combat and flexibility of the open world. I would often just drive around and look at the vast cityscape, strolling into the market and purchasing some noodles or customising Wei's clothes and appearance, looking at the bustling night life or rumble down a back alley and beat up some thugs, I loved hijacking buses and driving around picking up passengers, because i'm a badass like that.

There were a vast amount of side quests and 'favours' that kept me busy when i didn't want to progress with the story. the CCTV hacking was a fun pastime for me and trying to obtain enough 'Face' to acquire new clothes and vehicles to make Wei more "Gangsta"

All in all, I enjoyed Sleeping Dogs. It could have done with a bit more meat on its bones, but for a free download, I ain't complaining. And will return to it again in the near future to start afresh, and Hopefully I won't screw Wei's life up too badly. hah!