Shmee.Me

February 5, 2014February 5, 2014

Burn Through Your Wallet With Dungeon Hunter 4!

On my flight to Disneyland I needed a distraction, so I downloaded Dungeon Hunter 4 by Gameloft. It is a free-to-play Diablo clone for mobile devices. The game starts off very fun, but then when you just start to really get in to it the free-to-play gimmicks weigh it down.

The story follows a hero who is trying to save the world from demons. How does the hero do this you ask? Why by hacking and slashing his or her way through multitudes of enemies of coarse.

The game is very simple in premise. The more bad guys you kill, the more you level up and the more loot you gain, so you can fight bigger and badder (I know it is not a word) guys. This works very well in the beginning, but once you get a ways in to the game its shortcomings make their way to the forefront.

To buy health potions you need to spend real money. To use more then one health potion in a few minutes you need to spend real money, so that means for any of the truly challenging quests you need to show up with a few bucks. At first this didn’t seem like an issue since you could level up on the easy stuff, and then come back to the challenging areas, but after awhile everything is too hard. So to win you are going to need to spend some of your hard earned cash.

It is such a shame too because the game plays so well, and it has live multiplayer! If this game cost five dollars up front it would be a must own. The controls are great, and the graphics for a mobile game are top notch. Heck I would even be okay if it was free, and just the upper tier weapons and armor cost money (which they do). Oh well, this is the new mobile video game world we live in I suppose.

One of these days I will stop playing free-to-play games, but when they are all that seems to be coming out these days for mobile devices they are hard to avoid. For the first couple of hours Dungeon Hunter 4 is worth your time, but once they ramp up the difficulty pull out your wallet, or just uninstall it.

January 27, 2014January 27, 2014

Feel The Rush With Forza Motorsport 5!

I always like to have at least one racing game in my library for any system I own, so when the Xbox One came out I picked up Forza Motorsport 5 by Turn 10 Games and published by Microsoft Studios. It is a great showcase for the power of the Xbox One, and it is a blast to play.

Much like any racing sim, the game starts you off with normal every day cool cars like a Mazda RX8, but if you stick with it for a few hours then you will be racing around in Ferraris and McLarens. Play a little longer and you can race in just about any car of your dreams on famous tracks all over the world.

The great thing about Forza 5 is how different every car feels when you drive it. An AMC Javelin is powerful on straightaways, but you have to slow to a crawl around turns, but get in the driver’s seat of an Indy Car and it feels like you are trying to wrangle a crazed cat on hard wood floors while you are in your socks. It is exhilarating. It is a credit to Turn 10 that they were able change the handling on every car while having it still feel like the same game.

That being said if you don’t like the way a car handles you can always upgrade it so it feels a little different. Give it some more power, change the gearing, or take a little air out of the tires. You can tweak just about everything under the hood. Not a gearhead, but love to play with paint? You can spend hours custom detailing the looks of every car in Forza 5, and then share your paint jobs online for more in game credits.

The biggest change in this game from previous ones is the new Drivatar system. This was introduced in earlier games to race for you in long tedious races, but now your Drivatar races for you all over the world in people’s single player games. If he does well you earn a little extra cash, but the best part about the Drivatar system is that you never just race against the computer AI. You are always racing against someone’s Drivatar. This make the races way more unpredictable because you could be racing against someone like me who takes out everyone on the road, or against that guy who loves to take the perfect lines around the track. If you race against me, I apologize in advance since my Drivatar will probably be trying to constantly force you off the road.

The graphics in the game are wonderful. Every car and track is lovingly recreated and rendered in 1080P 60FPS perfection. The game looks so good that you forget that you should even care about the visuals. It just looks like you are driving around in real cars in mostly real places. There are a couple of exceptions though, crowds still look odd, and they need better anti-aliasing because there a few jagged edges.

Since they seem to refuse to make a new Project Gotham racing game, Forza 5 is a good substitute. It makes me a believer in the new generation of video games, and the fact they will get better then this is very exciting. If you need a racing game for your Xbox One, I recommend Forza 5 whole heartedly. If you see a driver named Shmee in one of your races, he will hit you.

January 22, 2014January 22, 2014

Hone That Killer Instinct!

This is mostly a hands on since I don’t play fighting games a lot. I mostly keep them around so that when friends come over I have something to destroy them with. Killer Instinct from Double Helix and Microsoft Games is perfect for that. It is free for the game and one character, and you can pay for whichever other characters you want. You can pay $20.00 for the base roster of characters, and then pay for new ones that come out if you want. Alternatively you can pay $40.00 and get everything as it comes out for no added charge.

This is kind of a new pricing model for fighting games, and I am a little torn since I love to have everything, but on the other hand it is letting you pay for exactly what you want. If you don’t like a character, you don’t have to have him. If you only want a couple characters then they are all you have to pay for. That being said $20.00 to $40.00 is a reasonable price range to pay for game these days.

That is enough on how much the game can cost, lets get down to how it plays. Like I said before, I am no fighting game connoisseur, but I think it is a very fun game. I like the diversity in the characters, and I like the moves. It feels very responsive. The game looks great. It is a 2D fighter rendered in full 3D, and there are tons of cool particle effects when you pull off that awesome special move. I have looked around the web, and I am apparently not the only person that feels that way.

The only downer is that at the moment it is a little sparse on gameplay modes. There is no story mode, or anything like that, but they said that they will be adding one once they have released all the characters. It isn’t a big deal for me since I use fighting games as party games, so I have no need for a story mode.

Killer Instinct is a fun game that does exactly what I need it to do, but some might find it lacking. I think the $20.00 deal is the way to go, unless you really need to have everything. At the very least it is worth downloading the free character.

January 17, 2014January 17, 2014

Exploring The Broken Age! (Part 1)

Broken Age will always be remembered as the game that made Kickstarter a reasonable way to fund video game development. Other games had done it before, but none of them had garnered as much attention or earned so much money. Broken Age, then known as Double Fine Adventure, raised $3.45 Million dollars with over 87 Thousand backers. Now developers raising money on Kickstarter is a daily occurrence, and since then, there have been several multimillion dollar projects backed. Was all the attention and money worth the end product? Yes it was! Well at least the first half of the game that they released was.

The game follows a teenage girl named Vella as she tries to defeat a monster that is threatening her village, and a teenage boy named Shay who is trying to break from the confines of his over protective ship. They both must solve a series of puzzles and riddles to achieve their goals.

As with any point and click adventure game, it lives or dies based on the story, and I am happy to say that the writing in this game is superb. It is funny and charming, and it really makes you care about the two leads. There have been very few games that have made me love the main characters as much as Broken Age has, and it pains me that I have to wait for the next part to come out to finish their story.

The puzzles are not as random as adventure games from the 80’s and 90’s, so there isn’t any throwing cheese in a well to stop green lightning. Plus this is more a Lucas Arts style adventure, so you cannot get stuck or die. No Sierra dying the dessert here. This might make it a little too easy for hardened point and click gamers, but for someone who is just nostalgic for those days, it is perfect.

The artwork is wonderful. They tried to make the game look like a living painting, and I think for the most part they have succeeded. Everything looks wonderful. This is one of those games that show good graphics does not equal more polygons.

Considering this is the first adventure game from Tim Schafer since the release of Grim Fandango, it is a real winner. Double Fine has continued its trend of making the most charming games on the market, and I cannot wait for the second half of this game to come out. I think this game is a must play, even if point and click adventure games are not your thing; maybe especially if they are not your thing, so you can see why we remember their hay-day so fondly.

January 10, 2014January 10, 2014

Sail The High Seas In Assassin’s Creed IV!

It seems that the evenly numbered Assassin’s Creed games are the ones to play. Assassin’s Creed I was interesting, but very flawed. Assassin’s Creed II fixed most of the those flaws, and it ended up being the game we wanted the first time around. Assassin’s Creed III was fine, but it was just more of the same, so it was hard to care and was boring. Now with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag they gave us the pirate game we have always wanted!

In the story you follow an eager young pirate Edward Kenway, who happens to be the father and grandfather of the protagonists in Assassin’s Creed III, and is not yet an Assassin. Through a series of events he ends up joining their order and helping them to find yet another ancient artifact that can save the future. In the present you work at a game company Abstergo Entertainment that is more then it seems.

Sadly the story is the probably the worst part of this game. It is basically the same story from every Assassin’s Creed game with the exception that the main character is not really an Assassin. He is just a jerky pirate that decided helping the Assassins would get him a little extra money. Though that change is very welcome because at times he feels the same level of apathy about the Assassins that I do.

What makes this game awesome is the giant open Caribbean for you to explore and plunder. You want to do battle with the English or Spanish and add their ships to your fleet? By all means! You want to hunt for whales or shoot helpless rare animals so you can make yourself cool gear? You should do that! You can even follow the main quest if you want, but the pirating is just fantastic.

Your pirate ship controls well, and there are a ton of upgrades to buy to make the Jackdaw the most formidable sea going vessel in the ocean. To upgrade it you will need to board ships and take their plunder, so you can earn money with their rum and sugar, or gather materials like wood, cloth, and metal. Every time you take a ship, you can either use it to repair the Jackdaw, coerce the enemy’s crew to reduce your wanted level, or add it to your fleet.

If you add them to your fleet, there is a mini game where you send your boats on trading missions, and they bring back money and treasures. It is a fantastic little time waster, and if your friends have the game they can help your fleet along its way. This game also fuels your need to take bigger ships, so they can take more cargo across the world.

The on land parts of this game are pretty much the same as in all other Assassin’s Creed games, but they have continued to refine it, so it is a good change of pace from shooting enemy Man O’ Wars in Tortuga. There are a ton of missions to do, and treasure to find, so you shouldn’t run out of stuff to do on dry land.

This game has a multiplayer mode, but I am not very good at it, and it never was that interesting to me. If that is your thing though it does add even more value to an already massive and worthwhile game. If they add a ship versus ship mode that would be awesome, but there isn’t one as of yet.

The graphics range from amazing to awful depending on what you are doing. If your ship is in the middle of a storm with whales jumping around it looks stunning. If your character is just randomly talking to another character it can look quite dated. This is no doubt due to it being port of a previous generation game.

I really enjoy this game, and if they can ever create a story that I can care about then it looks like the future is bright for the Assassin’s Creed games. For now however, you can find me pillaging the high seas because Assassin’s Creed IV got its hooks in me.