Tag Archives: Action Video Game

Dune: Awakening – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – This game has usurped my life, even when Harold killed me over and over again …. And over again.  

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Looking out over the Hagga Basin.

Dune: Awakening Review –

Every now and again, a game captures me in a way that I cannot quite understand. It’s what I think about at work, what I ponder on the bus, and sometimes even what pops up in my dreams. Today I get to do a deep dive into one such game that has taken over my life in the last couple of weeks. For you see, the spice must flow.

So, to set the scene, we have entered the world of Dune, but not the world you might be familiar with. For this is one of Paul Atreides’ spice dreams, where he explores a world of what would have happened if his mother Lady Jessica had been loyal to the Bene Gesserit and had a daughter instead of a son, as they wanted. Thus, House Atreides was not wiped out in the Arrakis coup, and the planet has been thrust into a war between them and House Harkonnen. You play an off-worlder from one of several factions that have found themselves on a slave transport. Your life has minimal promise, that is, until a masked figure shoots down your transport and you find yourself out on the sands of Dune, not prepared for the world you are about to enter.

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PEAK – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – An enjoyable single-player experience that comes alive with a group.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Looking down to the shore from the PEAK.

Peak Review –

One of the events I find fascinating is Game Jams. These are where developers set themselves a short period, usually a day or two, to see what they can build in that time. Here, time forces you to be creative and many weird and wonderful games, from Goat Simulator to Thomas Was Alone and everything in between, have been spawned. Usually, game jams spawn ideas that later become something grand. Still, I have never seen a game conceptualised in February and then released in June before, which is what we will examine today.

So, to set the scene, you are just a happy little guy going on a flight to a new tropical destination on Bingbong Airlines. But disaster strikes, and your plane crashes into an unknown tropical island. What do you do? Well, Scoutmaster Myers’ Wilderness Handbook Vol. 1 advises in How Not to Die, to run, not walk, and “You’ve gotta get to High Ground”. Looking around, you see a high peak in the distance, so it is time to collect supplies, gird your lions, and start climbing.

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Payday 3 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A sequel that looks stunning and full of quality-of-life improvements that unfortunately ends up feeling like a hollow shell of what came before.  

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

The gang.

Payday 3 Review –

If you check my most played games on Steam, you will discover that Payday 2 is in my top 5. Me and my friends played every aspect of the game, being able to stealth that first bank on the hardest difficulty as a warmup for the session. There were these moments of joy when we summited Everest in that damned politician’s office overlooking Capitol Hill. There were attempts to make Payday 3 multiple times over the years, but when it finally dropped, I got the gang back together for a heist or two.         

So to set the scene, your long, enjoyable retirement has been ripped out from underneath you as a mysterious force simultaneously targets you and all your old heisters in a targeted hit. Thankfully, Slade (Kosha Engler) saw it coming and was able to reach out and save Dallas (Simon Kerr), Chains (Damion Poitier), Hoxton (Pete Gold), Joy (Siu-see Hung), Pearl (Rebecca LaChance), and Wolf (Nicklas Berglund). All of their supplies have been lost, and their bank accounts have been frozen. But to survive, they need to start getting money and supplies, so it is time to start looting a new city and saying hello to New York.

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Fortnite: Or How I Learned to Stop Building and Love the Shenanigans – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – After years of frustration with this game, the no-build mode finally coalesces the game for me.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – This is a Free-to-Play with microtransactions, and I paid for the Battle Pass.

A crew shot as things explode in the background.

Fortnite Review –

Back in 2017, there was this odd game that exploded onto the video game scene, it was not the first Battle Royale style game on the market, but its free-to-play model and big marketing push made it the example all others wanted to copy. I tried the game when it first came out, and my biggest feeling at the time was that ‘this was not for me’. I just did not have the time in my life to learn how to work the building side of things. However, with the announcement that there would be a build-free mode, I decided to give the game another look and discovered just what people have been talking about for all these years.

So to set the scene, Fortnite is a Third-Person Shooter Battle Royale game. This means that it is a shooter where the perspective is positioned from behind the character, over the shoulder, rather than as if you were peering out of their eyes. As well as this, there is a barrier slowly shrinking the map to a central point forcing all the players together. What this means is at the start of the game, all 100 players jump out of a flying bus landing across the map and have to scavenge weapons and ammo, all trying to be the last one standing while some dude in a banana costume snipes you … banana costumes … raises a fist to the clouds.    

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Cyberpunk 2077 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A buggy experience that even when you power through it, you find a mostly surface-level game failing to delve into the world they had created

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Warning – Contains scenes that have been reported to induce seizures

Cyberpunk 2077. Image Credit: CD PROJEKT RED.

Cyberpunk 2077 Review –

To be honest, I was wondering if I was actually going to write this review. The discourse around this game has been unpleasant, to say the least, and what difference would be one more voice howling into the void make. I mean, I even found myself cleaning the house to put this off. But in the end, I paid full price for this game, a game that was clearly not ready for release, and also this is my profession, so I kind of owe myself and the working hours I put into this game to contextualise that into words.    

So to set the scene, in a boardroom, on the streets of Night City, or in my case on the northern outskirts of the city, we meet V (Gavin Drea/ Cherami Leigh) as his car is being put together. He is a nomad but without a clan or family anymore and is just trying to get ahead. One uppity sheriff later and he is on the way to meet his contact Jackie Welles (Jason Hightower). All V has to do is smuggle this little crate into the city, and he will have enough money to set himself up. There is just one border crossing between him and freedom … what could go wrong. When he thinks he has survived that skirmish, he is offered a chance to put together the heist of a lifetime involving the mysterious Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves).  From this point forward we will be looking at the game as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Cyberpunk 2077 – First Look

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TL;DR – A fascinating game full of interesting places, solid mechanics, and many bugs

Warning – Contains scenes that have been reported to induce seizures

Cyberpunk 2077. Image Credit: CD PROJEKT RED.

Cyberpunk 2077 First Look –

It took longer to get to us than anyone including the developer planned, but today the world finally got their hands on CD PROJEKT RED latest work Cyberpunk 2077. I must admit I came into this game with a little hesitation, a lot of people had recommended to me The Witcher 3, and well I bounced off that game as if it was Henry Cavil’s torso. But given this was a new franchise and new genre for the company, it was the perfect place to get it a second try.

Now before we dive in, we need to make a couple of clarifications. The first of which is that this is a ‘first look’ not a full review. I have spent a couple of hours with the game and enough time to get a sense of the world and the mechanics but not a deep dive into the story which will come in our full review. Also, I am playing this game on PC, so your experience may vary depending on your console or the rig you are playing this on.

So to set the scene, on the outskirts of Night City, we meet V (Gavin Drea) as his car is being put together. He is a nomad but without a clan or family anymore and is just trying to get ahead. One uppity sheriff later and he is on the way to meet his contact Jackie Welles (Jason Hightower). All V has to do is smuggle this little crate into the city, and he will have enough money to set himself up. There is just one border crossing between him and freedom … what could go wrong.

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Among Us – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A straightforward game that has layers of depth and works no matter what role you get

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Among Us. Image Credit: Innersloth.

Among Us Review –

In the board game realm, there is a genre of games called ‘hidden role’ games. These are games like Avalon, Mafia de Cuba or Secret Hitler where on the surface all the players are trying to complete a task together. This task could be fighting an evil empire, hoarding your boss’ diamonds, or getting rid of the fascist elements of the government. However, around the table secretly, there are some players whose job is to do the exact opposite. I have seen many video games try to capture that feeling but never quite getting there, well that is until today.

So to set the scene, you and your fellow crewmate are on a drop-ship to a new location. It could be another spaceship, an aerostat military base, or a research station on a planet. Something has gone wrong, and your job is to work together to complete several tasks like refuelling the ship, clearing out the trash, or shooting down some approaching asteroids. All of this is very routine; however, among your crew, there is an Imposter (or Imposters) whose job is to stop you from completing the tasks by killing you off one by one.

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Video Game Review – XCOM: Chimera Squad

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TL;DR – it is a game that is something old (The XCOM Setting) and something new (living rather than waring), something borrowed (SWAT mechanics), and something blue (the face of any enemy who just discovered Torque)  

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

XCOM: Chimera Squad. Image Credit: Firaxis Games and 2K Games.

Review –

If there is one studio that is the king of turn-based strategy games it would be Firaxis Studios. While they are probably better known for their fundamental Civilization franchise, they have also delved into the world of science fiction, alien invasions, and reloading that autosave because your fully upgraded soldier just missed the one guy standing right next to them and now they are bleeding out on the floor. I have enjoyed the XCOM series in the past, okay not that one alien that pretends it’s a civilian, but other than that, so I was interested when I heard we were getting a sort of sequel/spin-off thingy. Well, I became even more interested when I got my hand on it and I found out just how fun it was.  

So to set the scene, It has been a couple of hears since the end of XCOM 2, and the world has sort of found a new equilibrium as humans, aliens, and hybrids live side by side. There is one place in the world that has been remarkably successful with this, the famous City 31. XCOM has moved from overthrowing an alien invasion to helping maintain order in a constantly fragmented world. Thus the Chimera Squad was created to help local police, but just as they arrive the mayor of City 31 Mayor Nightingale (Nika Futterman) is murdered in front of the squad and you have to work out who did it before the city tears itself apart.

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Video Game Review – Diving into Sea of Thieves: Anniversary Update.

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TL;DR – A visually beautiful and fun game, even though there are still a couple of rough edges in places.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Sea of Thieves: Anniversary Update. Image Credit: Rare.

Review –

Last year the world was introduced to Sea of Thieves a game about sailing the open seas, digging for buried treasure, and sinking pirate vessels. As a concept, it looked like a great idea, and I watched a couple of streamers like Stephanie Bendixsen have a lot of fun on the open ocean. However, while it looked like a really fun game the price point was just too high here in Australia for me to be able to dive into it myself, something that has only be amplified by being out of a job for four months. Recently the game released its one-year anniversary update which seemed to add in a lot of the features people mentioned were missing, so I was glad the game was getting continued support. But one day I opened up my email to find a surprise, my friends had bought me a copy of the game. This meant that for the first time I got to explore the world and discover the highs and lows of Sea of Thieves.

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Video Game Review – Ark: Survival Evolved

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TL;DR– Bringing the survival gameplay into a world of dinosaurs is a fantastic idea, but for me,the balance is not quite there.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Ark: Survival Evolved

Review –

If you have read my reviews in the past, you would know that one of the easiest sells for me is to add dinosaurs to something. Movies, TV, Books, you name it and if it has dino’s in it I am there for it. However, when it comes to video games with dinosaurs I am much more hesitant after getting burnt in the past with games like The Stomping Land,and more generally in this genre with Day-Z.So when Ark first came out I was not prepared to invest in another Early-Access survival game, but now it has been out in full release for a year I thought it would be a good time to take the dive into the world of Dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, lots of Dodos,and oh the mechanic that lets you know when you pooped.

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