Are There Too Many Open World Games Coming Out?

Here is a recent post I wrote for ThrowingDigitalSheep.com Check it.

Not that long ago a good open world game came once a year, with a truly incredible one coming once every few years. I’m talking of the days when a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game would come and we would sink 200 plus hours into a single character build, we would explore every nook and cranny of the gorgeously rendered world with a character we more than likely put too much time than necessary into creating a custom face on(then never see it since what role playing noob would sacrifice the armour that a helmet gives us eh).



Now a day’s though we have at least a half a dozen fully fledged AAA games that are open world every year near enough, for example this year we have Batman: Arkham Knight, The Elder Scrolls Online(for consoles), The Division, Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Pain and The Witcher 3 and they are just off the top of my head. I do prefer open world games over a linear ones 9 times out of 10 because it gave me something that use to be unique to them, choice, now though this seems to be a fad among games of every genre. How many games have we had in the last few years that give you some sort of morality based system or the ability to choose between going in guns blazing or stealthy in missions. Those use to be the unique selling points of open world games.

I say used to be the unique selling points of open world games because they’re not unique anymore. Many games today are developed to be part of the open world genre but what we actually get given are half arsed attempts to be an open world game in order to sell to people who want to buy those kinds of games. What I see an open world game being is this – a game that allows you to do what you want when you want without the main quest line being a tether to the map, In my mind that means not using the map as a mission select screen, I’ve seen that in many games that claim to be open world. The Thief reboot and Deus Ex: Human Revolution games were notorious for this in my mind, they were sold as open world but in actual fact the few open world points were a transition from mission to mission, there were no mini games or no real exploration and the only reason you would talk to any NPC’s was to buy stuff or advance the main story.



There is a silver lining however that when an AAA company does make an open world game nowadays they actually have to make it open world! From what we have seen from the games I mentioned before they all do seem to be a genuine free -for- all- go- anywhere- you- like open world and that is good for us customers. Think about it these games will cost the same as any other yet you’re going to get more bang for your £. Where a game like Wolfenstien or Call Of Duty will take you 6-10 hours to complete the main story with no reason to go back to it(I’m ignoring the multiplayer and focusing on the single player aspect alone) we have games such as Elder Scrolls that take 100’s of hours to complete. Just to put into perspective the game I spent most time on of the last gen consoles was Skyrim and my Dark Elf character racked up an impressive 256 hours in the frosty region of Skyrim before I gave into real life again.



Is it a good thing that there are so so many of these games on the market today? Five amazing AAA open world games coming on the market later this year, assuming around 100 hours each one per play through and assuming multiple play sessions given the nature of open world and role playing games its likely a few of us will be sending break up texts while waiting in line outside Game or while waiting for our new game to download, because who needs a girl/boy friend when there is a big monster to fight ?

That’s what the problem is with these games coming on the market in such a short space of time. Don’t get me wrong these games will be good with some even being incredible. But its the experience of playing them that makes the memories and overall satisfaction of spending such an inordinate amount of time in these worlds. The fact that most of us who buy these games, those who have full time jobs, family, partners, children, social lives and everything else in life that takes us away from our beloved consoles cannot just drop everything and play these games for hours and hours and hours upon end. So we need to make a choice of which ones to play and which to leave even if we want them all(like me) because the in ones we do decide to play ,we are going to explore every single nook and cranny of that game world!



The only other choice is to buy them all and rush through the main quest lines and take a few interesting side quests, then we miss the nice easter eggs my fellow game devs spent hours implementing into the game just so we can get a two minute buzz. Like the marsh in Skyrim that looks like a giant grab and if you go there at night it turns into a ghost crab you have to fight, brilliant, fun, no use in game and completely random. Its just a shame things like this may be missed out by many players now a days because we simply have so little time to play so much.

The conclusion is this, too many good and long games are coming onto the market in too short a space of time. Normally I’d absolutely love this but unfortunately I've become an adult (…well…) and I cant play them all to the extent they should be played and neither can my fellow adults. So all I have is some friendly advice, pick a couple of these games and go nuts! Seriously explore the hell out of them, find every little Easter egg and hidden room, get every weapon and armor piece, do every mission and help every NPC damsel in distress. Lets face it we are not going to be short on worlds to explore for a hell of a long time.

Metal Gear Solid V releases worldwide on September 1st for consoles and September 15th for PC

Snake will return later this year in the games fifth installment according to the games creator(slash producer, writer and director), Hideo Kojima. The announcement was meant to be made on Wednesday by IGN.com but an accidental leak lead to the news breaking a day early. The game will release on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4 on September 1st with the PC version releasing a couple of weeks later on September 15th, the games much talked about multiplayer mode will also launch simultaneously with the single player game.

Metal Gear Solid V will pick up where Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes left off (SPOILER ALERT)with Big Boss/Snake dealing with an attack on Mother Base and only just escaping with his life, not to mention the death of Paz after he went into an American base to save her after being tortured.

Kojima said on Wednesday to IGN.com that Metal Gear Sold V will be the last Metal Gear in the Solid series, leaving the door open for a possible whole new avenue of Metal Gear games not revolving around Snake or Big Boss in the future.

As well as the standard game release the game will also see the release of a special edition release that contains a few premium goodies for the lucky few who will order it. The edition features can be found in this handy promotional picture.

Max curse of the Brotherhood review

Recently I've been enjoying the Xbox one gem Max curse of the Brotherhood. Curse of the Brotherhood is a 2.5D side scrolling platformer which puts you in the shoes of Max, an adventurous boy who accidentally wishes his little brother away to a world full of monsters and magical markers. Yes I said markers, early on you gain access to a magical pen that can change the world around you allowing you to solve the games numerous and at times inventive and fun puzzles.

The marker has limited use at the start but gains new abilities as you progress allowing for more complex puzzles further through the game, the trouble is once you have used these new abilities a few times the puzzles become repetitive and I was left wishing for yet another upgrade to my abilities to be challenged again. As for enemy encounters and combet its the standard platformer letting you jump on some enemies heads in order to kill or stun them and forcing you to simply run from others. The part of the game that excels and makes even the most repetitive of puzzles fun again is the level design which is superb. Each level is a pleasure to traverse and provides top notch platforming gameplay with incredible variety from having to outrun a giant monster to climbing down a huge crevice using magical plants or zip lining your way across a great chasm you'll always be thoroughly entertained.

Visually Curse of the brotherhood lacks the pure beauty of some other platformers like Limbo or Ori but it can still hold its own. The Unity engine provides the perfect platform to show of the bright colors of Max's new world he finds himself in and the 3D models look sharp and crisp when layered against each other to provide the platform view point.

The one part of Curse of the Brotherhood that really lets itself down is story or should I say lack there of. The main villain is rarely heard from or spoken about neither is the state of the game world or why your brother has been kidnapped. The magical properties of your pen is not really explained or why for some reason Max is chosen to go and defeat the bad guy which to me at least is frustrating when I like to know all the geeky backstory stuff that most people wouldn't care about.

Another point where the game is lacking is its very imprecise controls. There are times when you'll make a jump and there's a 50/50 chance if Max will grab the ledge and hoist himself up or fall to his death. Sometimes you'll be hoping for that to happen as well based on where you are and if you need to go back and start a puzzle over again.

 Max Curse of the Brotherhood is a very good and very fun game as long as you don't mind a lacking in story and will give it time to get used to the controls, its by no means a candidate for game of the year but for 12 quid the level of design is excellent value for money.

3.5/5

Destiny's PvP mode won't be available straight away

Bungie have revealed that Destiny's competitive multiplayer mode will not be available till a few hours into the game. Speaking to Eurogamer Bungie said that after a player has unlocked the PvP mode with one character it will be unlocked for all characters on the players account.

Explaining why the developers made this decision was Bungie's own Tyson Green, "We found early on that people here in the studio, when they jumped on the game – these were people who were already really familiar with the game mechanics – they would roll a new character, play through the first mission then go right into PvP, and they would just get really beaten up by the other players because they didn’t have a super ability yet and they’d only got an auto rifle from the first mission".

"And they said, ‘this is really awful, this is a terrible experience!’ And we said, ‘you’re right, we have to make sure that doesn’t really happen.’

"So when your first character unlocks PvP, you’re a little bit further into the game. You’ve probably done one or two of the campaign missions, probably unlocked a special weapon and your super ability. And then once that’s happened we unlock it for all the characters on your account. Once you know how the game works, if you want to take a Hunter into PvP at level three, yeah, we’re okay with that. You know what the game is at that point, so that’s your decision to make."

He also explained that a forge style user account would be available at launch as well as item trading and cross platform saves would be able to carry over on linked platforms (PS3 to PS4 and Xbox 360 to Xbox One).

So how do you feel about having to wait for PvP matches till your geared and levelled up?

The five games I'm most looking forward to this year 

Watch dogs: Xbox One/360, PS3/4, PC, WII U May 27th 2014

Let's start off with one of the most hyped up cross platform games there has been in recent years, watch dogs, I'm both looking forward to and wary of Ubisoft's open world adventure set in a near future Chicago. The game puts you in control of Aiden Peirce a skilled hacker with a troubled past who is out for vengeance due to losing his family. As Aiden you'll be able to use his hacking skills in the city to change traffic lights causing accidents, steal money from npc accounts, cause blackouts to escape a pesky police pursuit or spy on peoples social status looking if they have pissed somebody off lately and all this is possible due to the all powerful monitoring system now installed around Chicago making it the world's first smart city.

Watch dogs looks good from what we have seen but it's been in development for a good several years now, it wouldn't surprise me if the next gen versions are slightly lacking next to some other titles. The tone of the world doesn't go quite as far to say dystopian but it definitely try's to convey a sense of a police state where your always being watched and monitored by someone and I wouldn't be surprised to see some quiet nods towards the privacy debates always in the news these days, just remember folks what you put on the internet stays there forever(drunken pictures and posts included).

Overall I for one can't wait to play this game from start to finish, hacking my way through Chicago as a vigilante sounds awesome to me and I can only hope and pray that the first real next gen open world game will live up to its hype.

Quantum break:  Xbox One TBA 2014

Quantum Break a game from the makers of Alan Wake is an Xbox One exclusive. Time has been broken and can stutter and stand still with only a few people being able experience time normally as it passes. There's a couple of reasons why I'm looking forward to this game first being the fact that's its made by the people who made Alan Wake, I'm expecting a fantastic narrative and great drama woven into the gameplay. Secondly Microsoft has announced they will be producing a companion television series for Xbox video that links in with the game blurring the entertainment lines even more than they are now. We don't know yet how the game and show will link up but it's something that could either make the game more interesting or be the downfall of both of them if not done right, only time will tell.

The game its self is a 3rd person cover shooter that looks stunning and gives you some fantastic levels frozen in time to play in. Not only do you have your guns your also imbued with some temporal powers you can use to manipulate your environment and enemies with which haven't been shown of yet.

Quantum Break could be a stand out game for the Xbox one but apart from a few trailers and behind the scenes stuff from Remedy we have not seen too much gameplay or details so the verdict is out on it until we know more.

Alien: isolation:  Xbox One/360, PS3/4, PC October 7th 2014

This is my personnel most anticipated game coming this year due to two reasons. One Alien is one of my all time favorite films, I love the tension that Ripley gets put through and the terror that the Xenomorph could be around the corner or in the vent above you and hearing a screech of a crew member as their killed was what scary was to me back then. The second reason I'm looking towards it is the fact this is a survival game in the truest sense of the genre, where games like Resident evil has taken a more combat and action orientated path there are very few real scary games out there looking to have you wondering of its safe to go to bed without checking under it. Alien Isolation puts you in the shoes of Ripley's daughter Amanda who has gone in search of her mother and finds the same deadly enemy she encountered on LV422.

Unlike the past few Alien games this one puts you up against a single Xenomorph and goes back to the Ridley Scott interpretation of the sci fi horror genre, you have no weapons just a scanner and your wits to make it out alive. The look of the games adds to the terrifying tone and the use of lighting and sound is incredible, I'll be playing this game in the dark with my surround sound cranked right up to add to the authenticity and do the game justice.

Alien Isolation is the Alien game we deserve after the lacking Colonial marines.

Transistor: PS4, PC May 20th 2014

Indie games have risen like a phoenix the past few years and they don't seem to be slowing down in popularity what so ever. One of the most anticipated is Transistor which is down to a few reasons no less than its fantastic predecessor Bastion. Set in Cloudbank a futuristic gorgeously envisioned artistic city you play Red, a flame haired singer who finds an impressive looking electric sword(Transistor) lying next to the lifeless body of a friend. After picking up the sword Red hears the voice of her recently deceased friend and is now being pursued by robots after the Transistor....or her.

It's a an action rpg game with a truly stunning and visually beautiful art style. Naturally being a sword, combat is the Transistor's primary purpose and it's here that things get interesting. Supergiant has introduced an interesting system called Turn, which allows you to stop time as you choose what Red's next attack or move will be. You're given at the mercy of an energy meter that depletes with each action, whether you're moving between cover, attacking with the Transistor or firing a laser beam so there is some strategy to it.

Then it's a simple case of un-pausing the action to see how things play out. It kind of feels like that iconic scene from the Matrix where Trinity stops time to spin in mid-air and deliver a hefty kick to a hapless cop's face. It's incredibly empowering to watch Red take out several enemies before retreating to safety in one expertly choreographed manoeuvre though if you don't watch your energy bar you'll be vulnerable to attack for several seconds.

It's an Indie game, it looks absolutely gorgeous and the main character is a red headed singer with a talking electric sword being chased by killer robots, what more can you ask for?

Destiny: Xbox One/360, PS3/4 September 9th 2014

Bungie, the developer that brought us the behemoth of Halo is building this massively multiplayer online role playing game first person shooter and it honestly looks too big to fail.

Destiny casts you as one of earths last cities guardians, like all mmo's you will create your character based on one of three distinct classes which will determine the types of weapons and powers you will be able to use as well as how you look etc. Then your thrown into the world where you must battle a myriad of enemies, work up an insurmountable amount of loot and take part in random player events. Bungie have boasted that this will be a persistent world with you and your friends always being able to adventure together somewhere and always have somebody to fight, how this will work in real life at launch is yet to be explained but from demos and trailers that have been shown off it looks like Bungie may have struck gold yet again.

In one demo I watched at last year's Eurogamer expo I seen two players work their way through a massive structure battling enemies with pistols, machine guns and powers then they both attack a boss where they are awarded with a cool new weapon. They then exit the structure meet up with a few more players who appear to be dropped in the world from there personnel space ship and a random event happens just over the hill where a couple dozen players all join in to attack a gigantic walking tank bug thing!

Even though I've only seen demos I've got to say it still feels like you watching Halo(in a good way). All the weapon models look great, the combat is fast paced and action orientated like a fps should be and the sci fi setting is unique and atmospheric.

Destiny is still months away but from what has already been shown it looks like Bungie has done it again and that there really is life after Halo for them, Destiny looks great and I'm sure it will be huge I'm just hoping that will translate into it being a great mix of fps and mmorpg in a cohesive gaming experience.

Thief review : Xbox One

Thief the re invigorated reboot of the classic game series of the same name recently launched for current and nest gen consoles and I've sank a good couple dozen hours into playing the title on multiple difficulties and I have to say I'm impressed with what the game is meant to be......

Thief as the name suggests puts you in control of Garret the master thief in a dark toned fictional city. This is a fist person game that gives you the freedom to approach a situation anyway you want but only ever really rewards you for using stealth. Thief is the game of stealing and it gives you ample opportunity to do so, basically anything that is not nailed down you can steal and that's one of the problems I have with the games premise. Thief puts you in Garret's shoes who is meant to be a legendary thief for which there is no equal and yet he(thus you) is still encouraged to take items such as fountain pens and silver forks worth a couple of gold pieces along with the artistic master pieces like golden bracelets made to look like a snake or an exquisite pearl necklace that are completely unique. It kind of takes you out of the fiction while you're trying to convince yourself your playing a game where you can pull of an Ocean's eleven style heist(you can by the way) but at the same time your scraping together a living like a rookie still learning his craft. Now this may just be me as a game designer as well kicking in but it would make more sense to steal smaller items and work your way up throughout the game to the good stuff as your skill increases but this doesn't happen your always encouraged to steal anything and everything in order to pay for that new tool you need or that upgrade that will prove useful. It's something that doesn't affect gameplay by any means but it does take you out of the fiction.

The game has a very dark tone and the visuals fully support this and give you a great sense of the cities plight and squalor. You'll be sneaking past guards and the homeless alike through dark, wet piss stained alleys of the city and looking down upon your unsuspecting prey from roof tops covered by the sweet shroud of darkness as you watch guards walk around making it all too easy for you to spot with their torches lit. The game portrays the use of light and dark very well and there are times that you can really believe you can walk up to within a few centimetres of a guard, pickpocket his hard earned wage and sneak back off again without him ever knowing you were there.

 The gameplay has you roaming the games open world city looking for either loot(for which there is alot) to steal or a mission from one of the many npc's there are around the city. The missions often provide the greater risk, profit and fun that the game can provide to its players. During these missions you'll be faced with a number of obstacles that must be overcome however you see fit such as traps that need to be disarmed with the correct tool, roaming guards with guard dogs that can sense your smell and secret hidden passages that could lead you to a new collectible or allow you to bypass certain security obstacle. This is where the games stealth mechanics really come into their own as you have to contend with not only light but line of enemy sight, whether your walking one cobbles or grass, weather there is running water nearby or if you should use that empty bottle you picked up before to throw and distract the guard for a few seconds. This is where your rewards come in as you make it through these missions you can choose whether you play the game stealth, predator or assault, all of which are valid methods of completing the game but while the game excels at stealth it heavily lacks in the combat department.

Combat in Thief is a clumsy affair to be polite and utterly fracking frustrating to be brutal! Using the bow is a good way to take out your foes from afar but your normally faced by more than one in a patrol which is a problem since the bow is not exactly fast, it's more of a tool with you being able to use it with different arrow heads for jobs like putting out a lamp with a water arrow or push a switch from far away with a blunt arrow. Then there's close combat where the stealth aspect again comes into it, if you manage to sneak up behind an enemy you can knock them out in a single quiet blow but if your discovered your forced into a clumsy dodge/block enemy attack then attack and repeat and if you're facing multiple enemies it's even worse near impossible on the harder settings.

Story wise the game is not going to win any awards, without giving too much away there's a big bad guy who's abit too overly interested in a plague that's ravishing the city and its already devastated population with a good chunk of the super natural and semi dead love interest mixed in. The story may have come out abit better if not for the boring and frankly terrible voice acting in the game. The general npc's sound drab and boring with primary npc's having some nice(and at times darkly funny)dialogue who can't convey the intended emotion for a given situation then we come to Garret himself, he was obviously intended to be dark and serious with a flat dark sense of humour but the voice acting doesn't quite cut it. He always seems to speak in a single un emotionless mono-tone that reminds me of Deus-ex human revolutions Adam Jensen.

My Verdict

Thief is a reboot that try's some ambitious stealth mechanics with a gorgeous overall tone and well thought out game world which these two aspects make the game a joy to play, its only when you add in the other parts that are necessary to make the game whole do we see its deep failings in the combat system and characters. I do recommend this game but only for hardcore stealth game fans who should play on the most difficult setting and try to go full stealth in order to get the full Thief experience.

3/5 Stars

Titanfall review : Xbox One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiyvxRo8DoM

Not just another Call of Duty clone

I've been playing Titanfall for a few weeks now and every time I hear the A.I voice say your titan is ready I still feel a euphoric feeling of joy as I press the d-pad and look upwards to see my 20ft mech fall towards my position like a thunderbolt sent by Zeus himself. Let me say before I go any further that this is not another first person shooter trying to knock Call of duty and battlefield from their perch at the top of the multiplayer food chain, Titanfall blends the best parts of the fps genre with new and exciting game mechanics that makes it, to me at least, the new kid on the block to beat.

Let's start by saying it looks great, I'm playing it on the Xbox one and its right up there with anything else I've seen lately. It runs at a smooth 60fps and I've had no visual problems at all.

Titanfall for those of you who don't know puts you in the shoes of a Titan pilot who is both an elite jet pack equipped soldier and a trained pilot of the games main focus being the Titan mechs. When on foot the pilots have an incredible amount of mobility that makes it a joy to play which in turn has had an effect on the games level design with every map having an amazing amount of verticality to them. You can double jump using the jet pack to reach heights giving you an advantage when it comes to sniping and picking off enemy pilots or A.I controlled grunts that make up the bulk of your enemy force, you can wall run and better yet chain together multiple wall runs in order to get from one end of the map to another in a mere few seconds.

On the other hand after you have waited a short time for your Titan to be built you can call it down and take control of your new shiny walking tank and begin to 'try' and dominate the battlefield, I say try as the thing that I enjoy most about Titanfall is the balance of the match's. There is always a fight that can be won by anyone as each pilot is equipped with an anti-titan weapon as well as their regular load outs which makes a single pilot going up against a 20ft mech seem not so suicidal after all, it's a good feeling when you take out another player big titan with only your wits and a rocket launcher. Not only do you have your anti Titan weapon you can also use your pilots mobility to "rodeo" an enemy Titan to jump on its back and open up your weapon into its vital gears and circuitry to bring it down that way.

When you have your Titan your basically in a walking tank. Depending on your play style you can choose to call down a fast lightly armoured Titan, a big bulking behemoth that is slow but take a hell of lot of damage or a jack of all trades Titan giving you a mix of both speed and strength. Being in your Titan that you have kitted out is enough to give you a major ego boost as you walk around the map shooting both A.I and human controlled enemies full of lead and a rocket here and there. Some of the most interesting points of a match is when you have a Titan vs. Titan fight which depending on your own skill and how you kitted out you titan you'll either come away with joy, reeling that you have just lost 90% of your shiny new Titan health in its first fight or be somewhere 100ft in the sky trying to time your landing after an ejection so you can rodeo and destroy the bastards Titan who just destroyed yours!

Unlike most other multiplayer games Titanfall is solely focused on its excellent 6v6 pvp matches, it cannot be played single player and you are completely at the mercy of Microsoft's dedicated servers apart from a useful but short and easy tutorial mode. There is a feeble attempt to infuse a two sided campaign into the game that you must complete in order to unlock two of the three Titans you can customise and pilot, to be honest I couldn't explain the story to you as the most you get is a voice over from your Commander in the lobby before a match. Playing through and levelling up your pilot brings you new weapons and upgrades based on certain achievements(e.g. getting ten head shots with an assault rifle may unlock a new scope add on to be used with that weapon) but the most interesting thing Titanfall gives you are the burn cards. Burn cards are disposable one use bonuses that may grant you extra damage for a round or the use of an amped up weapon for one round. Some of these cards can drastically change the course of a match like having a titan ready to call at the start of a match a full three minutes before everyone else.

Those are all the good things about Titanfall but by no means is it a perfect game. There is at the moment a severe lack of game modes to play being only 6 which all seem very similar and boring after a while. I always find myself going back to the classic attrition and hard point domination matches. Also the until recently ability to have private matches with friends was a huge disappointment from a game that has such online only focus and business plan. There are also only 15 maps without the 4 additional ones you can get with the recent dlc, those original 15 get old very quickly and worse still while in the lobby the players cannot even vote for which map they play on next. On a personnel level though the lack of visual customizability is annoying, your class of Titan will look exactly the same as another players of the same class apart from weapons chosen. Hopefully the ability to add abit of flair and personnel customisation will come but that's just a visual niggle I have it does not affect the game play at all.

My Verdict

Titanfall is a breath of fresh air in the genre when you look at over saturation of first person shooters there is at the moment, everyone seems to want to jump on the billion dollar call of duty wagon but not make any real changes to the gameplay. Fusing mobility of the pilots with the power of the Titans and keeping the matches to 6v6 has worked incredibly well for Respawn and they have made sure all of these different ideas have come together in a cohesive package that plays like a dream which is why they can be partially forgiven for the bare bones multiplayer experience they are providing, sometimes I suppose you can say less is more and Id recommend this game to any multiplayer and first person shooter gamer out there.

 4.5/5 Stars