Game reviews – Page 51 – Savior Gaming

Star Wars Episode 1: the game

menace game

With the final movie of the Skywalker saga in Star Wars coming out at the end of this year, I’m going to start looking at pieces of the Star Wars I growing up. Given to me as a gift way later in life so I checked it out before upgrading to the PS3, brand new at the time. I can tell you this game did not age well at all.

The Phantom Menace game recounts the events of the game ( minus the pod race and thankfully the debate scenes). You play as Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Padme, and her bodyguard dude I can’t remember the name of. For Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan you primarily use your lightsaber and try to reflect blaster shots back at the enemies which requires pretty acute timing but is still hit and miss. You can use a force ability which helps. The other two characters are strictly shooters which wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t use tank controls. Yes, tank controls, so be ready to feel like you are going through a chore. The graphics are pretty bad, and you don’t get much resolution in the characters which can look kinda creepy at times. The music is fine but loops too often and the sound is Ok. This is one of those games I rage quit and didn’t look back from; between getting lost so often with the bad controls and bullshit deaths I just couldn’t bring myself to get past level 4. I can’t tell you if I would’ve liked this game more back then but in a more modern day, hell no. Regardless of your opinion on the movie, I can say you are good to skip this game. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Football Field Kick (Mobile)

Foot Field Kick is a Mobile game from that is pretty simple to play. All you do is tap the screen when the meter gets where you want it and your player will kick the ball. As you earn money you can upgrade your stats and kick the ball further, make the ball bounce higher and so on and so forth. The game is honestly fun for about 3 minutes until the ads every 30 seconds will drive you nuts.

Seriously, this game would have been perfectly fun to me if it wasn’t for all the damn ads. I get companies need to make their money, but these ads make the game pretty much unplayable for me. Skip this one guys, there are better free games out there that are far more interesting and engaging that won’t give you ads all the time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pokemon snap

pokemon snap

So the other day, walking down memory lane, I covered Hey You Pikachu and decided today why not cover an unusual Pokemon game that actually works. Again, much like Hey You Pikachu, this game was a cool concept: go on expeditions through various locales taking pictures of the native Pokemon that inhabit the region. It was a cool concept done surprisingly well. The camera was fluid and the expeditions were pretty fun; I remember a volcanic area full of fire Pokemon which were some of my favorites at the time. An unexpected bonus was how much fun it was playing with a friend, seeing who could photo bomb more Pokemon and who could get the cooler shots. Violet and I had a ton of fun doing this as kids. I feel if replicated today, the modern game market would abuse the hell out of this game, adding who knows how many DLC packages and micro transactions which makes me sad a bit. In the end, it’s a simple, wholesome game I recommend for Pokemon fans or families with younger kids. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hey You Pikachu

hy pikachu

I can’t lie, until randomly at my job that isn’t the blog, I forgot this game pretty much existed. Once I recalled it, I had to think to a time way back to when there were only 151 Pokemon and Pokemon: The First Movie was THE movie in my school and news of Pokemon 2000 was the equivalent of Star Wars hype. But, I digress… Hey You Pikachu was a game for the Nintendo 64 with a lot of ambition. Requiring a special microphone attachment for the N64 controller, you talked to Pikachu and had him to command and essentially lived your own little Pokemon fantasy. As far as I’m aware of, there was no battling, so there goes a huge chunk of that fantasy. I have to be 100% honest, I’ve never seen this game in person actually really work. Talking to Pikachu became ultra frustrating super quickly because the controller itself was nearly useless and the entire game was trying to talk. When you’d get Pikachu to follow your instructions it was so cool, but then enjoy the 15-20 minutes it took for his next command to register. I’ve seen people pitch hissy fits and whip there controllers over this game. Simply put. I can’t recommend this game to anyone. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Borderlands 3 first impressions

bl3 characters Like many I’ve been wild with anticipation over the release of Borderlands 3; I sold most of my hard copy games just to afford the $100 edition. So far, I’ve put roughly 10 hours into the game with Moze and about 3 hours with Zane.

In terms of raw gameplay, 3 is the biggest leap since Borderlands 2 from the original Borderlands and the strongest feature of the game. There’s a lot of small changes that welcome like the ability to power slide, being able to climb ledges, being able to customize vehicles more and the addition of alternate fires on some weapons. Speaking of customization, there is a huge amount of customization when it comes to your characters skill trees. For Zane as an an example, you can chose between 3 different skills to choose from, that you can switch up at anytime; each tree is dedicated to a skill and there are augments available to pump them up. It’s a bit to get used to but well worth it. Combat is much more intense because the enemies are smarter and you take damage much quicker. Guns also handle much better and feel crisp. It’s undoubtedly the best shooter I’ve played in a while.

So what’s the drawback? Sadly the story. After the awesome opening, the game hits a stagnant patch for much of your stay on Pandora. It tries to be funny but comes out flat a lot of the time. The Calypso Twins aren’t terrible as main antagonists but they get annoying when you figure out they are pretty much evil Twitch streamers. A change I didn’t like was getting rid of the Badass rank and replacing it with Guardian rank that you can’t access until you beat the story. Also, if you take too long to figure something out, the game will pester you until you figure it out at certain times.

Overall, it’s a awesome game so far and the review will be out soon. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Final Fantasy 8 Remastered

Oh Final Fantasy 8, how I have loved thee since I was a child. The GF’s, the characters, the world itself and the monster designs. As a kid, I used to love these things. However, did this translate to modern times and how did this remaster come out? According to my Platinum trophy pretty damn well.

The story is as you remember, that hasn’t been altered. You play as Squall Leonhart. Student of Balamb, member of SeeD. After being sent on his first mission and meeting Rinoa Heartilly things suddenly take a weird turn and our crew ends up on a quest to stop the Sorceress.

The story aside that I don’t want to delve into deep. The graphical upgrades to the characters are amazing, tho I am a bit disappointed the same treatment wasn’t given to most of the environment. The upgrades to the combat system are nice for an odd reason. You can up the game speed by 3 times, have no encounters and easy combat which basically makes you invincible unless you get killed in one hit, makes your gauge charge almost instantly and your limit breaks will always be charged. This makes the game a breeze to play outside of certain battles. However, if like me you are impatient and hate how long drawing all the magic takes, you can now do in minutes what used to take hours. That alone for me is worth it.

For the trophy hunters in this group, I won’t call this one easy but I will call it straight forward. Only about 3 of them are missable and if you are careful, those aren’t hard to get anyway. You only have to go slightly out of your way for them the benefits for doing so are pretty worth it.

The only issue is if you use the 3X speed upgrade, the game feels really slow in combat when you stop, and it’s really tempting to use the combat assist to heal yourself. Unless you are strong-willed or just want to experience the story avoid using them at all.

I did, however, love the game and have no real complaints with the remaster itself. I for one am glad to finally see this on a modern console and encourage everyone to give it a shot. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Gears Pop (Mobile)

Gears Pop is a mobile game where you control various people and creatures from the Gears of War universe and attempt to destroy the opposing player’s structures on the opposite side of the map. This all happens in real-time with characters that look like pop figures.

Truthfully as fun as this game is and as fun it is to have a multiplayer game, I feel like if this was just about any other franchise ( Command & Conquer Rivals (Mobile) for example) a lot of people would be giving this a real hard time. There are of course microtransactions which hey I don’t mind, the game is free after all. But we have seen this exact game before, and it got so much more grief for being a cash grab tho this one is getting a free pass.

That being said the sound is great and the controls are nice. The game is easy to learn and hard to master and requires quite a bit of strategy. I have no actual issue with the game and would happily recomend it to Gears fans or fans of this genre of game. I just see it as a bit unfair that many of the people trashing simialr games are praising this one. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Archery Go (Mobile)

Archery Go is one of those games you see an think I’ll give it a go, then after you do you wonder why the hell you did this. Then you keep playing for a while. The game functions fine, tho sometimes its a bit annoying trying to shoot with your own finger in the way. The game, however, is challenging and fun tho and has plenty of variety. You will be shooting at balloons, bottles, and even moving targets.

The game is free so give it a shot and see if you like it, but certainly, don’t spend money on it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Black Desert (PS4)

As always with these reviews, huge shout out to Pearl Abyss for sending me a review copy of Black Desert. It is always appreciated when a company takes the time to reach out to us and hook us up, and I like to be upfront about that. So how was the game? Let us discuss it.

First the story. The story starts when you wake up with no memory and a dark energy speaks to you. This leads you on a journey to rediscover all you have forgotten as well as for more dark energy. There is far more to the story, but this is just the opening act. I don’t want to give to much away as the real hook to any RPG whether it be MMO, action or turn-based is the story.

I bring that up because this game is at its core an MMO but the combat is pretty action-based. R1 and R2 are your light and heavy attacks for example with L2 being used to dodge and L1 being a different attack depending on the class you pick. You can also use different combinations of buttons to use different attacks still. There are still hit points and magic points, of course, tho you won’t be able to see the enemy HP at first. There is no special skill required, just knowledge gained from fighting more and more enemies.

The combat works pretty nicely and I actually found myself enjoying it more than I expected I would. In fact, I have no real complaints in the combat or story area. They both function pretty well and while they aren’t perfect, after all, nothing is, they do add to the experience.

Graphically is where my complaints come in. The game looks good, but there are some glitches that I think should have been dealt with prior to release. They aren’t huge issues nor are they exclusive to this game, in fact, they have been present in most open-world games that have released. Numerous times tho I have gone to talk to a character and their characters either aren’t there or basically just a shadow. Here are a couple examples of what I mean.

Black Desert_20190830000214

Black Desert_20190829235826

They did pop in shortly after, but it was still a bit disturbing the first time you walk up and see this. There was also an occasion where a random NPC was just hanging out floating in the air. Also not a rare glitch, and quite entertaining, but it is a thing.

Also don’t mind that my character at this point kind of looks like Gandalf the Grey, that was 100% not on purpose, but it was appreciated. This is him a few hours in.

There is a lot to do in this game by the way, easily hundreds of hours of content if you feel like doing it. There is crafting and fishing, houses to buy, trading to do and this is without getting into guilds and multiple characters. I am playing as a wizard but there are archers and warriors as well as berserkers and they are adding more characters as time goes on. The PC and Xbox version have far more as of right now but they will be making their way to the PS4 in future updates I am sure.

The game isn’t great, and it is far from the best MMO on the PS4. However, if you are a fan of them, this one may be worth checking out for you. It can be a grind, but its a grind many people do enjoy and so far I have liked my time with the game and will continue to play it well after this review is done so look for the occasional update. For now tho because of the graphical issues and the occasional connection issue I have to give this one a 7/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hearts of Iron IV Review, Sort of.

I call this a Hearts of Iron Review sort of because this one of those games where honestly if you play it for 20 hours (like me) or even 40 you probably aren’t truly qualified to truly review it. I can tell you about it of course, for example, it is a grand strategy game from Paradox or that the game basically starts just before World War 2.

I can also tell you that you will need to research new technology, build both civilian and military factories and when it comes to war it only becomes more complicated. You will be drawing front lines for your troops to defend, telling them where to attack as well as managing how when and where your planes will be attacking. That isn’t even touching on all the things you will need to do with the Navy at your command.

The issue is this all sounds like its pretty simple, but even getting the general idea on all this could be rough. I lost in the tutorial for example. Not my finest moment in gaming. Recently playing a game with my friend went a bit to hell. (Hey Cody how are you) we ended up starting a massive 3-way world war as I lost 500 thousand men in South America (I was North America) to Guatemala and El Salvadore. This was before I ever made it across the Atlantic to join the fight against Germany that as you can imagine, did not go much better for me. I am not very good at drawing front lines and such yet, or keeping my troops where I want them. Or building my divisions.

There is so much to learn here that you will want a friend to play with probably, and youtube will be a godsend when you try to learn. I haven’t even touched the Focus trees and how you can turn some countries from one country into another form entirely. For example, I turned America into a fascist country so I could invade South America in hopes of uniting with the UK in taking over Europe. I failed at invading Cuba, but it is what it is.

All in all the game is a blast to play and learn, but it will take some patience. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.