Star Trek Online

star trek online

Star Trek Online is far from a perfect game. There are more than a couple glitches to run into, none of which are game breaking thankfully. The ground combat is stiff and doesn’t require much thought and sadly it does feature pretty prominently in the game. All that aside the number of ships to choose from are nice and varied and the ship to ship combat is fun and is the main the part of the game.

Another nice aspect is the random conflict zones in space, so when you need  break from the story campaigns that are pretty long at times they are a nice distraction. The ability to choose between more than one alliance with a number of races within each alliance to choose from. The ships are also pretty customization with different weapons,shields color schemes and much more. With all that I would only recommend this game to Star trek fans and the more hardcore MMO fans, sadly there just is not a lot here for the casual fans. Thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Diary of the dead

ddead First, I have to say we at Saviorgaming.blog are saddened by the recent passing of one of horror’s greatest director’s, George A. Romero. Zombies were never the same after the first three films in his legendary Dead series: Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, and day of the dead. The fourth installment, Land of the Dead, was met with much wide recognition. The fifth installment, diary, I consider a underrated gem. Diary of the dead features a group of college film students in the woods with their sullen Professor, filming a movie when strange reports come in of  the dead coming to life. The film chronicles first- hand there experiences through first person film surviving a zombie outbreak, commenting on how the rational world melts away around them. Romero cleverly uses our main character (who we rarely see at all, because he’s behind the camera 95% of the time) to demonstrate our society’s over-dependence on the internet and our obsession with recording and reporting every second of our lives to validate our lives. I can believe the main actors are college kids living in northeast PA (two-thirds of the movie they are trying to get to Scranton, our hometown). The zombies are Romero’s classics but work for what the movie’s point is. There is enough strange moments to make the movie memorable and the narration is bleak but profoundly thought provoking. Though not as well know as the other entries in the series, Diary of the dead deserves a watch if you want to remember Romero as a man who used the living dead to say something about us and the times we live.

georgeromero  Rest in Peace George A. Romero, the godfather of zombies.

Shining Force 2 Retro Review

shining force 2

Another classic Sega RPG, Shining Force 2 is a grid-based strategy RPG, with dozens of characters to build your team from. The battles play out on the world map shown here.

shining force 2 fight.jpg

The battles take place in between the story about a thief that steals magical jewels that sealed a great evil from the world by the name of Zeon. as you fight the battle, switch from the world map to a close-up view to see your attack. Below you can see the main character attack the aforementioned Zeon.

shining force 2 battle

The graphics for this game’s time were pretty solid, and so was the sound. This great game can also be found on Sonics ultimate genesis collection on the PS3 and XB360, and is worth checking out if you have the means. The story is well paced and compelling, with characters you will easily get attached to. With a few solid twists and turns and more than one difficulty level, you will get your money’s worth on this one. Best of luck, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

F.E.A.R

fear First Encounter Assault Recon; it’s kind of a stupid name but the acronym fits better : F.E.A.R. It’s a first person supernatural shooter that came out the beginning of the PS3 era. You play as Pointman, the new guy on the F.E.A.R team who deal with paranormal phenomenon. He has heightened reflexes and a strange connection to Paxton Fetel, a psychic psychopath with a small army of cloned replicants at his disposal. As Pointman gets closer to his target, he keeps getting followed by Alma, a projection of a young girl. What ties this all together? I admit, I think this game gets a little too much credit in the horror department but its still creepy full of dark atmospheres, eerie noises, and a few good jump scares. One of Alma’s last appearances is pretty chilling (just not the ending). The shooting is simple but trusty, but the true fun comes when using your adrenaline fueled reflexes to slow down time. Trust me when I say you will need to use this ability, your flashlight, and your ammunition wisely because it can all run out in a blink in a eye. My problem with the first F.E.A.R as well as the trilogy itself, I’m not really invested in the story. Much of the story has to be uncovered via files and answering machine tapes as well as radio broadcasts; as for characters, I got four characters and a couple of names. There’s a twist at the end that’s fairly disturbing but falls flatter than it should. Overall, the first F.E.A.R is worth a once over but that’s as far as it should go, so may the gaming gods guide you away from creepy ass Alma.

Phantasy Star 4 Retro Review

phantasy star 4

Phantasy Star 4 is one of those nostalgia games i’d love to see get another release, but largely be untouched like in previous collections it was in for the PS3 and XB360. The game mostly takes place on the planet of Motavia in the Algol star system, but you did travel to multiple satellites and planets. The turn-based battle system offered lot of strategy with spells and skills that could combine to create entirely new abilities. The story itself was pretty standard for its time, a group of people who meet under various circumstances must save the solar system, with the main character, Chaz, being revealed to be the chosen one. The art style was great, with cut scenes playing out in a comic storyboard manner.

PS 4 cutscene

I have played through this game more than a few times over the years, and I have to say it holds up extremely well. The controls still feel nice, the story still fun and the combat still engaging. Any RPG fan should absolutely try it out. As usual, may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Shining

The Shining

“I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.”

Probably one of the best quotes from this classic movie. I my not always enjoy Stanley Kubrick movies but this one for me will go down in history as one of the best movies of all time. The concept is simple from Stephen King, take a family, toss them in an isolated hotel, mix in a kids special abilities and watch the horror ensue. Jack Nicholson plays his part perfectly as a normal ex teacher working as a writer that seems to be a bit off before becoming full blown bat shit crazy. Shelley Duvall completely nails being the conservative house wife doing her duty by taking care of their son and  following her husband lovingly to this hotel for 5 months before turning into the scared lil woman that eventually clubs her husband with a baseball bat defending her equally creepy as hell son played by Danny lloyd. Seriously this kid makes me happy I have daughters.

From the very opening job interview to Jack chasing his family around with an ax this movie is great, and for once the movie was far better than the book. As always thanks for joining me and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 Games of Disappointment

dissappointment valley

Every so often we all will look forward to a game and board the hype train full steam ahead, or at least read a bit about it. Sometimes those games either suck, or just were not what we thought they would be. These are five games this happened to me with, in no particular order.

 For Honor

for honor

For Honor is one of those games that had a pretty great concept and nice graphics. It is quite simple, take control of a barbarian,samurai or knight and kill everyone in your path. The controls make that pretty easy to do, however the game itself makes it hard to find or stay in a multiplayer game to the point that many quick playing entirely.

Final Fantasy 13

final fantasy 13

Final Fantasy 13 was on of those games that for me NEEDED to be good to renew my faith in a franchise after a horrible experience with its predecessor. From the looks of it, this was going to do it. Beautiful graphics, plenty of characters, a new world with a rich backstory and so much more. So i’m outside my local Game stop smoking anxiously awaiting my copy.  I rush home, crack open a beer and the disappointment hits me almost immediately. The linear paths, the horrible characters and that god awful battle system. It would be another 7 years or so before my faith in Final Fantasy can even begin to be rebuilt with FF15.

Final Fantasy Advance

final fantasy advance.jpg

Let me start by saying i LOVED final fantasy tactics for the PlayStation 1. To say I was stoked for this game would be an understatement. In fact it is totally possible this is the biggest offender on the list. The first one was a story of a war torn land with amazing characters and interesting battles. This dumpster fire involved killing people by odd and random laws and children. By all means, skip this game.

Dark Souls

dark souls

I heard a ton of great things about this one, such as solid graphics, fun combat and an insane difficulty. Well the graphics for its time were solid, everything else I quickly found to be bullshit. the difficulty comes from broken combat and one of the worst camera systems I have ever encountered. Mot of my deaths involved the camera being stuck causing unscene enemies and my weapon legitimately passing through an enemy but causing no damage. Thankfully later iterations fixed these issues.

Alien Isolation

alien isolation

I knew very little about this game until after its release. A friend of mine talked it up for being a great stealth game that had a pretty good scare factor. I was a bit skeptical but this trusted friend even went so far to buy it for me while it was on sale ( Hey TorstenV how you doing) Now maybe he over hyped it, but almost everything about this game was just bad for me. The graphics of this game weren’t bad, but the game play was slow even for a stealth game, the story was pretty meh and worst of all the game didn’t even scare me. I think a major issue was you had to be a huge fan of the movie series to truly appreciate this game.

 

Leatherface trailer review

lf Howdy ho, friends, Torsten V returns from a much needed vacation. Coming back from vacation, I returned to the much anticipated first trailer to the latest installment of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. This is the story of legendary slasher Leatherface as a teenager and what I’m going to assume is another Leatherface origin story. So first things first, I feel like I have to wonder if this part of the original timeline or a new series of films upcoming. I personally didn’t mind the remake and its prequel, in fact I actually like the more serious, darker tone. But with 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3-D, that swept back into the original time line and frankly dissolve the series into a hot shitty mess. It;s a interesting question to ask. I liked a lot of the imagery of the trailer, including the fresh look of the mask but I wish there was a little more story in the trailer, just to get an idea where the hell it is in the timeline. Good to be back, and may the gaming gods be with you.

RPG Maker,Creating Dungeons

Map019

Creating dungeons is quite a bit different than creating a town. Thankfully there is more than one way to do so. The game allows you to pick the walls and floor and it will randomly generate  dungeon which obviously makes it quite a bit easier. You simply ass a few things and it done, which is what I have done in the above picture. The other option, and the better option for any serious game maker, is to design the map from scratch. There are various tiles sets you an use to do this from floors and walls to statues and rugs.

Another thing to remember is where in the game you a placing it. A huge sprawling dungeon at the very beginning probably is not in the best interest of whoever is going to be playing your game, but a single room also would be pretty much boring. Also keep in mind you do have to create the monster for your dungeon and decide how strong you need/want them to be. Just remember to have fun, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Havenhurst (2016)

havenhurst-2016-poster.png

Havenhurst has a pretty interesting concept. An apartment building in New York is run by an old woman that only rents to people that are attempting to better themselves after miscellaneous poor life choices such as drug addiction, prostitution or alcoholism. If you go back to your self destructive ways you are evicted, and in true horror fashion someone viciously kills you before you ever actually move out. For example a woman returns to prostitution and well dies shortly after you see her ample chest bounce around with some money on the table. The movie itself can be creepy at times but outside of the core idea the movie itself fails to really follow through and capture how great the idea actually is. I won’t say this movie was bad, just not my cup of tea. Thanks for coming and may the gaming gods bring you glory.