Heavenstrike Rivals

maxresdefault.jpg

Heavenstrike Rivals is a mobile game from Square Enix that is, in a weird way, similar to Final Fantasy Tactics except not as fun or strategic. The game is plenty good enough. The story isn’t bad but it takes a backs seat to the combat. You use jems to summon troops to fight enemies on a grid that is only 3 squares down. The turn based system is pretty solid for a mobile game, but the best troops will sadly cost you some real money. It is by no means pay to win, it simply makes life easier. Thanks for reading, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Center of the Galaxy

IMG_20170717_120429.jpg

As some of you may know I decided to make the long trip in Elite Dangerous to Sagittarius A, the center of the galaxy. After hundreds of jumps and probably 12-20 hours I finally arrived. I’m admittedly not sure how long it took since I mostly was busy putting a ship together and planning my path 1000 light years at a time. The first picture was the super massive black hole at the center. The next is the view looking away from the black hole.

IMG_20170717_204416.jpg

All in all the trip was very very long and very uneventful. That being said i saw tons of interesting things, some of which literally nobody else ever has, and judging from the fact the game has around 400 billion systems no one may ever see them again. If you are very patient and have plenty of time to spend i’d suggest making the trip. Now all that’s left is the return trip. As always thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

We Are Still Here

WE-ARE-STILL-HERE_Eloise-and-Fiona-Dagmar.jpg

I’m not going to lie to you, I watched this movie with a friend and we spent the first 40 minutes mocking it to keep ourselves entertained. The story involved a family that just lost their college aged son moving to a remote town to get away from it all. The house they bought they are told used to be a funeral home. What they weren’t told were the owners were selling the bodies and burying empty coffins. This is explained quite early by some neighbors that come to visit. After about the half way point things will finally start to pick up and it actually gets pretty exciting. Some solid death scenes as well as a town conspiracy, or cover up may be a better word. Every 30 years a “darkness” under the house reappears and needs a family. Last time they didn’t get one and the fear now is the darkness will infect the entire town if they don’t get a family this time.

While not the best movie I have seen recently it is far from the worst, and if you can get through the first 40 minutes or so you may really enjoy it. As always thanks for visiting, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mario RPG Retro Review

mARIO-RPG.jpg

Mario RPG is viewed by many, including myself, as possibly the best Mario game ever made. The battle system is simple, yet elegant, with timed button presses or other button moves to do extra damage or healing. The game also has an amazing story that involves many things, including Bowser being kicked out of his castle, Mario collecting pieces of stars, and even fighting what are basically Power Rangers. The first time I played this game, I wasn’t expecting all that much. Just a short average at best RPG, and I’ve never been so happy in my life to be wrong. Visually, this game was one of the best the SNES had to offer, the sound and story were amazing, and the world itself was a mix between charming and deadly, with a mix of comedy with a few easter eggs to the Final Fantasy series to finish it off. This is a must-play game for RPG and Mario fans alike. Until next time, may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Act raiser Retro Review

act raiser

Act Raiser is an old Super Nintendo game where you play as a god who has lost his powers thanks to the people no longer believing in you. So you take control is a side-scrolling action segment in order to rid the land of a powerful enemy so the land becomes inhabitable again.

act raiser game play

After the side-scrolling event, you will start on a sort of Sim City-type gameplay where you guide your village to grow and discover new technology, such as wheat or bridge building, which you can then give to your other towns. This simple formula actually makes for a great and fun game as your villages grow, find you new spells and items, and even help other towns grow. This is definitely one of those games you would be doing yourself a huge favor to try out. Thanks for your time, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

John Carpenters Vampires

JC vampires

John Carpenter is a legend in the horror industry. Starring James wood the story revolves around a vampire hunter that works for the Catholic church. As the story goes a long time ago a member of the church turned against the church and too over a few cities. Eventually he was caught and burned at the stake and quickly  stories spread of him still walking at night. And this man was the first and most powerful vampire. Well one day on a routine hunt a master vampire is missing. Later that night what turns out to be the first vampire murders almost the whole crew with ease.  After all that, the real story begins but i won’t ruin that for you. I highly suggest you check it out. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.