Reviews – Page 75 – Savior Gaming

Metal Gear Survive

I was real late to the party on Metal Gear Survive. I heard a LOT of stuff on this game by the way, pretty much none of it good. Then I got to play this game when it was free to play on Xbox recently. The real question is, was the game actually bad?

Well to start the game actually looks really good on my One X. The controls also work really well. This is short and to the point on what I like, because quite honestly I am about to crap all over this game, just like most other people.

First, the story is ridiculous. The game basically starts as an alternate reality after a certain point then you create a character that is dead then you are basically tossed into an alternate dimension. The dimension is pretty much a point that sucks in stuff from a bunch of dimensions. This is where you will try to survive, as your hunger and thirst drain way to fast to the point it kills pretty much any fun I might have had with the game.

The wanderers used to be human, and apparently have occasionally ended up in our world. They were of course transformed by some sort of disease. Your job while survive is to track down old computer information to figure all this out. Now I know much of this information is quite vague and some isn’t quite accurate, mostly because I would still like for you guys to still be able to play it yourselves. I wouldn’t suggest playing this train wreck, because even for free I felt robbed.

The combat by the way, is not fun. After about 20 minutes of an intro where you don’t even control anything you get a gun, which you lose a few minutes later, you then get a make shift pipe spear. This thing is pretty annoying to use and it is your for the foreseeable future. Hunting food with it is a chore since most things are as fast or faster than you or dives thru you to attack you. Setting up fences helps, but that requires resources and time, which is also making your food and thirst gauges drain.

At no point did I have any fun with this game, and I wanted to. In fact the potential for me was there, the concept is sound and could have been fun. It just isn’t, and may actually be the worst AAA title I have played this year, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sudden Strike 4 European Battlefields Edition (Xbox One)

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Sudden Strike 4 European Battlefields Edition, is one of the few RTS games I have played this console generation, and is the ultimate version of the game containing both the game and the extra maps and such. I should also throw a quick thank you to Kalypso for tossing me this review copy.

The game itself on the One X is beautiful, and despite the old days of RTS’s not playing well on a controller, I had no issues with controls on this game. The game also heavily focuses heavily on real life battles. This is actually my favorite aspect of the game. Each battle has some sort of explanation and as you play the game you unlock historic videos.

The game however isn’t perfect, in fact anyone familiar with command and conquer will remember the missions where you get a set number of units and a set mission to accomplish? These were my least favorite missions, and that is essentially the entire game. This is 100% a preference however. The missions are fair, yet challenging and function just fine and do have some nice variety. You may be securing a gas station to refuel your tanks or securing a bridge. That being said if your favorite part of an RTS is base building like me, this is going to be a bad time for you.

The game also makes it VERY easy to create and switch between groups of troops. I found myself creating groups of tanks and infantry simply because I could and then using them as separate entities to back each other up. The RTS genre is slim on console, but if you are looking for one, this is your chance. The game itself is a 7/10 for me, and I have no issue telling you, if you want an RTS, this is worth checking out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Real Genius (1985)

Real Genius is one of those 80’s movies that for some reason most people I know haven’t seen, and that greatly upsets me. The story is simple. Mitch is recruited to a school for super smart people, he works with Chris the smartest person in the school turned slacker. They are tasked with a school project to build a laser. They aren’t the only two doing this but hey they are the main two.

As the story goes on we see all sorts of shenanigans, from the turning an entire section of the school into ice for a winter carnival.

To throwing a massive party with the local beauty school.

The movie is first and foremost, a comedy. This starts out pretty early with the scene where Mitch meets Chris, and he asks about him being prepared for gravity reversing itself and even trying to convince him the antenna on an odd remote control is in fact a penis stretcher, and offers to let him try it.

The movie does eventually take a more serious turn however, as early on you the viewer will discover the laser is actually being developed by the school for the government as a weapon to be used from space to assassinate targets. Mitch and friends eventually find this out as well, but not until the laser is finished and in the hands of the government.

They will of course go on a quest to put an end to the weapon and take revenge on the dean of the school for lying to them in the fist place, which will involve filling a house with popcorn. He hates popcorn. Regardless the movie is currently on Netflix, go check this out. The movie is amazing and has a great soundtrack. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

American Hero (2015)

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American Hero is the story of an alcoholic and drug addict man who as spent his entire life doing the wrong thing. The wrong thing for himself, his friends, his wife and his son. Well I should say now his ex-wife and son he no longer gets to see. There is a twist, he was born with a sort of power, a super power if you will. He can lift things up and move objects with nothing more than a wave of his hand.

Being the slacker that he is however this has mostly gone to waste with the exception of using it for fun and to make some money when he needs it for booze and drugs, and occasionally to stop small time criminals so he can steal their stolen stuff. This all changed when he has a small personal issue. By that I mean a heart attack. Then his best friend for his whole life gets shot by the local drug lord over something he did.

He then attempts to turn his entire life around and go straight, we are also treated to a scene of what his powers can actually do. The movie itself however has very little action which surprised me. With a name like American Hero I was expecting a lot more action and much less drama. It is all well thought out, well planned and well done. At no point do you ever get the feeling that it is forced or even forced.

This is a mixed bag however. I was disappointed in the movie for its lack of action, but I did enjoy its story of redemption and watching the main character, Melvin, grow from loser to less of a loser. The movie isn’t for everyone, in fact I would bet most people won’t enjoy it. Drama fans will enjoy it, everyone else should probably avoid it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Bad News Bears (2005)

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As a kid I loved the Bad News Bears, the 1976 version. I wasn’t old enough to see the original release, I wasn’t born for almost a decade after, but I still loved the movie when I saw it. I grew up playing baseball, and while I was never on any teams like that I have seen some bad teams, most of which got better over time and I always would have liked to have seen a story like this. I always liked a good underdog story. I was always wondering how this stacked up to the original but I was always kind of out off since I was never really a fan of it being remade. That being said I finally got the chance to watch it especially since I do enjoy Billy Bob Thornton.

The opening scene did fill me with some hope, as Billy Bob comes out of a basement drinking some beer rats crawling out behind him, and he tells the lady there are indeed a shit ton of rats down there. He then simply leaves, door wide open and rats escaping, and tells her he has a thing to do and to just call for a follow-up. We then end up at the field where we meet the team.

The team is about what you would expect, we got the token black kid, the nerd, kid in a wheel chair, two Latino twins that don’t speak English,or so we are lead to believe and of course we have the kid with the mom that makes him do all kinds of ridiculous stuff and sued the league to let the kids play in the first place, after all it is the 2000’s and everyone gets a trophy. That is actually one of the main sticking points in the movie between The 2 main coaches, one wants a pay check ( Thornton) and the other thinks the bears shouldn’t even be in a serious league.

The movie is odd to me, I can’t say I don’t like it. Billy Bob plays his role amazing and the kids do an honorable job replicating the roles they are given. That is where my issue comes in, the movie barely counts as an updated version of the movie. Many scenes are practically copy and pasted from the original. The ones that aren’t are pretty much the same scene just slightly changed. While this isn’t truly a bad thing, honestly the original is a classic and it does for the most part equal the original in my eyes, it doesn’t give fans of the original any reason to watch it really. The movie is by no means bad, just not very different. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed

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Of all the Mario Kart clones out there, this one was one of my favorites. Its pretty simple and straight forward. Take a bunch Sonic and Sega characters, toss them in karts that occasionally become boats or planes, toss them on tracks and away you go. You get a nice amount of people to choose from, nothing really all that surprising tho.

The tracks are pretty varied as are the power ups, they are all pretty standard tho, things that speed you up or hit your fellow racers like bombs or blow fish. One lets you go “all-star” that basically makes you go faster and not let you get hit. There is also one that will out a big catchers glove behind you to catch weapons used against you for you to then use yourself.

The game however is blatantly a Mario Kart clone. If you are familiar with Mario Kart,you have pretty much seen everything this game has to offer except it isn’t done as well. The only thing new here is the transforming and that is really just a gimmick to make it different, and it many times comes across that way. Its one lap here or there on a board to change a track after you get used to it and that’s it. The game is fun and worth buying, but it isn’t as good as what it is clearly copying.

47 Meters Down (2016)

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47 Meters Down is the story of two sisters on vacation in Mexico, both of them having their own personal issues. These issues however honestly aren’t even important except maybe to push them towards some bad decisions. Not really a bad decision tho, sort of. They meet two friend guys that invite them scuba diving in a cage to see some sharks, which they do every weekend on their friends boat. This is actually pretty common. Not the running off with strange men in Mexico to dive with sharks, that is borderline retarded. Just the actual act of diving in a cage with sharks.

So they end up the next day, on a boat with three men they really don’t know, now I have to say this, I was expecting this to get real bad for these two women, and it does. For a lot of reasons, but not these dudes. By the end of the movie I actually felt bad for assuming these guys were complete scum. As the movie goes on tho they are doing typical boat stuff, throwing dead fish in the water, getting gear set up, telling jokes. Typical boring stuff. In fact the movie is actually a pretty slow build. Its cool tho, we will get a pay off right?

Eventually the men go down in the cage and we get to see some huge sharks as the ladies get changed. Nothing odd here, just some general conversation and the dude left on the boat politely keeping his eyes and hands to himself. The men come up, the sister that lied about knowing how to scuba dive gets a crash course on how to do it which the owner of the boat was oddly okay with being lied to about. Now its time to get in the water.

After getting some cool time with the fishes and sharks, and dropping the camera into a shark’s mouth like she promised not to do things get bad. The cable starts to slip, they start to bring it up and…snap.

We finally get to the good stuff. The cage plummets to the bottom. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie, but the rest of the movie has to do with them stuck at the bottom of the ocean, getting out of the cage and discovering they actually need to stay in the cage, because the sharks are still in the water, and oxygen is running out fast.

Sadly while the movie has its moments of being extremely exciting and fun, you spend most of your time waiting for it. Most of the characters are hardly worth caring about and I never much cared if anyone lived or died. The movie was fun, but there are better movies out there. I won’t say don’t watch it, just be aware you may be disappointed. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Railway Empire

There are a few companies with games I always look forward to playing, the usual suspects we all do. But there are a couple that sometimes people don’t expect. About a week ago I woke up to an e-mail from one such company, Kalypso Media. They made Tropico 5 and Grand Ages:Medieval Review along with others of course. Most recently they release Railway Empire,so when they offered to let me review the Xbox One version with its Xbox One X support in 4K, I was on at the next station. However, did this play as beautifully as it look? And make no mistake, this game looks beautiful.

The first thing I noticed was the campaign isn’t truly your typical campaign. It mostly operates as a way to slowly introduce you to different aspects of the game, sort of like an extended tutorial. Don’t be fooled by this, you will still be challenged. The first mission will show you how to build tracks and add locomotives and show you the fundamentals of how to add stations and such. The second mission will show you something a little more intricate with how each city and place has different needs and will interact with different connections. The game truly has its own economy set up and you can, and most likely will at times, set things up in such a bad way that entire train lines will be worthless, or make you a ton of money.

Money however is not the only thing you will need to manage. You will also be researching new technology and new trains, managing employees, the stock market, sabotaging competitors and even managing smaller businesses. Each competitor has its own personality, one is a sort of southern belle,while another is a shady mob boss wannabe and we even get a scientist sort and a general. They all have their own perks as well such as the mod boss getting closer ties to the underworld and making it easier for him to sabotage people.

The game isn’t perfect, no game is. I wish there were some more options on the competitors as it seems like there isn’t a big variety. Don’t get me wrong there is enough, I would have just liked more. Building tracks while simple and easy isn’t always very precise and a couple of times I found myself wishing I could have moved things just a little more in one direction or another. None of this is enough to ruin the experience, it is just worth mentioning.

Now it is time for why you are all here, is the game worth buying at the $60 price tag? If you are a fan of the sim genre, absolutely buy this game. Solid 8.5/10 It is beautiful, controls well even on console, and is in no way short on things to do or challenges. I am not even a fan of trains, but this one will be in my rotation for a while. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

It’s a Disaster (2013)

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This is an interesting movie, basically a couples brunch gets pretty weird. One is a new couple, he a teacher, her the one that has a horrible taste in men. Another couple is forever engaged and twist, she won’t set a date. Watch the movie, you will understand why, seriously I wanted to punch this guy in the face. He is a paranoid conspiracy nut. We also have a couple that is, ok them I can’t explain without spoiling stuff.

The brunch actually starts pretty ok, until things aren’t ok. We find out the couple throwing this usual brunch are about to get divorced. So when the cable and stuff start going out it is assumed this is just a petty move to be vindictive. This is not the case however. What is actually going on is the our brunch happens to be taking place in the blast radius of chemical weapons. America has been attacked.

The weird part of all this? The movie is a comedy. Quite a decent one I might add. The movie isn’t amazing by any means, but it is worth a watch. There also some pretty good plat twist that I won’t spoil. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Jurassic Park Evolution Review

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See that sleeping T-Rex? That is my first T-Rex, Rexy. Cute lil guy isn’t he? He decided to go for a walk because he didn’t like his specially made area and eat people. So I make him take a nap, took a picture and put him back. He was apparently really pissed off about the lack of trees in his fenced in area. So I put more trees in there and woke him up. He busted out again and ate more people. Now he was mad about way to many trees. This happened 2 more times before I sold Rexy. I don’t know who the hell I sold him to, but I sold him.

This is the kind of thing that happens, Dinos break out occasionally and kill your guest for weird reasons. It was actually part of the fun. All the dinosaurs look amazing and go about their days and have things they like and dislike, and if they are unhappy long enough they break out. I still haven’t kept a T-Rex happy enough to stay in his cage. The game is a blast but has plenty of issues. For example until you create one of these beast you really have no way of knowing what it wants in its pen.

There also isn’t much of a way of knowing what it will or won’t live with or how many it wants in its pack. For example some carnivores want a few to play with. Others simply want to live alone or don’t have a preference. Some herbivores will panic and try to escape almost immediately without others of its kind around. Some species also simply don’t get along, raptors for example seem to hate everything.

I also have no idea why if you help 1 of the 3 factions more than the other ( security, entertainment or science) the other 2 might start sabotaging you by giving dinosaurs random illnesses or shutting off your power. It makes very little sense that people who work in your park for you and will die themselves would sabotage their own stuff.

Minor issues aside the game is a lot of fun, tho I do wish I had the option to run the sandbox island with the money on or off. It’s cool to just build whatever I want however I want,but for me part of the fun is setting up a successful part, and with unlimited funding that is pretty much kills that possibility. Is the game worth buying tho? Well yes and no. If you love sim and business management games, this is a fun game that fills a spot like nothing else. It will also appeal to dinosaur and Jurassic Park fans. For most people however, definitely wait for a sale. A solid 7.5 our of 10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.