Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: March 10, 2015
Platform: PlayStation 4 (Reviewed), Xbox One
Genre: Hack n’ Slash, Action
Playtime Length: Middle (~10 hour campaign)
MSRP: $39.99

Disclaimer: A digital PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the DmC Definitive Edition review.

Ninja Theory’s DmC: Definitive Edition might be the most purely fun PlayStation 4 game I’ve played so far simply because it doesn’t try to be anything other than a good Devil May Cry game.

It’s not pretentious, it doesn’t try to bore you with a winding story arc, nor does it push new mechanics onto the player: it sticks to its original guns by harking back to the authentic and stylish dark mayhem that built the franchise.

The hack-and-slash action is made all the more riotous thanks to the new 60 frames-per-second update, which assures every combo is supercharged with lightning-fast responsiveness.

Every second matters in games like these, and with this upgraded port, players are able to make use of every extra millisecond to wreak total chaos with Dante’s devilish powers.

Although the game is a straightforward remaster in terms of content, it does toss in a nice handful of extras to make the meal all the more enticing.

Vergil’s Downfall, an extra DLC-style extension that chronicles the story of Dante’s brother, bolsters the original campaign mode and lets you tap Vergil’s katana-wielding style of combat.

Other additions include being able to customize how Dante looks during the campaign–particularly useful if you really hate Dante’s new appearance–along with an incredibly fun Turbo Mode that doubles the game’s speed.

If you’re a hardcore combo-stringer that’s looking for a serious challenge, the Definitive Edition has you covered with no less than five new difficulty modes like Gods Must Die or the uber relentless Hell and Hell mode, which makes Dante die from a single hit.

One of the more significant additions is the ultra-survival Bloody Palace mode that’s unlocked when you beat the game. In this timed high-score mode you’re swarmed by endless waves of enemies who are hellbent on annihilating you from existence. The Bloody Palace can be played as either Vergil or Dante, and serves as an excellent way to refine your stylish combo-building skills.

Ninja Theory’s prequel has a pretty strong story that seamlessly delves into the origins of Dante and Vergil, tying in a nice webwork of myth and demonology into the mix as well.

It turns out that Dante is a nephalim–that is part demon and angel–and is the fruits of the union between his father, a demon named Sparda, and his mother, the angelic Eve. Their union broke immortal mandates and both Eve and Sparda were sentenced harshly, but Dante and his brother Vergil were freed.

Being a nephalim has all kinds of advantages, and they manifest quite creatively within the game. As a devil-hunter Dante can cross-over to Limbo, a kind of vibrant and colorful bizarro-universe where nasty demons and corrupt chaos reigns supreme, as well as wield weapons infused with demonic and angelic power.

Combat is elegant, fluid and incredibly stylish. Every combo is enthralling and empowers you to really feel your role as a devil-hunter and develop your ass-kicking prowess along the way.

The real beauty of combat is how dynamism of the attacks ensure you can make your own customized combos, pretty much letting you string together a near-infinite flurry of explosive chaos the way you see fit. Being able to define your own style has always been a hallmark of the series and its in full force in the DmC: Definitive Collection.

Dante has quite a varied arsenal this time around that makes every single battle much more layered and tactically strategic.

Since Dante is a nephalim, he has angelic and demonic weapons that can be switched on the fly by holding LT and RT respectively. Each set has its own unique set of abilities and moves, plus you’ll have to mix and match to take out certain enemies like the harpy, whose shields are weak against angelic attacks.

Angelic weapons include the sweeping scythe Osiris and the dual-wielding Aquila, which can be thrown at a distance or used to slice and dice weaker baddies. The trick is you can only have one angelic item equipped at a time, but you can switch between these on the fly

The other half consists of demon-powered tools like the fiery fists of Eryx (super useful for uppercutting and launching enemies in the air) and the powerful slow Arbiter axe that takes whole chunks out of demons’ life bars.

Dante’s immortally iconic Rebellion sword and Ebony and Ivory handguns are in the mix too, making for an expansive arsenal that can be tapped to deal with a wide variety of situations and bosses.

To me, the best part about combat is how Dante can use his devil or angel chains to yank enemies forward for some punishing destruction, or to sling across levels like an inter-dimensional Spider-Man.

With the chains you can dish out severe havoc on a baddie, fling them away with a crushing blow, and then just pull them right back for more pain. This is essential for chaining together those stylish combos and serves as a major advantage against certain enemies like the hulking Tyrant.

Having so many weapons and abilities might sound like too much to handle, but Ninja Theory remedies this with their amazingly balanced control scheme, making sure you never get overwhelmed.

Gameplay is masterfully paced in such a way you’re not too strong or too weak at any given time. Also the better you perform in-game–high combo strings, finding collectibles, etc–determines your overall grade, netting you extra skill points and the like.

The real beauty behind the game’s pacing formula is that it creates a distinct sense of accomplishment after ever level, dishing out tangible rewards and practical bonuses along the way.

Dante still racks up red orbs to spend at angel statues for helpful items to restore health, boost his Devil Trigger super, or even revive him once he’s been slain–but the progression ins’t just about orbs and items, it also perfectly punctuates boss fights and level completion by granting a brand new weapon.

DmC‘s bosses are exceptionally creative and deserve a nod, too.

From the grotesque foul-mouthed succubus that taints the world’s favorite Coca-Cola-like soft-drink with nasty chemicals to Raptor News’ Bob Bargas that attacks players as a giant digital head, the bosses are amazingly fun and provide a nice throwback to those methodical battles of old.

Something has to be said about the game’s amazingly bizarre world of Limbo, which manifests as a literal playground for demon overlords. There’s a distinct sense of otherworldly chaos pulsing within the heart of this dimensional rift, and it’s not the dark, blood-red universe we’ve seen before.

Instead Limbo is represented as a quite colorful and eerily beautiful sort of acid-trip with a true sense of artistic flair, providing a feast for the eyes at every turn. Vergil’s Downfall taps the mystical eldritch style of the between-world quite well, showcasing a universe that tethers the very fabric of reality within its scintillating colors.

Conclusion: The Devil You Know

With the DmC: Definitive Edition, Ninja Theory has refined the game’s rough edges and creating a shining example of what all remasters should be. Tossing in a bunch of extra DLC and modes is a must, but the real substance lies with the new frame rate enhancements that make every millisecond count even further.

This is the type of game you can extensively replay over and over again even after you beat it simply because of it’s proven fun-inducing formula.

Every moment spent in Dante’s stylish boots is enjoyable, and it’s a game that goes exceedingly well when complimented by other styles in a game library, providing an excellent foray when you’re in the mood for something stylish and chaotic.

Capcom’s DmC re-release is a perfect fit for long-time Devil May Cry fans and new players alike, melding everything that made the franchise so damned addictive with a fresh new storyline and a huge armament of stylish weapons.

The post DmC Definitive Edition Review: Dante’s Inferno appeared first on VR World.

Tormentum Dark Sorrow is a dark point and click adventure created by the three man developing team OhNoo.

A nameless robed figure finds himself hanging from a cage under the zeppelin. Skies are dark and twisted as the flying machine travels through a hellish meteor showered landscape. In the cage near him is a weird horned ratlike creature. The conversation is brief and provides little information except the promise of suffering that is to come.

A sinister citadel in the center of hell is their final destination. The robed figure finds himself in a prison cell, skeletons litter the room and a few moments later a dark knight approaches. Our protagonist has been a very very bad man and the time has come for him to pay for his sins. The problem is he has no idea who he is or what sins he actually committed.

The nightmarish art direction of Tormentum Dark Sorrow is inspired by the works of H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński. It is a dreamlike world filled with strange shapes and elements that should not mix together in a natural setting. Some might find it bleak or depressing but for those of us that grew on similar game themes it is a real treat.

Tormentum Dark Sorrow is an old school type of point and click adventure with a very retro look and interface that is hard to find nowadays. It follows the now long forgotten formula where art design and atmosphere trump ultra crazy graphics and cheap scares. Gameplay is the classic search the rooms and find the useful item, put the item in the backpack and use it when you find the place it goes in.

Along the way the player is faced with several moral dilemmas that affect the knowledge he uncovers about himself and the world as well as his final fate. These choices can appear cut and dry but are not always what they seem and some might find themselves surprised when they find out that the good ending they “deserved” is not what they got in the end.

One can easily see various influences the team has taken as inspiration. While it is flaunted as being inspired by H.R.Giger storywise it reminds me of one old video game called  I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream based on the book by Harlan Ellison. In that game there are several characters trapped in gruesome nightmare scenarios that can only be solved by making certain ethical choices at key parts, or making the wrong ones and realizing what a horrible person you played all along.

The game also draws a lot of influence from the fantasy setting, probably Planescape most of all. The main character is a nameless robed figure that has no memory of who he is or what his great sins are and everything around him is unnatural and alien. Atmosphere created by the combination of art design, music and the story theme is a fantastic and grotesque abomination. It is a freaky and outlandish journey of self discovery that one can easily recommend to any horror adventure fan.

The post Pay For Your Sins in Tormentum Dark Sorrow appeared first on VR World.

Developer: Turtle Rock Studios
Publisher: 2K Games
Release Date: Feb. 10, 2015
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Genre: Online Mulitplayer Shooter
MSRP: $59.99

Note: Our Evolve review was conducted on the Xbox One via a copy purchased independently by the reviewer.

Evolve is a curious game that’s built upon a fantastic idea: a sci-fi take on a Godzilla-esuqe hunter vs. hunted scenario complete with high-stakes strategic gameplay.

But as we’ve seen in the past, fantastic ideas have a way of losing sight of their core goals, becoming something quite different when made a reality. Evolve is a prime example of a great idea that lost a lot of its magic during execution.

The main problem with Evolve is that it makes players gamble with their time. There’s no guarantee you’ll enjoy yourself while playing, and that’s quite true with just about any game, but it’s moreso true here.

This is mainly because the game’s steep learning curve, its emphasis on teamwork, and the wildly varying pace.

As a monster, you’re lone-wolfing it and are pretty much responsible for your own survival. Basically you want to hunt down as many creatures as you can and trigger evolution as quick as possible while avoiding hunters along the way.

Every premature encounter lowers your odds in winning, and while there is some pretty good tutorials, it’s up to you to figure out which skill combos work in which situations.

Panicking almost always leads in death–especially with the Goliath–but gameplay can get pretty entertaining if you’re lashing lightning blasts with the Kraken or slicing and dicing with the Wraith.

Every match is a clean slate for the monsters. You get to pick which skills you want to use and allocate three points before the match. You’ll want to pay attention to the hunters that you’re facing and match your skills accordingly–like if Bucket is an enemy, pick up the Goliath’s stone throw so you can easily take out his pesky sentry guns.

Ultimately as the monster you have to find successful ways to outwit, outmaneuver, and out-hunt your opponents, all while paying close attention to the tracks you leave and chomping on wildlife to fuel your evolution.

As interesting as this sounds, playing as the monster can often be pretty menial and rote, and sometimes you’ll find yourself asking why you’re playing to begin with. Victory just means you get more points to spend in a light RPG like progression system, unlocking perks and more monsters along the way.

Seeing as your main goal is to literally avoid hunters until you hit Stage 3 for the final chaotic showdown. In a sense, Evolve is kind of like the Dragonball Z saga: there’s a ton of talking and commercials that culminate in a short fight, where the powers clash.

When you’re playing as the monster, there can be a sense of urgency and danger. But this feeling fades away as you explore the rather drag environments–despite the “interactive wildlife”, everything seems so tacked on–and start to feed.

Maneuvering and controls vary from monster to monster; the Kraken, for example, can float and wisp along in the air, whereas the Goliath is primarily ground-based. The Goliath can leap and climb quite adeptly, but he’s not so fast when you need to get out of an area in a pinch.

The Wraith is my personal favorite; it’s snake-like and oily, using a variety of deadly skills like the dreaded Supernova and basic melee slices to dish out chaos. Plus the Wraith also has a decoy ability that’s amazing fun, even if it’s a bit broken.

How much you get out of being a monster just depends on how crafty you are and how well you adapt to your surroundings and pick up on new strategies. But the novelty, like the thrill of the hunt, seems to wear off fast, letting the mediocre shooter elements shine through.

When you’re playing as a hunter, there’s a distinct heavy emphasis on teamwork and knowing your role and sticking to it. Now FPS mechanics are in play here, but they take a backseat to team-oriented strategy with defined roles like Trappers, Medics, Assault and Support classes.

Trappers are responsible for dropping domes and laying out hook traps then dealing some DPS when possible; Assault classes are simply wreaking total chaos as the main DPS/tank; Support pays close attention on mitigating damage whenever possible with the shield projector and using cloak to hide and revive teammates; the Medic heals with a medgun, burst heal, or even heal grenades.

The beauty of the classes is that there are three different sub-classes, or characters, that each have their own unique weapons and abilities. The principle role still stands, but there’s a number of different ways going about it thanks to the sub-classes.

The post Evolve Review: Monster Of The Week appeared first on VR World.

Developer: Sledgehammer Games
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: November 4, 2014
Platform: PS4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Shooter, Action
MSRP: $59.99

With Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, the mantle of gaming’s FPS juggernaut was passed on to Sledgehammer Games. For three years the developers crafted their shooter, filling it with exosuits, futuristic high-tech weaponry, and a tailor-made campaign centered around an engaging techno-industrial war plot.

To prepare their multi-platform hit, the team built a new in-house graphics engine from the ground up, secured Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey for a lead role, and positioned Advanced Warfare as one of the year’s most attractive shooters with its high-octane action-packed content.

But like most dev teams who take on massive high-profile projects, Sledgehammer’s efforts fell short.

Instead of a revolution for the series, Advanced Warfare feels like a pretty big step back in terms of its campaign. This could be attributed to the studio’s inexperience–the team hasn’t worked on a game outside of a co-developer role alongside Infinity Ward for Modern Warfare 3–and the pressure to create a fresh new mega-hit with innovative features.

Whatever the reason, this new entry feels hollow and ultimately fails to live up to its potential. This is a trend we’ve seen all too often in the industry as of late, and it’s even more obvious with Activision’s newest annual shooter.

Campaign: Devolving the FPS formula

In an attempt to reinvent the formula, Sledgehammer actually pulls out key pieces of the FPS dynamic. This makes an awkward and ungraceful shooter experience, breaking down hallmarks of any truly memorable experience.

Advanced Warfare has the air of a brief blockbuster action flick with all of the explosions and he-man bravado of a Michael Bay film.

Much like an action film, the game considerably lacks substance. The plot is a thin veil for blind shoot-em-up madness wherein players are walking Terminators that annihilate all on-screen baddies. As empowering as this sounds, the experience is actually jading and provides a rather serious case of disillusionment for players, who are led to believe they are nigh-invincible future soldiers.

Gameplay takes players on a different war; a war that pits you against the game’s badly designed mechanics.

This war is tedious and needlessly frustrating to gamers. It’s composed of many smaller-scaled battles, and every single mission or multiplayer map presents its own unique challenges that take skill to navigate. But you’re not just fighting teeming hordes of gun-toting baddies, you’re fighting the game’s maddening controls, lack of on-screen indicators, abysmal HUD and truly terrible vehicle controls.

One of the most prominent annoyances that Advanced Warfare presents is the lack of an on-screen HUD. Instead players are met with an extremely minimal holographic display that shows your tactical grenades, offensive grenades, and one of the most asinine indicators of your exosuit class I’ve ever seen.

And there’s no radar. Yes, Sledgehammer has somehow gotten away with breaking one of the most holy rules of any shooter, making for large-scale firefights things of confusion, annoyance and tedium.

What happened to good old-fashioned futuristic HUD’s? Halo‘s classic heads-up-display comes to mind as the quintessential future soldier setup. But instead players are met with anything that feels futuristic. The game takes place halfway through the 21st Century, and you’d think by now there’d be some creative mix of Killzone‘s enemy scans and the classic mo-tracker.

Instead of a radar, Sledgehammer arms players with threat grenades. These effectively do what Killzone: Shadow Fall’s scanner does, but there’s one problem: they only last a brief amount of time, and you have a limited supply of them.

AND enemies don’t stay marked once you scan them.

But it gets even worse: threat grenades are only one of the three subtypes of tactical grenade, and all of them are limited. Other types include EMP and Flashbang. Switching through grenade types is also something that is needlessly tedious–instead of just being able to easily cycle through with a button press, you have to hold L1 and press Square to select what type you want.

This is an incredibly bad design, and only adds to the awkward setup.

Despite grenades and the lack of a HUD, players can’t always make out what exosuit they have equipped. There’s two main variants in the campaign–Specialist and Assault, both of which have specific goodies like a grapple hook (think Link’s hookshot), mag-gloves for scaling up skyscrapers, stim packs to temporarily boost life, double boost jumps, and a handy riot shield.

Before any mission the game tells you what exo class you have equipped. Lest you should forget, you’d think the game would remind you so that you can adequately facilitate what actions you can take in a firefight, right? Wrong.

Pausing the game doesn’t show you anything, and of course there’s no HUD, so there’s no way of telling what suit you have on without just knowing beforehand.

How hard would it have been to have an on-screen indicator reminding you what class you are? This is quite important as it basically determines what you can and can’t do.

It’s also worth mentioning that the game takes out and throws in random exo class abilities on a whim, as certain missions call for certain gear, and at no time lets players choose what kind of role they’d like to take in battle.

This is a big mistake.

I can’t be alone in wanting to be able to choose my own customized exo-suit loadout, making it a sort of role-playing adventure within the campaign. Sledgehammer failed in this regard, and in so many others, and I have to wonder why it took three years to build this game when it feels so minimalistic in terms of mechanics.

The lack of a HUD doesn’t just hamper combat, but it serves as a massive roadblock to progression itself. What little on-screen indicators the game has are not obvious at all, and the objectives are vague and unclear. Often you’ll find yourself lost in a sea of enemies amid a beautifully rendered city, wandering around and blasting Atlas foes at whim.

This is disorienting and isn’t something that any shooter should ever have to contend with. You should always know where to go and be on-point, and the game should always keep you in the know and arm you with the information to make informed decisions.

Sledgehammer takes all the strategy out of any given segment simply because you have no idea where to go, and often don’t know how many baddies are out there–or where they are–until you get shot to hell and back.

Apart from the annoying factors, Advanced Warfare does have some innovative features.

The exosuit’s pneumatic jumps are quite handy in campaign and multiplayer, even if they are a bit clunky and awkward. You can juke and dash in all directions by pressing L3–a poor button map for this function if there ever was one–which is immensely useful after double jumps.

But even this has its downfalls. The novelty can wear off fast, and it lacks the fluid grace that Destiny‘s boost-jumps bring. All in all it’s hard to compare Advanced Warfare to a refined breed of shooter like Destiny or Halo simply because it neglects so many of the important aspects.

A good shooter doesn’t start players off at a disadvantage due to its awkward control scheme, nor does it rob them of important mechanics right out of the gates.

The post Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Review: Flawed Future appeared first on VR World.

Publisher: SEGA
Developer: Creative Assembly
Release Date: Oct. 7, 2014
Platform: PS4 (Reviewed), PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC
Genre: Horror, Survival, Stealth
MSRP: $59.99

There are precious few games that can perfectly recreate the feel of a movie, but Alien Isolation achieves this with an almost eerie precision. It’s the kind of game you play alone in the dark, knowing the absence of light could both save you and spoil you from the fright.

The game is a captivating and harrowing experience that fully envisions the scope of Ridley Scott’s immortal film Alien. Rather than simply portraying the film, though, it expands upon it and brings to life a refreshing new extension while keeping the original concepts in place.

Creative Assembly has crafted a thriller that completely absorbs its audience, using many of the same mechanics of the 1979 classic.

Perhaps the most unique concept about the game is that it takes away all power from the gamer. And as odd as this will sound, that’s actually the beauty of it all. Instead of gunning down xenomorphs with reckless abandon, players are forced instead to treat their foe for what it is: an interstellar killing machine.

Sticking to the shadows and relying on their senses, players are stripped of their machismo bravado in favor of Amanda Ripley’s cunning and wit. It’s a welcome change to the genre and pays glorious tribute to Ellen Ripley’s performance in the original film.

One of the things that Isolation does best is revitalize the image of the alien simply by making players respect its power, and for that I’m extremely grateful. It’s one of the most amazing depictions of the alien’s true nature that I’ve ever seen, and throughout the game, I was almost in awe of the slithering terror.

The developers have captured the creature’s liquid grace perfectly: the fluid movements, the way its tail slithers around corners, and the way it crawls its way through the station like some kind of interstellar viper. The way it leaves chaos and death in its wake, and the way it’s inner mouth snatches out to dispatch its prey.

The terrifying primal state of H.R. Giger’s nightmare has been permanently restored, and it’ll always be remembered and regarded the way it should be–with blind panic and fear.

The post Alien Isolation Review: Hunted By A Freak appeared first on VR World.

Developer: Bungie Studios
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: September 9, 2014
Platform: PS4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360
Genre: Online Shooter, Action, RPG
MSRP: $59.99

Editor’s Note: I’ve taken quite a bit of time to explore the interstellar shoot-em-up adventure that is Destiny. As a result, the review is a little late, but I felt that Bungie’s new game deserved a considerable playthrough to give it justice.

Below are my findings based on my in-depth experiences with the shooter.

Destiny is a prestigious game that was set to be a revolutionary marriage of sci-fi shooter and online multiplayer RPG, but like many missions to the stars, Bungie’s dream game didn’t quite take off.

To understand how Destiny fell short, we have to take a quick look at the role that marketing hype plays in video games, and how this affected our expectations for Bungie’s sci-fantasy epic.

For the last two years or so, all eyes were on Bungie’s newest project. It was supposed to be the biggest thing the devs have ever attempted, and it was to be their magnum opus. They called it Destiny.

This new undertaking looked to be the perfect arrangement of sci-fantasy and action-packed shooter. From the start it whisked us away on a fanciful story filled with offworld planets, aliens, advanced technology and the magic of any space odyssey.

The story itself felt like something that Isaac Asimov dreamed up; an archetypal struggle between a mysterious force known as the Light and the malevolent planet-eating Darkness was entrancing. The quintessential heroes, known only as Guardians, were infused with the power of the Light to fight the terrors of the night–and to save humanity from its smoky tendrils.

Destiny promised to take us on a journey that transcends space; an intergalactic adventure across the stars that unfolded before our eyes.

Mystery played a huge role in Destiny‘s hype, and the devs took advantage of this by understandably keeping things under wraps, feeding us scraps here and there at major trade shows like E3 and the Tokyo Game Show.

We didn’t know too much about the game, but from what we saw, it looked to be a definite game-changer. Here was a game that promoted social interaction in seamless drop-in drop-out co-op across whole planets, a game that featured customizable heroes with their own deadly skills.

And a game that was filled to the brim with incredibly potent space guns.

The partnership with gaming juggernaut Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI) meant that Destiny would be a massively-scaled journey the likes of which we’ve never seen. The level of hype for the game created a sizable gap that has proven to be the folly for many different mediums, whether film, games, or even music.

Destiny couldn’t ever live up to the incredible expectations from the public as a result of the major adverts and media focus; Bungie’s new game was destined to be undermined by its own potential.

The Hive have some of the most striking environments; here they pray to the World’s Grave, a diabolical machination deadset on destroying the Traveler’s Light.

An unfinished universe: storyline, missions and characters

Destiny as a whole largely feels like a game that was shipped too early. There are very blatant holes missing in various sections, including story, meaningful character development, truly immersive activities and even loot mechanics.

Players are pulled into a galactic story that briefly prefaces the Golden Age of the Traveler, where the mysterious semi-divine sphere bestowed the gift of Light upon the Solar System. The Traveler terraforms hostile planets like Venus to make lush tropics teeming with plant life, and as a result humanity was propelled to the stars.

But this Golden Age was brought down by the Darkness, a malevolent entity that spreads chaos and death in its wake. Players never really know what the Darkness is; instead we’re met with a convoluted bunch of enemy factions–the brutish Cabal, the cunning Fallen, robotic Vex and diabolical Hive–that all vie for control and destruction of humanity.

The Darkness–and its warring factions–slowly eat away at the colonies that stretched across the stars, forcing humanity back to the Tower, which stands above the Last City on Earth.

Here Guardians, special ultra-warriors infused with the power of the Light, stand against the tide of the Darkness and search for a way to repel its wake.

Players don’t get to interact with the last city at all; it’s just a picturesque vista rather than an example of human woe and desperation.

Even here Bungie’s once-great magnum opus is marred by severe holes.

For example, players never get to actually interact with the last city on earth; from the Tower we can look down upon it and see its futuristic skyscrapers, but there’s this sense of artificial plasticity in the whole thing.

Bungie doesn’t tap into that human element at all; we never get to see the last bastion of humanity we’re fighting for, we never get to see who we’re fighting for.

There are some denizens in the Tower, but they are NPC fodder and usually have no actual bearing. The same for the game’s handful of vendors–even the Speaker, who actually communicates with the Traveler, is rote and mechanical.

This is a great fault in the story and takes away from the emotional and personal elements of the game. Destiny is branded as a kind of RPG-shooter, but it considerably lacks the deep and dynamic story arcs that role-playing games entail. Instead we’re left with a game that grinds like an RPG but trumps meaningful story for frenetic Call of Duty-like elements.

Destiny’s overhead map features a fast-travel system for loading screens rather than letting players fly through the stars, and features four main planets to discover.

The story so far…

The story itself is broken up into an array of missions across various planets like Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars. These missions further the storyline, but they seem clipped and minimalist rather than content-rich.

Every planet has its own Strike–some, like Venus, have two–along with a free-roam Patrol mode that allows players to scout the planet’s regions for smaller missions and to collect items like Relic Iron for weapon and armor upgrades.

The planets all have a set region that’s used by the Strikes, Patrols and missions. These regions are public game “worlds”, and at any given time players pass through these public zones throughout their endeavors. This intuitive mix of live drop-in drop-out co-op is a landmark for the game, and gives players the chance to easily recruit teammates if they find themselves in over their head.

As far as character development, player Guardians are stale and lack any sort of real substance. They have no actual personality other than the quintessential space marine that kills in the name of good. Most of the other NPC’s lack any sort of dynamism as well, and serve the same function as an ATM of sorts for items and loot.

Most of the NPC’s and other characters like the Ghost lack personality, but some memorable characters are the Queen, her brother and the Exo Hunter that assists players.

Sadly, Peter Dinklage’s performance as the floating Ghost companion substantiates this claim even more. The Ghost was lamented as insufferable way back in the Beta, and his amazingly cheesy, mechanical dialogue hasn’t improved any in the final game. If anything it’s worse now, as we expected improvements.

Rather than being helpful, witty, snarky or even rude, we get such bland uninteresting interactions that the Ghost feels like a hindrance.

My friends and I have also dubbed the Ghost as “Windows 98″ on account of how long it takes him to upload/download/unlock doors. The little floater essentially brings back the horrors of Goldeneye 64‘s diabolically sadistic Control Room mission, as you’ll have to set him off and kill hordes of baddies while he tedious hacks a door.

Mars is ruled by the iron might of the Cabal, titanic aliens that rely on strength and brutality to conquer their foes.

Addictively tedious: game mechanics and gear-grinding

Destiny is an extremely addictive game. Despite its faults, Bungie has tapped into a troubling trend that we’ve seen all too often in modern gaming: the promise of more content at the expense of time.

Rather than delivering the promised feast of an expansive MMO-shooter to hungry gamers, Bungie gave us enough to barely sate our ravenous appetite. And they continue to do so, bit-by-bit, with an array of updates that roll out every few weeks or so.

However it’s important we look at the entire scope of their plan. Activision affirms that Destiny is a decade-long endeavor, and since it’s not subscription-based, we’re looking at a few releases (most likely a trilogy of games) along with a dazzling array of expansions. Two of these said expansions were released during the game’s launch.

The Moon remains one of the most visually appealing planets in the game, strewn with crags, fissures and craters from the evil Hive.

Combined with a feasible business approach to sort of lockdown content behind paywalls (based on the first two paid expansions we can assume more will be coming), Destiny will be inherently updated and patched at a moderately slower basis.

Activision and Bungie have found a new way to combine the time-consuming MMO-style grind for gear with the action-packed sentiments of multiplayer FPS games. This union–or fusion–is a unique intersection that accounts for much of the game’s addictive factor.

Players simply can’t stop playing because they want to complete their character, which is only natural. But unlike other grind fests, Destiny‘s story arc isn’t part of the grind–it’s more of an afterthought that you can avoid completely to progress.

True there’s always something to do in Destiny, the activities sort of lack substance. As of right now Bungie has improved the selection a bit with activities like the Queen’s Wrath and Vault of Glass raid, but these are things that arguably should have been included upon release.

Planets like Venus have multiple environs, making every different zone a work of art.

The grind feels artificial and wholly based on the same allure of leveling up in, say, Call of Duty. Rather than bridging the gap between meaningful character and story development, players only get stronger so they can complete more endgame content–and at this point the Vault of Glass raid and Weekly Nightfall Strikes comprise Destiny‘s challenging endgame content.

Destiny is incredibly addictive, but this addiction last substance and immersion in so far as the activities that are completed.

Unlike other MMO’s, there’s no point to keep playing once you’ve hit level 30 and mastered your gear. The only thing to do is make a new character to keep things fresh, rather than be introduced to fresh new content by the developers.

Endlessly grinding for loot is filled with tedium thanks to the drop ratios. Bungie has made an improvement in this regard, but it took them almost a month, making it too little too late. Players have to grind out reputation in Vanguard strikes or PVP matches in the Crucible to buy specific gearsets, some of which call for higher ranks.

A bigger slap to the face, though, is spending all this time leveling up your Crucible ranking only to find a legendary that’s the same or even better than the one you just bought.

Exotic bounties lead to powerful rewards, but all too often its not even worth spending the time to unlock them.

Exotic items are quite rare and don’t drop very frequently, but Bungie has tried to remedy this with exotic bounties. The key word here is tried. The requirements for these bounties are absurd and remain some of the most consuming time-sinks in the entire game.

Here’s a quick for instance: to charge my Depleted Handcannon and turn it into the exotic pistol known as Thorn, I have to complete a laundry list of demands.

Frenetic in-your-face firefights comprise the bulk of Destiny’s gameplay, with RPG and story elements falling short as a result.

Game Mechanics: Call of Duty meets Halo meets Borderlands

At its heart, Destiny is a shooter that melds the authentic frenetic action of Call of Duty‘s pinpoint accuracy with Halo‘s intergalactic war on aliens and Borderlands-style loot fests.

Combat is fast-paced and enthralling, making for some of the most engrossing firefights in recent years. Guardians team up in fireteams of three to dispatch a horde of monstrosities, some of which are titans that hulk within the heart of the Moon itself, in terrific and devastating battles of wit, cunning and trigger-pulling accuracy.

The sandbox style FPS mechanics afford for a massive amount of tactical strategy, and this is further exemplified with the superpower sof each class. The Hunters, Titans and Warlocks each have two different subclasses at their disposal, making for a nice blend of skillsets that can be tapped for any given situation.

Phogoth the Untamed is one of the most memorable Strike bosses in the game. This towering behemoth shoots lasers from his head and annihilates anything in his path.

All classes have some things in common, though: they all use a melee attack as well as a powerful grenade in conjunction with their special abilities. Both the melees and grenades vary widely from Hunter to Titan to Warlock, and thanks to the requisite cooldowns, must be used tactically.

The Titan Defender’s Ward of Dawn skill makes a massive dome that shields allies from harm, and can even boost their weapons and give them overshields for a short amount of time.

The Hunter’s Bladedancer tree allows them to go invisible for a spell, making for perfect resurrections. The Warlock can fire up his Sunsinger skills to reduce his teammates special cooldowns while blasting three fiery grenades and even resurrecting himself.

The Hunter, Titan and Warlock have their own skill trees filled with passive and active enhancements, as well as two different subclasses to choose from.

These skill trees make up the bulk of the game’s RPG elements, but Guardians also have three main stats that boost combat proficiency. Discipline reduces your grenade cooldowns, Strength reduces the cooldown of melee attacks, and Intellect allows players to use their supercharged ability more often.

Speccing the right stat is extremely important for certain situations and varies widely to class preference. Flashbangs, for example, are an amazingly useful tool for Titan Strikers and can be buffed with heavy Discipline. On the other hand Titan Defenders need hefty Intellect to throw out their powerful shields more often to protect the entire fireteam.

Along with these skills and stats Guardians can equip three guns at a time; one primary (scout, pulse, and auto rifles, handcannons, etc), a special (fusion rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun) and a heavy (decimating rocket launchers and machine guns).

Missions and strikes are punctuated with tough boss battles that sometimes can last an hour or more.

Special and heavy weapons can be infused with elemental affinities like Arc and Void that deal bonus damage to certain enemy classes. The Hive, for example, are weak against Solar, whereas the Vex are weak against Void damage.

Destiny‘s combat is extremely fluid and graceful, and can often be challenging. But there are a few basic things that can hinder performance, especially in the Crucible, where communication is key.

Bungie still has a discrepancy between your actual team and your in-game fireteam, making it so that your teammates cannot hear you unless you send out a separate fireteam invitation. This is true for every mode of play, whether its Crucible or Strikes or missions, and can often be the difference between victory and defeat.

The quest for loot, not missions or story, fuels progression in Destiny.

The gear-grind struggle

Gear grinding is the other half of Destiny’s heart. There’s many ways to find gear: it can drop out in the wild, be rewarded upon completion of missions and strikes, and can be bought from NPC’s. Gear can’t be traded–another major oversight that’s included almost universally in every online-RPG-style game.

Finding end-game quality gear, though, is a chore in itself. And once you find the gear, you’ll need to upgrade it with materials like Spinmetal, Ascendant Energies and Shards, Plasteel plating and Weapon Parts. To amass the huge quantities of mats to upgrade gear requires hours of farming, which in itself can be annoying, but Bungie has found a way to keep things interesting.

To be able to upgrade your gear you have to first level it up. That’s where bounties come in. Netting EXP doesn’t do anything for your character after you hit level 20. The only way to progress higher is by gaining items with higher Light.

Exotic weapons have bonuses that are unique to their type, along with a hefty number of defense and damage mods.

When you earn EXP from bounties or killing enemies it’s instead applied to the items, which unlocks various tiers of enhancements like higher defense or Exotic-specific skills.

Blue and above items have a range of tier-specific unlockables that add to the effectiveness of the weapon or armor, and also improve the Light bonuses when upgraded.

By completing regular bounties during your mat farming runs, you can ensure you don’t lose your mind searching for that oft-hidden rockface of Relic Iron. The Ascendant materials, though, are random and are usually given by getting Gold tiers in public events. Maxing out certain bits of gear requires up to eight Ascendant materials per tier, ensuring that you’ll keep playing if you want to be the best.

Powerful exotic weapons are the highest tier of item available, but players can only equip one Exotic item type at a time.

Upgrading items in Destiny is frightfully tedious and arguably unnecessary, but Bungie has found a way to augment the experience with various events and the like. Even still it lacks substance and actually remains one of the only things you can do in the game after you reach a certain point–which is a hallmark of a badly designed multiplayer-online game.

MO’s are supposed to have an expansive wave of content to ensure that players don’t get jaded or “burnt out” on the experience; to keep things fresh.

Bungie is only recently tapping into this, and to be fair they are addressing some key concerns. Even still the overall game feels rushed and unfinished, and has a general air of incompleteness about it–an incompleteness that’ll be filled in at a later date, when it’s convenient (or paid for).

Bizarre and memorable visuals accompany the bulk of Destiny’s gameplay, but without meaningful story or characters, it lacks substance.

Conclusion: An imperfect fate

Destiny is an interesting spectacle of a game that’s been crushed by the weight of its own hype. Bungie hasn’t delivered the game-changing open-world shooter that was promised, but instead has ushered in a sort of unified mixture of addictive gameplay with snippets and miniature pieces of added content.

The experience does redeem itself in various ways, however. The game’s interplanetary environments are truly incredible, painting mesmerizing backdrops of unreal intergalactic beauty, but even this splendor seems somehow hollow. The worlds are stale even in their wonder, lacking a true sense of immersion–in a sense they seem to be visually vivid and not substantial, not real…not whole.

The absence of any real meaningful character development and messy plot holes pretty much tells players that the game’s story is still a work in progress. The events are anti-climactic and feel tacked-on rather than the deep and profound experience that accompanies most RPG-style games.

Destiny uses faraway vistas to bring a sense of open-worldness to gameplay, but it’s a false perspective as players can barely explore certain regions.

Destiny‘s principle trouble is that it’s suffering from an identity crisis. It tries to be too many things without wanting to take the time or effort to fill in certain blanks. In its current form, Destiny feels like a sort of shell or maybe a puzzle that has its borders completed, but is blank in the middle.

Although there is plenty missing in the game, Destiny will keep you busy for quite some time. The game has a way of pulling you in regardless of the absence of plot or character development. It’s cleverly designed to hook players and keep them going until they max out their character, in which time there will be a new morsel to chew on while we wait for the main course.

And that’s the real problem with the game; even a month after release, gamers are still waiting for the main course.

Pros

+ Amazing Graphics & Visuals

+ Frenetic FPS Action

+ Strategic Skillsets

+ Array of Weapons & Armor

Cons

- Loot Upgrades are Tedious

- Minimal Storyline

- Lack of Character Development

- Major Plot Holes in Story

- Non-Combat Content Lacks Substance

The post Destiny Review: The Fault in Our Stars appeared first on VR World.

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Activision Publishing
Release Date: August 19, 2014
Platform: PS4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360
Genre: Action RPG, Dungeon Crawler
MSRP: $59.99

Do Fear the Reaper

Diablo III Ultimate Evil Edition is one of the best games available on the PlayStation 4. It’s jam-packed with some of the most exceptional console-based dungeon crawling you can find, and is bursting with infinitely replayable monster-slaying action. It pulls players into a world of never-ending ARPG chaos, and is a shining example that Blizzard are the masters of their craft.

The Ultimate Evil Edition comes with the original Diablo III game as well as its Reaper of Souls expansion–along with every game update that’s been released on PC so far (excluding patch 2.1).

These updates bring new weapons, the Crusader class (who’s a powerhouse of awesomeness), an Artisan that can re-roll mods on items, and a brand new act that continues the story across the previously unvisited region of Westmarch.

The franchise’s distinct action-RPG spirit has been furthered with this release, showing a dynamic evolution of the series while preserving its namesake mechanics, features and elements.  Blizzard has found a way to ingeniously craft a worthy successor to the hallmark dark fantasy series with patches and updates that bring a smorgasboard of new features to the series.

There’s a lot to explore in Blizzard’s newest entrant, so let’s start with the game mechanics.

Elite bosses in Diablo 3 can get quite tough, especially in the Torment difficulties where their mod combinations are enhanced.

Stay a While, and Listen: Adventure Mode, Paragon, Nephalem Rifts and more

The Ultimate Evil Edition keeps that same control scheme found in the previous console release. The in-game controls are fluid the point where it feels like Diablo was always meant to be a console game. Inventory and skill interfaces are comprised of radial menus that are a bit awkward to get used to, and can be navigated via the DS4’s touchpad.

From the start, the game takes on an epic scope that fully taps the co-operative demon-slaying grind of the Diablo series. The seamless matchmaking system ensures players can team up with three other players on a whim and tackle everything from story quests to the new Adventure Mode.

The Crusader is a flexible new character class added to the game who can easily perform multiple roles in battle. Their abilities are quite impressive and combined with the right gear they can be literal powerhouses on the field.

The newly added Crusader class is one of the most versatile heroes I’ve seen in quite some time. The best way to describe them is a cross between a Barbarian and a Paladin from Diablo 2.

Their skills are quite flexible; with Smite they can shoot long-ranged blasts of holy energy. With Blessed Hammer, they can be indomitable casters; and with Shield Bash and melee-based skills like Punish, they can dish out huge damage while becoming human shields.

Crusaders even have activated auras called Laws that deliver bonuses to nearby players. Every skill also has its own rune sets to customize and experiment for the optimum build that suits your tastes.

The Crusader’s passive traits are nothing short of amazing; Heavenly Strength allows them to equip a two-hander and a shield at the same time, and they have another called Indestructible that protects them from death. Crusaders are incredibly fun and serve as a breath of fresh air in all fronts.

One of the most amazing things about the Ultimate Evil Edition is that it literally never ends. It has staggering meta-game content. The limitless playability is largely due to new features like Adventure Mode, Paragon points, Nephalem Rifts,  and six new dementedly challenging Torment difficulties.

With Adventure Mode heroes can take on a series of randomized bounties that range from killing certain bosses to completing mini-events strewn throughout Sanctuary. The mode itself is completely separated from Story Mode and can be completed on all Acts, with every Act dropping its own cache of rewards.

Adventure Mode seems to be more for end-game users trying to rack up their Paragon points, and offers a significant change of pace outside of the usual run-of-the-mill story questing. The best part about the gametype is that it perfectly captures the soul of ARPG’s by providing perpetual monster-hunting, and it’s something that Diablo always kind of had, except the quests weren’t randomized.

The Torment modes are largely responsible for the never-ending content in the game, powering Adventure Mode,Nephalem Rifts and the more advanced key hunting activities.

The difficulty modes now affect gameplay even more. The Torment difficulties–which range from Torment I to the unbelivably sadistic Torment VI–are actually required to be able to find Legendaries on Level 70 characters.

Torment not only adds more EXP bonuses and makes monsters all the more beefy, it also boosts the chance to find better items you wouldn’t be able to find in, say, Normal or Hard. These difficulties can be chosen for all modes including Story and Adventure.

The advent of Torment and the accompanied modes brings a new important to co-operative play. Gamers now have to work together to tackle screenfuls of monsters in order to stay alive and continue their grind. You can even find gifts for your friends, which pretty much always translated to a leveled Legendary item.

When a legendary item drops sometimes you’ll find a random gift for your friends.

Gifts drop randomly, but often drop when you find a unique of your own, and ensures players share their identifying splendor with their friends. The gear itself is immensely varied, with a myriad of sets, legendaries and rares that fill up your chest in no time at all.

Gamers can also break the max level cap with Paragon points. Essentially Paragon is a separate leveling system beyond Level 70 that provides passive bonuses for characters rather than new skills.

There are four main attribute trees with bonuses that range from added Vitality, lowered resource cost rates, all resistances, and even movement speed. Paragon is infinite as well–I’ve personally seen some PC players hit 300 Paragon, so it doesn’t doesn’t stop until you do and has no ceiling.

Nephalem Rifts are jam-packed with powerful bosses, making it a great place to magic find and level up Paragon points.

Ontop of Adventure Mode we have Nephalem Rifts, which are portals to completely randomized areas with a single goal: annihilate every monster. These rifts contain a host of extremely powerful elites, some of which have devastating mods like Arcane Enchanted, Shielding, Extra Health and Vortex.

The Nephalem Rifts have a massive frequency of these bosses, which of course translates the chance to find amazing loot. Tackling a rift on Torment III can lead to some pretty hefty Legendary drops. Every rift is also punctuated with a final Rift Guardian who will often drop some interesting items.

All of these new modes guarantee that players will never have a dull moment in Sanctuary. There’s always something to do, always items to find and demons to slay–and you can always find a friend or ally to join up with. The Torment difficulties are perfectly designed to keep players moving forward, complimenting player progress with persistently challenging gameplay.

No matter how strong you get, no matter what amazing items you find or skill combos you use, you’ll always be humbled by hordes of seething monstrosities. It doesn’t matter if you do 400k damage, have 1500 all resistances or have 20k Armor, your character will be tested–and will often die.

This is the magic of this newly refined Diablo. Blizzard has tapped into an incredible equation that balances challenge and reward with seamless precision, and its mastery is evident the farther you venture into the heart of evil.

The Artisan allows players to re-roll a single mod on any item to form that perfect sword or gearset. There’s no limit to how times an item can be enchanted,

All That Glimmers is Gold: Rolling Perfect Items and the Gear Grind

In the Ultimate Evil Edition Players are empowered in a whole new way, but the game is very careful how it balances this power. Gear is largely responsible for any hero’s success in any ARPG, and once again Blizzard has one-upped itself by unleashing a new treasure-trove of shiny randomized goodies to the denizens of Sanctuary.

Even with the immensely powerful Legendaries with their unbelievable mods–one two-handed polearm can even summon cows to your aid (yes, cows!)–it’s hard to find that perfect piece of gear. Sometimes that shield will have strength and vitality, but that crucial all resis or block-rate is all-but missing.

With the Artisan gamers can use enchanting to re-roll stats on all items. Now it’s possible to make that already amazing piece of gear into something 1337, godly, and all-around mind-mindbogglingly good.

But there’s a catch: you can only re-roll a single stat on any given item, and there’s a chance you’ll get something you don’t want. Every stat is aligned in a series of pre-defined groups that differ from item-to-item. Some items, for example, can translate Life Per Kill into Strength or even Dexterity–raw stat boosts like these are crucial for any character–but others are limited.

The items are quite varied but players will find gear that suits their character; as a Crusader, you’ll find shields and other gear that’s tailored to Strength and Vitality.

Enchanting requires resources and gold, so you won’t be able to switch around the mods as often as you’d like. Rolling high-tier Level 70 Legendaries, for example, costs a pretty penny by requiring Forgotten Souls, which aren’t dropped to frequently. Resources like Forgotten Souls can be acquired by salvaging Legendary (and rare/magical) items at the Blacksmith.

Enchanting and crafting via the blacksmith adds in a new level of depth to the usual Diablo grind. Since there’s always a new difficulty mode to traverse and tough baddies to slay in Adventure Mode and Nephalem Rifts, gamers will always be searching for better equipment to fuel their quests.

Teaming up with other players is an essential part of any Diablo game, and is moreso important for this version as monsters can become quite bloodthirsty.

Now players are not only searching for top-tier gear, but to find resources to re-roll items and gems to slot into their helms, plates or titanic battle-axes. Gems have gotten a nice boost as well, with a host of new grades as well as the inclusion of the diamond. Diamonds give all resistances in shields and armor, which is undeniably crucial for modes like Torment.

The huge addition of content has significantly evolved Diablo‘s end-game structure. Endgame is now less about killing monsters but choosing the right kinds of items with certain stats.

This becomes the major turning point for all characters and stands as the major trial to progression. You’ll find items that are good, but they lack certain stats and must be scrapped for resources. Juggling gear is a tedious but interesting aspect of the game, as you’ll often experiment with new skills and abilities to keep things fresh.

Nephalem Rifts and Adventure Mode add in a massive amount of replay value for the game, as every single session can last for hours and only end when you call it quits.

Battle Royale: Key Running, Hellfire Rings, and the Infernal Machine

If you needed even more extra content, Blizzard has brought back the Ubers for some of the most challenging end-game content in any Diablo game. Players can open up special portals to battle royales that actually pit gamers against up to three bosses at once in an extremely tough, heart-pumping fight.

For the Realm of Fright, for example, a friend and I fought Magdha, Diablo and the Siegebreaker all at once–and Diablo even split himself into three different versions. It was intense and incredibly fun, serving as one of the more entertaining bits of semi-hidden content I’ve see in the entire game.

The Uber fights are intense and pit players up to three different bosses at the same time.

To get to these portals, you’ll need to find the plans to make an Infernal Machine, and the keys associated with each. There are four machines for four different boss battles. The keys and plans are dropped by Keywardens, which spawn randomly in specific areas.

At the end of the Uber bossfights, the player who opened the portal gets an organ–in this case the Heart of Evil–and all four organs are used to craft a Hellfire Rings and Amulets, one of the most prestigious and powerful items in the game.

This extra bit of content is extremely fun and enjoyable, and serves as a way to test your mettle. Be forewarned, though, it’s quite hard, so I’d recommend trying it out in the lesser Torment difficulties.

The game isn’t without it’s humorous charm, though: baddies like Cuddlebears and Twinkleroots can be randomly generated in the Rifts.

Conclusion: The Best Diablo Yet

The Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition is undoubtedly the definitive console port of the franchise. Blizzard has redeemed the series with an unprecedented level of action RPG mastery, proving that they’re on their game by reaffirming their commitment to the brand.

Despite some grievances like clumsy boss battle prompts and the tedium of constantly having to compare found items to equipped gear, the game outshines every other console dungeon crawler on the market.

Blizzard has created a game where there’s always something to do, always something to slay or make or find–they’ve built a never-ending adventure that only gets better with time and never gets stale. The in-game music is stupendous, and the graphics and environments really instill the unending war between good and evil in a superlative way.

The new content is so rich and expansive that it really feels like a brand new game, and Blizzard has confirmed that the console versions will be getting regular updates to match its PC counterpart. With that level of determination, Diablo III will continue to evolve and take on new shapes in the months to come, proving that it’s the ultimate choice in the ARPG realm.

The post Diablo III Ultimate Evil Edition Review appeared first on VR World.

Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Release Date: July 29, 2014
Platform: PlayStation 4
Genre: Survival Horror, Action
MSRP: $49.99

Author’s Note: This is my first time playing The Last of Us, and the review will reflect my experiences as someone who has no prior knowledge of the game. Although this is a review on the HD re-mastered version, I will discuss the merits of the game for both new and old players of the series.

Where do we start when discussing The Last of Us? Do we talk about dynamic personable characters like Joel and Ellie that make players actually care about their future?

Can we start with the winding storyline that pits these characters in impossible circumstances in a post-apocalyptic future? Or do we recount the memorable sequences that truly test our mettle whilst being overrun by marauding undead?

All of these elements are responsible for The Last of Us becoming more than a game. It transcends the entire medium to become something different, something beyond, much the same way a profound film can give life to a devout cult following.

The Last of Us has a very deep cinematic flair that blends exceedingly well with its raw subject matter, shedding light on vibrant beauty even amid chaos.

Naughty Dog has created an interactive work of art that masterfully engrosses gamers in a broken world full of death, danger and mayhem–but amid the chaos there is a very real, very human story about struggle and survival.

These dramatic elements perfectly punctuate the elements of raw horror and action in such a way that the game certainly takes on a cinematic scope.

In many ways, the game crosses the boundaries of film and gaming media to allow a sort of beautiful combination between the two. It feels as if players can step into the movie screen, to actively participate in the fates and struggles of the characters while being propelled by the magical hands of film directors in their movies.

Ellie and Joel must traverse a world that’s moved on, scavenging what they can find while moving forward in order to survive the threatening landscape.

Story: Haunted by a World That’s Moved On

The Last of Us chronicles the story of a world that fell to its knees by a rampant fungal infection known as the Cordyceps Brain Infection. Society crumbled almost overnight, with pandemonium and chaos reigning supreme. Soon nearly all of the population was infected and rendered into hideous, misshapen monstrosities that fed on the living.

To survive, society had to splinter into groups and gather into fortified Quarantine Zones that protect the remaining uninfected population. Rather than restore any semblance of humanity or society, these zones are ruled by a militant entity that simply exiles or executes residents for petty crimes or suspected infection.

These zones perfectly articulate the true bestial nature of man when faced with such a crisis, and show how far society will go to preserve any measure of safety. The outside world is an ever-present threat that weighs on the psyche, transforming survivors into cruel, misshapen shadows of their former selves.

The Quarantine Zones are the last vestibule of “safety”, but residents pay for this safety with their freedom and must ultimately submit to the might of the military.

The game centers around Joel, a hardened and grizzled survivor who operates in the underground black market trade in a Quarantine Zone outside of Boston. Along with his associate Tess, Joel frequently penetrates the outside world and chances death to smuggle goods and sell them to residents in the zone.

While out on a raid, Joel and Tess come across a wounded Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies–a humanist rogue militia faction that’s embattled with the military–in Boston.

Marlene was on a quest to bring Ellie, a very special young girl who might be the key to a vaccine to the recombinant fungal infection, to the Fireflies. Marlene charges Joel with transporting Ellie to the group. Joel, owing Marlene a favor, reluctantly accepts.

Along their state-wide trek, Joel and Ellie become inseparable. They face insurmountable odds on a daily basis, doing what they have to to survive. Their bond is a magical one and shows that even in the face of death, hope can still shine through.

Joel’s listen mode allows players to plot out nearby enemies on a whim and is essential for survival in impossible situations.

Game Mechanics: Combat, Exploration, Scavenging and More

The Last of Us: Remastered functions exactly like the original in terms of game mechanics. The game utilizes the frame set forth by Resident Evil games with a third-person view, and players will often have to interact with their surroundings to solve puzzles to advanced further (just like RE games).

Joel and Ellie make the perfect team in this regard. Quite often Joel will need Ellie’s small stature to get to certain areas or unlock gates, creating a dynamic cooperation between the two. Since Ellie can’t swim, Joel will have to find a floating pallet for her to ride in order to cross water and get to the other side to solve a particular area.

Ellie’s cooperation doesn’t just end at tossing down ladders or propping open sliding metal doors; she’s incredibly handy in combat. At her core, she’s a resilient survivor who won’t balk at emptying a clip into an enemy or tossing a brick when Joel’s getting choked out–she even sometimes leaps on the back of a baddie to stab away with her lethal switchblade.

Scavenging raw materials leads to practical results as Joel can modify and create an array of deadly tools and weapons.

Throughout the game players can scavenge raw materials and create makeshift weapons like sugar bombs that mask your movements, deadly shrapnel grenades, or molotov cocktails that spread fiery havoc to enemies in a radius.

Joel’s main arsenal is a nice webwork of different tools of survival that range from handguns–revolvers, sawed-off shotguns and pistols–to scoped hunting rifles, a flamethrower that belches fire, boomsticks that pack a huge wallop, and even a bow that Lara Croft would approve of.

A tactical combination of makeshift explosives and firearms makes a big difference when tackling hordes of Clickers and Runners–or even a group of marauders. This strategic gameplay also serves as a satisfying mix of shoot-em-up action and survival horror.

Bloaters are extremely dangerous and serve as mini boss-fights. These mutated monstrosities have armor-plating and even toss pieces of themselves at their prey in an attempt to infect with the spore clouds.

The CBI has warped those its infected into ferocious monsters of varying kinds. Players will have to use stealth and strategy to dispatch Clickers, who are blind but adept at hearing, and be careful to sneak up on Runners, who have eyes like hawks. Stalkers use a sort of echo-location to find prey. Bloaters are the most terrifying; these hulking masses of mutated flesh use their might to literally tear apart their prey.

Bandits, on the other hand, are just as dangerous as the infected. These survivors are desperate and have nothing to lose, and that makes them all the more deadly. With the bandits and their groups, Naughty Dog perfectly captures the duality of man in dire situations–many of which actually turn out to be more deadly than the monsters they fight.

Gameplay is broken up into adventure-style progress through different areas and punctuated by tense “battle royale” sequences. Essentially different areas are lead-ups for those big finales, but the game does an excellent job giving players the resources they need to prepare medkits and snag much-needed ammo for those battles.

The lead-ups involve miscellaneous puzzle solving, small-scale battles, and exploration–and it is in these moments where the game shines the most. Exploring the ghostly and hallowed suburbs, for example, brings a true sense to the loneliness of the abandoned world.

The people of the past are gone, but evidence of their lives–their houses, their belongings and even journal entries and notes–remain like silent monuments of a world that’s moved on. Everything that’s vital or useful has been taken, but buildings and cars pepper the streets like relics of a forgotten time.

This is the magic of The Last of Us. The dramatic cutscenes that transition the sequences themselves add new depth to the experience, giving it life and making it take a truly remarkable shape. It seamlessly blends heart-pounding action with infected battles with the tear-jerking drama that fully realizes the strife of surviving in a decaying world.

Portrait of a survivor haunted by the rigors of a broken world.

Conclusion: A Marvel of Modern Storytelling and Gaming

With The Last of Us, Naughty Dog seamlessly captures the effects of a world torn by terror and death, presenting the primal side to survival and how this struggle warps any society. Survivors turned on each other for supplies, looting and killing with wanton carelessness that exposed a side to human nature that reflects that of the undead.

The story articulates the rigors of such a world where people murder for canned goods, and killing is a necessity and the toll it takes on the living. This duality of man is ever-present, and in many ways its much more frightening than the bloodthirsty ghouls who feed on the flesh of the living.

Rather than re-hash the popular post-apocalyptic zombie theme, Naughty Dog has delivered an original and fresh take on the archetype with its fungal infection. With a hosts of twists and turns in the story, players navigate a dynamic plotline that spreads to the heart of an impossible conflict, all while tackling nerve-wracking terror and action along the way.

The game features a dazzling array of photo-worthy environments, all of which can be captured and customized via the in-game Photo Mode.

The graphics are impeccable and seem to tap into the PlayStation 4’s visual power, delivering pristine visuals at a fluid 60 frames-per-second. Using the platform-specific Photo Mode, players can turn into amateur photographers and capture their favorite moments and share them across the web.

At it’s core, The Last of Us: Remastered remains Naughty Dog’s magnum opus and stands as a clear marvel of our generation. The game transcends multiple mediums to deliver one of the most ambitious and truly immersing experiences in the industry, all while seamlessly dishing out visceral action that reflects its general themes.

If you already own the game and have beat it,  I personally wouldn’t recommend picking it up again as the game isn’t changed in any way other than performance-wise. Sony’s thinking in putting it out on PS4 was to give new players the chance to experience it in its entirety, so you should just play it on PS3 if you want to re-visit it’s hallowed splendor.

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