Mass Effect Andromeda Arriving Soon & ME2 Free!

2017 has only just kicked off and Bioware have already blown the doors off with their latest press release. The hotly anticipated release for the latest instalment into the Mass Effect Universe will be arriving in North America on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 and Thursday, March 23, 2017 in Europe.

Bioware's general manager continued by writing - 

"Mass Effect: Andromeda is our most ambitious Mass Effect game to date. We’re telling completely new stories, creating new characters, new planets, new species, and introducing new gameplay systems. And for the first time, we’re bringing Mass Effect to the Frostbite game engine, an incredible engine that’s delivering a tremendous graphical jump from the trilogy to Mass Effect: Andromeda. To deliver on this, we’re taking all the time we can to make sure you’re getting the best possible experience."

In conjunction with this news, NVIDIA released a gameplay trailer showcasing in game footage and a few of the menus, mobs and manoeuvres in glorious HD (#PCMasterRace). From this short snippet alone, visually it looks incredible with crisp lines and a variety of lighting and colour. The menu concerns me due to its rather rapid and clunky looking movements but this could have been sped up.

With such hype and excitement behind Andromeda, EA have made Mass Effect 2 FREE for all users of their Origin platform for PC users. No news surrounding the console community yet but the big partnership with NVIDIA probably influenced such promotional strategies.

Are you excited for Andromeda? Let us know in the comment section below!

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - WHEN WILL IT STOP!? - Xbox One Review

About 6 years ago, I began my foray into the Call of Duty series with Modern Warfare 2 for my brand new Xbox 360. MW2 is the most beloved and coolest CoD game to date, ever since, I've made sure to get my hands on them and play them but nothing lived up to Infinity Ward's quality. The game took a huge hit with Black Ops. It's quality was naff and it's general gameplay and story were duller than a blunt kitchen knife. It seemed a trend but does it stop here?

Well...Not really. We are 40 years after the events of Black Ops 2, subtle references to the villain of the past give reasoning to the huge amount drones and their constant reliance on something so easily manipulated, as we keep finding out. We are a nameless character, male or female with the ability to choose from a selection of facial pre-sets. The male voice is played by Farscape's Ben Browder and the female by Abby Brammell. We are also joined by a whole host of faces and names throughout from Christopher Meloni, Neal McDonough, Ron Perlman, Robert Picardo, Jeff Goldblum, Tony Amendola and the legendary Nolan North to mention a few. Its not only their voices, many of them have their faces digitally mapped into the game much like Advanced Warfare's Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker to create another selling point. Now sure, they look good and it was cool to see a few familiar faces but it didn't add much, especially when you watch the movement of the faces during dialogue and all you see is an empty black hole into the abyss. I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen someone's hand and a couple black lines from the side of the mouth too their chins. As for the general voice acting, its was alright. Now we shift to our character. The need to even create one is rather obscure, you only see yourself in a few transitions prior to levels and in game cutscenes, so its general need could have been fulfilled in a far more practical manner - AKA, not have it at all. The quality of our face is also far less than that of any other character so its difficult to justify why they simply didn't use their voice actors like every other character. Typically, as ever, there is a bad guy. We need to find them and kill them. This time however, its a "complicated" story of AI, CIA and biotech enhancements on your squad. Rather than spoil anything, you have a chip in your brain that allows you to control certain aspects of the world around you and give you advantages on the battlefield. But, we never started with this. In fact our first mission is us diving into Egypt to save a high ranking official. Upon rescuing him, we are treated to a rather impromptu massage from a defective masseuse that pulls a couple limbs off and uses them to beat me into oblivion. But all is not lost! Rescued by an elite group of operatives fitted with biotech chips, top of the line prosthetics and Meloni at the helm, the very same organisation that we join in return for saving our life. Now as a story, its lives under its own guise of "oh so complicated" when in actual fact, its a very basic story that decides to throw some of its Nazi zombie features in for no apparently reason other than, "eh, fuck it". Character development is non-existent and the attempted love/relationship story arises from nowhere and vanishes quicker than a fart in the wind.

So what else is there? Anything new you may be asking?. Well there are a couple things. One is the biotech chips which give you a select amount of abilities that can control the flow of enemies and remove threats more effectively. Some allow remote hacking of devices for control purposes while others garner the ability to fuck shit up and implode combat drones. They've also reduced strafing

abilities from AW, only giving you a forward slide which is a faff in general as its only engaged while running at a certain speed so its a little bit annoying for sliding between cover. It's also taken another leaf from AW but we all know that this leaf came right from Titanfall and that is the wall running ability, but this time you have to unlock it with points rather than it being part of your super solider get-up and its a really clunky affair. Its not smooth and its hardly used. Unless you're like me and it suddenly appears that you need it to cross a gap for 1 section and you didn't unlock it because it was already part of your training and you presumed you still had it!...

Visually the game looks sharp. Some textures aren't perfect and as I've already mentioned, faces lack a good form of animation and suffer from looking like clay or wax models. But its not all bad. The UI HUD is fantastic. Very simple and easy to use and the tactical elements included give some great guidance throughout and reveal kill zones and enemy locations. However, when setting my safe boundaries, loading screens prior to levels completed ignored that and cut the majority of the level names out which was a rather infuriating issue that bugged me consistently. The music is okay. Nothing dramatically amazing that sticks to mind but the sound effects need toning down. I was playing with the stereo output via the controller with my Razer Kraken Neon Pro's at a decent level but voices were often distant and the explosions were physically painful.

 Now, multiplayer. The only reason anyone buys these games? Probably. My experience is short and it'll stay that way with Fallout 4 on my lap, Tomb Raider on the back of a truck on route to me and Star War Battlefront so soon after. I opened it up to be greeted by a selection of classes. Typical destroyers and abilities were attached to them which would have certain effects within the game, their genders can't change but they have a variety of customisable pieces. So, jumping into my first game, I've already been kicked out of 3 and joined lobbies where nothing happens at all. Team balancing takes an age and starting and getting into a game is just agonisingly long when you just want to play a single round. Perhaps its the Xbox's awful wifi receiver connection or perhaps its the CoD servers being rammed or more than likely, a combination of both. Levels gained in the campaign also do not affect the online multiplayer meaning that it is useless to have such an unnecessary mechanic. But considering I finally managed to make in into a game, lets talk about it. Bearing in mind it was one map and my only match so far, it was alright. I fell off the high-rise building a few times and often got myself lost looking for people who blended into the environment making them rather difficult to see. Upon entering the round, we are greeted by a League of Legends (Maybe Dota, I don't play it) player roster that details the enemy players and what class they are running, once again, a pretty useless addition that tries to give the illusion of strategy to then round out the match with a podium finish of those who performed the best that features a short bit of dialogue from the top character. Honestly one of the most cringy experiences I've ever had to witness in a game. Now here is my biggest gripe. I can hear where the enemy team is. Not because of their footsteps or movement but because the characters are screaming and shouting. In close quarter situations, its becomes a cluster of shouting that draws more and more people in and any element of surprise is removed when some bell shouts "Enemy down!" at the top of their lungs. 

Now has the game changed? No. Not at all. If you scrap all of the tiny little additions of the player rosters and the "new guns" You'll probably see the lifeless corpse of Treyarch's World at War and Infinity Studio looking back in disgust at the desecration of the classic Call of Duties that made the series such a big hitter in the market. Now, I don't think we've seen the end of it. In fact, I'm sure it'll continue for a few years now with the same dull and boring story with minute mechanic changes because its audience so wholly digest it, they cannot actually comprehend that the series is simultaneously fucking them while gradually feeding them more content so they keep their mouths shut. We are left with a series that is watching its audience become self-aware (perhaps that's what the story was really going for) and see what they're paying for year on year.

Use Cara Delevingne as much as you want. It ain't going to make the game good! 6/10
Buy it cheap, play it for a few hours and watch as the map packs destroy and displace the player base.

Mafia III - Official RELEASE Trailer

The long awaited 3rd instalment into the Mafia series is finally upon us. Will it follow Vito and Joey from 2 or take its own new path? Well apparently its going to take a new path, throw the past away and join a gentlemen named Lincoln Clay in 1968 after the Vietnam war. As a lover of all things Mafia and crime related, I'm worried. Its not what I had hoped for. See for yourself below

Evolve - XBOX ONE - Can the big monster still pack the punch?

Online games are something I tend to stay away from. Not just because of an internet connection worse than a poverty stricken 3rd world continent but due to their lack of diversity and story. However, there are a few games that have worked solely on an online experience such as Titanfall which stands as one of the best online experiences I have had in many years and one of my favourite games to play on the Xbox One when I get bored. You also have the Plants Vs Zombies third person shooter that sits firmly as a fun and creative experience that has very little Cod or Battlefield mentality lurking among their community yet both lack a campaign to engage me into the world even more. As for Evolve, if you watched our EGX trip vlog, you may have picked up on my love and excitement for Evolve. As it stands, I got a hands on with the Kraken and whaled on the 4 hunters. Once the Big Alpha appeared, I got another chance to try all of the hunters which you can also see on the Youtube channel.

Evolve works on a 4V1 system online FPS. If players aren't found, AI's will fill in the gaps. Now 4V1 in any situation is bad, however, if that 1 is a hulking monster with an insatiable thirst for power and a passion for killing things and using your spine to scratch that spot you can't quite reach, its a heart pounding experience. From the alpha and beta demos, I experienced a good build, minor glitches at times and a few full on game breaking bugs. Its only now that we find out if Evolve and 2K studios can stand up and create a game that doesn't have its fans seething with rage.

Given some time to play around everything else, Evolve is remarkably easy to progress through. With very little time and motivation, it didn't take me long to to plough through character skills with very little progress through the levelling system. Not that the game needs a prestige system and an overdose of levels to gratify playing it for extended periods but its this length that reduces that games life with little potential for prolonged play without paid DLC. Alongside very few game modes, you get little variation to reduce modes becoming thin and rather lacklustre with little potential to move further. Considering my excitement, maybe I expected a little too much from a game that was an online exclusive like Titanfall but Titanfall came out with a lot to offer from the offset with a lot of fresh ideas. Evolve skipped that and dropped in a horde mode, right at release that with improvement, could have stood as a free inclusion to draw players back. Speaking of DLC, its seems to have taken a huge grasp in recent years and the DLC apocalypse within Evolve is just one example of why these guys need to rethink their plans. Sure, make money, that's cool by me but clasping for money from tiny extras like a weapon skin pack really isn't on in any situation. Alongside releasing 44 DLC pieces on release, being greeted by a massive day one patch that is bigger than most of the PC games I download and play and finding that the season pass doesn't give you all of the content leaves a sour taste in the mouths of those who have paid the extra.

Ignoring the blatant money grabbing and the length, Evolve can be extremely fun. As the monster is a preferred character of mine, I was going solo and that often leads to some extremely tense moments that had me shaking from adrenaline pumping through me at a rate of knots when posed against a team that are well choreographed. Its these hairy situations that make Evolve fun. The same can go for for the Hunters but often enough, you play with people who simply want to run off and kill the monster on their own and surprisingly, it is almost always the medic. Given that they are given free reign of the map, they will not partner with anyone and the lack of a medic means those who are actually in the fight are left constantly being battered. As for the support class, they fell very inefficient. Their role doesn't change the course of a game unless you are trying to run away from the monster. Back to the monster, have to look at the support you get when you start the game. You have

to choose how you want to advance from the get-go, go loud and run or stick low and not leave footprints? Its erratic when almost instantly you can be tracked because you've drawn or scared the local bird population no matter how you've started and its this that means the monsters can often be caught in a matter of minutes giving all the edge to the hunters. If the hunters are sufficient players, you won't see stage 2. If they split and go solo, you will be looking at an easy win. From here we have to talk about the match making process that comes into play. Is it fair to drop someone in as a monster with no support against a team who are far superior giving an incredibly unbalanced match? No not really. Dropped into lobbies with level 15+ while I'm only 8 was daunting enough adding that I was only a Goliath against a squad of second+ tier hunters ended with me being killed in a matter of 3 minutes flat. Apart from the obvious team balancing issues, the AI is very well programmed. Sometimes they can be a little hard but it has been calmed down since the Big Alpha which means fighting AI's isn't impossible. The creatures of the land are unforgiving and generate enough distractions that can be used tactically depending on your situation.

Finally we have the visual aspects of the game. As a next gen game, they are up to standard. I'm not in awe of the work they have done, simply as I haven't been still long enough to focus on the vegetation of the landscapes. Although there was never a scene that captured me even when I was moving about. In Dragon Age Inquisition, I was caught by the composition and lighting effects within a jail cell while Evolve was more of, "Oh, that looks cool...". Their character designs are where Evolve stands out. Although the monsters are somewhat generic, the hunters run on irony and stereotypes for certain nationalities that are rather amusing and once decked out, look pretty badass. Although a story mode might enable this guys to flourish, they are funny amoungst themselves.

If you are looking for a bit of fun, something to kill a few hours, Evolve is perfect for that. As a long term commitment, it lacks. Eventually the games multiplayer will become sparse and the newcomers later down the line will find it hard to get a decent start into the world without suffering continuous losses until they level up and gain some perks. Visually it is good, I still have sound issues that make the game sound like a robot, whether that is something to do with latency, I don't think I'll ever work it out, but my experience on other online games says otherwise. Pick it up for a little fun, make sure its price is a reasonable £20 or so to get your value for money. All in all, the game is probably a 7/10. I certainly got caught up in all the hype from EGX but the overall outcome was still good and enjoyable except from its large flaws which in some cases, put money ahead of the consumers.

Destiny [Xbox One] - Next Gen Review

If you've lived under a rock for the past 18 months, you probably haven't heard about the new big kid on the block. His name is Destiny. Created by Halo's original makers - Bungie - and Call of Duty's Activision, Destiny is a new creation that supposedly incorporates open-world styling in a first person shooter setting. Think about Defiance but on a fairly restricted scale. But what is it?

Continuously we were bombarded with messages saying that this game had huge and expansive open areas for you to explore and fight enemies within. However this is not the case. These big areas are just CoD maps. You cannot just wander and explore the world, you follow a set path. You have to go on "Patrol" to really explore these worlds yet we have no inclination to actually do so. Its not open world. With very little to actually find on the surface, why should I bother spending ages looking about for some chests that are in vastly limited numbers when I could be getting on with the story?

This is were it gets funny. The story is almost non-existent. Thrust into this war to save the traveller (giant floaty ball), you must defeat its enemies that have come to claim it. You go all Master Chief

This time I chose the Warlock. Very Star Lord

and go kill everything in your way. You meet new races and your only reaction is to kill them. Each planet have their own race of fighters mixed in with the "Fallen" that fight each other...for some reason...Its simply not engaging. Riding off of the success of CoD and Halo is all that this is doing with a few vocal talents thrown in for good measure. I can't quite tell if the story is so convoluted that its just dull or that it suffers from CoD syndrome and lacks any substance other than "BLOW HIS FUCKING FACE OFF!"...

I'm playing on the Xbox One. With all they hype of graphics for the game, I felt my next gen console would grant me far superior visuals than my 360. Although I cannot speak for the PS4, the game does look good. Visuals are sharp and the landscapes do look great. The Guardians also look wicked. One thing I've enjoyed is finding new armour and weapons that look cool and improve my general look. But wait...Wasn't there talk of customization? Sure, there was. At the beginning, you choose the race, type and colour of your guardian but you won't see this often enough to actually care in the long run. If you wish to customise armour, you aren't in luck. Trying to create something that doesn't look like you're planning a gay pride parade across Mars, Venus and Earth is a huge pain in the ass. Simply because you need to actually find things that both improve and match. If its vastly better for defence, you don't want to hold onto something that just looks good but will hurt you in the long run. You can however get shaders. I have one. I can't use it yet as I'm not level 20 and I only got it because I pre-ordered the game alongside the upcoming CoD. Finding others are a mystery to me so I've left it down to looking a bit like a gay Star Lord.

Gameplay. What we all want to hear about. "How does it play?" I hear you asking. Well...Its alright. Aiming is rather slow and feels as if you're moving through glue. The rest of the shooty stuff is fine. You would expect it to be considering the developer combination. Moving is just a huge problem. Running about and shooting in chaotic areas means you cannot see where you are going. Often you end up getting stuck in a gap and then the game has a fit. Unable to jump out of this hole, all your character does is panic and appears to have some sort of seizure until he finally shakes out or you're shot dead because you can't turn around. When you play with other players, it can also be a huge pain in the ass when they continually push into you or walk into the line of fire causing you to waste rounds into the back of their skull. While also playing online with randoms, you will suffer. Continually I have suffered with it. Almost always finding people who are either inactive or inept.

This big fucker made life rather difficult

Just prior to writing this, I completed a strike mission with over 100 more kills than my team "mates" without being downed in the final attempt. Even worse is the fact that those inept are actually higher levels and will often try and grief you. From annoying humans to stupid AI's. Within the Beta testing, many complaints were raised about the Spider Tank and its incredibly high power for its level. Although I didn't have such a problem with it myself (Hide under the bridge and snipe it through the gap) it was substantially nerfed for release. Further into the game upon approaching several other bosses, these were also incredibly OP on their own or had continuous support respawning that you couldn't take him out without being surrounded by 2 dozen hostiles. The other issues is that many of the enemies don't know what to do with themselves. You can either find them hidden behind cover without moving or attacking or you will see them simply standing out in the open with little desire to do anything. The only other thing to really talk about is The Crucible. Online matches for those who get bored of the story. A mix of Captures and TDM's that do little to entice or excite me in the slightest. If you get bored of the story or feel you can't be bothered, they probably are the better place to go but in reality, we have plenty of other things we could be playing.

Perhaps my expectations for Destiny were rather high. Perhaps I caved in to the over generated hype by all the outlets and marketing campaign but is this really an excuse when Bungie and Activision were at the forefront of creating such a storm? I don't think so. The game is a huge disappointment. Already packs are being mentioned and are on pre-order in the hope to pad out the game in the long run but when you buy a game for upwards of £40, you want something with meat on. This was always the case before DLC became such a money-spinner and it angers me that I have to wait and pay more money to understand what the hell is going on with the story or get new game modes/maps. Being so utterly disappointed by Destiny, my only aim is to complete it, get some achievements and put it back on the shelf to look at in the future. Would I recommend buying it? Probably not until its on sale for a tenner. This grand piece of art only turned out to be CoD on a bigger scale. My rating for this feels like a 6/10. Maybe 7 if I get bored.

What did you think of Destiny and do you think DLC 'extras' are something we should embrace?

I'm just going to sit here and think about all the money I just wasted

Watch_Dogs - Review! - Was it worth the wait? - SPOILERS

After spending every available minute I had on Watch Dogs over the past 2 days, I have finally completed the campaign mode and a few of the little extras. Now considering that I've been waiting for this puppy since the first reveal trailer early last year, I was major league bummed to turn up to Eurogamer and find that they only had a stinking demo presentation that we couldn't get our hands on, then to find out that it was pushed back until now stung. The 3rd person sandbox RPG was enough to capture my attention after my huge admiration for Red Dead Redemption a few years back (Still one of the best games known to man...) and blended with a modern world piggybacking on the recent NSA coverage makes this quite a topical game.

Since playing that game, I have got a lot of gripes with the game. For something that I've spent a year waiting for, I'm rather pissed. If I'm annoyed now, I dread to think what was wrong originally to push it back. Straight away we have the driving. Normally, I'm a good driver in games and I get the hang of it very quick but setting foot in a car in this game is one of the worst possible things you could do. Every damn vehicle has the turning circle of a lorry and apparently the ability to perform a burnout when you gently accelerate. The camera angles may as well have been shoved up Aiden's ass as they are some of the worst possible angles I've ever seen and when the majority of time is spent in the fuckers, you have no hope of avoiding them. I'm not expecting that Watch Dogs should be like GTA, but when you can't shoot out of your own damn car or throw/use equipment, it is useless to expect us to be able to take down certain targets who spend all the time on highways in armoured trucks and are near no environmental factors. The only decipherable way to ram them and in doing so do more damage to your car than you inflict and then stealing other cars only to wreck them a moment later. By wreck and run them off the road, by that I mean the poorly animated collisions which are more likely related to morphing. Hitting vehicles along the road almost always looks as if you're transpiring through them like a ghost... So yeah, I despised the driving. To the point I would be willing to never drive in game again. A quick tip, get the Uplay points and unlock that car or steal a car. Buying them is pointless. Other than getting the bonuses, Uplay works whenever the hell it chooses and the ubisoft servers would regularly not work for me and trying to exit to the menu doesn't work at all for me and stayed at one spot while I was away for 3 hours.

Now the core part of the game is the hacking. In advertisements, it portrayed the fact that you could

manipulate everything or a high proportion of things, yet when in the thick of the game play, its

rather sparse for variety but a lot of copy and pasting which can become repetitive if you play as sessions like myself. Apart from the driving mechanics, hacking was easy to do and infiltrating places was also incredibly easy if you didn't fancy the run and gun approach and have some patience. Using the environment to pick people off was rather amusing but if you didn't feel like it, you could easily beat your way through with very little resistance. If you hadn't heard, not long before its release, information was revealed that Watch_Dogs was in a higher resolution for the PS4 rather than the Xbox One. I cannot tell much difference on the One but I do get a little wound up by the fact that its scratched in on a 720p setting for HD. Albeit, the game looks nice and plays the Final Fantasy trick. Luring people in with images from cut scenes that use high standard visuals rather than the core graphics is always a cheap move to make but otherwise it looks good. The gripe is when you're being hacked, the full screen starts blacking out. Now, in reality, why does the screen go black? How can we actually be blinded? Are we a fucking robot!? Let's put ourselves into the future into the Watch_Dogs world. In a time when HD is advancing incredibly fast into 4K, why is it that music and screens glitch in game. Surly the outcome would be crisp shapes with no static and light skipping? Apparently not. In the words of Sips, it makes me want to rip my dick off.

Now, the real reason many by games is the story. I as one of them were satisfied. The campaign was sufficiently long, spending an age going between them probably prolonged the period and there is a lot of side missions to do along the way. The story is hinged upon the past actions by our lead --Aiden Pearce. The loss of his niece has led Aiden to become this masked vigilante called "The Fox", although you only find out the name at 2 instances; midway through and right at the end. As he tries to do good Aiden's new persona has put his remaining family in danger and they need his help to save them. It spirals through 3 villains that all have a lot of roots in the underground and cyberspace. Without spoiling much, the end was a little dramatic but satisfying after the hours you invest. The inevitable "boss" was pretty damn easy when you can set up a load of bombs and the death by the hacking of some personal equipment was an brilliant idea. Somewhat morbid but I couldn't help but revel in how much awesome there was in that moment. As an over arching story, it was average. It's been enough to spark the interest of media outlets who want to discuss its inevitability in the real world but they do the same in Die Hard 4.0 so it's not this new big thing...

So my overall score really focuses on how much I enjoyed it. Apart from the fact that it glitches like a bitch at times, the driving is enough to drive me insane and that the story could be covered in the next buddy cop comedy movie with Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, it was rather fun.  Blowing stuff up and shooting people is what's at the core and that does it for me. Although I can't quite justify the wait, I'm giving this a 7/10. Also the fact that "collectors edition" is more, "collect these 5 different additions with different things if you want everything because we are going to milk you like a little cow"...Cheers, guys. Plus, when you advertise something, don't ruin the secrets and create new scenes which never appear in game...