video games

Time to revisit The Witcher 3, perhaps

It’s hard to believe that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt came out a year ago (my Gog.com account tells me I last played it a year ago). It was such an awesome game and the latest trailer and screens for the next DLC, Blood and Wine has me contemplating actually firing the game up again.

The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt_Blood_and_Wine_A_nice_day_for_a_walkThe_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt_Blood_and_Wine_Sleep-tightOut on May 31, Blood and Wine (PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4) is, says CD Projekt Red’s game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, lead character Geralt’s final mission. With more than 90 new quests, and more than 30 hours of new adventuring, he says it’s something that he believes gamers will remember for a long time.

“There’s also a massive amount of features we’re giving gamers with this expansion like a dynamic Point of Interest system, a new Gwent deck, new endgame mutation mechanics, and even a place Geralt can call home …. And it’s all happening in a new region as big as No Man’s Land in the base game,” Tomaszkiewicz says.

The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt_Blood_and_Wine_Thanks_for_reaching_outI didn’t play the first DLC but I’m really keen on checking this out. From what’s been shown in screen shots & in the trailer, the game world looks a lot more vibrant and colourful, which is something that I like (I’m sure there are dark moments with horrific monsters but yeah, I’m liking the vibrancy here).

It looks like Blood & Wine will cost $20.47 (it’s currently 10% off). It’s something that I’ll seriously look at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to win a copy of Uncharted 4? Of course you do …

Hopefully,  you’ve read my review by now of Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End, the latest adventure for Nathan Drake.

PS4_UC4_3D_Inlay_R13In the review I said that Naughty Dog had saved the best Uncharted till last – and I stand by that. I loved the game from start to finish and now, thanks to the kind folks at PlayStation NZ, you have the chance to win a copy of Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End and an Uncharted cap.

Entering the competition is simple. All you have to do is tell me what is your favourite moment from an Uncharted game. It could be the opening moments of Uncharted 2 or it could just be some of the amazing locations the game has visited: It’s up to you. To enter, you have to either write a comment on this blog or visit the Gamejunkie 2.0 Facebook page and post a comment there (feel free to like the page as well!)

Like any competition, of course, there are some T&Cs:

  • The competition is only open to people in New Zealand with a New Zealand residential address.
  • The competition runs from 8pm, Tuesday, May 10 until 8pm, Sunday, May 15.
  • You must be aged over 13 to enter the competition.
  • To enter,  you can either post a comment on this blog on your favourite moment from the Uncharted series or on the Gamejunkie NZ Facebook page. One entry per person, please.
  • The prize (1 x Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End game, 1 x Uncharted 4 cap) will be drawn after 8pm, May 15 and the winner notified by email or direct message. The game is PlayStation 4 exclusive so you’ll also need a PS4 to play it on (you’ll have to supply that yourself).
  • The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Cap UC4So, what are you waiting for? Get your entry in!

 

 

 

Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End: Saving the best till last

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End has been responsible for me losing sleep.
It turned out it was one of those “A few more minutes then I’ll go to bed” games. Most gamers would have been there. All gamers will know a game like that.
city_09I finished Uncharted 4’s narrative campaign in 16 hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds on moderate difficulty (I’ve heard things are fairly tough in the hard and above difficulties) and loved it. According to the in-game stats, I spent 2 hours 14 minutes and 34 seconds of that standing still, I climbed 5652 metres, collected 25 of 109 treasures and defeated 583 enemies. I plan to play through it again (I haven’t gone near the multiplayer yet. If I do, I’ll do it when the servers go public but Uncharted has always been about the campaign for me).

During two late night sessions when I played until 2am in the morning (one of them Monday night) I remember looking at my watch at 11.30pm – I was the only one up: My family had long gone to bed – and saying to myself “OK, a few more minutes and I’m off to bed”. The next time I looked at my watch it was 2.10am – and I had to be up at 7am to get ready for work.

ope_01I can’t remember a game that has hooked me so much as Uncharted 4. It’s good. It’s very, very good.
Set three years after the events of Uncharted 3, Nathan Drake, the intrepid adventurer from the previous three Uncharted games, has apparently left the world of fortune hunting behind him but when his older brother Sam turns up, he’s convinced to head off on a quest to find the treasure of fabled and feared pirate Henry Avery.
What follows is a roller coaster ride of adventuring globe-trotting that is, to me, the best of the series.  Naughty Dog have definitely saved the best to last. Uncharted 4 might not have the big set pieces like Uncharted 3 did or the unforgettable opening of Uncharted 2 but it’s all the better for it.

dive_01Visually, the game is stunning – I think that will come as no surprise – with locations including lush verdant valleys, abandoned towns, underground tombs and the depths of the deep blue sea, but for me, the Uncharted games and Naughty Dog have always been about the narrative, about the relationships between characters. There is a reason that ND’s other stellar game The Last of Us is so good: The relationship between its two lead characters – and it’s the same with Uncharted 4. The relationships are front and centre.

The main thing that really hit home for me with Uncharted 4 is that it’s about the relationships between Drake and those he loves, especially the relationships he has with Elena Fisher (who he is now married to), and his brother Sam, who Drake thought was dead. Sure, Uncharted 4 has gunplay  and climbing and bad guys and treasure but it’s all about the characters. This may sound really weird, because we’re talking about digital actors here,  but at times I almost believed they were human: They looked and behaved so realistically.

home_01Case in point: During one late game cinematic, I watched Elena who was standing in the background as Drake spoke and her mannerisms and body language felt like I was watching an actor and not a collection of pixels rendered on a TV screen.

I felt more connected to Drake and Elena more than I had in previous games and they look older too: We’ve been through a lot together and I put that connection down to ND’s Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, who both skipped Uncharted 3 to work on The Last of Us. It shows: This is probably the best narrative I’ve seen in an Uncharted game – or perhaps any game in recent memory – and I felt invested in the characters. Not many games do that to me.

The game’s environments are more open, too, allowing you to reach an objective using a variety of paths, and combat feels more weighty than in previous Uncharted games and while at times the odds seem stacked against Drake, using the environment to your advantage works beautifully here.

You can now use a grappling hook to help take enemies down as well as swinging across gapping chasms and, yes, ledges and handholds still crumble when Nate is climbing a precarious cliff face or building but I never grew tired of it.

city_06I liked that I could tackle the combat situations all guns blazing, if you want, but that will attract the attention of every enemy in the vicinity, of  course, or you can creep through long grass (yes, creeping through long grass is now a feature), taking out as many enemies as you can quietly. I tried to handle as many situations as I could this way: Take out a handful of enemies quietly by pulling them off ledges or from the vantage of vegetation then using the grappling hook to swing across a gap, punching down an enemy from above. It’s so satisfying, believe me.

Uncharted 4 is also a game full of little details that help you feel that the game world is a living, breathing place and the characters have conversations amongst themselves while Nate is off climbing a ruined building. It’s those little things that give the game more grounding in reality and makes the characters more believable, more real. Driving through Madagascar,  I knocked over several rock piles, prompting Sam to say:  “You do realise that someone probably took hours putting those rocks there?”
The puzzles are back, and they’re not too taxing if you pay attention to sequences and clues you’ve picked up and I could go on for hours about Uncharted 4 but I’m going to stop.  You’ve realised by now that I loved Uncharted 4 and it’s the best  of the series because its characterisation is front and centre.
If I had any niggles it would that I felt there were perhaps too many “Oh, can you find something to help get me up to that out-of-reach ledge” moments. Generally that something involved a large crate on wheels.
Uncharted 4 is a triumph of narrative and proves Naughty Dog are masters at creating characters you can believe in. It is a fitting farewell.
Thanks to PlayStation NZ which provided me with a review copy of Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End. 

Deus Ex Mankind Divided new trailer

Umm, I’ll just leave this here, shall I? I watched it a few times, I must admit. I’m hyped for this game. HYPED!

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is out on PC, Xbox One and PS 4 on August 23 and you’ll be able to buy just the game itself (that’ll do me nicely) or two boxed versions. The Day-One edition which features an extra in-game mission (this sort of thing pisses me, to be honest: Why not give the level to everyone who paid for the game??),  Covert agent packs which contains a compilation of in-game items, including various weapons, re-skins, and upgrades, a digital copy of the original soundtrack (this would be most excellent as it is being done by the most excellent Michael McCann) and digital copies of a mini artbook, novella and comic book.

Then there’s the collectors edition (I bought the Batman Arkham Knight Collectors edition and after that, I’ve decided I’ll never buy a collectors edition again. I just don’t think they’re generally worth the money you pay) which comes with all the Day-One edition content, a 9-inch Adam Jensen figurine, a black and gold prism-shaped box, a 48-page art book and a steelbook.

Shawn Ashmore interview: Bending time and having fun doing it

Canadian actor Shawn Ashmore is a man playing with time.

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The digital Shawn Ashmore as Jack Joyce.

OK, Ashmore can’t actually manipulate time in real life but thanks to his starring role as Jack Joyce in the Xbox One game Quantum Break, he’s able to bend time to his will – and he couldn’t be happier about it.

The Canadian actor, who is probably more well-know for playing Iceman in the X-Men movies and appearing in TV show The Following, was brought into Quantum Break a fair way into its development cycle (a game play trailer from E3 2014 shows a different actor playing Joyce) and he said as soon as he heard that Remedy was making the game he jumped at the chance to be involved.

“I got a phone call from my agent who told me that Microsoft Game Studios was developing a new IP. When he pitched the story I thought ‘Wow, this is bold. I’m interested” but when he told me Remedy were making the game, I instantly said: “I’m in”. I felt that the narrative was well suited to my acting style.”

shawn-ashmore-1

The real Shawn Ashmore.

Ashmore said doing motion capture for his character in Quantum Break was a challenging but a “magical” experience but he said realised early on that Remedy were doing something special with the game. He divided his performance between motion capture work in Los Angeles with co-stars The Wire and Game of Thrones Aidan Gillen (who plays Quantum Break’s villain Paul Serene and The Wire’s Lance Reddick) and facial capture work at Remedy’s headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. He said Quantum Break was double the workload for working on a movie or TV show.

“The first few days were quite strange. I was outfitted with a head rig and I felt, at first, a little out of my element but I got used to it. Doing the mo-cap felt very pure, in a sense that you had more time to rehearse scenes, go over scripts. I felt that I was a little freer to work scenes than if shooting on a movie. It wasn’t a constant shoot: Because of the nature of the work, we’d shoot a week in LA doing mo-cap then a month later I’d be in Finland.”

The actor said the biggest challenge with the mo-cap was remaining completely still while capturing his performance. “It was hard, though, as Jack goes through things that are emotional and I had to go through all that emotion while remaining still.”

Ashmore says he loved that Remedy was taking a chance by making Quantum Break,  and that the developer was open to suggestions he had about how to portray Jack Joyce.

Quantum Break_REVIEWS_Screenshot 18“I’ve got a brother [twin brother Aaron Ashmore] so I kind of drew on my relationship with him in how I thought Jack would relate to Will [Jack’s brother, Will, is played by actor Dominic Monaghan]. I tried to bring a part of me into Jack.”

Since finishing the game, Ashmore said he was pleased with the end result. “I’m happy how it played out. It was exactly what I’d wanted.”

His digital likeness in Quantum Break has also had an unexpected effect on his wife, someone who doesn’t normally play video games.

“I played QB with my wife, who’s not a gamer, and I gave her the controller and she wouldn’t give it up. She was so into it. That was a good sign: That someone who wasn’t a hardcore gamer liked it, that the narrative could pull people in.

Ashmore said it was inevitable that a game like Quantum Break, which blurred the lines between video game and TV, was made. “People want to experience things like this. Remedy has taken the best narrative parts of a video game and combined it with the cinematic style of TV. It’s not the type of game that every developer will make, though.”

“I’ve been blown away by the game. I tell people that my inner 10-year-old is jumping up and down! Seeing my likeness in the game was a really emotional experience, especially for my wife, who told me ‘This is something we’re going to be able to show our kids when you’re 60’.”

Quantum Break is out now on Xbox One and PC

** Thanks Xbox’s awesome NZ PR man who, despite me emailing him after business hours on Monday requesting a possible interview with Ashmore if he had time in his schedule, found a time for me to chat to the X-men and Quantum Break star. Big thanks, Gavin!
***  Ashmore also told me that while his QB tour was his first trip to New Zealand he has ties to the Land of the Long White Cloud. “This is only my first visit but my parents lived and worked here before I was born. They still have friends here.”

“The times they are a changing”: How gaming less has made me appreciate it more

gamepad_318-48332.pngI’m sure I’m not alone in this but I’ve found the amount of time I have to game these days seems to be getting less and less – and the times I play those video games has changed, too. I guess, when I look at it, it’s the natural progression of getting older, having more responsibilities (partner/children/work/other interests) and prioritising things –  but, surprisingly, gaming less is not necessarily a bad thing, at least  not for me.

When I was in my early 20s, I was pretty much able to game when I wanted to, apart from while I was at work, of course (although when I picked up a job doing game reviews for a NZ newspaper that shall remain nameless I was able to convince my non-gamer wife that the hours I was spending on video games was legitimate work: It worked most of the time). If I wanted to play a game on a Saturday afternoon, I could but as work became busier and children came along, my priorities changed: Gaming took a back seat for a while, especially when the children were still up.

If I wanted to game while the children were up I had to be selective on what I played, too: I rightly couldn’t play violent first- or third-person shooters in front of them, which was fair enough. There was a silver lining, though, as the children got older I started reviewing more child-friendly games, meaning I could get them to play the game with me: Win-win. Of my two children, my son is the one who games these days. My daughter hasn’t shown an interest in it apart from The Sims from time to time.

As I got older, time to game didn’t become so much of a priority: Other things took precedence. I’m sure many of you have found yourself in a similar position: By the time you get home from work, do the things around the house that need doing, sort dinner, take the dog for a walk (or go for a bike ride) and spent time with the family, it’s almost bedtime! Well, not quite, but it seems I don’t have the energy or time to spent four or five hours gaming in a single session anymore these days. I’m also not usually gaming until after 10pm, which means if I’m too late I’m pretty tired in the morning.

I guess it’s natural for the time you spent on things to change as your life changes but I’m now finding that now I’m in my mid-40s (I know: Old man, right?) while I don’t have a lot of time to game, I’m finding that I’m enjoying it more because it’s more focused. I’m doing it in bite-sized chunks and that suits my life now. I’ll play a mission then go to bed.

Another thing I’ve noticed, too, is that I’ll often be quite happy sitting watching my avid gamer teenager son him while he plays multiplayer COD or a few rounds of zombies on Black Ops 3. I don’t have to be gaming myself to find enjoyment in it. Watching my son is a fascinating exercise in seeing how a young, agile gamer tackles particular  situations or scenarios (it’s also great in seeing how he handles when things go wrong). Sometimes, I’ll just sit, transfixed as he racks up another kill or jump boosts his way through a map, taking down a horde or zombies with a bow. He’s young so has quick reflexes and reactions, unlike me. I don’t play MP games anymore  these days: My hand-eye co-ordination just isn’t up to the task anymore and my eyesight is starting to get worse (I had to buy a cheap pair of glasses from a chain store the other day just so I could read the fine print on a bottle of something)  and I’m not old (at least I don’t consider that I am) but my reflexes aren’t as quick as they used to be. I’ll stick to my campaign/story-based games, thanks.

That fact that I game less now isn’t a bad thing: I think it’s actually made me appreciate gaming more. I think it has helped that I don’t review as many games as I used to. When you review dozens of games a year I think you start to lose the enjoyment factor and the reason why you started playing games in the first place. As a critic, you’re no longer playing games for fun, you’re playing them to find fault. Now that I’m reviewing fewer games and buying more games myself, I can sit back, take as long as I like to finish it, and enjoy it. I’m liking that.

I’m also not so obsessed with collecting Achievements/Trophies as I was as a younger gamer. Now, I want to experience the game for all it can give me and I’m not wanting to blast through it, missing details in the narrative or all it has to offer. I’ve got no problem taking 10 hours to finish a game that Gamer X took six hours to complete. I have less time to game these days so I want to savour every moment.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is if you’re gaming less now than you used to don’t see it as a negative. Embrace it and enjoy it. You might find,. like me,  you start enjoying games a little more.

 

Somebody pick up my jaw from the floor, please

I’m just going to leave this – the newest trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End – here, OK.

Try not to drool on your desk/floor/kitchen table/lap too much, alright?

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is out on the PlayStation 4 at the end of this month. That’s not far at all in May.