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And the second one.

Review 2:

Metro Impressions

As a first time player of the Metro series Metro Exodus does a great first impression for getting me into the series.

Developed by 4A games and published by Deep Silver Metro Exodus is the third installment to the story driven FPS based on the books by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The game had a lot of controversy with the pc port before release but since I played the game on PS4 I won't refer to it in this review.

The Metro games are very well respected for their design and atmospheric setting and game play. Everything in Metro Exodus is done in fine detail from your weapons getting visibly dirty to the characters clothing changing based on what area they’re in (Swamp, Desert, Etc). The devs seem to have thought of everything the player could do when developing Exodus. The one complaint I would have is with the movement of your character being a bit too slow and on occasion the movement speed would slow down to a snail's pace for 10-20 seconds.

The graphical quality and detail the developers managed to push into a PS4 is fantastic making the environments, characters and details beautiful yet terrifying. The detail in the water ripples as you row a row boat down the river or how if your gas mask breaks you’ll need to fix it and tape and cracks will be visible on the mask when you wear it immerses you in this post apocalyptic Russia.

Sound design is done incredibly in Exodus, the voice acting is believable and doesn't go too far into the accents for it to be cringy. The sound design of the creatures is terrifying and sends chills down your spine. The gun sounds with the firing and reloading sound hard and heavy.

As a whole Metro Exodus is a fear inducing open world fps which stays true to its roots with its underground dungeon areas which still have their levels of claustrophobia and terrifying mutants to combat and whilst there are few bug and issues and a lackluster ending Metro Exodus does a fantastic job at getting me into the series and I intend to visit the older games sometime because of it!

8/10

[blightedstuff]

Just gonna upload some basic reviews I did for my university assignments.

Review 1:

Apex legends.

One surprise release that occurred in recent weeks is the release of Apex Legends a free to play battle royale hero shooter set in the titanfall universe and created by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA. The game has risen in popularity drastically within that time reaching the 25 million player mark most recently.

When it comes to FPS gameplay Respawn are arguably the best at developing it which shouldn't be a surprise as some of their devs have made other well received FPS games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (The first one). The gameplay of Apex Legends is done to near perfection, the movement mechanics feel speedy yet not slippery and the gun play feels heavy and responsive. The ping system that is incorporated into the game is a very welcome inclusion into the game as it gives players who are playing with other players without mics an option to be able to communicate with them, each character says a unique voice line for every possible ping as-well so the team communication is done for you! The amount of polish and lack of bugs feels refreshing considering EA’s reputation for releasing unfinished games.

The graphics for Apex Legends look very similar to its predecessor Titanfall 2 although Apex Legends looks alot more colourful and has more shaders involved. The character models and their unique skins look excellent and well modeled. The animation of the various weapons in the game are reused from titanfall 2 and the well designed animations give them a feeling of sturdiness and durability whilst still being speedy and cool to look at.

The sound design in Apex Legends is excellent with the gun sounds feeling heavy and they pack-a-punch. The character voice lines are also done very well even with a variety of different accents that are noticeable and understandable. The soundtrack used in the game is excellently made to give the player a feeling of intensity and excitement as they drop into the arena and begin to loot up!

I’ve personally never been into the battle royale genre but apex legends changes up the genre enough to make it fun for me and Respawn have once again delivered a well designed experience.

9/10 from me

[blightedstuff]

A lonely railroad within the quiet apocalypse

Game: The Long Dark

[blightedstuff]

They shall not grow old.

A movie directed and produced by Peter Jackson and as he describes himself it’s a documentary made by a non historian. As a person who takes a large interest in history (especially war history) the film immediately became a favourite of mine.

The film uses real footage from WW1 and the creators use the restored footage in combination with actual interviews with veterans from the war to create a story starting from the start of the war till the end of it. The achievement of restoring the film is a reason the watch the film by itself. The amount of detail and effort that went into this film is also something to admire as they even use lip readers to give the people in the film voices so you can hear what they are saying to each other. All of these features are painstakingly added to make these people as human as possible which gives the viewer a more empathetic understanding of what these soldiers went through.

What this movie documentary hybrid is really about is giving a more human side to history and Peter Jackson does this fantastically, this movie will be one that i’ll definitely re-watch in the future and I encourage anyone to watch this movie as it’s not only an achievement of the film industry but it gives the viewer a look at what these soldiers went through and lets us see the people that they were.

9/10

[blightedstuff]

Destroy All Humans 2 review. (A Cult Classic)

Destroy All Humans 2 is the sequel to the first game (Destroy All Humans) and was made by Pandemic Studios and published by THQ back in 2006 for the original Xbox and PlayStation 2 and would be the last game to be developed by Pandemic. The game has been considered a cult classic as it did not become too popular and the series has generally been forgotten.

Story: The story itself isn’t something too deep or symbolic but it fits for what sort of game this is. Set 10 years after the events of the first game, it’s 1969 and you play as Cryptosporidium (or just Crypto) 138, a Furon and the successor the the first game’s main character Cryptosporidium 137. To keep the story short, you travel around different locations around the earth to try to take down to people who destroyed your mother ship and who threaten the earth itself. The game is set within a time period where hippies were common and the soviet union was still a thing and this game does not shy away from stereotypes and plenty of dark humour.

Graphics and Style: Being released back in 2006 means that it’ll be difficult to compare the graphical quality, but looking at images of games released at the time and it obvious that this game looked good compared to its competitors. There’s a lot of attention to details when it comes to certain character models like how Crypto’s head faintly glows a couple of colours where his brain would be and how the saucer (Your spaceship you can fly around in.) visually changes depending on how much damage its taken. The style of the game is very heavily based on 60’s stereotypes, America is full of hippies, England is full of secret agents and Austin Powers lookalikes, Japan has ninjas and Godzilla and so on. The music has a different tone from the first game, the first game had a heavy 50’s alien movie type of soundtrack whilst this one is more based on the environment you are in E.G. England has a heavy spy film like music to it whilst still having some of that alien tone.

Gameplay: The game is an action adventure open world game and you can tell as soon as you begin to play that this game is not to be taken seriously and is meant to be a fun, humourous, parody like game which pokes fun at a lot of subjects. There’s a lot of things you can do in the game, from reading people’s thoughts to prank calling the police. The general gameplay itself is pretty basic, you run around, shoot and run around some more, rinse and repeat. You have a jetpack which does give a lot of movement options when it comes to combat and moving around the map. Crypto also comes with his psychokinetic powers which give a variety of different abilities such as mind control, telekinesis and the ability to take over a human’s body and stay disguised as one. You also have double the amount of creative weapons to disintegrate and destroy, with new weapons like the Dislocator and the Burrow beast and so on. The AI isn’t that smart and could definitely have done with some improvements, they aren’t super bad but they could’ve been smarter.

Destroy All Humans 2 has a great soundtrack, great style, funny and witty writing and memorable characters but it’s held back by its simple story and the gameplay can be a bit too simple at times.

I would give the game a 8/10 and if you want to play a more light hearted, fun and comedic game then this one will not disappoint. 

End Note: Destroy All Humans 2 is a game I grew up with and will always be one of my favourite games of all time and I hope that other developers will make more games like it in the future.