Reviews: Farcry 3: Blood Dragon

"Part man, part machine, all cyborg warrior". This sentence is among the opening lines of the game and it truly sets the tone for the rest of the DLC. 

Farcry 3 Blood Dragon started out with the same kind of humor that's prevalent throughout the game, by releasing  a teaser on April 1st. Almost everyone thought it was just a April fools, no doubt Ubisoft's intent all along, so in the end, the joke was the joke itself, well played ubisoft, well played. 

In Blood Dragon you step into the shoes and cyborg eye implant of a Sargeant Rex Power Colt, a commando sent with his partner the 'blacksploitation' gag of the game, Spider, to an island to investigate their former commander-gone-rogue. 

The world is recovering from a nuclear war in the year 2007 as seen from a 1980's point of view, and when looking at the horizon near the edge of the map you can see distant nuclear explosions, but the island itself remains relatively unharmed. 

The level of comical detail put into the game is what really made it stand out during our playthrough, with everything from dialogues to tutorial text it's like the game stops and winks at you between each one-liner. 

One-liners on par with classic Duke Nukem and prevalent throughout the entire game, even the tutorial has one liners, asking you to 'prove your ability to read' by pressing a button. 

If you are of the sort who never read descriptions or journals, you might want to make an effort in this one, most of the best jokes in the entire game can be found in weapon and animal descriptions. 

The gameplay can be compared to Farcry 3, and though highly enjoyable it definatly takes a back seat to the theme of the game. Cutscenes in the game come in the form of low res 8 bit graphics from the late 80's era of video games, but with voice acting. 

The weapons in the game easily fill every purpose and you're never left wanting, they have a nice weighty feeling and a sense of 'oomph' when hitting an enemy, the upgrades are inventive and closes whatever gap there might be in your armory. 

For instance, you might feel you're missing some sort of rocket launcher, but the exploding rounds upgrade for the sniper does the job just fine. 

Here we stumble on the one and single issue we had with the game; the game wants you to handle situations either with a balls out, guns blazing approach or a stealthy, pick your targets and time every move approach. 

The problem lies with the upgrades, the gun gets a silencer, however, one headshot is never enough to take out a sentry, the only guns that do that are the fully upgraded assault rifle and sniper without exploding bullets. 

In other words, you can only do the stealthy approach by using melee takedowns if you have to be medium to close range, so we found ourselves more than once just standing far away and pelting the area with explosive sniper fire, wich gives stealth kills bonus if you are standing far enough away. 

With the neon lights, vector graphics, fun gameplay, hilarious story and great writing, Farcry 3 Blood Dragon is a fantastic package at its price. And although you can fly through its few, but meaty missions in a fairly quick time, exploring the island and unlocking upgrades really rewards you and when you near the games end you feel like a total b-movie badass, nigh immortal and a killing machine. 

This is a game featuring  such classic 80's clichè gems as a completely off center love story, a tai chi during sunrise scene and a training montage... In one cutscene. 

Overall

Fantastic game, for those who grew up in the 80's-90's it can bring some nostalgia, but mostly its a game that's overly self aware, so far past the point where its not funny until it becomes funny again. More than once we got the feeling the creators were playing the game and laughing alongside us. 

Game score: 5/5

Gameviews recommendation score: 80%

If you either dont like shooters or dont like parodies (of old movies and themes) this is not for you, everyone else, buy this, seriously.

Reviews: Dishonored: Knife of Dunwall DLC

It truly feels like Daud 'fills' Corvo's boots either as much or more than the man himself.

The first noteworthy thing you notice when you start this DLC, other than that it needed a better way to select the content from the main menu, is Daud's dreary, worn and rusty voice. A voice, truly fitting for the man in this universe, a voice that has seen and done many thing, recounting the events in the beginning of the main game. 

One cant really say what kind of character Corvo was because of the silent protagonist syndrome that lets you fill the role of personality in your on-screen avatar. Daud on the other hand is a unique and exciting character, with a tip of the hat to Michael Madsen, masterly portraying every aspect and emotion of the character without ever seeing a face. 

You can really get a sense of Daud's regret, insecurity and wish for redemption through the dialogue and nuances of mr. Madsen's voice. The second thing you notice is the 'favors' system, new to this DLC, it allows you to buy, well, favors in the next mission, like a safe password or a missplaced bone charm. 

In the mission itself the favors become side missions you can pursue if you so desire, adding longevity to each mission. On our first playthrough we went for zero kills, but can be spotted, and what we noticed is a lack of way to disable someone in a fight if you get caught in the wrong place, though this is not the fault of the DLC and wont subtract anything from our score. 

The final mission of this DLC you truly have to be a master to remain unseen and have enough sleepbolts or choke gas to keep going if you are seen more than once. Wich brings us to our other issue, we completed the last mission by simply running to our objectives while being chased by the guards the entire time. 

The game is simply too easy if you dont mind being spotted, thats a small issue though, easily remedied by the always-at-hand difficulty option in the menu. The new Blink, freezing time whenever you stop moving while holding the button, makes Daud stand out from Corvo as a more Advanced user of The Outsider's granted abilities. 

It allows for more varied use and you get a great feeling when sprinting towards the edge of a roof, jump and freeze time mid flight only to realize two guards saw you and then blink to a ledge you can barely reach with your body now slightly closer, floating mid-air, out of the guards' views. 

Our main concern is that for some this might be a very quick and small DLC at a high price, it all depends on how you play. Some will thoroughly explore each area and try to remain as stealthy as possible, especially for a no-kill run, this can last you anywhere from four to six hours. But on the other hand, if you dont care about chaos and just want to kill everything in your path, this should be a quick 45 minutes to an hour. 

But what Dishonored did so well continues in this content with both playstyles being complimented with upgrades and abilities, and you feel like you're urged to go either way. And when the game is over you get a sense to jump back in and play it again in a different way. so if you do play through this in an hour you might end up spending another six despite having finished it.

Overall

This is how DLC should be done, it should add without taking anything away from the main game, Daud is a fantastic character, portrayed so well by the writing and Michael Madsen's performance. The new areas to explore are rich and enchances the feeling you get that there are many, many ways to aproach your mission. Some might still find the length to be a little on the short side, but the DLC, like the game, has great replayability and different experiences to be had on each playthrough.

Game score: 5/5

GameViews recommendation score: 100%

We find it really hard to imagine someone who enjoyed the main game to have any regrets paying for this, it will only enrichen the Dishonored universe and give you an excuse to revisit this great game.

Reviews: Injustice: Gods Among Us

Injustice: Gods Among Us is the newest fighting game released by NetherRealm and it shows. 

The last time NetherRealm used their DC comics license was with the love-it-or-hate-it title "Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe", but in the end, what the DC license really needed was a stand-alone fighting game. The way the combat in the game works just feels fluid and the scenery feels really interactive. 

With it's 'use enviromental attack' button and the ability to change combat arena by knocking your opponent into a whole new part of the map, the way you can vary and combine attacks, it has really outgrown Mortal Kombat 9. Just the mechanincs in general are leaps and bounds ahead of the previous Mortal Kombat. 

Having said that, the way the game feels and plays is easily recognizable to any elite Mortal Kombat player. In the beginning you'll be jumping to cover distance and fights feel very slow paced, but soon you will be dashing and juggling foes like you've never done anything else. 

A feature that helps make every character seem completely unique is the 'character ability' button that varies from character to character. Each fighter has a different ability; Batman summons three batarangs that can make a combo longer or disrupt a incoming flurry of blows, Wonder Woman swaps between flying-fighting-with-a-whip to sword and shield. Yet some are less impressive compared to others.

Adding in the 'bounce cancel' move and 'block escape' move allows Injustice to be more of an E-Sports game than its predeccesor. The bounce cancel move allows a player to cancel out of his combo and bounce his opponent for a reset and juggle opportunity, while on the other hand the block escape move cost one bar of your super meter and helps you out of a combo. 

Then there's the new clash mechanic: If one player is low on health, he can initiate a clash where both players wager a portion of their super bar. The winner gets a percentage of his health back. It just shows how strategic this game is and fighting game E-sports these days are all about strategic games. Hopefully we'll all be able to see this played in major tournaments soon. 

One thing we can rely on from NetherRealms is that they will always set new benchmarks for story in fighting games. And Injustice is no exception. Throughout the story mode this reviewer was glued to the screen. Coming into this with a mild interest in comics, we found the story to be both compelling and dramatic and found ourselves rushing past fights to see the next segment. 

Online mode is really the meat of the game. If you enjoy the fighting mechanics and want to keep playing the game, this is where you will be spending most of your time. In addition to the standard ranked/unranked matches, there's the "king of the hill" and "survivor" modes. 

King of the hill forms a group of up to 8 players where the winner keeps playing until he loses while the others spectate and wait for their chance to challenge the king. Not much is more exhilarating than finally beating the king or growing your streak of wins. Survivor is basically the same, but the 'survivors' character pick and health bar carries over to the next fight with very little health regained.

Overall we had a blast with the game, and cant wait to get back to it. There are minor nitpicky things, like the QTE's before some of the matches seemed out of place, but they're fairly quick and you can just skip them alltogether. Some people might not like the way combos or abilities work, but that's just individual preference.

Game score* : 4.2 out of 5

GameViews recommendation score**: 70% Fighting games are more of a niche genre that's hard to recommend to everyone, but the gripping story and newbie friendly game system makes this an above average recommendation.

*A general scoring system, 0-100 has been skewed to much so it counts more as 50-100, because 50 is considered a bad score when it's really average, and average these days is pretty good to be fair.

** This will be a % score based on how much we recommend you buy it with a short description of why we believe you should\should not buy the game