So I picked up a title unexpectedly a couple weeks ago.

Nioh popped up on my radar briefly at the PSX show in December, the developer took the stage to talk about his title, and when asked how long it was, he casually said to do the story and some side quest, like 70+ hours, oh, and this is a “Dark Souls” like game in difficult, and plays a lot like Ninja Gaiden with a splash of Onimusha tossed in.

I was instantly sold, but due to length, I was going to pick it up later in the year.

Well reading a few stellar reviews on other site, I decided to jump in an man am I glad I did.

I just finished my play-through, which consisted of 100% of the side missions and 100% story and it clocked in a total of 68h 23m.

I didn’t manage to finish all the Dojo challenge missions, or more than 2 Twilight missions, so there is still a good 10+ hrs of content left.

On top of that, a NG+ mode unlocks post game, where the original story missions from the first 3 regions are now in uber hard mode, but have very big rewards too.

So needless to day, there is likely 80-100 hrs of content available day one, with the dev promising a new difficulty mode coming soon as well.

The game play is similar in spirit to Dark Souls or Bloodborne, you have to be good at this game to succeed, and you will die… A LOT. I am no slouch when it comes to hard mode, and I still manage to clock in over 200 deaths start to finish.

Something in the way of a surprise with Nioh is how fast paced it is, I love Dark Souls, but those games tend to be a lot slower and more calculated. Where Nioh is a very twitch based game, but requires a great amount of skill to proceed.

As the game progresses you will get better, not stronger. While armor and weapons increase your damage, the monsters you fight are on the same sliding scale, so things you fought as  mid level bosses in stage 1, will be run of the mill enemies by the end of the game.

As levels progress the challenge not only revolves around the enemies you fight, but the environment as well. Take a large Armita Fiend in an open area and you can usually dodge your way to success, but put him in a cramped hallway and the game changes completely.

This is the beauty of Nioh, it is ever changing and evolving from start to finish, with not a single of the games 20+ story missions having the same level. And every single level offering a very unique experience or location. From a flotilla like village with water graves and broken ships everywhere, to mansions in Kyoto or the bloodied battlefield with hundreds of soldiers fighting in the background.

Variety is something  I did not expect from Nioh but was thrilled to find it. There is no fetch quests, no doubling back to cheaply fill out a level, this game is large and very well designed.

The side quest offer smaller snips of the larger levels, and oft explore some areas you never saw in the main mission, That mansion you explored may have a back garden you could not reach, in a side mission you may begin in the house proper, but go out a door that was previously locked. So even most of the side mission feel substantial.

The leveling system is also akin to the “Souls” games, in the fact that you gain experience (Armita) by killing enemies or searching bodies and Soul Stones.

If you are bested in battle, your guardian spirit lays in wait for you to return and collect it and the souls you dropped, but die again, and you will lose all you have collected forever.

This adds a real challenge to every confrontation, you can cash in your souls at a shrine strewn about the levels, and touching one gives you a place to respawn, but the cost is that all enemies you have killed thus far will respawn as well.

So the game is a constant balance of should I spent my souls and level up, or chance making it to the next Shrine and maybe losing everything I have done thus far.

This really forces you to play the game like intended, cautiously and with skill, not just brute force, because that is the road to dying guaranteed.

The game itself is split into 6 main regions (and a couple bonus ones I will not go into) as well as random Twilight Missions.

The Twilight missions are like Nioh on steroids, levels have about 2x-3x the enemies of regular level, and the creatures here are HARD, double or more the HP and strength. You will die here, and die often.

There are 9 in total, and only 2 are ever available at one time, they reset to a different level every day at 11pm est I believe.

This makes getting them for the trophy a bit of a pain, as the appear and change randomly, you may have to wait days or even week to see all of them come up.

But in all fairness, you will be playing this game for likely weeks as it is, so they should all appear in that time frame.

Visuals and sound is top notch in Nioh as well, with lots of small details that really sell the environments, small fires burning, birds picking corpses clean, everything is meticulously designed.

Audio is top notch too, with lots of subtle sounds giving you an idea of where enemies are located and hiding.

There is also a heavy crafting component to the game in the way of a blacksmith shop. Where items, armor and weapons can all be crafted, merged to make better stats, de-synthed for materials, and created anew.

The loots system is not so dissimilar from Destiny or Diablo, with random loot drops from chests. monsters and the like.

All and all Nioh scratches a real itch that is missing, good Ninja / Samurai games, since the departure of Ninja Gaiden and Onimusha years ago, it is refreshing to see Nioh come along and completely fill that niche and take it to the next level.

Here’s to hoping it is the first in many sequels, because even after 68hrs I am looking forward to more!

A superb game, and a complete 10/10.

 

 

When the first Titan Fall dropped back in 2014 it had a luke warm reception. It was an XB1 exclusive which boded well for Microsoft, but not so good for console fans. It was a straight online multi-player only affair, and offered no real story mode to enjoy.

XB1 was not selling too well back then (and still is not compared to PS4) so it is no big shocker that EA decided the buckets of money they got to make it exclusive, were just not worth keeping up, how could you exclude a console with 54 million players.

So TF made the jump to PS4 this year and it is a real treat. Unlike it’s multi-player only predecessor, Titan Fall 2 has added a very well designed story mode. Going down as one of the most enjoyable FPS games I have played in a long time.

They have taken what many consider a bit of a stale gerne and catapult it into the future with some truly unique game play design and level set up.

There are 3 primary jaw dropping levels in the game.

First and foremost is a “Portal” like level that is continually morphing and changing as you ride a conveyor belt that is seemingly assembling a set of office buildings. All the while being coaxed onward by an AI. This comes to a head in a horde mode type village with all the assembled buildings.

Second is an absolutely stunning time travel level, now I am no big fan of time travel in games, as it usually leads to massive plot hole and is often just a gimmick. But time travel in Titan Fall 2 was in place for a reason, it served to move the plot forward, and had a real purpose.

It also allowed for some amazing level design. For instance, in one sequence you have to wall run down a hall in the present, but it is all on fire, so you begin running, hit L1 to instantly morph the environment to the past, run a bit farther, warp back to the future now that you have passed the flames, and keep on running.

It is hard to explain how cool this is on paper, but it works incredibly well. The switching is almost instant via a wrist based travel device, and it is so seamless it is stunning.

Enemy encounters in this area is very well thought out too, with you dropping into a room full of guards in the past, fire a few shots, then pop back to present, reposition and go back to the past. This gets real tricky when you have enemies in the same space, both past and present.

The last innovation came from one of the later levels, where you are jumping from airship to airship, running along exterior hulls, and fighting off waves of enemies. The scale of the battle here was immense but your presence felt valuable. Like you were turning the tide on the battle.

All throughout Titan Fall 2 you really feel powerful, you are just an average Joe, but you feel like superman given the fast pace and the design. Flipping weapons is quick, reloading feels right, and wall running becomes a thing of beauty once mastered.

All told the campaign took me about 8-10 hours to run on Master difficulty, not for the novice, at least not to start, as this difficulty is very punishing, where a mere 2 or 3 hits in quick succession will kill you.

The story at times can get a little side tracked, but all in all it was a very enjoyable narrative. Wrapping up nicely, and even offering a secret ending if you finish on Hard or Master.

I am not much of a fan of online multi-player, I used to be back in my 20’s and early 30’s, but now that I have limited time and rather enjoy playing through a story than mindless online combat, I tend to avoid the online game play.

But I did take TF2 for a few rounds of MP play on various maps.

First match I checked out I got slaughtered. Ended with about 12 deaths and had a big ole zero for kills, now I am no slouch when it comes to playing online, I finish all my games on the hardest difficulty for a reason, I like the challenge and normal and traditional hard modes are a cake walk.

So this was a bit of a shocker. Was the online community that good? The answer was no, once I got the hang of the levels a scant 3 or 4 levels later, I was coming it on #2 or #3 on the leader board, so a rocky start, but if you play the core story mode, you have all you need to go online and kick some ass.

Leveling up online is pretty fast, in the few hours I played I quickly rose to over level 10. Much like CoD, you unlock gear and skins, weapons and upgrades along the way. So in no time I had a much better layout and was feeling pretty at home online.

But like I said, I do prefer story mode in games, so I had to pull myself away and move on to other games. But there is no shortage of online content to keep you going for months. With 5 or 6 different game mode, from capturing and holding hard points, to traditional death match, to a straight up insane all Titan mode, there is plenty to keep you coming back for more.

All in all Titan Fall 2 was one of the best shooter I played in years, and most definitely the most fun I have had in a FPS in a long time.

Highly recommended, a solid 9 out of 10.

So just finished up a lengthy play of Watchdogs 2 and was thoroughly impressed.

I know I am in a minority here, but I rather enjoyed the original Watchdogs. While it may not have been the game that we thought it would be, it was all in all a great game that was very under rated.

WD2 on the other hand is a complete 180 to the original. With a fun cast and a brilliant protagonist. Marcus is charismatic, a sharp dresser, and just an all around fun character to play.

The game opens on you trying to prove your worth to Dedsec by pulling off a major hack, thus granting you access to the club.

Things progress from there into a place that is all to familiar in the eyes of the world.

With you gaining followers on social media to boost your status in the hacking world. Taking on the big evil corporations of Nudle (google) and Blume, as well as a political candidate that is pretty close to Trump.

It all feels very real world in a way.

The core game play is quite similar to GTA in a lot of ways, from car jacking to shoot outs and police chases.

Where WD2 differs though is the ability to hack anything and everything, from changing street lights to cause crashes, hacking cars to make them have accidents, or taking out a chopper chasing while you flee the police.

All of these things set it apart from a boring old sandbox gangster game.

Another very strong point is characters, you routinely get calls from your crew and just chit chat, and the banter is so well done. From talk of childhood to radial commentary on silicone valley, it is all very organic and real. They did an amazing job casting this game.

The multiplayer is also top notch ere, it is a persistent multiplayer world that is akin to Dark Souls, where you are not all in one place at once time, but other players can be in your game, helping or reeking havoc.

The only gripe I have is that by the end of the game, it gets very “Michael Bay” in terms of story, with a game that was so plausible and rooted in reality, it is a bit disappointing to see how far off the deep end they go with the action and end game scenarios.

It does not mar the game in any big way, but in my eyes it was too much out of the realm of beleiveability.

Play-through took about 25 hours to hit a Platinum trophy and was enjoyable start to finish. Not a hard Plat, and by no means indicative of a 100% game.

There is tons you can still do post game if you are so inclined, from street races, to uber driver, vandalizing the town, and endless online missions as well. You could easily milk 100 hours out of WD2 to see and do it all.

A solid 9/10 and a great open world game.

I will get this out of the way early. If you are in any way, shape of form a Final Fantasy fan, you need to go buy World of Final Fantasy. Plain and simple.

The nostalgia here is so thick you can cut it with a buster sword.

World of Final Fantasy follows the typical FF formula. Start off by confusing the audience, drop your Hero and Heroin into a unfamiliar world, and let things slowly boil to the surface.

But what sets it apart from the 14 core games before it is, it takes all you favorite heroes and monsters from previous franchises and adds them in to this mysterious world of Grimoire.

There is no explanation, no preamble, just that they somehow exist all together on this strung together floating island world. They are all friends to an extend.

Tifa lives in Neiblheim, a city assembled by Shinra after a disaster along side Squall who works for Seed with Rydia and Shelke.

Vivi and Edgar forge a friendship and work to save their kingdom.

Tidas, Squall, Bartz and the original Warrior of Light will all work together to help you save Grimoire from the dark forces threatening it.

None of it makes any sense, but all of it feels so good.

You get the point, this is a walk down memory lane, all while being completely fresh and new.

At the core of WoFF is a robust RPG system, with a simple yet very complex fighting system.

The whole system revolves around stacking a pile of monsters you capture and using them to fight, so take a baby Shiva and “teen” Ifrit, pile them on top of you, and you now have a fire and ice based combo mage.

Or take a baby Ifrit and a teen Ifrit to morph all your spells from there vanilla form to a Firaga or Firaja

Stand on top of an Iron Giant and a Rock monster and you have a heavy hitting melee class.

It is difficult to explain, but it works very well, in practice easy to get into, but hard to master.

Leveling up is done through the creatures themselves. Sure you have a base level for the 2 main characters, but all your bonuses and skills come from spending AP points gained through combat on your specific monsters.

The story itself is pretty cohesive for Final Fantasy all things considered. It has the standard build up to the false ending which so many JRPGs have in common. This is in no way a slam, and actually is pretty well executed. It will keep you guessing as to what is happening and is all very well wrapped up in the end.

The world as a whole is fairly substantial, and you will visit a lot of familiar location from the FF world.

I will not go into detail as I do not want to ruin the surprise, but there are moments here that brought me back to my 20’s playing FF7, and made me seriously long for that FF7 remake we have been promised.

Also, this happened:

If that does not make you run out and grab WoFF, then nothing I have told you will.

The tale lasts about 40 hours for a straight play-through and all the “tea room” side stories. You could easily milk another 20-30 hours out trying to find all the 165 monsters available and finishing all the side quests.

There is also a clear picture by conversations in the game, that this will not be the last game in the World of series, with talk of other worlds and universes, I can see that if WoFF succeeds, we can expect a World of Dragon Quest, or a World of Kingdom Hearts in the future. Which in my opinion would be very welcomed.

All in all a fantastic lighthearted adventure that was enjoyable every moment, not once did I get that familiar “ugh, I just want to be done” feeling that so many RPGs seem to give me.

A solid 9/10 and a must buy for FF fans.

So I dove back into PSVR this week with the release of RE7 and the Star Wars Battlefront VR mission, and while in VR mode, decided to power through a few games I had sitting here as well.

So I dove into Bound with reasonably high expectations, based on all the reviews and the strong voice on the PSVR sub-reddit.

I know I am going to be in the minority here, but I have to say I was terribly disappointed. Sure it looks and feels nice in VR, but as a whole, the game made little to no sense at all in terms of cohesive story.

So many reviews (and the reddit community) tout it as something spectacular, but I just found it boring after the first 10 mins.

Maybe I am just no longer built for Indie games, but I like a decent story that makes some semblance of sense, and less and less indie games are offing that it seems.

It is as if the community is going to the starving artist. Whereby someone smears red and blue pain on a canvas and touts it as the modernization of society and its struggles with the middle class.

When all I see is a messy kindergarten level drawing.

Maybe I missed the point, but Bound really was not for me.

From the messy camera, which only “jumps” to an angle and distance each time you push in a direction. To the completely incoherent story.

** Spoiler Alert **

I am going to delve into the ridiculous story here for a min.

You start on the beach as a pregnant woman, who appears to be going through a journal of traumatic childhood memories. Why? No one know, nor does the “artist” care to explain.

Each memory plays out in some abstract world whereby you dance to fight off the source of the misery, from moms broken pearls, to your brothers paper airplanes. I know ridiculous right?

There is a loud monster that seems to have no bearing on anything, just yells.

You paint back memories of you parents fighting, mom scolding you brother, brother getting scalded by hot water.

All in an attempt to…. WE HAVE NO CLUE!

Is this women somehow mentally damaged by the fact her brother 30 years ago got yelled at? Seriously?

Is she having second thoughts on having this baby with the knoledge that her dad left?

Why did he leave? Or more important, why should I care?

This is Bound in a nutshell.

It is a mess, the plot makes zero sense, as we lack all motivation for the main character.

Why do memory play out as a cyber ballerina? Was she a dancer? No one knows, and no one cared to explain.

Save yourself $10 and bypass this highly over rated dud.

A generous 2/10, simply as high as it is due to the fact the game did really look nice in VR. Beyond that, it is simply not worth it…

So I spent this weekend strolling through an alien landscape not so dissimilar from earth.

It has flora and fauna much like ours, with a variety of creatures from cockroaches to hulking dinosaurs.

And all of it was experienced from the comfort of my recliner…

Welcome to Robinson: The Journey, the latest offering by the guys at Crytec.

The game itself is not too terribly long. I managed to finish the main story in about 4 hours, and spent another 2 wrapping up trophies for the Platinum.

While not the most challenging game, it certainly was one of the more immersive games PSVR has had to offer thus far. The lush environments were teeming with life, from the smallest of bugs to dinosaurs that towered 20 meters tall.

The premise is a simple one, explore. More of a walking simulator than an actual game, Robinson offers players a chance to stroll around (and climb around) a very well designed world. There are a few puzzles, none of which were too challenging, and a couple stealth section (and I use that term very loosely).

All in all a fun game you can sit down and finish in a single weekend.

There is a mystery to be solved, and things unfold at a decent pace. But do not expect a life changing story of serious depth, because that will not be found here. What you get is a snapshot of a very small time period, in what feels like could have been a much larger game.

Now will that play out long term? Time will tell. But there is definitely sequel potential here.

One of the biggest faults to Robinson is sadly, once your journey is complete, there is very little reason to go back and play again. You can easily snag a platinum on the game, and there is no real reason to go back again once you have, no score modes, no mini games, nothing.

Sadly another big flaw with the game is visual glitches. Or more specific, VR glitches. Things like not being able to position your hands on a wire to slide down. Having to constantly readjust the center position as you at times need to lean WAY forward to reach something.

It can be a frustrating affair at times, and many senseless deaths can happen due to poor design.

All that said though, the good does outweigh the bad here.

Robinson is thus far the best looking game on PSVR, the environment is very well laid out and feels natural, while still pushing you along in a specific path. The games 5 distinct areas all feel different yet the same. And that is not a bad thing, they tie together nicely, but each boasts its own unique design while still remaining within the realm of possibility.

Another really cool design aspect was they ripped the game play from The Climb (their Oculus Rift title) for all the vertical traversal. I loved this system when it was introduced in The Climb, and it immediately made me wish for something like that in an adventure game like Tomb Raider or Uncharted.

While Robinson is certainly not of the same caliber, it is definitely benefited by this game play mechanic. It is a simplified version of The Climb, without the stamina meter and the annoying jump grabs, but the core is still there and a welcomed surprise.

All in all a game worth its price of $39.99cdn. While you may not get any replay, sometimes if a game is good enough, once is enough.

While not perfect, it is till worthy of a 8/10 for the AWE factor alone.

So I just wrapped up Wayward Sky and have to say that these type of games are hands down my favorite in VR.

Games that offer a hybrid of both 3rd person diorama with some first person elements.

For years now I believed that VR was only going to offer decent first person experiences, and little would be gained by other traditional genres like platformers or puzzle games.

I will be the first to admit how wrong I was.

When I first fired up Lucky’s Tale on the Rift many months ago I was enthralled. Watching your  character bound around in a miniature world was something really amazing. Seeing this tiny fox jump from platform to platform right at the tip of your nose was unlike anything I expected to see in VR.

Sadly, Lucky’s Tale was alone, with no other games offering a similar experience, that is, until now.

Wayward Sky is best described as a puzzle platformer, where you must navigate the floating city with either Move controls or traditional game pad. You point to a place on the map, and your little character Beth trots along to the destination.

When you point and click on a glowing object, you will enter a first person mode that will allow you to say flip switches, or turn dials until you complete the puzzle at hand and open a gate or door.

The mechanic is simple and the game poses very little challenge, but does benefit greatly from VR, what would have been a mediocre romp around a floating city with a pretty paper thin story, becomes so much more when you feel like you have a God like view of the realm.

And at the core of VR, that seems to be the big sell. There have been very few games out there that would not have been commercially panned had they not been in VR. The coolness factor can take a normal game with a score of 5 and turn it magically into a 7 or 8 with the VR googles on. Much like too much booze and an unattractive mate, hahaha.

All in all Wayward Sky clocks in at about 4 – 5 hours long if you are aiming to get 100% completion.

There is no coveted platinum trophy here though, just bronze, silver and one gold.

If you are perceptive you can likely hit 100% in a single run, but may need to double back to collect a couple hidden canisters that unlock robots for the arcade mini game.

All things considered, Wayward Sky does what it sets out to do. It chose to be a fun and simple little puzzler and it hit that mark dead on.

If you go in with that in mind, and do not have high expectation for this to be the next Portal, then you will find a decent gem in the sea of throw away VR games.

Another thing to note, this game is very new VR user friendly, there is no sudden camera movement, it is 100% static, so there is very little chance you will get VR sickness.

A solid 7/10 and highly recommended for those who like games like Lucky’s Tale.