A Puzzled Rime – The Game Review

August 14, 2018 / Detached / 2 Comments

Hello again everyone!

I hope the week has started off well for you all and the creative vibes are still flowing for writing.

Today I want to jump in and look at a Rime which I just finished over this last weekend. Rime is an absolutely gorgeous game filled with some pretty amazing music and beautiful art. The game has some very mysterious elements which fill a strange world you get to explore, but the game lacks new ideas to make it stand out from other puzzle platformers. Unfortunately, most of the puzzles in the game are bland and instead of a challenge we get monotonous.

Overall Rime’s story is pretty basic: you wake up on some strange island after a shipwreck, and have to solve a mix of puzzles in this new world to try and piece together what really happened. You start the game with a nameless character who doesn’t speak or have many features you can make out except his figure and a red cloak. Your guide through the game is a small fox who has more personality than you do…that’s for darn sure. This fox mainly helps you navigate the world and points you in the right direction which is a huge help through the game. You can do some exploration as the world is pretty open, so it’s nice to have a guide back to where the next progression point is.

The games puzzles you complete throughout the world seem more like simple tasks and don’t offer a lot of challenge to figure out. Exploring the world can be fun as it’s got an amazing art style to it, but ultimately all the puzzles and tasks to figure out pull away from things instead of adding to the beauty of the story. Even though I got bored at times from the puzzles, I love artistic style games so that’s ultimately what caught and held my attention in Rime. The world exploration does offer up some hidden collectibles you can gather, but at the end all they gave you was a picture that showed up on the menu screen. I gave up the pursuit of finding all the collectibles pretty early on honestly as it seemed pointless and didn’t add to the game or story you were just thrust into.

I go back to the aesthetic aspects of this game being it’s winning factor for holding my attention again, as the game was littered with bugs and performance issues. Multiple times I had camera issues where it got stuck in strange places, and an overall clunky climbing experience while all topped off with some choppy screens due to loss of frame-rate. This game has a mystery to it that had me glued to the screen but at the end of things it didn’t deliver. I loved the open world feel, the artistic beauty and hooks to keep you interested in the story along the way….but all said and done this game wasn’t an experience I enjoyed once things came to a close.

Destiny: Rise of Iron – How We Advanced

September 20, 2016 / Detached / Leave a comment

Today is happy Destiny day for all of us Guardians out there….yes it’s Rise of Iron release day and I’m sure most of you have already been grinding away to see all the new stuff.

Here’s a quick run down on some of the important things we are getting.

Felwinters Peak, the new Social Space with new vendors, a new Cryptarch, and it comes with wolves!
5 main campaign Story ARC Missions, plus other Missions and Quests
The Plaguelands, which is the new open patrol area of the revamped snow covered Cosmodrome.
SIVA infected Fallen called Devil Splicers are here now
The Archon’s Forge, a new arena much like Prison / Challenge of Elders
We’ve got new STRIKES!!!
Wrath of the Machine, the new Raid, available September 23rd!
Yes we have a new PvP mode as well called Supremacy!
Iron Banner has been re-worked
4 new Crucible maps
New artifacts that were created from scratch!
New Max Light Level
New Armor, Weapons, and a ton of new Rewards
You can now put Ornaments on exotic weapons, and armor, a skin that changes the look of the weapon

Big Light Level Jump

Bungie told us we would be getting a big light level jump but no one really knew what that meant. Well here is what we got!

Rise of Iron Launch Light Level Increase to: 385

Once the hard mode of the RAID releases the light level will cap at 400

We have a new Record Book

Rise of Iron has a new free Record Book which tracks all activity in Rise of Iron account-wide. As you complete missions, quests, and other activities from the new expansion, you will gain percentage points of completion, and as with past Record Books will receive rewards at set intervals.

These rewards include:

Full Iron Lord armor for all Character Classes
Multiple new Emblems
New Shaders
The new Iron Song Ghost Shell
And More

Engram Boost

We’ve all been asking those questions of what will our engrams do when we decript them after ROI drops. Well, Uncommon and Rare (Green and Blue) gear will drop at higher light levels (potentially up to 350 for Rare items). Most of mine were dropping and coming out around 330 for blues and 200 for greens. Higher for Legendary / Exotics.

Strike Exclusive Gear and Skeleton Keys

Nightfalls and Strike Playlists are getting a new inventory item added to their Loot systems: The Skeleton Key, these keys, which will drop randomly at the end of missions, can be used in Strikes featuring exclusive items to get a guaranteed drop of one of those Exclusive by opening the “Strike Hoard” – a new chest that will be appearing upon completion of Strikes, even outside of the Weekly Playlists.

Weapons, & Armor

From new Iron Banner weapons reintroduced Year 1 guns, Rise of Iron is giving us a lot of new options.

Exotics
- Year 1 weapons returning –
- We already knew the Gjallarhorn was coming back! If you pre-ordered well then you got it in (Black) and it’s sexy!
- We also have another Year 1 that was very popular but brought a lot of pain among the Guardians…. The THORN is coming back! It will have it’s own Exotic quest so get ready.
- For those of us already sporting Year 1 models, it’s not clear if the updated version will be immediately available through the kiosk or if we’ll have to work for it the same as everyone else.
- A whole list of new weapons, but I’m saving that for you all to discover
- One very familiar weapon that every Guardian has used is coming back. The Khvostov 7G-0X which is the exotic version of this weapon. This weapon will be the reward from an exotic weapon quest, but this one is different. This weapon won’t have a single exotic perk that makes it stand out. Instead, Bungie has added something brand new, a set of perk columns that allows us to turn this primary weapon into a custom killing machine.

New Armor Concept Drawings

The armor just speaks for itself as it’s amazing looking!!! We want it all!!!

The game has a whole host of new features to discover and this is just a base list of some new items that have come in, so get out there Guardians and go become an Iron Lord

The Walking Dead Game – Season 2 – Episode 1 – All That Remains Review

June 5, 2015September 10, 2015 / Detached / Leave a comment

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I wrote my last game review and that’s mainly because I haven’t been playing anything lately. My attention has been pulled towards other side projects, and real life has kept me quite busy. Though I’ve managed to get a little free time….and when I have some free time, I tend to go rummaging through old games that I haven’t had a chance to play or catch up on. I’ve had Season 2 of The Walking Dead installed since it came out, and I’m just now getting around to finishing up the story. To me it’s one of those little gems of the game world that you can’t wait to play. I got a hold of the first Walking Dead game early last year and had a blast playing through the series, but I wasn’t able to follow the story into Season 2, until now, and all I have to say it’s a buckle your seat belt kinda game. It’s full of roller coaster emotional moments, and packed with action scenes that keep you on the edge of your chair.

We pick back up with Clementine who is the young heroine of this story. You can really tell the death and destruction that has surrounded her for so long is starting to wear on her. She no longer has Lee to lean on in those tough desperate times of need as he’s passed away and just a memory now. This season starts with a brand new feel and that innocent little girl you saw in season 1 is all but lost and put aside.

Just as the first season game play spun our heads, how you play and how you make decisions in this season determines how the story flows. All That Remains really pulls you to the center of how Clementine has learned to survive, fought for the things she held dear, and even learned to grasp the evil that humanity can bring on itself. She is learning to lean on the dependency of herself instead of others in this season.

It’s still a big enjoyment of the game to have those split second frantic button popups during zombie battles, decision points with the groups, and exploring the environments at your own pace. But one thing I’ve not enjoyed is the decisions you made in season 1 don’t seem to matter all that much now. Clementine ends up with an untrusting new group that finds her stranded and alone, but because everyone exists to question Clementine, we’re left not knowing what anybody but Clementine wants.

She meets a man named Pete, who seems to be the group’s leader and has an instant open heart to Clementine, almost a father-figure role. Clementine becomes quick friends with Luke, a young man she confides in about her old friend Lee that passed away. Clem also finds another young girl about her age, who for all purposes is completely oblivious to the things happening outside the walls of her home.

This new group brings a new level of fascination, and stress to the game, as they all have a very strained relationship with each other and the conflict will surely blow up. The main plot of this season has a dark enemy lurking closer to the group and way more dangerous than the zombies could ever be. The overall story line seems a bit torn and less put together than the first season, and I’m not sure if it’s meant to be that way to keep you guessing, or by the writers being torn. What makes everything tie together is Clementine, as she is the shining star of this game and no matter how unsure you are of the overall story, her story pulls everything together somehow.

This season has some of the most shocking violent moments in The Walking Dead series I’ve seen but everything you experience as being Clementine is more engaging and way more emotional. Though Clementine has found a new group of survivors she still has this empty spot and you really do feel alone in the game. Some of the conversations you have with others seem disheartening as you get to watch the little bit of humanity that seems left slip away. But again, this type of emotional roller coaster is what makes the game so appealing, and emotionally you feel connected to those characters that TellTale has created.

scr.ee tags:

#gaming #gamer #telltale #thewalkingdead #seasontwo #review #blogging #episodeone

A Hobbits Journey

Game Reviews

A Puzzled Rime – The Game Review