After Horizon Zero Dawn’s success at the PlayStation platform, this open-word, RPG game was released for PC users on the 7th of August 2020.
By 2019, two years after its initial 2017 release, Horizon Zero Dawn had sold over 10 million copies, making it a PS Bestseller. An expansion pack called “The Frozen Wilds” was added to the franchise in late 2017. This “lush, post-apocalyptic word,” was developed by Guerrilla Games, with director Mathijs de Jonge at the helm. Then it was brought to the public by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world game set in a far-away post-apocalyptic world where ancient tribe culture mixes with high technology and advanced machines. Through a third person perspective, we follow Aloy - an outcast. The game begins when Aloy is a young child, and we learn about her guardian, Rost, as well as her life as an outcast from the Nora Tribe. She comes to obtain a piece of technology called a Focus, which allows her to scan her surroundings and gain knowledge of the past. Fast forwarding, when Aloy comes of age, she enters a tribe ritual called the Proving. If she wins, she will be accepted as a member of the Nora tribe.
After the Proving goes horribly wrong, Aloy returns to a world where Rost is gone and Cultists have taken control of machines, corrupting them. To stop these Cultists, Aloy has to use her connection to the past, discover her destiny, and learn about a top secret mission meant to restore the earth: Project Zero Dawn.
The game has a perfect mix of danger and beauty, action and character. During combat, you have the choice between melee and ranged weapons, and the world also facilitates stealth and sneaking. That allows each player to mould the game into whichever combat style they prefer. You also get the ability to override machines as you go along the game, which makes them calm, friendly and usable for travelling or combat support. Who doesn’t want to ride a robot bull through a luscious jungle or across the savannah?
Skills can be collected and used to unlock new abilities in a skill tree, which is an excellent way to further customize your experience. The skill three has three main categories: “Prowler”: stealth, “Brave”: combat and “Forager” which concerns gathering and healing abilities.
The world is accessible to you through one, large map, and fast travelling points lets you move around more freely after discovering a new area. Throughout your journey you go through jungle, forest, desert and great mountainscapes where elements or parkour is needed to climb to the tops.
All in all, Horizon Zero Dawn is a great adventure through stunning landscapes. The mixture of technology and nature is a refreshing take on the post-apocalyptic world, and it also serves a purpose in terms of the plot. Although the dialogue and the character models received some criticism, Horizon Zero Dawn has been praised for its open world, story and visuals.
In 2015, a game was released called “Ori and the Blind Forest”. It was a beautiful looking game, but a little short at about 8 hours of gameplay. Fast forward 5 years, and we have the highly anticipated sequel called “Ori and the Will of the Wisp”. With updated visuals from the first game, Will of the Wisp is a visually stunning game that I can’t stop looking at! Seriously, the artwork in this game is worth a watch on its own. The game has been developed by Moon Studios. It is available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Will of the Wisp follows Ori, a white guardian spirit. The game takes place directly after the first game, though I will not give anything away as you should definitely check out both games if you are interested in playing. The game includes a lot of unique platforming and puzzle solving. Throughout the game, you can unlock different abilities and attacks, which in turn allows you to access different parts of the map. It is very reminiscent of Hollow Knight (which btw is also a very good game you should check out!).
Will of the Wisp has received great scores from various gaming sources, including a Megacritc score of 93/100 for the Nintendo Switch version. The lowest score being an 81/100 from PC Gamer US, showing just how good this game really is. Even user reviews have an “Overwhelmingly Positive” review on Steam, with very little negative reviews.
I don’t think it’s a game many people know about, including myself until recently. Though I have not finished this game yet, it has given me many hours of fantastic and challenging game play and I can’t wait to see where the game goes from here! I’m obsessed with it and I hope I can convince someone else to check it out and join me in my love for this game!
The game “Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout”, more commonly known as simply “Fall guys”, was released on August 4th 2020 on PC and PlayStation 4. Up to 60 players compete against each other in a battle royale kind of game, which is inspired by game shows such as Wipeout, It’s a Knockout and Takeshi’s Castle, but also popular children games such as tag. The player wants to qualify through all the rounds until they are the last one standing. Each round a group of people will be eliminated based on how they performed during the game.
The characters are a small kind of jelly-bean looking creatures that you can customize with different skins, colors or costumes. You will then play a few mini-games with the other players, including the finishing of an obstacle course, making sure not to get tagged, keeping your tail until the end of the game or completing any of the other tasks in order to eventually make it to the final. The winner of the last mini-game will be the last player standing.
The game was met with positive reviews with an average rating of 8/10 from a lot of gaming related websites and magazines. When a closed-beta version of the game was released it became the most watched game on Twitch and it became the sixth best selling game on Steam when pre-ordering was available. Online games have grown in popularity during the pandemic which might be the reason why Fall Guys became such a popular game in such a short time.
I haven’t played the game myself but I have watched other people play it and it looks fun. However, as a rather simple game, it is on the slightly pricier side, on sale for $19.99.
Valorant is a free-to-play multiplayer tactical first-person shooter game developed and published by Riot Games. Valorant is Riot’s first game since it released the ultra-popular League of Legends in 2009. First teased under the codename Project A in October 2019, the game began a closed beta period with limited access on April 7, 2020, followed by official release on June 2, 2020.
The game is a team-based tactical shooter and first-person shooter set in the near-future. In the main game mode, players are assigned to either the attacking or defending team with each team having five players on it. Players play as one of a set of agents. Agents have unique abilities, each requiring charges, as well as a unique ultimate ability which requires charging through kills, deaths, or spike actions. Every player starts each round with a "classic" pistol and one or more "signature ability" charges. Other weapons and ability charges can be purchased using an in game economic system which awards money based on the outcome of the previous round, any kills the player is responsible for, and any actions taken with the spike.
The action will sound familiar to anyone who has played Counter-Strike or similar games in the past few decades, but Valorant departs from the Counter-Strike formula with its characters, called Agents. Each player picks one of 13 Agents at the beginning of a match, and each Agent has their own special abilities, adding an extra level of strategy.
GAME MODES Unrated - In the standard non-ranked mode, the match is played as best of 25 - first team to win 13 rounds wins the match. The attacking team has a bomb-type device called the Spike, which they must deliver to a specified location and activate. If the attacking team successfully protects the activated Spike for 45 seconds it detonates and they receive a point. If the defending team is able to deactivate the spike, or the 100-second round timer expires without the attacking team activating the spike, the defending team receives a point. Spike Rush - In the Spike Rush mode, the match is played as best of 7 rounds - the first team to win 4 rounds wins the match. Players begin the round with all abilities fully charged except their ultimate, which charges twice as fast as in standard games. All players on the attacking team carry a spike, but only one spike may be activated per round. Guns are randomized and every player begins with the same gun. Competitive - Competitive matches are the same as standard matches with the addition of a win-based ranking system which assigns a rank to each player after 5 games are played. The competitive ranking system ranges from iron to radiant. Every rank but radiant has 3 tiers. Deathmatch - 14 players enter a 10-minute free-for-all match and the first person to reach 40 kills or the player who has the most kills when time is up wins the match. Players spawn in with a random agent they have unlocked in the game, and all abilities are disabled during the match.
AGENTS At the moment, there are 13 agents with different roles in the game: Brimstone (Controller), Phoenix (Duelist), Sage (Sentinel), Sova (Initiator), Viper (Controller), Cypher (Sentinel), Reyna (Duelist), Killjoy (Sentinel), Breach (Initiator), Omen (Controller), Jett (Duelist), Raze (Duelist) ans Skye (Initiator).
Your agent isn't stuck with a specialized weapon like in other character-based shooters. You spend money buying weapons (and armor and abilities) at the beginning of each round — exactly like Counter-Strike. Here are each type of ability the agents have: ⚫ One ultimate ability - This powerful ability requires multiple charges to use. These are earned from kills or completing objectives (like defusing the bomb). It might take three rounds or more before you have enough charges to use yours; ⚫ One signature ability - This ability is automatically usable each round. How many times and how often you can use it varies between characters; ⚫ Two purchasable abilities - Each character has two extra abilities that require charges bought from the store at the beginning of a round. Think of them like grenades in Counter-Strike, an optional item that gives you some extra utility in combat.
ERA’S REVIEW When its release was announced I was very excited about it, since I’ve played Riot’s other game, League Of Legends, too, so I was expectant about what they will bring with this new game. And I can say I was pleasantly surprised.
Valorant’s main game mode is simple. All the game modes are easy to understand, they are not very complicated. The gunplay, however, is GENIUS! The guns are weighty, they have aggressive recoil and spray bullets all over the screen if you don’t know what you’re doing. The weapons all fire somewhat slowly, each with a satisfying and unique booming ker-CHAK sound, which I so love!
The first shots may be off target, but you can still win the firefight if you can adjust your aim to a headshot before the second bullet fires, even if your opponent is busy hitting you twice in the body. Winning fights like these is always thrilling. I observed the fact that learning to control recoil is one of Valorant’s most challenging mechanics, and one of the most fun too!
Another aspect which I loved about Valorant was the graphics. For me, the graphics of the game is the thing I’m most interested in when I am looking at a game. Valorant’s graphics are similar to Overwatch and Fortnite, they all have cartoon type graphics which are not gritty and muddy, and allows a computer with lower specs (like mine) to still be able to run the game.
Valorant is a game with a lot of potential and it’s a suitable game for the lovers of shooting games and also for newbies, since it’s relatively easy to understand.
The long awaited The Last of Us Part II, the sequel to The Last of Us, is finally here – The Last of Us Part II is a third person action-adventure survival horror game developed by Nasty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game follows the two main protagonists: Ellie – who we also know from the first game, who sets out for an adventure for revenge after suffering a tragedy, and Abby – a new character, who is a soldier who gets involved in a conflict with a cult.
During the game you will switch between playing as Ellie and Abby traveling through different post-apocalyptic environments such as small towns, cities and forests while fighting against other groups of humans and zombie-like creatures using different kinds of weapons. The player can use long-range weapons like bows and rifles, short-range weapons like pistols and revolvers and different forms of melee weapons like knives, hammers, glass bottles and bricks you find by scavenging different areas. During different sequences of the game you will switch between moving by foot, horseback or boat, you can also break different kinds of glass, such as windows, to access different kinds of areas or to obtain supplies.
The game takes place five years after the plot of the first game and 25 years after the outbreak of the Cordyceps Brain Infection, set in the USA in 2013, that resulted in about 60% of humanity either getting killed or infected. The Infected are the main enemy in both Last of Us games and appear like zombie-like creatures in different stages of infection.
In Part II Ellie and Joe have to deal with the consequences of their previous actions and their complicated father-daughter-like relationship. During the game you will come across many difficult and complicated aspects of human nature, such as empathy, anger, love, loss and so on. All in all, The Last of Us Part II is a violent, heart-breaking yet beautifully crafted adventure game with a good balance between action and plot. As the game has been a huge success with over 4 million sold copies during the launch of the game and overwhelmingly positive critic reviews, it has also faced a lot of negativity by players as it includes big story twists and a broad LGBTQ+ representation.
The game’s representation of LGBTQ+ characters is broader than most mainstream games as the main protagonist Ellie is a lesbian in addition to two other queer supporting characters; Dina, a bisexual woman and Lev, a transgender boy. Neil Druckman, one of the writers of the game has stated that he did write Ellie as a gay character from the start but wanted to leave her sexuality up to interpretation by the players in the first game. In the DLC Left Behind she kisses one of her female friends, but in Part II she’s an openly lesbian character.
Part II is in no way about these characters’ sexuality, but does feature love between queer characters and conversations about sexuality. Sexuality in different types of media is often treated as “shock value” or to create a plot, but we don’t see any of this in this game. In fact the characters are well developed and complex characters.
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