et's call this a comeback. Doom isn’t
just the best it's been in nearly two decades, but the best
single-player campaign id Software has produced since Quake II. It isn't
flawless, groundbreaking or original by any stretch, but it’s smart,
relentless and furiously exciting. It’s almost everything fans have been
wanting from a sequel since the glory days of Doom II.
Like the
less brilliant Doom 3, this is pretty much a reworking of the original,
though with elements that call back to the 1993 classic. You’re on Mars,
somebody has opened a doorway to Hell, so now you're against the whole
demonic army. Where id might once have wasted time with the setup, this
time it just throws you in the action straight away. You’ll be blasting
hellspawn within seconds of the game opening, and from there on in it’s
action all the way.
Related: Battlefield 1 vs Infinite Warfare
The
new Doom has an intriguing back story and a great line in humour – take
time to listen to the company announcements as you wander around the
UAC’s facilities – but if you just want to get on with shooting demons
in the face, it’s not going to waste your time. It’s kill or be killed
in a gruesome fashion – that’s all you really need to understand.
This one addition radically changes the
combat. On the one hand, we’re back to the good old days of tackling
large numbers of enemies en-masse, strafing and circle-strafing to blast
away while dodging incoming fire. Keep moving, keep shooting, don’t get
backed into a corner. There’s no cover system or recharging health,
just medkits and the by-products of your slaughter, so you really need
to work quickly to survive. On the other hand, the glory kills encourage
a more aggressive, up-close style of combat. Often you’ll find yourself
on your last legs, facing a handful of double-hard demon brutes. Keep
your nerve and dish out the final blow to one, and you might just get
enough health to slay the rest. Related: Best PC Games
Weapons,
meanwhile, now get a progression system and additional modes of fire.
Squeeze the left-trigger while firing the old pistol, for example, and
you can charge and fire a super-powered shot. Do the same with the
combat shotgun, and you get an exploding projectile to dish out. You
unlock these modes using floating weapons droids, picking from a pair of
branching upgrade lines for each gun. You’ll then earn extra combat
upgrade points while fighting, to be splashed out on new tweaks and
enhancements for your kit. There’s a similar system for your armour,
powered up through tags collected from the Demon-battered bodies of
elite base guards. There’s even a system in place to upgrade your
maximum health, armour and ammo, through little orbs of Hell-produced
argent energy. Please Complete Thwe Survey for downloading the game
Writing an introduction to a Grand Theft Auto review seems unnecessary. If you know videogames, you know Grand Theft Auto. Hell, even if you don't know videogames, there's a better than low chance you know Grand Theft Auto.
The "bad boy" of the games industry for many years, few titles have
generated as much controversy -- and sold as many copies -- as
Rockstar's premier crime series.
It's been twelve years, however, since the seminal GTA III,
and times have changed. As videogames become more mainstream, and the
inherent violence in many of them reach a point of normalization, the
once shocking world of Grand Theft Auto isn't quite so
hair-raising anymore. In an age where game budgets have skyrocketed and
scale is everything, the idea of a huge immersive world doesn't impress
as GTA: San Andreas once did. No longer the rebellious firebrand, GTA is a part of the old guard -- it's been around forever, and we know its tricks by now. Grand Theft Auto V, to its immense credit, seems to embrace
this. It's a story about old men who aren't what they used to be -- and
worse, never changed -- in a world of younger competitors and a society
that outpaced them. GTA V does, in many ways, act as a gleeful celebration of the Grand Theft Auto series, and a slightly smirking self criticism.
Oh, and of course you can still run people over.
Please Complete The survey For Downloading The Game
In amongst its frantic combat, slick parkour,
and outrageous action choreography, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End achieves
something wonderful: maturity. This is less a breezy lad’s tale
revelling in fortune and glory and more a story about the lads when
they’re all grown up, bolstered by an equally developed graphics engine
and career-high performances from its cast. A surprisingly assured set
of multiplayer modes ices the cake.
What lets it down,
however, is an uninspired and overly long third act which slows down its
pace considerably with curiously repetitive gameplay. Uncharted 4
consequently falls short of the greatness achieved by some of developer
Naughty Dog’s leaner, more inventive predecessors.
Its
15-hour experience kicks off with focus. Uncharted 4’s story is
established in a compelling handful of chapters that weave their way
through different time periods with tightly directed cinematic flair.
While its setup is overly familiar - Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher are
attempting to retire from action-heroism and live a normal life until
Nate’s presumed-dead brother turns up with an offer he can’t refuse - a
strong emotional throughline is born from the characters’ struggle to
reconcile their adult responsibilities with the promise of excitement
they secretly crave. Uncharted 4 does a terrific job of exploring a more
world-weary group of adventurers, with their concerns and musings
layered throughout its quieter moments.
These
incidental conversations are a marvel. It’s here that we see characters
bristle and soften, brought slowly to life with considered writing and a
peerless voice cast. Performances from series veterans Nolan North
(Nathan Drake), Emily Rose (Elena Fisher), and Richard McGonagle (Victor
Sullivan) are as big-hearted as ever, while newcomers Troy Baker
(Samuel Drake), Laura Bailey (Nadine Ross), and Warren Kole (Rafe Adler)
are nicely understated in more enigmatic roles.
Uncharted
4’s companion characters never break the spell in more frantic or tense
sections, either. If you choose to play stealthily, they’ll crouch down
in the long grass beside you (and unlike Ellie in The Last of Us, they
do an excellent job of staying out of enemy sightlines). If they’re in
your way while climbing, they’ll let you clamber over them. They’re
competent in gun fights, helpful in traversal, and typically witty
throughout. They feel vital.
This
level of polish and slickness permeates Uncharted 4. During traversal
you can now reach for platforms by controlling Nate like a puppet with
the DualShock thumbstick, which leads to fluid, unbroken climbing. A new
4x4 controls well over tricky terrain, and Uncharted 4’s camera
worships Nate’s grappling hook, lovingly zooming out as he swings off of
cliff faces to bring home a magnificent vista. Steep gravel paths (a
personal favourite) send Nate slipping across cliff faces like they were
waterslides.
Naughty Dog has expanded its terrain in order to
make the most of these new tools. While I would have enjoyed more to do
in this larger land mass - there’s disappointingly little to reward
exploration of its various nooks and crannies beyond the occasional
sparkling bit of treasure and a great view - I appreciated that
occasionally there was more than one pathway to reach my goal. For a
series defined by linearity, even the suggestion of choice is
refreshing.
There are a couple of wonderfully choreographed action sequences.
The
same can be said for the stages of more violent action. While you’re
occasionally flung into the middle of a group of mercenaries with little
to do but shoot your way out, other encounters take place on elaborate
adventure playgrounds allowing for more stealthy play. I appreciated the
option, even if this is fairly pedestrian and routine stealth gameplay
in 2016: characters can be tagged for tracking, long grass is there for
silent takedowns, and enemies linger on ledges begging to be grabbed by
the ankle from below or kicked off from behind. That’s not to say it’s
done poorly – it’s as polished as everything else in Uncharted 4 – it
simply doesn’t do anything surprising or interesting. More, considering
AI switches to a cautionary state at any sign of trouble, I was
disappointed I couldn’t move bodies.
If you’re noticed, Uncharted 4’s bad guys will
spring into action and distinguish themselves in combat. Open level
design allows them to pull relatively intelligent moves like flanking,
and they’ll rarely forget you’re there if you try to hide (while hanging
off a ledge, for example, they’ll stamp on your hands). Such credible
behaviour means you have to keep moving in battle; crouching behind an
indestructible pillar to regain your health is no longer feasible. While
shooting in Uncharted 4 is satisfying if unremarkable, enemies are now
savvy enough – and thankfully less spongy – that there’s a genuine
satisfaction born from each kill. It’s fun, frantic stuff.
Somehow,
the visuals keep up with it all. Unlike past Uncharted games where very
strict linearity allowed for very carefully orchestrated beauty between
stretches of more utilitarian sections built for action, Uncharted 4
manages to be all gorgeous, all the time. The big vistas are predictably
impressive, but it’s the little details that really astound: the way
snow settles on Nate’s hair, the shocking green of an underwater plant,
the reflection cast off of an oil painting. The regularity of such
beauty borders on ridiculous: it may be capped at 30 frames per second,
but this is the prettiest game I’ve ever played.
With
such strong systems at its disposal, then, it's disappointing that
Naughty Dog doesn’t build more theatrical context around them. Regarding
the series’ trademark outrageously choreographed action sequences,
Uncharted 4’s campaign suffers from a curious lack of imagination. There
are bright spots: there’s a brilliant car chase in Madagascar and a
vertigo-inducing section involving clambering up a clock tower that
really stand out. But otherwise the thrills here tend to be of a more
predictable nature: lots of handholds breaking at the last minute,
buildings coming down, an occasional easily solved puzzle in an opulent
interior. It’s 2016, and after three Uncharteds (and two contemporary
Tomb Raiders) we’ve seen it all before.
This becomes a big
problem in Uncharted 4’s third act, where the pacing slows down to a
crawl. This jungle section is repetitive, and Nate and friends do little
in it but climb and shoot, rinse and repeat. After a while, every
encounter blurred into one amorphous amalgamation of shootouts, cliff
faces, and pushing crates off of ledges for your companion to clamber
up. As it’s the longest section in Uncharted 4, it eventually became a
slog.
Things pick up significantly by the end. The
thoughtful exploration of these characters and their relationships with
each other has a subtle payoff which bucks against the typical action
coda, and it’s to Naughty Dog’s credit that it’s unafraid to stay true
to its characters and their motivations, even if they aren’t as
explosive as one might expect.
Uncharted 4's visuals astound.
After The End
There’s
not much to do in the main campaign once you’ve finished it, bar
completing your treasure collection, but there’s extended life to be had
in Uncharted 4’s confident 5v5 and 4v4 multiplayer. Though it’s still a
sideshow to the main campaign in scope, its four modes – Team
Deathmatch, Plunder, Command, and Ranked Team Deathmatch – embody the
series’ most enjoyable qualities: camaraderie (your teammates can be
revived when in a downed state), sheets of bullets, and a constant sense
of momentum. On the latter point, it helps that the stages for play
have been opened up from previous games thanks to the grappling hook:
zipping around to high vantagepoints to get the drop on enemies lends
itself to a dizzying sense of verticality.
Deathmatch is ranked,
which lends competitive longevity and appropriate skill matchmaking to
Uncharted 4’s multiplayer, but Plunder and Command are the most fun.
Command is a map-domination variant that places greater emphasis on
teamwork by putting a target on the back of the strongest player in each
team - the ‘captain.’ As you try and capture territories and hunt the
enemy’s captain, you also have to protect against the opposing team
trying to kill yours. You’ve got to be even more alert than usual, even
as you’re pursuing an objective.
Plunder works similarly to previous Uncharteds, where the goal
is to carry an idol to a central point on the map before the other team
reaches it with theirs. Slowly heaving an idol to your teammate across a
giant ravine while being shot at on all sides makes for a hilarious
contrast in pace.
A sense of chaos is further encouraged by the
outrageous abilities you can now harness in all of Uncharted 4’s
multiplayer modes. Spending earned points to temporarily wield
supernatural powers like teleportation, which hurtles you across the
map, and summon a sarcophagus that attacks the enemy with flying evil
spirits can totally interrupt the rhythms of what would otherwise be a
normal firefight.
The AI sidekicks available for every player are
a clever new addition, too. Instead of buying flashy powers, you can
summon enormously handy AI-controlled helpers in battle. They’re capable
of fulfilling basic tasks like sniping, brute-force shooting, and
healing – as well as giving your opponents something to shoot at that
isn’t your head. If you’re up against them, there’s a franticness born
from trying to take them down while being attacked from all sides.
It plays beautifully. Because it runs at 60fps, the shooting
feels better than it does in the main campaign, and there’s just as much
fluidity to scaling walls and swinging, but now with a palpable
smoothness. Naughty Dog does a great job at twisting familiar
environments from the main campaign into interesting shapes across eight
maps: soaring through the air against a boundless Mediterranean sea
before leaping into the opulence of an Italian auction house – all the
while shooting at other players – is exhilarating.
These maps are
well suited for shootouts, leaping, and magic powers. Wide open spaces
peppered with lookout spots make for dramatic shootouts, winding
corridors under heaving pirate ships are there for intimate encounters,
and spots for the grappling hook are everywhere, meaning every game
feels alive with motion.
While it’s difficult to say what
Uncharted 4’s multiplayer will look like in the future, there are enough
unlockables and perks to act as a carrot for completionists, and
Naughty Dog has promised more maps, mysticals, and a co-op mode in the
future that I’ll be sticking around for.
The Verdict
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a remarkable achievement in blockbuster
storytelling and graphical beauty. Though it’s let down by a lack of
imagination and some self-indulgence, especially in a third act that
drags on far too long, Uncharted 4 carries on the series’ proud
tradition of peerless polish and style, with a great multiplayer
component to boot. Most importantly, it’s a gentle sendoff to the
rag-tag group of characters we’ve known for nine years. A worthy thief’s
end, indeed.
Activision revealed all with a live stream and first trailer, giving gamers a taste of what's to come in November.
Outer space might (literally) sound like a world away from what made older Call of Duty games great, but there's good news for long-time fans. Infinite Warfare is just half the package: it's coming bundled with a remastered version of the original Modern Warfare.
Even with E3 in the bag, Activision hasn't spilled the beans completely, so there's still plenty we don't know about Infinite Warfare. Still, we've got all the facts (plus trailers and some purdy screenshots) right here.
We'll be keeping this article updated with the latest news, so make sure to check back for new info as it drops - that's an order, soldier!
Call of Duty might be headed out beyond the stratosphere, but the series is in good hands: original creators Infinity Ward are at the helm.
The teaser trailer only gives a glimpse at what's on the horizon, but
according to the developer, you're going to have your work cut out if
you want to make it back to Earth in one piece.
With Earth stripped of its natural resources and reliant on off-world
colonies for survival, it's going to be a bad day in the office when
the big bad Settlement Defense Front decides it isn't going to keep up
with the care packages.
You'll be in control of Tier One Special Operations pilot Captain
Reyes, with combat shifting from ground to space with "few visible
loading times". It sounds like you'll be spending a lot of time on your
warship, the Retribution, which could mean downtime between missions
where you talk to your crewmates.
Expect some good old fashioned run-and-gun as well as space combat. There's no Star Wars-style
laser death in the trailer, so it looks like Infinity Ward is staying
restrained with the sci-fi - although there are plenty of robots, space
ships and other futuristic gadgetry on show. Plus grappling hooks!
