Killing Floor 2

Killing Floor 2 is a First Person Shooter video game, and the sequel of the 2009 game ‘Killing Floor’.  Although Killing Floor 2 has already been released on PC, it is an ‘early access’ version.  The full release is scheduled for release later in 2015 on PC and Playstation 4.  Killing Floor 2 can be played solo or coop with up to six players.  The objective is to fight through waves of monsters, known as ‘zeds’ until you can take on the boss monster.  Each game can be set up with different wave lengths from easy with 4 waves, up to hard with 10 waves.  The game staggers the zed amounts depending on how many players are competing at the time meaning the game will be a challenge regardless if you are alone or with five other players.

Each player can choose one of four classes currently. Support, Commando, Medic, and berserker.  Additional classes may be added once the game has had its full release.  Each of the classes has perks that can be upgraded if players can utilize the classes’ weapons and skills. For example, the support class can gain experience from using shotgun weapons and welding doors shut to keep the zeds at bay.  As they level up there are given a percentage boost to their class.  Again as an example, the support class will have additional welding power and can penetrate more enemies with shotgun based weapons.  As players level up, at certain levels, they can unlock perks.  The game will consist of ten perks, with four weapon tiers spread across them.  Each perk provides the player with a set of passive bonuses and skills.

Killing Floor 2 currently has 11 different zeds and 1 boss currently.  Each of these zeds has traits that can cause players difficulty if they do not pay attention.  With the larger zeds, like the Scrake and fleshpound, who charge and players and consistently attack them with their weapons until either the player dies, or they do. 

Killing Floor 2 early access is currently available on Steam for £19.99.  Come and join the carnage.

Grand Theft Auto: Online

Grand Theft Auto Online was released two weeks after the release of Grand Theft Auto V.  And although Rockstar Games had taken precautions to make sure the online functionality would be solid, as GTA Online became available, servers crashed and people who were able to connect, suffered great lag, time outs and disconnections.    These issues we’re not easily resolved and continued to cause issues for a number of months after the release.  After the server issues had been resolved players started getting very excited waiting on the much anticipated “Heists” update. 

Throughout GTA Online players can explore the open world of Los Santos as they have done during the single player game.  The differences being that players create their own characters and can connect with anyone from around the world and together complete missions, compete in death matches, or just cause carnage to other players who are wanting to complete missions.  The Online world can also be closed off to anyone except your friends who you can invite for a more private and personal experience.  Players are also able to purchase apartments to live in and keep collections of modified cars in their personal garage using their in-game cash that they have collected from completing missions or looting from dead players.

Rockstar have continually updated their Online game by giving players free content with the ‘Beach Bum Update’ which gave new cosmetic items and vehicles for players to use, but as the months rolled by, players were still awaiting the release of the online heists and most people were starting to believe that Rockstar Games would never come through and release this anticipated update.  Some YouTube channels decided to create their own heists like RoosterTeeth’s ‘Let’s Play’ channel.

Online Heists were finally released on 10 March 2015 prior to the games release on PC.  Players were finally able to complete complicated, multi-tiered missions, with their friends to earn large cash rewards and mission specific vehicles.  Since this release ‘Twitch’ has  seen a massive increase of both people streaming GTA Online and people actually watching people play, with on average of 60,000+ people viewing GTA content each day.

GTA V single player

Grand Theft Auto V (also known as GTA 5 or GTA V) is a video game developed by Rockstar North. It is the fifteenth installment in the Grand Theft Auto series and the successor of Grand Theft Auto IV. The original edition was released on September 17th, 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 version were released on November 18th, 2014, and was later released on April 14th, 2015 for the PC.

Grand Theft Auto V is set circa 2013 in the city of Los Santos and its surrounding areas and tells the stories of three protagonists: Michael De Santa, Franklin Clinton, and Trevor Philips. It takes place about five years after the events of Grand Theft Auto IV, and four years after the events of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

As one of the most awaited video game titles to be released in 2013, the game was widely anticipated prior to its release. Grand Theft Auto V was released to universal acclaim, holding scores of 96 and above on MetaCritic and GameRankings, as well as receiving perfect scores from over 30 reviewers. The game sold 11.21 million copies and grossed $800 million on its first day, setting many records, and eventually making $1 billion within 3 days of the game's release.

There are many unique features in the game, one of those features is that when the players are playing as one of three protagonists in the game, the other two are living out their daily lives, and you will be surprised by what you find the characters doing when you switch back into them. Another unique feature is that the character swapping feature is executed in a Google Earth-styled manner. The PC, PS4 and Xbox One versions will present an exclusive feature which is a first person mode. The whole game can be played through the eyes of the protagonist. This gameplay mode presents a whole new way to play the game. Cars will have detailed interiors different to each vehicle; shooting will be like that of a FPS game.

The map is larger than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Red Dead Redemption combined. After some calculations by members of GawdAlmighty.com, that would equal to around 27.5 square miles/71.2 km2 when land and sea are combined.

Grand Theft Auto V has more vehicles than in any other Grand Theft Auto game to date, with a variety of vehicles, including airplanes, helicopters, cars, utility vehicles, emergency service cars, motorcycles, and jet skis. Players are able to fly planes, which impossible in Grand Theft Auto IV because of the size of the map, but the feature is now in Grand Theft Auto V because of the much larger map.

The game features a large variety of weapons, like the Norinco Type 56-2 assault rifles with sound suppressors, mounted flashlights, olive drab polymer furniture, and side-folding stocks. There is now the option to mount attachments onto various different guns, each one affecting the performance. Melee weapons like the nightstick and the golf club that were present in Grand Theft Auto IV have also returned to Grand Theft Auto V.

Grand Theft Auto V expands the multiplayer feature that was present in Grand Theft Auto IV. The multiplayer is treated as a additional title and is known as Grand Theft Auto Online.  GTA Online will be looked into more detail in the next blog.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is the direct follow-up to the first game, serving as both a sequel and a prequel. This time the gameplay is centered around a bigger cast of characters who each have their own point of view regarding the events. Dennis Wedin, the game's co-creator has stated that most of the gameplay mechanics are intact and that players will get to experiment with new weapons, new and more gory finishing moves and a complete story arc that will end the series.  The gameplay is mostly identical to that of the first game. Two of the original masks make a return, while new masks will offer new and exciting abilities and playstyles.  New tweaks to normal gameplay have been added, including executing with guns.

The difficulty has increased as well, along with two levels implemented  (Normal and Hard) for people who believed the first game was either too hard or easy.

Hotline Miami 2 has a Hard difficulty mode, which can only be unlocked when the player beats the game. In Extreme, enemies are more difficult to take down, and some abilities may be taken away from the player, such as enemy-locking.

Hotline Miami 2 has a lot more weapons than Hotline Miami: with returning weapons from Hotline Miami, cut weapons, and entirely new weapons. The developers are planning on releasing a level editor later in the Spring

Hotline Miami 2 takes place before and after the events of the original, focusing more on the latter, between October and December 1991. The game suggests that Jacket's interpretation is the canonical ending of the first game. In this version of events, Jacket is unwittingly manipulated into killing off the leadership of the Russian Mob by a neo-nationalist organization known as 50 Blessings.

After the previous game's ending, Jacket was captured by the authorities and put on trial, and his exploits have achieved national infamy. The persona of "Richard", a mysterious figure in a rooster mask that occasionally appeared to Jacket in the original game, has been appearing to certain individuals who are involved with 50 Blessings and Jacket's murder spree

The game received generally positive reviews from critics. It received an aggregated score of 86.25% on GameRankings based on 12 reviews and 81/100 on Metacritic based on 18 reviews.

Day of Defeat: Source

Day of Defeat: Source is set in World War II, specifically the European Theatre in the year 1944. Players choose to join the forces of either the United States Army or the German Wehrmacht and compete against each other in a variety of game modes. Players select from one of six classes to play as, each with its own role within the team. Player characters cannot take much damage, and in some circumstances can be killed by a single bullet, forcing players to make use of cover to stay alive. When a player character dies, that player starts a short countdown for reinforcements. When the timer runs out, the player and any friendly players killed in that time respawn into the game at their insertion point as the next wave of troops. All weapons in the game have realistic limits to their use: machine guns must be deployed to maintain accurate fire or to be reloaded, rocket launchers must be shouldered to be aimed and fired, sniper rifles are most accurate when used with the scope and grenades not "cooked off" before release may be easily fled or even thrown back by the opposition.

 The game was initially released with four maps, although later updates have introduced five new official levels and eight community produced maps supported by Valve. The game's levels are based after real battles in the Allied campaigns in Italy, Sicily and France, such as the Falaise pocket or the beach landings of Operation Shingle at Anzio, as well as entirely fictional battles. Combat can take place in several environments, such as city streets, buildings and sewers. Each online game can sustain a maximum of 32 players.

 Day of Defeat: Source, like other titles developed by Valve, tracks detailed statistics for individual players. They include the time spent playing as each class, accuracy and performance for each weapon used, flag captures, and various other details. Day of Defeat: Source also features numerous "achievements" for carrying out certain tasks, such as scoring a certain number of kills with a particular weapon or completing a round within a certain time. Many of the achievements are class-specific, providing incentive for a player to improve his or her abilities with each class evenly. Achievements unlocked and statistics from previously played games are displayed on the player's Steam Community profile page.

 There are two main game modes in Day of Defeat: Source: territorial control and detonation. In territorial control maps, players must fight for control of all strategic points on the map. The strategic points take various forms, such as a destroyed tank in a street or fields and buildings, and are designated by a flag in its vicinity, which displays the army colors of the team who controls the point. Points are captured by a certain number of team members surrounding the point, with it either capturing instantly or after a couple of seconds. Players on the other side can disrupt a capture by placing themselves within the capture area during the process or by killing the enemy players at the point. The first side to hold all the points simultaneously wins the round.

 The objective in a detonation level is to plant and detonate explosive devices on a number of enemy positions, which can consist of AA guns, tanks and armoured cars. Some positions must be hit twice for them to be completely destroyed. Players can protect their positions by defusing the explosives before they detonate. In one variation of this game mode, one side has to defend their positions for a set amount of time, with the destruction of each piece of equipment giving the enemy team more time. The defenders win if they can hold their positions long enough for the time to run out, while the attackers win when all objectives have been destroyed. In the alternate version, both teams must attack the other's objectives while defending their own. The first team to destroy all of the enemy's equipment wins.

 Day of Defeat: Source is still considered a active game. With a diehard fan base still gains over a few thousand people playing every day. For a game that will be ten years old this year, that is a very good number.

Dying Light

Dying Light is a first person survival horror game, set in the post-apocalyptic city of Harran.  The game was initially released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on January 27^th 2015 in North America and on January 28^th 2015 in Europe and Australia.  However, the European physical copy of the game was pushed back until the February 27^th.  The official Dying Light website describes the game as:

"Dying Light is an action survival game presented in first-person perspective. The game is set in a vast and dangerous open world. During the day, you roam an urban environment devastated by a mysterious epidemic, scavenging for supplies and crafting weapons to help you defeat the hordes of mindless, flesh-hungry enemies the plague has created. At night, the hunter becomes the prey as the infected grow in strength and aggression - but even more lethal are the nocturnal, inhuman predators that leave their nests to feed. You will need to make use of all your skills and any available means to survive till dawn." – Official Website

In Dying Light, you control Kyle Crane, an undercover operative who is parachuted in to Harran to recover a secret file.  However, as you land you are bitten by one of the infected and rescued by a group of survivors’ and taken to their base ‘The Tower’.  The tower houses a number of people, some who have been bitten and require medicine, others who have simply found a safe place away from the infected.  To pay your deed for being saved, you are enlisted as a ‘runner’.  Runners look for air drops of medicine and supplies that are being dropped to keep the people alive.  However, a rival gang also try to obtain these drops to horde.

Dying Light host a multitude of weapons for players to use; from 2x4 up to assault rifles.  Each of the melee weapons can be customized using blueprints found throughout the game along with the items required to make these.  These upgrades can give special effects such as; poison attack, incendiary, or electrical attacks.  And for the first section of the game, these weapons are your bread and butter as firearms are few and far between.

Dying Light offers two different ways to play the game.  Single Player or Co-op.  Much like Dead Island back in 2011.  The game is made more fun whilst running around with friends.  However, the true fear comes from playing the game alone and trying to survive the night, when infected are more powerful and also have backup by some special infected monsters. 

Overall Dying Light is an improvement on the open world survival horror game franchise.  With its ability for you to traverse your environment by free running. Along with a good story line and balanced monsters to fight.  Dying Light is one game well worth picking up.

Runescape

Runescape is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) first released in 2001 by brothers Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Studio.  The game is a browser based game and can be played on even the most basic of PC’s.  Since being released in 2001, Runescape has had over 200 million unique accounts created and has been recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest free MMORPG and the most updated game.

RuneScape takes place in the world of Gielinor, a medieval fantasy realm divided into different kingdoms, regions, and cities. Players can travel throughout Gielinor via a number of methods including on foot, magic, or charter ships.  Each region offers different types of monsters, resources, and quests to challenge players.  The game current allows players to train up 15 different skills via gaining xp for doing certain actions in game; players are also able to create their own character to give their game more of a personal feel.  However if players wish to, they can pay approx $5 per month to become a ‘member’.  This gives them access to 11 extra skills they can train up, new monsters, weapons and armour, and access to the full game map.  Runescape is also a community heavy game, with an official game forums as well as ‘clans’.  Which players can meet up to level up their skills, or fight the many boss monsters that roam the world.

Runescape in 2001.

Runescape currently has 209 quests available to paying members with varying levels of difficulty and skills required, however players do not have to complete these quests to play the game.  Although if they choose to level up their skills and complete these then they can get access to new monsters, armour or weapons that will make their experience in the game a lot easier. As well as giving varying chunks of experience in skills.

Since its first release back in 2001, Runescape has gone through many changes,  the most noticeable is the graphics.  In its first release, Runescape was a mix of two and three-dimensional graphics.  Which was very advanced for a browser based game at the time.  In 2004, ‘Runescape 2’ was released.  With this the game had a fully three-dimensional environment.  The initial release of the game was rebranded as ‘Runescape Classic’ which although is not available to play anymore to new players, if your account has logged into Runescape classic at least once. You can still play this version of the game.  In 2012 the combat system was reworked granting players access to a customisable ability bar where they could set up attacks based on the combat style they were using.  This update did not sit well with many of the players and Jagex seen a great decline in their active members.  However since then many player have come back and have accepted the changes to the combat system and most prefer it.  However in 2014, Jagex released ‘Legacy mode’ Which gave user the ability to play the active version of the game, using the old combat styles.  The current version ‘Runescape 3’ was released in 2013 with the main change being that the game now supports HTML5.

Runescape 3 Boss Fight

In February 2013, a poll passed to create a separate incarnation of RuneScape as it was in 2007. It was originally created as an exact copy of the game from August 2007, but it is continually updated by a separate development team. New content is voted on by the players. Data on Old School RuneScape is separate from RuneScape 3.

Runescape 2/Old School Runescape

Although there are new games being released every month, popularity for these games can decline very quickly.  Runescape boasts that it still has over 85,000 active accounts daily for Runescape 3 and a dedicated fan base of over 40,000 players on ‘Old School’.  And with its ongoing weekly updates, still makes it one of the freshest games around. 

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 is a team-based multiplayer first person shooter developed by Valve.  The game was first released in 2007 for PC and xbox360 as part of Valve’s ‘Orange Box’ and has since then seen a PS3 release and even had a standalone release.  In 2010 Team Fortress 2 was released for Mac OS X and also made free-to-play and eventually was playable on Linux in 2013.

Team Fortress 2 follows the same premise as the first game pitting two teams against each other, Reliable Excavation Demolition (Team RED) and Builders League United (Team BLU) and has nine classes available for each team.  Each class has its own unique strengths, weaknesses abilities, weapons and roles.  However the abilities have evolved as the game has progressed.  Since being released on different formats, only the PC/Mac OS X/Linux version still has a very loyal following, with over 60,000 unique users playing the game each day.  Making Team Fortress 2 the third most played game through the Steam platform behind Counter Strike and Dota.  Team Fortress 2 was created with a cartoony feel instead of going with realistic graphics, however still has a great deal of graphic violence.  However the game still holds comic value and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, even although the players can take it very seriously. 

Since its release on PC, Team Fortress 2 has seen many updates that have evolved the game which has kept the game interesting.  One of the most frequent occurrences that happens in game is players will receive random weapons which can be equipped by one of the classes with different bonuses and weaknesses.   In 2011 when the game was made free-to-play, Valve opened an in-game store where players could use real money to buy new costumes and weapons to use in the game, and this has been the primary source of income for the game now.

Team Fortress 2 was first developed with three game play modes: 

Capture the point – where the objective is to capture all the areas of the map to win,

 Payload – in which one team has to move a bomb to the enemy base to blow it up.

Capture the flag – in which You must retrieve the enemy teams briefcase and bring it back to your safe zone to earn points.

As the game more popular, more game types were added later.  In 2012 Valve released their much anticipated ‘Mann vs. Machine’ update which pits six players against increasingly difficult waves of robots, intent on destroying your base.  This update came with two versions to play ‘Mann Up’ which you use tickets you buy from the online store to play where afterwards you receive a special weapon or outfit.  And ‘Boot Camp’ which is the free to play version, but does not come with any rewards.  Most players who play this MvM will choose the ‘Mann Up’ version so that they can play with competent players.

All in all, Team Fortress 2 is a game that I’ve personally played since its release and always feel that the game feels different every time you play it.  This is down to the amount of players and variations of weapons that have been implemented into the game.  With its fast paced and sometimes frantic games Team Fortress is a great game to just drop into and play a few rounds when you have a bit of spare time.  However one of the main reasons that people play Team Fortress 2 is quite simple...HATS!  Team Fortress 2 will still holds up from its first release nearly 8 years ago, and has the potential to still be one of the most played games a further 8 years from now, or until Valve release Team Fortress 3.