QC Done

Author: A.K.H.

  • Star Wars Outlaws: Review

    Immediately after finishing Star Wars Outlaws, I went to Ubisoft’s Youtube channel and tried to find out if there was a trailer or video that accurately depicted how it feels to play the game. I mostly found stylish trailers showing non-stop action, including gunfights, fistfights and space battles. But there was only one video that had the piece of footage I was looking for, and it was a gameplay walkthrough from June 2023. In this video, we can see our hero Kay Vess sneaking through an enemy base, and eventually she gets caught. Then a gunfight breaks out and the action begins. But this rarely happens in the actual game.

    Most of the time, what happens when you get caught is that a random enemy will try to raise the alarm, and you need to try to stop them. Then another random enemy tries to do the same, and so on. And more often than not, the alarm does get trigged, and you get an instant fail screen. This sums up the core experience of playing through the story of Star Was Outlaws – a pretty decent game that is let down by its forced stealth mechanics that take away the fun most of the time.

    If you’re not going to watch the video, here’s a summary: Star Wars Outlaws is a stealth-heavy third person action game that really doesn’t want you to use the action part for most of the time. When it does allow you to break free and explore the world at your own pace though, it does feel like an enjoyable game. The story is told quite well and actually makes you feel connected to the characters. At a runtime of between 15-20 hours for the main story, and a whole lot more for the side quests, this game is a decent package for anyone who is a Star Wars fan, or plays a lot of Ubisoft games.

  • Gamescom 2024 Highlights

    Gamescom 2024 recently came to a close, and after the death of E3, this seems to be the largest in-person convention in the industry right now. Until last year, Gamescom used to sit in a weird spot in the calendar, where it was too late to announce new games releasing in the same year and too early to announce new games coming out next year.

    So poor Gamescom used to be left with focusing on games that were already announced. This year however, things have changed quite a bit, with multiple world premiere trailers being showcased at Gamescom . I guess part of the reason is that the summer showcase events have become way too crowded, and the game awards show in December is also quite crowded, so Gamescom currently feels like an unexplored area. However, it still has a long way to go before filling the gap left by E3, at least in terms of anticipation and excitement. With that said, let’s have a look at some of the announcements made at Gamescom that I felt were worth highlighting. These include a mixture of new and previously announced games.

  • Star Wars Outlaws: Early Impressions

    Thanks to the old trick of virtually moving to New Zealand on the xbox, I was able to access Star Wars Outlaws at 5:30pm local time on the 26th. And so I was able to spend some time with the game, and decided to make another of my early impressions videos. I make these videos because they give me some breathing room to put out a full review at my own pace, while also taking advantage of the increased interest in the game during its launch window.

    I’ve been preparing for Star Wars Outlaws all through August by playing the two Jedi games by Respawn Entertainment. I started Outlaws expecting a completely different experience, and that’s exactly what I found. In this video, I talk about my early experience with the game. I played four missions, spanning across two hours. While I believe there are no major spoilers, watch this video at your own risk.

  • Immortals of Aveum – One Year Later

    August 2023 was an interesting month. It saw the release of one of the year’s most praised games Baldur’s Gate 3, and it also saw the release of one of the year’s most forgotten games – Immortals of Aveum. In April 2024, PlayStation plus members were given Immortals of Aveum as part of their monthly essential games offering. I immediately downloaded it and gave it a try, eager to see if the game truly deserved the criticism it received. To my surprise, the game got off to a good start, and I put in around 3-4 hours of playtime. However, the issues soon started cropping up and I uninstalled the game the same day.

    Now, as we approach the game’s one year anniversary, I wanted to see if I could give it another try. Would I find the game bearable enough to finish it this time? And the answer is, not yet, but I think that’s partly because I continued my in-progress game rather than starting fresh, meaning I have lost touch with the game’s mechanics. This game has design issues that make it really difficult to keep playing after a long break. I will probably start a fresh game sometime after this video goes live, because I feel this game does have some merits, and I want to see it to the end. For this video, I wanted to summarise the story behind this game. A lot has already been said about Immortals of Aveum by a lot of people, and I doubt I can add anything new to the discussion. That said, I feel that talking about these things from time to time will keep the conversation alive about the direction in which the video game market is headed. Today I wanted to talk a little about my experience with the game, and also take a look back at the background for this game’s development, how it was received at launch, and what happened after the launch. The summary of the video is this: Immortals of Aveum may be a flawed game, but games like these is what the industry needs right now. I’m talking about a linear, single-player AAA production that doesn’t have any microtransactions or any extra monetisation model beyond the initial asking price. The studio which made the game is on life support right now, and I sincerely hope they pull through to bring another, hopefully smaller project to life.

  • Star Wars Jedi Games in 2024

    Star Wars Outlaws is due for release later this month, so I thought this would be a good time to look back at the two games that a lot of people will use to draw up many comparisons. And most of us already know how it’s going to end – Outlaws will not get as much critical praise as the two Jedi games did, but it will still end up making a lot of money for Ubisoft, because the combination of the Star Wars brand and the familiar Ubisoft open world formula has a lot of commercial appeal.

    Anyway, in this video, I will be talking about the two well received, single-player star wars games developed by Respawn Entertainment, and published by Electronic Arts. This is not a review of either of these games, and will feature heavy spoilers, including the ending of both games, so watch at your own risk.

  • Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – The Sky Breaker: Review

    Given all the games I was covering in July, I had no time to look at the first DLC for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which released on July 16th, 2024. Although I have to say it was partially Ubisoft’s fault, because just like the base game, their marketing efforts for this DLC were a bit lacking. In fact, I could not find a launch trailer for the DLC on the official Ubisoft channel in July. They only put out one trailer in June, during the Ubisoft Forward event, and that was it. I also didn’t see the DLC mentioned in my regular news sources, which may suggest that a lot of media outlets either didn’t receive review codes, or they were not really interested to cover it. Either way, it’s safe to say that this DLC didn’t get a lot of attention at launch. And I guess this lack of a marketing push was intentional.

    That’s because the sky breaker is a pretty safe and standard DLC for a standard Ubisoft AAA game, which doesn’t really offer many surprises, and is happy to give you more of the core experience of the base game. And that’s the short version of the review. If you liked the core experience of Frontiers of Pandora, this DLC simply offers more of it. There’s no new enemies, no new game-changing mechanics or any surprising story twists to talk about here. It’s quite short, running between 2-3 hours for the main story and around 2-3 hours more of side content. For some people, that’s exactly what they’re looking for from a DLC. For others, it might be a bit of a disappointment that Ubisoft didn’t use this DLC to try something fresh and unique like they sometimes do with their Far Cry DLCs. To find out more, let’s get deeper into the review. Minor spoilers ahead.

  • Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – Review

    This week, I was originally planning to do a 15-minute rant about subscription price hikes, but that felt boring even as I was writing the script. Then, I kept seeing a lot of praise online for this new title on xbox game pass called Kunitsu-Gami Spirit of the goddess. Developed by Capcom, it is an Action Strategy game, and it can even be called a tower defense game, except instead of a tower, you are defending a Maiden. That’s what the game’s description calls her by the way.

    As usual, here’s a summary if you’re not going to watch the video: Path of the Goddess is a must-play if you’re the sort of gamer who wishes we ought to see new ideas in the market. Well, here’s one of the industry giants experimenting with a new-ish idea, with a heavy dosage of Japanese culture and some really well-designed, action-packed levels. It’s a visual feast, and the strategy part of the game is kept simple enough to appeal to a wider audience. The game definitely struggles to maintain the pace towards the end, and involves a lot of backtracking in order to progress efficiently, but overall it is a quite excellent title that is one of the more interesting releases in 2024 so far.

  • Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – Review

    If you’re not going to watch the entire video, here’s the summary: Flintlock The Siege of Dawn is the perfect 7 out of 10 game to play on Xbox game pass. The story is forgettable, and exists only to lead you from one boss fight to the next. The gameplay loop is a bit of an interesting mix between melee and ranged combat which you may or may not like. Everything else about the game is really average, but since it is quite short, you might consider investing some time in this if you don’t have anything else to play at the moment. Now on to the full review.

    This was originally going to be an early impressions video for Flintlock the siege of dawn, similar to videos I’ve done for The First Descendant and Zenless Zone Zero earlier this month. I only made early impressions videos for those two previous games because I wasn’t too interested to finish them. But halfway through my playthrough of Flintlock, I realised that I was actually interested to finish the game, and that’s what I did. It helped that the game is quite short, and I was able to finish it in a little over 7 hours. And these days, if I’m able to finish a game, I consider it to be at least a decent game. That’s what Flintlock is – a really decent game, which has a few moments of fun, but is wrapped in such a mediocre package that the 7 out of 10 scores that it is getting seem justified. Before we get into the details, here’s a warning that this review will include some spoilers from the game, and while I don’t show any footage from the later stages of the game, I do talk a little about the final boss, without going into too many details.

  • Battle Passes: A Deep Dive

    Earlier this month, the developers of the popular Battle Royale game, Apex Legends announced that they would make significant changes to its battle pass model starting in the game’s upcoming season 22. In short, they are going to remove the ability for players to purchase a battle pass using in-game currency, and they are going to introduce two battle passes per season, each costing $10 USD.

    At the time of recording this, neither EA or Respawn have commented on the community backlash, but a lot of people expect one of two things to happen. One, the developers will come back with an apology and announce a slightly better plan, which was supposed to be the original plan all along, and this controversial plan which no one likes was only meant to make the original plan feel better. We have seen this happen many times before. Or two, the controversial plan will actually be implemented, because the developers know that the people complaining online are only a vocal minority, and the majority of the player base will continue playing the game and maybe even buy a lot of these new battle passes.

    Either way, it’s not really a good time to be playing Apex Legends as your main game. A lot has already been said about this controversial update and I don’t really want to to discuss more about that in particular. Moving on from that controversy, this made me think a lot about battle passes as a whole. Battle passes as a business model in video games have become so common that we are no longer surprised to see them in most new games these days. They started gaining popularity because they offered what we thought was a good alternative to lootboxes, because you always knew what you were buying with your money, unlike lootboxes where you paid money without knowing what you would get in return.

    But little did we know that the battle pass system would bring problems of its own, and the sad thing is, we currently don’t have a replacement system in sight. In this video, let’s spend a little time looking into the origins of this monetisation model, why publishers and developers are so reliant on it, and how it hurts the consumers in the long term.

  • Zenless Zone Zero Early Impressions

    Zenless Zone Zero is the latest major release by the well-known Chinese game developer and publisher, MiHoYo. The company gained worldwide fame through their breakout hit Genshin Impact, and followed it up with Honkai: Star Rail, which was also a huge hit, although probably not on the same scale as Genshin Impact. Now ZZZ has managed to score over 50 million global downloads in less than a week after its launch. So the game is certainly off to a great start, but what awaits players behind all the hype?

    If you are not going to watch the video, here’s the summary: ZZZ is a stylish action game that is designed to be played in short bursts. The game has got excellent production values, and a decent gameplay loop, but the outdated gacha monetisation model will feel tedious to anyone who has not played similar games in the past, or prefers the more modern approach of simply buying what you want without having to depend on RNG.