Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta – PC Game Review

I am just going to come out and say it: Unearthed is an Uncharted/Tomb Raider clone. It’s basically a generic version of uncharted targeted toward the budget PC game market. The game makes no attempt to mask this at all! In fact, they seem to take pride in the fact that they are a cheap knock-off.

Still, as far as knock-offs go, the story isn’t half bad! It’s an episodic game, and has a decent plotline that could evolve into an interesting story. Though, it seems as if we will never really know for certain, since Episode 1 came out in 2014, and no episode 2 has ever followed! Will one eventually pop up? Possibly, though I wouldn’t hold my breath for it! The first episode ends in a cliff hanger too! So, if you are someone who really enjoyed the game? Too bad! No ending for you!

The game is made by Semaphore, but a part of me has to wonder if this is the gaming branch of Asylum films. It’s just insane how much of a blatant knock-off this game is. Still, that doesn’t bother me much! I actually don’t mind cheap knock-offs! In fact if I am being completely honest, it being a knock-off of Uncharted was the main reason for buying it. (That and it was on sale for only 99 cents!)

Anyway, like I said! The game is an Uncharted knock off, which means it features many of the same elements from Uncharted. Stealth kills, rooftop chases, driving, riding passenger while firing guns at pursuing enemies…Everything you would expect from an uncharted game, just in a miniature format. Everything is shorter.

So, how is the game? Well, it starts out ok! everything seems to be textured nicely. Unfortunately, while the textures used were fantastic, a lot of people had a shine to it. This made people, and their clothes occasionally look like plastic! It’s not present in everything, but the few times it occurs is a bit of a distraction.

As far as the acting goes, I wasn’t that impressed. The voice acting wasn’t that great at all! In fact, it was some pretty poor voice acting! Maybe some of the worst that I have heard in a video game. They really should have just went with no voice over! That would have been an improvement!

As I start actually playing the game, the first thing I notice is the poor animation! Still, this is an indie game, and I am sure the company isn’t set up with motion captioning studios. I have seen worse in Indie games…Hell, I have seen worse in some AAA titles too! So, the characters move stiffly and nothing feels smooth! It’s about on par with what you would expect from a 5 dollar game in terms of animation.

What isn’t on par with what you would expect is the amount of glitches! Seriously, was this thing even beta tested? I was killed by invisible enemies, detected and shot through walls(Which kinda defeats the purpose of taking cover really), Died from fall damage while going down some steps and even jumped THROUGH a pillar and off a ledge instead of jumping onto the pillar! All that was just what I encountered during one play through! I can only imagine the bugs that I haven’t yet encountered!

The game is 100% Xbox 360 gamepad compatible, but the controls are also very shoddy! You can use them, but everything feels clunky, and I just can’t seem to move exactly the way I want or need to! This makes it especially annoying when trying to maneuver across thin walkways above a deep chasm.

The “Puzzles” are also very simple. There’s no way you will have trouble solving any of the puzzles in this game, but apparently it has a hint feature just in case! I am kind of curious if anyone has actually used it, but I am assuming they haven’t, and if they did I doubt they would ever admit it.

Lastly, the game is SHORT! I mean, obviously you expect it to be short, but it’s REALLY short. The game can be complete in an hour and a half! Most of that isn’t even real gaming either! A good portion of that is just walking down a street, driving around repeating roads and “Fist fighting” foes!

Is it worth picking up? I suppose if you get it on a 99 cent sale like I did, and you enjoy cheap knock-offs and the chuckles they can bring..then sure. Otherwise, 5 bucks is asking way too much for what the game provides.

PROS

• cheap!
• Good textures!
• Rips off Uncharted!
• Nice Variety of levels
• Gamepad support

CONS

• Low asking price is STILL too expensive.
• Poor animations.
• Poor voice acting.
• Incredibly glitchy
• Flawed controls.
• Simple Puzzles
• Incredibly short.
• Incomplete game that ends in a cliffhanger.

Overall rating: 2.5/10

Rise of the Tomb Raider – PC Game Review

I had been looking forward to playing Rise of the Tomb Raider since it was announced, and decided to pick it up on steam, because it was on sale for fairly cheap! I can’t remember the exact price, but it was cheap. Did it live up to my expectations?

Here’s the thing about ROTR: It’s very much like the original Tomb Raider. It doesn’t really bring anything new to the table! In fact, the graphics are very similar to the graphics found in the original Tomb Raider PC Release(We’re talking about the reboot of course, not the very first original Tomb Raider game). This isn’t a bad thing! The graphics in the original were absolutely breath-taking! I am completely happy with the graphics in both games, but it does leave me confused on why ROTR requires such a beast of a computer to run! The game is currently one of the current higher requirement games out there, and I just don’t understand why. Granted, I am not a game developer, so there is probably much that I don’t understand.

As I said, a lot of the game is very similar to Tomb Raider. This statement also includes gameplay mechanics. There are very few new tools at your disposal, The few new tools that DO exist don’t even come into play til toward the end of the game, and even then aren’t that interesting. It boils down to the same Ledge Climbing, Rock Scaling gameplay as the original. Complete with sliding down snowbanks/waterfalls and having to move left and right to avoid obstacles.

What the game DID do right however was the storyline! It had a very appealing any interesting storyline the focuses on an artifact that can grant eternal life. It also has an evil group which is a secret society who is seeking the artifact for themselves, and a group of rebels who are trying to keep the artifact from falling into the wrong hands. It has some twists, Moments of betrayal, Moments of loyalty…It has everything you could want from an adventure story of this type.

One thing that might upset some people, is that Rise of the Tomb Raider doesn’t have a multiplayer mode. What it does have instead is an expedition mode.I haven’t really mucked around with expedition mode too much, but it seems to offer you a variety of different modes that let’s you replay chapters of the story, while also giving you the option to increase or decrease difficulty through the use of cards which can be purchased using an ingame currency(Or using real cash apparently). Personally, I don’t find the lack of a PVP based multiplayer game disappointing at all. I love the fact that a game company still focuses on the creativity and story based captivation of the single player campaign.

Don’t get me wrong, I like when a game has both a rich and full single player campaign as well as a PvP mode. It’s just that more often than not developers go the lazy route and just toss in some half assed single player campaign that is completed in a half hour and basically serves as a tutorial for the online game mode. Other developers even go the more incredibly lazier route and toss out the campaign mode all together and stick you with a multiplayer only FPS, that when the servers eventually go down, or people quit playing..you are stuck just running around shooting bots. At least with a campaign, you have that to fall back on when the servers are gone.

Speaking of rich storylines! Rise of the Tomb Raider is an incredibly long game! It took me 22 hours to complete it, and that’s just the main story. That’s not including all of the optional tombs and side missions. I did a few of them, but there’s still plenty more for me to go back and do! There’s also the expedition mode which as I said before I have only lightly dabbled in.

Now, this long storyline might be good or bad. Depending on your view. I loved the game and the story, but even I was getting to the point where I was wishing the game was just over. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing I suppose. Like I said, I enjoyed the game. but 22 hours is a long time to find out what’s going to happen. For me, the perfect length of a main campaign is about 15 hours. Any more than that, and my attention starts to wander. This is mainly due to my ADD, so it may not apply to you.

Overall though, it was an enjoyable game. If you were a fan of the last Tomb Raider game, or the Uncharted game series(Which the gameplay shares similarities with) then you will most likely enjoy this title.

PROS
-Gorgeous Graphics.
-Long and in-depth story.
-Many Side missions to keep you occupied.
-Decent replay value
-Flawless gamepad support
-Impressive voice acting & Mocaping.

Cons
-No PvP based Multiplayer
-Game might be TOO long for some players.
-Micro transactions.
-High system requirements

Overall score: 7.5/10

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

There was a game released on the Playstation 2, Called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I am sure you have heard of it, because it was insanely popular. It was so popular that Disney felt basing a movie on it would be the bee’s knees.

Years pass, and sequels are spawned. The Playstation 3 begins cranking out playstation 2 compilations. It’s no wonder that one of these compilations is the Prince of Persia Trilogy.

People who have never played the games before are given a chance to play these classic stories, in HD, stereoscopic 3D and with Trophies.

One of those people who are experiencing the game for the first time, is me. See, I was never really into platformers back in the PS2 days, in fact the only types of games I would even consider playing were RPGs. As you can imagine, I missed out on playing many great titles.

As time passed, my tastes in games expanded, and now I pretty much enjoy every video game genre imaginable. Except most sports games and all rhythm games. Those suck. I have tried them, and I despise them.

So tonight, I began playing Prince of Persia and the Sands of Time, and I have to admit, I didn’t like it all! In fact, I would go so far as to say it sucks. Not just sucks, but suck much ass!

It’s not that I don’t enjoy platformer games. I love them! In fact the Uncharted game series, is one of my top favorite series! I also love Assassins Creed Ezio Trilogy, I enjoy God of War and Tomb Raider. In fact, I love most platformer games! So, it came as quite a shock when I discovered that I detested PoP:SoT.

I know many people love the game, and most people will say how it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. To them I say, you really need to try a new brand of sliced bread.

So, what do I dislike about the game? So many things! To begin, with the story is very poor. It doesn’t reach out and grab me, and make me want to keep playing to see what happens next. Which is a bad thing, considering the controls feel clumsy and awkward. Usually, even when a game has crappy gameplay, if the story is good, I will keep playing, because I don’t want to be left hanging.

This wasn’t the case with PoP:SoT. In fact, I quit playing less than 2 hours into the game, and have no intention of looking back, or trying the next two installments of the POP trilogy.

Uncharted Review

I just recently had the honor of playing the PS3 exclusive game “Uncharted: Drakes Fortune“. The game is fairly old, however you wouldn’t guess that by looking at the jaw dropping graphics. You might be wondering if it is so old, why did it take so long to play it? Well, to begin with I didn’t have any interest. I saw videos, and screen shots and to be honest, I thought it was going to be Tomb Raider with a male leading character, and I despised the TOmb Raider games, even more than I despised the Tomb Raider movies!

When I finally played it, I learned quickly that the ame is NOTHING like Tomb Raider, which is a good thing. In fact, the game is really unlike anything I have ever played. Sure, the story might not be original, and some of the dialog might be a bit cliché, but the gameplay it’s self is truly unique and entertaining!

Basically, the story follows Nathan Drake, who happens to be a treasure hunter. Kind of like a modern-day Indiana Jones, except not quite as cool. As you start playing, one of the things you will notice is the tutorial guides. They are extremely helpful and informative, and teach you how to manuever around the world of Uncharted. It is highly advised that you do not ignore these.

The controls are simple enough so that anyone can pretty much pick up a gamepad and begin playing, and if you are having trouble, the game guides you into the action. You aren’t tossed head first into life and death situations. So, by the time you are in the heat of it all, you will be quite comfortable with the controls and play style of the game.

Everything about this game is great, the Story, though not original is entertaining, and the voice acting os probably some of the best that I have heard in video games to date! There’s not a thing about this game anyone can complain about. Well, at least not til toward the end.

You see, as you begin nearing the end of the game, Uncharted decides to introduce a new enemy type to the game. This Enemy is a melee enemy which just so happens to pack quite a punch. This means all of a sudden you are forced to break away from the controls you are used to. The method of combat that you have lovingly been introduced to is pretty much tossed out on its ear. Gone are the days of taking cover and aiming down the barrel for accurate shots. In order to survive you simply have to run like a maniac and shoot from the hip. Yea, suddenly, the game becomes a standard Run’N’Gun type game. To make matters worse, the game doesn’t give you any indication that, now might be a good time to change your entire play style.

This sudden change made the game frustrating, however After I played it and finished it, and looked back at the game. I think it was a nice touch. Sure it was a pain in the ass, but it gave the game a sense of confusion and panic. It made the game seem to come alive.

Over-all I would say the game is top-notch and is a must own, and am throughly impressed with this game title. Never before have I been this pleasantly surprised with a video game title.

Looking forward to trying Uncharted 2 now!