GTA online review

Ok, now this was difficult. I personally love the online of this game, i think i have been a bit addicted this past month. However i also hate the online as well. Rockstar had a rough launch day, or should i say week. Yes i was annoyed but not suprise and i just waited until people reported it working. So i'm going to let that pass. However what i won't let pass is all the features the missed out until 'a later date'. I mean if i bout a game, i want the game, all of it. GTA online is like buying a foundation of a house and hoping rockstar completes and adds on to it, its good yes, but it isn't complete. What i mean by this is when i saw the trailer i was more excited with the stock market feature and the bank robberies you could plan with friends, none of that is available yet.

Ok now i want to talk about the money of this game. Excuse my langue but it fucking sucks. you can buy money with real world money through the credit card option, that are coming 'at a later date', the main way you can get money is by doing missions and of course people abuse the crap out of it refreshing an easy mission and getting millions that way. Then rockstar said, well instead of trying to find a way to make the missions harder or longer, we will not longer let people play a mission again. That is so stupid, i have played a mission where you get $1000, not because of the money but because it was fun. now i cant do that mission again easily. The second way you get money is by robbing stores, fun but you only get $900 - $1500 each time, and of course people found a way to gain the system too. The third way is you sell cars, i'm fine with this way as you can only sell one car a day, but you can get up to $10,000 a car. Now the last way i've found it to simply go crazy killing people and players, but this is a good way to get kicked or have a bounty on your head you only lose when someone kills you.

Now i'm not saying i dislike gta online, i just think if you'r going to release something with promises of features
, release those features straight away and don't stop adding features until a month after release. Ok i think thats all the problems i've found in the game. Now to the more positive part of my experience.

After loosing three character from cloud issues and finally getting used to that piece of crap character creator (heritage), i made a  somewhat awesome looking guy, this is now me and i'm now fully immersed as they don't speak, weird thing to say but thats how i felt. Another awesome moment is the first time you fly a fighter jet online, and assuming you don't get kicked, you can have a lot of fun. Furthering on this point is a mission called top fun. Top fun pits a 4 v 4 match one team as the runners on bike, and the others in jets. I think i played this more than free roam. If you get a chance to play it i suggest doing it, it can be found outside the military base.

Ok this is gunna be a small review because theres so much to say and talk about that i simple can't. What i will say is that gta online could be its own game, and it could hold up as one. Rockstar have made an online experience like i said before is the foundation of something great, and i will be playing this in the years to come, as this open world is only going to get bigger.

GTA V review

OK, grand theft auto V(please note i will not be reviewing or talking about Online yet, that will be another review all together). I was first introduced to the grand theft auto series a very long time ago, i dont even remember when. It was the top down GTA. I thought it was fun... for about 5 minutes, got bored and never thought about it again, and it was my neighbours game not mine. The next time i played the series is when my brother got San Andreas in 2004 for the Ps2. I remember sneaking into his room and playing it for hours and even just watching him play, which for an 11 year old is a tough thing to do.

When i was older and i actually bought/got for christmas my xbox 360, i remember getting into a heated argument about how i was too young for an 18+ game(i would have been 16), but alas i won her over an in 2008ish i bought it/got it early for my birthday. I remember my first time playing this game, the first real open world game i ever played. the graphics were, and are amazing. Thats why when GTA V was announced last year i was so exited. Just like the total war series, GTA had been a part of my early nostalgia gaming years.

Ok now for the review. I have played GTA V, and completed it, so about a month, and i can say it blows me away how even at 20 i can still revert back to my child like state and play for hours and be immersed in a digital world so easily. GTA V is the swansong of rockstar. The reason i say this is between gta 4, rockstar have made Max Payne 3 and red dead redemption. The reason i bring this up is because what makes a perfect game is this; realism but not too much, graphics, and gameplay. The realism in this game is caption by the ragdoll effects, i love them. when running down a hill your character will stumble and start rolling, i think i almost chocked laughing. Something about seeing this just proves that the reason we play games is to fell like a kid again. but i digress, the graphics. The graphics i thought, i first were fantastic, the cars, the sunset, beautiful.

However i did notice that they still haven't solved 2d textures looking, well like 2d textures. The reason i say this is when walking down a street and you look at a shop, you can tell its just a picture, not depth at all. Now i'm not a game developer (yet) but it does take you out of the realism. Furthermore when you get into a plane or flying vehicle, the buildings are surrounded my mist and fog to help the rendering process, but takes me out of the realism. However those are two miniscule problems with this game.

One thing i enjoyed about this game was the main trio of heroes, all anti heros of course to continue GTA's streak. We have Trevor the psychopath, Micheal the 'retired' bank robber, and Franklin the gangster. Not to sound soft but, i get it, you like anti heros, i'm getting a bit tired of it. Ok so maybe not tired but i certanly am getting decensored to the evil shit we do in these games. For Example when playing as franklin we accompany Lamar to steal a bike, and of course it ends up in a firefight with the player killing countless foes. Now Franklin is actually portrayed as a down to earth guy, wanting more out of life and doesn't want to kill. But GTA V gives the player no remorse, i really got too disconnected from what the characters were doing. For example near the middle of the game the psycho trevor is told to torture a innocent man for information, forcing the player to use a car battery, waterboarding, and other 'tools' to achieve this goal. Now i know i said i was desensitized to this but, i felt weird and generally disgusted with myself after doing this. I remember the controversy over modern warfare 2 where you kill civilians at the airport, this blew that away. Theres something very wrong with the moment, i know this is only virtual and none of it is real, but for a moment i had to walk away and do something else, just to continue playing.

However i do not believe that violence in video games is wrong, just the opposite, it gives people to opportunity to release there anger in another world where theres no repercussions, i mean better in a game than them doing it for real. And remember its and 18 game, but i really hope no one under that age played that scene.

Anyway on with the review. This game easily wins over GTA 4, mainly because i never finished GTA 4. The game started to become repetitive and the main character, Niko, became really annoying and i never found it fun or immersive because of that. But GTA V had brilliant voice actors. Franklin was voiced by a real gangster i believe and the back and forth with his friend Lamar was fantastic. Micheal was generic but funny and very likeable at time, but Trevor stole the show. Trevor is a psycho, yes, but him as a character is just so fresh. we have violent psychos in games and it becomes a cliche i will admit, but Trevor was a over the top, hilariously funny character, who i played as most of the time. The characters overall made this game for me.

Now thats all i really have to say for this game. If you liked GTA 4, buy this game, don't rent it, or borrow it from a friend, because even though i have played for a month and have completed the story, i'm only 76% done. There are side missions for all three characters, all of which are fun and not at all boring. Any way i have rambled on for way too long now so i'll leave you with this, the start of the game is good, the middle of the game is amazing, and the ending, where there is three different choices, is by far the most satisfying of any game out there. And with that i'll leave you. i haven't even told you about half of what the game has to offer, like heists and mission quality, but those i think, should be experienced first hand, Thanks

Matty

I will be talking about GTA online next time when I've had a chance to play it extensively, but until than, goodbye.

Rome 2 total war

Ok so this is my first post... and review I guess, so I decided to make my first one  about my all time favourite game franchises, the total war series. Rome total war which came out in September of 2004 very quickly became the only game I played. Granted I would have only been 11 years of age when it came out and 14 when I actually got it, my standards of gaming were as follows, can it play on my PC, ok can I understand how to play it, yes, ok now I'll spend every spare moment playing it. However, looking back on my time playing Rome, I spend the majority of my time playing custom games, where it was me playing as Rome with a full army of Romans vs a very small army of Carthage, this took up probably 99% of actual game time played. But give me a break I was 14…

Anyway back to Rome 2. When I first saw the live action trailer[ Rome 2 Announcement Trailer ] way back when, I couldn't have been more exited. This only doubled when I saw the gameplay trailer of the creative assembly team showing of the Rome vs Carthage siege.[Carthage Battle Gameplay Demo](remember this is all of my Rome 1 memories) After a LONG wait they released the pre-order of the game with the Sparta/Greek culture pack, which I instantly bought.

Now when the game was released I was on vacation in Washington DC (I live in Washington in the UK.. weird) with only my little laptop on hand. But my excitement could not wait, I started downloading I think was the 6 Gb download, and a day and a half later it was complete. Unfortunately for me it could only play on the lowest settings possible and still had major lag.

when I got home I had heard noting but grief towards Rome 2, much to my surprise. After all I had watched countless game play videos from many lets players who didn't mention any distaste or hatred towards it. OK before I go any further I want to clarify I am a complete noob when it comes to in depth strategy games, so when I watched the "Angryjoeshow" Rome 2 review I could not be more angry at him…I think that's ironic[Rome II Angry Review]. he goes on the biggest rant about Rome being to "OP" and other glitches in the game and unit balancing, which apparently ruins the whole game experience. any way this is my review of Rome 2 not of his video review.

The first thing I did was play a custom game, Romans(me) V Carthage(easy AI) obviously. I was amazed with the amount of detail of the units and their armour, mesmerised with the map quality, the Rome sequel I had been waiting for. the user interface and the overall feel of the game is very reminiscent to Shogun 2, which I was first pleased by, but I now wish they hadn't as for some reason I dislike it as I now wish they had created there own. Furthermore this game now forces you to choose a general unit(again takjen from shogun 2), whereas in all games prior to Shogun 2, the first of any unit tagged the general onto, which I preferred. However as much as I would like to complain to gratify other review'ers, I simply love everything else, or have not found fault. I have played 150 turns into the roman campaign, 50 turns into the Iceni/Britain campaign, and have loved every second of it so far. The map looks beautiful and is so nostalgic to the first Rome game and medieval 2 total war (another favourite of mine). The game also offers a technology tree and a simplified city management system. The diplomacy is simple and historically accurate with the Greek states and Gauls hating you for your "cultural aversion" to theirs, harsh but fair as you can win them over fairly easy. I will also add is that when playing the land battles the unit animations are so immersive I lost many battles simply looking at a small skirmish between to sword units.

The last thing I will say to my perfect and completely bias review of Rome 2 is this, DON'T listen to the angry reviewers who look at this game with a microscope and pick menial things to complain about, of course its going to have problems, what game doesn’t. but with its third patch on the way, the team at creative assembly have, in my opinion, successfully delivered a compelling and immense continuation to the total war franchise. If you don’t believe me, play the game yourself or watch lets plays online(I will post my favourite YouTuber's down below), thank you for reading...I promise I will improve with later reviews, thanks.

I will be reviewing GTA V next week, goodbye for now,

Matty