30.gaming
Monday 24th October 2016
The Courier
Gaming Editors: Errol Kerr, Jared Moore & Jordan Oloman
Overwatch Celebrates all things Halloween Georgina Howlett investigates the paranormal craze sweeping through the Overwatch community
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n October 11th, the Halloween Terror event began in Overwatch. Much like with the Summer Games event for the Olympics, new skins, emotes, sprays, highlight intros and more have been made available in the pumpkin-themed loot boxes, with the exclusive loot now also available to buy with ingame currency by popular demand (thank you, Blizzard!). In addition, the game’s first PvE (player versus environment) brawl, Junkenstein’s Revenge, has been established with great success and popularity. With three difficulties to choose from (easy, medium, and hard) and four new brawl-exclusive achievements to collect, there is never a lack of players to team up with to try and thwart the evil plans of Dr. Jamison Junkenstein to destroy the gates into Aldersbrunn and exact his revenge on the Lord of the castle. Players can choose to play as either McCree (‘The Gunslinger’), Soldier: 76 (‘The Soldier’), Hanzo (‘The Archer’) or Ana (‘The Alchemist’), and all must work together to destroy Junkenstein’s minions – including The Reaper, Junkenstein’s Monster, and the Witch of the Wilds (a.k.a. Reaper, Roadhog and Mercy) – as well as defeating Junkenstein himself. With the approach of BlizzCon, Blizzard’s annual celebration and platform for announcing game updates and new titles, also comes more and more speculation regarding the mysterious Sombra – a character whom has been teased to us players indirectly, and whose release progress was thought to be being marked by the ‘A Moment in Crime’ website. Alas, reaching 100% transmission on October 18th, the website reveals nothing of Sombra’s character or abilities; rather, it now states “Bastion Unit E-54 committed ... ... Completing connection ...” – implying that more of Bastion’s history is perhaps to be revealed, and as for Sombra, we’ll have to wait until BlizzCon between November 4th and 5th. I for one will be following the convention closely, and in the meantime, I’ll be praying to find Mercy’s witch skin in a loot box... Halloween Terror is running in Overwatch between October 11th and November 1st.
Image Credit: Blizzard
Review:
Image Credit: 2K Press
2K makes Gerry Hart an offer he can’t refuse...
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afia 3’s a weird one. Its mixed reception aside, the decision to shift the setting to the late ‘60s Deep South was certainly interesting. I was persuaded to buy it, despite having never played the previous two entries. Generally speaking I’ve been enjoying the game, though that enjoyment comes with caveats. The game’s main draw is its narrative. The story follows Lincoln Clay, a black Vietnam veteran on his quest for vengeance against the Italian Mafia in the city of New Bordeaux (i.e. New Orleans). The characters and voice acting are fantastic and I loved how exposition is framed through documentary interviews. However the best aspect is the historical setting. You will frequently encounter open racism and characters will often provide observations on certain issues, bringing to life the tensions of the day. My only problem with the story is that it loses focus somewhat once the game opens up, but other than that its a fantastic piece of historical commentary that encapsulates the zeitgeist of late ‘60s America.
(though they become less menacing once you realise most of them adhere to the Blues Brothers school of law enforcement). It’d also be remiss of me to not mention the soundtrack, which consists of rock n’ roll classics from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and when worked into certain scenes it makes for something special. It’s hard not to feel badass fleeing the cops to the tune of Little Richard. Nonetheless, this doesn’t make up for the gameplay’s shortcomings. For instance; the side missions are repetitive and amount to little more than padding. That said I have a weird tolerance for grinding and I still found the combat to be serviceable and even fun. Some of the executions are satisfyingly gritty, and tie the tense setting back into the gameplay like a feedback loop.
“A fantastic piece of historical commentary that encapsulates the zeitgest of late ‘60s America”
However Mafia 3’s biggest crime is its technical problems. The most common for me were texture issues with character models and clunky lighting effects, but I’ve heard other horror stories including slow download speeds on PS4 and a 30 fps cap on PC (which has since been patched out). There have also been some unintentionally funny reflection bugs. Issues like these are inexcusable, and I was fortunate they didn’t ruin the game’s beautifully crafted story. Ultimately, Mafia 3’s a pretty flawed game. Even if one ignores the technical issues, its gameplay - though passable - is derivative and unremarkable. Despite this, I still adored its brilliantly poignant story. It’s unfortunate that for many it will likely be overshadowed by the game’s drawbacks.
Unfortunately, the actual gameplay is pretty mediocre. It takes place in a GTA-esque sandbox, through which you traverse completing story missions and side objectives, with combat consisting of third-person cover shooting and stealth. I liked how the setting’s racism was incorporated into the gameplay. Some buildings are segregated and entering them will result in the police being called, and the police themselves will respond faster to criminal behaviour in a rich white neighbourhood as opposed to a poor black one
“It’s hard not to feel badass fleeing the cops to the tune of Little Richard”
Image Credit: 2K Press Hub
RageQuit: Miner Wars 2081 Jack Coles divinates a dystopian, laborious future in space, one rock at a time
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iner Wars 2081 is one of those indie games that feels like it wasn’t “produced” so much as “spontaneously generated”. It contains a veritable bargain bucket of generic features: there’s survival aspects, space flight, weapons found in any modern shooter, 6-degrees-of-freedom movement, fighting Russians, resource mining, and terrain destruction. Oh, there’s also zombies (well, zombie spaceships) and Nazis, in case your generic-o-meter hadn’t quite exploded yet. So what makes this game particularly bad? For starters, the backstory is so awful it makes Stephenie Meyer read like Agatha Christie. In 2070 the Sun explodes, leaving behind no planets in the Solar System, just a lot of asteroids and space stations. Quite how this doesn’t kill literally everybody isn’t explained. As a result, a new order rises from the survivors and – nah, I’m joking, it’s virtually all pre-existing countries. You belong to the EAC, a mixture of Europe, and the US, who colluded to blow up the Sun. (As a diplomatic faux pas goes, that’s pretty
major.) You are also enemies of China and Russia, as you might expect. There’s also the Fourth Reich (Space Nazi Germany); quite why the inclusion of Nazis was deemed necessary in 2081, I do not know. Strangely enough, one of the minor factions is the developers themselves, Keen Software House, with their CEO kept alive by cybernetics. Now that’s egotism. The main story itself reads like an 8-year-old retelling his grandad’s war stories to be more exciting, but just ends up rambling instead. Your support NPCs include a brother who obviously gets killed for character development (except it’s spoiled at the beginning that he’s still alive, so whatever), and one guy who you meet once and then betrays you at the end for no apparent reason. Imagine if Julius Caesar hadn’t been stabbed by some Senators, but by the market vendor that sold him a pie for breakfast two days earlier: That’s how bizarre the betrayal is. Gameplay-wise, there’s a lot of wasted potential. You would think that futuristic spaceships would
have futuristic weapons, but no, it’s rifles and shotguns for you! There are three different types of health: actual health, armour (also health), and radiation (health that decreases because the Sun is still exploding, the selfish git). There’s also fuel and oxygen, creating a survival-like mechanic. It’s only survival-like, though, because you can constantly revisit your mothership to replenish everything for free. The controls are very poorly explained. I once hit the letter “X” on my keyboard and accidentally turned off the inertia dampeners, causing me to keep moving and then wallop into a passing asteroid. It wasn’t listed on the controls submenu so I just had to guess which buttons I might have pressed. Also, there were plenty of ships available for sale and I eventually got enough money to buy one, but I needed to trawl forums for a good ten minutes before I found out how to actually use it (I’d tell you, but I’ve hit my word limit). In short: Miner Wars? More like Major Bores.
Image Credit: Keen Software House