I'm back (but moved over to wordpress)

https://ewanrants.wordpress.com/

Yeah, it's back, go check it out.

I missed my personal blog, it'll be good to get some more work done for that.

A Quick Update

Hey! It's been a while, I've been very busy these past few weeks. Updownright is going great thank you for asking. I feel like the time has come to reboot this blog in a way. Obviously I wont be posting on it as much as I used to but I'll see if I can get a post out every so often.

However, I actually created the Ewan Rants blog on Wordpress, just in case I ever wanted to move my blog over. I'll mull that decision over and get back to you on that one.

Game Review #33 - 007 Quantum of Solace

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free! (I think)

Well, we've finished our strategy games month, I need a break from strategy games, so why not play a mindless, movie tie in shooter that may or may not be any good.

I played a lot of this game when I was a child, so my judgement may be shrouded by nostalgic memories of doing things in this game, like shooting generic bad guys, shooting a bloke in the head with a nail gun and a bunch of quick time events.

Storyline wise, it sort of hap-haphazardly follows the plot of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, with a few original missions thrown in too. It's confusing but I the missions sort of link up when they're explained in cutscenes that I skipped because I've already seen both films and I don't really feel like having that experience ruined by some half arsed cutscenes.

Obviously the main part of a first person shooter is the shooting which is done by guns, So what type of weaponary is available to us? Well, Bond can carry up to three weapons at a time, always starting the mission with his P99. The weapon variety, while small, is nice, it's not overwhelming, but at the same time it's not underwhelming, they got it just right.

Equipment wise, you get grenades, that's it. No watch that sprays toxic gas, no telephone shoe, the invisible car is permanently invisible and there is no signs of a tuxedo jetpack I'm afraid. But that's alright, Bond took a much more serious tone when it re-booted so there's a lot less quirky gadgets available to Bond and they're more serious now.

Something that struck me as rather odd was the fact that when I went to look for the logo of the game, there wasn't one. Not one that I could find anyway, maybe it's because we should forget about this game. But we shouldn't forget about this game, it's quite enjoyable if I'm honest. Yeah, the controls can be clunky, the quick time events are infuriating and the shooting can be boring, but there is some fun you can kick out of this game.

Achievement wise, this game can get you an easy few hundred gamerscore for an easy, relaxing play-through of the game, multiplayer achievements are now almost impossible to get because the one person that plays the multiplayer has hacked everything, probably.

A mildly fun game that's worth playing through, for fun and for achievements,

007 Quantum of Solace gets a 6/10

*This is probably going to be the last post in a while, sorry everyone, updownright.com is my new home, does not mean that this blog is dead though*

Game Review #32 - Civilization V - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Steam
Store Page
Price I Paid: £9.99

What can I honestly say about this game that hasn't been said already? I could tell you the usual stuff about how this game is considered a masterpiece because of how well it was made, how enjoyable it is and how this is possibly the best strategy game of all time. But that would be boring, so what I'm going to do, is lie to you for the first paragraph of a review and tell you how good this game is.

So obviously, yes, this game is good, the DLC is better and the Steam Workshop adds so much to the game that it's just extraordinary. I have a few mods installed, mainly to replace a few leaders with people who should've been in the game. That was my problem, while most countries have their obvious leader such as France and America, there are some countries that just make you question why they didn't put someone else in their place, like Germany and Russia. Yes it would've been controversial to put Hitler and Stalin into the game but it probably would've been a lot better with them as leaders as they're more recognisable.

Tech Tree's are amazingly detailed and it requires a lot of strategy to do efficiently. You could just zoom all the way along to "Future Tech" click the final Tech and let the game just progress you through everything all at once but that is in no way the most efficient thing to do, it would indefinitely hinder your progress.

Unit wise, you start with a warrior and settler unit, with resources around you for your workers to, work on when you have them. Over time, you unlock new units and buildings for your cities to develop and make, with each building giving your city a nice boost and the units being varied enough to keep the battles fresh. Another thing you can build are basically Wonders of the World, the Pyramids of Egypt, Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge and so on, which give your city/civilization a huge boost in certain things, for example money, food or population.

Multiplayer wise, that's where the game falls over itself a bit, the multiplayer isn't bad it's just not done well enough compared to the single player mode of the game. Turns can take a while to process, however they give you certain types of turn movements to choose from, you can make everyone take their turn all at once or one at a time. Mulitplayer is only really fun if you have a few days and a few friends who have a lot of spare time on their hands because Civilization V games can take literal days to finish.

Each civilization has a different unit specific to their civilization, such as Panzer tanks for Germany. Much alike Halo Wars with the specific commander having specific units that do a bit more damage than the original unit. Still nice to see so many damned units in a game.

But wait, there's more! You can trade with other civilizations, make friendships, research agreements, even denounce/declare war on them. It's extremely in depth and it needed to be to make the AI feel like they were more than enemies, they aren't too useful combat wise if you do partner up with someone, they'll usually just not help or by the time they get there you've already disposed of the enemy units.

So with all that in mind, it's obvious that the game is good, albeit a bit rugged on the AI frontier and Gandhi, while a war monger-er in this game, can easily be defeated with this giant pile of nukes I have, and I don't think elephants can withstand nukes.

Civilization V gets a 9/10

Game Reviews #31 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: £8

Much alike "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified", this is another game in the XCOM series. Unlike "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified", this game isn't a pile of shit. This game is extremely, extremely,  fun to play.

It's a tactical strategy game made by our friends at 2K Games, who, now that I think about it, are a pretty dominant force in the gaming industry, they own a lot of amazing franchises, I'll have to talk about this in another blog post. On with the review.

XCOM isn't like most strategy games on console, Enemy Unknown works pretty well on console, it's not clunky, laggy and it doesn't have any of the usual problems that most console strategy games have, mainly the controls. The game does a very good job of making sure the bulk of the content is accessible to all players from an early stage, with enough strategy and challenge mixed in to make sure the player doesn't just blitz through the game at rocket speed. It's a lovely balance that I wish more games had.

So how does one go gallivanting around, killing our extra terrestrial invaders? Well, you (initially) have a squad of four troops to deploy onto the field and fight the aliens, however, here's the kicker, once a squad member dies, they're dead for good. It gives you a real feeling of "OK, I need to be careful here" and what makes it worse is that you can name these loveable lemmings to give yourself a personal attachment to them. I usually name my squad members with names from my real life friends or celebrities, it seems like the only two you can really do.

Of course, if you're going to beat the aliens then you'll need to get better equipment, tech and so on, which is where the research comes in. Every time you finish a mission, you might bring the alien bodies and tech back with you for research to begin, giving you the advantage in your next bout of combat.

You eventually get alien weaponary and if you bought Enemy Within/DLC then you can eventually use bloody robots to fight off the aliens, I have Enemy Within on PC, but for whatever reason I didn't enjoy it as much on PC as I did on console.

Oh yeah, there's a multiplayer in this game as well, uhm, so that's a thing. It's alright I guess, what can you expect? They're basically quick firefights, a 1v1 match of tactical strength, however you can play as the aliens which is pretty fun.

If you haven't played this game yet then do yourself a favour and go out and buy a copy of it.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown gets a 9/10

Game Reviews #30 - Supreme Commander 2 - Strategy Games Month

Platform: Xbox 360
Store Page
Price I Paid: Free!

This ones for you, if you're reading this said person, you know who you are. You finally get to find out what I think of your beloved franchise.

And what did I think?

Yeah, it's alright I guess. It's not my cup of tea strategy game wise but I did enjoy parts of the game. It was all very menu-y, something usually seen in PC games, every button apparently opened another menu for one or two different things. If you want to build a shield generator then you need to click on the APC and then hit Y twice, Y do that. That was a great pun, but you see what I mean? They made the selection menu so small there has to be multiple ones, or maybe it's just a branch of something.

Graphically wise it reminds me a lot of Halo Wars, which is fitting seeing as though I reviewed that last week. What is it with strategy games liking the colour blue so much? Halo Wars, Supreme Commander, Civilization V, XCOM, the list goes on, use a different colour for gods sake. That should be a feature on the back of some boxes of new strategy games "now featuring different colours". I would buy that.

So what units do we have? Lots to do unit wise actually, multiple ways to upgrade your units, but if you're like me and have little to no idea of what you're doing then you're gonna build 40 Rock Units, upgrade them fully and then pretend to attack while your other two friends nuke the enemy, still got me 35G but that's not the point.

Yeah, I gave the multiplayer a go, was actually quite fun, the games at a minimum go on for a half hour or so, which isn't a bad thing but when 20 Minutes of that time can be spent with the rush defence on, which means that you can't attack or anything, then it can get boring when you've finished building everything.

Unfortunately I didn't give much of the campaign a good look through, I'm still playing it through actually and so far it's been pretty good, more or less the same each time, build units, blow up enemy, repeat x amount of times until objective y is complete.

To a new player, this game might seem very alienating and much more complex than other strategy games on the console, but it can be an enjoyable experience once you learn more about the game.

Supreme Commander 2 gets a 7/10

Updownright

What's he going on about? Well, this is only going to be a short post, because I've actually secured myself a job at updownright.com which means that, obviously, I'll be posting a bit less on here. Game reviews are weekly, that wont change, however you might not get as many Ewan Rants and so on, as they're going to be on updownright.

Thanks for the past two years etc etc, go view my posts on updownright.com, two posts a week on there.