The final shambling steps

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts over the last few months, sadly we lost authors and then real life took all the time we had to put into the site.

Thus the remaining members of Zombie outbreak have decided that the site shall come to an end. 

Zombie Outbreak started January 2011 as the fevered dream of a single man, who then recruited everyone he knew to do the work for him. In that time 11 people have made just 2 posts shy of 600 hopefully entertaining posts.

As that original fevered dreamer I want to thank (in chronological order):

Friday Voni

Wednesday Luke

Sunday Matt

Thursday Will

Saturday Simon

Tuesday Shanice

Thursday Lindsey

Sunday Tyler

Thursday Santoro 

Saturday Andy

So from me Monday Richard, Thank you all for reading. 

Watch this space, like any good Zombie the site will not stay dead forever.

Even if when it returns, it's in a whole new form.

NaNoWriMo Adventure Contiues

So last year I undertook the challenge of National Novel Writing Month and successful wrote a 50000 word novel in 30 days. This is something that happens every year in November and it seems to be something that I really enjoy undertaking as I'm doing it again this year!

Along side this I also run a blog writing my experiences and thoughts about the whole month. This can be found here so if you want to follow my adventure go and read, there's also the whole back log of last year's posts and posts from all throughout this year about my new challenge of trying to find literary representation for what I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2011.

Plauge Inc.

Plague Inc

Developers: Ndemic Creations LTD

iTunes Rating: 4.5 Stars (937 ratings as of 17 June 2012)

Game Center?: Yes

Version Details: 1.2 (released 12 June 2012)

Age Rating: 9+

Price: £0.69

Plague Inc. is a pandemic simulating strategy game similar to Pandemic 2.5. Although they are very similar in concept, Plague Inc. has revolutionised the gameplay and expanded on what Pandemic started. With more gameplay elements and a different approach to the pandemic simulation genre (is it really a genre?) Plague Inc is definitely worth a look at!

Gameplay

The game play in Plague Inc is very similar to that in Pandemic 2.5, infect the whole world with a disease and try to kill everyone while your “opponent” the governments of the world, try to stop you. I’m going to try and do this objectively, although Pandemic 2.5 and Plague Inc. are very similar, I’m going to try and hold back from comparing the two games too much in this review.

So the game starts off with choosing a difficulty, Casual, Normal or Brutal. If you want to unlock new content (which I’ll get to shortly) you have to play on Normal upwards, which is good although I’ve yet to finish the game with a bacteria on Normal so haven’t unlocked anything. The next stage is to choose your type of disease, of which there are 7; Bacteria, Virus, Fungus, Parasite, Prion, Nano-Virus and Bio-Weapon. You unlock each new disease type by completing the game on Normal or Brutal with the previous disease type; for example completing the game on Normal with a Fungus would unlock Parasites. Also on this menu are links to 2 sub-menus; Unlock and Special. Unlock is a menu to unlock things with in app purchases! (shakes fist) You can unlock the next pathogen type for £0.69 all of them for £1.99 and also the 3 cheats for £2.99.

Although I’m against these, Ndemic seem to have a tongue-in-cheek approach to them, almost saying out right, “Yes we are charging people for the ability to cheat and take away from the lifespan of our game, and we don’t care!” I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this, I am against in app purchases because most companies implement them incorrectly, but from the ones I’ve run into in my time these seems to be the least bad. They only add to the gameplay – especially the cheats, and if people want to pay for them it’s a single player game so it’s really no issue of mine whether they do so.

Anyway back to the gameplay! The cheats are pretty much God-Mode in their effects; Immune Plague – no cure development; Hidden Plague – no governments; Unlimited Plague – Infinite DNA points. So yeah, they sound like they pretty much make the game impossible to lose and I’m not sure if these would even be fun to play with activated? However to unlock them (without paying £2.99) you have to finish the game with all 7 types onf Brutal, so it pretty much is an end game extra.

Once you’ve chosen a disease type you can choose a name and then it’s into the game. You get to choose where you start off in Plague Inc. tapping a country/region will start your disease off in that area, which I think is a nice touch and adds more strategy to the game. Do you start off in a land locked country? Or on an island with lots of air and water traffic? The actual gameplay at this point is pretty much the same as Pandemic 2.5; infect new people, spread to new countries gaining DNA points and evolving your disease to gain new benefits. The genes in Plague Inc. are split into 3 categories Transmission, Symptoms and Abilities. Transmission genes are different ways off passing on such as animal hosts, air and water. Symptoms are the symptoms infected people will show and change the three variables for your disease; infectivity, severity and lethality. Abilities are your resistances to different environmental factors such as cold and heat and also a few special genes which I’m guessing will change depending on what type of disease you are.

Evolution points are earned in two ways in Plague Inc. The first is the same way as they’re earned in Pandemic, spreading to new hosts and killing old ones. However you get various floating bubbles in Plague Inc. that you can pop for benefits. The first you encounter are Orange bonus point bubbles, these appear at random in any country you have infected, and simply pop it to gain a few points (usually 2-4) before it disappears. The next are Red infection bubbles, these appear once you spread to a new country or region, pop it for a medium boost (5-10). The final bubbles don’t give you points but instead help you combat vaccine research, these bubbles are Blue and popping them adds to the time that a cure will be finished.

These additions make Plague Inc. much more interactive and fun to play and if I really (gun to my head) had to make a decision between Plague Inc and Pandemic 2.5, I would have to pick Plague Inc.

It’s more interactive, the menus are bolder and the graphics are more sleek and intuitive, however there are a few things about it that I feel don’t need to be there. The world menu has links to a lot of graphs that show repeated data that you can find somewhere else and in much nicer formats. The infection spread summary is really the only one I use in this data sub-menu but there’s also a graph to show the breakdown of the population (as well as a pie chart and numbers in the main world menu AND numbers of infected and dead on the main screen) a graph to show the cure progress (in addition to the main world menu’s cure graphic AND the same thing repeated in the cure sub-menu of the world menu...) and a disease graph which shows how your infectivity, severity and lethality have changed over time (the main levels of which can found on the gene evolution screen).

Basically what I’m getting at here is most of that data submenu can be found in other places and honestly I feel it’s just added to try and make it “better” than Pandemic, which although it had boring looks, had all its information either in the world screen or shown on the main screen of the game, much tidier and professional.

Addictivity - 10/10

Again, I got completely drawn in to this game and as I said, the addition of a few extras, mainly the bubbles, makes the game more interactive. So rather than staring a screen of numbers changing, waiting for new evolution points, you get to pop a bubble every now and again in the dry spells.

The game is a lot harder than Pandemic, or maybe I haven’t adapted to the different gameplay style of Plague Inc. just yet. I’ve yet to finish the game once on Normal although I’ve done it a couple of times on Casual. The game does seem to be more user friendly than Pandemic although it seems a bit dumbed down at the same time. The ways of unlocking new genes is completely different to Pandemic and I honestly don’t like it as much. To get to higher level genes you have to follow paths in different places, and unlocking a gene in a section (e.g. Symptoms) increases the price of all genes in the section, which again I don’t like. Some of the unlocks are crazily expensive too and take a while to save up for and as you can’t see all the genes at once and the prices depend on how many you’ve unlocked, it can be hard to plan too far ahead in Plague Inc.

Another extra though that I love is addition of mutation. Your disease can mutate a symptom gene randomly, unlocking it without using any points, however these are usually low level or following a path, they very rarely follow the path you want though and can maybe unlock something that you don’t want.

Controls - 9/10

The controls are mainly all menu driven as in Pandemic, and the menus in Plague Inc. are beautiful to look at and easy to understand so the controls are simple. The only complaints I have about the controls are the bubbles are small and sometimes when I tap one it doesn’t pop and disappears before I can get it.

Menus - 9/10

The menus in Plague Inc. are beautiful. They’re very nicely designed and are easy to follow, although I don’t like the gameplay mechanic of unlocking the genes through pathways, they’re amazing to look at, however not showing the complete pathway is a bit bad I think. Maybe if they’re greyed out when you can’t unlock them but show them anyway so you can see all the genes available? There are some that require multiple pathways to meet at a point and you only know if you spend points to converge all the paths, which not everyone will do. I deducted a mark for the repeated data in the redundant Data section of the World menu. This really isn’t required...

Sound - 10/10

The sounds are good, there’s a background loop that sounds similar to the Pandemic loop track, but the addition of sound effects in the game put it above Pandemic in the sound department. Some of them are quite creepy but I guess that’s the vibe they were going for here and they nailed it!

Graphics - 10/10

The graphics for Plague Inc. are amazing, the game is bright and bold, which is why I feel the game is dumbed down and not as realistic and scientific as Pandemic. The only problem with the graphics I have is the problem with the gene pathways and also the top section of the GUI sometimes blocks out bubbles in countries such as Canada, Russia and Greenland.

The use of Landscape orientation is definitely a bonus here!

Difficulty - 7/10

The game is a lot harder than Pandemic, I’ve yet to finish this on Normal even once... This is due once again to issues with the Cure development. It seems to get to around 20% and then it just rockets up and nothing you can do can stop it. I’ve had all 8 or so of the genes to do with cure development hindrance and it seems to do nothing at all in abating the research, also popping the bubbles seems to do nothing as well? I’ve popped tens of bubbles and it’s done nothing to slow down or stop the research. It also seems that the cure always works in Plague Inc. there’s no chance of it being an unsuccessful cure like in Pandemic.

Learning Curve - 8/10

The learning curve for the game is a bit all over the place... You think you have the hang of the game then suddenly the cure arrives and everything goes downhill, or a new symptom mutates and messes up your game plan. Also the fact that you can’t see the full gene pathways makes it very hard to plan ahead unlike in pandemic, where all the genes are visible from the start of the game. Other than that the game is very easy to pick up, as new bubbles arrive you get pop ups telling you what to do, which you can turn off. I have one problem though which I can’t seem to find the answer for. In Pandemic the variables for the diseases are explained. In Plague Inc... Not so much, I have no idea what severity means, it sounds the same as lethality but it can’t be... So yeah, I don’t know.

Also it’s harder to plan ahead as you don’t get markers to show how symptoms affect your variables like in Pandemic, you just have to guess and hope your lethality doesn’t get too high.

Average Score – 9.0/10

Overall Score – 10/10

Plague Inc. has the problem of being marked with the stigma of a copycat; Pandemic is pretty much the only known pandemic simulation game and has been for a long time. Plague Inc. however does some things a lot better than Pandemic does and maybe can be seen as an entry level Pandemic game. It does look friendlier and easier to play but once you get into it, Plague Inc. is not a casual game (at least if you’re not playing on Casual anyway...) it is definitely a good contender against Pandemic, I honestly love both of these games and still play them both. They have different mechanics and game play elements so are completely different games and as such, play differently. You can’t take your strategy from Pandemic and copy it to Plague Inc. because chances are, it won’t work at all. As I said above, if I had to pick just one I would definitely pick Plague Inc. Don’t let Pandemic’s reputation as the only pandemic simulator put you off and mark Plague Inc. as just a clone.

Good News, Everyone!

My post this week is a post the went up on my NaNoWriMo/Writing blog a few days ago, I though I would share this here to spread the good news!

So On Tuesday I sent out samples of my book to agencies, and Wednesday morning I woke up to find... Well, I'll let you all read what happened...

P.S. Award yourself some awesome points if you got the reference in the title ;)

Nihilumbra

Nihilumbra

Developers: Beautifun Games SL

iTunes Rating: 5 Stars (14 ratings as of 19 July 2012)

Game Center?: No

Version Details: 1.1 (released 28 June 2012)

Age Rating: 9+

Price: £1.99

Nihilumbra is just... Wow. This game is so amazing and it has hardly any ratings but they’re all 5 stars (a few are 4 stars but only about 2 or 3). I think this may be due to the fact that it looks a little bit like a stigmatic and oh-so-hated “Art” game. However, Nihilumbra is a side scrolling puzzle platformer with some truly original game mechanics and an engaging story that will keep you hooked.

Gameplay

The game starts with a small blob in this place called “the void” a desolate place of nothingness that has somehow spawned a conscious being. You travel through this area that teaches you the movement and jumping mechanics and eventually escape into the real world.

Here you find yourself in a truly beautifully designed landscape, a snow-capped mountain path in the middle of a blizzard. As you travel along this path you come across a scarecrow and change your shape so you look more human. This is where the real game starts, you follow the path until you reach a place you can’t go and are forced to follow another path. Here you find a glowing flower and discover something amazing. Colour. This is what the game is all about, you travel from a place of nothingness and find all these colours and beautiful landscapes and you don’t want to leave them, you want to discover more. However the void wants to be complete and is after you.

The colours serve another purpose though; you paint the surfaces to give them new physical properties. Each colour does something to the surfaces that you will have to use as you progress through the different landscapes and find new colours to add to your palette.

The narrative of the game is amazing; it really sets the tone and the feeling of the game. Sometimes it echoes your feelings in an eerie way, but at others it tell you what your character is feeling at this point, it tries (and ultimately succeeds in my opinion) to put you right in the shoes of the character. The story is really gripping and interesting and I really want to see what happens at the end, especially as in the description on iTunes it says: Unlock a great surprise by completing the game, replayability assured.

Addictivity - 10/10

The game is fun and the story is interesting, the game mechanics are good and there are multiple ways to solve each puzzle, some easier than others. I’m currently in world 3 of 5 and I’m about half way through the game as a whole. It really is amazing and well worth the higher than normal price tag.

Controls - 10/10

The game has two control methods, on screen buttons or tilting the device. I haven’t tried out the tilting because I’m more of a fan of buttons but the buttons are well designed. They’re not big enough to overtake most of the screen space, but they’re not so small that you can’t hit them accurately. The buttons are used to move your character left and right and there’s a small button on the right that you use to jump.

Using the colours is a bit more complex. First you have to choose your colour; this is done by a small menu at the top right corner of the screen. An orb shows you the currently selected colour and tapping this opens up a treelike menu where you choose another. Once you have your colour you can simply paint over any surface and it coats it in that colour. It’s that simple.

Menus - 10/10

The menus are simple to understand. There’s an options menu where you can choose from multiple languages (this changes the onscreen narrative) set the BGM and SFX volume levels and also choose which control setup you want to use (you can also do this at the start of a new game, it asks). There is also a feedback button where you can choose to leave a rating or pass the game around on FaceBook and Twitter.

Also on the main screen there is a profile selector, you can have up to 3 profiles, or save files, on the game and you can choose here which you want to play. Tapping “play” will take you to the void if you’re playing a new game (this is a tutorial area that you can’t play again if loading) if you’re loading it will take you to the level select screen. Here you can choose what area you want to play in and can also choose what checkpoint you want to play from.

Sound - 10/10

The sound in this game is beautiful, the background music to the menus is amazing and each level has its own score which fits in perfectly with the landscape and adds to the atmosphere. If you’re going to play this game I strongly recommend you play this with the sound on, it really adds to the game immensely.

Graphics - 10/10

The graphics, like the sound, are absolutely beautiful! The levels are all amazingly well designed and recurring aspects of the game, such as the magical area you go to when you discover a new colour, are just as beautifully done. As I said, I’m only on the third area and still have another 2 to go, I’m really looking forward to seeing what they are, and also what colours I’ll be unlocking.

Difficulty - 10/10

The game is balanced perfectly well, adding new colours adds new challenges to the game but you also have to use everything you have learnt as you progress. The colours don’t have one single use, you can use each of them in multiple ways (apart from green that seems to only have one use) and you can combine the use of colours to get the desired effect. For example pushing a large block is only possible if you use blue to ice the floor up and then you could make it stick part way down a wall, after you push it off the edge, using brown.

The hardest bits of each level are at the end where you have to outrun the void, dodging obstacles and using what you have learnt throughout the level to progress. Unless you’re very quick thinking and can react well then you’ll have to attempt these levels multiple times.

Learning Curve - 10/10

The game is incredibly easy to pick up; each new element is introduced well. When you gain a new colour you travel to a small tutorial area where it gives you a small over run of some of the ways you will have to use the colour. Then you’re warped back to where you were and have to carry on up the path you couldn't go before with your new found power. During the level it will give you new ways to use the colour and will introduce ways to use more than one colour at a time.

Average Score - 10/10

Overall Score - 10/10

Wow. My first perfect 10... Honestly it couldn't have gone to a more deserving game. This really is the most beautiful game I ever played and I can see why some people would class it as an art game (heck, even I did when I first played it). But Nihilumbra is so much more than that, it has great gameplay to go along with the art side and they tie together amazingly well. The story is gripping and I honestly love it, it brings up issues of belonging, wanting to live, whether it’s pointless to live if you’re just going to die and many more. I honestly love this game and think it is well worth the £1.99.

DragonVale

Here's a review for an awesome game on iOS systems that a lot of you may play, DragonVale! This was the very first review I did over on my blog, Donarex's iOS Review Corner. and since then a lot has changed to the gameplay. You can now breed dragons in a new Epic Breeding Island as well as the Breeding Cave, race your dragons at the Race Track and there have been new dragons added such as the rare Gemstone and Treasure dragons, as well as a new Metal base type!

DragonVale

Developers: Backflip Studios

iTunes Rating: 4.5 Stars (5370 ratings as of 20 Feb 12)

Game Center?: Yes

Version Details: 1.5.0 released 28 Jan 2012

Age Rating: 4+

Price: Free

The Main Screen

Patent Wars

So this has been going on for years/months (I'm not sure which) but it's been getting a bit crazy right about now, so I thought I would have a little talk about it. Apple are a bit like Marmite when it comes to the internet; people either love them or hate them with a fiery passion.

Now I use an iPhone and yeah it's an okay phone, it does what I want and I like how it does it. It has a few problems, but what doesn't technology wise these days? I am in no way an Apple fan-boy, the iPhone is the only thing I own and yes, I agree they are overpriced for what they are but I don't mind paying for it because I think it's worth it.

However, I don't like Apple as a business... They make a lot of overpriced stuff and although I think (I may be wrong but don't kill me!) that the iPhone revolutionised what a smartphone was and brought them into the public spotlight, they haven't been the first to create a lot of what they claim and they are a bit crazy when it comes to enforcing patents...

Now I've never understood patents or copyrights, I'm a very sharing-is-caring kind of guy and think that although competition is good for innovation, so is sharing. Now I have a limited knowledge of the past to all this, the first thing I heard about anything was a lawsuit between Apple and Motorola concerning the slide to unlock function... Yes, it's that's stupid! I can't remember who won that but I think it was Apple?

The second lawsuit I know about all this was between Apple and Samsung concerning the Galaxy S and the iPhone 4/ iPad... Apparently the Samsung Galaxy stuff look mighty similar to the iPhone and iPad... I personally don't see this, but courts did and awarded Apple $1BILLION for patent infringement! Now I can't help but ask myself, why? You're a billion dollar company Apple, why do you need to sue people over stupid things? Slide to unlock functions and phones "looking similar", all of this just seems childish and a bit absurd...

Now Google and Android, who have connections with Samsung and Motorola are very annoyed about all this. Google bought Motorola and are now suing Apple and wish to stop the sale of Apple products in the US? I would say Apple bought this on themselves, but is this really a mature reaction? Patent laws are crazy and things like this will keep happening, with people suing each other into oblivion until there are no phones for anyone.

And as if that wasn't crazy enough, a company in China got their hands on some leaked photo's of the iPhone5, which Apple were hoping to announce in the coming weeks. They've banged out a quick copy (only China...) called the GooPhone I5 and are threatening to sue Apple if they release the coming iPhone in China...

My mind is just like... WHAT?! To all this... This is quickly getting out of hand, and honestly I think this will all end in Apple getting into serious trouble, if not going bankrupt. And they only have themselves to blame in all this! I honestly think this is bad... I didn't care much for Apple but honestly after using the iPhone1 almost 5 years ago I can't go back to using something else... People have told me that Android is better but I've invested a lot of money into my Apple product, through buying the phones and the apps, even recently going as far as purchasing some Hank Green on iTunes...

If Apple were to go bust, I (and many more people) would possibly be left with useless phones that wouldn't get serviced any more, wouldn't get upgrades any more, wouldn't get replaced or fixed if they broke any more... And I would hate that, I've paid a lot of money for my iPhone 4S and I don't want to see it become a brick that I can't use...

So I honestly hope that this gets sorted out soon before either Apple or Android become a thing of the past...

Metal Gear Solid: The Movie

Anyone who knows anything of the Metal Gear Solid series knows the issues Hideo Kojima has with cut scenes and it's often used as the prime example for games that have too many of them. This has caused a lot of people to say, "Why doesn't he just make them a movie instead?"

Well, at the 25th Anniversary event Konami held for the MGS series, Avi Arid (the man behind X-Men, Ironman and The Amazing Spiderman) will be producing a Metal Gear Solid Movie!!

Honestly, I'm really looking forward to this! The story to Metal Gear is one of the best that I have encountered in a game, although I'm still playing through MGS4: Guns of the Patriots...

Not much is know about the movie as of yet, but I will post up more once things come to light.

The Time Has Come...

I know I'm not the only one who has been waiting for this, and if I'm honest I thought I would be waiting a lot longer, but today marks the arrival of...

If you preordered it...

Yes, the long awaited "second" game in ArenaNet's Guild Wars series, if you pre-ordered the game you can start playing today if not you have another 3 days to wait... Although it's called Guild Wars 2, it's actually the 5th, but all the others box together into one world, kinda. It all started with Guild Wars: Prophecies, this was the first I played and I didn't like it then as much as I do now. I wasn't much of a PC gamer back then, but I did invest in all the other games, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the Northm.and got almost to the end of Prophecies before giving up and didn't get really far in the others either...

While I was at university I kind of fell off the MMORPG radar and didn't play Guild Wars much at all... I got stuck and no one else really played either so I had no help and it was pretty much impossible to get the last missions done. However, in my last year, I came back with a vengeance, joined a Guild and actually played it properly. I got really into it and I still kind of am, although I hardly play now as I was waiting for Guild Wars 2 and playing on the Beta weekends and stress tests.

The main extra feature that many MMORPG's had that Guild Wars lacked back when it first came out, was the ability to play as more than one race. In Guild Wars you could only be a human, even though there were a lot of races featured in the game; Dwarves, Centaurs, Asura, Norn and many more... But you couldn't play as them...

Until Guild Wars 2 came along! You can now play as Human, Asura, Norn, Charr and a new race to Guild Wars 2, the Sylvari. From the start I was adamant on playing as a Charr, and in Guild Wars I play my main as a Warrior Primary, Monk Secondary, so when I heard about the Guardian class... Oh My God! I knew I wanted to play that as my main character. I actually missed the first Beta event as the game was £50 to pre-order (CRAZY EXPESIVE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD!!) and I couldn't justify spending that much money on a game... However after the rest of my guildies came back and were completely in awe of how amazing this game we had been waiting 5 years for actually was... I knew I had to make it my life mission to get this game. Luckily soon after I pre-ordered, the second Beta event was announced and I got to play it at last! The graphics and the artistic style of the game still blows me away. It's beautiful, and although I hate people who say all games need "good" graphics to be a good game, Guild Wars 2's art style is impossible to ignore.

I've always loved Guild Wars for it's different style of gameplay. I've played other mainstream MMORPG's (Warcraft and Final Fantasy 11) and many other Free to Play ones and they all seemed around the same. So when I heard that Guild Wars 2 was going to break the moulds of MMORPG standards, I knew I was in for a treat! They have skills similar to those in Guild Wars but they've revamped the skill system. Rather than just buying your skills and being able to equip whatever you want in any slot, you now unlock your skills in branches, and each slot has it's own type. You have skills dependant on your weapons, your class, your race and you unlock them as you go.

Another thing I loved about the way Guild Wars 2 has changed how MMO's work is that they seem to have taken inspiration from RPG's such as Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls series and Bio Ware's Dragon Age series. They've added in the fact that your choices matter, you're not playing a role thrust upon you anymore like in most stories of an MMORPG. You get to decide how your story progresses in your own way rather than just follow the story like a puppet.

ArenaNet have put emphasis on the Role Playing in RPG and they've also done this with the Massively  Multiplayer part of MMO. You get certain events in game where it's impossible or time consuming for one person to do it, say a big dragon suddenly falls out the sky and starts attacking a village, anyone who's around can come join in to slay the dragon. It certainly makes the game a lot more fun and engaging!

The story to Guild Wars is something I am invested in, having played through all 4 of the campaigns from Guild wars 1. I said above that the first 4 kind of slot into one game, however they can all be played as stand alone games, except for Eye of the North which is the only true expansion of the series. Guild Wars 2 is set around 200 years after the end of Eye of the North, where SPOILERS: you find that the Great Destroyer that was commanding all the destroyers was in fact a dormant dragon that has now awoken... Big stuff. The humans have taken refuge in Kyrta, the Asura have been forced onto the surface, the Charr have taken back Ascalon, the Norn have moved south (although I don't know why... Dragons I think...) and the Sylvari are a new race that have been growing in the Maguma jungle and have awoken some time between Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2.

I don't know much about the overall story, I played a little as each class but reached level 20 with my Charr and each storyline is different depending on how you set up your character by answering questions at the start of the creation (similar to how it was done in Dragon Age: Origins) and I had yet to find out the over all storyline about the Dragons and saving the world, but if it's like other Guild Wars storylines, it will be time before everything falls together...

Basically I cannot wait for this game. The way ArenaNet were being all secretive about the game and releasing little bits of info here and there, I thought it was another year away at least. Then when Chinese new year came along and they said "This year will definitely be the year of the dragon... Guild Wars 2 is coming out in 2012" I knew it was close, but I was still guessing somewhere around November/December time. But then out of nowhere (it seemed that way) it was announced August 28th, 25th for pre-order head start... I was just amazed, and I'm so happy that I finally get to play this stunning and beautiful game!

Let's Play Rayman Origins!

Firstly, my apologies for missing my post last week. I had a lot going on and was meaning to get it done on the day but things just snowballed up more and more and I eventually found myself with no time left. (All my own blogs have been a bit neglected too...)

So today I'm going to do a post on what I was going to post about last week, mine and Tyler's new YouTube channel; AndyxTylerPlayGames.

So Tyler and I have been watching Hank and Katherine play Super Mario Brothers Wii for quite a while and we had also been playing Rayman Origins since I found out it had slipped under my radar. That's where we got the idea to find out if we could record ourselves playing Rayman, and after a great bargain I found on eBay, followed by A LOT of research into how to get the hardware to work without the software it comes with (long story...) we had a way to record from our consoles!

As a little aside, for those who are interested, we're using the Roxio Game Capture. In all honesty, this probably isn't the best capture device on the market, it is however the easiest and cheapest (relatively) to use. It was also the easiest way to connect a console, computer AND television together.

So the channel! It's relatively small as it's only just started up but we have a lot of videos already recorded and ready to upload, two ongoing 'series' (can we call them that?) and a lot more planned. Tyler has already talked about one of the series; The Adventures of Shuggy, and we've also got what will possibly be the largest of our series; Rayman Origins.

I remember getting up stupidly early as a kid to play Rayman on my PlayStation and absolutely loving the game (I recently repurchased it digitally on my PS3) but I never really had a chance to play any of the main Rayman series after that except for Raving Rabbits... If that counts... And I didn't like the look of Rayman 2 or Rayman 3 as they moved from side-scrolling 2D and took away a lot of the bright-goofy-cartoony-ness that made Rayman [1] such a good game to me.

But when I found out about Rayman Origins, a game for the new consoles that was hoping to rekindle the original feeling of Rayman, naturally I jumped at it! The game had pretty much fallen under everyone's radars and I ended up getting it quite cheap off Amazon (by means of selling off my old Uni textbooks too!). But this game is amazing! Too me, it pretty much takes me back to playing Rayman on the PlayStation, has beautiful graphics and music, the gameplay is amazing and it has a lot to do.

I missed out on E3 this year because I forgot about me (I know, shoot me...) but I recently found out that Ubisoft have announced a sequel to Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends! They've only shown footage for the Wii U but have hinted that it will be on other platforms too, which I can only hope! (I refuse to buy a Wii U for one game like I did with the Wii and Twilight Princess...)

But I digress... So please, go check out our channel, and if you like what you see, subscribe! We've got a lot more games planned as well as other projects involving games, one of which may be starting soon... (we hope!)

Zombies! Run

Hi I'm Andy and I run two blogs; an iOS game review blog, Donarex's iOS Game Reviews Corner and a blog about my literary adventures, Donarex's NaNoWriMo Adventure and I'm your new Saturday!


Below is an example of one of my game reviews and also the kind of thing I will be posting on Saturdays.

Zombies! Run

Developers: Six To Start

iTunes Rating: 4.5 Stars (8 ratings as of 09 July 2012)

Game Center?: No

Version Details: 1.3 (released 20 June 2012)

Age Rating: 12+

Price:  £5.49

Zombies! Run is a game unlike anything I have reviewed before. It’s strictly speaking not even a game, more of a narrative running tool. The “aim” of the game is to follow the story of Abel Township and its population as you, playing the role of ‘Runner 5’, work to gain the trust of various people and help out with the workings of the Township after your helicopter crashes down at the start of Mission 1 when you’re struck by a rocket from an rocket launcher. All of this whilst you actually run (or walk) in real life.

Gameplay

The gameplay is a bit limited but honestly I love it. The story is what makes this game above others, the narrative is well written and you find yourself connecting with the characters in this post zombie apocalyptic world. The game is split into Missions, each taking about 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on the length you choose in the options and also the lengths of the songs in your playlist. Each mission is split into chunks of narrative, delivered in the form of radio transmissions, with songs played in between. If you choose 30 minutes you get a radio transmission after every song, 1 hour you get a radio transmission every other song.

When songs are playing between the radio transmissions you gain items which you use once the mission is over. You place the items into various areas of the township (hospital, communications, housing etc.) and these level up as you put more resources into the areas. Some missions are unlocked as you progress naturally through the story, however others can only be unlocked by levelling an area of the township up to a certain level. If you don’t wish to play through old story levels but haven’t levelled up enough to unlock new missions there also supply missions in which you just run and gain items.

The game makes use of pretty much every aspect of the iOS devices and uses them very well. The only problem is because it uses a lot of technology and you also have to keep your device unlocked if you’re playing the game, it does drain battery life quite a bit. You can choose to make use of the accelerometer or the GPS and you can track steps or distance respectively. If you’re running you can turn on Zombie Chases, which is exactly what it sounds like. You hear zombies running after you and you have to pick up the pace to outrun them.

Addictivity - 9/10

The game is quite interesting but honestly if you’re into running or don’t really have time to walk for 30-40 minutes then you won’t find this game any fun at all. I use it whenever I have to go for a long walk and get a mission or two done every week or so but I don’t find myself wanting to go and play it if I don’t have something to do.

Controls - 9/10

The controls are all menu based and are pretty much self explanatory. The controls and options that are a bit more complex have explanations to go with them and everything falls into place quite easily.

Menus - 10/10

The menus are nicely designed and flow well, once you’re all set all you have to do is walk/ run and you don’t even touch the device again until you’re finished with the mission and want to start another or you finish the run. When you finish the narrative part of the story and the missions is over, you get a message through your headphones informing you of the completion and that the game is entering “radio mode”. Radio mode just plays your playlist through and lets you gain items as you run. The main menu is simple and consists of 4 options: missions, supplies, codex and options.

Missions lets you choose a mission it also lets you choose whether you want the music to play, what playlist you want to use, whether you want to use GPS or accelerometer tracking and also if you want zombie chases on or not.

Supplies lets you allocate supplies and is done by simply dragging the supplies from an area at the bottom into the area you want the item to go on the map.

Codex lets you read up more into the background of the story, characters and places mentioned in the game you also have to collect some special mission items during the game and these can be found here. Reading the codex isn’t necessary but it’s nice to have the option to read more into the background and journey deeper from the surface of the story.

Sound - 10/10

As the story and the game progress entirely through sound, this is a very important aspect of the game. I have to say, this has been very well put together. The story is interesting and although you learn some things and really want to know what is going on, that’s not always the case as life goes on and new supplies are needed every day. There also some unexpected plot twists that really move the direction of the story into exciting and compelling areas.

Graphics - 9/10

The graphics aren’t really that important but they’re beautiful anyway. I’ve taken a point away here because they had a nice “slide to run” feature on the home screen which they “had to take out” in a recent update.

Difficulty - 5/10

I had to give this game a low score for difficulty because honestly, IT IS SO SIMPLE! It’s a bit too simple really... there is no real challenge to the game at all, but as I mentioned in the opening paragraph: it’s not really a game. This is more of a story that you listen to whilst running and although it’s interesting and the concept is good, there is no margin for failure, at all. I don’t think it is even possible to fail a mission unless you’re actually running and you can’t escape a zombie chase.

I guess the fact that you have to actually run in the real world and it depends on your athletic ability whether you can do this well or not they can’t actually make it so that you have to run a certain speed or you lose. Instead the zombie chases are done by percentages, run a certain percentage faster than your current pace for a few minutes and you escape. The one bad thing I would have to say about this game is that there is no challenge factor to it at all, which isn’t that bad because it’s not that sort of game.

Learning Curve - 7/10

The game is easy to pick up and just play. If you can walk, you can play this game. Want more of a challenge, run instead. The game is great and doesn’t really pose much of a change in its low difficulty at all over the course of the game. The missions don’t really get much longer as you progress through the game and there’s no real way to make the game harder as it progresses.

Average Score - 8.4/10

Overall Score - 9/10

Although Zombies! Run got low scores for Difficulty and Learning Curve, it's still an amazing game. The price tag is a bit steep and to be honesty the only reason I got this was because it was on sale for £3.99 instead of its usual £5.49. I think if Six To Start were to release a lite version of the game then more people would be willing to give it a go after they'd seen how it was for themselves. The only reason for the game getting low scores for Difficulty and Learning Curve was because it's not that kind of game, it's not really a game at all; more of a fitness tool with game aspects.