Hitman (PS4) - Review

Hitman is available now on PS4 and is priced at £44.99 for  the full experience or £11.99 for the first episode and £7.99 for each episode thereafter. If you enjoy the first episode then you can buy the full experience upgrade pack for £36.99. Jeez, that was convoluted.

I've held back on this review for a little while. I have had it since launch and have played a hell of a lot of it. But the episodic nature of this game irked many a gamer and I wanted to be completely sure of my thoughts on this game before I set out to sway you guys one way or another.

By the time all of the episodes have been released there will be a total of six locations for you to go on a killing spree in. This doesn't include the ICA training facility that is included in the Paris episode. I mentioned the pricing at the beginning of this review and honestly believe this lead to more confusion than was necessary. IF you bought every episode as it came out, on the basis of how much you enjoyed the previous one or whatever it would cost you £51.94 (well according to my calculator anyway). Get Paris and then decide to upgrade? You're looking at £48.98. So if you think you might enjoy what Hitman has to offer the best option would be to get the full experience. Want to hedge your bets a little? Go for the full upgrade after seeing what Paris has to offer. I see no reason why anyone would buy each pack separately if I am honest, though I suppose it does look attractive to people of limited means. £7.99 a month is doable for most people.

Anyway, lets get away from all of that for a second and talk about the game, shall we?

I was going to write up a dissection of what each different location offers, but that would be time consuming and pretty damn boring to read, I imagine. Instead I want to talk about the overall level design. Hitman is a great example of what brilliant level design can do for a game. This game was lambasted by many for offering just one level for £7.99 at first and now my Twitter feed is full of congratulations to Squenix each time a new locale is released. The levels are intricate, beautiful and full of things to discover. Paris has been out since May and is the smallest of the maps so far (save from the training facility, which is also fantastic) yet I can still find new ways to approach the objectives, still find myself getting lost or finding new corridors to explore. Paris is the only one so far that centres around just one building and it's gardens, so you can imagine how many opportunities for exploration there are in the town of Sapienza and the markets of Marrakesh.

You do hear the same voice acting in each of the locations, which does nothing for immersion in my opinion. I want to hear different voices, different accents for crying out loud. Instead, no matter where you go you hear the same fairly stuffy British accents from every person who happens to speak as you walk by. Maybe I am nitpicking, but it does take away from the exotic locations somewhat if I'm being honest.

Back in May when I first played the Paris missions, I was thinking the same as everyone else, that being "all that money for one contract?!". I had had a little play in the contract mode, but I have to be honest it didn't interest me that much, and remains my least played area of the game. So I put the game to one side for awhile and decided to revisit once Sapienza was released and then maybe write up my review. I'm so glad I did, as this review would have been going in a very different direction. After I had completed the missions in Sapienza, I decided to revisit Paris and try and do it another way. Sapienza had shown me the amount of thought that went into each level and I approached The Showstopper with renewed appreciation. Hitman really is a masterclass in level design.

After doing The Showstopper again I was hooked, but still not feeling the contracts. So I gave the Escalation mode a try. Escalation mode consists of 3-5 rounds in one location that get progressively harder. I don't know how I hadn't noticed them before. They're brilliant! Incredibly challenging but even more rewarding. They give you different targets from the main ones included in the missions, and then they give you more targets on top of the first as well as more stringent security to contend with. They're infuriating, but fantastic and I have whiled away many an hour tailing random people in each location, looking for the perfect time to strike.

My favourite thing by far about the new Hitman experience though has been the Elusive contracts. They are such a great idea for a game like this. There have been four Elusive Contracts so far (all of which I have completed, wahoo!) and these contracts run for about 48 hours. The target will ONLY be available in that window of time, real-time. If you die you don't get to do it over. That's it. You get a nice red Failed sign over the target on the game's main screen. Ouch. Actually, even after completing another one the failure will still follow you, as my partner found out. I don't know whether these will come back once the disc version is released, but I hope they do. It would be a shame for game collectors and lovers of physical discs to miss out on how exciting this mode is.

Overall I think that Hitman works wonderfully episodic. It keeps it fresh and exciting and basically gives you a new game to look forward to each month. I actually find myself wondering why the hell all previous Hitman games weren't like this. If the whole game had been released in one go I honestly wonder whether I would have played it as much as I have. As it is I find myself looking forward to the next month, to see where I'll be killing people next. If you were at all on the fence about this game, don't be! Get it. There are options to suit every wallet out there. I promise you won't regret it.

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Homefront: The Revolution (Xbox One) - Review

Homefront: The Revolution is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £44.99.

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have heard a lot abut Homefront: The Revolution. Most likely, none of it has been good. From what I have read it has been the PS4 and PC versions which have been slammed the most. So I went into my Xbox One copy feeling grateful that I personally favour the XB1 pad.

With that said I still encountered some problems on the XB1 version and I'm gonna get them out of the way here. I don't usually approach a review in this way, but I feel like most people have come to a Homefront review already "knowing" how it's going to go. Many will have already made their mind up before reading anymore reviews based on what they've heard. And that's fine. But I just want to get the negative stuff out of the way so I can talk about what I did like about this game and end this review on a more positive note.

The biggest problem I encountered whilst playing Homefront: The Revolution was lag. The lag was pretty terrible actually and made it feel like a chore to continue playing rather than fun way to use my precious spare time. It lagged when I aimed through my scope, it lagged when I had an enemy in my sights so that the gunfire sound was playing but nothin else was actually happening. It lagged every single time I used the little locker/store thing or accepted a mission. If you're sitting down to play this game for a prolonged period of time this lag really starts to get on your nerves. I sat through two hours in one sitting and the pull to turn on another game was very strong, let's put it that way.

The graphics have been given a lot of crap and I honestly don't think they're bad. Whilst it is certainly not the prettiest game we have seen so far this gen it is by no means the ugliest (has everyone forgotten Toro?!). Nah I'm being unfair there, we shouldn't compare this to Toro, but my point stands. This game does not look like a previous-gem game at all and in places it was actually really nice looking. It's mostly down to the light usage I think, but I'll tweet out some screenshots after I've published this review and you can tell me what you think.

The load times are also terrible. I honestly wondered whether the game had crashed entirely. And the death animation is laughable, really. But that about wraps up the bad things I have to say about this game. Don't get me wrong, the lag especially, are pretty big bads but I'm sure that future patches will make all of these better. Now onto what I enjoyed!

The story is really interesting and the introduction sets it up perfectly. I couldn't wait to play and find out more (damn you lag!). The game is set in an open-world version of Philadelphia after the "Norks" (no, really. They're not big boobs, it is in fact slang for North Korean, apparently) have flipped a switch in all of our tech and invaded. Wandering around the city feels great, and actually captures that feeling of dread much better than The Division does. You feel oppressed. Nervous at what you might find around the next corner. The atmosphere is really fantastic.

The gun animation is great too. You can swap your load out on the fly, including attachments to your gun. Your avatar will lift it up and you press the button corresponding to the bit you want to change (scope, under-barrel etc). You then detach what is there and attach the new part. It's all very slick and the guns look fantastic. I'm a big fan of the hack mechanic too, which works a little bit like the hacking in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Overall this game is never going to win GOTY but it is a solid single player FPS experience with a great open-world to explore. Yeah there are big problems with lag at the minute, but I'm sure it will be patched eventually. And with the bad press this game has received it is already available for less than £35. In a few more weeks it'll likely be around the £25 mark and I think you should definitely think about snapping it up then.

6/10 TRY IT!

A copy was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek (Xbox One) - Review

Enigmatis is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £7.99.

Hidden Object games are a guilty pleasure for me and, I imagine, many others and I have reviewed each of the previous Artifex Mundi offerings on Xbox One (here and here). Whilst they both sated my guilty pleasure, neither of them were given a great score. I found the stories to be lacking slightly and graphically the games are unimpressive to say the least. So how does Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek compare?

Enigmatis follows a woman who finds herself in Maple Creek. She has no idea why she is there, so she sets out to investigate. The story is much better than either of the previous Artifex Mundi games and it ties in with the hidden-object side of Artifex Mundi's games much better. When I first reviewed an Artifex Mundi game on the Xbox One I struggled to think of anyone to recommend the game to, it just seemed like something a "Facebook Gamer" would play. Then I reviewed their next release and found myself enjoying it, so much so that I started looking forward to the next press release. I launched Enigmatis the minute it had downloaded and finished it in a couple of sittings. I think this is their 'pull', they're extremely simplistic, just point at what you want to investigate and click. They don't take long to complete either, even on hard mode, so they're a perfect way to kill a little time before big blockbuster releases.

The thing that makes Eningmatis stand out though was the evidence wall. As you make your way through Maple Creek you discover things about the different places you visit and the people you meet, and you put the scraps of paper on your hotel room wall to help you work out what is going on in Maple Creek. It is pretty cool to see that filling up, with you adding information to the correct sections to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The other puzzles in this game were great too, they're not so challenging that you end up turning to Google in despair, they posed enough of a challenge that you don't feel like you're breezing through the game too fast. The hidden object sections were fantastic, items were extremely well concealed or camouflaged against the background, making it very hard to get the achievement for spotting a few items in a matter of seconds.

If you have enjoyed either of the previous Artifex Mundi offerings then you should definitely pick this one up. In my opinion it has taken the best bits of the previous games and expanded them, making this one the best by far. I enjoyed every minute of this one, though after spending four hours in one go on it I did feel a little ashamed that I hadn't sunk that time into a bigger title. But, hey, I was having fun. Leave me alone.

9/10 BUY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Adam's Venture: Origins (Xbox One) - Review

Adam's Venture: Origins is available now on Xbox One and is priced at £39.99.

Adam's Venture: Origins follows a guy called Adam Venture. No, really. The 'puns' surrounding this name are even worse. Anyway, we end up on a little adventure with him and Evelyn, his father's assistant.

The game at first glance looks really quite nice, but look too closely at any of it and it looks incredibly dated. There are a lot of rough edges in this game, a LOT of things are blurred and I couldn't really tell if this was intentional or not at first. The more I played the more I realised it definitely was not intentional. I had a lot of problems with graphical bugs as well, the worst one being when you have to avoid being spotted by some spotlights. I'll share the images in my Twitter after posting this review so you can see for yourself, but massive chunks of the environment went black, like the textures hadn't loaded. This made th spotlight impossible to see. I got caught a few times before it fixed itself.

The music in this game deserves a special mention, it was honestly one of my favourite things about this game. It has a really lovely soundtrack, that I turned up so it would drown out some of the awful, hammy voice acting. It is terrible. The puzzles in this game are a nice mix of fun and challenging. There are some really simple ones, but some of them will have you trying to work them out for quite awhile. It reminded me of the old Broken Sword games in some ways. I think I expected Adam;s Venture to be more of an adventure game, but I definitely felt more like I was playing a point-and-click game, and in truth, these moments were the best in the game. Some of the 'adventure' moments were just laughable. When you first get into a mine cart a little box pops up telling you that it 'isn't for the faint-hearted'. I got all excited, hoping for a few slow-mo moments as you narrowly miss falling off the edge of the track, or quickly dodge a falling rock. Nope. No such luck. Instead you go around a corner and down a slight incline. That is it. I was SO disappointed.

The game is very linear, there is no chance of getting lost here. This was slightly disappointing when you you consider it is supposed to be an action adventure game. There is no real adventure to be had, you just follow the very clear paths set out for you and solve th puzzles along the way.

All that being said though, I did enjoy my time with Adam's Venture: Origins. I can't really tell you why, either. It is in no way a blockbuster and definitely not worth the price tag, which is set lubriciously high for this game in my opinion. It was a nice relaxing game to play and I found myself picking it up over other more 'exciting' games I have. If it's on a good sale its worth picking up, even if just for the achievements.

5/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Azkend 2 (Xbox One) - Review

Azkend 2 is available now on the Xbox One and is priced at £6.39.

Now you all know I love Sparkle Unleashed and Sparkle 2 by the guys at 10tons and I still play them both fairly regularly (I will complete them on Nightmare mode!). So when a code for Azkend 2 dropped into my inbox I was super excited to try it out, but how does it compare to 10tons previous Xbox One releases?

Azkend 2 is basically a match-3 game, with the addition of a story. The story isn't all that bad, though the voiceover reminds me a lot of the hidden object games we have seen come to Xbox One by the guys at Artifex Mundi, a little bit cheap and cheesy sounding. A story in a game like this is a little unnecessary in my opinion; I don't pick up a puzzle game if I want to immerse myself in a brilliant story, I pick it up because I have 15 minutes spare and want a quick game, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, because of this I found the story to be more of a distraction from the game than an asset.

There are over 60 match puzzles to make your way through. Along the way they get a lot tougher, but you also acquire various upgrades. They are given to you after you've completed a certain amount of levels and you are asked whether you want to equip it before going into the next level. I do wish there was a way you could see all of your available upgrades here, rather than backing out into the menu screen, I just feel like the game would flow a little better that way.

Overall Azkend 2 offers a fairly entertaining challenge, but for me it doesn't reach the heights of Sparkle Unleashed and Sparkle 2. It doesn't have that same addictive streak that keeps me coming back and spending hours at a time playing. If you like match-3 games then obviously you should probably get it, otherwise skip it.

6/10 SKIP IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

Blues and Bullets Episode 2: Shaking The Hive (Xbox One) - Review

Blues and Bullets Episode 2: Shaking The Hive is available now on Xbox One and is priced at £3.99 if you're buying the episodes separately.

Now I have to be honest, usually when I'm reviewing an episodic game I'd rather wait until they're all out to review them. I think you deserve to know what I think of the game as a cohesive whole, rather than what I think of each individual chunk. Let's be honest, would any of you have wanted a big retail release like Fallout 4 reviewed in hour long chunks?! But with Blues and Bullets I have (and will be) reviewing them as and when they come out, because it has been ages since Episode 1 released and if I didn't review them singularly I'd forget what the hell has happened before the last Episode.

Now that sounds a little silly but I'm serious, the gap between episodes for Blues and Bullets is far too long and honestly this is my main criticism of the game. The story is gripping and well told, so that by the end you are dying to know what is going to happen next. Fast forward EIGHT whole months and we can finally continue the story. Tiny problem though, a lot of time has passed and I can't remember what the fudge was going on. Yes I can replay the first episode, but lets be honest here, we all have a huge gaming backlog, don't we?

As ever I'm not going to ruin the story here. Episode 2 starts off a little slower than I would have liked, but it soon picks up and by the end I was desperately searching for any known release date for the next episode on the internet. The art style is still a real pleasure to immerse yourself in, the story is gripping and I love the mixture of piecing clues together and shooting the bad guys. The shooting parts really stand out for me in this game, they are just really simple and fun, I love that you can aim in the right general direction before sticking your head out of cover. The dialogue options could be a little clearer as I found myself disappointed in what Ness was saying a few times, but this might just be me!

Overall I'd say Blues and Bullets is a really interesting game, one that I love when I'm playing. However the large break between episodes is a problem for me really, by the time this one came around, any interest I had had waned significantly. Props to the developer though, as once I started playing it had me hook, line and sinker again. I just hope I don't have to wait another eight months for the next episode.

7/10 TRY IT!

A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

An Apology...

This will be one of the harder blog posts I've ever written, but it's long overdue so I'm going to try. It doesn't really fit with the work I usually put out on here, but it has directly affected my work and so I feel the need to try and explain a little...

First off I want to issue an apology to anyone who reads this and all the developers and publishers I've had the pleasure of working with. I want to apologise for how lacking in content both my blog and my Twitch channel have been recently. My last post was a whole month ago, but since then I've still been being sent games so my backlog is pretty damn huge. I AM going to write them all up in due course, but first I want to explain a little about myself.

I suffer from crippling anxiety - from the moment I wake up to the minute I finally manage to stop worrying enough to eventually fall asleep. It used to be when I was younger that people just though I was a little more prone to stressing and my anxiety is actually still a source of much amusement to my family. But they only see the side of me that leaves half an hour too early for everything because I'm so scared of being late and seeming disrespectful. The side that won't (can't) go to the doctors for fear of being told that something more serious is afoot. The Danielle that stresses about every upcoming birthday, no matter how far away it happens to be (the next family birthday is actually in October now and I'm already having sleepless nights trying to plan it).

The first few months of the year are always tough on me. They include the majority of my families birthdays (February being the birth month of my dad, brother and son!) which means I spend an inordinate amount of time fretting that I've done enough, that they'll like the gifts I give. Hell I worry so much about the gifts I give to people I end up telling them what I got for them weeks before their birthday just to check that they will like it. I always buy presents the month before, so then there is plenty of time left over to stress about whether I should return it and go back to the drawing board. April sees me turn another year older and ten days later it is my daughters birthday. I wouldn't stress so much about April if it weren't for the fact that my birthday was so close to my daughters. I find myself every year telling my family and friends to ignore mine in favour of making more a fuss out of her. They ignore me every year and then I spend my birthday worrying that they've done too much for me, that it's going to overshadow my daughters day.

Writing all of this down now I feel ridiculous, but try as I might (and I really have tried) I can't shift this swirling feeling in my stomach. And all of that is just the half of it. I'm a stay-at-home mum at the minute, my daughter attends nursery in the morning and my son is full time at school. So I have a couple of hours child free every morning. My family tells me to make the most of it, have fun. So sometimes I spend this time playing the games I have to review. I go for the odd coffee morning with some friends. But every single time I'm doing something 'for me' I am listing ten thousand things in my head that I could have been doing instead. Housework, exercise etc. etc. My house is always clean and tidy. My kids are always well fed, happy and cared for yet I spend the majority of my life inventing more things I need to do. Endless lists occupy my phone and my handbag of things I must do by a self-imposed date and time. My heart races and I feel sick. My stomach swirls with the guilt of having given my children cereal for breakfast rather than a homemade, organic super fruit filled smoothie or something. I feel myself start to unravel, much like I'm doing here, rambling on and on about all of the ways I fail my children and my family. I keep it all internalised and it festers and grows to the point where I truly believe I am the worst mother that has ever existed. And all of this stems from attempting to have a little bit of time just for me.

So this last month I haven't written anything, mistakenly believing (or maybe hoping) that it was the stress of having to write down and share my thoughts on games that lead my mind to start wandering in that way. I played games that I wanted to play for me, rather than games I had to play to review. Of course it isn't the stress of writing that leads to the guilt I feel when I sit down and take five minutes for myself. It's made no difference. I still found my mind wandering during cutscenes in Quantum Break. Still felt that familiar swirling pit opening in my stomach, even once the kids were fast asleep. Because of course when they're asleep I should be ironing, wiping down kitchen units or any number of other household tasks.

This hasn't come out nearly as clearly as I had hoped it would, but I guess I shouldn't have expected it to when it comes from such an unclear and uncertain part of myself. I am the Queen of Second Guessing, I constantly question myself and the others around me. I find myself, months after the fact, replaying conversations I've had with my friends, or my kids teachers and cringing about what I'd said. When I did share this with friends it was always an unfounded worry, something they had completely forgotten about. Since I was a child I've had panic attacks over my fear of dying and recently I've found myself stressing about the fact that one day my children will die, a thought which made me wish I hadn't had them in the first place, which I know is absurd but in these anxiety fuelled moments that are coming thicker and faster as the years go on these are the dark corners my mind wanders to. That particular episode was during family film night, with both of them snuggled into me sharing popcorn and watching Star Wars The Force Awakens, a time where I should have just been happy and content was mired by my anxiety, again.

This month I have realised that my anxiety is ruling the majority of my life. Where it used to only come into play with things like doctors visits and appointment keeping it has now snuck into my downtime and is attempting to ruin that too. I won't let it. It has been the voice in my head telling me not to write this post, to just write one of the reviews I have been sitting on for weeks and ignore the gaping hole in the calendar where there were none. I can't. I have to acknowledge this side of me so as to attempt to control it. I needed to let the amazing developers and publishers that are kind enough to share their work with me that the reviews are coming. I needed to let anyone reading this little blog know that I never forget about you, I spend a massive amount of each day worrying that I haven't written anything in awhile, stressing to the point where I find I literally can't do it. I paralyse myself through my fear. I spend every waking moment fearing judgement; by other parents at the school gate, readers of this blog, hell even strangers on the street. I'm trying to adopt a calmer attitude, the 'I don't care what other people think of me' attitude that most of the people around me manage with ease. So please, bear with me.

The next few weeks I AM going to catch up with every outstanding review I have on the deck here. This mean you might see a review for a game that was released months ago. Please stick with me, I will be getting up-to-date again as soon as I possibly can. Thank you for being so patient thus far. And to any of my Twitter followers that have found their way here thank you so much for being the best set of followers I could ask for. I've had so few negative experiences on Twitter, and it is all you guys.

Nothing but love,
Dannie