#he did so good I rewarded him with the legendary bow I looted from the Titan

[rain-harmonia]

I did the Steel Watch Foundry fight last night and. Good lord. That final fight sucked. The state of my party by the end of it all.

No spell slots between them. Caerqiroth (my Tav) went down 3 times, Gale went down once or twice, Halsin went down once. All of them hanging on to their lives by a thread.

Then there was this motherfucker. Spent the whole fight unbothered. Skipping around tapping the Titan and the Watchers with Shocking Grasp, doing more damage than he has a right to.

Didn’t even lose half his health I can’t stand him I love him he didn’t even struggle. Having the time of his stupid life.

[megos95]

God of War 2018 Review (SPOILERS)

          What seemed to be something of a walk from point A to point B while talking in a dramatic tone style reboot, Dad of War is a legitimate happy surprise that offers a lot more past its TLoU inspired surface. To be frank I was dreading this game because of all the articles on it prior to its release. With reviews hyperfocusing on how mature the story apparently is (it isn’t really) I was expecting it to be a pretentious semi-movie with very limited and boring gameplay. BUT NOPE! The gameplay has a ton of stuff going for it and I very much appreciate all the cool shit in the game so here we go!

Gameplay

o   Combat

The game utilizes a trigger button style layout with R1 being light and R2 being heavy. L1 to block and parry and R2 aiming your weapon for a light/heavy throw. One could say its inspired by souls but this layout makes sense because previously Kratos attacked with face buttons and did spells/ranged attacks with the trigger button, but this game is more up close and personal with its combat. This isn’t saying that there isn’t any souls inspired things but I see it mostly in the setting which I’ll evaluate later. Holding the left stick and pressing X allows kratos to evade, double pressing X has him roll. His roll is much shorter and not a gymnastic-tastic style roll he had in previous games; Kratos is getting older y’know. Square is the boy button, its where in combat Atreus fires his arrows either via aiming them with L2 or the enemy you have locked onto. Circle is for interactives. Directions buttons are for cycling through weapons or arrow types. Pressing R3 can lock on. Locking on can be finicky because the lock on can break or if the enemy breaks away from your gaze it’ll unlock. This can be frustrating fighting very mobile enemies, it’s as if the camera is an enemy itself.

Rage meter from previous entries returns, as you fill up the meter via attacks you can unleash a mode where you do hefty damage, regenerate health, and take zero damage. However you will be melee only but youre slightly more mobile and can make yourself more effective with upgrades.

Enemies are following: Draugr, Dark Elves, Nightmares, Tatzelwurm, Wolves, Revenants, Hel-Walkers, Reavers, Wulvers, Ogres, Trolls, Travellers, and ancients.

Draugrs and Hel-Walkers are the most diverse type of enemies with having variants of mobility, tanky or fast, and weapon type. Some will carry shields, act as archers, or dual wield. These foes are the most common enemies.

Dark Elves are flying enemies that can shoot projectiles and inflict debuff that can limit your vision or cause a flash. A unique type is a summoner which can call about two more elves until he his killed. The toughest form of this enemy are the Dark Lord Elf which has a larger health bar and stronger attacks

Nightmares are the weak projectile firing enemies that can be more a hassle than a challenge. Often Nightmares can posses enemies and give them fast regen, strength, and speed. So when you see them take em out!

Tatzelwurms are enemies that can burrow underground then spring up to attack. Use arrows to keep them from escaping.

Wolves are fast enemies than can hold you place with bites

Revenants are the most frustrating enemies as they will evade your attacks and move far away from you spamming projectiles that inflict poison status. Theyre deceptively strong with some attacks taking huge chunks of your health. Use arrows right before attack to keep them from doing their evade. You will learn to hate them will all your might.

Reavers are weak human types. They will mostly be projectile lobbing enemies and sometimes have a heavy type that can regen health while doing a pose standing stll.

Wulvers are werewolf type enemies that will have fast high damage attacks and can take a hit. They will have 2 or 3 at a time and can overwhelm you. At certain low health threshold they will go into berserk mode that will increase their speed and damage. They are mid to late game enemies that put you to the test.

Ogres are very reminiscent of the cyclops from the previous games where at a certain stun, the can be rode and made to attack other enemies. Focus on them first to use them to clear out other enemies.

Trolls act like a sub boss and carry a large rectangular pillar. They will come in different flavors: cold, hot, and hel. You’ll encounter them often and it can get lame since they’re used so frequently as the sub boss and not other types of big epic monsters.

Travellers are unique humanoid enemies that carry large heavy Asiatic swords that will wreck you. These will often be optional enemies that you can fight for good loot. Sometimes they’ll be a sub-mini-boss but those ones are weaker.

Ancients are also optional hard enemies that are too simple. All you do is wait for them to open their chest and throw your axe. They have good drops but are boring to fight. Travellers at least will have two variants but if you fight one ancient you’ve fought em all.

Enemy bars come in different colors to indicate difficulty aswell as a level number. Green means easy, orangish brown (me bad at colors) indicate hard, and purple means come back later chump. A skull accompany the purple bar means dude don’t bother you will get owned so hard in front of your son. Beneath the bar is a stun meter, build up stun to do an execution on weaker enemies and a high damage attack for stronger enemies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PG-xytQYI

Kratos can acquire and use runic attacks which have a heavy and light attack. They’re sorta like specials and are influenced by your runic and cooldown stats. They’re very useful in fights when youre being overwhelmed or have a very tough single enemy.

o   Arrows

Atreus will get two types of arrows: electric and blue magic. Electric inflict a shock status effect which can cause an enemy to be paralyzed, useful against enemies that can dodge easily. Blue magic inflicts more stun and can cause a weaken status effect which weakens duh. Upgrade Atreus’s quiver to hasten his arrow reloading and his bow to do more arrow damage.

Atreus is a badass lil squirt, he can disable enemies but choking them with his bow. Atreus can trip enemies and whack him with his bow. Prioritize his leveling so that he can make fights much easier and fluid.  

o   Armor

Kratos has 3 armor slots while Atreus has 1. Each set of armor can affect your stats of Strength (DMG), Runic (Runic DMG),  Defense, Vitality (Health), Luck (perk activation chances, xp earning, hacksilver earning), and Cooldown. Chest, arms, and waist armors can be found or crafted. Progressing in the story unlocks more recipes. Overall the ones you craft are often better than the ones you find in chests.

Upgrade armor at the shop to unlock enchantment slots which can either enhance the stats given by the armor or balance out the stat boost provided. This makes the approach to combat more diverse and can be tailored to one’s liking.

Loot has levels of common, rare, legendary, and epic. Obviously the higher the rarity the more resources needed to upgrade. This is problematic when the game ends and you do not feel obliged to fully max your armor unless you’re fighting the valkyries

o   Talisman

Talismans are equipable doodads that can boost your stats and the more legendary talisman the better, since it will allow you to do another move of L1 + Circle. These can have high or low perk activation which can a huge beneficial passive, for example cooldown reduction occurs after successfully blocking. That kind of thing

o   Weapons

Kratos for the first half holds the Leviathan Axe, a nice frost flavored axe that after upgrading can inflict frost status affects. Hurl your axe then recall it with a very satisfying axe return animation. Down the upgrade path, you can unlock a stance switch which allows the axe to twirl like no other all around kratos making fighting big groups of enemies much more easier.

Surprise! The Blades of Chaos make a return by being the second weapon of choice. Much like the Axe, the Blades are elemental giving a burning effect. The blades have two other puzzle/clearing of rubbish. Hel-brambles can be burnt off to get to chests and the blades can be imbued with the Hel-Wind Energy to power mechanisms to solve puzzles/open chests. The Blades’ upgrade path involves a stance switch where instead of being more ranged, you get up close and personal with fiery stabs.  

Unarmed combat is actually quite viable. Punch enemies to build stun faster than axe swings or blade slashes. This involves upgrading the shield which can add to the punish that comes with a successful parry.

Both weapons have pommels that can be upgraded much akin to armor upgrades. However, they do not have enchantment slots, that’d be too much girth!

o   Summons

The BOY can summon spectral animals that help clear the wave. The summons have varying degrees of Stun, Damage, and Runic. One summon, squirrel finds consumables (health pickups or rage builder) and will talk mad shit to you!

o   Valkyries

Valkyries are optional super difficult bosses. Find 8 scattered across the realms. Each Valkyries shares similar moves, but has a general gimmick to them or attack pattern that’s easy to follow. Beat all 8 and put them back on their thrones to unlock the HBIC Sigrun who has all their moves and will kick the crap outta ya until you’re like super mega kratos and then you might have a chance kid.

They drop good loot and have probably one of the best armors and pommels in the game, so you should take on the less difficult ones in order to make later sections easier so you can feel BIG! Overall, I like the idea of this optional content. It puts the player’s skill to the test and has high rewards for beating them. Very satisfying stuff I gotta say.  

 Setting

o   Midgard

The majority of this game takes place in Midgard as it’s the biggest zone you can explore. The game isn’t open world but has open zones if that makes sense. When I think open world, I think something like a skyrim or MGSV and this is more akin to arkham asylum or nier2. In the center is the lake of nine which has Tyr’s Temple smackdab in the middle. In the radius of the temple are the towers that represents the realms. On these towers have realm tears which can hold difficult enemies or straight up realm dust that can be used to upgrade talismans. There are plenty of side areas that you can clear to get loot. Invest time exploring the side areas to increase your overall BIG.

o   Alfheim

Elf-land, the first other realm you visit. It’s the third largest zone, where you visit and once you solve all the optional areas you don’t really have reason to go back unless you’re doing the Valkyries, maybe DLC? Possibly? Hope so.

o   Musphelheim

Trials hot world, here you do combat challenges for fire loot where you can upgrade legendary and epic items. This is good for bettering your playing habits and increasing your hugeness. This adds to the continuing of playing, not replayablity I’ll get into replayablilty later.

o   Niflheim

Musty land. Here you can explore this challenge area with respawing lootchests and enemies. You have a timer that once time is up your health takes huge DoT. Replenish your timer by having the right gear and opening up chests. This is another way to continue playing the game out of seeing how well you can do a run or getting loot to upgrade your Valkyrie gear.

o   Helheim

Helheim is the second biggest realm that serves more of a story purpose than more side content. Here you will use your blades than axe. This area is more of a character building and story progressing area as after you finish you have no real reason to go back unless again your taking on Valkyries.

o   Jotunheim

Technically a long playable cutscene where you wrap the game story up. See the devs flex on you because this area serves as an indicator of future titles. Eh area.

 Story

The real question around this game is, “IS GOD OF WAR MATURE NOW?” well….. yes and no. Yes, as its left behind the more edgy early to mid 2000s aesthetic of the previous entries. However, all this game does is follow almost every trend it can possibly follow. It does retain its own identity by having Kratos in it so theres that I guess. The story itself is very basic, its not this groundbreaking video game story but since the medium is fulla chumps who actively avoid games like yakuza or nier or hell even new vegas for western titles.

I do however appreciate some aspects like how its one continuous shot no cuts, it adds to the games’s immersion and I just think its neat. I do like how the setting is this empty desolate world where the actions of the gods have affecting the mortals and how no matter what they do the apocalypse is going to happen. You don’t see Odin but the game does a good job of telling you this is all his fault. How his paranoia and desperation to prolong the eminent is what caused the end to happen.

 Characters

o   Kratos

How’s Kratos? Still a bit peeved. I attribute Kratos cold almost aloof personality to that his wife died. It’s implied that the wife was the one leading him and without her he’s lost. Kratos is generally cynical and borderline nihilistic, he hates the world and no matter where he goes he has to deal with gods in power. We do not see Kratos’s “change” from old Kratos to this Kratos, instead we’re introduced to this new Kratos who’s still mad but clearly changed. Why don’t we see this arc? Because Old Kratos is very difficult to make likeable.

Old Kratos was a violent unnecessarily cruel buttmunch. One can argue he’s like that because he’s not been given what was promised for his ten years of service which is ending his nightmares. For ten long years for every time he dreamt he had to see his wife and child be murdered at his own hands. Retconning has seen the blame been shift of Kratos but let’s just say hey Greek tragedies just do that have tons of family murder ie Hercules. The game doesn’t pretend he isnt without sin because they reiterate “you cant hide from your past asshole” and kratos realizes that he and Atreus must “Be Better”

We see Kratos gradually warm up to his son and lighten up a bit. His reasoning for his coldness is to try to speed up Atreus’s grow up. The world is mean and cruel and Kratos is not good at this being a dad see his previous kid.

I generally like this New Kratos, he’s tired but loves his son. He’s stern, strict, reasonable, and much less impulsive. He still breaks shit but HEADCANNON what if Kratos is the Greek god of Destruction. Sure Perses represents destruction, but think about Kratos has sorta caused the Greek world to end and now has brought about Ragnarok. Just something to think about.

o   Atreus

BOY. Atreus is a good boy, being the perfect foil for Kratos. The optimist to Kratos pessimist. We see Kratos teach Atreus to be more discipline and Atreus teaches Kratos to have some hope and not expect the worst.

This must’ve taken a lot of effort to make a child character likeable and not grating. He’s well done for the most part (barring the reveal that hes a god and his character switches for a good minute like what the fuck). But I like the boy. I like how you can attribute his bad decisions to being a child who had good intentions. He’s smart but is naiive. He’s frustrated because he feels that he’s capable of doing more than Kratos assumes. I like the dynamic and boat convos they have.

o   Mimir

Mimir, god of knowledge’s head accompanies the duo by giving you lore and background to almost everything mentioned in game. He acts a something to clear the awkward silence between kratos and Atreus have since kratos doesn’t like talking for stretches or at all.

Between him and Helios, hes the better head.

o   Sindri and Brok

Your merchants/blacksmith who will give you side quests. Sindri the germaphobe and Brok the danny devito. Funny guys that serve as a break from all the drama.

o   Freya

Freya is first the witch of the woods who helps the duo with getting around or healing. She’s revealed to be Freya much to Kratos chagrin. Kratos assumes all gods are jerks, but she serves as example that not all gods are selfish assholes (but a lot of em are). She is from the vanaheim realm which could be DLC land as they tease it in game. Also her actress is SMOKIN!

o   Magni and Modi

At first I thought Magni was thor but the 2/3rds of the game boss duo. These guys are very basic and are just there for you to kill or lay pipe not that kind the plot kind.

o   Baldur

YO this is a good villain. Baldur in norse mythology is a god who can’t be killed by anything, but with that he can’t die and cannot feel anything ANYTHING. He cant starve and doesn’t need to eat and if he did he doesn’t taste anything. His existence is pointless in his eyes he’s beyond bored. He’s moody because of this and is longing for something. Freya (his mom who loves him very much) justifies his condition because she did it out of love, but that overprotection brought him misery. I like how his design reflects that, it’s in snowy-ass Scandinavia yet he’s shirtless and barefoot. He’s scrawny because he’s malnourished. He looks exhausted because he doesn’t sleep. I like where they went with this character and I very much appreciate it.

 Graphics

Games PRETTY OH MY GOD. God of War has always tried to push the limits of the current graphical landscape by being grand and awesome. I remember first seeing GoW3 and thinking wow this is crazy. Hell even GoWA is incredible despite being forgetful. This is incredible you just see the money ooooozing when you look at this game. Great stuff, especially Alfheim.

 Overal

God of War was nice surprise, as a fan of the series I was wary of this title but found myself playing this game for hours on end for entire week where I did as much I could and be satisfied. Please play God of War for a good ole time!

[geekekitten]

Shadow of War: Improving Something Great

If you haven’t played the first game, Shadow of Mordor, firstly you should play it, secondly you probably won’t understand all of the comparisons I make between the two games (but you should still be able to take away the main ideas). 

So Shadow of War is the sequel to Shadow of Mordor, as most people know, that was released earlier this year. It experienced a few delays in it’s release, but I think waiting for a game longer so that it can come out more polished is better than getting the game earlier and experiencing a lot of bugs and glitches. I’ve been playing the Xbox One version and so far I have only run into one glitch, and it was an easy fix. For those of you that have played Shadow of Mordor or watched someone else play it, you’ll probably remember a few key details: the nemesis system and the lack of a deep story. Well the good news is that Shadow of War improves on both of those things. 

I love the nemesis system. I think it is so innovative that other games should start using it too. If you’re unfamiliar with the nemesis system, it works like this: the enemies within the game world are almost like living beings in that they remember encounters with you, interact with other enemies in their own missions, and can get stronger through successful encounters with you or other enemies. That was about the size of it for the first game. For the second game however, it is expanded upon. Now recruiting orcs for your army is very important because you’ll be doing something called “fortress sieges”, in which you need to take an army to the gates of a warlord’s fortress (the warlord is the highest rank the orcs can get) and tear through those walls, take over the objective capture points, and then go and face off with the warlord. This is a great addition to the nemesis system. It really makes your hard work feel more productive and like its paying off. 

Recruiting orcs feels really crucial now. Granted it was important in the first game too, but in this second installment you feel the difference. There is also opportunities for orcs to either lose or gain abilities/traits when they fight you. If you “break them” (meaning their health gets so low or they are so afraid that you can dominate them, as in make them come to your side) and they are a higher level than you, making you unable to recruit them, you can “shame” them instead. This will cause them to lose at least several levels, and sometimes it results in them getting weaker. However, if an orc defeats you in battle, it will usually lead to a promotion, perhaps a new title, and maybe even some stronger abilities. Also a nice edition is the “fighting pits”, where you can send your recruited orcs to fight other enemy orcs in hopes that they will win and get stronger. Just be careful with who you send in though--you CANNOT intervene in these fights, so if your guy dies, that’s that. 

The story in the first game was rather flat. It was nice to learn about Celebrimbor a bit (the elf spirit who has fused with Talion) and have Gollum taking an important role in helping with the missions, but there just wasn’t a lot too it. It was really much more focused on wandering around the world killing and recruiting orcs. And don’t get me wrong, that is really fun, but it would have been nice for there to be more breaks in those activities for story content. Thankfully the second game does a good job balancing the need for story content and the need to just go out smashing orc skulls. Shelob takes an important role in this game, Gollum does make some appearances again, and you get quite a few interactions with the Ring Wraiths (including the Witch King himself). You learn more about Celebrimbor’s life and you learn some interesting things about Shelob and Sauron. The idea is to try and make the second game fit into the Tolkien universe and have it somehow connect to the Lord of the Rings story (I have not played the ending yet, and even if I did I wouldn’t want to spoil it for others). They introduce new characters that take part in cutscenes and story missions, and having the opportunity to fight alongside other people feels fresh in comparison to the first game where you always fought by yourself (except for when your recruited orcs were with you). 

The two additions that I really like (which you have to get through the skill tree) are the abilities to summon a bodyguard (you have to assign an orc you’ve recruited to be your bodyguard) and to summon any caragors you’ve dominated that are still alive. I prefer to dominate the wildlife rather than kill it, so I usually have a few caragors that can come to my aid. The best thing, I think, about the bodyguard summon ability is that when you go to fight the warlord at the end of the fortress sieges, you go in alone, and that pompous warlord has a bunch of guys with him to fight! So to make the battle ground more even, summon your bodyguard. He can take a lot of heat off of you. 

Also what the second game has improved upon is the skill tree, in making it go deeper into abilities and also adding new ones, and the items you have equipped. In the second game you will get new gear by defeating captains and unlocking the “poem doors” (I like to call them) by discovering all the ithildin in the region. There are tiers of these items, just like you see in MMORPGS or games like Hearthstone: common, rare, epic and legendary. You will only get items that fit into one of the slots you have (so daggers, bows, swords, cloaks, rings, and later on, hammers). Having a more expansive skill tree helps you play the game more your own style (I personally like to dominate some archers, cause mayhem from safely on top of a tall building and then swoop to the ground for combat). Having gear to pick up (and gems to slot into the gear for special bonuses) feels better than always having the same stuff. It should be noted that in the cutscenes, your gear will always look like the original stuff you had on, and there’s been a lot of complaints about that. It doesn’t really bother me that much though. 

I will admit that it can get monotonous to do a lot of traveling and kind of cycle through the motions of taking out fortress captains, recruiting as many orcs in the region as you can, having some of your recruits infiltrate the warchiefs, and then going in for the fortress siege. But when that feels dull I change things up by doing a story mission instead, or doing a vendetta mission (when you go and try to kill an orc captain who has killed another player and you get rewards for defeating them). Also, once you get to a certain part of the game, you can get involved in competitive fortress sieging, in which you try to take down other players fortresses (not to worry, everything done in this mode will NOT affect your single-player game--your fortress and all your orcs will be unharmed).

There has been a TON of controversy and ranting about the new “marketplace” and “loot boxes”. I really don’t want to get into it though because sooooooooo many people have done that already. It’s just become annoying to me now to listen to it or read about it because its been covered again and again. So this is all I will say about it: I’m not a fan of loot box systems (except the kinds that Battlenet uses in Heroes of the Storm, I like the way they were implemented into that game) but you do not have to participate in this part of the game to enjoy the game and to get what you need. That’s it. 

So there you have it. If you’ve already played Shadow of Mordor and you enjoyed it, it’s really in your best interest to play Shadow of War. It really does improve upon a lot. If you haven’t played the first game, I personally think you’d be better off playing it and then Shadow of War (or at least checking out some lets plays of it and getting the main drift of the story). Both games are good, I just think the second one is more innovative and fixes some issues in the first game. If you’re on the fence about it, then check out some videos on youtube (there are a TON for this game) before making a decision. Its worth your time.