Review: Zombie Vikings

What do you get when you mix zombies, classic beat-em-up game-play, gorgeous hand drawn visuals and Norse mythology?  Zombie Vikings!  From the clever folks at Zoink Games bring their humor and creativity to life in Zombie Vikings.

Zombie Vikings is an homage to classic 90’s side scrolling, button mashing, couch co-op.  Choosing random maps in arcade mode, or jumping into story mode gives you access to one of the 4 initial playable characters.  Each character is a viking, brought back to life by Odin to help retrieve his stolen eye from Loki.  Every character comes with a basic attack and combo from multiple hits of the attack button, the ability to grab and throw both objects and small enemies, and a unique magical attack.  You can charge your attacks by holding down the appropriate button.

Each mission plays out in 2.5D as your 2D animated characters do battle with various monsters, vikings and cats, lots of cats. You’ll encounter a variety of these enemies, and though many of them share similar attack patterns, Zombie Vikings does a good job of mixing each one up slightly, and also adding a diverse grouping of them in each encounter.  Mixing it up in between even more, there are a ton of bosses, mini-bosses and chases scenes to break up the button mashing and you think a little more strategically, or just race across the beautiful hand drawn backgrounds in order to out run a giant slug.

Avast! Ax wielding slug things!

Throughout each zone you’ll also find side quests to embark on.  These are usually pretty straight forward find-and-return quests, but the quirky characters and their specific and amusing needs keep these fresh and interesting throughout.

Sprinkled further into this mix, are a huge variety of bizarre weapons that you can find throughout the game, or purchase for gold at shops you’ll find along the way.  You’ll also be able to equip magical runes to your characters that will give a variety of different buffs to your health, magic or attack.

The artistic style of Zombie Vikings is where it’s at.  The 2D characters and backgrounds are all hand drawn with extreme detail.  Each zone you encounter if full of the ridiculous, the surreal and the downright weird to catch your eye as you battle along.  Though these landscapes are great, it would be nice on occasion to see more animation amongst them to help them really feel alive.  Characters in the background stand motionless, and there is no interactivity for you to play around with.  This feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to add even more fun and hilarity to the game.

It’s a witch! On a stick!

Hilarity is in the heart of this game.  Zombie Vikings is full of humor.  As you play through the story missions you’ll be exposed to the tongue in cheek laughs throughout each short cut scene.   They are wonderfully silly and full of puns.  These cut scenes along with each character are fully voiced as well.  The voice overs are solid and energetic, and each character really feels like their own individual.

Umm penguins, help?

When you combine all these aspects with a few friends online or locally, Zombie Vikings is a load of fun.  It does an excellent job of reaching it’s goal of bringing back to feel of old school gaming, sitting on a couch with a group of your friends vying to power through the game in one sitting.  Though the game is not hard, it offers enough challenge and variation to keep you amused throughout.  Currently available on PlayStation 4, Zombie Vikings will also be released in the near future on Steam, and a stream of content and new characters already seems to be in the plan for future updates.  I suggest you check it out!

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment below and let me know about your experience with Zombie Vikings if you’ve played it!

 

Review: Mad Max

Welcome to the wasteland, time for some good old fashioned revenge.  Enter Mad Max, the grizzled, apocalypse surviving ex-cop with a bad temper, and even worse demeanor.  Brought to us by the folks at Avalanche Games, Mad Max is a terrific open world action game with various RPG elements thrown in to boot.

Dropped in the middle of the wasteland, you take over Max after he’s been beaten, abused and robbed of his beloved V8 after one of the most epic opening scenes experienced in recent memory.  The gist from here is simple.  Get a new ride, and take out the guy who stole it from you.

One of many, many, many, many, many explosions

If you are familiar with games like Assassin’s Creed, Shadow of Mordor or Batman: Arkham Asylum you’ll fall right in line with the basic game-play for Mad Max.  You roam around in third person in a massive, fully explorable map.  At any time you can view this map for insights as to special locations throughout the world.  These locales can be discovered similarly to Assassin’s Creed, by finding view points and explore the world, only this time they come in the form of hot air balloons.

There is a wide variety of missions you can take on, from simple scavenging quests, to races, to taking down powerful convoys, or even invading fortified bases and taking them over.  There is always something to do, and even these similar tasks are made less repetitive by changing up the layouts or objectives in each area.

Each of these will involve combat of some type.  Ammunition is extremely limited early on, so most of this combat will take place either on foot, or in your vehicle.  Ground combat is theatrical thrill, and takes more than a nod from Batman and Shadow of Mordor, with it’s button clicking, counter timing style.  The speed, variety of enemies and attacks, and pure adrenaline it inspires from it’s theatrical approach however makes you completely forget any of the before mentioned similarities to other games.  Combat here is simple to learn, but just a ton of fun to take part in, as Mad Max takes on dozens of enemies at a time with his bare fists, or weapons found laying about.   Later combos also let you perform magnificent kill shots, and use the environment around you to assist in a multitude of ways.

If you aren’t fighting on your feet, you’ll be fighting on your wheels, in your own customizable death machine, better known as the Magnum Opus.  You’ll spend most of your time in your vehicle, building it up from a scrap pile of a dune buggy, to a monstrous machine of death, spikes included!  You can customize and upgrade your vehicle with an assortment of armor and weapons, or configure it into special Archangels which will give you various bonuses to driving or combat.

Early carnage (pun intended) starts with simply ramming objects and other vehicles, but you quickly gain useful accessories, like a harpoon able to rip pieces, or even people off of opposing vehicles, and even taking down towers and snipers and other stationary targets.  Later additions like a rear mounted sniper rifle, and explosive harpoons add to the mayhem.

Meet the Magnum Opus

Throughout the game you will upgrade your vehicle and Mad Max himself by collecting scrap strewn throughout the world.  You can also gain scrap by taking over opposing camps, and building relationships with the leaders of the mighty strongholds.  Managing your scrap intake is a big key, especially early on, to upgrading Max’s abilities and customizing your ride.  For the most part though, besides a few visual choices, most players’ Mad Max will more or less play like everyone else’s, there is simply just not as much uniqueness available in the skill sets, and you can eventually just buy everything, or gain it through either in-game quests, or your notoriety which will raise as you complete quests and accomplishments.

These small misses are generally completely wiped out by the pure scale, scope and feel to the giant, and quite literal, sandbox laid out for you to explore.  The Wasteland is vast, beautiful and treacherous.   You can explore nearly every mountain, valley or distant point with no fear of any invisible walls, or dead ends.  The lack of any loading screen only makes this world seem more massive.

And the Wasteland isn’t just a pretty place to look at.  There are various dangers out there just waiting to kill Mad Max.  Massive dust storms throw debris everywhere, tornadoes appear out of nowhere to knock you off of cliffs, and massive scary as hell thunderstorms destroy nearly everything in their path.  The surroundings are beautiful and deadly, and you’ll never know when to expect attack from roaming patrols, or snipers.

The only major downfall to Mad Max is the story.  After the initial awesomness, the story falls to the background and there is little motivation to proceed with it, except to unlock new upgrades for yourself, or your Magnum Opus.  Though the story does pick up again in the final chapter, you’ll have more fun just exploring the world, blowing up things, and knocking out bad guys.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Sorry, what was your name again?

Regardless of any of it’s shortcomings, Mad Max is a huge amount of fun to play.  There are a couple of different ways to go about the combat, and there is always something else to do.  Completionists will find a ton of items to collect, scrap to find, and historical relics abound in the massive and beautiful environment.  Fans of the movies will also see a variety of call-outs to the series as you explore, though there is an obvious disconnect from direct references to any of the movies.  By far if you are looking for a fun time-killer, and love over the top action and beautiful explosions, Mad Max is a fit for you.

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to comment and like below.  Also, check out my YouTube channel for Let’s Plays and stream  highlights for Mad Max.

Another awesome game!

Youtube Review: Bronan Games

Another week has gone by, and I have discovered yet another channel for you guys to check out. Bronan Games is another great, humor filled gaming channel, with a wide variety of content, doesn’t hurt that he is Canadian either, or does it?

If you like variety then Bronan Games will satiate your hunger well.  With nearly daily updates on almost every type of game genre are available here.  What I really like about the channel is the huge selection of indie games featured.

As a lover of  indie gaming, it’s great to find a single channel that features so many different indie games.    Browsing through his catalog there are a ton of games here that I have not seen elsewhere.  Everything from short one-offs to longer horror games and the weird and silly are represented here.  Spin the dial and pick something random for some quick entertainment.

Style wise Bronan Games stick to fairly heavily edited just plays.  Lots of graphics, quick cuts and the such to keep you engaged whenever the games he is playing may not be.  Commentary on the channel is goofy and frivolous which may or may not suit all viewers, but let’s face it, we’re watching a gaming channel, it should be goofy and silly.  Bronan is also fairly consistent with interacting with his viewers, which in my opinion is a major miss for most channels this size.  Regular and prompt interaction with your audience at this level is almost as important as the actual content you put out daily, and it’s good to see a channel that has this.

I did have a good deal of fun and more than a few chuckles checking out video’s on Bronan Games’ channel.  With thousands of channels to surf through, it’s become harder and harder to find anything unique in the over-saturated market.  That being the main reason I do these weekly reviews of course!

All said, Bronan Games is a great channel to discover some hidden gems, especially in the indie horror scene.  It also offers enough selection of both random games, well known games, and just pure goofiness to keep a good range of viewers entertained. The level of interaction is solid and it seems you can usually expect most of your comments to be replied to, which keeps the channel genuine and on the level. Make sure to give Bronan Games a look see as soon as you can.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to like and comment below.

Find Bronan Games here, and follow him on Twitter.

Check out last week’s Youtube Review!

Youtube Review: GamingByGaslight

Another week, another YouTube review.  This week I stumbled across GamingByGaslight,  My continuing quest to find you guys interesting new channels stumbled across GamingByGaslight after YouTube insisted I check out more Don’t Starve videos.  I guess the timing had it, and the channel had just uploaded a video moments before I arrived, in fact I I am pretty sure I was the first view!  What I found was a very thorough play through of a portion of Don’t Starve with a good amount of both interesting facts, and survival tips which urged me to go and check out more.

The next thing that caught my eye about the channel was the sheer amount of content.  For a channel that only went live in May this year, there’s a ton of stuff here.  The channel features a variety of long Let’s Play series featuring several popular games.  Beyond the above mentioned Don’t Starve, you can find Terraria, or Penumbra, and some AAA games like Arkham Knight and The Witcher III:  Wild Hunt.

With some of the series numbering in the teens or higher in episodes, there’s an amazing amount of content to binge watch if  you have interest in one of the featured games, or just have way too much time on your hands.  This amount of consistent uploading is pretty surprising for such a newer channel, as many aren’t nearly that active in the early months.  This helps a small channel of under 100 subscribers such as this one grow, as it’s almost 5000 views attest to over it’s short life on YouTube.

The content itself is pretty solid and entertaining.  I am actually surprised that GamingByGaslight doesn’t have more subscribers yet, but that could boil down to simple marketing and sharing strategies.  The commentary is pretty solid and insightful, and offers a lot of insight for someone who wants to learn tips about the various showcased games.  Each episode is lightly edited and leaves the meat on the bone when it comes to what you see.

Though these relatively straight cuts work fine for the content, these episodes could use a little more to stand out from the crowd.  A snappy intro, or a face cam to add a bit more audience interaction would be great.  I also noted there’s little interaction with viewers in the comments for each video, and this lack of interaction on a smaller channel is a bit disappointing.  It may also be part of why the channel is still relatively small though the content is solid and regularly updated.

Aside from these small flaws though, GamingByGaslight is a solid channel that will allow you binge watch several popular games, while also helping you out with tips and hints for each one.  This alone adds value content  to YouTube and should hopefully see the channel grow in the future.

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to like or comment below and let me know if you’ve checked out GamingByGaslight.

Be sure to following GamingByGaslight on Twitter, and you can also follow him on Google+.

For last week’s YouTube Review, head on over here!

Youtube Review: PlayDusty

This week’s Youtube Review brings us to the PlayDusty channel.  A solid channel dedicated to both playthroughs as well as reviews.  Based in Australia, the PlayDusty channel went live just under a year ago.

Still quite a small channel, PlayDusty features primarily multi-episode playthroughs.  These episodes are generally recorded from his twitch channel, and feature popular, if slightly older games like Demons Souls, Shadow of Mordor, and classics like Half-Life.  Though these games are a bit older, if the popularity of retrogaming has taught us anything about gaming, is what’s old is new.

PlayDusty does a pretty good job of keeping his audience engaged, though as the videos are cut from live stream, you do lose some quality that more edited playthroughs provide.  It can also be distracting when the commentary switches to someone off-screen whom you can no longer interact with.  Having a mix of edited let’s play among his streamed content would be a good step to remedy this and give viewers of the Youtube format more attention.

This aside, what first drew me to PlayDusty’s channel was his very well structured reviews, Will You Like.  Focused primarily on indie games, this immediately drew me in as a fellow reviewer of many indie games as well.  The reviews are extremely detailed and offer a great look into each game offering viewers an opinion on each game with the gameplay facts to help you make your own decision.  There’s a good variety of games to check out, and likely a few you have yet to even hear of, so it becomes a great source for potential hidden gems for the game collector out there.

The narration of each Will You Like is well scripted and delivered professionally.  A great deal of work has been put into this behind the scenes work to deliver this high quality and it shows.  After watching each episode I had a very good understanding of what to expect with each game, and if I may or may not like it, which is exactly what any good review should provide.

This is definitely a channel to watch if your are looking for precise, detailed reviews.  Though the rest of the content would probably be more enjoyable in it’s original live format.  The only other thing lacking here is more great reviews, which are hopefully on on-going focus for PlayDusty for which we can hope to see more of in the future.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment and like below. Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more great reviews.

Check out PlayDusty’s channel on Youtube, find him on Twitch, and of course follow him on Twitter.

Check out last week’s Youtube Review here.

Channel Review: Young Bones Gaming

It’s Tuesday once again, which means time to introduce once again a great, funny gaming channel to you all, Young Bones Gaming.  Featuring Calton, and Stahly, a huge variety of games, and a fair amount of sass, Young Bones Gaming is a load of fun.

Featuring both solo, and pairings in their videos, Calton and Stahly are able to mix up their content quite well to offer a lot of unique playthroughs.  From in character one-offs to on going themed series like Definitely Not Minecraft, Nightmare Fuel, and Gaming With a Consequence, there’s a lot of content here.  What is most surprising here is blend of styles all seem to work pretty well together, whether the guys are playing solo or together.  This expands their catalogue quite well to include a variety of content.  All of this content is pretty well edited and condensed for a funny experience.

Most of the Let’s plays here are one off’s but Young Bones Gaming’s recurring themes are a lot of fun.  I particularly enjoy their Definitely Not Minecraft series, where they play games that are generally inspired by Minecraft, but aren’t quite it.  It’s a smart little twist that not only drives more search traffic to their site but also helps them avoid going the route of many channels that are just re digested games over and over.

Be mindful though, these videos are PG-13 and contain a bit of language to watch out for.  Though this limits their audience some, I never found it over the top, or disruptive to the gaming or the humour.

With a fairly enganged audience, and very active comment sections, there’s a small but active community built here already.  I think the only thing they are really missing right now is more content.  Only releasing 1 or 2 videos a week, I can be easy to lose track of the channel as there won’t always be something new to check out when you go there.  Depending on your viewing habits this may or may not draw you away from the channel, but hopefully it doesn’t.

 

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and like below, let me know if you’ve checked out Young Bones Gaming!  Follow them on Twitter!

Check out last week’s review channel, The Neo Nerd

Weird Wizard Dave: Just Talk 07/19/2015

Check out this week’s Just Talk with Weird Wizard Dave as he examines the importance of balancing the time and effort put into video editing.  There’s a great deal of good insight here into the reception of edited let’s plays as opposed to unedited playthroughs.

Is the time commitment required to make awesome, tightly edited videos worth the potential extra views, or is better to leave less on the cutting room floor and present more raw videos, but perhaps more of them?

Check it out and make sure to like and comment below, let me know if you prefer edited let’s plays, or the uncut versions.

Subscribe to Weird Wizard’s channel, and make sure to follow him on Twitter.

Youtube Review: The Neo Nerd

Hello folks, and welcome to the first of many Youtube Reviews!  Every Tuesday tune in to see my thoughts and opinions on various up and coming (no pun intended) channels for you to check out.  This week I’d like to reintroduce you to a very familiar, but also one of my favourite channels currently, The Neo Nerd.

Having started out very similarly to me with a blog, The Neo Nerd expanded into a full youtube channel earlier this year, and has grown to over 700 subscribers as of the time of this post.

What originally drew me to The Neo Nerd’s channel was the amount of really absurd, bizzare games he had in his library of videos.  Everyone has seen a million different posts of Five Nights at Freddys, or Call of Duty and all the usual Youtube roulette of popular games, so these odd, strange games were an amazing find for me to watch and explore.  Steering away from a lot of mainstream games makes the channel unique and helps it stand apart from the rest.

This one for instance is a little odd….

After getting through the strange, you’ll also find a great deal of great games that he has played as well.  Though The Neo Nerd doesn’t focus on full playthroughs, not doing so means there is a lot of variety to the types of games you’ll find.  From the odd and quirky games like Facade (above) to awesome games like This War of Mine (one of my favourites), to epic survival games like Ark:Survival Evolved.  There’s going to be some game here that connects you the viewer, and The Neo Nerd.

Though the channel is still relatively young, there has been vast improvements to both audio and video quality from his early videos.  Opting for edited Let’s Plays, The Neo Nerd does a pretty consistent job of keeping the videos moving at a fast and humourous pace to keep the viewer invested and usually laughing.  He also consistently puts a lot of effort into the thumbnails, and opening sequence to each video.  For this relatively new channel, you’ll likely be wowed by his opening sequence, featuring the expanding universe and a solid musical track.

The thumnails are equally well rendered, and are sometimes funnier than the videos themselves, with The Neo Nerd’s face cropped very well into a screenshot of whatever game it may lead to.

Everybody poops, some more than others.

Throughout it all, The Neo Nerd does regular fan appreciation videos, filled with highlights, or that literally draw inspiration from his followers.  His Draw Your Tweets videos are easily the most genuine on the channel, and garner a good deal of interaction from his followers showing their appreciation for the entertainment he provides.  Continued commitment to the fan base should help to continue to grow the channel in the future.

That all said, the range of content, the amusing collaborations, and The Neo Nerd’s genuine commitment to his followers leads to an overall quite entertaining channel.  I am very interested to see where the channel goes over the next few months, and what steps The Neo Nerd will take to maintain a unique feel to the channel, as he has so far resisted the great urge to fall into the usual tropes of many other Youtube channels.  Here is looking forward to what may come.

Stay tuned next week when we will visit another channel, and as always, make sure to comment and like below. Let me know what you think of The Neo Nerd’s channel, or let me know other channels you’d like reviewed!

More Youtube: Weird Wizard Dave, My First Encounter

Youtube: Channel Previews

Welcome to the latest Youtube featurette!  This time around we are taking a quick look at a couple of new channels by @SuperRexGamer as well as @Squirrel_grrl.

Taking inspiration from channels like Markiplier with a focus on humour and gaming, SuperRex hopes to make you laugh.  There is a wide variety of content here.  Games range from short indie horror games, to World of Warcraft, to puzzle and strategy.

You’ll also find skits and lots of random silliness here to help you break a smile.  Look hard enough and you’ll find a pretty funny lip Sync video featuring a 3 part harmony.  Pretty impressive.

For the hardcore, you can watch SuperRex in league play recordings here and tons of collabs featuring games like Smite, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm.

There is also a lot of heart on this Youtube channel.  Perusing some of the vlogs will open up some more layers of SuperRex and what he brings to the spectrum of his channel.  He is very outspoken and an obvious supporter of various gaming communities and channels.

Flying Squirrel Grrl’s channel revolves primarily around her weekly streams.  Her overall humour and charm are what grab you at first.  She obviously puts a lot of effort into this humour with her channel revolving entirely around squirrels.

It’s always a lot of fun to pop on a channel just to watch someone genuinely getting a kick out of various games.  The content here covers several popular games like Subnautica, Lego World, and the Sims 4.

Squirrel’s channel has only been around since early March, so expect much more content to come in the near future.  So far though she shows some smart editing, and her general cheerfulness and fun nature is sure to catch on.

To help support these young Youtube channels make sure to subscribe today if you like what you see!

You can find SuperRex here, and follow him on Twitter as well.

For Flying Squirrel Grrl head here, find her Twitter here and see her awesome live streams on Twitch!

There will be more channel previews and reviews in the weeks to come, in the meantime check out my feature on Weird Wizard Dave!

Don’t Starve Together: Beta Review

What makes a great game like Don’t Starve better? Why playing with friends of course. Journey into the world of Don’t Starve with up to 5 friends in Don’t Starve Together. This standalone expansion brings with it a whole new style of play to explore the strange and wonderful world of Don’t starve.

If you are not familiar with the gameplay of Don’t Starve, the concept is simple. Your character is dropped in the middle of a strange wilderness and you must use your wits and whatever else you may have brought with you to survive. Don’t starve Together removes some of the story of the original, but the basic concept remains the same. You, and your friends, are dropped through a portal into a random area of the procedurally generated map. You are immediately tasked with finding the basic resources to survive. With the day and night clock running, you need to do so quickly before the darkness sets in, and you are relatively helpless.

A very eclectic bunch of people

This is where the sense of balance from the original game can sometimes feel off. The original game has enough resources scattered around the spawn areas for you to usually be okay the first night or two so long as you are careful. You have only one mouth to feed, and a small pool of skills to use depending on which character you have unlocked, and in play. With Don’t Starve Together, you are open to choosing from among the entire cast of eclectic characters from the original game, and the DLC, Reign of Giants. This early access to all the characters gives an interesting chance to mix and match various skills together to see if they can coexist. This process however is often hit and miss, as the resources available early on, are much different than what you would find in the single player game. This often means that you spend a lot more time harvesting basic items like food, as you need to travel farther to collect enough for two or more mouths to feed.

Famous last word?

When you do find a good balance of skills between your characters the game shines. For instance mixing Wigfrid’s combat skills and good starting armour with Wickerbottom’s smarts allows you to quickly build an advance base and defend if you work together well. And yes, all the playable character’s names start with ‘W’. Pick the wrong combination however, and even good teamwork can lead to frustrating death, upon death.

Yep, death by penguin

Really though, this game is meant to be played with friends. The game worlds available to drop into are varied, and many run with different settings and mods and figuring out how to survive with strangers, or just avoid them and make your own spot in the world has it’s moments. When it comes down to it however, the best aspect of Don’t Starve Together is going in with a group of friends and experiencing the weird and wonderful world. With a good set of friends, the general wit and humour of Don’t Starve, it’s impossible not to have fun, even when one of your friends accidentally dies after running directly into a wolves den, or opening a mysterious chest that suddenly begins winter.

Graphically there is no difference between either version of Don’t Starve. Don’t Starve together however includes the full content of the original game’s DLC as well as some new items, creatures and biomes to explore. The game runs relatively smooth, with only a minor amount of lag up to the 6 player limit. Though it is possible to allow more players onto a server, the game becomes unplayable due to lag, and latency issues.

Fighting off night Terrors

The Dev team at Klei Entertainment are quite active, and as this game is still officially in beta I am sure they will iron out the balance wrinkles. They may even be able to expand past the 6 player maximum. If you enjoyed Don’t Starve, there is absolutely no reason why you won’t enjoy Don’t Starve Together. For new players to the game, it gives a unique opportunity to work with others to learn the mechanics, or have a friend help you start off. Overall this is a great addition to this game’s universe and I can’t wait to jump in with my friends and play some more.

Thanks for reading as usual, and be sure to comment and share below, and let me know what you thought about Don’t Starve Together.

Don’t forget to follow @TheNeoNerdBlog on Twitter, and Subscribe to his channel for more funny videos like this one.

And while you are here, check out my preview of World Of Warships, a great looking upcoming multiplayer battle sim.