The Content Rules: Figuring Out Who You Are

The Content Rules is a book from authors Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman which acts as an incredible, and completely credible guide for anyone putting themselves out on the net.  Whether it be through blogs, E-books, or even YouTube videos, it’s a great resource to understand some of the basic principles of what makes great content.

Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman boil down content to 11 simple principles.  Some of these simple principles seem just that on the surface, simple.  When you really dive a bit deeper into it however, easy ideas like #4 “Speak Human” are often harder than you think.  Especially when writing, and being our own critics, it’s astounding how often we over speak, over indulge in big words, and complex ideas to make our thoughts sound so much more interesting.  So we think.  But, the reality is, we all often forget who we are talking to, and what we are talking about when we get the chance to edit and filter ourselves so much through written and video content.  Trying to perfect each sentence, and idea and structure, we often forget who our audience is, and what they expect from our content.

“Know yourself better than anyone.  Get your brand story straight and give voice to your distinctive point of view based on your mission and attributes.” ~ The Content Rules

Elements like this are found throughout The Content Rules.  Even within the content itself, the book follows it’s own rules to draw you in to the conversation it is trying to have with you.  The easy language, lightheartedness and regular jokes and jives help illustrate various points throughout the text.

The modern internet is no longer about simply having the most and best facts available to all, but really about building relationships, conversations, community and a story about your brand.  The Content Rules does a good job of teaching you how to do so, and what pitfalls to avoid along the way.

It’s also not pushy about how it does so.  With internet content, there is no strict right or wrong, but there are elements of what we publish that will fit better, or worse with who we are and what we are trying to accomplish.  The best take away I got from my reading, is exactly that.  Know who you are, know who you are trying to connect with.

“Does it sound condescending to instruct you to ‘speak human’?  We don’t mean it to be; instead, we are imploring you to create content that sounds as though a person, not a corporate department, fashioned it.  How? Simply: Write the way you talk.”  ~ The Content Rules

For my YouTube friends, the book also focuses on what we can do to set ourselves apart from others.  Though a good deal of the content is focused on businesses, branding in general is still very relevant to what you and I do, and is critical to growing our audiences and building communities.

Though you won’t find hardcore specifics of what hardware to pick up, or what games to cover, the principles of marketing yourself and your brand illustrated in The Content Rules still apply.  Most people starting up YouTube gaming channels don’t have marketing degrees, and years of experience.  The biggest downfall is seeing something you enjoy watching, and copying it exactly, like the many versions of the infamous PewDiePie to be found out there.

What the book will help you through however, is how to create your own story.  How to be real.  The simple question of “Why would the people I want to reach want to watch this?” is something a great deal of content creators for YouTube forget to answer.  It also touches on the point that you don’t need to have a video go viral to be successful.  Steady commitment to being who you are, and how your brand yourself is just as important as getting a million views.

“Video has the potential to tell a more powerful story than text or audio, so you have a tremendous opportunity to create something truly memorable.” ~ The Content Rules

The Content rules is a great source of inspiration, and guidance for anyone publishing content online.  Whether you are a casual blogger, or YouTube channel, or manage a massive online sales company, the principles found throughout the text are sound areas to begin your foray online.  The lightly written, and illustration filled book is not only easy to read, but it in fact demonstrates it’s own principles as you move from chapter to chapter.  The authors do a stellar job of following their own rules throughout the book.  I would definitely recommend The Content Rules as a great source for those just starting off, or those who have been in the game for awhile and want to evaluate more insight to help their brands grow.

As always, thanks for reading, and make sure comment below and let me know who you are and how you hope to bring your content to life!

Fallout 4: Review – Where does it end?

Depth and imagination bring the world of Fallout 4 to life.  It’s large and well planned environment, and amazing amounts of customization out weigh the many minor issues you may find in your journey across the wasteland of Boston.

Time for a shave!

The Good:

Fallout 4 feels enormous.  Not just in the generous map size, but in the sheer amount of things you can do throughout the wasteland.  It would be quite easy for you to simply go out and explore, and never do any quests at all and still feel quite accomplished in your chosen path.

After customizing either your male, or female character, you get a short prelude into the world that was.  It’s high tech, high tension cold war atmosphere filled with advanced tech, but still locked in a 50’s style environment is a ton  of fun.  Every character in the game is also fully voiced, regardless of their importance.  They will even try to say your chosen name so long as it’s recognized by the game.

It’s not long before everything goes downhill and you are thrust into a nuclear destroyed future, alone, confused and missing your young son who is stolen away from you by raiders.  From here it’s up to you to decide what you want to do.  Whether you follow the story, do some random quests, or simply ignore all story and just start shooting things, there is always something to do in Fallout 4.

The main story will push you to go and find your lost son, finding clues and new friends along the way.  These friends will join you on your adventures if you choose, and have a few benefits.  Alongside the extra fire power, each companion you find will also add unique skills, and a perk once your relationship is solid enough.  For instance if you’ve chosen to ignore increasing your lock-picking skill, Cait is a great companion to have around as she can open up locked chests and doors for you.  Your loyal dog Dogmeat is able to hold down enemies to give you time to use your V.A.T.S. targeting system to target individual limbs on your enemies.

Shoot it in it’s face!!

If you’ve played Fallout 3, then combat will be familiar to you, but the combat is based around similar FPS games, so new comers should fit right in easily.  Combat can be approached in several ways, either through stealth, melee, or taking advantage of your V.A.T.S. to target enemies.  V.A.T.S. allows you to slow down time and individually target enemies and limbs to cripple them, or engage in gruesome slow motion kills as body parts explode off of your enemies.  It’s a huge amount of fun and the fact that time sill continues as you target takes away the feel of invincibility you got in Fallout 3 when time fully paused using this system.

The stealth systems are workable, but I never quite found it that much fun, as compared to just running in guns hot and firing away, or using V.A.T.S. to slow time.  Either way fights are challenging, and you will die often if you take on enemies who are too high in level or too numerous.

As you embark in battles and exploration, you will scour the corpses and environments for scrap and salvage, along with weapons and armor.  Scavenging in the wasteland is of dire importance in Fallout 4.  Early in the game it’s an absolute necessity.  Salvaged items can be either consumed if edible, or broken down to their components and can then be used in crafting.

So many things to tinker with.

You will spend a huge amount of time crafting and building in Fallout 4.  Every piece of weaponry and armor you collect can be customized.  This adds a great deal of depth to combat as you can build equipment to suit your every need, or your play-style.

To be very successful in Fallout 4 you will also have to build up various settlements throughout the world.  These settlements are unlocked early in the game and you can acquire more by completing quests in the areas surrounding farms, or other central locations to align yourself with the settlers there.  Once allied with them, you’ll have to take time to build them up and protect them so that they grow larger, and help you with your resource collection.  This is a great added feature to the game, and allows you to add your mark to the desolate wasteland.

Every action in Fallout 4 gains you experience.  Whether you’d like to do all the quests, kill all the enemies, or simply spend your time building up settlements, you’ll continue to earn experience and level up.

 

The Bad:

Though there is a ton of things to do in Fallout 4, outside of quests, there is very little information about what you need to do.  As you explore, your quest log will load up quickly, and though each quest is searchable on the map, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish which ones are side quests, or part of the main story line.  If you are someone who want’s to power through the main story line, you’ll have to keep track of which quests you need to do next to do so.

There’s also very little explanation of some of the concepts of the game.  For insatance as you build up your colonies, there is no mention about how to link the resources for each of these sites together.  I personally only found out how to do it by watching a friend play the game, and had been missing out on having all of my resources connected to make building up settlements faster.

As you find new companions throughout the game, it becomes increasingly hard to keep them organised.  There doesn’t seem to be any utility to tell you where your people are unless you keep a list of where you’ve sent them.  I for instance have no idea where I left my dog and have to search through more than a dozen settlements to find if I want him to accompany me on a quest.  Also, beyond the first few times with a new companion, you may not know what their particular perks will help you with.

Finally a reason to go get my armor!

Power armor is available in the game, and gives you extra strength and endurance, but it became rare late in the game where I felt I needed to use it.  I seldom felt like taking the time to go all the way back through a couple of loading screens to collect my armor to come back and fight a tough enemy or boss.

When it comes to the main story, there is little urgency in completing it, and considering it’s your son you’re looking for, my character never really seemed that concerned about finding  him.  Although I understand that Bethesda wants you to play the game however you like, it seems strange that my character doesn’t really care if I spend weeks building up a settlement while unknown fiends have run off with my only child.

 

The Ugly:

Unfortunately, like with most Bethesda product, Fallout 4 comes with a variety of graphical and gameplay glitches.  For the most part these glitches are minor and don’t effect the gameplay, and are often good for a laugh, but every once in awhile this is not the case.

In one case at my largest settlement, I decided to store my extra weapons inside a cupboard in a house.  When I returned one day to the settlement a cow had somehow found it’s way into the house, and was unable to fit through the door, essentially blocking me from accessing my inventory.  Even after exiting the game and coming back, the cow was still there, mocking me.

Man, I hope he’s house trained…

Other occasions found me getting stuck in the environment during massive fire fights, resulting in my untimely death.  Other combat issues like feral ghouls launching at you, and passing through your body to the other side, resulting in you having to quickly twitch around in order to hit them, or aiming straight down to make impact with them.

These along with various other clipping issues, and weird graphical issues throughout my experience made me occasionally want to rage quit the game when things didn’t go my way.

In the end:

Fallout 4 has a lot going for it.  There are countless things to do and see.  The environment is large and beautiful and whoever designed the map should earn an award. The open world, and customization choices mean you can play Fallout 4 however you like.  There are no rules or obligations for you to play any particular way, or even complete quests to have fun.  Adversely, with such a rich story and history, it’s unfortunate the game doesn’t really push you to want to complete the main quests and discover the mysteries of the wasteland.  This, along with a variety of glitches and exploits mean that Fallout 4 is far from perfect, but it’s rare that these issues will interfere with you having a blast blowing limbs off of super mutants or raiders the like.  The sheer amount of funny, awesome and interesting things to find and do have stopped me just before rage quitting from some silly glitch more than once.  Fallout 4 is definitely a great addition to the franchise and I am sure to spend many more hours in the wastelands of Boston.

As always, thanks for reading and make sure to like and comment below, and let me know what you thought of Fallout 4.  Follow me on Twitter @micbemac88.

Get the game here!

Game of Thrones Episode 6: Was That a Thud I Heard?

Game of Thrones Episode 6: The Ice Dragon is the climatic ending to season one of TellTale’s episodic adventure.  With it comes a lot of loose ends, a whole lot of blood, but not particularly that much storytelling to go along with all the choices you’ve made in the previous 5 episodes.

Reader beware, after this point there will be some spoilers for the lead up to episode 6

Conclusions for our characters are what we would expect fora  season finale, but it’s not necessarily what we get here.  Only one character through my play-through actually had a real ending to their story, and that was for Mira Forester who’s story I never really connected with until episode 5.

Hmm, I choose you!

Her political dealings in the capital only really become interesting so late in the story, that the abrupt possible conclusions for her story didn’t hold much impact for me in the end, and I really could have gone either way on my final choices.  There didn’t seem to be any good way to end her story, though the last second portrayal of her true nemesis in the story was well done, and unexpected.

To the north, Garred finally discovers the North Grove.  After so much time spent talking about it, and what it is, I was really looking forward to finding out more about it’s secrets.  Unfortunately episode 6 failed to deliver in that regard, and although we do get one small secret revealed, we really learn nothing about why the North Grove is so important that we would risk so much to find it and keep it safe.  We are left here with a pretty gruesome life or death choice, but the impact feels empty without the secret of the grove’s importance being revealed.

When have I been wrong?

Meanwhile in Ironrath we get to experience the more dynamic of all the endings.  Your choice of who to save at the end of episode 5 creates great contrast in what you can do to try and save the Forester family.  Though most of our choices end up in vile bloodshed and much life lost, we still don’t really get a full conclusion here.  There are many loose strings left hanging with the hopes that TellTale is working on an yet unconfirmed season 2 to help answer some of these questions.

This place has seen better days.

In the end Game of Thrones from TellTale is left wanting.  It feels like there is still another episode of content that didn’t get that would help answer our questions and give us more of a conclusion.  Season 2 is yet to be confirmed, so it seems kind of unfair to the player to leave so many loose ends to chase.  With all that does happen in this episode, and with the overall dark sense of the story, it’s also somewhat disappointing that it doesn’t feel like you really have any way to feel like you got a win in any of the possible endings.  Each choice ends up either terribly, or terribly gray and it would be nice to at least have one character come out of 6 episodes of game-play in a better position than where you started.  Though I still enjoyed my play-through I feel somewhat empty with it’s results.

As always, thank for reading and be sure to share and comment below.  Let me know what choices you made in your game and how it ended.

You can find my reviews for all of Game of Thrones episodes here or use the links below.

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5

Building a World: The Universim

The Universim continues it’s promising growth with an early access alpha showcasing some of the early game-play.  Moving beyond the previously released tech demo, this early build brings many of the promises of the developers, Crytivo Games, to life.

It’s a small world afterall.

Though this early release is quite limited, it’s full to the brim with potential.  After establishing your first early settlement, your people, or “nuggets” get set to work as assigned by you through the simple UI.  Whether they start gathering food, stone, or start building and expanding is up to you.  Each nugget can be assigned to these roles dynamically, and can be changed at any time depending on your current needs.

Your nuggets will go off to work, and require little attention from you.  Though you are to decide where and when to build certain advanced structures, your nuggets in Universim will decide where new houses are going to be built, and where they will go to gather resources.  This makes choosing your starting point very important so as to not have your nuggets wondering miles to collect wood or stone.

The dynamic planetary weather system is also key in your early decisions.  Each planet has it’s own unique environment and weather patterns.  A quick look at the available overlays will show you wind patterns, and temperature patterns to give you insight as to where to build.  Cloud and storm systems will travel across the landscape dropping rain, snow and occasional lightning across the land.  Placing your starting town in areas where storms are common, or where the temperatures drop greatly during the winter can be deadly early on.  Crytivo also promises random events will litter the surface with earthquakes, storms, volcanoes and the such throughout your game.

Them’s storm clouds a brewin’

Your nuggets are also dynamic, and each have their own thoughts and emotions.  In later game areas you’ll have to manage all of these aspects to keep a happy tribe together, and you can expect even more problematic issues coming up as you advance into the the modern age and expand across the planet surface.  People in The Universim will live thier lives, grow old and die.  As they age their stats will change to reflect this.  Young Nuggets are fast on their feet and able to carry more produce around, but as they age they slow down, and carry little to nothing.  Clicking on each one will show their stats and a quick biography of their family, and how many children they have.

Future depth to explore

A basic research tree is also available in this release, showcasing three trees of growth available to your society.  There is nothing really new here as most of the early technologies are fairly straightforward and lead to more abilities and buildings.  It will be interesting to see what direction The Universim goes with as you move into the modern and advanced ages.

Come, meet the family

This early build gives a great preview into the potential of The Universim.  The game runs smoothly with a limited amount of bugs, and the groundwork has been laid well for the basic functions of the game.  I’m really looking forward to the various additions forthcoming that will add more layers of challenge to the game.  We haven’t seen a really great ‘God” game in awhile and they have always been one of my favorite genres.  Crytivo games has their hands full with The Universim, but my early impression is that they are the right hands.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share your comments below about The Universim.  Make sure to subscribe to me on YouTube for future updates!  Previous preview can be found here!

To get early access visit The Universim and opt in as an backer for immediate access to the Pre-Alpha build.

Follow @CrytivoGames, @TheUniversim

 

Pick-pocketing and shadows: Kingdom Come Update 0.5

Kingdom Come :Deliverance returns with it’s latest batch of updates.  Though not as exciting as 0.4’s combat update, update 0.5 layers in more details into the overall game experience.  The added items help build the immersion of the environment and start bringing the world to life.

Most of the additions this time around add to the environment and look of Kingdom Come.  New updates to CryEngine allowed Warhorse Studios to add even more dynamic lighting and shadows throughout.  As the sun moves through the sky, shadows shift and waver.  Jumping will let you see the silhouette of your character mimicked on the ground as he bounds into the air.

It’s so pretty!

The music is also more dynamic, and lends to the atmosphere as new events arise, or you enter into combat.  NPC’s now seem to react more to their surroundings as well as you move about the small hamlets currently available to explore.  The addition of an early crime system adds to these reactions, as you now have a chance to loot or pickpocket unsuspecting villagers as you pass.

Hey! Personal space dude!

The combat got some minor updates this time around.  Keyboard and mouse controls were slightly tightened for ease of use, and you can now fight more than one foe at a time.  With the realistic combat of Kingdom come however, it would be rare that you would want to fight more than one person at a time.

I wasn’t able to find any new quests as I explored the countryside, and I’m hoping to get a glimpse at some of the main story quests in the next update when it arrives.  If only to see what a longer, more multi-tiered quest would look like in Kingdom Come.

Now this is first person!

There is still a long way to go, and a long way to wait with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but everythign so far is looking great.  The addition of more atmosphere is great for the feel of the game.  Adding multiple combatants to battle is the first step for the hopeful epic, larger scale battles to come in later versions.  We can only wait to see what’s in store in update 0.6.

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

Check out Kingdom Come’s backer page for your chance to gain access to the early alpha as well.

Subscribe to me on YouTube.

Check out Update 0.4 right here!

Called it! : Life is Strange Episode 5 – Review

Though still a very emotional and gripping story, Life is Strange Episode 5 falls for familiar tropes of time traveling Sci-Fi stories.  The end episode of the series brings Max Caulfield’s story full circle with an emotionally gripping, if predictable finale.  

Beware spoilers to follow!

When we left Max in episode 4, Chloe was dead, again, and Mr. Jefferson had been revealed as the big bad.  Both of these were predictable outcomes from the foreshadowing of earlier episodes.  I was disappointed with this “surprise” in episode 4, and I was disappointed even more by Jefferson’s total switch to psychopath here.  The man basically becomes an evil cartoon villain with his heightened expressions and full 180 degree switch in behaviors.  I was hoping to see a more layered villain, and not somebody off of the show Gotham.

What follows this opening scene is a series of time hops, and trial and error as Max tries to figure out how fix everything and make sure everyone survives as well.  The usual rewind, try again approach that we’ve seen in previous episodes is here.  We again lack anything new to try out early in the game  or get any complexity added to our powers.

Look into my eyes!

After this initial escape scene, Max goes about her day of messing around with time, after seemingly learning nothing about messing with time before.  What follows is a series of faux-endings as you jump back through time over and over to try and piece together the puzzle of how to stop Jefferson and save everyone else.  The episode does it’s best to talk about fate and destiny without ever mentioning the words themselves.

Here Life is Strange does a good job of first pulling the strings on all your hard thought of choices, then giving you the happy ending you thought you wanted, only to pull that away too.  The lead in into a trippy, paradoxical world of endless hallways, and Walt Disney like light up animatronic displays of all your choices once certainly and interesting way to go.  It did a good job of literally highlighting your experience through the story, as well as feeding both the guild Max feels for her choices, as well as adding emotion to the game’s final choice.

An everyday hero.

Unfortunately, I found that this final choice was where Life Is Strange faltered the most.  Though both choices available to you at the end play well emotionally after all the time spent with the two main characters, it feels like there was missed opportunity to go somewhere new here.  And yes, as the title of the review says, I wasn’t surprised with the choices at the end.  Either learn to live and die with your choices, or let fate and destiny do their thing and sort life out for you.

Overall, Life is Strange Episode 5 presented an emotionally gripping finale to Max Caulfield’s, and Chloe’s story.  This emotional connection was well built up and established throughout the story and the episode, and mostly makes up for the fairly obvious plot taking place in the background.  Choices made through the earlier episodes unfortunately make little difference here and weigh little into your final choice.  In the end it would have been nice to see something slightly more original done with this story and it’s characters, but it is still very rewarding to play through Life is Strange and experience the powerful emotional connection of two friends, destined to make an impact on you regardless of your choices.

No caption required

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share your experience with Life is Strange Episode 5 in the comments below, and make sure to share!

 

All Things End: Kingdom – Review

All things end.  This is the tagline for Kingdom, a simple, pixel art tower defense game with a whole lot of charm.  It’s a whimsical journey into a vast land laid before you to conquer or fall depending on the choices you make.

This is the tutorial, that’s it, now go!

Almost everything in Kingdom is simple, except for success.  As you drop into the simple, but detailed pixel art world, you’ll be given a short tutorial as to the basic functions in your procedurally generated world, with your also random king or queen.  A few lines of text are all the instruction you get as you ride into the world.  The concepts are simple too, collect gold coins throughout the world, and either give them to the denizens surrounding your camp, or use them to purchase and upgrade your camp itself.

You start with enough gold to start a basic camp, recruit a couple of peasants, upgrade them to archers or builders, and build basic defenses.  From that point you have to figure things out on your own.  Kingdom does nothing to let you know what to do next, except to explore, expand and survive.

As the sun arcs across the sky, and becomes night, the survival aspect becomes clear.  Each night you will be randomly attacked by strange creatures.  These creatures will throw themselves against your fortifications and steal gold coins and equipment from your peasants.  If they attack your liege you will lose any coins you may be carrying, and eventually they will knock the very crown from your head.  If you are unable to retrieve the crown before one of the demons does, it’s game over.  These attacks will randomly include a red moon, which brings more fiends and creepy flying beasts that will literally suck up your workers and carry them into the night.

Well this can’t be good…

If you haven’t prepared well enough during the day, these attacks can be devastating, even if survived.  It was common during my play-through’s to simply abandon hours of work after a severe attack as it would be nearly impossible to rebuild in time.

As you expand your kingdom outwards, and grow your encampment, you’ll find alters and monuments throughout the world that will assist you.  The game however makes you experiment with these the first time around to figure out what they do.  After a few runs however, you’ll discover that there are only a few of these and you’ll stop finding surprises.  The only thing that will change from run to run, will be the location of these monuments, but eventually with enough planning and patience you will be able to unlock everything regardless.  This felt like a missed opportunity from the developers to throw in new snags to each game of Kingdom by either limiting which monuments spawn, or by throwing in a few others with random properties that may or may not spawn with each game.  This would have added a nice layer of replay-ability beyond just the random spawn locations.

Check out this hilarious play-through from Weird Wizard Dave

Because of these limitations, once you get the idea of the game, only you, the player can create new challenges for yourself.  It’s fairly easy to create a bustling kingdom if you know how, and it’s easy to repeat the steps over and over in order to reach the game’s win condition of protecting the crown.  Once you figure this out, the only challenge remaining is to create your own obstacles by deciding where not to spend your coins and where to make the game harder.  The lack of a difficulty setting, or more random events or options puts a big limit on Kingdom’s longevity.

Other issues that reside in Kingdom is the balance of pace, and the usefulness of your liege.  As king, or queen, your only ability is to collect and spend coins to recruit and build.  As night falls, all you can do is watch to see if you did enough during the day to survive.  There is very little interaction or any real type of micromanagement available beyond deciding what to build, when and where.  These means a lot of long nights where you either watch your defenses mow through dozens of enemies, or see your kingdom fall as all you can do is run around and try to avoid being taken down yourself.  The rest of the time, you’ll find yourself running back and forth through your eventually massive kingdom to collect the necessary coins to expand to the next wall or point of interest.  Near the end, it can take you a whole day of game time to simply run from one end of your kingdom to another.

Progress!

Issues aside, Kingdom is still a very solid game.  Though it eventually lacks some re-play-ability and the pace isn’t always great, most of these issues can be easily solved through creating your own challenges, or potential updates down the road from the developer Noio.  The procedurally generated world, and learning curve will still give you hours of play time in order to secure your crown.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share your experiences with Kingdom below in the comments.

Follow Noio on Twitter for more information on Kingdom and other projects

Another great Indie Game!

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!

 

Preview: Overfall

Welcome to a gorgeous, stylistic adventure RPG for the explorer in you.  Brought to us by indie developers Pera Games, Overfall is staged to be an open world exploration RPG set on the high seas in a beautifully hand drawn environment.  They have recently completed their Kickstarter campaign and full development is under way.

I got a chance recently to play through the demo for Overfall.  You quickly set sale into the hand drawn environments with a couple of characters in tow.  A brave fighter is accompanied by a very useful cleric as the starting classes available in the demo.

The early beginnings of multiple classes and races?

Though the current available archetypes for each character are relatively straightforward, the fighter deals massive melee damage, and the cleric works on healing and buffs, there is still a lot of potential for unique characters within the fantasy setting.  The world is filled with interesting characters and creatures, from giant pig men, to goblins, to pirates and of course elves.  These characters are set aside from other games by the cartoonish, but extremely detailed artwork.

This artwork expands into the environment as the backgrounds are gorgeous, and filled with color and life.  The high seas are also filled with activity and dozens of islands to explore, though only a few were available in the demo.

So many places to explore, many on fire though…

The other thing that will grab you in this game is the witty dialogue.  It happened more than once through my play through that I would think something quite witty and funny to myself, just as my character on screen would almost read my mind and say something similar.  The developers obviously know how to make fun of both themselves and the general tropes of similar games and take advantage of that to instill a great deal of humor into the game.

Combat takes place in turned base format on a hexagonal map.  A unique twist added here is the use of various combat stages for each turn.  All characters can take multiple actions each turn this way, with a variety of different abilities available depending on what stage they are in.  Rather than using magic points or something similar, these skills are all on cool downs and can’t be used two turns in a row, meaning you will have to carefully plan how to use your skills each turn or be potentially stuck in a prickly position.

Combat! Comedic Characters! The letter “C”!

If they continue on this path, Pera Games should have a winner for themselves.   Though the Kickstarter is over with, you can certainly support the development by following the developers on Twitter where they have shown to be active and supportive of their community.

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

Follow my social media madness on Twitter, or Facebook!

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!