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!

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

 

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!

Review: Reassembly

Reassembly, a 2 dimensional space sim from developer Anisoptera Games with a load of charm.  An exploration sim with building mechanics that lets you explore a procedurally generated galaxy.  As you explore you collect resources and build bigger and better ships to better handle your expanding influence.

The basic premise is pretty simple.  Choosing a basic starting ship and colors to stand out, you’re dropped into the galaxy near some friendly units to start your exploration.  The tutorial guides you through basic game-play to get you started.  From it’s top down perspective, Reassembly has you gathering resources from local meteors and strange space plants that can be returned to owned bases to be converted into more useful resources.

Damaged bases can be captured to help spawn more friendly NPC’s to assist you against the many enemy ships scattered around space.  Unless a ship shares yoru colors they are enemies, and will attack on sight.  More resources can be gained from combat as you destroy these enemies.

Combat in Reassembly is fast and fun.  Ships fly around irradically across the screen depending on their design, firing all sorts of different weapons, from lasers to torpedoes, to chain guns and more. This fast pace is fun and frantic, and though there is little strategy here, you still have to make sure to maneuver smartly around to best take advantage of gun placements and armor.  Armor is mounted all around your ship and can take a certain amount of damage.  As the armor is damaged, it flies off exposing more critical components of your ship.  If you can avoid getting hit long enough, your ship will slowly pull it’s pieces back together again and recover, otherwise expect to be blown up and re-spawning at a nearby friendly base.

Custom grill maybe?

Customization in Reassembly is not only just a visual change, it’s a necessity if you are going to survive exploring the galaxy.  As you gain resources, you will also earn “C” which are used to buy new components for your ship.  These can include weapons, new armor or useful components.  When you enter the customization screen, you’ll find your ship layed out in closeup.  Each component you can utilize has various stick points you can use to connect it to any other component.  It’s very easy to add or subtract parts or weapons you want to and build pretty much whatever you like within the 2 dimensional interface.

The amount and type of parts you can use, is limited by your ship’s “P” which you can upgrade with “C” along the way.  This allows you to add more weapons, armor or utilities  and make larger and larger ships.  It also allows you to add more ships to your fleet.  These are NPC’s that will follow you around and help you in battles.

Lots of parts to choose from and upgrade

The customization screen is where the strategy really exists in Reassembly.  You must carefully build your ship to take advantage of weapon range, direction, and firing means, while balancing armor around your vessel to ensure you can take some damage as you go.  You can also specialize ships for resource gathering or other beneficial specs if you like, or build a jack-of-all-trades ship otherwise.  Each component has multiple sticking points so you can be fairly creative within the 2D limitation.   All throughout you will also need to balance your ship’s energy generation ability to power your weapons and make sure your fighting ability is not hindered by a lack of power.  There are also various pre-built ships you can use as is, or as a starting point for something else.

The colorful visuals for Reassembly keep you engaged at all times.  Explosions fill the screen.  Thrusters burn through space, and the various weapon effects are all unique and make it easy to see what’s coming at you.  The quiet, ambient music helps fill the void of space without adding more to the frantic experience.  The HUD is informative without spoiling the view.  In the top right hand corner you can see  a live closeup of your ship, including any damage that may be accruing so that you can move to avoid death if you’re quick enough.

I can’t hold her together! I’m an engineer not a miracle worker!

Reassembly does a solid job of being fairly easy to learn, but also giving enough customization that those who want to spend hours building the perfect ship can do so equally easily.  It’s simple but fun graphics mean you have a smooth experience throughout with little slow down or hiccups regardless of how much is going on on the screen.  The unlimited replay-ability will have you coming back often to try out new tactics or ship designs.  This is definitely worth checking out if you are into space exploration sims.

As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment and like in the space below!

For more fun indie games with a space twist check out Cosmonautica

Review: The Flock

The Flock, an asymmetrical first person game of tag with a twist, when every dies at least once, the game comes to an end.  Unfortunately it’s hard to see the current population of 215 million plus actually wanting to play long enough to die that many times.

The basic premise of The Flock has all players starting off as strange gargoyle like creatures.  Your creature can run, jump and scamper, and when you stand still you become stone, and impervious to your prey.  There are no other attacks or actions, or special moves you can do as the gargoyle.  Your first objective from here is to lactate the light.  The light is basically a big flashlight with a terrible battery.

Once the first player finds the light, the game play changes slightly as you the carrier of the light are now the prey of everyone else and becomes a simpering weak human.  Taking away all the movement advantages of the gargoyle creature, you are left with only the light to protect you.  As the human you can only walk or sprint, you can’t jump or crouch or crawl or anything else.  You’re only protection is your flashlight which can burn up the other players who remain gargoyles.

Here the objectives change slightly, as now you as the human must run and hide from other players, while waiting for objectives to light up that you can activate for extra points.  You also gain points the longer you carry the light.  The other players adversely are trying to find you and attack you to take over the light.  The light however hurts them and their only protection is to stay still to avoid damage.

Well it’s kinda bright

This seems like a interesting concept, but it’s lacking in various areas.  For one, as compared to other asymmetrical games like Evolve, there is absolutely no teamwork involved here.  Everyone is out for there own score and objectives.  There is no in-game chat or any other form of communication to use, nor is there any benefit from working together as each individual is simply trying to get the highest score each match.

The other big issue, is after a match there is literally nothing else left to do.  Each match is the same, regardless of what map you choose to play on.  There is no variation to the game, nor is there any development to your skills or abilities.  There is literally  no replay value here.

The beautiful color pallet astounds

There’s not really much to look at here either.  Visually The Flock is drab and repetitive.  Every map though unique is dark and grey, with very little variety.  Though I will say there are generally some interesting areas to set up ambushes if you’re patient.  Character animations are also very limited, as you can see the gargoyle characters warping across the land and generally looking silly and un-detailed.

Sold as a horror game, there’s little to be afraid of with The Flock aside from wasting too much money on it.  With zero story progression, no replay ability and no other modes to try out, there’s little chance I will see the end game when 215 million other players die.

Thanks for reading, and as always, make sure to comment and like below, and let me know what you thought of The Flock.

Check out my review for Evolve for something much better to play.

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.

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.

Ark: Survival Evolved: Early Access Preview #2

Welcome back to the next dive into Ark: Survival Evolved.  In this episode we will dive right into the core gameplay of Ark.  Though still only in early release, there is a lot of game here.

At it’s core, Ark is has the pretty familiar basics of any survival game.  Land on a seemingly deserted island and quickly find food and shelter to survive.  Early gameplay is fairly cookie cutter in it’s mannerisms, though Ark does add a few new ideas here.  Your first day however will still involve punching the heck out of a load of trees to collect wood and thatch.  You’ll also find other resources scattered around like stone and berries.  Stone acts like any other game’s stone, but berries add a somewhat unique add as many of them have special affects and become extremely useful in later gameplay.  Narco berries for instance can help keep fallen enemies asleep, or yourself if you accidentally eat them.

Pretty sure I can take him

You’ll have to juggle a variety of deadly statuses early on in the game.  The usual things like hunger, and dehydration are here, as well as managing the heat and cold temperatures.  All of these affects can lead to your untimely death, and that’s not to mention the very aggressive enemy A.I.  Death can come from any angle when you step across the path of both small and large carnivorous dinosaurs.  Though you can try to fight them, early on it’s always better to run.  Even the small Dilo’s can quickly take you down with their blinding poison attack.  Luckily the one way you can’t die is by getting stepped on by a Brontosaurus.  With the world’s full day  night cycle, and weather dynamics, death can be around any corner and you won’t see it coming.

To avoid early death it’s important to take advantage of the robust crafting system and also level up your character.  Experience is handled uniquely as it is dolled out in small amounts as you survive.  You can also gain experience by performing any actions in the world.  Gathering materials, crafting items, or of course defeating creatures all help you advance your level.

As your level advances it opens up points to be spent on both your personal stats as well as crafting engrams for which a new variety open up with every major advancement in level.  You can of course build shelters, equipment, clothing, as well as weapons and consumables to help you in your quest to survive.

Time to design some new duds!

Crafting opens up the next big phase of the game, capturing and taming your own dinosaurs and animals.  Every creature in the game can be tamed to be your personal conveyer of goods, extra combatant and most can be ridden if you have the right materials to build their saddle.  This is where the pace of the game stiffens right up though.  Capturing dinosaurs can be a massive endeavor, no pun intended.  Though the smaller animals and dinosaurs tame fairly quickly, larger beasts can take hours to tame.  After carefully knocking the creature out, you must keep them under with narcotics and the before mentioned narco berries, all the while managing their health and keeping them well fed.  Larger creatures like mammoths and stegosaurus can take days of in-game time to tame.  Though this makes each tame animal rewarding, the balance for more casual gamers is lost unless they can find a group that is willing to help in taming creatures for them.

Crafting also becomes tedious at higher levels.  Rather than adding more complex, or higher level materials to combine to create more powerful items, the game instead chooses to have you collect hundreds, upon hundreds of basic materials instead.  though this again adds accomplishment to each task, finding 240 hide to make a mammoth saddle felt very unrealistic, and entirely redundant.

After you are done collecting trophies.  You can also start collecting tributes, to summon creatures to be defeated for unique items at Ark locations throughout the island landscape.  So far this seems to be the available end game for you to build up for and start farming high end equipment and weapons.

Meet ‘Kitty’

With this game still in early access, I am impressed by the amount of content here.  Though the most fun parts of the game lack some balancing, if you can find a good team of players to play along this is lessened.  Low level players can still be useful by gathering mats and help building bases, regardless of whether they have the time to invest in taming high level creatures to their sides.   Hopefully as the game develops this balance will improve and offer more for each type of player to enjoy in game.  Till then I’m going to keep crafting hide pants.

Thanks for reading, and as always, make sure to comment and like below.  Let me know what you think of Ark: Survival Evolved.

Check out part #1 of this two part review here!

 

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!

Sound, get it right: Youtube

So, you’ve managed your schedule great for your youtube channel so far, right?  Great.  What’s next to work on?  Obviously we can talk about editing and video quality, and we certainly will down the road, but one key factor to having a high quality channel is audio.

Good quality audio can help your videos just as much as recording in 1080p at 60 frames.  Nobody wants to hear your crackling voice, or random static cutting in and out.  The first place to start of course is your microphone.  There are a wide range of mics to choose from, in  a wide range of prices.  These components can be expensive, but well worth buying a good mic to record with.

Good to professional quality microphones will range in cost from around $70 up to $300 or more.  It’s advisable to research a mic heavily before purchasing, depending on the type of channel you are planning to put together.  Personally I, along with many others will recommend the Blue Snowball as a solid, easy to use plug and play microphone.  With a standard USB install, this mic doesn’t require any real heavy knowledge to get going well, and provides excellent voice capture.  You can also pick it up $60-70 which is pretty reasonable.  Doesn’t that sound good?  There is a great post here at www.ezvid.com highlighting some of the best mics available, and I highly recommend you check it out.

Love this mic, so easy to use.

Now the next thing to think about is sound mixing and background music.  As most of us here are recording gameplay, there is usually some background music playing with the game itself.  Often times though, especially in the Independent developer industry, or in some of the early release titles I look at, there’s not really much music apparent.  This is a great opportunity to mix your own music over your gameplay, or utilise music and sound effects for overall presentation.  Intros and outros also need great sound quality and design to be eye catching, fun, and of course unique.

Though most of the recording software packages available have some type of audio recording included, if you are doing heavily edited let’s plays, or walkthroughs, good sound recording software will work for you better.  With a range of packages available, from a free lite version to full professional suite you can buy, Pro Tools 12 is a solid package.  I would also recommend checking out Audacity as another option for free software with a good range of options for you to try out.

Audacity, a great tool and completely free!

Don’t forget, competition for views on Youtube is incredibly high.  If you want to compete and draw an audience you need to present a high quality product.  Though we often first worry about the visual, the sound we present is just as important in creating an engaging experience for your viewers.

Have some advice to share, or came across a Youtube channel with great audio?  Don’t forget to comment below.

For more tips and tricks, make sure to check out my thoughts on the importance of scheduling and regular content.