Category: Computer

Thanks to heavy discounting I decided to pick up Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and for the most part it has been a good decision.  The shooting is solid, the graphics are amazing, and there are a variety of things to do.  The problem is that it should not be called Ghost Recon.  Wildlands has more in common with Far Cry than Tom Clancy; it is just you and a group of bros assassinating a bunch of dudes down in Bolivia.

With the older Ghost Recon titles, the games were always about finding the best way to tactically take down your targets.  To make sure that you were never taking fire because that meant instant death.  In Wildlands, you get out your drone, mark all the targets, and then make sure to get them all as you do what needs to be done.  If you want to go in guns-a-blazin’ that is fine, just don’t stand out in the open too long.  Even better, why not jump out of a helicopter, or crash a car through the front gate.  Again, you don’t quite have the god-like powers you do in Far Cry, and you have to kind of make sure to scout the place first, but it definitely doesn’t take the skill and planning of the older Ghost Recon games.

To add to this, all the secondary audio seems like it was added from an ‘R’ rated military cartoon.  The bad guys brag about murdering people on the radio, and your squad says pretty offensive things at times.  Meanwhile the main story cutscenes and media are dead serious.  Tonally this game is all over the place.  It seems like they didn’t want to make another Far Cry game, so they slapped the Ghost Recon brand on it, and to justify that they gave you a squad of bros, made you slow down, and kind of think about what you are doing.  A little.

Listen, Ghost Recon: Wildlands is around $20 these days, and it has enough positives that make that a worthy investment.  It is just a shame they couldn’t commit to a playstyle for this game.  Because an actual open world Ghost Recon game would have been pretty sweet, but this is just Far Cry’s slightly more grown up bro.  Waiting for you to come murder sicarios with him.

It is no secret that Sea of Thieves is a little bare bones right now.  The sailing, exploring, and fighting are all great, but after a while you have kind of seen it all.  Here are a few quick things they could add to liven things up a bit.

1: An Arena Mode

A lot of pirates out there just want to fight, so why not let them.  Have a vender set up where you can pay a little for an entry to battle other crews for the enjoyment of others.  Then take the entrants to a smaller map with just a couple of islands to have ships dart around, and loaded with bananas and cannon balls, so they can send pirates out to scavenge while that battle rages.  When it is all over the winner takes home a hefty prize and bragging rights.  Then allow people to spectate from the islands and place wagers

2: More Complex Sea Warfare

Right now you can only fire two things from cannons.  Yourself and standard cannon balls.  Just by adding a couple more shot types this could get so much more fun.  Grape shot to take out other crews while leaving the other boat intact to try and steal their loot, chain shot to take down enemy masts and slow them down, or harpoons to pull in other boats or take down sharks.  More variety would make ship to ship combat way more fun, and give people more stuff to scavenge off islands.

3: Parley/Safe Harbor

Always looking over your shoulder for other pirates is half the fun of Sea of Thieves right now, but there is no good way of just meeting up with other crews and hanging out.  If there was an island you could go to chill and talk to other crews that would be pretty cool.  Even cooler if this was something players could set up.  Maybe they could buy ravens and send them out asking for parley and setting a location, then other crews could accept or deny the request.

4: More Life Like NPCs

The only NPCs in the game are shop keeps, which I understand, but it makes the world of Sea of Thieves seem lifeless.  There needs to be more people to make this feel like a real place.  Maybe just a couple of pirates drinking and singing songs in the bar, or a couple guys wandering about.  Maybe they could even give you special quests for rare items if you listen to their tales.

I want to like Sea of Thieves.  It has the bones of a game I want to get lost in, but right now it just needs more.  More of everything.  The quick fixes above would go a long way to making things feel more fleshed out.

I have had Monster Hunter: World since it came out, and even though I have played quite a bit of it, I have never posted a review because I felt that I had only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer, and I still feel that way, but I am going to let you know my thoughts on the title anyway.  It is massive and fun, but sometimes the thought of actually playing it overwhelms me.

Monster Hunter: World is a streamlined and much better looking version of every other Monster Hunter game out there, but if you have already played other Monster Hunter games, then you probably don’t need this review because you are knee deep in some Flying T-Rex’s flesh right now.  For everyone else, Monster Hunter: World is a game where you go out in to a varied landscape and hunt all sorts of large creatures, and then turn their parts in to better equipment, so you can fight even bigger monsters in cooler parts of the world.  You do this until you fight a dragon as big as a mountain.

That may sounds like a massive grind, and it is.  The whole game is based around grinding massive animals to get really cool stuff.  Of course when you go out and hunt those creatures, you will probably not get the bones or pelts you need, so you will have to do this a few times.  That may sound dull, but the monsters are awesome, and the world they have created is like a real place.  It is magical to see how all these beasts interact with each other.  They have created a really good ecosystem simulation for these mythical beasts, and they let you murder (or capture) all of it.

Another awesome part of the game is that every weapon in Monster Hunter: World, makes the game feel different.  You will have to drastically change your play style if you decide to move on from the weapon you are currently using (it is a good idea to YouTube the weapon before using it), and there are fourteen different weapon types, and each of those weapons has a myriad of upgrades you can grind from those poor, poor massive deadly creatures.  Then it gets even better if you play with friends (if you can figure out how to play with your fiends)!

This game will not be for everyone.  If you hate long drawn out battles versus boss type creatures, maybe you should skip Monster Hunter: World, or perhaps borrow a friend’s copy before laying down your hard earned cash, but the monsters are different enough that you will have to change your strategy for every monster you face, and that keeps things fresh.  You can also just start using a different weapon if you want change things up for a while.  I am having a good time with it, but due to the prep and the time required for fighting the monsters, I can only play at little bit at a time.  Others have not had that problem.  At all.  I recommend it, but just know what you are getting in to before starting Capcom’s most successful game of all time.

It turns out the reason that Bruce Wayne spends all his time fighting crime as Batman is because he just screws things up as Bruce, or at least I screw everything up as Bruce, and since 80% of the people out there made the same decisions I did, we are all screwing up together.  I mean things have really hit the fan in Batman: The Enemy Within, Episode 4, What Ails You.

I guess I should have seen this coming.  Leaning on my father’s criminal past to infiltrate a group of crazy criminals was always a bad idea, and I hate Amanda Waller for making me do it.  Still, I have only myself to blame for the way things have turned out.  Which is not good.

Sadly since this is only Episode 4, I wasn’t able to go full Batman and finish things they way I should have from the beginning.  Which is the problem with all TellTale Games’ forth episodes.  They are short and don’t have satisfying endings.  They are pure setup for the finale.  That being said, I have not seen things get this out of hand in a TellTale game before either.

I swear that I have done everything right, but crap is still falling apart.  Which is why I have been loving this series.  Generally in a TellTale game, you do what you are supposed to do and things end up okay.  With The Enemy Within, I am not sure that is going to be the case.  Which is a far more interesting story than everything being just peachy.

If you haven’t got TellTale’s Batman: Then Enemy Within, you need to start playing this game.  You will have no regrets, other than the fact you will be terrible at being Bruce Wayne.  Which, if we are fair Bruce is usually pretty bad at being Bruce as well, so this is a faithful adaptation.