Every now and then in the gaming ether something emerges that is truly a fantastic and awesome all-round piece of art without doubt. It hits all the right qualities in the perfect way from the music, to the gameplay and up to the story. Bastion is one of those games.

You play as `The Kid` a survivor of something called the Calamity that appears to have turned others from where you live into stone. As a survivor you find your way to the Bastion. The first port of call in an emergency only to find one other survivor, `The Stranger`, a deep gruff man who narrates your story as you play which gives it a fantastic dynamic of telling the player the story from a 3rd person perspective whilst the player is able to play it first hand.

So as the story goes you must find these pieces of mystical rock called `The Core`, these artifacts should resurrect the Bastion to full power and along with it you have the ability to build some buildings that will help you through your journey. An Armoury to pick your weapons from (and there are some fantastic weapons in this game, believe me. Catering to all play styles from quick and light to heavy and slow, ranged and up close and personal), A foundry to upgrade the weapons you find (for a fee of course), A Distillery to pick which `tonics` you have active (essentially passive traits that could help you in tough situations – they boost some stats per tonic) and a couple others to help/challenge you as you see fit.

So in your adventures to try and rebuild the bastion you will come across many relics, weapons, testing grounds for said weapons which can provide some fun challenges and even a couple survivors.

One major part of the game is that as you travel along each level you can’t technically see where you’re going to go as the floor forms up from the ground to support you and point you in the right way which is admittedly a really cool way to set out the players path as you smash, cut, shoot and blast your way through the plethora of enemies you get to fight.

Out in the wilds, beyond the Bastion that becomes your central hub and home you will find as said many enemies but not to fret as you are given Health Potions and Black Tonics (which you need to perform your `special` moves which can reign destruction down in very artistic and exquisite ways). As you progress and you become more aware of many of the elements of the game, for instance the Narrators voice and the music styles, you can’t help but feel the game has this wonderful little western tinge added into the mix somewhere. This doesn’t mean you become a cow-boy, it just means many of the qualities in the game wouldn’t be out of place in a saloon.

As well as the wilds and the weapon training grounds you will come across several levels called `Somewhere Else`, these are dream sequences where you will face waves of enemies. Now its a different lay out in the fact its waves and not a structured level which you explore, however these dream sequences (and there may be one or 2 in the campaign) are brilliant `trip` sequences where colours have more contrast and seem brighter (imagine the confusion that follows say the `trip` sequences in Far Cry 3).

One of the many fantastic elements of this game has to be the ending (no spoilers don’t worry). You’re given a couple opportunities to choose a few things which is a nice change for what is an important ending. The reason I bring these choices up are because of the fact that (due to my choices) it can give the game an incredible beautiful moment or two (I have not played the other choices…. yet).

However the game isn’t over when you make these choices, you now have the opportunity to play New Game Plus. You get to play again with all your weaponry, Xp and extra stuff too (something i’m currently doing with all 10 idols active – idols make it more challenging, think Skulls in Halo).

Bastion is an infinitely beautiful game with the artwork and music especially (I’ve written this whilst listening to the soundtrack). It is a fantastic game from SuperGiant games and I hope that their new project Transistor has a similar mesh of awesomeness.

Bastion definite 10/10, Thanks for reading, please feel free to check out http://willza99.wordpress.com/ for more of my reviews

As puzzle game fans may remember a game came out a while back called Q.U.B.E. It was a fun puzzler based around the idea that the player only ever had about 4/5 different kind of blocks to help them solve the puzzle whether it be escaping the room or just moving an item to a desired location to progress.

It was the first puzzler game I picked up not that long after portal and since I’d completed that I was really excited to find another puzzle game where everything isn’t straight forward and it had a wonderful minimalist style (check out my review on Kairo which uses a similar approach).So as a fan of the original I was elated to find that a piece of DLC had been released for this great game. Original fans beware however as it is different. The original brilliance of Q.U.B.E. focused around the user thinking logically of what needs to happen or what can happen next.

This new addition to the game is a puzzle of sorts but in a different way. It focusing instead of logical progression, at the quickest path.The DLC is made up of 10 new levels each with 3 medals to be gained through pain-staking trial and error. If you want to play the later levels you’ve got to earn your way toward it however as with a total of 30 medals, you need at least 25 just to reach the last one. Players will have to get back to grips with the love-able blocks of old, the blue that when compressed bounces you, the yellow staircase, the red extension and your occasional directional arrows to shift the room.However, its not all the same old mechanics, much like portal 2 introducing different coloured goo, Q.U.B.E. introduces fantastic little medals that can be seized as you as you can see them with the simple click of your mouse. There are a fun selection that are instantly apparent including the blue medal that gives the user low-gravity effects, the yellow that will helpfully shave seconds of the score in order to try get gold, the green medal which makes the player as quick as the flash and a fun purple medal which will reveal tiny secrets that may alter the course for you.

Ultimately you will have to rely heavily on the medallions hidden throughout, you have to if you want to get the gold. And quite smartly, I feel, the developers have put in place items that, due to the original play-style mechanics, blocks you think you’ll need to use, however due to the powers hidden within each medallion, not everything you see is a necessity.

You will be running through one level about 4/5 times before you realise what it is you have to do, in order to get that gold medal. However just because you know how to manipulate the room doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get the gold medal on that 5th run through. The execution of how you manipulate what you have to your benefit will have you pulling out hair (something maybe familiar to the original fans out there).So it may not be some lovely new levels to get lost in the wonder of how each cube connects to the other, but still a `puzzle` can be vague in meaning and I’m sure many fans will be happy just to be able to be back in the world they once loved. Although admittedly I jumped at the chance to play in some of the large nearly empty rooms with the occasional blue block to bounce you from one side to the other again, I still feel this DLC has a place for a puzzler such as Q.U.B.E. and I’m just happy to be back in a world so familiar. Thank you to Toxic Games & Thank you for reading, please feel free to check out willza99.wordpress.com for more of my reviews.

In a field overly saturated how does one shooter stand out against another? In Spec Ops The Line the addictive story is what makes it stand out above the rest. Too long have I been bombarded with over the top cool ads for the latest Call of Duty Zombie Warfare 10 with extra death on the side, it’s all too much. I don’t pretend that CoD 4 didn’t in some way however small or large revolutionise or more rather galvanise the market, I’d be a fool to deny that since CoD 4 I have noticed a large increase in the amount of shooter’s, which isn’t necessarily good for Gaming in general. If we want to be taken as serious people with a love of a hobby we shouldn’t turn to behemoths such as CoD where human beings are ripped up with machine gun fire and dismembered with motor fire. Such games are the Fast Food equivalent of the Games industry, sure it may be nice but it’s not good for you and it lacks sufficient sustenance.

However as I said Spec Ops The Line manages to keep above the tidal wave of, when you actually think about it, poorly written games or just straight up plain violence for violence sake. For me Spec Ops The Line asked one major question and its one that has been rattling around my brain when it comes to shooter’s: How do you live with the actions you take?

It’s interesting, think about most of the games that are sold en mass to the general market, not the people who have a love and passion for games who dig deep to find that one indie game that speaks volumes to them. No, I mean the incredibly popular mainstream titles where, if you dare to go online, you get abused by Bro’s or a 12 year old with a surprisingly colourful vocabulary. So with those games in mind, I’ve often thought these are characters that are, I imagine in some cases, loved. These are men that shoot and kill vast amounts of people and overcome incredible odds and they just shrug it off. These are meant to be people with real feelings and emotions, not blank, impersonal drones with a gun in hand.

Spec Ops The Line follows 3 men as they are sent into Dubai to find an old friend of the protagonist who was originally sent in to evacuate survivors of a terrible storm that ravaged Dubai’s beautiful landscape and skyline. You play Captain Walker a man with a mysterious past in Kabul where he met your target Konrad, a celebrated War Hero. Through some initially confusing story you begin to discover what happened here in Dubai, all is not well as 2 factions’ war it out against each other (and you) and through it all a crazed DJ plays tracks like its Vietnam 2.

Even in a linear game such as SOTL it offers choices to the player, choices that at the end are reflected upon and for good reason, because of the question it askes. How do these men whose jobs are to kill upon command survive what they encounter, or even do they? The player gets a feel for how maybe the command you’re given isn’t the command that you should carry out, this becomes especially clear as you progress through the game and through the actions you make. It is because of the actions you make and how you’re 2 man squad reacts that give the player a true immersion, on a personal note I had to pause the game at several crucial moments to decide what I should do, is there a right and wrong here? Does the easy way ever meet with the right way of doing things?

If like me you get swooped up in the story you may find the loading screens become more eerie. It’s one of the many minor things that I love about this game and that is the game itself askes questions of you and prompts you with things like “Can you even remember why you came here?” “You are still a good person” “Do you feel like a hero yet?” and also “This is all your fault”. People have incorrectly called this taunting, but I feel it’s supposed to make you think about not necessarily the genre of games that people just seem to buy into but also the real life actions of people who do this and as a result end up with PTSD.

Now I’ve love to say more, it’s been a while since I’ve played a game and truly couldn’t get enough of it, and with a story that has many layers and possible choices to take, it’s definitely worthy of more than one play through, but I feel if I write much more I’d give away some major points.

A little tip though, if you want the most from the game, unlock the FUBAR setting (never has this acronym felt so appropriate) and play through it, sure it’s harder but as I just said, the loading screens can get eerie and give you some sort of insight. Now I’m off to play some more.

Thanks for reading ;) Please feel free to check out: http://willza99.wordpress.com/ for more of my reviews

So one of the usual discussions on games is this sort of thing and I thought why not get more peoples opinion. This originally came about due to everyone talking about Bioshock Infinite (please no spoilers ;) ).

So violence in video games. It is something to worry about slightly. When you try and tell friends/family about a game you may be playing and how amazing it is, realistically should you be saying how the game is amazing because you can “no scope 360″ someone from across the map? or “the screen splatters with their blood”? Not really, not even close.

Violence is within all of us, and it’s there from the beginning, I mean you have to teach children to share and play with each other because initially they might batter the other kid for trying to play with the build-a-blocks or whatever children do now-a-days. We all get angry and very few know how to vent it, some unfortunately decide to throw things (maybe their controller) or hit walls but hopefully not others. Some people look to games to vent, look at http://www.gamessavedmylife.com/ and you’ll see that everyday people use games to release stress or let go of anger due to the violence in the game or the message that it conveys.

A while back I wrote 2 game reviews, the very first two I actually ever wrote and they were about Far Cry 3 and Spec Ops The Line, little did I know how much these 2 games were actually bucking the trend of violence vs the player. In fact recently 2 writers from both those games did several pieces on http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/talking about the future of games and how they dealt with the systems that game designers put in place and also how they met head on the issues of; What happens after the fight? It is a good question, what happens when your character stops, when they give up, when they retire. How does Commander Sheppard deal with all the violence he’s seen? In fact recently I finished Halo 4 for the first time and a line that stuck out beautifully was “Find out which one of us is the machine”. It came from Cortana (Jen Taylor) and it struck a chord with this theme I feel. The Master Chief has been slaughtering his way across galaxies and through several Halos, is maybe the rampancy that Cortana is going through a foreboding for what may come for Master Chief?

Now some games deal with violence not in a serious, what happens manner, but just a funny manner. Who really feels bad at Borderlands? No-one because its imbibed with humour, it detracts from the rather serious fact that you are still massacring your way through swaths of humans.

Obviously games try to rationalise what the player does (or at least many good games do), i.e. there is a just cause for this, there is a war, people were wronged, what they’re doing isn’t right etc. Now I had a conversation with my friend about Lord of the Rings which I feel applies here too, he said that “people want to live in middle earth because its painted in a very beautiful way, but more so because the lines between good and evil are clear and absolute”. Now many of the games i’ve played walk that line too, there seems to be little middle ground, think CoD people are on your side or evil. I’d be much more interested to play, instead of a cool game like Far Cry 3 or Spec Ops The Line, a game where characters have their own intentions and aren’t necessarily fighting for you or the other side, because the world isn’t black and white, not everything is right and wrong, we like to think they are but people have cause and motivation and they aren’t always wrong, however thats another discussion.

Obviously some games don’t deal with death but they do violence, imagine Pokemon or Sonic, you fight and battle other pokemon/eggman but they don’t die. Whose to say which is worse? However I do feel that games that avoid violence or at least avoid fighting proper stick in your mind more, I still remember Abe’s Odyssey from when I was a child, and you never fought in that game, it was a puzzler with deadly consequences, Jet Set Radio was a game where violence was replaced with paint and art instead of bullets and guns, Portal admittedly uses a gun but not for nefarious purposes.

I feel like a fair bit of the violence we see in games today is actually up to the player. I played through the entirety of Mirrors Edge without killing anyone because my thought process was “They’re accusing me of being something I’m not, so i’ll prove to them how wrong they are” not “Well they think i’m a killer so i’ll just have fun with it”. Its an important distinction, I recently wrote a review on the way I played Dishonored as thats another game that gives the player the choice to be good or bad and pays the player with a difference in the way the game plays out. When I was young an RTS essentially meant all that happened was I build up the biggest army I could and then flooded the enemies encampment with 10x their soldier count, however a great popular example that counteracts that is Civ 5 (with a DLC coming introducing 9 new Civs, and a couple new victory paths) where you can have a cultural victory, not necessarily a military one.

Overall I think violence is probably used too much by game developers and they may try to distract us from it by justifying it or making it somehow amusing or okay, but ultimately I think it comes down to the player choice in games where they do have one. Does the player just mimic what they’ve done for everything else, or do they make a conscious decision to take the high road and win not through body count but through actions.

Thanks for Reading ;) Please feel free to check out: http://willza99.wordpress.com/ for my reviews and hopefully more discussions like this in the future :)

So it took me a long time to finish my very first play through of Dishonored, I think thats partly down to my play style. I knew stealth would be too easy, and just fighting through the enemies offers little challenge unless I was playing on a harder mode. However as with most games that try to walk this black and white line of do good/bad I decided to try and be the most stealthy serial killer. Essentially imagine being Ezio from Assassins Creed but having the violent tendencies of Mr. Hyde ripping through enemies and youd get a general idea.

The main game mechanic at play here is the Good vs Evil debate of how you choose to play and for me there was one particular bit that made up my mind. You play Corvo, a man wrongly imprisoned for a crime he didnt commit, very much a wrong place, wrong time cliche, but thats fine. Your first act as Corvo is to break out of prison and this involves getting past all the guards. Its your choice obviously kill/sneak past. Initially I chose kill given that I was to be executed for a crime that I obviously didnt commit, yes unfortunately vengeance was in the forefront of my mind. So I hacked and slashed my way through.

This posed very little of a moral quandary until I got to part 2 of the break out; escaping through the sewer. This is where I found one of the many notes youre bound to find spread across Dunwall. In this note a man told a short story of how he and his wife couldnt buy enough elixir to live on and that hopefully the fire they lit would keep the rats at bay. Very sad, Im sure youll agree. However what really got me was that when I put the note down and turned to leave there I found huddled together as lovers would these 2 people. I knew the more I killed people the more the disease would spread and I would be subjecting the innocent civilians of Dunwall to a plague that would kill them en mass.

However after a quick peek at the achievements I realised that Id already discounted myself from several of the available challenges and thought to myself Screw it, onward and downward in my spiral of death and depravity but, this couple warrant a 2nd, peaceful playthrough. In that moment the writers had already convinced me to play peacefully but the real world satisfaction of achievements meant I had to do this twice So be it.

The game does have many fun little minor changes between good and evil choices made by the player. Its a wonderful system that pays off, but maybe you wont realise until you too have played a 2nd more drastically different playthrough. However before I jump into some of the fun facets of the Good v Evil outcomes, one of the things the game does is something that even larger developers with bigger games have done and it never works.

At the beginning before youre imprisonment you must meet the Empress and her Daughter Emily. Through reasons that are later explained the Empress is killed and her daughter kidnapped right in front of you and you are left to take the blame. Now I have a problem with this. As a player Im meant to have some sort of attachment to the Empress and Emily, these 2 women I hardly know and they instantly go and kill one and `remove` another. Why should I care? I dont know these people, I havent had time to build an actual immersive relationship with these people enough to care that theyre gone. It comes across as more of a Oh, tough shit scenario not a Oh my god NO! moment that the writers clearly want me to have (fallout 3 did this with the Users Dad). Its unfortunate that writers keep seeming to think that Ill care if someone I dont know but am supposed to, dies. It just brings me out of the experience.

However you do build an emotional bond to Emily through the game later as you see her change with whats gone on, but the fact that Im punished so unfairly is a better emotional `hot poker` in order to get me taking action.

So the repercussions of Good vs Evil are one of my favourite tiny mechanics at work here. For instance if you kill everyone you come across when you do talk to Emily later in the game shes far more dark and emo, at one point she draws a picture and on an Evil playthrough you see something that Id imagine Damien the Devil Child would create, however on a Good playthrough Emily draws sweet child crap like Rainbows (Dont think any of the writers stretched their imaginations there, but still its a nice touch).

Also part of the Game involves your use of `magical` mystic powers given to you by some spectral being called simply The Outsider (which does sound like a nickname given to the weird kid at school with a snot bubble). On a Good playthrough he appears as he did the very first time you saw him, however after slaughtering your way through Dunwall for the 5th time he appears more darkened and a scarier being overall which is probably the most appropriate thing.

I know I said the couple in the sewers made me want to be good, but in reality I think a larger part of being good was put upon me when my side-kick in crime Samuel (who ferries you to each mission, has wise words for you and seems an all round nice guy) told me at the beginning of the last mission I was the worst of everyone, betraying, scheming and killing. It was a surprising blow to take. I could barely believe it, the man whose helped me so much and always seemed to have something nice to say, the man who will save you at one point, just told me to get out of his boat and leave. Its like when your parents said they werent mad but just disappointed in you. I purposefully played a 2nd playthrough on peaceful, for an unfortunate couple and the validation of a simple old boatman. I feel it is the tiny things in games such as these, that make them great.

I feel Dishonored overall is an average game, but upon close inspection and a 2nd play though it certainly grows on you as a player and with some interesting DLC coming in about 5 hours, dealing with a mysterious man called the Daud you get to meet toward the end of the game its certainly worth a couple quick play throughs I feel.

8/10, Thanks for reading and please feel free to check out: http://willza99.wordpress.com for more of my reviews, thank you ;)