Categoria More: Gari Games

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view. Compared to FromSoftware’s Souls series, the game features fewer role-playing elements, lacking character creation and the ability to level up a variety of stats, as well as having no multiplayer elements. It does, however, include gear upgrading, a skill tree, and limited ability customization. Rather than attacking to whittle an enemy’s health points, combat in Sekiro revolves around using a katana to attack their poise and balance instead, which eventually leads to an opening that allows for a single killing blow. The game also features stealth elements, allowing players to immediately eliminate enemies if they can get in range undetected. In addition, the player character has the ability to use various tools to assist with combat and exploration, such as a grappling hook and a torch. If the player character dies, they have the option of being revived on the spot under certain conditions instead of respawning at earlier checkpoints.

It’s hard to do Sekiro‘s world justice through any amount of descriptors, but as usual the detail is there to augment the already impressive environments. Locations, mind, that you can mostly just go to instead of wandering about, as you more often than not can grapple hook up or down to wherever you want. It makes for a rather hefty game, as my playtime so far is roughly on the level with a Souls title and I’ve uncovered what seems to be several optional/super bosses. New Game+ is also confirmed and I’m already looking forward to it since you can’t really “over level” for it. It’s going to be brutal and the closest thing that comes to mind is the brilliant old chestnut Ninja Gaiden Black: do not come in expecting a traditional “Souls” experience.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice innovates to the point where people who are tired of the same old song and dance will find new mysteries to master, but still maintains that strong marriage of world building and sense of pride garnered from besting taxing conflicts. It’s another keeper so long as you’re ready to strap in for a tough ride.

9/10

Release Date: 11th February 2019
Platform: Origin
Region: Worldwide
Language: English

Gameplay

Apex Legends is a battle royale game borrowing concepts of the hero shooter, taking place 30 years after the events of Titanfall 2. Apex differs from most battle royale games by incorporating Legends, pre-defined heroes with unique abilities that fall into roles such as Offense, Defense, Support and Recon. Players are grouped into squads of three, each player selecting a unique Legend in turn, and each match features up to 20 teams competing. All teams start with no equipment and are flown over the game’s map via dropships from a random direction from which they drop onto any spot on the map they can reach. Teams scour the game map for weapons, ammunition, and other equipment while fighting to be the last team standing, all while staying within an ever-shrinking safe zone on the map. A player can be downed into a vulnerable bleed-out state, leaving them only able to crawl for cover or reach a squadmate, who can revive them. If the player bleeds out, or an opponent uses a finisher move on them, they are then eliminated, dropping their equipment to be looted and a banner. The player can potentially be respawned if their squadmates recover this banner and take it to a Spawn Beacon, scattered on the map, in a limited amount of time. Apex features both voice-chat communication with squadmates and a contextual single-button communication approach that allows a player to ping map features like weapons, opponents, or rally points.

Apex Legends is free-to-play and supported through microtransactions for cosmetic items and heroes. New cosmetic items can be earned from opening Apex Packs, the game’s version of loot boxes that contain a random assortment of rewards, or spending the in-game currency Crafting Materials, which are gained through Apex Packs. Apex Packs are freely earned as the player gains experience levels. Additionally, players freely gain Legend Tokens for playing matches as well as for leveling, which are used to unlock new Legends and certain cosmetic items. A final currency, Apex Coins, is bought with real-world funds and can be used to buy Apex Packs, unlock Legends, or purchase specific cosmetics. Respawn plans to offer battle passes in the game’s future which reward players with new seasonal cosmetic items by completing in-game challenges.

Characters

The game currently has 8 playable characters, each with 3 unique abilities.

• Wraith who is a interdimensional skirmisher.
• Bangalore who is a professional soldier.
• Pathfinder who is a forward scout.
• Lifeline who is a combat medic.
• Gibraltar who is a shielded fortress.
• Bloodhound who is a technological tracker.
• Caustic who is a toxic trapper.
• Mirage who is a holographic trickster.

Mirage and Caustic are not available to new players right away. They must be unlocked with either in game credit (purchased in the store) or by playing many games and getting enough XP to purchase them.

Release Date: 11th February 2019
Platform: Origin
Region: Worldwide
Language: English

Gameplay

Apex Legends is a battle royale game borrowing concepts of the hero shooter, taking place 30 years after the events of Titanfall 2. Apex differs from most battle royale games by incorporating Legends, pre-defined heroes with unique abilities that fall into roles such as Offense, Defense, Support and Recon. Players are grouped into squads of three, each player selecting a unique Legend in turn, and each match features up to 20 teams competing. All teams start with no equipment and are flown over the game’s map via dropships from a random direction from which they drop onto any spot on the map they can reach. Teams scour the game map for weapons, ammunition, and other equipment while fighting to be the last team standing, all while staying within an ever-shrinking safe zone on the map. A player can be downed into a vulnerable bleed-out state, leaving them only able to crawl for cover or reach a squadmate, who can revive them. If the player bleeds out, or an opponent uses a finisher move on them, they are then eliminated, dropping their equipment to be looted and a banner. The player can potentially be respawned if their squadmates recover this banner and take it to a Spawn Beacon, scattered on the map, in a limited amount of time. Apex features both voice-chat communication with squadmates and a contextual single-button communication approach that allows a player to ping map features like weapons, opponents, or rally points.

Apex Legends is free-to-play and supported through microtransactions for cosmetic items and heroes. New cosmetic items can be earned from opening Apex Packs, the game’s version of loot boxes that contain a random assortment of rewards, or spending the in-game currency Crafting Materials, which are gained through Apex Packs. Apex Packs are freely earned as the player gains experience levels. Additionally, players freely gain Legend Tokens for playing matches as well as for leveling, which are used to unlock new Legends and certain cosmetic items. A final currency, Apex Coins, is bought with real-world funds and can be used to buy Apex Packs, unlock Legends, or purchase specific cosmetics. Respawn plans to offer battle passes in the game’s future which reward players with new seasonal cosmetic items by completing in-game challenges.

Characters

The game currently has 8 playable characters, each with 3 unique abilities.

• Wraith who is a interdimensional skirmisher.
• Bangalore who is a professional soldier.
• Pathfinder who is a forward scout.
• Lifeline who is a combat medic.
• Gibraltar who is a shielded fortress.
• Bloodhound who is a technological tracker.
• Caustic who is a toxic trapper.
• Mirage who is a holographic trickster.

Mirage and Caustic are not available to new players right away. They must be unlocked with either in game credit (purchased in the store) or by playing many games and getting enough XP to purchase them.

Release Date: 25th January 2019
Platform: Steam
Region: Worldwide
Language: English, English-US, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish

I have fond memories of playing the original Resident Evil 2 in my dorm room at the University of Kansas back in 1998 and thinking the CGI cutscenes looked incredibly realistic. (Oh, 1998 Daemon, you had so much to learn!) Another great gaming recollection of mine is playing the 2002 remake of the first Resident Evil on GameCube with its beautifully updated visuals, completely new areas to explore, and terrifying new enemies. Now, in 2019, Capcom has given me a new experience I’ll remember for a long time: this ground-up remake of Resident Evil 2 is a very fun, very creepy adventure thanks to its completely new and modern graphics, controls, and some smart quality-of-life improvements. The two playable characters’ stories aren’t as different as I’d hoped, but I enjoyed nearly every gory minute of my return to Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield’s shoes.

I hadn’t played the original Resident Evil 2 since its release 20 years ago and only remembered the broadest of strokes: I knew it largely took place in a police station, the Lickers were introduced, and the giant spiders in the sewers were a nightmare. If a similar amount of time has passed for you, or if you’ve never played it, it might not be apparent what an enormous improvement this remake is unless you look at it side-by-side with the original. That’s because instead of the usual remastering treatment where we see upgraded resolution and textures hung over an old game’s skeleton, here Capcom started from scratch and remade the whole thing using the RE Engine, which is the tech that powered Resident Evil 7.

Now, instead of pixelated characters running from pre-rendered background to pre-rendered background, Resident Evil 2 is a fully 3D, over-the-shoulder affair with atmospheric lighting effects, impressive facial animations, and the best-looking zombies I’ve ever seen in a game. They’re juicier than ever (I’d venture a guess the designers were heavily inspired by the Tarman from Return of the Living Dead) and I love the way they lurch around and react when you blow off very specific chunks of their heads and hands courtesy of the satisfyingly detailed dismemberment system.

Capcom does noticeably reuse the same handful of zombie models, though. Especially later on in the story, you’ll likely recognize the same undead faces you blew off way back at the police station.

Some events have been rearranged or expanded upon and there are some surprising twists I didn’t remember, but this is a mostly loyal remake of the suitably dark and twisted story of Resident Evil 2. It’s two months after the zombie outbreak of the first Resident Evil, which took place mostly in a spooky mansion. The horror has now overrun the entirety of Raccoon City, which is divided into three large areas that serve as the story’s acts. Exploring its dark hallways, solving puzzles, and hoping to god there isn’t a zombie around the next corner all remains fun today. Charting each area, learning the lay of the land, and eventually overcoming the obstacles in your way really never gets old. There are statues with hidden compartments everywhere, mutated reptiles stalk the sewers, and there’s a vast scientific lab buried underground. None of it holds up against much scrutiny, but they’re all fun places to explore.

Our heroes Leon and Claire, meanwhile, have strolled into town at a really bad time and are almost immediately separated. The pair is likable enough but two dimensional in their unwavering heroism. They never have a moment of despair or self doubt, and that makes them a bit dull, whereas a couple of the side characters are more charismatic and interesting. The mysterious Ada Wong in Leon’s campaign keeps you questioning her motives and wondering whose side she’s really on, for example.

Crucially, inventory and ammunition management is still a key part of Resident Evil 2’s gameplay. This is real survival horror, where it always seems like you’re just barely scraping by with enough ammo and healing items. You can’t carry everything you find with you, so what you should store and what you should carry is a battle constantly being waged in your mind.

Those quality-of-life improvements I mentioned include automatically updating your maps to let you know if a room has been cleared of items or if you missed something, frequent and unlimited save points, and freedom from the infamous barrage of loading screens. All of those are very much appreciated when exploring Raccoon City.

Tension has been elevated by the excellent sound design. Very little music accompanies gameplay, which leaves plenty of room for creaking doors, thunder and rain, the moans of the undead somewhere just out of sight, and heavy footsteps of something sinister in the next room over. Resident Evil 2 gets atmosphere like nobody’s business.

I beat the story from Leon’s point of view in eight hours, which felt a little short, but I was excited to fire up Claire’s campaign and see the fateful evening’s events unfold from an entirely new perspective. Unfortunately, whomever you play as in the main game mode, Resident Evil 2 will be largely the same when you finish and switch to the other person’s 2nd Game mode. While there are a handful of new locations, many quest items are shuffled to new locations so you need to hunt for them again, and you’ll see more and deadlier enemies sooner in the campaign, most of the same events happen. Leon and Claire take extremely similar paths, meet most of the same people, solve most of the same puzzles, and fight most of the same bosses the other one did the first time through.

(In an earlier version of this review I mistakenly played through the first versions of Leon and Claire’s stories back to back, which are even more similar. Having now played Leon’s 2nd Game, I’m still disappointed that there’s only marginally more new things to see and do there.)

Their play styles aren’t entirely identical, at least: If you play as Leon first you may get used to dispatching enemies with his shotgun and flame thrower, and when you return as Claire you’ll have to learn how to adapt your playstyle and make do with a submachine gun and grenade launcher. Plus, each hero meets a unique, important person who causes them to deviate from the shared path for a short time, and there’s a different final boss fight at the end. I enjoyed all of it, though the repetition of so much content made it significantly less entertaining the second time through. Those small differences aren’t quite enough to justify a second playthrough of a very similar campaign.

As much as Capcom added to Resident Evil 2, a couple things are noticeably missing. Those giant spiders I remembered being terrified of? Not here. I was really looking forward to being scared by more realistic monster arachnids. (At least this is good news for arachnophobes who’ve missed out on Resident Evil 2 up to this point.) Also, when you press start at the title screen, no cartoonishly scary voice says “Resident Evil!” Big miss.