Outlast

                              
      If you love having heart attacks or actually have the mettle to stomach horror/survival video games or simply want a break from the mainstream popular title games of today, then Outlast is definitely a great choice to play. Released on September 4, 2013 for PC and February 4, 2014 for PS4, Outlast is a game appropriately named for the first-person survival/horror genre of video games. Red Barrel, the studio responsible for the horrors of Outlast, created the game with three simple options for playing: run, die, or hide. It's just that simple. Those are your only choices to survive a mountain asylum filled with nightmares that stalk you throughout every blood-stained hallway. However, the scariest thing about Outlast has to be one single feature, a hide button; but I'll get to that in a bit.
      First off, lets talk about what this nightmare actually is and the back story behind it. You play as a freelancer journalist, Miles Upshur, looking to write a story to expose the Murkoff Corporation and find out what crazy things are taking place in their institution: Mount Massive Asylum. As you enter the asylum and begin to see all of the mangled corpses of the hospital staff, you realize that you have made a fatal mistake....problem is - the front door is bolted shut. So, by this point you are forced to search for an alternate route out, which, ironically, seems to only lead you farther in the dreaded place. Armed with nothing but your handy-dandy camcorder, you must try and survive the former patients of the asylum that now roam the hallways, murdering what is left of the staff in anger of what they did to them in Project Walrider. Now, Project Walrider is a real mystery. As an experiment consisting of drug use, torture, and mind control, it has turned the patients into delusional, mutated nightmares known as the Variant. Somehow, Project Walrider has transformed into some kind of almost physical force and believe it or not, the patients are mad at what it did to them. So, honestly, the patients' violent and psychopathic murdering is somewhat justified, right? Unfortunately for Upshur, they  can't distinguish him from the staff. The whole story of the asylum and Project Walrider is all based off of a real CIA project in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in the U.S. and Canada called: MKUltra. The asylum, supposedly abandoned by the CIA, was reopened by a private organization. So, all in all, Outlast has an intriguing story, however it isn't strongly narrative based. Most of the story is developed through documents found by the player and notes that Upshur makes when he has his camera rolling. (P.S. I advise rolling the camera at all times to avoid missing important notes)
      Now, the hide button isn't the only option presented to you in your struggle to survive. Sometimes you will have to crawl, jump, vault, run, or squeeze your way to safety from one horror only to find yourself holding your breath to avoid another. Thankfully, besides vaulting low objects, the enemies in Outlast can't perform any of these maneuvers like you can. This gives the player a slight edge...however, be warned, as it is one of few. Combat is not an option in the game, only avoiding. Now you do have a few options when it comes to avoiding your enemies, but you need to be fast! You can hide in a locker or under a bed when cornered in a dead-end room, disappear for a short time into an air duct for safety, or slip through a narrow pass to move on to the next area. However, creating loud noises or attracting enemies will force you to act quick! For instance (and this does not contain major spoilers) at one point in the game, you must turn two valves to restart a generator. These valves are in two separate rooms and cause the generator to let out a noisy screech that, you guessed it, attracts the bad guys. Once you turn on the first valve, one of the enemies will barge into the room shortly after, and without much warning. As you hear him try to bust the door down, you will have to think fast before he charges in and beats you to death with a pipe. Hiding in a locker is your only option before he catches you. However, be cautious, as he will check some of the lockers looking for you, so pray that you choose the right one! Lastly, as a big part of the gameplay, your character, Miles Upshur, does a great job at adding to the tension at the already amazingly tense moments in the game. As you leave or come upon a moment in the game where something may (or may not) happen, the music will start to rise and play the classic "opera violin music" that has become accustomed to horror in movies, games, etc. and then Miles will start breathing heavily, mimicking the timidness experienced  by the player at the same time. At first, (and I know from experience) you may not realize it is Miles breathing heavily and believe that something is nearby, stalking you. However, I will admit that this is a nice touch that they added to the game. It really helps develop the feel of what it is your going through in this "abandoned" asylum.      The visual appearance of Outlast does a good job of tying in with it's objective of creeping the heck out of the player. The complex layout of the asylum makes it feel authentic and almost makes you feel like you've traveled so far throughout it, even though you've been stuck in the same asylum since the beginning...which helps bring the feeling of being trapped to a realistic level and helps you understand just how far up shit creek you really are.
      Overall, I say that Outlast is a great game that does an even greater job at scaring the mess out of players. Now, I haven't played many horror games besides this, but I'm sure once you play it for yourself, you'll agree.

Terraria

Hey internet! It's been a few days since my last post but, like I said earlier, most of it will be on the weekend. Today I wanted to talk about a cool adventure/exploration game: Terraria. The game has been out for quite a while now on PC but was also recently released on the Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Android, and iOS. Now, I've only played it on PC so I'm sorry if some of what I say doesn't match up with the other versions. If you've ever played Terraria or Minecraft you might realize that the games are pretty similar, except the fact that Minecraft is 3-dimensional and Terraria is 2-dimensional. Also, in my personal opinion, Terraria has a lot more stuff to do in it and things to find. However, I'm not here to talk about MC, so let's start off with an overview of Terraria. Terraria is an action adventure/RPG indie game released by Re-Logic game studios. In the game, you can explore the land, craft weapons and tools, construct buildings, and fight a huge variety of monsters and bosses all in a randomly-generated 2-D world. Now, to talk about some of that, lets move to game play. Terraria is known for its exploration/adventure style of gaming such as Minecraft. Basically, it features a day and night cycle along with nocturnal and underground type enemies that you might not normally find during the day. There are world building elements and a character advancement throughout the game and has a tile-based graphic design. When you start out in your brand new world, you start off with basic copper equipment: copper axe, copper pickaxe, and copper shortsword and you start with 100 health. As you progress through the game, you can upgrade to better equipment with ores and materials you find to construct better tools. Also, as you find health crystals, you can upgrade your max health to a limit of 400. Also, lets move on to enemies. During the day, there are relatively no enemies in the world to worry about, just some annoying "slimes" that hop around everywhere. However. at night, zombies and demon eyes spawn. Make sure you have a shelter at night. Compared to the rest of the enemies in the game, these aren't really much of a problem for players with experience and good equipment, however for players at the beginning, these can be nightmares! As you start mining and reaching new depths below the ground in the game, you will continue to find more and more enemies, all getting seemingly more difficult especially when you reach the Underworld.....which is full of demons! Overall, the game is very fun and can sometimes be a little challenging. Personally, a tip to help you get through the game is to use the wiki site for the game as you play. When you find something new, refer to the wiki to see what it is and it will also help you find even more stuff to look for in the game. This will help you get past the beginning where some people get stuck and don't really know what to do. Hope you guys enjoyed reading! I might have another post out this weekend or might have to wait until next week, sorry. Thanks for reading!

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Who is Edward Kenway?

Hey Internet! This is actually my first post to cover the same video game as a previous one. I am again going to cover AC4: Black Flag (Assassin's Creed IV.) Today, I will discuss who exactly the main character is. For years, the Assassin's Creed series has been focused around one, legendary assassin: Ezio Auditore living in Renaissance Italy. However, last year, Ubisoft made a revolutionary milestone when they jumped forward a few hundred years to Colonial America during the American Revolution and introduced a new protagonist: Connor Kenway, a Native-American  assassin who strives for justice in the English colonies around New York and Boston. This year, Ubisoft is again changing characters but not so drastically. The newest assassin is Edward Kenway and based off of his name, you should be able to tell he's related to Connor from AC3. back in time before it's predecessor game. However, he's not his son. Edward Kenway is actually the grandfather of Connor and  lives in the Caribbean a few decades before the countries revolution...and he's a pirate! Edward Kenway was originally in the British Royal Navy and  was stationed in the West Indies. However, Britain's war with Spain ended and hearing stories of gold and fame pulled Kenway into a life of piracy. This is said to be where the game picks up, after Kenway is already a pirate. Kenway is pretty much the typical stereotypical pirate you might imagine. He is selfish, deadly, and bends his knee to no nation. However, an interesting personal struggle emerges within Kenway. He is contacted by and asked to join the Assassins, the only problem is that to be an assassin, one has to be selfless...something a pirate is not. This causes Kenway to have a strong personal struggle but also causes him to have no loyalty to the Assassins. He joins them only for their knowledge, combat techniques, and their treasure. If this isn't bad enough, it's said that he will even at times be persuaded to work with the templars! Of course, the Assassins wouldn't stand for this and the developers have said that this whole ordeal will be a big part of the game's story-line and so not much more has been said about it. That's all I have for today, but thanks for reading!

Amnesia 2: A Machine for Pigs

Hey there, Internet! If it hasn't been clear so far, I am mostly a console gamer, but today I will be talking about a very popular PC game known as Amnesia. The first game became very popular for how unparalleled it's horror was and well...how horrifying it was! Just recently though, it has finally released a game perhaps just as scary, if not scarier and it is Amnesia 2: A Machine for Pigs. In this article, I'll cover some of the background and game play. So, let's start off with the background to the game. It is set in London around 1899-1900 with a very wealthy industrialist named Oswald Mandus as the main character and focuses on his relationship with his children. Upon returning from a dreadful trip to Mexico, tragedy struck him. Ill with a fever, Mandus has dreams about a "dark machine" until he wakes up. He doesn't know however that three months have passed and as he is re-awakening, he hears the loud noise of a mysterious machine's engine starting. Seems like a great start to a horror game to me. So, let's switch over to game play. It is, same as the last game, a survival horror game from a first-person perspective. Some elements have changed since The Dark Descent, one reason being that they wanted to add a "fresh feel" to the game. The environment has been said to be "significantly different" from The Dark Descent with larger areas and even outdoor environments (more area to run from your fears in.)

Also, to avoid people predicting enemy movement based off playing the first game, the developers "tweaked" the AI system to make them behave differently from last time. However, despite all these changes, it still has the same core feelings as the first so fans hoping for more of the same feelings as the first won't be disappointed while people wanting a fresh, new scare should be happy too. Oh, and one last thing. The inventory, oil, and tinderboxes have been removed from the game. This is probably a change they made to give the game a fresher feel, who knows? Last for game play (this is kind of obvious, but) the game will remain a single-player game as it's predecessor was. The game released on September 10th for Steam and should also be available anywhere else it is set to be sold. So that about wraps up all of the info I have on the game. If you want more information or want to watch some game play, I strongly suggest YouTube as a source for that. For those who don't know, there is a famous You tuber known as PewdiePie, famous for Amnesia videos and I also  recommend checking him out on YouTube. Thanks for reading!

Watchdogs

Hey, Internet! It's been a while since my last post but it's time for the next one! Today, I will be talking about Ubisoft's next new upcoming game: Watchdogs. It's been talked about for months, almost a year and it will be released November 19 in North America and November 22 in Europe on Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Wii U. For a basic summary, it's all about hacking. It focuses on hacking into various electronic systems for either information or even to destroy those devices completely. For a plot, I'll paint you a picture. The game takes place in Ubisoft's interpretation of near-future Chicago. Crime rate has lowered to below 3% and homicides are at an all-time low...all thanks to CtOS (Central Operating System) which is being featured in Chicago, as well as other cities in the nation.

This system controls almost every piece of technology in the city including everything from smart phones to ATMs to street lights to security cameras. This means anyone able to control the system basically controls the city...and a man named Aiden Pierce does just that. The game is an open world sandbox type of game, which is no surprise coming from Ubisoft, the creator of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. and it looks like a good one! If you want my personal opinion, it looks a lot like a modern-day Assassin's Creed, just a little less focused on killing. So, now, lets move a little bit into game play. The game seems very smooth and realistic on just about every aspect, even to just walking down the street. They have made the NPC citizens throughout the city act very normal (if that makes sense) in that they seem like they really would in a near future urban city. There is a good parkour system that seems like a toned down version of Assassin's Creed but it fits perfectly to the environment. The stealth seems like a lot of fun with all the different ways there are to go about it. Using blackouts with streetlights or locking a parking garage behing you to stop a chase. You could even use security cameras to predict guard patrols to sneak by, or silently kill everyone around you one by one, or if all else fails and you are caught, cause a CITY-WIDE blackout and slip away in the darkness. Also, the game has a very deep notoriety system. Depending on whether you kill your targets or simply let the police take care of them will affect how people think of you. Now, when I say people, I don't mean just that cops will search for you more or less, I mean the actual people walking around in the game will be affected. If people recognize you, they might even call the cops just from seeing you. For instance, say you walk into a weapons shop to buy guns. The clerk might actually press one of those "under the desk" police buttons and the cops could be on their way to arrest you and you might not eve know. This, I presume, will help to keep the player always on their toes.  I know this article may not have shown much info on the game but it's all I have right now, sorry :/ As always, I recommend simply going to YouTube for more information, it's always there.  Thanks for reading!

Black Ops 2: Zombies - Origins!

Hey, Internet! It is finally the weekend again and so I am of course going to have a new post! Today, I'm talking about Black Ops 2: Zombies, and more specifically, it's newest map expansion Origins! Now, I know it hasn't come out on PSN yet so if you're a PS3 player and don't like spoilers, DO NOT CONTINUE! So, let's begin with some background to the map. They finally brought back the original 4 characters: Dempsey, Nikoli, Takeo, and my favorite, Richtofen! Now, you might have guessed this by the title "Origins" but the game is supposed to be the very first time the four ever met and also when the VERY first Nazi Zombies were created! This story is only fitting to be the last zombie expansion to be released on BO2 and it's great. The trailer video in the game reveals how the zombie outbreak started and here is a quick summary: Richtofen and an army of Nazis were excavating some old catacombs that were supposed to hold this "Element 115" (sorry if the number is wrong") and they planned on using this element to win WWII. They even used it to create 1000ft robots named Thor, Vera, and Odin, which are on the map(more of that later.) However, while excavating the catacombs, they were attacked by Crusader zombies! Yes, the very first zombies! These zombies then begin to eat and infect the Nazi army creating Nazi Zombies. To avoid spoiling everything in the story, that's as far as I'll go on story. So, the next I want to talk about is Steam-punk! There are quite a bit of objects in the game that are Steam-punk designed like the new starter pistol: the Mauser. It is just as powerful as the M1911 and is mostly just a cosmetic change (unless you upgrade it and it's amazingly powerful even on high rounds.) Other steam-punk designed items are the new Zombie shield for the map, a map-specific gun the MG08 which is an LMG and it's steam-punk design is great, the 1000ft robots are also designed this way, and last, the new main boss for the map (whose name I haven't discovered.) However, there actually is another new style look for other things on the map, which seems to be some sort of ancient/magic tech type. The mystery box, pack-a-punch machine, and pack-a-punch weapons all have this new look. (b.t.w. I will post a few pics at the end of the blog of some examples) Now, as I said earlier, I would mention the 1000ft robots a little more. These three god-like structures stomping around the map are accurately named "Thor", "Vera", and "Oden." They have pre-set points at where they step down on the map and make sure you keep an eye out for there feet because it will kill you if it crushes you(obviously.) However, if you figure out how, you can shoot out the bottom of certain feet on them to grab parts for the maps new super weapon(s) by being sucked up in them and then shot out the top, hurtling back down to the map. I won't go into detail about the new weapons because I haven't used them much, sorry :( But, now I'll finish talking and show some of those screenshots that I promised:

General Things about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Hey Internet! This post is about my personal favorite game series: Assassin's Creed!  For those who don't know heir new game (and one I am VERY excited for) is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. and this article will cover some general information I deemed worthy to blog about. I will do more specific stuff on it later, but this will just cover things like background, gameplay, new additions, etc. As always, I would like to add a disclaimer that all of this information is from pre-release content and is subject to change. So, lets get started. Background is an important aspect of any video game, and for Black Flag it's being a pirate! Edward Kenway, the game's protagonist starts out as a pirate, and is also the grandfather of Connor Kenway, the protagonist of Assassin's Creed 3 making Black Flag the first Assassin's Creed game going back in time before its prequel. Edward's story is similar to the other Assassins like Ezio and Connor and unlike Altair's in the fact that his entry to the Assassins is projected to be unusual. Ezio was "inducted" into the Brotherhood in a huge, confusing conspiracy that killed his fathers and brothers and he got mixed up in it and never left the Brotherhood, Connor joined when tragedy also struck him and his village was burned down and he found the brittle remains of the Assassin Brotherhood in his area and basically brought it back to working shape. However, we all know by now that Altair was born into the Assassin Brotherhood and was an Assassin his entire life. Edward, as I said, is a pirate. When he is prompted to join the Assassins he only does it for their treasure and techniques hoping to gain an edge on his enemies, not caring at all for the actual creed of the Assassins or what they stand for. Because of this, he gets mixed up working with Assassins and, at times, even the Templars before he becomes a full-fledged Assassin. This, I believe will be a very interesting story-line because Edward, being a selfish pirate, has to basically battle his personality to become selfless to be an Assassin.

I think that even though Ubisoft has rushed this game into production only a year after their last release: Assassin's Creed 3, it will still have an interesting story as they always have. The next topic to discuss is game play. Based off what I've seen, the game play will be be very similar to AC3 as it is on the same engine: Anvil Next. However, being a new game, they have added brand new features. First, is free-aiming. In past AC games, whenever ranged weapons were used (bows, crossbows, flintlock pistols, etc.) they always used a lock-on aiming to ensure you usually wouldn't miss which suited the games well. But, in this game, they will allow you to free-aim at whatever you want. Personally, I don't believe this was really necessary. If I'm correct, the auto-aim will still be present and if it is, most people will probably stick to it. Last thing to add in game play, the free-roam. The free-roam in this game will be much larger and in depth than it has ever been. The ability to go from island to ship to another island through out the Caribbean without loading screens will make the game fell very seamless and enjoyable. Also being added is underwater swimming, which is a very first in AC history and will literally add DEPTH to the game. It also opens up entirely new environments to explore through out this sand-box game. Last thing I want to talk about is some of the new additions I have noticed so far. First, they have given pistols a seemingly new aspect. As far as I know, you can still have up to 4 as you could in AC3 but the way they are used seems to be much more professional, and their killing ability seems to be deadlier. Another first is dual-wielding. As seen in the picture above, Edward has dual swords and it just seems completely  bad-ass. This surely means there will be new moves to use them with and maybe even more creative ways to use swords in the game. Hunting has been tweaked a bit for this game to fit the environment a little better. Instead of hunting just land animals, Edward will even be able to hunt creatures such as whales, sharks, and (not 100% sure on this) squid. However, Ubisoft has said they will not allow hunting of dolphins in the game because they feel that is (for lack of better words) wrong or just not right. In conclusion, Ubisoft is really focusing on the new pirate theme for this game which seems exciting, as long as they don't neglect the fact that the game is about the Assassins. I personally hope that they really don't but I'm sure it will be a great game. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I wanted to ask that you guys out there leave comments on what you think and also, wanted to know if you thought I should make my posts longer or shorter. I feel like they are a little too long and get boring too quickly so I wanted to ask for some feedback on that. Thanks!