Game Review - Payday 2

This game is essentially Payday: The Heist but improved - what a sequel should be.

Payday is a FPS in which the aim is to perform certain tasks in order to complete missions, earn XP and Cash to spend on weapons/skills to improve your character. The missions are usually heist with a certain theme like robbing a bank or creating and collecting meth. The more you create/steal/get away with the more money you get. These can be a one off job or a multi in game day jobs that require lots of covering crashed escape vehicles, doing multiple objectives or transporting goods through multiple zones. There is also varying degrees of difficulty to support those newer to the series or who want training.

The heists are performed by 4 male characters - Hoxton, Dalas, Chains and Wolf in Washington DC. These can either be AI and you, or multiplayer online with friends or strangers. The gameplay is similar to the original but with some mechanics improved and all round glossed up to improve how smooth the game runs. The AI as usual is difficult when they are with you and  when you are against them their level of capability is equivalent with the difficulty, varying from blind, headless chickens with guns to terminators. Since I am used to the Payday mechanics I went straight in with some harder games until I came to a large difficult heist with level 50+'s. For me this was the best way to learn the way the specific heist worked so I used their methods and gained a massive 7 level ups and $500,000 to my upgrades. The stealth option of sneaking the back way and destroying cameras etc. has been improved to be more forgiving (actually possible) from the first game. The actual weapons and objectives have also become more realistic (loot bags weigh you down, recoil is a bigger issue) to improve the game further.

The graphics are decent, nothing too insane but nothing too basic either. However I game into a problem where on standard HD resolution (1920x1080) the game still had a black box around the edge of the game (quite large actually) which confused me as most games don't have this issue. The gun detail is on the same standard as the original which confused me as it's not that great, not up to scratch with CoD or Battlefield guns, however I doubt this had the same budget, and I'd much rather it was spent on the gameplay rather than graphics. As story goes there isn't much other than the backstory behind the heists and the story running through the heist. It is quite interesting though for the little there is, however this is a game that does not resolve around story so that can be forgiven.
  All in all this is a pretty good game, much better than is predecessor, but not quite as good as I think it could be with a little work and some story to go with it, the replayability  factor would be even higher. 7/10

Game Review - Crysis 3

 Crysis 3- The Battle Against the Cardboard Grass

If anyone is wondering what that random introduction is about, all will be explained later. We will start this review with the story line. I can't give away spoilers because I'm not that kind of person. The story is pretty much your average guy has to save the world against all odds plot, with the twists, turns and upsets but hey I'm not complaining it was pretty good. At one point I didn't realise how long I was playing and realised I'd been on for hours. In my opinion it is better for more games to do this kind of story line rather than explore new not so good ideas. The story is set with prophet being the last fancy nano suit soldier left on earth, and he battles through the apocalyptic looking (think I am legend) New York dome. You fight on the rebel's side against the hyper energy corporation of Cell (could be sell - didn't have subtitles on) who are using a mysterious energy source to fuel their business. All turns to shit from there. So all in all the story line was good, not great, just good, with a great ending.
    Now for the graphics, anyone who reads my blogs knows my PC build isn't the best however Bioshock Infinite I could run on all very high and a few high settings. This will run high and medium due to the cry3 engine being ridiculously strong. However I've seen this game on the highest settings and it is a very pretty game. Apart from one thing. The grass looks like a 2D cardboard cut out. I mean really developers, you can make your grass sway in the breeze like it's real but you can't make it look 3D? I may be being picky but I want some good grass in my games, especially since it's everywhere in the apocalyptic NYC. All in all I do like the graphics in this, especially model detail on the suits and weapons.

That leaves us with gameplay. I have to say, I tried my ass off at stealth, it was hard to say the least. The AI find the bodies of the people I just murdered then I panic and shoot everyone. Either that or my energy runs out when I'm invisible, staring with into the gunman's eyes when it comes up with "energy low" I become visible and end up dead. But other than that it's really good to have an option of how to play, stealthily kill, sneak past, go in guns blazing, set up a trap with their own defences etc. So props to you guys for that! One problem I occurred frequently was the clunkiness between switching the arrows on the awesome bow. They tended to bug and you'd have to wait a while before you could shoot which can be somewhat problematic. Overall the gameplay is great. As for multiplayer, it is a good experience, especially the hunter mode where you either kill the invisible-ish archers or you are one. I loved it.
  So in conclusion, Crysis 3 is a really good game as the modern games go, and with a few tweaks (like the grass and some top notch story) it could be perfect. 7/10