Everyone is talking about Deadpool at the moment – the infamous ‘merc with the mouth’ – with the impending release of his big screen debut next year. So of course, what better time than for us to be given a high def rework of the Deadpool game for the current gen consoles. Why not!

The main plot revolves around Wade Wilson aka Deadpool chasing down Mr Sinister one clone at a time for interfering with a contract hit on mogul Chance White. However, it wouldn’t be a Deadpool game without the fourth wall being not only broken but completely shattered; and we learn our antihero assassin has forced High Moon studios to make the “most awesome game ever” with him as the leading man. The fourth-wall remains ignored for pretty much the majority of the game, and it does a good job of distracting you from what a fairly generic action gameplay, and helps you get lost in the overall experience.

Despite what Wade Wilson says about it throughout, the script is the crown jewel of the game. It manages to stay true to the feel of the comics and the running commentary from all three voices in Deadpool’s head provide big laughs when you least expect them, and the supporting cast of Marvel cameos make for great comic foils. (The optional explanatory montages are a nice touch for those not familiar with the likes of Arclight and Vertigo.)

It reminds the player that it’s all supposed to be fun, and provides some much-needed spice during the pretty bland gameplay, which is especially valuable in helping you lose track of time while playing. Deadpool may be a fairly simple game, and there’s not much reason to bother returning to it after you’ve finished it, but the script will suck you in and make sure you’re entertained.

However, it’s a shame that with a lead character who so successfully deconstructs the genre he exists within, gameplay is little more than jumping between platforms and waiting for the baddies to run in and stand in a circle so you can shoot them with guns and attack them with close combat weapons. The standard superhero fare is occasionally broken up with some old school gaming throwbacks, which Deadpool puts down to budgetary issues.

They’re good, but don’t really push the envelope as far as you want them to and only highlight what High Moon could have cooked up if they’d had more money to play with.

Deadpool looks and sounds fine, but occasional lag during combat is frustrating as hell and ruins some of the comic timing. There’s not much more to say – the game has an overwhelming feeling of being no better than alright. It’s very clear this isn’t a property built for the current gen consoles, and it hasn’t made the leap from the Xbox 360/PS3 in a particularly effective way – certainly less so than other action games, the easiest and most fitting comparison being Saints Row 4.

All in all, it’s a fun game that has no illusions about what it is.

But it’s disappointing to see one of comic books’ most format-bending stars so firmly stuck in the middle of the road. I was hoping that the extra oomph from being on the Xbox One might offer the studio a chance to add a bit more to the strong base provided by a great script and a pretty flexible leading man. Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of Deadpool and missed out on his game the first time around, this will surely entertain,

The post Deadpool (Remastered) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Given the colossal failure that preceded it – the universally panned, and widely unfinished Assassins Creed: Unity – AC: Syndicate had a lot of pressure on it to not be a borderline, unplayable mess, and to restore the franchise to the lofty world of 4 star reviews that it was in it’s glory days.

Luckily, AC: Syndicate is more than up for the challenge, delivering a game that is better fleshed out, more streamlined and logical and noticeably less buggy than it’s predecessor. It’s by no means the perfect AC game (that award, in my mind, still stays with the masterpiece that was Black Flag) but it’s an excellent romp nevertheless.

Syndicate sees you playing as not one, but two assassins from the eponymous group of shadowy killers – the Frye Twins, Evie and Jacob. You switch between these two characters at will, and although they fundamentally run using the exact same control scheme and sets of abiltiies, we’re told that Jacob is better for combat and Evie is more inclined for stealth. I’ve seen little in the way of explaining this, but hey. Sure.

This fits in nicely with the twins personalities and goals – Evie is set on finding the one of the mysterious Pieces of Eden that have littered the timeline of the game, and she goes about this in a very organised and meticulous way.

Jacob, on the other hand, is closer to the standard mould for an Assassin in this franchise – aloof, jovial and humorous. His goal is to wrestle control of London away from the villainous megalomaniac Starrick, and he intends to do so by assembling a gang of citizens called The Rooks. Often this goals don’t completely line up, so you’ll find yourself bouncing between missions playing as either twin, trying to get to the bottom of their particular mystery at any given time.

The game takes little time to establish the plot – the long and short of it is that the twins are working for the Assassin’s Brotherhood somewhere outside of London, and get tired of waiting for a chance to take down the bad guys controlling the city. Against the advice of their leader, they sneak off to do just that. The writing of these characters is perhaps the weakest element of the game – especially Jacob, who’s attempt at being a jovial, cockney scamp come across as forced, cheesy and borderline obnoxious.

The gameplay mechanics in this iteration of AC are more of the same – a pretty much exact handover from AC Unity.

There’s nothing wrong with this, mind you. 99 times out of 100 these control schemes work really well, and on the rare off chance they fail, it’s usually human error. The addition of the ‘free run up’ and ‘free run down’ settings can be a bit tiresome at times. I can see why these were added, but I also can’t recall a time before they were introduced where I ever felt I needed to specify what direction I wanted to travel in.

There’s a great new addition of the rope launcher; a wrist mounted grappling hook that Evie and Jacob use to get around London a bit faster, shooting up buildings and making ziplines to travel back and forth between high and low points. This is a great addition and really speeds up the free roaming aspect of the game, and allows for a bit more control when attacking certain challenges.

Syndicate looks pretty damn good too. Perhaps not as good as Unity, oddly enough, but this is potentially because Paris is a much prettier city than grubby old London. But the moody tones of a city by gaslight, mixed with the smoke plumes of barges running up the Thames (a particular highlight) and the sounds of horses clopping along the cobblestones all work together stupendously.

With a lot to do around the edges of the main story missions, and a fair simpler, less cluttered currency system, AC Syndicate is a real joy to play and leaps and bounds ahead of the last AC outing.

If you’re a fan of the franchise, spurned by previous titles, this is a good place to leap back in. If you’re a newbie, this is one you’ll really enjoy.

The post Assassins Creed: Syndicate Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Few games have as much of a prowess behind them as the Elder Scrolls series – the iconic fantasy games, known for their expansive and engrossing worlds, and complete gameplay freedom.

Everything this franchise touches tends to turn to gold – with massive hits in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, marking milestones of gaming excellence on their respective console generations.

With that in mind, it only makes sense that Bethesda would try their hand at expanding their already engrossing world even further, by creating a fully actualised, MMORPG version of Cyrodil.

But where does it stand in relation to its titanic brothers? The answer, despite its best efforts, is that Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited doesn’t quite live up to what you’ll expect from the series, managing to deliver an OK experience that’s neither a great Elder Scrolls game, not a great MMO, but rather a generic combination of the two.

The game begins with somewhat of a whimper, while you find yourself creating a character, by without the vast range of races, classes and visual choices that the previous entries in the series have afforded you.

Four races and classes simply isn’t enough to make you feel like you’re playing in the vastly complex world of Elders, but one has to suppose that it’s probably more than enough variety when compared to other MMOs – the first generation of WoW, for example.

You find yourself trapped in a dungeon, inside what is roughly explained as the Cyrodil equivalent of Hell. Luckily, you are sprung from this prison by someone who recognises you as part of an ancient prophecy (a classic trope of the ES universe), and it’s not long until you’re back in Cyrodil, ready to head off on a series of adventures.

At first, it’s somewhat impressive how completely fleshed out the world of ES Online feels.

When you first hit a major city, the setting is alive with activity. Townsfolk are eager to talk and offer up exciting quests for you to tackle – each character is fully voiced and engages you in conversation much like in Skyrim before.

However, this soon becomes tiresome as you realise that not only are there around 6 voice actors in the entire game, but also that many of the quests follow the exact same frame work. Many of the quests offer some sort of intriguing mystery or interesting element, but these come few and far between once you proceed further with the stilted and simple main single player story.

Perhaps the hardest part of this game would be to try and sell to fans of the series just how limiting it is.

The best part about Skyrim was the ability to literally do whatever you felt like in your own little world. Here we find ourselves sharing this world with countless other adventures – so gone are the days that you can rob guards, murder helpless chickens or break into people’s houses willy nilly.

This is one of many examples of the game trying to shoehorn the ES universe into a more standard MMO space, and it only serves to hurt the overall gameplay.

The same can be said of the combat mechanism too. The basics of swordplay and archery are the same, but in the interest of making this PC port workable, all the magic you have access to is hot keyed to one of your buttons, meaning you only have access to a certain amount of spells at any given time.

If your style of play doesn’t fit in with this system, as is the case with me and my battle Mage style, you’ll find yourself severely hampered and unable to play the way you might like to.

The controls on the Xbox One version, while fine, are limiting. Graphically, the Xbox version looks appalling and you can see how this was released for PC a year ago. The sound, however, holds up incredibly well and sounds exactly as good as you’d hope.

Based on the above review, you might think that ES Online is a bad game. But it’s not, it’s perfectly fine.

It’s fun enough with moments of sheer brilliance and some great elements. But unfortunately, it’s less than the sum of its parts and not a worthy successor to the last ES game.

The post Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

I’ll be the first to admit it – I’m not the right person to review this game.

I’ve never been a fan of the Resident Evil series (those terrible movies didn’t do much to help that), and I can’t honestly say I’ve ever played one for more than half an hour. So take the below review with a grain of salt – as I’m not really reviewing it as a remastered version of an existing game, but rather as a game that’s totally new to me.

2002 is a very long time between original and remaster, but that’s what we’re looking at here – with the Gamecube’s (already a remake) version of Resident Evil being given new life with 1080p graphics and a serious overhaul for sound.

And it kicks off in the tried and true fashion you might remember if you’ve played this game 13 years ago, or indeed are aware of the massive pop culture status this game has.

Racoon City is falling apart – all sorts of nonsense is going on, not the least of which is people eating each other. Either Chris or Jill and their S.T.A.R. team fly into the city to investigate another recon team that’s gone missing.

All hell breaks lose, some zombie dogs show up and attack you and you get chased to the spooky mansion where most the games action takes places. You go off to explore the mansion on your own, in a classic Scooby Doo move, and things get worse from there.

The thing about this game is that no matter how hard it tries, the entire thing feels very 2002. A lick of paint and new sound do wonders for the visuals, I’m sure, but unless nostalgia is completely blurring your vision, it doesn’t hold a candle to anything else going on with either of the major consoles.

It looks good, mind you, just not great.

This bleeds through into the gameplay, which seems to be pretty much unchanged from it’s last outing in 2002. These are clunky and slow, and it’s hard to get enjoyment out of simply moving around the environment.

Combat is especially grueling, with reaction times slow to the point of maddening.

The puzzles of the game, mind you, are perfectly workable, and along with the new sound and graphics create a tense atmosphere that keeps you engaged enough to stick with it.

As someone who is still undecided on the overall concept of HD remasters, Resident Evil just doesn’t strike me as a game that needed this treatment.

However, one can’t fault the power of nostalgia, so if this was one of your go to games in 2002, or even 1996, give it a go.

For me though, it’s nowhere near enough to pull me into the world of Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation.

The post Resident Evil Remastered Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

In case you missed one of the latest installments in the on-going trend of re-releasing games for the Xbox One, the Zombie Army Trilogy has risen from the grave once again, on a single disc for your next gen console.

If you’re like me, chances are you never heard of the Zombie Army games (let alone knew that it was a trilogy) prior to the updated version being released last month. Turns out that the games were each spin-offs from the Sniper Elite series – wherein the very serious gameplay got turned on it’s head a bit, and saw you traipsing through a B-movie interpretation of World War 2 Germany, tackling the Undead Nazi hoard.

There’s not much more to it than that. There’s a very quickly glossed over story that we’re playing in a Universe where Hitler, knowing he was about to lose the war, unleashed a zombie horde on Europe. This sees you playing as a range of German characters, trying to rid the country of the zombie plague – which, if nothing else, is a nice change from the patriotic American characters we usually see in games as cheesy as these.

Zombie Army Trilogy seems perfectly fine to just point you roughly in the right direction, on the rails to your next objective, and hurl zombies at you. Sound repetitive? For the most part, it is.

You find yourself doing the same thing, on repeat, for most of the game. The objectives might change, but fundamentally, none of that matters.

And sure, some of the Scooby Doo-level spooky atmospheres are good for a laugh and kind of fun to wander through, but it’s not enough to flesh this game out to more than what it was – a collection of DLC that’s already too old. For the most part, this game looks bad and the gameplay doesn’t do much to save it.

One question you’re probably asking yourself is: why did a Sniper game do a zombie spin-off?

That’s a very good question, because unlike the stealth and technique involved in Sniper Elite (finding the perfect spot, getting there without being seen and blowing someone’s head off from a mile away), Zombie Army is pretty much centered around zombies shuffling at you from the middle distance.

Your primary weapon is always a sniper rifle of some sort, and you find yourself constantly wanting to change to your shotgun (despite how awesome it is to watch a slow-mo clip of a zombie’s skull collapsing as you put a round through it).

Sniper Elite is a third person game that wasn’t without it flaws – the most noticeable of which was a pretty shoddy third person camera mechanic.

A lot of lower end third person games have this problem – an ethereal camera that doesn’t seem to be anchored to your player character at all.

Gears of War had it right – when you turn around, give the camera half a second to catch up, as it would take you to re-aim in real life. Zombie Army suffers this same problem, and you can’t help but feel it might have been better as an FPS.

Zombie Army Trilogy is a game that manages to be OK in pretty much every way – not doing anything to make itself particularly playable or hate-able. The graphics are fine, gameplay works fine and there’s a couple of entertaining moments.

If you really like shooting zombies, or you’re bored with your Xbox One in the current lull of new games, check it out.

The post Zombie Army Trilogy Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

But by sticking to this formula closely and by adding a unique art style and a compelling mechanic, we’re left with something very special.

In a small dark town in Boston, at the height of the Great Depression, an unnamed man in a trench coat and fedora polishes off a few drinks to drown his sorrows in a bar, before leaving and driving away.

He gets a couple of miles in a deep and menacing woods before spotting a girl on the road. He swerves, crashing the car and badly injuring himself. When he awakens, the girl is gone and he’s in dire need of aid.

He seeks that help past the foreboding iron gates of Vesper Manor – an old house off the road which wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Scooby Doo (if not for how genuinely unsettling it’s visage was).

The Manor, of course, is unattended. Our hero is forced to break in. And that’s where the intrigue begins.

Because, of course, Vesper Manor is no ordinary home, it has a series of dark and terrible secrets housed within, and it’s up to our hero to not only find help for himself, but survive the horrors of the house.

Along the way you’ll find clues, photos and newspaper articles that explain the situation you’re in a bit more, but you’ll never be armed with anything more than a packet of matches – which you’ll need to ration as you find the occasional extra around the house.

Darkness and light are the main mechanic of the game, with the entire thing being displayed in a fittingly 1920’s black and white; with black equally darkened, and pure white equally light.

Most of the puzzles you solve involve turning on lights to banish malevolent spirits blocking your path to the next room or clue, and there are some fun versions of this dotted throughout the house’s four levels – lampshades, fireplaces, candles – each with a different purpose in the game.

It’s a simple system and when combined with a four button control scheme and a very simple interface for puzzles, it’s elegant and fun.

One negative for the game comes when it stops being a puzzle game, and starts instead to play like Pac-Man – i.e. avoid the ghosts.

Our film noir protagonist isn’t built for fancy footwork, and neither is the camera the game deploys. Occasional segments that involve getting from A to B using a lucky dodge rather than a brilliant idea are punishing and tedious, and derail the momentum of the action.

The addition of mysterious jazz crooner Selena really ties a bow on this very sweet, very beautiful game.

White Night is a good example which really shows what DLC games are capable of, definitely worth a play.

The post White Night – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Not forgetting it’s standalone DLC Gat Out of Hell.

I’ve already given Saints Row IV a review on shanethegamer.com, so I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail when it comes to the plot and gameplay of this new, updated version.

Quite simply, nothing has changed.

The newly elected President of the United States has to save the Earth from alien invaders from inside a computer simulation, collecting super powers as he goes. Both version of the game are nearly identical, and you can’t help but wonder if a revamped version of the game for the next gen consoles was completely necessary.

While the gameplay, the story and the humor certainly hold up, the graphics certainly don’t. Running at a better frame rate and better res doesn’t make all that much difference when your base game was a little on the shabby side visually to begin with.

With that said, if you missed it the first time around, this is a nice point to jump into the franchise as there’s still a huge amount of fun to be had here. I played through the entire game for the second time, simply because the nature of the gameplay makes it surprisingly addictive.

What was new to me, however, was the addition of the standalone DLC chapter – Gat Out of Hell.

Taking place directly after the conclusion of the main story of SR4, GooH sees Kinsie’s birthday party aboard the Saints space craft ruined by a malevolent Ouija board sucking the Boss into hell.

The board reveals the intent is for the Devil to force the Boss, the most worthy human, to marry his daughter Jezebel. Kinsie and Johnny Gat pair up, head to Hell to save the Boss and stop the Satantic shotgun wedding.

Now, again, the graphics don’t really hold up here, but for the most part this additional chapter offers a pretty great experience.

The setting of hell, a metropolis full of lava, demons, slums and skyscrapers is just different enough to keep you from feeling like you’re still in Steelport (despite Lucifer’s halo offering you access to the exact same super powers you earned yourself in the simulation).

The supporting cast in Hell makes for some great comedic moments too – whether it be Shakespeare working as a DJ in the entertainment district, or Vlad the Impaler in Hell’s prison/daycare being forced to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. There are some great cut-scenes too – including a truly brilliant musical sequence that sees the devil’s daughter lamenting her imprisonment like a Disney princess.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is a little weaker than in SR4.

In order to get the Devil angry enough to engage with you, you have to create chaos around the streets of hell. You do this through a series of mini-games, and while these are all skinned and explained slightly differently to how they were in the original game, they’re fundamentally the same thing and don’t really do enough to act as story driven content.

With that said, there’s just enough story missions to drive the action ahead, and just enough collectibles to keep you busy.

All in all, if you’ve played either of these games before, chances are it’s not worthwhile diving back in on your next gen console. But if you’re looking a bit sparce on games, this is a good one to give a try.

The post Saints Row IV – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

With an idea that’s actually new and fresh, in a gaming landscape where we’re so often given repackaged and recycled ideas, it’s then especially sad that Evolve is so much less than the sum of it’s parts.

Plot is pretty thin on the ground when it comes to Evolve – it seems as though the intent is far more directed at getting your Hunter on the ground to go face a variety of nasty monster. Based on my time with the game, all I can really tell you is that a non-Earth planet that’s inhabited by humans is under attack by a collection of immensely tough and dangerously monsters.

In a bid to fend off these things before they kill everyone, a four-person team is put together to flush these monsters out of hiding and, using their distinct personal abilities, take it down.

And that’s about all the info you need really – the rest is kind of just white noise.

When playing the five day campaign mode, hunters versus monsters, each mission will have something at stake so that aiding the survivors will make your next round easier.

For example, one mission sees you try and rescue survivors near the weather control tower. If you can do it before the monster kills them all, they’ll get the tower working and the next mission you do will be during beautiful weather – i.e. no shadows for the monster to hide in. If you don’t, the weather will turn nasty with clouds or fog, and the monster will gain an added advantage while stalking you.

Each hunter has a very well defined and explained role to play in the hunting of the monster.

You’ve got the Assaults – massive super soldiers with a range of powerful weapons and abilities designed to boost their own strength. You’ve got Trappers, who specialize in finding and containing the monster through a number of unique tools – the most useful of which is the mobile arena, a portable force field that throws up a dome around the hunters and the monster so that neither can escape combat.

Then you’ve got your Support, which does exactly what you’d expect by offering various boosts to your teammates, along with the equal self-explanatory medic. These all play really well, and in the (sadly quite rare) occasion when everything in Evolve comes together as intended, the dynamic across a team can be wonderful.

However, the class structure is so rigid that if you’re down a teammate (due to death), the game will use bots to make sure it’s always a four person team, the whole thing can come apart pretty quickly.

Each class has three different characters you can play as – each with a few different abilities – so there’s some variety there, but it’s essentially the same gameplay wise.

When playing as the hunters, I found the offline mode much more enjoyable, as you’re able to cycle between characters on the fly. This is something new and exciting for an FPS, and frankly, I’d like to see that expanded on more.

Playing as the monster is a completely different experience from the fairly standard, albeit very slick FPS experience of playing as the hunters.

The monster has you play third person, controlling a large and sometimes unwieldy monster, stomping or flying about, doing it’s best to stay hidden and consume other animals to Evolve until it’s third and final stage.

Where the hunters are bogged down with strategy in their various abilities, the monsters are not. While the three monsters do have different skills, fundamentally they’re mostly used to attack or free.

The real trick with the monster comes in hiding, avoiding startling birds and eating enough to become strong enough to either kill the hunters or destroy whatever the objective is. Most of the time objectives can only be completed by a Stage 3 monster, which puts an interesting time dynamic on the game.

But while originality is all well and good, this game would have worked better as a campaign style experience – work together to beat a few Levels, then work together to take down a monster.

As it stands, the player controlled element of the monster means you’ll spend most of your time playing hide and seek, boosting around the map, not really doing anything.

Every now and then some non-monster wildlife will take exception to your presence and attack you, but for the most part Evolve can be broken down as 80% finding the monster and 20% fighting it.

You can’t help but feel as though this is an extra game mode someone has taken and just fleshed out as much as possible –like Dying Light’s ‘Be the Zombie’ mode, so Evolve just doesn’t ever feel like a full gaming experience – becoming the latest in the unseemly trend of releasing online focused game with no real core to fall back on.

I’m sure that it’ll improve itself (evolve, if you will) over time for free, much like Titanfall did, but for me Evolve loses points for not feeling like a complete game.

Definitely not one for buying, but maybe worth a few hours of hire on a rainy day.

The post Evolve – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.