A KING’S TALE: FINAL FANTASY XV

A KING’S TALE: FINAL FANTASY XV

No strings attached A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV is a free downloadable side-scroller beat 'em up. Think Castle Crashers crossed with Final Fantasy XV crossed with the original sprite based Final Fantasy games. A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV was originally a preorder bonus (yuck!), but now is being given away for free (yea!). Now this is nothing like most of the free-to-play offerings we get now days. While it's a short play at about one and a half hours, there are no microtransactions in sight, no ads, it's not a rip off of another game and it's not generic (although it does start off that way). https://youtu.be/tKJ_Ni4d5EE A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV. Throwbacks galore A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV breaths new life into the side-scrolling beat 'em up genre by adding in the fighting mechanics of Final Fantasy XV. This includes warp strikes, elemancy (magic), link strikes and a few little surprises. This makes combat fun and really sees the game stand on its own. As someone who played Final Fantasy XV right through, I feel that having the back story made the relationship in the story telling parts (parts that quite literally tell the story) have more impact, but it's really not necessary to have played Final Fantasy XV to enjoy A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV. Shorter than Kingsglaive The big shame here is…

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IMPRESSIONS: ZELDA BREATH OF THE WILD

IMPRESSIONS: ZELDA BREATH OF THE WILD

Zelda Breath of the Wild is here and  VERSUS PLAYER has decided to change up the format and stop referring to reviews as reviews, we find dissecting a game into individual categories like music or graphics or gameplay doesn’t really work for us. Instead, we are going to focus on little stories that sum up whether or not I choose to continue my adventure or switch (heh) over to a different game. In the wise words of Usher, these are my impressions. Feature Image by Josh-DO-It Zelda Breath of the Wild is a huge surprise for me, I knew I’d purchase it if I was going to drop a cool $479 on a Nintendo Switch but only because it was one of the few titles that were coming out at release. My relationship with Zelda isn’t a long one, I played the original on the NES at a friend’s house, I purchased Zelda: A Link To The Past at a Games Wizard sale long after the SNES was released and long after I’d completed titles like Final Fantasy VII. At the time I regarded that as the be all and end all of RPGs. I enjoyed A Link To The Past and finished it but it didn’t leave me with many memories. I completely skipped the N64 era and wouldn’t touch a Nintendo console until…

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FINAL THOUGHTS: FINAL FANTASY XV

FINAL THOUGHTS: FINAL FANTASY XV

How the Mighty Have Fallen Stumbled A while back I posted an article, IMPRESSIONS: FINAL FANTASY XV, where I wrote about my thoughts on the game 12 hours in. You can find that article below. What I wanted to do now though is give an update with my final thoughts on the game after spending a total of 42 hours with it. This included finishing the main campaign, playing around with the first DLC pack and completing a few more quests for my girl Cidney. The Good Overall, Final Fantasy XV gets a huge thumbs up. Pretty much most of what I had to say about the game initially was positive. Beyond that point there was more to love. I found the boss battles to be fun. In fact, battles stayed interesting the whole way through, feeling fast and dynamic, with a sense of danger of losing. Many modern RPGs have you tearing through your foes or repeating the same exact move over and over. In Final Fantasy XV, I felt encouraged to try out new weapons, mix up my magic and combos with my crew and to actually use items. The summons looked amazing, although they were underused. There was one particular summon that had one of the best cutscenes to go along with it that will satisfy all the old school Final Fantasy fans…

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IMPRESSIONS: THINK OF THE CHILDREN
Think of the Children

IMPRESSIONS: THINK OF THE CHILDREN

Ready! Set! Parent! Think of the Children is a couch co-op game that will make you never want to have kids. Unlike other games that have inspired it, like one of our favourites Overcooked, it allows for online play. It also has one of the best Steam descriptions out there; Little Bobby’s chasing a feral dog, the BBQ’s on fire, Jen’s eating poisonous berries and the birthday cake still needs icing. It’s just another wonderful day with the kids so... Ready! Set! Parent! This sums up the game wonderfully. In Think of the Children, you play as a parent who is trying to stop a bunch of kids from getting into danger and killing themselves, all while you are carrying out a bunch of tasks. These tasks include setting a picnic table, building a sand castle, putting up a piñata and more. The game was created by Jammed Up Studios, an Australian game studio, at a 48 hour Game Jam and is currently undergoing polish before it is released. It will be published by Surprise Attack Games, an Australian indie games label. First it will be released on PC via Steam and The Humble Store and then it will be ported to consoles. https://youtu.be/IM0iN3UTQmw Not safe for children At the IGN Select Awards 2016 and RTX Sydney 2017, there were two stages on offer. The first, shown below, had…

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IMPRESSIONS: FINAL FANTASY XV
Final Fantasy XV

IMPRESSIONS: FINAL FANTASY XV

Thoughts on the game 12 hours in Right off the bat let me say that I'm loving my time with Final Fantasy XV. The world is incredible, the combat is fun and the enemies and quests are varied. Final Fantasy XV is a sequel that is, in their own words; "A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers." Right from the get-go it's apparent how true this is, along with the influence of western role playing games and modern society. What's old is new There are amazing little touches in the game and throwbacks to the older games in enemies, stickers for you cars, the names of objects and characters and more. This is a very unique Final Fantasy game. It's open world, but you are encouraged to travel from quest to quest in a linear fashion by hopping into your real-world inspired car, the Regalia, and letting one of your companions drive you there for minutes at a time. Or you can call a Chocobo up and head off road. I don't mind the car trips and appreciate I can fast travel back to most places. When heading on the road in my ever changing Regalia, I flick through the radio stations, turn the music up and browse the net on my phone (IRL, not in game). It is fantastic that old Final Fantasy soundtracks can be purchased at shops…

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WHY I WON’T PLAY THE WONDERFUL GUITAR HERO LIVE AGAIN
Guitar Hero Live

WHY I WON’T PLAY THE WONDERFUL GUITAR HERO LIVE AGAIN

Despite it being a great game On our fifth episode of our VERSUS PLAYER podcast, Jase spoke about how much he enjoyed Guitar Hero Live. I had never played the game, despite still keeping my Xbox 360 around to occasionally have a go of Rock Band (I have not felt the need to update to the current generation version). On the podcast, Jase spoke about the interesting Guitar Hero TV (GHTV) mode and later we discussed the accessibility of the guitar, with its six key structure of two rows of three keys. It was this new guitar that held the most interest, although being able to rock out while watching music clips in GHTV sounded very appealing too. So I borrowed the game, spent a fun few hours with it, and I'll never play it again. Guitar Hero Live hits all the right notes Guitar Hero Live is an incredibly well made game. There is so much to enjoy here, from the well constructed guitar, the solid track list, the unique presentation of the career mode and GHTV. The tutorial is very user-friendly and the game makes it simple to identify between those keys in the top row and bottom row. Throughout play, there are also chords that require both the top and bottom row keys to be pressed at the same time and bars that indicate…

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GAMES WITH GOLD: BURNOUT PARADISE
Games with Gold Burnout Paradise

GAMES WITH GOLD: BURNOUT PARADISE

Does this Xbox One Games With Gold game deserve your time? All you Xbox Live Gold subscribers received an early Christmas present from Microsoft in the form of the Games with Gold Burnout Paradise Xbox 360 title. Now full disclosure, we at VERSUS PLAYER have a lot of history with this game (you only need to listen to our podcasts to hear us talk fondly about our time playing this game together online back in 2008). Now the question I'm sure a lot of people are asking is if it's worth your time playing this game, what 8 years later. Yes, yes, a million times yes! Even if you have the brilliant Forza Horizon 3 and are loving the newest snow themed DLC, Burnout Paradise is different enough to make it stand on its own, what with takedowns, dynamic races, incredible stunt jumps and the fantastic fun to be had cruising around with your mates online. And most importantly, BOOST! Does it still hold up? For me, two things make this game stand the test of time. Car handling: Drifting doesn't get much more satisfying than in the Burnout series and here it is done masterfully. Add in boost mid cornering and just try not to smile. The controls are as tight as you could hope and the game is accessible for newcomers (particularly when driving an aggression car).…

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OUT OF THE COLLECTION: ALIENS INFESTATION

OUT OF THE COLLECTION: ALIENS INFESTATION

ALIENS INFESTATION ON NINTENDO DS NEEDS MORE ATTENTION Growing up I dined on a large diet of 80s and 90s action/sci fi films. Aliens was one of my all time favourites. So back in 2011 when this game was quietly announced I was interested. I found out it's game play style was like the classic 2D Metroid and Castlevania and was hooked. I ordered it from a British online retailer as no-one in Australia seemed to be stocking it! The DS game arrived a few weeks later. I started playing and found myself nowhere near as excited as I expected to be.  Frustrated, I put it down only an hour into gameplay and didn't get back to it. Fast forward to 2016. I found myself reconnecting with some of the older titles in my collection.  Aliens Infestation was one of the first. My time with it has been an incredibly different experience from the first 5 years ago. Upon some reflection I realised that 3 main features of this game helped create the connection I originally longed for when acquiring this game: The visuals - the graphical style was reminiscent of Metroid fusion on the Gameboy Advance but with an Aliens flair and the character art had all been created by Chris Bachalo from X-Men/Generation X comics of the nineties. I’ve always enjoyed his art…

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BATTLEFIELD 1: TWO WEEKS IN THE TRENCHES

BATTLEFIELD 1: TWO WEEKS IN THE TRENCHES

WW1 IS THE FOCUS IN BATTLEFIELD 1 Battlefield 1 immerses players in the horrors of World War 1. The gameplay moves at a refreshing pace which falls somewhere between Call of Duty 4 and ARMA 3. The online FPS hasn't strayed too far from it's predecessors but has made enough changes to make it feel refreshing. The overall package is near flawless for me in terms of gameplay however the crux of my enjoyment comes from playing with my friends. FOREWORD We do things a little differently here at VERSUS PLAYER, we're a small startup games blog that gets to review the latest titles on release. While we do provide a score at the end our break-down is all about cohesiveness. A game can look and sound fantastic but does it work well together? It was clunky and full of bugs but it's charm won me over and I love it! As a gamer it's all about my combined experiences that sway my overall opinion of whether something was worth my time so don't be surprised if the overall score doesn't match up with the individual elements that put this game together. What follows is a collection of experiences and opinions I've formed during my two weeks with Battlefield 1. For a summary of the final score please feel free to skip to…

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