Author Archives: Justin Fox

It’s been raining non-stop (for at least a month now?!) and I’ve been gaming a LOT! I’ve geeked out (when do I not?!) and dug up some more older games that I probably should have played when they were first released. Fallout 4 (2015) has to be my favourite game of all time; the post-apocalyptic theme, deep lore, companions, the massive open world and balanced RPG and action gameplay. I’ve been hanging for Fallout 5, and that’s been primarily the catalyst in searching for other games which might fall into the “Open World Action RPG” genre.

After much research (the best bit!) I put my money into BioShock, a dark and atmospheric first person action shooter with RPG elements which many still say is their fave game of all time, and definitely a game of the year back in 2007. Metro: Last Light, a hardcore post-apocalyptic Ukrainian first person shooter and Fallout 3.

What’s awesome about buying these old games now is that A) they’re damn cheap! And B) They’re remastered versions which feature bug fixes as well as better graphics than release. Getting old games to run on the ZEN PC has been a lot of fun too. There’s a tonne of support out there when it comes to PC’s and gaming so finding others with the same issues was pretty easy.

So what did I think of these 3 games?

BioShock Remastered was a hoot! Really creepy, fast paced, intuitive retro fun. I loved the retro Art Deco style and especially LOVED the emotional ending I got (the good ending). I had no issues running it on Windows 10 either. When I finished the game I was left feeling super satisfied, so satisfied that I’m happy to put the series to rest (IE: not bother to play BioShock 2 or 3).

Metro: Last Light Redux looks and runs great (2013 so not that old). It came up a lot in searches when looking for games with a post-apocalyptic theme. It’s Russian, it tries to be hardcore with no HUD or crosshair too (I love that as HUD elements always ruin immersion for me), but in the end it just feels more arcade than hardcore shooter.  You can’t save when you want, only at check points. The saves get corrupt too so you have to start chapters over each time you launch the game rather than continuing from your last save. I’m about half way through the game and losing interest. The AI in combat just isn’t that engaging, the story isn’t grabbing me either. Not a bad game! Just not blowing my socks off.

Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition – in the end I just had to return to Fallout! Getting Fallout 3 to run on the PC has been super hard. I crashed out a billion times during the main story playthrough, sometimes I’d have a good 1-2 hour run with no issues, other times I’d be crashing every 15 minutes, or every time I went through a door or jumped to another scene. It was super frustrating, but fixing these issues is part of the fun of retro gaming too (geek out!). The mod community has come to the rescue again here, and this guide helped to get the game going (albeit still with random crashes every now and then).

Fallout 3 is on Nexus Mods too (oh noes!), so playing it with high res texture packs and a few other convenience mods has been a lot of fun. The game itself is a LOT like Fallout 4! I feel it’s as if Bethesda just took Fallout 3 and remade it with better technology, much like how Hollywood would take an old film and remake it today. I can see that if you were a Fallout 3 fan you could have been super underwhelmed with Fallout 4 as you might have been expecting a whole lot more, but as a huge Fallout 4 fan I was just so happy to be getting more Fallout, period!

So on that note, there’s Fallout (1997), and Fallout 2 (1998) I’ve yet to play. I’m eyeing the bundle on Steam right now… hitting that ‘buy it now’ button is inevitable!

EDIT: I’ve since played Fallout 1, my GOD, SO old school!!! I finished it with a guide, would not have been able to without! The bundle came with Fallout 2, and Tactics too, but will be giving those a miss. Bring on Fallout 5!

Running in 4K on the 65″ Sony x ZEN PC. Static screen grab doesn’t do this any favours though, got to see this on my screen in real life for major WOW factor.

That some games developers let the community mod their games is just truly UNBELIEVABLE! Check out the high res textures one fan has created to replace almost every texture in the game. So impressive (and mods are free!).

Horizon Zero Dawn left me wanting more. I felt like I was the only person out there that didn’t love it. I thought about that some more and started searching around for others out there who also didn’t fall in love with the game, that lead me to a few reviews which suggested that Horizon felt more like the best bit of a whole lot of games in one.

One of the games that Horizon was compared to was Witcher. I judged that game by it’s cover and never looked into it, but as I looked into Witcher 3 reviews I found that it won more game of the year awards than any other game in 2015, and at $40 (on Steam) with all DLC’s I couldn’t refuse.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an action RPG. It’s open world, which I love, the world looks and feels like Skyrim only it’s not your world, you’re not you’re own character either; in Witcher you’re the white Fox Geralt of Rivia, who’s a mature and super witty guy (some of his dialogue literally had me laughing out loud!).

Witcher 3 is all story and all graphics. Where Horizon had great action gameplay, Witcher really comes across as more of an interactive movie than an action game, but it does the interactive movie thing better than any other game I’ve ever played that”s for sure. And the graphics, WOW! It turns out Witcher 3 has mods on Nexus. I instantly downloaded a high res texture pack and man… this game, though a couple of years old now, is WAY better in ultra on a PC than Horizon on a PS4. WAY BETTER! I’d go as far as saying it also has the most detailed world, and most amazing sunsets and sunrises of any game I’ve ever played.

PS: As usual I’ve completed the main story line first, and I’ll move onto side quests later on. The main story ending is a motherfucker! I played about 40hrs or so to finish the main story and I amazingly got the good ending. Oddly it’s because I was just being “me” in the game (I made some rebellious choices that let my “daughter” in the game have fun, as opposed to over fathering her), that said most playters would have sunk more like 100 hours into the game to get to the end, they would also have made “good guy” choices, all of which would have served them up the sad ending, which is so fucking sad that heaps of Witcher 3 fans out there necked themselves.

Official Trailer.

Entering a Cauldron. Cauldrons are very much like Skyrim’s massive underground caves.

Lara Croft moments actually got more and more enjoyable.

One skill lets you call a ride whenever you like. Riding beasts lets you travel large distances fairly quickly. It’s a lot like riding horses in Skyrim (you can even set your ride to auto pilot), great mechanics and I found myself riding around quite a lot.

You get to make choices in the game, but they don’t seem to have any consequences. I assume because it’s a much smaller game in reality than say Fallout 4 (where choices completely change the outcome of the game), but at least the choices you make let you play Aloy how you like (which is strangely satisfying).

The skill tree is super easy to max out (in comparison to Fallout 4 or Skyrim where some players still have yet to max out their skill trees years into the game). I went for all the convenience skills to begin with as usual and it played out nice.

Loved using the map (hate using crap maps in good games!). Fast travelling costs you, which is pretty cool, and end game you can buy yourself an unlimited fast travel pack (very clever as this further encourages you to discover the rest of the world).

Yup, had to do whatever it took to get the secret shield-weaver armour! I used the photo mode to capture all these shots too (nice feature with on the fly camera panning, depth of field adjustments and more).

Horizon Zero Dawn is Playstation’s latest “Hollywood Blockbuster”. The hype on this game is HUGE, with pretty much every single games reviewer out there (both big and small) giving it a near perfect rating.

I watched a fair few trailers a while back, didn’t do anything for me stylistically (even though I love robots!), and the gameplay footage of the main character Aloy climbing up a huge giraffe like robot (in reality it’s one of the more fun things to do in the game) just put me off as that kind of dynamic story telling puzzle solving Lara Croft stuff just isn’t my thing.

The game came out last week. I tried to hold it at bay for a few days as Ved and I have been playing Ghost Recon Wildlands, but the hype train got me so I pulled the trigger.

I’ve just finished the game over the weekend. I stuck to the main quests and have kept the side quests for end game play. The game is super slick, and smooth as, but felt more like an interactive movie than a true open world action RPG. Much of the praise has been on graphics, open world, gameplay and story. I never felt like I was truly in an open world, in fact I always felt like I was on a track (unlike Fallout 4’s huge open map, or Skyrim, or Ghost Recon Wildlands). And regarding RPG, it’s light, very light. I didn’t do much RNG at all and still finished the game just fine with low end gear. Regarding the action; killing various robots was pretty fun, but shooting arrows isn’t so fun. I love shooters, but with an arrow you’ve got to press the trigger to draw it back, then let go of the trigger to let the arrow go, which makes fast shooting of big robots feel really really silly (as you’re shooting every time you let go of the trigger) so I’ve ended up setting my character up to be much more of a melee warrior (it’s nice that you can).

All in all I enjoyed the game (and I’m still enjoying some end game activities like clearing out cauldrons, which are set in huge Skyrim like caves) and story (especially loved the ending scene). Lots of reviewers out there are comparing Horizon to Far Cry, but I feel it’s more like an easy/commercial version of Fallout 4 (especially with the secret suit above, it’s setting is pretty much exactly the same as the overpowered X-01 Quantum Power Armour in Nuka World DLC), except I didn’t get anywhere near as emotionally involved as Fallout (Fallout 4 really really got me, especially the soundtrack).

Graphically it’s just a huge let down as I’ve been playing games on the PC in ultra. Horizon is just full of super low res textures on the PS4 (yes the graphics are meant to be better on the PS4 Pro) and I just can’t get over that fact, but the cut scenes (typically where you talk to characters in the world) have got to be the best looking cut scenes I’ve ever seen in a game (many have complained about strange lip synching but I still think it’s some of the best), controls are great (crafting arrows on the fly mid battle actually ends up feeling 2nd nature), the detailed map, and using it (especially zoomed in) is great and the costume designs, and character designs in general were awesome (especially love how they use rope, string and leather materials to tie emblems in place).

My PC really is the “console killer” in that I just can’t look at console graphics as being anything but bad, jaggy and low res now. I’d LOVE to see what Horizon looks like on my new Sony HDR 4K TV with a PS4 Pro, but I’m not ready to buy a Pro just yet. Having said all that, Horizon is one super polished game. If you’ve got a PS4 you’ve pretty much got to buy this game. IE: If the PS4 only came with one game, this would be it!