Diving into the Dino-rific World of Durango

How the hell is the survival game genre still thriving? Ever since Minecraft blew the minds of gamers and developers alike we’ve been inundated with a constant barrage of survival-based games. Ever depleting hunger bars and durability stats are becoming inescapable headaches that, according to the ever blossoming Early Access Survival genre, gamers just can seem to get enough of.

While we still can’t get a full-fledged Monster Hunter title in NA, Nexon has chosen to bring Ark: Survival Evolved to mobile devices. Nope, not beating around the Mesozoic Era bush with this one. Durango is pretty much the mobile equivalent of Ark, seeking to capitalize on the latest popularity trends that include dinosaurs and survival games.

Nexon is hardly the only company to follow trends and pump out safe bets. What sets the publisher apart from other MMO conglomerates like Webzen, Aeria and OGPlanet is the quality of their library. That isn’t to say the aforementioned companies don’t publish fun and interesting titles, but Nexon has consistently been a cut above the rest for years.

Durango is no exception. Despite the obvious placation towards the massive crowd of gamers garnered by titles like Ark: Survival Evolved, What! Studio is creating one of the most addictive and high quality MMO experiences on Android.

Delving Into Dishonored, 4 Years Later

Giving players a free digital copy of Dishonored: Definitive Edition with Dishonored 2 was a fantastic idea. I remember liking the original game four years ago but not really being all that impressed with its story. Picking up the sequel was a bit of an afterthought. During Gamestop’s Black Friday sale I traded in some games to get Skyrim, which was only $30 at the time, and had another $30 in credit left over which I impulsively used to get Dishonored 2 since it was also on sale for $30.

I’m telling you this so you understand why I decided to play the original before diving into the sequel. It was a matter of happenstance. I wasn’t itching to play the sequel, it just sort of fell into my lap. And it turned out to be a phenomenal decision.

My Overall Thoughts on Dishonored

Final Fantasy XV’s Misuse of Achievements

(There are no spoilers in this article.)

Even as ignored as they are, achievements have had a substantial impact on gaming over the last decade. They can serve a myriad of functions, from keeping players invested for longer than usual with a steady drip of accolades to encouraging exploration and self-induced difficulty settings like Dishonored’s ‘Mostly Flesh and Steel’. Yet for some reason even the most practiced and highly regarded developers don’t seem to understand how to utilize achievements effectively.

Final Fantasy XV is a great example of how achievements can be overlooked and misused. Most of the achievements are story-based and many others are “do X for the first time.” Very few require any bit of end game content or even mild exploration, making it fairly easy to stumble your way into getting all of the achievements shortly after you see the end credits. You can get all of the achievements in about 50 – 60 hours, which is incredibly short for an RPG that has Final Fantasy in the title.

Paragon’s Monolith Update: Better, But Not Good Enough

The Monolith Update for Paragon is great. It’s a massive step in the right direction and has made the game much better. Characters move much faster, the jungle has a clear purpose and routes, and overall the game plays ten times better than it did when it first went into open beta. The Epic Games’ foray into the MOBA genre also remains the most graphically stunning game in the genre, and now that the update has made the game playable it may see a rise in popularity and growth.

However, it’s still quite difficult for a veteran player of MOBAs like SMITE and LoL to recommend Paragon. Even after the update it’s still one of the worst MOBA experiences currently available and gives players no reason whatsoever to switch from their current MOBA of choice.

Paragon still feels like it’s meant to be Baby’s First MOBA, like how you’d recommend Runescape to someone who has never played an MMORPG before. Being easily accessible and a stepping stone to more complex games within the same genre isn’t a bad thing. In fact it’s something the MOBA genre could definitely benefit from considering how high the learning curve can be. Unfortunately, Paragon’s new player experience is so poor that it’s hard to justify recommending the game even to genre newcomers.

A Personal Issue with Reviews (My Own, Not Others’)

I’m not happy with my Final Fantasy XV review. While it does touch on the main points and gets across that I ultimately liked the game, I left a lot out.

For instance, the game is heavily imbalanced. Unless you purposefully ignore the open world and/or go out of your way to play sub-optimally, you’re going to end up wildly over-leveled before you’re even halfway through Chapter 2. This makes a lot of the combat mechanics, like weapon and elemental weaknesses, pointless and largely ignorable. I never used any of the Armiger weapons and very seldom used magic, especially once I had Ultima Weapon, which is insanely easy to get.

This highlights an internal struggle I’ve had with reviews for some time. Do I leave things out in order to be concise and focus on the main point, or should I nitpick on every aspect possible? Sometimes I make the decision while I’m writing, which is what happened with the FF XV review. I was going to go further in-depth on the game but felt like the main idea was there and well-formed enough to end the review –which is why I said, “While I could go into detail about every little aspect and feature in the game, I think you’ve gotten the point by now.”

Final Fantasy XV: Where Innovation and Nostalgia Meet (Spoiler Free)

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

After 63 hours of gameplay and my first platinum trophy ever, I can safely say that Final Fantasy XV is a return to form for Square Enix and one of the greatest main installments of the franchise. While nostalgia will keep it from gracing the top of many older fan favorite lists (myself included, FF IX will always be #1 to me), it could easily become the widely talked about favorite for the next generation of Final Fantasy fans.

No More Midnight Launches?

There were at least 150 people in line for the midnight launch of Final Fantasy XV at my nearby Gamestop. I was number 117 and had the game in my hands by 12:06am. After waiting for my Uber and downloading the 9.4GB Day One update, I was finally able to dive into the game at a little past one in the morning.

Rapid Fire Reviews

Ever feel like what you’re aspiring towards amounts to little more than practiced futility? If so then maybe you understand why I’ve been gone for so long. If not, what does it matter? I’d rather not recap the last little while of my life. That’s not why I’ve sat down to write today.

Instead, I want to give you a little recap of what I’ve been playing and burn through what I’m calling ‘Rapid Fire Reviews’. I’ll list the name of the game, give a one word rating, then further expound upon that one word for those of you who don’t just skim through content and actually bother to read.

A Hardcore Gamer’s Review of Hardcore Henry

I just saw Hardcore Henry and thought it appealed to the gaming community enough to warrant a review video.

TLDW: Go see Hardcore Henry in theaters!

Glen’s Staff Picks Humble Bundle Review Video

This is a review of the Staff Picks Humble Bundle that was released on April 5th, 2016 and will run until April 19th,2016. The Steam links to each game and everything referenced in the video can be found in the YouTube description for this video.