Kane Newell – Writer
This week Ive been up to quite a lot. Firstly I got by hands on The Uncharted collection on Friday, that’s been the main game I’ve played. I’ve finished UC1 Drakes Fortune, and I’m half way into UC2 Among Thieves. My personal favourite of the 3 once I finish that. I’m going to dive straight into UC3 Drakes Deception. So I can get my review of the collection done and out this week. After my review I will have to patiently wait for the Uncharted 4 beta. I can’t wait to jump in and give you all my first impressions.
I downloaded the highly anticipated Star Wars Battlefront just to see what all the fuss was about. I have no interest in the games nor have I watched any of the films!! (Yikes) but I was more interested to see if it was a reskin of Battlefield 4. While it seems different and has its own personal touch, I’m wondering and worried will it hold its own against the big online communities of Destiny and of course the new Call of Duty that comes out before the game. I’m not positive but hopefully there is room for it. Played the usual FIFA 16 and Hearthstone but nothing much to talk about.
And finally I watched Sicario in the cinema. Apparently it means Hitman. The film started off with a bang and then didn’t really go anywhere, until near the end. It was a good interesting film with some very tense scenes, and then there was the boring scenes, and scenes when they talk but I can’t understand or hear them because they have a gritty mumbling voice, that put me to sleep a few time. It’s kind of annoying that all the best parts were shown off in the trailer.
Jorge Godinez – Writer
In the spirit of the upcoming Halloween, I replayed Luigi’s Mansion for what felt like the 100th time. Actually, I have probably played the game 100 times but the number of times I actually completed the game is much lower. It amazed me that I found some secrets that I had never found before in my other playthroughs of the game. If you have never played this Gamecube classic then you need to get on it, and fast. The game is actually really short, I finished it in a day, but it has a lot of character that offers up a lot of fun. I think that I will make it a Halloween tradition to play Luigi’s Mansion every October and I definitely think that you should too.
Daniel Garcia-Montes – Writer
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the other hand was far better (as expected). It had the perfect mix of shooting, climbing, and puzzle solving, evenly spacing out all these elements appropriately, not to mention some of the most exciting and explosive set pieces I have ever seen. Even the story and especially the graphics were far better in the second game, so basically I had a blast playing it. I’m currently over halfway done with Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and so far it’s close to but not quite as fun as the second game. Like its predecessor, it has a good mix of shooting, climbing, and puzzle solving, and its story is more dramatic for sure. But somehow it’s not quite as exciting as Uncharted 2, although it’s really very close. I still have to see how the last quarter of the game goes before I decide which game I like better, but so far Uncharted 2 is my favorite. Tune in for next week’s “Gaming Respawn Plays…” to see my final thoughts on Uncharted 3 and the series as a whole.
James Haxell – Writer
These last two weeks have been rather uneventful in terms of playing games for me, with only the odd minute being free. Nonetheless, I was able to finish Assassins Creed IV, which is defiantly the best one for a long time, especially as Edward is a top lad. The story was actually interesting and simple to follow, with me even carrying about the characters, which rarely happened in previous titles. Sailing began to become a bit tedious towards the end, with me mainly using the time to do odd jobs, only tweaking the steering to avoid land. The only other thing I’ve played, albeit briefly, was Destiny, The Taken King. Destiny has grown on me over the year, at first I was a little apprehensive towards it, but soon I found myself becoming addicted to its loot. It’s just a well-made shooter that is easy to pick up for an hour or two. From what I’ve seen of the Taken King, it’s by far got more going on than the previous two dlc’s, but still think its price is too high. It adds pretty much sort of stuff as the last two add ons did but on a grander scale, seeing as it’s an expansion. Still it works the same as before with just more going on.
Michael Fitzgerald – Writer
I’ve been mostly playing two games this week, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and FIFA 16. There will be a full feature covering Uncharted that will be up on the site this Tuesday, so look out for that this week. With that in mind, I’ll keep my comments on it here brief. Basically, I enjoyed it but there was also some criticism which I will cover in more detail on Tuesday. Overall though, I liked it and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it before. Whether someone who has played it should spend money to play it again depends on what they think of the graphical overhaul it’s had. As a first time player of Uncharted, I found it to be a lot of fun and I eagerly await the chance to play the other two when I get a chance.
My playtime on FIFA 16 was mostly dedicated to wrapping up my first season of Career Mode with Kilmarnock. Why Kilmarnock you ask? Well, the reasons were twofold. Firstly, I thought it would be a good challenge to take a struggling team and try to lead them to glory. Also, I regularly frequent an online forum where one of the members is a long suffering Killie fan who regularly laments their poor form and horrific performances. Such was I moved with his plight, that I decided to take the reigns at Kilmarnock and in the immortal words of Martin O’Neill, “bring some success to the football club”
It hasn’t been easy. Killie’s best player is erstwhile striker Kris Boyd who started the season mode rated at a whopping 69 out of 100. after a seasons worth of development I’ve managed to drag him as high as a 70, but his advanced age means that I probably won’t be able to rely on his goal scoring prowess for much longer. Thusly, I’ve been desperately trying to develop younger striker Dale Carrick into a successor of sorts, but he’s currently at 63, although he is developing somewhat.
Despite the low ratings of the players (most hovering around 58 to about 65) I managed to force Killie over the line and win the title in my first season. It took a lot of staunch defending and a slew of 1-0’s and 0-0’s to achieve it though. That being said, Boyd ended the season as top scorer with 18 goals and players like Hamil and Slater all provided goals from midfield. My big achievement was being able to go the whole season without dropping points to Celtic. I played them four times in the league and managed to beat them all four times. My bogie sides were Hamilton and Motherwell respectively, who both took points off me over the course of the season with an annoying regularity.
Overall though, I managed to bring the title home to Kilmarnock and did it with a few game to spare. You’re welcome David 😉
My goal is to start an alternative career mode where I pick a team at random and then swap to a new team at the end of each season. I’ll document my successes and failures at each respective club. I might do this with 2 minute half’s in the interest of time management, but hopefully I’ll be able to produce something worth reading with this.