Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Review

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Publisher: Valve Developer: Valve Platform: PC Release: 2012 Players: 1-20 (Casual / Public), 10 (Competitive) Genre: First-Person Shooter / Strategy Rating: 8.4 \ 10.0: Great

Above is a player using the dreaded AWP.

For those of you unaware, Counter-Strike is a series of tactical FPS games with a competitive scene that has garnered massive amounts of attention. The first game in the franchise was as a mod of the original Half-Life, and the rights to the game were purchased by Valve, the developers of Half-Life, leading to multiple sequels including the most recent entry, Global Offensive.

In a standard match, there is a team of terrorists and a team of counter terrorists. The terrorists must plant and detonate a bomb at one of two sites and the CTs must prevent them from activating it. Once a player dies, they're out of the round. The round ends if all of the players on one team are eliminated, if the bomb is detonated, or if the bomb is defused after being planted. After every round, players are awarded a certain amount of money based on whether they won the previous round and how many enemies they killed and can then buy weapons or gear such as armor that can protect you from additional bullets or a defuse kit (for CTs only) that can deactivate the bomb faster. This setup allows for some of the most tense gameplay you will likely ever experience while playing a shooter.

It's worth noting that CS: GO plays nothing like the vast majority of modern shooters; there's no sprinting, no regenerating health, most of the weapons don't have aim-down sights, and some small arms won't kill with a single headshot. But don't let any of this fool you -- you can be dispatched just as easily if not more so than you can be in other titles in the genre. Additionally, the recoil patterns of most weapons are exaggerated to the point of unrealism, meaning that you are absolutely required to fire in short, controlled bursts to hit targets at medium range or longer. I've often been killed in close-range battles in which I held down the trigger on an automatic weapon only to find I only landed one or two hits. This is a mild but somewhat frequent frustration that I'll never truly get used to.

New modes have been added to this edition of CS that add a fair amount of replay value. These include Team Deathmatch, an interesting take on the traditional gamemode that awards different amounts of points based on the strength of the weapons you use; Arms Race, in which you earn increasingly more powerful weapons as you get more kills and undo the progress of enemies by killing them using the knife; and Demolition, a fast-paced twist on the traditional bomb scenario in which you play on small maps and earn stronger weapons as you take out more enemies as opposed to buying your own gear. Demolition follows the same die-and-you're-out format as Casual / Competitive, meaning there are no respawns. TDM and Arms Race, however, do feature respawning, and although those modes are mostly enjoyable, the spawn points are absolutely dreadful. I'd often get placed directly in the line of fine of enemies and sometimes would even respawn partially trapped inside a ceiling, immobilizing me. This would force me to either wait to be killed and sacrifice my spot on the leaderboard or switch teams in order to respawn instantly and maintain my score. Unsurprisingly, the latter was almost guaranteed to irritate my (former) teammates. A matchmaking system has been implemented for the official gamemodes, but a community server browser is also available.

Global Offensive's overall balance is solid, but some weapons and maps are questionably designed. A few maps place the spawn point of one team closer to the objectives than the other, and a few weapons seem disproportionately priced. For example, the Negev and the M249 are priced at $2,000 and $5,400 respectively despite having similar stats. I've also experienced countless one-hit deaths at the hands of users of the AWP, an incredibly powerful bolt-action sniper rfile.

CS:GO may have some frustrations, but its excellent tension make it a easy to recommend to anyone seeking a hardcore FPS experience.

Ups
Gameplay is very tense
Multiple gamemodes
Steam Workshop support
Matchmaking and server browser

Downs
Minor balance issues
Frustrating recoil patterns
THE AWP KILLS WITH ONE BODY SHOT


Also available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PlayStation 3

The System Difference: The console versions of CS: GO have only been updated several times since its release. The PC version features more maps, modes, and weapons, as well as Steam Workshop support which allows for easy access to user-generated content.

ESRB: M (PARENTAL WARNING: This game contains large amounts of realistic blood) Content: Blood and Intense Violence Price: $14.99 (Download)

Just Cause Review

Just Cause

Publisher: Square Enix Developer: Avalanche Studios Platform: PC Release: 2006 Players: 1 Genre: Third-Person Shooter / Sandbox Rating: 7.2 \ 10.0: Good

Above is Rico in a speedy, motion-blurry pursuit with the policia.

Just Cause has become a series renowned for its massive open worlds and explosive action that would leave Micheal Bay impressed. The developers, Avalanche Studios, have become full on triple-A developers thanks to their series of summer blockbuster simulators, but they had humble beginnings.

Anyone familiar with this franchise will not be surprised by the plot; The tyrannical Salvador Mendoza, a man believed to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction, has taken over the fictional South American island nation of San Esperito.  Because of this, Rico Rodriguez, who has now become a staple of the series, is sent to the country to aid the rebels who reside there in overthrowing Mendoza and to take out the president's corrupt government officials. This gives the title of the game an often overlooked double meaning, as "Just Cause" can be interpreted as Rico's actions being honorable or as a shortened version of "Just because", the perfect answer as to why you a do any of the over-the-top things the game allows you to.

Those who have played later games in the series but not this one may take while to adjust to the gameplay. Many of the major elements of games to come are still present -- the massive game map is littered with races, side-quests, and villages to liberate. However, the game itself plays much differently, mostly due to the less fleshed-out stunt system. This game's grappling hook is still fun to use, but it can only latch onto vehicles, meaning that travelling by using the parachute and hook as many players did in JC2 is not possible. Thankfully, you're able to request a vehicle drop at your location whenever you're not in a pursuit. As you liberate more villages and bases, more vehicles become unlocked. My biggest issue with the unarmed vehicles in the game is that you can't use weapons while you're riding on top of them, making on-road vehicular combat needlessly frustrating. While in pursuits, I often had to abandon my car every several minutes and climb into a police or military one due to taking significant damage because I was unable to defend myself without heavily reducing my mobility.

Liberating settlements also works quite differently then it did in later games. You start a liberation by speaking to the rebel or gang member outside the settlement, and both sides will immediately begin to call in reinforcements. There are three barricades that must be destroyed in every settlement (that are really easy to get around and could hardly be considered barricades, but "logic" and Just Cause are an oxymoron), and the enemies will suddenly disappear once you either capture the flag or take out a gang leader depending on which type of settlement you're overthrowing. These battles feel incredibly intense due to the large number of NPCs. I was frequently getting hit by bullets I had no hope of avoiding, but this was never too much of an issue since enemies will occasionally drop medkits upon defeat. The scale of these shootouts is impressive, and the number of weapons dropped by combatants on the ground that I would see in the aftermath of liberations never failed to impress me. This game was released before the open-world shooter formula was refined, and the game can sometimes feel even more repetitious than modern Ubisoft titles, and if you don't enjoy those types of games, you certainly won't enjoy this one. However, I don't mind very much when the repetitious activities are so entertaining.

It's difficult to notice that this game's AI opponents don't live up to the "intelligence" part of the acronym when you're fighting them on foot in large groups, but things get ugly when vehicles are involved. You'll often see massive pileups of cars in the middle of villages after liberating them, and the enemies are just as reckless on the open road. They would frequently ram me off of cliffs and took themselves down with me, and would also often run into lampposts and trees. The enemies don't cease their stupidity while airborne, either; the helicopter pilots may be able to shoot you from incredible distances even through thick trees and vegetation, but they usually stay still and will never attempt to avoid your gunfire when you're on foot, making them incredibly easy targets if you've got a rocket launcher equipped.

As for the campaign missions, they're okay, but mostly forgettable. There are a few fairly fun moments I can recall, but what I most remember are the numerous glitches I came across and frustrations that arose from them and the ludicrous saving system. Some of the more notable bugs I ran into were when tanks tumbled around uncontrollably when I drove them, triggered explosives bouncing across the ground when I deployed them, objective items disappearing upon retrying levels, and the game instantly crashing on PC if the game was in anyway minimized. I once accidentally pressed the Windows key while piloting a helicopter when I meant to lower the vehicle by holding the nearby CTRL key. As a result, the game crashed and I lost nearly half an hour of progress. (This apparently doesn't affect Windows XP users, but if you own a PC running an operating system from 2001, it's probably factory-built and has no hope of smoothly running this game) "Why didn't you just manually save?" you might be asking. Well, the only way to save your progress in Just Cause is via prompts that appear when you complete a campaign mission or if you use a control panel at one of the safehouses you unlock as you liberate San Esperito. This combined with the inability to start the game up from mission checkpoints caused me to become stuck for long periods of time on some segments of the game.

Just Cause is one of the most polarizing games I've played in awhile. The gameplay has thrilling highs and extremely frustrating lows; the islands are densely packed with well-detailed vegetation and foliage, but the FMV cutscenes are grainy and ugly; the flamenco soundtrack does wonders to accentuate the action, but the voice acting is hilariously bad. The game may have many shortcomings, but they are ultimately overshadowed by the often entertaining action. It's far from a masterpiece, but it's worth checking out if you want to kill time with some open-world silliness.

Ups
Impressively large-scale battles
Beautiful visuals (for the time)
Fantastic flamenco soundtrack
Clever title
Hilariously idiotic A.I

Downs
Horrible cut-scenes and voice acting
Repetitive tasks
Frustrating save system and glitches
Hilariously idiotic A.I.

Also available on Xbox, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 2

ESRB: M (PARENTAL WARNING: This game contains intense violence, suggestive content, some swearing, and drug references) Content: Blood, Drug Reference, Language, Intense Violence, and Suggestive Content Price: $6.99 (Retail / Download)

5th Anniversary Post

It's Told You So Review's 5th Birthday!

I'm publishing this post in celebration of my blog's five, albeit belated anniversary! Since the day I created this blog, I've published 105 posts, received 23,505 pageviews, received 125 comments (my replies among them), and been followed by 11 people (my two Google accounts included)! This wasn't my greatest year, but I did add quite a few new features. I know this may be disapointing to hear, but expect even less reviews in 2017 than last year. I've been working hard to make sure my reviews are as detailed, thorough, and reliable as possible, and that can take quite awhile. Be sure to keep commenting and checking out my blog, and maybe become a follower! Thanks!

Clash Royale Review

Clash Royale

Publisher: Supercell Developer: Supercell Platform: iOS Release: 2016 Players: 1 (Training), 2 (Online) Genre: Strategy / Action Rating: 8.3 \ 10.0: Great

Above is a match in Area 1, Goblin Stadium

It's been a long time since I've played a mobile game that wasn't a port of a preexisting title that I found to be not just okay or good, but great. Clash Royale is one of those rare games. Any mobile gamer is very likely familiar with the name of its Supercell. They're the developers behind the hugely successful base-building strategy games Clash of Clans and Boom Beach, both of which are often rightfully accused of being very difficult to advance in without paying for microtransactions.

This spinoff of CoC abandons Supercell's consumer-unfriendly format in favor of a more simple concept: Two players draw cards to place troops on the battlefield in hopes of getting them to their opponents side and destroying their three towers. These cards cost a certain amount of elixir which you can only hold onto a limited amount of at once and slowly regenerates over time. At the end of each three-minute match,  the player who has destroyed more enemy towers wins. The match ends early if someone's primary tower is wrecked and goes into overtime if the game is tied, at which point the next person to wreck an enemy tower wins instantly.

After completing a very easy tutorial in which you battle against the A.I., you are given several cards to start off with and then must face others players. There are nearly 70 different cards you can collect and battle with including troops, buildings, and spells. Clash of Clans players will be familiar with many of these, such as the skeleton-summoning Witch, the Mr. T lookalike the Hog-Rider, the mighty cyborg-ninja known as P.E.K.K.A., and the fast-firing X-Bow. My favorite newcomers include the Musketeer, and markswoman armed with a long-range cannon; the Elite Barbarians, a pair of warriors that are stronger and speedier than the normal barbarians; and the Executioner, who is capable of hitting the same enemies multiple times by using his axe as a boomerang.

As with Clash of Clans, you gain trophies from winning battles and lose them when you're defeated. CoC's leagues have been substituted with ten arenas whose trophy requirements get higher and higher as you advance. Each arena has a variety of cards you can unlock from chests, which are also won from battle. This is where the free-to-play mechanics rear their ugly head; These chests contain cards and gold and take from three to 24 hours to unlock. If you collect enough duplicates of a card, you can upgrade it with gold. The higher the level of the card, the more duplicates and coins you need to upgrade it again. Upgrading cards earns you experience points, and leveling up increases the health of and damage dealt by your towers. These cards also vary in rarity; they can be common, rare, epic, or legendary. Rarity doesn't necessarily determine quality, but the legendaries tend to be the most unique. For example, the princess can attack towers from beyond their range, the Log is the only card that can knock back ground units, the Electro Wizard can attack two foes at once ... There are several other legendary cards, but they all possess qualities that more common cards don't.

It's worth mentioning that Supercell's traditional cartoony art style continues to charm, and the music, while not very varied, well suits the battles. The overtime music especially helps to make long-lasting matches suspenseful.

While "clan" may not be in the title, clans are still an integral part of the game. By joining one, you are able to request for cards every eight hours and donate unwanted duplicates in exchange for gold and EXP. You can also battle your clanmates for fun or for practice. If you ever want to test out a new deck, I'd strongly recommend battling a clanmate rather than the game's A.I. trainers which never seem to execute commonly used strategies and cannot properly prepare you for real matches. The most important part of being in a clan is participating in participating in the weekly Clan Chest event. Every week for three days, your clan must try extra and to desrtor towers in battle in order to level up a chest that opens when the three days are over. A frustrating aspect of the clan system is the lack of a global chat. This means that the only way to recruit people that you don't know personally is to invite
someone you see in a featured replay in the TV Royale section (or hope someone comes across your clan in the clan search.

One of the biggest challenges of Clash Royale is crafting a proper deck. Your deck is limited to eight cards that are shuffled at the start of each game and eventually cycle, and you can hold four in your hand at once. There are countless potential scenarios and statistics you must consider when making a deck, such as the average cost of the cards, how easily they can be countered by commonly used cards, whether they're able to counter other cards, and how many have low and high HP.

The game is fun and balanced for the most part, but sadly, no Supercell game is complete without pay to win elements. Users can purchase gems to pay for upgrades when they have insufficient gold or instantly unlock chests, as well as buy chests in the shop have a high chance of containing rarer cards. Because of this, I occasionally encountered players that were level 11, which requires an absurb amount of EXP, or who had level 3 legendary cards. To put this into perspective, I have played this game for dozens of hours and have only aquired four total legendary cards - two Miners and two Logs. Upgrading an individual legendary card to level 3 requires six.

Minor balance issues, frustrations , and mildy repetitive gameplay aside, Clash Royale is as well made and entertaining as a mobile game gets. Strategy fans will love it, and even if you dislike Supercell, it's definitely worth a shot.

Ups
Strategic gameplay
Great visuals and music
Tons of cards to collect
Clans are very helpful

Downs
Microtransactions mess with balance
Recruiting clanmates is difficult
Mildy repetitive gameplay


ESRB: N/A Content: N/A Price: $0.00 (Download)

Crysis Review

Crysis

Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Crytek Platform: PC Release: 2007 Players: 1 Genre: First-Person Shooter / Sandbox Rating: 8.9 \ 10.0: Fantastic

Above is a military outpost being completely leveled.

In 2007, Crysis was released on PC and was received excellently. In addition to having solid gameplay that was unlike any FPS before it, the game wowed gamers and critics alike with its stunningly beautiful visuals. However, this meant that only the beefiest gaming rigs were able to run the game, and until it was ported to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2011, PC gamers obsessed over the question "Can it run Crysis?".

These days, more people remember the game more for its technical prowess than its gameplay, which begs the question: Is the game as fun as it is pretty?

Before I address this, let's discuss the plot; The game starts off onboard a plane from the perspective of the protagonist. While learning nothing but the code names of the soldiers surrounding him, Nomad (that's you) is told that the island they're about to infiltrate has been invaded by the North Korean military. Partway through their descent towards the island, Nomad is unexpectedly knocked off course and plummets into a river.

This is a decent setup, but I feel that the weak point of this game are its characters. I wanted badly to be able to care about these characters, and they were unable to prove that they were anything more than generic soldiers before (minor spoiler alert) two of them are killed off. Even Nomad himself is completely forgettable. You could argue that a character Halo's iconic Master Chief, another faceless marines in power armor was no less bland in his debut title, but he was shown to have an interesting backstory and actually displays emotion in more recent games. Nomad, however doesn't even appear in future Crysis games. However, there are likely few other people that feel this way, and the story's shortcomings do little to diminish the game's overall quality.

To answer the question from earlier, Crysis still plays as well as it looks. Progression is linear, but the island setting allows for stealth as well as as explosive battles. Helping to allow for variety is Nomad's nanosuit. This high-tech getup allows him to generate an extra layer of armor to absorb damage, make himself nearly invisible, sprint lightning-fast, jump incredibly high, and have superhuman strength. Using these abilities consume's energy, and managing it is crucial to surviving. While both your health and energy can regenerate, don't think that makes this an easy game. Even on normal difficulty, Nomad can be taken down with a realistically small number of bullets when unarmored, so don't try playing this game like you would Call of Duty. Adding further depth is the ability to customize weapons in real time. There are several sights and attachments that you can apply after collecting them, and you can also add a laser pointer or flashlight, change the firing pattern, or even sometimes swap the ammunition of most weapons. When I first got tired of going into each encounter guns blazing, I thought that I'd be unable to attack from long range. I then had a lightbulb moment and equipped an assault rifle, slapped on a sniper scope, set it to semi-automatic, loaded it with incendiary ammo, and added a tactical attachment that supplied me with an infinite amount of tranquilizer darts, then cloaked and picked off enemies from afar one by one without being detected. That's not to say that the more action-packed approach isn't just as entertaining -- charging towards a group of enemies and grabbing one of them with super strength with one hand and shooting the rest with the other is just as satisfying, and witnessing rubble fly as mounted gunners tore through small buildings was exhilarating. It is a bit disappointing, however, when you're forced to take the action-oriented route in certain setpiece moments. Additionally, the various vehicles you can operate, despite being equipped with powerful turrets, are often nearly destroyed in seconds, which is a real shame since shooters that allow you to use vehicles in unscripted sequences are scarce these days. The controls can also be a bit awkward on console -- I found my self accidentally switching to weapons unintentionally because the weapon wheel and "switch to previous weapon" are both mapped to the same button. This is just a nitpick, and due to the large amount of keys the game uses on PC, I was still very impressed that all of the vital commands were crammed onto a controller (leaning was sadly excluded).

I mentioned how amazing Crysis looked earlier, but the game looks so darn good that it's difficult to overstate. Everything from the water to the foilage to the trees left me in awe, and the mission in which you board an alien ship is just as stunning as the coasts and jungles. I am a firm believer in the idea that gameplay is far more important than graphics, but I have little doubt that you'll be impressed by this game. Crysis obviously has lower texture detail on the 360 and PS3 and the draw distance is a bit short, but it is still easily one of the best looking games on the seventh-generation consoles.

The first two thirds of Crysis are fantastic, but the missions that follow the defeat of the general you came to the island to take out are lackluster by comparison. All the aforementioned freedom is mostly gone, and the enemy soldiers are replaced by the flying tentacled Ceph aliens that are briefly seen effortlessly dispatching troops several times prior. While this isn't necessarily bad, it's a pretty dramatic change in gameplay. The final boss, however, isn't enjoyable at all and lasts for what seems like forever even once you figure out its attack pattern (and some PC player have even reported that the boss was unkillable in their copy).

Crysis may not be a perfect game, but the the majority of it was incredibly enjoyable. Regardless of its issues, I can't recommenced it enough to anyone itching to play a unique FPS.

Ups
Tons of freedom in combat (for the most part)
Nanosuit abilities add strategy
On the fly weapon customization I've rarely seen in other games
Amazing visuals

Downs
Complete lack of character development
Lackluster final few missions
Occasional performance issues
Vehicles are near-useless

The System Difference: Graphics fanatics will obviously want to pick up the PC version of Crysis if they have an able gaming rig. However, if you're more concerned with performance, then you're out of luck, as even high end PC users reportedly have experienced framerate issues, which is the fault of the game and  not hardware. I have a GTX 1070 graphics card with 8 GB of video memory which massively surpasses the game's hardware issues and was able to run the game fine fro the most part. Bizarrely, the vertical sync settings locked my framerate to 50 6PS despite my monitor supporting 60 FPS, but this didn't bother me. What did bother me is that the framerate briefly dropped below 30 FPS in the most intense battle in the game and didn't exceed the low 40s to mid 30s range until the mission was over. As for the console version, I  encountered some bizarre bugs on the 360 such as wreckage of houses floating in midair and soldiers being unable to stop using mounted guns, but there was nothing game-breaking. Last but certainly not least, the mission Ascension in which you control a helicopter is surprisingly absent from the console version, possibly due to it often being regarded as the worst segment of the game.

Also available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3

ESRB: M (PARENTAL WARNING: This game contains intense violence, strong language, and moderate amounts of realistic blood) Content: Blood, Strong Language, and Violence Price $19.99 (Download)

Kirby: Planet Robobot Review

Kirby: Planet Robobot

Publisher: Nintendo Developer: HAL Laboratory Platform: 3DS Players: 1 (Story, Arena, MKR, K3DR), 1-4 (TKC) Release: 2016 Genre: 2D Platformer / Action Rating: 8.7 \ 10: Fantastic

Above is Kirby battling a boss in the Robobot armor.

Kirby: Planet Robobot isn't a particularly unique game. It doesn't do much to differentiate itself from its predecessoors, but it does surpass the games that came before it in one way: It manages to be one of the most consistently fun platformers I've played in quite awhile. If you're in search of a deep plot, you'll want to avoid a large number of Nintendo games, but there is a tad bit more complexity here than in previous Kirby titles; Everything is well and good on Kirby's homeworld Pop Star until a fleet of alien ships arrive and start to industrialize the entire planet. Unsurprisingly, it's up to Kirby to defeat the head of this operation and restore peace to Pop Star.

Gameplay wise, Planet Robobot is hardly distinguishable from Triple Deluxe before it. As you might expect, the game plays like a combination of Kirby's Adventure and Kirby Super Star with a few neat twists including new copy abilities, creative sequences where you jump between the foreground and background of a level (just like Triple Deluxe), and the all new Robobot armor. This powerful suit doesn't appear in every stage, but when it does, it's an absolute blast to use. Just like Kirby, the armor is able to scan enemies and absorb their abilities, making the machine practically unstoppable. These power trip sections are in my opinion more fun then the Hypernova and Super Ability sections from previous games in the series due to armor abilities which add a lot for variety and a larger number of puzzles and increased interactivity. Wreaking havoc with the aforementioned power ups in the previous games was fun, but you often caused all the destruction with very little input and mostly watched the chaos unfold. With the Robobot suit, overcoming the obstacles that lie before you hardly ever involves simply holding down a button or watching a cutscene unfold life before. Whether or not you're using the Robobot, the levels are as entertaining and creatively designed as ever.

As I said before, KPR includes some fun new Copy abilities. These include Doctor, which equips Kirby with deadly pills and syringes (Rated E for Everyone!); ESP, an ability inspired by Ness from Earthbound which enables you to control a deadly ball of energy using telekinesis; and my personal favorite, Poison, which grants you the power to spew and surf on lethal purple liquid and breathe out small toxic clouds. While these new abilities are great, two of my favorites from Triple Deluxe, Beetle and Bell, have sadly not returned.

Presentation wise, this is easily one of the strongest games in the franchise. Industrial-themed areas usually look incredibly dull, but Planet Robobot uses this theme to its advantage by adding adorable cyborg enemies and colorful areas amidst the metal and machines, making for a game that looks fantastic by 3DS standards. It's also well worth mentioning that Robobot easily has one of the best soundtracks in the series so far, which is quite a feat. The score features tons of catchy new tunes that span a decent number of genres, as well as plenty of excellent rearrangements of old fan favorites. The references to the series's past don't appear exclusively in the music, either -- there are also numerous references to Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Kirby Super Star which I won't spoil here which are sure to bring a grin to the faces of longtime fans.

In addition to the main story, the game also features a few other modes that can be unlocked. The first of these is Team Kirby Clash, a co-op RPG-lite mode in which you battle bosses using one of four Copy abilities with a team of AI or human-controlled Kirbys. While the mode is plenty of fun, the progression is shallow, and there isn't much replay value. Next up is Kirby 3D Rumble, a brief but entertaining top-down sub-game where you rack up combos by defeating enemies without taking damage. Two more modes are unlocked upon completing the adventure: The Arena and Meta Knight's Revenge. The Arena has barely changed at all since its previous iterations; You select your favorite Copy Ability and face every boss in the game with limited health items to use in between. In the Meta Knight's Revenge, you play through the main game as Kirby's frienemy Meta Knight. The prospect of playing through the game of the iconic antihero is made is better by the inclusion of several powerful moves that can be unleashed by collecting M-shaped coins.

As much as I enjoyed this game, there are a few issues that must be addressed. While the game runs at a very smooth 60 frames per second most of the time, I occasionally experienced brief slowdown (I played the game on both the original 3DS, and the New 3DS and there were no differences in performance despite the faster processor of the newer system). I was also mildly disappointed by how similar the game was to Triple Deluxe (as great as that game was), and it doesn't always feel like its own unique title.

Regardless of these minor issues, I highly recommend that any 3DS add this title to their library. It may not be very different from its predecessors, but any fan of the Kirby franchise is quite unlikely to be disappointed.

Ups
Creative level design
Robobot segments are great fun
Charming and detailed visuals
Fantastic music
Entertaining extra modes
Tons of fan service

Downs
Team Kirby Clash is fairly shallow
Occasional framerate drops
Too similar to Triple Deluxe

ESRB: E Content: Cartoon Violence Price: $39.99 (Retail / Download)

Just Cause 3 Review

Just Cause 3

Publisher: Square Enix Developer: Avalanche Studios Platform: Xbox One Release: 2015 Players: 1 Genre: Third-Person Shooter / Sandbox Rating: 8.6 \ 10.0: Fantastic

Above is Rico, just causing some chaos.

Have you ever wanted to play a game you can decapitate a statue, attach the head to a heavily armed helicopter, and use the head as a wrecking ball whilst launching an endless barrage of missiles, and are morally obligated to do so? If your answer is "Yes", then Just Cause 3 is for you.

For those of you unaware, Just Cause is a series of open-world action games in which you take control of Rico Rodriguez, a man obsessed with freeing oppressed fictional countries from the reign of evil dictators ... by reducing countless military assets to flaming rubble.

This time around, things are a bit more personal, as Rico's homeland, the fictional Mediterranean archipelago Medici is being controlled with an iron fist by General Sebastiono Di Ravello. The general plans to use a precious ore known as Bavarium, which is found only in the region, to take over the world, therefore justifying any "crimes" committed by Rico. If you have any doubt that liberating Medici wont be exciting, then the game immediately proves you wrong; unless you don't find bombarding military property with an infinite supply of rockets from atop a plane to be the least bit thrilling. While this stunt is difficult to recreate, this opening gives you a good idea of what to expect.

Rico is eventually thrown off the plane, and meets up with his best friend Mario Frigo, who explains that he and his fellow Medician rebels are in dire need of help, and calls in a helicopter to bring Rico to the brilliant scientist Dimah Al-Masri, head of the rebellion. She outfits Rico with a wingsuit, an substitute to vehicular travel that's difficult to master, but incredibly useful.

After flying towards to a small unoccupied fuel station, Dimah also equips you with a brand new grappling device. Just Cause 2's grappler was a lot of fun to use, but could only really be used to tear down statues and yank enemies towards you. The all new device allows for much more destruction, as you can pull any object that's not rooted to the ground towards a solid surface or another object. You immediately get to put it to the test by tearing down several fuel tanks, resulting in a beautiful series of explosion. You're then instructed to blow up a nearby bridge to stop an incoming military convoy, which reveals that unlike its predecessor, JC3 gives you access to unlimited triggered explosives.

After the bridge is demolished, the mission concludes, and what you do next is up to you to decide. Will you go out of your way to free every settlement from Di Ravello's wrath, or travel around the beautiful landscape seeing what you discover? There's entertainment to be had whatever you decide to do, but it's easy to get lost if you don't stick to the optional objectives; the islands of Medici make up a whopping surface area of 400 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), and every acre is truly a sight to behold. This land is divided into three regions, each of which offer a unique experience. Insula Fonte is a rural, agriculture-focused area littered with vibrant fields flowers; Insula Dracon houses a large amount of  oil stations; and the incredibly dangerous Insula Striate is widely varied, containing both snow-capped mountain ranges and Bavarium mines.

While there is tons to do in this game, the core of the gameplay lies in liberating the towns and military bases peppered throughout the archipelago. In order to free a settlement, you must destroy every military asset in the area. Towns will often contain speakers, Di Ravello Statues, billboards, and other means of spreading propaganda, and most restricted areas are littered fuel tanks, electrical units, radars, and satellites. Most civilian areas will also have a police station, which is taken over by calling in rebel reinforcements are taking out enemy troops and vehicles. After freeing every settlement in a province, you will be able to fast travel (extract) without using your limited flares, and the location of any collectible items is revealed. Reducing government control over Medici is loads of fun at first, but by the time that only a few settlements remain, liberation will feel like a chore. To make matters worse, the game's framerate will suffer horribly when there's too much occurring onscreen at once (or sometimes when there's hardly anything occurring), though this rarely lasts for long.

The one thing that keeps the action from becoming stale is the vast amount of freedom you you are given in combat. Say that you're being confronted by a helicopter; you could simply gun it down, hijack it, tether it to a nearby surface or hack a nearby anti-aircraft turret and have it take down enemy aircraft for you. I once saw someone down a copter by tethering it to a car, driving it off a bridge which weighed it down, and bailing right before the vehicles crashed. It's moments like these that simultaneously add of strategy and silliness amidst the nonstop chaos. If you'd rather take out Di Ravello's forces silently and stealthily, then this game unfortunately isn't for you; the closet you can get to an alternative to going in guns blazing is picking off the opposition from afar with a sniper rifle. (However, if you're in search of a "liberate bases in exotic nation"-style sanbox shooter where stealth is effective, than I'd strongly recommend playing Far Cry 3 or 4)

Making the combat even more enjoyable is the varied arsenal. While there is a selection of fairly generic pistols, assault rifles, and the like, there are also creative weapons such as dual-wielded automatic shotguns and a lock-on rocket launcher that splits into smaller rockets to hit multiple targets.

Adding even more depth is the new leaderboard system. By performing a wide array of feats ranging from farthest distance ascended with the parachute without touching the ground to most enemies dispatched with a single clip of ammunition, you are ranked on list against a randomly selected pool of players and your friends that play the game. If you do something absolutely insane like drive out of a cargo plane multiple kilometers above the ocean and survive (just like yours truly did here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-gJmiZ1NA) and you want to see if your friends can outdo you, you can send them a call out daring them to do so.

The equipment upgrade system has been given a major overhaul; rather than simply collecting weapon and vehicle parts to increase power, there is now a wide variety of optional "GEAR mods". Some of these can't hurt to have activated, such as mods than increase your maximum items and reduce the cooldown of equipment drops, while others are suited to certain play styles. For example, if you care more about witnessing objects go flying than causing destruction quickly and efficiently, you'll want to equip your planted explosives with rocket boosters. If you fall into the latter category, you might also want to activate the Glass Grenades mod, which causes your grenades to explode the moment they make impact with a surface. I developed a strategy of placing explosives with the Proximity mod activated at areas where I knew reinforcements might arrive that would explode as soon as an enemy approached them. However, these mods aren't available from square one -- in order to unlock them, you must complete challenges. Each category of gear has its own set of enjoyable challenges. My favorite challenges are the wingsuit courses in which you glide through wings to the accompaniment of an uplifting soundtrack and the Crash Bomb challenges that have you drive a bomb-rigged car towards a set of targets. Based on your performance in the challenge, you are awarded up to five gears that go towards unlocking mods. While the challenges are fun for the most part, some of them can be incredibly frustrating, especially timed Destruction Frenzies that take place in bases with chaos objects that are spread far apart or take an excruciatingly long time to destroy with bullets. I even encountered a glitch during one of these challenges that placed an invisible barrier in front of the targets, making it nearly impossible to get a five-gear score until I took a riskier alternate path to the objective. I was also mildly annoyed that I had to earn gears in order to unlock the ability to aim down the sight of my gun, which is essential to making the most of semi-automatic weapons, given this feature was usable from the very beginning of JC2.

Another aspect of JC3 in which it outdoes its predecessor is the presentation; the HUD and menus look sleek and professional, and the voice acting is a massive step up over exaggerated so-bad-it's hilarious performances in Just Cause 2 -- this truly feels like a Triple-A game.

If you're planning to complete this game 100%, then be prepared to sink around a hundred hours into this game, if not more; you'll have to liberate every settlement, bring one of each civilian vehicle to a Frigo Garage, earn five gears on every challenge, light every rebel shrine, pay your respects at every ancient tomb, dig up every vintage weapon and vehicle part, and collect every entry in Di Ravello's audio diary.

My final and possibly largest gripe with this game is that the repetitiveness can make even the most fun things I did in the game feel stale. My first time pulling a helicopter towards the ground felt incredible, so did wingsuiting over the beautiful landscape, but such activities start to get old once you've played the game for as long as I have.

Just Cause 3 isn't an outstanding game, but the sheer amount of replayability easily overshadows the flaws, and it will keep any fan of open world action entertained for a long time.

The System Difference: While JC3 is a blast on all platforms, but it is reportedly the most stable on PlayStation 4. I only played the game on PS4 for a couple hours, so I'm not sure if that version of the game contains some of the glitches I encountered on Xbox One. The game still lagged and eventually crashed when the action got too intense on PlayStation, so no player is safe from that issue. The console version also has annoyingly lengthy load times. If you own a powerful computer which an NVidia GPU, it's the best platform to play on. I've played the game on my PC which has a GTX 1070 graphics card with 8 GB of video memory as well as on my Xbox One and experienced no performance issues when using the highest graphical settings at a 1080p resolution. However, players who use AMD hardware or that had 8 GB of RAM or less have reported frequent crashes and memory leaks.

Ups
Massive open world
Engaging combat
Decent voice acting
Incredible visuals
Brand new leaderboard
Fun upgrade system

Downs
Liberation ends up feeling like a chore
Occasional performance issues
Lengthy load times
Some poorly designed and glitchy challenges

Also Available on PlayStation 4 and PC.

ESRB: M (PARENTAL WARNING: This game contains moderate amounts of realistic blood, intense violence, and some strong language) Content: Blood, Intense Violence, and Strong Language Price: $59.99 (Retail / Download)