Geekly Review #58

Once again another week passes by resulting in another weekend to Geek! Here’s what we got up to.

I’d been buzzing for the weekend for quite some time. There’s been a massive amount of hype surrounding the Video Game Awards and The PlayStation Experience both of which were taking place over the weekend.

I did the time conversions and realised that in order to watch the VGA’s I’d need to tune in at 2am. Not a problem. We had some friends over in the evening for some food, games and drink. Once they left I took myself upstairs and watched the New York Knicks lose to the Hornets to pass the time. Then the show began at 2am. The show itself was funded by Geoff Keighley and given that it was a very good award show. There were some oddities such as Developer of the year not receiving any stage time other than Reggie being called to the hosting area and congratulated. No video montage of any nominations just “boom here you are Reggie”. And a number of the awards weren’t actually announced at the show, to find the results out I had to use google which was weird considering I tuned into the show for 3 hours to find out the winners.

It was a good mixture of awards, performances and world premier trailers for new games and already announced games. The show started with a Nintendo musical and ended with Legend of Zelda gameplay which looks amazing. Not a sniff of Microsoft at this show which was odd, the majority of the premier trailers were multiplatform or Sony Exclusive, even Nintendo got 2 world premiers in so very strange with no Microsoft presence.

Here’s a re-cap of the winners and premiers.

During the Saturday once I caught up with sleep I was on Grand Theft Auto 5 all day. Although I did give Injustice a try as it was one of the freebies from PSN. It’s not too bad, the story mode seems pretty decent. However it is very obvious this is a port of last gen visually.

That was all filler as another big event was starting at 6pm. Sony’s first PlayStation Experience in celebration of 20 years of PlayStation. The hype regarding this event was unreal. Every possible game under the sun was rumoured to show here. Now let it be said I wasn’t disappointed with show. I did fall into the hype yes, but that still doesn’t mean I’m angry at Sony for what they did show. 25 games… yes 25 were show. Some of which we knew of, but alot of debut reveals. Those 25 were PS4 games too. The Vita also got a love in with 7 new games announced. Not to mention that the majority of those 25 will only be available on PlayStation 4.

Now, the age old argument of PS4 not having any games surely must be put to bed? Sony attended 3 video game conferences this year and held their own Sony Specific conference over the weekend and have revealed new games at each conference so far. The indie support that they’ve got on board in phenomenal.

Anyways so the bombs that were dropped were Street Fighter 5 being PlayStation 4 exclusive as Sony funded the development. Square-Enix trolled the gaming world in the biggest way possible revealing Final Fantasy 7 will release on PS4, but it’s a port of the PC version. The rage was so very real in the crowd.

 

Sony’s first party offerings are looking immense. The gameplay footage of Uncharted 4 was mind blowing. Bloodborne keeps looking better, The Order looked better than the last reveal, Until Dawn and Tearaway unfolded are becoming 2 of my most anticipated games of next year.

To see everything from the show, take a look here.

Sunday I spent roughly 7 hours in bed playing GTA5 and finally completing it again. I loved every minute of it as much as I did the first time. It’s without a doubt one of the finest gaming experiences ever. There’s still much more to do such as the strangers I’d left till the end and the collectibles. I’ve rarely felt such satisfaction watching credits roll down the screen as I have while watching GTA5’s credits.

Another bit of news from the Sony Experience is that EA were releasing 3 free games on Sony consoles. Need For Speed for Vita, Mirror’s Edge for PS3 and Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare on PS4. I took advantage of this and picked up Mirrors Edge and PVZ. I gave PVZ a shot and was pleasantly surprised with it. It’s mutliplayer only, but a charming and fun FPS. I tried 2 classic team death matches and enjoyed my experience as both a plant and a zombie. I’m thinking I’ll try this more during the week, anticipating playing the equivalent of Domination. Thanks EA (Did I just say that?)

And finally I’d like to rage slightly on some news I read on Sunday that certain Amiibo figures have been discontinued already. I had a hunch that some of these would end up being rarer than others, but I had thought they’d be on sale at least a year before they’d start becoming hard to find. Apparently Marth, Villager and Wii Fit Trainer are discontinued now. This has resulted in a frenzy on all supermarket websites and online retailers to hike the prices. I managed to get a Marth on launch day and it’s still in it’s packaging. I think it’ll stay that way now. Also the rumour of the Gamecube adapter being discontinued too. The only was to enjoy 8 player multiplayer smash is with that adapter and it’s apparently gone already. Sure you can still get one on Amazon, for the price of £99 without Smash or  £120 with Smash. Wake up Nintendo… you’re throwing money away to scalpers who are buying up all your shit and selling it on at 4 times what you’d suggest at retail. They’re stealing your money and ruining people’s enjoyment of Amiibo and Smash.

What a weekend aye!

– Murr

Destiny has been out for around 4 months now, and it has taken me up until now to try out the raid. I don’t really know why it took me so long to do it either.

But on Friday night I had a whole night of Destiny planned with my Destiny (and real life) friend Ryan.

We’d attempted the Vault of Glass earlier in the week, but gave up at the Templar because it was getting late, and, well I was tired. We were able to pick up where we left off though, and after a pretty painful time of finding 4 other people to play with, which included checking the Bungie forums, our friends lists, and the Destiny Reddit – seriously, something needs to be done about this, I’m not sure if match making is the fix, but at least make an area in the tower where you can look for raid buddies…

Anyway, once we found our team we launched our mission to Venus. Everyone was a little quiet as we didn’t know each other. I was a little nervous as I’d never done the raid before, but I played it cool to the others, as they had all done it previously.

 

We spawned in at the Templar check point. First we had to defend the confluxes from waves of enemies. This bit I understood as it was mainly just shoot anything you see, then follow everyone to a little cave and wait it out – I’m still not sure why we went there…

Second was taking out the Oracles – What’s an Oracle? I didn’t know. Then all of sudden people were shouting “Middle” “right hidden” “left top”… What the hell are they talking about? I don’t see anything, I will just try and stay alive. After a minute or two, I realised that what they were calling out was the location of the oracles which were yellow cube things that you had to take out, I even managed to take some out!

The final part of this stage was taking down the Templar. Luckily I knew what to do on this bit – Shoot the big  dude when his shield is down. We breezed through this section without a single wipe and I received my first ever loot drop from the raid, I was rewarded with Praedyth’s Revenge, a legendary sniper rifle only available in the Vault of Glass.

Then we had to tackle the Gorgons Labyrinth, this is where you have to sneak through a maze of sorts avoiding all Gorgons completely, because if they see you, you’re dead, but not just you, your whole team. My plan was simple, stick as close as possible to the people who know where they’re going. We made it through first time, but Ryan had been waiting at the beginning trying to get another party member, as we’d lost one after the Templar, so on his run through whilst we waited, he got spotted. Which meant we had to start again – silly Ryan!

Once we were through and after picking up the chests (I got myself some boots) it was on to the disappearing platforms. Basically you just have to jump through before the vanish.

Again I had no idea what to do, so I just went for it, and miraculously I made it first time – beginners luck or pure skills?

Now we were at the final hurdle, the Vault, where Atheon and his minions awaited. But first, we had to regroup, we’d lost another team mate – damn disconnects.

When waiting, you tend to get a little bored, so naturally you start to mess about, pushing team mates off cliffs whilst they’re idle, having fist fights. Clearly we were starting to bond, we’d been through a lot, but relatively unscathed, we were having fun and it was starting to show. We were comrades, bro’s, buddies, whatever you want to call it. The Vault had brought us together, and just at the right time.

It was time to move on, time to focus and face Atheon.

We ran in to the Vault and took on the first challenge, the Gatekeeper. We took him down easily. This then opens up two Vex timegates, half of the team travel through these to retrieve a relic whilst the other half defend some confluxes from various waves. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the crux of it. This part took us a few tries, but eventually we got passed it, and finally on to Atheon himself.

In this final phase Atheon will teleport three people to another planet, when there you have to retrieve another relic and bring it back through a Vex Timegate. When you get back in the vault, you can activate it, and it will create a bubble which will protect you from Atheon attacks whilst unleash ‘Times Vengence’, which is granted after destroying the Oracles in the portal and allows you to deal extra damage, but it only lasts a little while, and then you have to do it all again.

 

It took us a couple of tries, including one where I got disconnected which resulted in our team wiping, but eventually we did it. We had beaten the Vault of Glass. I was super chuffed to have finally done it, we all danced in celebration, said our thanks for helping out, and added some new friends, then we parted ways.

Overall, it was an awesome experience, I’d made some new gaming friends, got some good loot (three pieces in total), and generally had a blast. It’s fair to say that Destiny has gotten a lot better since I’ve hit the higher levels, and it makes me pretty excited for what’s to come.

The rest of my weekend was pretty lazy, but we did get to go and see the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen on Sunday night. It was the 150th Anniversary of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, I know what you’re probably thinking, “A bridge?” This isn’t just any bridge though, it was a technical marvel when it was built. Anyway, the fireworks show was amazing, and lasted for 12 minutes, which for a fireworks display is a long time.

 

– Will