This week we welcome back Will after his honeymoon, here’s what we’ve been up to this week.
Rise of The Tomb Raider
As you’ve seen over the last few Geekly Review’s I’ve been making my way through my Christmas games. Well Rise of The Tomb Raider is from 2016 Christmas, so sat in the back log for a while. I finally got round to completing it making it game number 6 of 2018 I’ve completed.
I have to say I really enjoyed the first of these new rebooted Tomb Raider games. In fact I did a late to the party post about it a while back. So I was quite happy to see Rise of the Tomb Raider was not just an Xbox One exclusive amid all that controversy during its reveal. Having just completed Uncharted Lost Legacy recently I was always going to be comparing the games. Unfortunately for RotTR, this game is not Uncharted. I did enjoy the new methods you unlock to scale terrain as you progressed through the game. And there was definitely a lot more ways to explore in this game over Uncharted, but I didn’t enjoy it overall as much. The part that did actually grind my gears most was near the end of the game when you encounter the supernatural enemies, and that was something grabbed straight from the original Uncharted Trilogy. I’ve mentioned a few times on this site when covering the Uncharted trilogy on PS4 that I didn’t enjoy the turn of the super natural enemies appearing. And that’s the same here, really disliked it. Also a few parts of the ending of Rise of Tomb Raider were incredibly frustrating too, such after breaking the first gate down using the trebuchet.
The upgrading and improving of Lara’s skills was very much copy past of the first game in this new rebooted series. And that actually works well, I did enjoy improving her skills and the weapons while ongoing in the game.
Star Wars Battlefront II
And after RotTR, onto the next game, the rather controversial Battlefront 2. I’m not going to touch the multiplayer of this game ever, I’m very confident in that. But one thing that’s new to Battlefront this year is the inclusion of a campaign, So I’m happy to try this out. So far I think I’m about halfway through and it’s not actually that bad. Visually the game is excellent, the Battle on Endor looks absolutely stunning. And the space dog fights playing as a Tie fighter are incredibly fun, I have to say that the campaign mode is something that was massively needed in this franchise. I’m yet to try the arcade mode, but it appears that it’s an option to play the large battles that Battlefront as as series is famous for against Bots if you choose to play solo, or features a co-op mode to play either online or on the sofa with a friend. Another win to be honest.
I did get rather excited in one of the levels where I took control and was playing as Luke Skywalker, I hadn’t read into the campaign, so this was a pleasant and exciting surprise. So far I’m actually enjoying the campaign and can’t think of any complaints. But as said I’m staying well away from the multiplayer and have no intention of getting bogged down into the loot crate shit that has plagued this game.
– Murr
Battalion 1944
This weekend saw a closed Beta event take place for Battalion 1944 with it’s release date being just around the corner – 1st February. It started on Friday, but I only got hold of a code on Sunday afternoon so didn’t really get a chance to play as much as I would’ve liked to. Battalion 1944 is a classic WW2 FPS shooter that looks to recapture the core of competitive shooters. To me it’s very much like the older Call of Duty games, smaller maps, 5 vs 5 intense close quarters combat.
Both me and Murr actually got to play it back at EGX Rezzed last year and were really impressed with it. Since then I’ve been pretty eager to try it out again.
As I said earlier I didn’t actually get to play much of it yesterday but had a quick play on some capture the flag and Team Deathmatch. I left feeling kind of undecided with what I played, some of it was ok, but a lot of it still felt pretty rough around the edges and to be honest when I first played it last year I actually enjoyed it more. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it was just because it was new and exciting at the time. I think that maybe I’m just not in to that super fast paced twitchy shooter any more.
It’s fast paced and pretty frantic with quick time to kill on pretty much all guns. So if you’re in to that kind of gameplay then you’ll probably find a lot of legs in Battalion 1944.
The game will be launching in to early access with a handful of classic game modes and I think 8 maps to play on, although I can’t seem to verify that number right now. The price should be around £15 which I don’t think is too bad for a multiplayer game. I will certainly be keeping my eye on it, but right now I don’t know if I like it enough to buy it on launch.
Overwatch League
I’ve never been in to e-sports, but I think that’s mainly because of the games that have been covered in the e-sports world because since the Overwatch League started a couple of weeks ago I’ve been hooked. I’ve watched almost all of the matches that have taken place and some of them have been amazing to watch.
The way it works is there are 12 teams split in to two divisions -Atlantic and Pacific. There are four stages, each with five weeks of games starting every Wednesday.
Each match between two teams will be played across four maps, if by the end of those four maps the score is 2-2 then a fifth decider will be played.
At the end of each stage a title match will be played between the top three teams for a bonus prize pot. After all the stages are completed the top team from each division and the top four teams from both divisions (6 teams in total) will advance to the playoffs. They will then battle it out to see who is crowned Champion.
Going in to it I was trying to decide on which of the 12 teams I should maybe support. I was initially drawn to London Spitfire mainly because they’re the most local and only UK based team. They also just happen to be one of the best and tipped to be towards to the top of the tables along with Seoul Dynasty. I’ve also really enjoyed watching Philadelphia Fusion too, they have a couple of really good players in Carpe and Shadowburn, so I think those are the teams I’m probably going to end up supporting across the season, because you have to support someone, don’t you! To be honest though, I’ve pretty much enjoyed watching all the teams, every team has some amazing players and it’s great to see what they get up to and the crazy stuff they pull off when playing.
I’ve been hugely impressed with the opening few weeks of the Overwatch League both in terms of the quality of the games and the quality of the broadcasts, everything has been top notch and it’s clear that quite a lot of investment has gone in to it.
For this season all games are taking place in LA, but there is talk of home and away games for next season and if that’s the case, then I would love to go and watch some live!
-Will
