Verdun

2015

Publisher M2H and Blackmill Games

Genre Multiplayer Shooter

I bought this game when it was in Early Alpha, a WW1 trench warfare shooter – I had to be part of that. Like most early access games, however, it was a complete and total train wreck. It looked bad: the maps were super low resolution and bland, and the servers were slow and often crashed mid game. I decided to stop playing for a while let the game develop a for a bit.

I came back about a year ago and I was amazed. The maps looked amazing; the developers studied real guns to make their digital versions as realistic as they possibly could. They also fixed the server issues making the game look and run smoothly.

The one thing that troubles me is its player base: a weekday night usually only boasts about 500 players. The game has a hard time attracting new players due to its obscurity and the learning curve. The game’s message board is full of complaints about how fast newcomers get killed and how they can not stay alive for more than one minute. The response to these complaints are usually the same: “It’s World War 1… get used to it.”  

Mount and Blade: Warband

2010

Publisher Tales World

Genre FPS and RP

Published in 2010 by Tales World, Mount and Blade: Warband was the follow up to Mount and Blade and Mount and Blade: Fire and Sword. The game takes place in Calradia, a medieval world in which you, the player, are tasked to conquer all of the land. First, though, you must grow your army’s strength and become a vassal for one of the six factions.

I am not a huge fan of the single player campaign, which is rare for me, but the multiplayer is fun — especially the DLC Napoleonic Wars. The best part of the DLC is the musket. Muskets are weird for videogame developers to put into games: they are slow to reload and inaccurate, two concepts that could annoy a gamer. Yet Tales World made the system fun. They cut down the loading time and increased the accuracy, but it still feels real.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

2014

Publisher Bethesda

Genre FPS

Nazis are a staple enemy for video games because no one minds about killing a Nazi because, well, they’re Nazis. Wolfenstein was the Nazi-shooter game. The game was rebooted in 2014 and the game can only be described as “let’s make killing Nazis great again.”

The plot of the game is the age old question of what happens if the Nazis won WWII. The answer, crazy hybrid super-Nazi soldiers. You player as B.J. Blazkowicz the series’ protagonist since 1987. The game takes place in an universe where the Nazis managed to get ahead of all the other nations in military tech, and the first mission is a last ditch effort to kill the head Nazi scientist in hopes of turning the war around. The mission goes badly and you end up in a coma, awakening 14 years later to a new world, a world dominated by the Nazis.

Now you must join the resistance and bring the fight back to the Nazis. While the gameplay and graphics are tight and smooth, the story is “meh” and it was easy to poke holes in the plot. For example, you have to disguise yourself as a scientist so you can get to the Nazi moon base. Putting on a suit and having an ID makes everyone oblivious to the fact that you don’t look like the original scientist.

The game is still fantastic though and it’s great if you just want to have a good shooter in a crazy setting.

Dishonored

2012

Publisher Bethesda

Genre Stealth and Action

You are Corvo Attano, the bodyguard of the Queen of Dunwall, an Industrial Revolution city that is in the midst of a terrible plague brought about by rats. The plague either kills its victims or turns them into zombie like creatures.

The game begins with the assassination of the queen and the kidnapping of her daughter, Emily. You are framed for this by the Lord Regent whom you soon realize is behind the machinations. After breaking out of prison, you join a resistance movement now armed with mystical powers from the “outsider,” a god like being. You must prove your innocence and find Emily.

The thing that really makes this game unique is the proprietary Chaos System. The Chaos System is governed by how you play: are you merciful and merely knock them out, do you bypass guards stealthily, or do you cut through them like butter? Each mission has a main target whom you must kill, or you could find another way to rid them. For example in the first mission you are tasked with killing the High Overseer, the right hand man of the Lord Regent who assumed full power after the queen was killed. You can either kill the High Overseer or you can find an alternate route that involves branding him, marking him as an outcast.