The campaign and multiplayer in general has been for a little while now and it’s difficult to be fair with the game right now. Meaning there is some content missing from the multiplayer end of things, as well as hella bugs that need squashing. I’ll tell you what I like about the game before I move onto my dislikes. One thing for sure about the campaign and MP are graphics. The graphics are pretty amazing this time around. Not to say past games didn’t have good graphics and next gen hardware (current gen?) definitely helps, but even the MP looks really good. They outdid themselves with the way this game looks. Movement and controls are solid while I’m not a fan of dolphin diving (only because I’m used to holding the circle button to slide, everything is working perfectly when it comes to my controller. I feel like the pacing (movement) is at the right spot for me. Audio has come a long way since MW 2019, but still needs a little tweaking. Sometimes the only thing you can hear is the gunfire or a V-Tol jet hovering above and while I understand that is realism, sometimes a bit too much. I have adjusted my headset and I’m game settings, but I can’t quite get it where I want it to be. Infinity Ward has already deployed a small hot patch for audio adjustments, but I think they’re probably working on further tuning it. I’m hoping, anyway. I’m pretty sure the TTK (time to kill) has decreased slightly. I find the core multiplayer player matches to be almost on par with hardcore game modes when it comes to TTK. I prefer it this way myself. I’m a pretty accurate shot and find it frustrating when I drop 4 hit markers on an enemy and they manage to turn on me and drop one into my dome for the headshot kill. 2-3 bullets is about what it takes to get a kill and I’m pretty satisfied with that. There are a handful of game modes to choose from and that includes the mode Invasion which is large scale MP against real players and AI. It’s a great mode to level up your weapons and unlock attachments and with the way things unlock in this game, it’s a good mode for using weapons you’re typically not good with it can’t stand using. It’s a little slower paced than your traditional MP matches, you can jump in and take your time or do whatever it is you’d enjoy doing the most with little pressure. All in all the multiplayer is a lot of fun and while I have never really been a fan of the campaigns myself, it’s nice to get rewarded for completing it. I will say I enjoyed how challenging the campaign was this time around. It has definitely been made to be a little more difficult than past cod titles and I thought it … Read More
Opinion: Are Gamers Real?
I found myself at the center of a debate recently. An argument between two others began with one person stating that any real gamer knows that PlayStation is the best console brand to pick from. This was an obvious attempt to spark the never ending console wars. The person that comment was directed at, didn’t offer the rebuttal I was expecting. Rather than playing into the hands of the PlayStation Fanboy, he went on to say that there is no such thing as a Gamer and that people need to stop labeling people that enjoy video games. Their argument escalated while more and more people jumped in to make their points. It was interesting to read and I was staying out of it until a friend of mine tagged me and asked me to drop my thoughts on the matter. Granted, at the end of the day, it’s all opinions no matter how hard people want to claim it as facts. So, after entering the debate, I decided I would share my opinion here as well. Is there such a thing as a Gamer? My answer is yes, Gamers are real people. Is being called a Gamer a label? Yep, It surely is a label. And what do labels do? They identify something you know what it is. It makes life easier. Not all labels are a good thing, but I personally think the label of Gamer is a good thing. Some of us like to use that label to easier explain our passion. Yes, we Gamers tend to be passionate about video games. So what makes one a Gamer? Well, there are several things that can be factored in here, but I’m going to keep this fairly simple for the ones in the back. Simply put, if you like and play video games, that would classify you as a Gamer. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, but it can also get much deeper when explaining why we like and play our video games. I’m not going to explain all of that, but I am going to continue with explaining just a few other personal opinions of mine. Now that I’ve simplified what makes a Gamer, I want to throw out that Gamers are not restricted to one game type. Gamers are also not expected to play every single game made, let alone like them all. You can like ice-cream and not enjoy every flavor. Just because someone enjoys playing Call of Duty and doesn’t play much else, doesn’t make them less of a Gamer. They just have their favorite game all picked out and that’s ok! I personally play all sorts of titles and genres, but I also have some friends that only play Fortnite. That doesn’t make them any less of a Gamer to me. It just means if I decide I want to play Fortnite, I’ll have a friend to join me. Now, the console wars. This may be … Read More
Elden Ring Walkthrough Guide – First Steps Toward Stormveil Castle
So, you’ve gone out and bought or borrowed an Elden Ring and now you’re stumped. The large open world of Elden Ring is a beautiful and dangerous land to see, but now that you’re in the land of the tarnished, a little guidance may be useful. In this Elden Ring guide series, I’m going to take you through the base game. I will likely mention side quest locations as we near them. Maybe bring up the location of a secret item that could be useful along the way, but this will be a pretty straightforward guide to help you along the way in case you get lost. You have likely already begun the game, so I’m just going to recap the starting area of the game and explain our way to and through Stormveil Castle. You’re going to be thrown into a boss fight right off the bat. Don’t sweat it at all. This boss is meant to kill you from the get go. When you have completed the game and started New Game+, you’ll be able to get your revenge and easily whoop him the second time around. Now our journey begins in the Stranded Graveyard. Making your way through is pretty straightforward and there are messages along the way that explain the basic controls of the game for you. You will see as you playthrough that the controls become more advanced and just how simple this area really is. Enjoy it while it lasts because it won’t be long until things begin to heat up. Now that you have made your way through most of the area, it’s time to face a mandatory mini boss. Soldier of Godrick is very easy to beat. You shouldn’t have much trouble defeating him, but keep in mind, he is probably the easiest fight in the game. After you finish the tutorial, the game picks up the pace and starts punishing you for underestimating your enemies. It’s not hard to get overwhelmed by baddies. Now that you’re out of the cave, I would recommend exploring a little bit. It’s a huge open world and there are a lot of hidden secrets to be found. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to make our way to Stormveil Castle. Start making your way East and enter the Storm Gate. If this is your first playthrough, just take your time and try not rush right into fights as there will be more soldiers around the area. You stealthily work around the area to take a headcount and try to lure some of them in one at a time. Or just rush right in there and see what happens. Totally up to you. As you work your way, there are going to be some dangerous enemies ahead. Crossbowmen and a large troll are just waiting to ambush you. My first time through, the troll killed me. I ended up riding past the area on Torrent … Read More
Uncharted the movie – non-spoiler review
To start, if you haven’t played the Uncharted games, I highly recommend you get on that. Uncharted is one of the best video game series ever created. It’s a lot of fun and has a great storyline throughout the franchise. That being said, if you have played the Uncharted games but haven’t seen the Uncharted movie, get on it!! It’s pretty good and even better if you played the games. Now, let’s move onto the movie review. I wasn’t going to write a review about the Uncharted movie. I didn’t get to see it in theaters and so it seemed like dropping a review long after theatrical release wouldn’t be very ideal, but after seeing it for the first time last night, I felt compelled to share my thoughts and try to get people to see it at home. It’s worth it for any fan of the series, in my humble opinion. Tom Holland plays a better Drake than I was expecting. I didn’t have real high hopes, but he did make a pretty good Drake overall. Mark Walhberg did just fine in his role as Sully, but I think someone else should have filled that role. I’m not sure my Walhberg was cast, but he did fine, so I’m not hung up on that. Just pointing out my thoughts. As I watched the movie, I got the feeling of deja vu several times. I thought to myself, I’ve played this! It was kind of weird in a way. Watching a game I’ve intimately played become a movie on the big screen. The more I watched, the more I was sucked in. It has original content that wasn’t sniped from the game, but if you’re a fan of Uncharted, you can’t help but see it all. I feel like it gives hope that future “games into movies” could be a really good thing. All too often a movie based on a video game misses the mark and ends up not even close to as magical as the game was. I guess the same goes with books, but you can’t fit off that content into a single film. Luckily, Uncharted manages to capture the magic of the game and successfully place it on film. It could be better for sure, but it could also be far worse. For fans of the Uncharted franchise, there’s a great Easter egg in the movie that is sure to please. I know I was tickled by it. All in all, the movie is action packed, has a good storyline to follow and the acting is good. It felt a little silly at times, but then again, so is Drake, so it all comes together great. I give it an 8 out 10 for sheer entertainment. It won’t be my movie of the year, but definitely worth sitting down and watching either alone, with family and friends or whomever you desire to watch it with. You can watch … Read More
The next God of War isn’t ready for us to see, but still releasing this year…
Some concern has surfaced from God of War fans recently as it was announced that the game is not ready to be shown. The concern here is that the game is slated for a 2022 release, but we haven’t had so much as a glimpse of it yet. Being this close to a release, it does seem alarming that we can’t see a trailer or anything else for that matter. But, the games animation director Bruno Velazquez, says the game is definitely releasing this year. The games director, Cory Barlog, went on Twitter and said he wished they could show us footage of the game, but it’s just not ready to be shown, and fans went from there. And for good reason. As I said above, it’s close to being released. The only thing we’re really left wondering is why it isn’t ready to be shown. Maybe it’s simply because Sony has something special planned for the first gameplay trailer or maybe the game really isn’t ready for a showing at all. What are your thoughts? Do you think there’s a chance it could be delayed again or?
Elden Ring – Best Rune Farming Location
Elden Ring hosts a lot of challenges and the further you progress, the more challenging it will become. Therefore, farming for runes to level yourself up can be a key step towards victory in the end. There are a handful of places to farm runes, but there is one place in particular that will load you right up with tons of runes. Infact, you can scrape up a few million runes in under an hour in this location. I’m talking about The Palace Approach Ledge Road site of grace. Here you can easily squeeze out 30,000 runes in about 1-2 minutes and the grace site being right there, you can reset over and over again. There are two ways to reach The Palace Approach Ledge Road site of grace. There’s a fairly simple way that’ll get you there earlier than the second way, but how you choose to get there is up to you. Personally, I recommend the hard way, that way you can experience the bulk of the game the way it was intended. If you’re just about farming and getting through with ease, here’s the first way to reach the site of grace you need. The easiest way to reach The Palace Approach Ledge Road is by completing Varre’s questline. This is an NPC you meet very early on in the game. He is first located at The First Step Site of Grace. There is no way to miss him unless you do it on purpose. Go ahead and speak to Varre and exhaust his dialogue. Now you’ll need to make your way to Godrick, the first real boss fight you’ll face in Elden Ring. Once you have defeated Godrick, go back to The First Step Site of Grace and speak Varre again. Varre is going to tell you to hold an audience with the Two Fingers at the Roundtable Hold. Once you have completed this step in the questline, you will find that Varre is no longer standing at The First Step Site of Grace. Instead, he has left you a message to find him at the Rose Church. The Rose Church isn’t too difficult to find. It is located West of the Academy Gate Town Site of Grace. Once you reach this grace, you can travel directly west to reach the church. Once you reach the church, you will Varre standing outside the entry. Be aware that if you step inside the church an NPC will invade you at the church and you’ll need to kill him. Otherwise, just speak Varre and tell him Something Seemed Off about the two fingers. He will carry on dialogue with you and give festering bloody fingers. USe the fingers to invade another player’s world 3 times. You don’t have to win the fight nor stay to fight if you’d not bother other players to complete this quest. After the three invasions, speak to Varre again. Make sure you select to be anointed … Read More
Elden Ring… the best RPG of all time!
Elden Ring has gone on to become my favorite video game of all time. I know that sounds drastic to some when considering the long list of video games available to play and to date myself, I’ve been playing video games since 1985. So, how on earth after playing more video games than I could possibly count did Elden Ring manage to take the top spot for me? Well, that’s a long answer, so I’m going to put it down into sections. None If the reasons listed are in any particular order, so I wouldn’t read too deeply into the placement. For starters, the games lore is top notch. Call it a story if you’d like, but the story is the lore. Playing through Elden Ring is rather realistic in the sense of how the story unfolds. I imagine that if I were in a primitive land on a mission to kill the lands lords and become a lord myself, it would unfold much like the game. Not a lot of clues, not a lot of friendlies and a whole lot of exploring. You never know what you’re going to get yourself into. That is unless of course you beat the game and start a new one. For the most part, you know what’s happening down the line. If it were real life, I could become a tour guide and talk about my adventures. Of course, if I’m an Elden Lord, I’d probably just have one of my subjects tell my story, but that’s just semantics. Well balanced. FromSoftware is known for challenging players. The Souls series is a great example of that, but I will say Elden Ring isn’t quite as tough as the Souls games. It’s still quite a challenging game, especially for newcomers that have no real prior experience with Fromsoftware games. The balance is pretty near perfect. It offers a good amount of challenge, but it also offers many ways to get relief if you just can’t get beyond an area. An enormous map. Man, this map is huge and it has so many hidden locations and items, it makes my head spin. During my first playthrough, I could have never grasped just how large it is. During my second playthrough, I wound up uncovering areas underground that I hadn’t discovered in my first run. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discover a new map. Wow. Now, I have beaten all the games in the Souls series and I’d like to include BloodBorne and Sekiro for good measure, but completing Elden Ring the first tike around gave me more satisfaction than any of those titles. Probably because I sunk around 160 hours into my first playthrough and was just blown away by the vast amount of freedom to explore. I just can’t get over it. I’m sad for the ones writing articles about how they have Elden Ring fatigue before completing the game. All in all, Elden … Read More
Lets talk Speedrunners
Speedrunners are known for beating games at a remarkable pace. Playing through games faster than most can comprehend and I’m one of those onlookers that just can’t imagine being able to speed run a game the way these seasoned gamers manage to do. If you’ve been keeping up with gaming news lately, no doubt you’re aware that Eldin Ring has been released to critical acclaim from critics around the world. You also probably know that the game is not for the faint of heart. It can be a challenging title to take on and your very first play though will most likely be the most brutal, if you manage to hang in there and complete the game. It’s a beautiful open world that requires a lot of exploring and paying attention to your surroundings. Taking your time is definitely a smart way to play this game, but I am seeing a lot of frustration from gamers lately when the subject of a Speedrunner comes up. Hence why we are about to cover the subject. There have been major feats for Speedrunners in Elden Ring. In fact, the fastest playthrough was clocked in around 59 minutes and set a world record, only to be undercut to 49 minutes by another player in the same day. I could not imagine completing this game in less than an hour. This takes some serious practice and if I do say so myself, talent. I keep hearing from other players that aren’t necessarily complaining about Speedrunners, but more so seem to be confused by them. Comments like “why would you want to speed through this game and not take a moment to look at all the scenery?” Or “Speedrunners are stupid. You can’t even find all the items because you’re skipping everything!” This is all false. There isn’t anyone out there running through this game on the first try and beating it in under one hour. These Speedrunners have to play through the entire in order to learn how to speed through it. They have to level up their characters, find all the beneficial items they’ll need in the game before they start their next play through and know exactly how to kill off each boss quickly to move on. This is no easy feat by any means. It’s grueling, I’m sure. Speed running games aren’t something to scoff at, its something to be admired. If you really think about it, many of these players know these on much deeper levels than the majority of us casual and hard-core gamers. It’s not something everyone is interested in and certainly not something everyone can do, but we should all give props where it’s deserved. So to recap, speedrunners aren’t skipping entire games. They are exploring as many elements as possible in order to complete the run. It is indeed a feat that most of us cannot complete, but that’s alright too! We don’t need to. All we need to … Read More
Easy Rune farming for Eldin Ring Newcomers
Elden Ring, Oh Elden Ring! What many critics are considering the best title to release from developer FromSoftware (myself included), this game delivers plenty of challenges for most players. To help with those challenges, I’m going to drop some tips and tricks I have learned about along the way. If you have any tips, please, feel free to share them! Today I’m going to tell you about what seems to be the easiest way to farm runes in Elden Ring when you’re fairly new to the game. Runes are needed for leveling up your character, your weapons and much more! While farming is repetitive and can get boring rather quick, it’s still something I find myself doing when in desperate need to gain a few more levels for different reasons at the time. The initial area for a higher rune payout can be quite treacherous for a lower level player, but the risks are worth it in the end. In order to her there, you’ll need to locate the Bestial Sanctum. In order to find this grace, you’ll need to defeat the boss Margit. If there is a way around this boss fight, I have no knowledge of it, but summon a few helpers if the boss proves to be a bit much for you. Once you’ve defeated Margit, you can move onto the Round Table area and speak with a character that is sitting at the table. D, hunter of the dead, will offer up some information you need to find your way to the grace location and sell/teach you incantations. From here, check your map and place a beacon to location D has pointed out to you. I would suggest fast traveling to the grave that I’d closest to the location you’re looking for and then riding Torrent the rest of the way. Once you have reached the area, it’s time to look a little closer and you will see a portal. Go ahead and use the portal and you will safely arrive in Bestial Sanctum. You will be a rather large fellow on the other side of the room. Go ahead and chat him up, he’s friendly. Notice in the opposite direction of the room is an exit and a not so friendly baddy will be standing guard. No need to worry about him right now, because you’re going to ride right past him while using torrent. If you’re here to farm runes, you’re probably not quite ready for this fight. He takes a lot of damage before he’ll go down. If you don’t want to disturb the boss, you can go left or right once you step out the main doors and work your way down to Lennes Rise where you’ll find another grace. Before you reach Lennes Rise, you’ll have to travel a little ways to get there. There are plenty of enemies to fight along the way if you’re feeling froggy. These enemies are worth around 1000 runes and … Read More
Elden Ring Review
Elden Ring is here at last and if you have been reading the reviews, you know this game is probably pretty damn good. Being compared to games like The Legend of Zelda is no easy feat and dare I boast my opinions with others and claim that this could be one of the greatest games that have ever been created? Yes… yes I do. This game is indeed an instant classic and a literal game changer for the industry. It will go down in gaming hosted as one of the best games ever created and there are plenty of good reasons. So, so many things to discuss and so little space in this review, but I’m going to do what I can to fill you in and not spoil anything. If you want spoilers, be sure to check the page regularly as I’ll be writing up walkthroughs to help tarnished souls get around this massive game. Speaking of massive, I don’t think I could quite explain how massive this open world RPG really is. Man, this will set a new standard for size and beauty. Not only is it massive, but well detailed and beautiful. Souls games have always been beautiful, but often restricted in how far you can travel. Souls game maps are tight enough to feel like a path has been partly carved out for you and it’s fairly easy to stay on track. Elden Ring definitely follows the spirit of Souls games, but it does it even better than any of the Souls title have. It is amazing. And if you’re by chance a Souls fan, you’ll likely agree. On one hand, this game has had some changes that seem to make things a little simpler than in the Souls games. You can jump with the cross button now. That’s a big deal to me because I am not a fan of holding the circle button to sprint and then pressing it again to jump. Furthermore, you can summon your steed to help navigate through the large map with speed and that includes a double jump on horseback. I didn’t realize just how useful the horse would be and it doesn’t hurt that you can still swing a sword while riding. You can still use multi-player to call in two other players to help aid you along the way for boss battles and even use a chat feature instead of just using gestures. The bosses in my opinion are much more difficult to take down this time around. It’s like Sekiro meets Dark Souls. Not everyone has the patience to play a title like this. Many will say the game is too difficult because they want to just run into every fight unprepared without any plan of attack. Then you have the seasoned player that claims that this game isn’t difficult at all and if you disagree, you must suck. Sorry pal, the expression you’re looking for is simply put as “Git Good!” … Read More