Dying Light: The Following (Xbox One) Review

I played some Dying Light a few months ago with two friends, and enjoyed my time with the game.  I wasn't able to put much time into it, having to review games and all, so I was happy to get a review code for the Dying Light expansion called The Following.  Trouble is, they recommend that you be at least survival level 12 to "have the most enjoyment" out of it, so I first tried to get myself to that point so I could dive into what sounds like a big expansion for the game.

However, I couldn't resist jumping into it.  Or I was nudged for taking too long to get to it.  Either way, I dove in, hopefully not woefully under-prepared.  I can't really say one way or the other, since it felt just as hard as the base game, with all the things that irked me there.  Getting to the first camp wasn't too bad once I was able to see the way, but a lot of the other stuff was hard.  First off you have to infiltrate a camp and steal a car.  Thankfully, you don't have to kill anyone, but can just steal the car and leave.  I was able to do that after only a few deaths.

So I jumped back to the base game to buy a gun.  That put me on equal footing to the bandits, and I was able to go back and finish them off.  It works really well for fighting them and making any zombie in your visual range run up to fight you.  Thankfully, the game allows you to jump back and forth between the two saves with the same character.  Admittedly, the grappling hook should make a lot of things easier, so if you can, have that before jumping into The Following (hence the survival level 12 thing).  If there was no death penalty, I would have had it by the time I played it.

Still, I had difficulties with the game.  Enemies tend to travel in large groups, spawn nearby or behind you while you deal with their friends, and generally be a nuisance whenever you are trying to do something.  There's even quests to destroy Volatile hives.  It's safer to get there during the day, but then the hive itself has more enemies and is harder.  It's very possible that I'm bad at the game, since combat tends to be hard for me.  Even so, I imagine it's also better to have a friend of three when tackling quests.

The map for The Following is really big, as befitting for an expansion.  The main story structure reminds me of Gat Out of Hell, where there are only a few missions, but you must raise your reputation by doing other things, like sidequests or delivering air drops.  There are a lot of side quests and other things to do in the area, which will take a long time to complete.  I could easily see people spending 20 hours to do everything, and even longer if you are by yourself or under-leveled.  The main quest is pretty open, allowing you to kind of pick what you want to further your reputation with the locals.  While the base game was in a city, the expansion has a lot more open space because of the best addition to the game...the vehicle.

Early on you gain access to a buggy that you can upgrade and drive around the map.  It has a few different parts that you can equip to it and have to repair.  While a bit strange from an outside perspective, it fits in the game very well.  It's kind of like the weapons, although they don't wear out nearly as fast.  There is also a skill tree for driving, and abilities you can use in the car, like a mine dropper, nitro boost and a flamethrower!  Honestly, I just prefer to drive into all the enemies, but a lot of the other things had their uses.

Trouble is, I feel like they kind of went out of their way to suck some of the fun out of the vehicle.  Many places you drive have some kind of obstruction to your view, such as high grass, trees or other similar things.  This in turn makes it easy to run into things, which is easy enough with how unwieldy the buggy can be.  The part that really annoys me is the parkour virals.  They were annoying enough before, but now they can jump on your buggy and hang on.  Or, just punch it which makes it lurch to the side or slide around when you try to turn.  I somehow don't think they should be strong enough to punch a car and make it move, but clearly the developers think otherwise.

If you liked Dying Light, The Following is a great reason to jump back in.  It gives you a huge area to play around in, with lots of new quests, and the car to mow down infected.  Even if I'm terrible at combat, I would recommend playing with friends to make it the most fun and smooth experience it can be.  I got annoyed at various points, but I'd say it was worth the price of admission, as you get a lot of extra content.  Plus it is really fun and cathartic to run over lots of zombies.

BL2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC (360) Review

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep is the latest piece of DLC for Borderlands 2.  Taking a break from fighting Hyperion, Lilith, Brick and Mordecai are playing a Dungeons and Dragons-style RPG called "Bunkers and Badasses" with Tina as the dungeon master, with your Vault Hunters being the player characters.

The game within the game takes place in a fantasy setting very different from the normal wastelands of Pandora.  It all starts out as a bright and sunny place with butterflies and rainbows until Tina is reminded it was supposed to be bleak.  Then it becomes a dark, spooky place, resembling the dark woods from several fairy tales.  Throughout the DLC, you will be travelling from a shore, through the woods and to the tall tower of Dragon Keep.  The settings are cool, and thankfully will change to their cheerier counterparts once you beat the main campaign.  Each area is pretty big.  You have plenty of room to explore and various places to go for the many quests contained within.

To go along with the new setting, there are plenty of new enemies that fit the fantasy theme.  There are skeletons, knights, orcs, golems and treants to name a few.  Some behave similarly to enemies found in the base game, there are Suicide Skeletons and the golems are similar to the Goliaths.  Even so, there are lots of new things, like sorcerers that summon things like fire birds, skeletons that have a sword that must be removed to kill them, and floating skeleton heads.  For some reason, I really like the treants.  Maybe it's just because I haven't played a game that lets me shoot them, but the little ones have some great animation.  Not only do some of them have axes stuck in their heads, but when they die, they sink into the ground and grow a small patch of mushrooms.  It's a cool little touch that I enjoy.  The most annoying enemies are the Orcs warlords that level up similar to the Goliaths.  They can quickly become five levels over you, making them ridiculously hard to kill and are best avoided at that point.

The story of Assault on Dragon Keep is actually really good.  Without giving away many spoilers, it primarily deals with Tina dealing with the events that take place near the end of the main game.  It's funny and even sad at some points.  Being a game within a game, it is very self aware.  I like that it breaks the fourth wall without actually breaking it.  It stays true to the world of Borderlands while still cramming in lots of references, winks and nods to fantasy and sci-fi.  In a lot of ways it's a love letter to the "nerdier" side of life (yay!), and I definitely approve.  Plus, it even has my new favorite character, Mister Torgue.  I'm glad they found a way to stick him in there because my wife and I loved listening to him talk in the Torgue DLC, and I'm happy to hear him yell again.  Although the best lines, to me, are when Tina is voicing Roland.  Hearing the strange way she talks but in Roland's voice is just funny.

Being a game all about loot, you will be happy to know there are several pieces of unique loot in Assault on Dragon Keep.  The best ones I've come across so far are the "fireball" and "magic missile" grenades, and of course, the "Swordsplosion" gun.  Yes, it is a gun that shoots swords.  However, Mister Torgue makes it better by demanding the sword explodes, and then throws out more swords that also explode.  Even if I don't use it much, I have to keep that gun.  It's probably the coolest weapon in the game (thanks, Torgue!)

At this point you are likely wondering how long the DLC is.  The main campaign itself is about 5 hours.  A chunk of this will be spent on the boss fights, since they last a long time.  There's three main ones, and each one took my wife and I about 20 minutes.  We were both level 50 and playing on True Vault Hunter mode if you want a frame of reference.  The boss fights were probably the least fun part of the whole campaign.  They were fine fights but just took too long.  Besides the main campaign, there are numerous side quests to do.  Many of these poke fun at MMOs or are references to other game and the like.  They are enjoyable, and there are at least 2-3 in each zone.

Unlike the previous DLCs, which had three achievements each, Dragon Keep has ten.  You get a few through normal progression and doing the missions, but a few require extra effort, like feeding the queen, attacking the darkness (snicker) and getting the amulet.  The hardest would be defeating the Raid boss, which will likely require a full party, same as the other raid bosses.

I enjoyed Assault on Dragon Keep.  The main campaign and side quests are both more enjoyable than Campaign of Carnage, although I didn't find it quite as funny.  However, it is very well written and humorous.  There's plenty of references to sci-fi and fantasy properties while still remaining true to the Borderlands universe.  It has enough hours of playtime to be worth the $10.  If you enjoyed playing Borderlands, Assault on Dragon Keep should be on your list of DLCs to buy BECAUSE... REASONS!

MGR: Blade Wolf DLC (PS3) Review

The next piece of downloadable content for Metal Gear Rising, called Blade Wolf, has been released on the PSN and XBL Marketplace.  It retails for $6.99 (or equivalent in Microsoft Points) and has players using the dreaded boss from the base game, Blade Wolf.

Despite being four-legged, Blade Wolf controls just as well as Raiden and Sam.  He (it?) can jump, dash, dodge and parry.  It has been a bit since I last played MGR, so parrying took time to work off the rust.  I didn't get much practice since I was favoring stealth kills to open combat.  The quick attack uses the claws, while the strong attack has Blade Wolf grabbing the chainsaw on his back and using that.  It's pretty much the attacks he uses to destroy you in the base game.  If you do the full combo with the chainsaw, he will even say "combination attack" and "combination complete".  Nice touch!  If you use the strong attack while dashing, he will do the spiral dash.  A jumping strong attack is a very powerful and useful spinning saw-like attack.  Overall, some nice moves to cut up your enemies.

The scariest part of the story was seeing other blade wolves running around.  They are not boss fights, so they aren't very hard.  They can still do tons of damage to you though.  Blade Wolf is pretty mobile, so it wasn't too hard to run around and dodge attacks from the enemies I did fight.  Also, I only really ran into the dreaded camera issues on the final boss fight, which was a relief.  That was the hardest fight in the story, and did take me a try or two before I won the fight (at first I had forgotten to equip the rations).  It did feel as though Blade Wolfs Zandatsu didn't reach as far as Raiden or Sam.  I'm not sure if that's true or I was just crazy.

Most parts of the story can be completed without ever entering combat.  Like the main game of MGR, you have the option of straight up fighting all the enemies, or stalking around and stealth killing them.  This is my favorite part of the DLC.  I love sneaking around and stealth killing guys, and did so at every opportunity.  It was something I really missed in the last DLC (Jetstream Sam), and was very happy to do it again.  Playing it this way made the whole thing much easier and less frustrating, so I was able to have lots of fun.  I learned my lesson with the last DLC and set this one to easy, but I didn't need to.  Being able to sneak around and kill enemies instantly negates much of the difficulty in fighting them.  On a second go around, I set it to normal and so far haven't had any trouble spots.

The Blade Wolf scenario is pretty short, as my final time clocked in at just over 1 hour and 15 minutes.  This doesn't count cut scenes or retries.  Except for the VR missions, I only had to retry once.  Given that I prefer to use stealth and my final finishing time, I am strongly considering trying to beat it on Revengeance difficulty in under an hour.  I feel it's possible for me to do it, which is not something I say very often.  I don't like playing on the hardest difficulty or speed runs, but I want to do it for Blade Wolf, which is surprising.  I could easily knock down my time since I won't need to search for things.  The only real difficult part would be the final boss fight.

Just like Jetstream Sam, the VR Missions can only be done when they are found in the story mode.  I prefer the main story where they are just unlocked and can be done later.  When you access one, it will reset the checkpoint, so any enemies you killed will be back.  At least in this DLC, I could do some of these VR Missions.  All the ones I ran across in Jetstream Sam were combat related.  Thankfully, the Blade Wolf ones have stealth and platforming ones.  These are much better for me, personally.  The first sneaking one I ran across was infested with targets to avoid, but was still doable.  The combat ones seemed harder, mostly because Blade Wolf takes a lot of damage from attacks.

While it was pretty short, Blade Wolf was really fun.  It was less frustrating than Jetstream Sam due to the ability to sneak around (or kill) most of the enemies.  If you are a completionist or willing to go through multiple times, it will probably be worth the money to you.  If you weren't a fan of sneaking around and assassinating enemies, you might get less out of it, but it should still be fun.

MGR: Revengeance Jetstream DLC (PS3) Review

The base game of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was fun, sometimes hard.  The new DLC, Jetstream, allows players to play as Sam, "the Brazilian Wind", in events leading up to the main game.  This is a good way to flesh out another character while still keeping the story true to the base game.  Story-wise, I am a fan of playing as the villain at some point, since it gives another perspective on the events of the game.  Granted this is more prequel than another perspective, but it is still something that interests me.

Just like the base game, the graphics are great.  The controls are pretty spot-on.  The difficulty still seems all over the place and the camera is still horrible.  So what does the DLC do differently?  Thankfully, Sam plays a little bit differently than Raiden.  He cannot do the "ninja kills" (unfortunately), but can taunt and you can charge his strong (triangle/ Y button) attack for his unique "quick draw" skill.  I like the attack, but I found it hard to use, since enemies don't like to give you time to charge it.  If you could hold the attack until you let go of the button, I think it would be better to me, so I could charge it early.  As it was, I would frequently get attacked while trying to use it.  I also realized too late (just before the end boss of the level) that the charge attack was really effective on most of the enemies I struggled with.  Taunting is supposed to make the enemies more aggressive, which is crazy since they are already pretty bloodthirsty.

Sadly, I struggled a lot with some of the fights in the DLC level.  At first it was working off the ring rust and remembering the timing of the parry.  Once I was better at the timing, it seemed like the parry just wasn't as effective.  Enemies tended to jump out of the way (or counter parry) more than I remember in the base game of Revengeance.  Also some of the more damaging attacks will hit you when you are on the ground, leading to more damage and frustration.  The enemies are pretty competent killing machines.  As mentioned earlier, I found out near the end that the charge attack seems to be the cure to those woes, so I should have practiced that instead of parrying.  Doh.

That said, there were still fights that were incredibly hard (and of course the camera didn't want to cooperate).  The sword and rpg wielding solders were ridiculous, but are a lot easier if you can land a quick draw on them.  The big gorilla-like soldiers were a lot tougher than I remember them being in the base game, and the quick draw didn't seem particularly useful on them.  The hardest fight by far is against Blade Wolf.  I'm really confused as to why they put one of the most aggravating fights from the base game in again.  This time it seems even harder, since I was only able to effectively parry one of its moves.  The only strategy I found that worked for me was to spam the dodge (square + X) and attack quickly during the way too brief moments it stopped moving.  This took a bit, I still needed the auto heals, and it hurt my hand.  The other two bosses weren't nearly as bad.  Sure, the final boss took 2 or 3 tries, but it still wasn't as bad as Blade Wolf.

The Jetstream DLC is one long level.  My total completion time was just over an hour and a half, but you may know that it doesn't add the time if you die and continue, so it actually took me almost three hours to complete.  The trophies it adds will take a lot of effort, since there is a speed run on the hardest difficulty and beating the last boss without taking damage on hard.  Yikes, not ones I am going to get.  Thankfully there isn't one for doing the VR missions, since Sam's are accessed during the mission.  I wish they were just unlocked and not "do them right here and now".  I was pretty bad at them, since I only ran across combat-related ones.

If you loved the base game of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, welcomed the challenges, and ran through multiple times on the harder difficulties, you will like the Jetstream DLC, and likely get your $10 worth.  It offers enough familiarity (good and bad) but adds in some new mechanics to keep it fresh.  If you are a beat it once and leave it kind of person, you may want to wait for a sale.  Either way, it's a good addition to the game.