Escape Dead Island (2014) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 3)

With Dead Island 2 going onto Xbox Game Pass a few months back I thought it was about time I got myself up to date with the Dead Island series. At the start of this month I finished up my playthrough of Dead Island: Riptide, the stand alone expansion to the first game, and earlier today (at time of typing) I brute forced my way through the third game in the series, Escape Dead Island. I had always thought this game was a prequel to the others, but it turns out the majority of the plot takes place some months after the events of the first two games. Not that any of this really matters however, as it is accepted almost everywhere that what happens here is non-canonical.

After a prologue mission set two days before the zombie outbreak on Banoi (where Dead Island was set), the action moves forward six months later. Wannabe journalist Cliff Calo (voiced by Joseph May - Blair Witch video game, Horizon Zero Dawn video game) has convinced his two friends, Linda (Jules de Jongh - Dead Nation video game) and Devan (Ako Mitchell - Dead Island 2 video game) to help him investigate what really happened on Banoi, with official reports stating the island is off-limits due to a terrible tropical storm. Rather than try and get to that island, the three have used a boat that Cliff stole from his broadcasting executive father to travel to the nearby Narapela island, which Cliff believes will contain information explaining what has happened on that other island. After their boat sinks, they have no option but to head inland, but are surprised to find the place seemingly deserted. Upon discovering a mass grave they encounter dead bodies returning to life, and in the chaos Linda is bitten by a zombie. With Devan looking after Linda, Cliff heads deeper into the island to look for help, and along the way he meets Xian Mei (one of the protagonists of the first two games) who tells the man that inside a secret Geopharm lab there may be a cure for the zombie virus that Linda is now infected with.

Rather than a realistic open world first person adventure game heavily reliant on battling the undead, Escape Dead Island is instead a third person cel-shaded somewhat linear adventure where stealth is encouraged as much as all out combat. I had to dig out my old Playstation 3 to play this, and I was swiftly reminded how terrible the analogue sticks were on the controller for that. While you get access to both a pistol and a shotgun, I found the analogue so twitchy that I preferred where possible to just engage in melee combat. For the first third of the game things were very difficult, Cliff seems only to be able to take one or two hits before dropping down dead, and the weapons seemed very weak. You have irritating acid spitting enemies who sometimes are able to spit acid straight through solid walls, and you often find yourself being swarmed by enemies and reduced to nothing in a heartbeat. I did like that all zombies can be stealth killed in a single hit should you sneak up behind them, even the super zombies like acid spitters, clawed and screaming undead can be dispatched that way. Frustratingly, the same can be done for you, with the most basic zombie being able to grab onto you from behind. This initiates a quick time event that nine times out of ten I wasn't able to complete before I died.

It is relatively generous with check points, but it had the annoying old school way of having check points just before unskippable cutscenes. There was one fifteen second long cutscene in one of the more combat heavy areas near games end that I must have had to watch some fifty to sixty times, often my actual playtime being a few seconds in length before dying, extremely frustrating!

The cel-shaded look grew on me, though there was lots of clipping and bad draw distance. The more cartoon like look didn't reduce the bloodshed, with zombies often losing limbs and heads quite easily. I thought the story had the potential to be really interesting. Playing as Cliff you are given an unreliable perspective on what is really happening. As the game progresses events get more and more surreal, from conversing with dead people over the radio, to huge shipping containers dropping from the sky, being teleported to different places and having several of the ten chapters turning out to be dream sequences. While I pieced together what likely really occurred, this wasn't a satisfying story, with it left up to you to work things out rather than really explain all the weirdness.

I wanted to like Escape Dead Island, but the clunky controls often left me shouting with anger, there shouldn't be a second or two delay when switching weapons, and the reload animation was far too long for guns. The last quarter of the game devolves into a series of combat arenas, and with combat being the least fun part of the game this caused a real fall in quality. The story got in the way here, with even the game's antagonist creature being battled within a dream sequence rather than in 'reality'. By the time the end credits rolled I was glad to see the back of it to be honest. There are some good parts here, I enjoyed the slight Metroidvania way that Cliff gets access to different items that allows him to explore hidden areas (such as a gas mask to get through poison filled rooms and a grappling hook to reach out of the way areas), and the graphics did grow on me. Still, with Escape Dead Island apparently being non-canon anyway, I am very convinced I will never play this game again in my lifetime.

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Dead Island: Riptide - Definitive Edition (2016) - Zombie Horror Video Game Review (Xbox One)

You have to feel sorry for the Dead Island series of first person survival horror zombie video games. The release of Dying Light in 2015 really took the wind out of its sails, an extremely similar game but looking better, controlling better, and having a better story to it. Dead Island will always hold a special place in my heart though, when I first re-discovered the person who would become my best friend, she was raving about a Dead Island novel, completely unaware it had been based on a game.
With Dead Island 2 recently heading to Xbox Game Pass I figured it was about time I caught up with the story of the previous games I had yet to play. Dead Island: Riptide was a confusing entry when it first came out. While it seemed to be a sequel to the first game, the lack of a number '2' led to many people (myself included) unsure if this was a new game or a definitive version of the first game. Speaking with a friend about this recently, he summed it up perfectly, describing it as a stand-alone expansion. I also felt at the time that I wasn't sure if I wanted to return to the world of the game so soon after having completed the first, especially as this really did look like it was more of the same. Spoilers for Dead Island to follow.

I do love it when a sequel picks up immediately after the end of the first, and that is very much what happens here. Having left the zombie infested island of Banoi in a helicopter, the four survivors (Xian Mei, Logan, Purna and Sam.B) find their chopper running out of fuel, spying a military vessel they decide to land on it. Their relief is short lived when they find themselves being imprisoned below deck once it is known they are immune so that experiments can be performed on them. Knocked unconscious while resisting, they awaken some time later to find the ship overrun with the undead. Out of control, the ship has crashed into the nearby island of Palanai where the survivors discover to their dismay that the zombie virus has also ravaged this place. Forming an uneasy alliance with Colonel Hardy (the person who was in charge of the ship), the group make it their aim to travel to a military base in the nearby city of Henderson, where it is hoped they will finally find sanctuary.

It may be a new island this sequel takes place on, but it is very much business as usual. Unlike the first game that was split into a variety of areas, this time there are two main ones, the flooded jungle and the city of Henderson. It took me around fifteen hours to complete this, with about two thirds of the game being in the jungle, with the city both smaller in size and with less missions to it, though very well designed. My initial thoughts were very negative. Despite playing the Xbox One 'Definitive Edition' the game still looked very ugly. Even worse were sound issues that led to characters constantly speaking over each other in cutscenes, and music that would get stuck and keep repeating the same few bars over and over again. I played the game as Xian Mei as I did previously, but it doesn't really matter what character you pick as you only really get proper story in the cutscenes. 

The focus is mainly on melee weapons that you can get blueprints to upgrade at work benches to do all manner of status effects, such as poison, fire, and electricity. There is a big skill tree that soon has you much stronger, being split into three segments, the rage metre part (once a bar is filled up you basically become invincible for a limited time), the attack part, and the healing part. Fighting zombies is a load of fun, you lop off limbs and heads constantly. There were 'boss' style undead as well, but when it is so easy to run past these rather than fight them, their inclusion felt a bit pointless. The big new thing for Riptide is the defence missions, where you and A.I survivors must survive against waves of zombies attacking wherever your current base happens to be. To help you can set up electrified fences and gun turrets, but this is all very slight and unexciting. At least, despite being a bunch of these they were all easy to complete.

The meat of the game has you completing a variety of quests and side quests in order to make your way to Henderson and find safety. The side quests take you to optional areas, but the quests themselves were unexciting and felt like far more could have been done with them. The core story was fine, but unexciting, your mission to safety had already been done better in Dead Island, so it felt like things were just repeating here. There was nothing that occurs here that felt remotely original or compelling, I didn't care about any of the characters, and it leads up to a final boss fight that didn't feel like a great way to end the game. Dead Island: Riptide hasn't aged too poorly, it does look dated, but gameplay wise it is perfectly fine. This only really exists for people who loved the first game and wanted more. The setting felt familiar but not as fun to traverse, with less interesting looking areas, the story was a low effort repeat, and the revelations about the source of the virus were very generic. Least it is out of the way now, so will move onto apparently terrible prequel, Escape Dead Island, which I am going to have to dig out my Playstation 3 to play.

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Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge: Special Edition (2010) - Comedy Horror Video Game Review

With Return to Monkey Island having been released this month, and with it following on from the events of the second original game, I knew I just had to play through the first two. With The Secret of Monkey Island I chose to play using the dreadful new artwork, mainly so that I could hear the new music mixes and spoken dialogue. Loading up the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, there was actually the option from the start to enjoy the original game as it was, but with the dialogue also spoken. I fully expected that would be the way I chose to play, that is, until I saw how expressive and surprisingly good the updated graphics were this time around. Spoilers for the first game to follow.

The game begins with my new favourite phrase 'in medias re', basically the story begins halfway through. Haplass pirate Guybrush Threepwood is dangling over a huge pit, a treasure chest in one hand, his other holding the rope that is preventing him from falling to his doom. Threepwood's former love interest, Elaine Marley appears, and it is while asking how he came to be in this situation that the story skips back to the start of the game. Threepwood had arrived on Scabb Island as part of his search for a legendary treasure known as Big Whoop. He discovers while there, that the treasure was discovered on a mysterious island, and that the people who found it split their map of the place into four pieces so that no one else would ever discover it. Unfortunately, Threepwood also encounters Largo LeGrande, a pint-sized bully who used to be LeChuck's right hand man. This inadvertently results in him providing LeGrande with the final ingredients needed to resurrect LeChuck's body as a zombie.
With LeChuck back to life and wanting Guybrush dead, the young pirate realises that the power that Big Whoop is said to provide may be enough for him to escape LeChuck's clutches forever...

I enjoyed replaying The Secret of Monkey Island, yet it also made me realise that that first game, while good, didn't have as much of an impression as its sequel. Everything this time around is so much better. There are more wacky characters to interact with, the story is a lot more involved, the wonderful pixel graphics are more detailed, and this features some of the very best video game music that was ever created, something I still believe today. While you can play the game using the original point and click interface (of commands and items being kept in the bottom third of the screen), the updated controls thankfully don't follow the cumbersome controls of the first re-make. Instead, there is a much better feeling control scheme, more like what The Curse of Monkey Island did. My memory of how to do the first game was a bit fuzzy, I imagined it would be the same for LeChuck's Revenge, turns out it wasn't. Outside of one moment (where I briefly forgot to get the cook out the kitchen you had to rattle some bins), I remembered all the puzzles and solutions, and this is a game where it doesn't mind you doing things out of step. Even if it makes no sense for where you are in the story, you are able to collect items before you are aware (within the story) that you require them.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009) - Comedy Horror Video Game Review (XBox 360)

With the amazing announcement that a new entry in the pirate themed comedy horror adventure series Monkey Island was being made (released on 17th September), I just had to replay the others in anticipation. This new game is only taking the first and second games as canon, ignoring the events of the third, fourth and episodic games (though apparently keeping some story beats and characters as canonical). The Secret of Monkey Island is a classic 'point and click' game that first came out in 1990. Back in 2009 it enjoyed a re-release and re-make, a game that let you swap at will between the beautiful pixel graphics of the original, and the ugly, uncompleted in feel look of the remake.

Guybrush Threepwood has arrived on the Caribbean island of Meleé with one goal in mind, to become a pirate. The pirate elders there give him three tasks to complete in order to become one. While exploring the island he comes to learn of a fearsome pirate named LcChuck, who was so infatuated with Meleé island's governor, Elaine Marley, that he returned from the dead as a ghost pirate to continue trying to win her heart. After Elaine is kidnapped by LeChuck and taken back to his base on the mysterious Monkey Island, Guybrush decides he must recruit a crew, find a boat, and go and attempt a rescue mission.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is one of my favourite video games of all time. The Secret of Monkey Island is nowhere near as good a game, yet it is a pleasure to play through, despite being far simpler. I played these games back before the internet had become a mainstream thing, and so when I became stuck in the games I was really stuck. I would spend entire evenings playing these, trying to figure out on my own how to proceed. Because of this I have a deep affection for the series, the original game giving me large does of nostalgia. After about a fifteen year break I still mostly breezed through this. There were times when I was jumping ahead of myself, trying to solve puzzles that I wasn't yet actually able to do with where I was in the story. The game is split into chapters, each with a clearly defined goals. From completing the three tasks to become a pirate, to sailing to Monkey Island and hunting down LeChuck. 

Persona 5 (2017) - Adventure Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

For reasons that baffle me to this very day (and which haunt my nights) I decided to review Persona 4 after only 24 hours playtime back in 2010. I think I must have assumed I was near the end, however it was actually 91 hours long. I would like to think I'm more professional nowadays and so for this review of Persona 5 I have actually completed it first! It took me a whole year to finish this RPG, clocking in with a game time of 97 hours.

Persona 5 starts with your school age character (knick named Joker) being arrested whilst in the middle of a daring casino robbery as part of a group known as the Phantom Thieves. He is taken away to an interrogation room where he is asked to recount his version of events leading up to his capture. A large chunk of the game is a playable recollection of events. Joker arrives in Tokyo to stay with a coffee shop owner Sojiro, due to being on probation after having been charged with assault. Him and his new friends through a series of events unlock 'personas' which are manifestations of their inner psyche. They also gain the ability to enter 'palaces' which are in a supernatural realm and which are twisted versions of the palace owners mindset. Basically kind of like Inception; by going into a mind palace and stealing the treasure located there they are able to 'steal the heart' of their target which results in them developing a conscience and admitting their crimes in the real world. However the more they change people to better help society the more they find their actions become investigated by the police and government and soon find themselves with danger of arrest...

I loved Persona 4, and I love Persona 5 but I don't think story wise it is as much of a draw. Early on we are introduced to the antagonist and so there is none of the mystery and surprise that came with Persona 4's hunting a serial killer storyline. Instead over the course of a year you go after different targets, starting with a teacher who abused his position to sexually harass students, you end up going after business leaders and politicians. As you do so your fame increases with public opinion constantly spurring you on to further actions.

Dead Space 3: Awakened (2013) - Horror Video Game DLC Review (Playstation 3)

The whole reason I decided to finally tackle Dead Space 3 after so many years was due to a friend going on about how good the DLC was for it. Awakened contains within it the true ending of the Dead Space franchise, I guess originally it was meant to lead the way to a fourth installment. While I enjoyed my time with this playable epilogue I was a bit disappointed to find out how short it was, and how it was happy to recycle locations from the main game. There will be spoilers for Dead Space 3, unavoidable when talking about this.

Isaac Clarke and John Carver somehow survived the events that resulted in the ice planet Tau Volantis seemingly falling apart. The two find themselves on a race to find a spaceship to escape from the surface, but with the Unitologist army having the same idea transport is becoming scarce. To make matters worse destroying the necromoon didn't end the necromorph threat, as before it passed it was able to make contact with other necromoons all over the universe that now have their sights set on Earth...

It was only once I started this DLC that I realised the insanity elements of Dead Space 1 and 2 had been nowhere to be found in Dead Space 3. Awakened more than makes up for this though as from start to finish it is full to bursting with Isaac hallucinating. I loved how this started with the threat of the monsters seemingly over, it led to a great moment when the two characters realise the nightmare is not yet over. I was reminded of Alan Wake's DLC in that all the areas you go to are taken from the main game, but with some amendments to them. The ice planet section seemed partly to have some new areas, but once you get into space you head straight to a ship that you explored already in one of the optional missions of the main game. It was nicely populated with a crazed cult though, another part of the original game I had forgotten about.

A lot of the enemies you face here appear as hallucinations that are still very much a threat but has you wondering just what is real and what is fake. It brought to mind the fantastic first mission of on-rails shooter Dead Space: Extraction where you discover at the end of the level that you had been killing defenceless humans and not monsters as they had appeared. These enemies include baby necromorphs last seen in Dead Space 2, so that was a nice bonus. Here you get a series of boss battles against the leader of an even more radical splinter group of the Unitologists that appeared once the necromoon died. He appears time and time again to hound you, as well as appears in flashbacks detailing the sadism that tore the surviving soldiers apart. You also get to fight Carver which was nice (as I think his character sucks), again in a battle that takes place as a hallucination. To be fair I liked Carver a lot more here, or rather the game actually treated him as an actual character rather than a bland second player placeholder. There was some great dialogue, my favourite being (paraphrasing) "Isaac when people hear voices in their head they are going crazy. You are going f*cking crazy, now go get that machine part so we can get out of here before it's too late".

Awakened only lasts for around 90 minutes, I had hoped for two or three hours at least so wasn't impressed with that. However while it is mainly business as usual you do get to do some stuff that felt different, such as fighting enemies in the midst of a huge blizzard, and an impressive looking finale that had you powering up a huge reactor that was spewing out deadly radiation everywhere. While the main game ended on a cliffhanger here there is even more of one, setting up events for a game that will never come, instead it acts as a bleak finish to a dark and moody series that would be original if it were not nearly identical to the Mass Effect Reaper storyline (literally nearly identical!).

I did like playing this DLC, however the short length and the recycled areas means that I can't rate it too highly. I liked that your upgrades and weapons carried over from the main game, though this did mean it was very easy to do. Thank the gods though that this DLC is a huge improvement over Dead Space 2: Severed, as that was absolute tosh.

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Dead Space 3 (2013) - Horror Video Game Review (Playstation 3)

For a while I was deeply into the Dead Space series of games, the first in the series back in 2008 was a fantastic survival horror that was a master class in design and suspense. When Dead Space 2 dropped in 2011 we got another fantastic entry in the series, even if the later half was a disappointing devolution into high action, something the game had not been particularly well known for. With the DLC chapter Severed we got our first taste of what an all action Dead Space may feel like, so when a demo was released for Dead Space 3 in 2012 and it was very action orientated, coupled with poor early reviews I 'severed' my ties with the series. I thought now it was finally time to return and try out the final entry to see if it really was as bad as was made out.

Engineer Isaac Clarke has been hiding out in an apartment on a city on the moon since the events of Dead Space 2. He just wants to be left alone and is a broken man, so is none too happy when Captain Robert Norton and Sergeant John Carver of EarthGov arrive to request his help. It turns out a group of scientists led by Ellie (Isaac's ex girlfriend) have gone missing while exploring the possible location of the original marker (too complicated to go into, basically 'markers' are devices that turns people into monsters). They want Isaac to go with them on a rescue mission as he has prior knowledge of how to destroy the things, however they are interrupted by the outbreak of war. A Unitologist (a marker worshipping religious group) army led by Jacob Danik have attacked EarthGov and activated a nearby marker unleashing hell onto the city, all in an attempt to kill Isaac who is seen as an enemy of the religion. Isaac and his group escape and head to the planet Tau Volantis where Ellie's signal was last heard...

The story is deep in that if you haven't experienced the previous entries you will be extremely lost, hell, I've played those games loads of times and I was still mightily confused at points. Usually time makes games worse than they were due to the ageing process, however here I think is a rare example of a game that has actually improved, if only due to some of the more irritating design choices getting removed. Dead Space 3 was very much a product of its time. It came out when people making video games started to become convinced no one wanted to play survival horror anymore, they believed everyone wanted games that were high in action and fast paced. Due to this the weird decision to include human enemies was made with a poor facade of cover based shooting slotted in, obviously trying to appeal to the Gears of War crowd. That was the first nail in the coffin for me not buying this game when it was first released. The human enemies though only appear in around 15% of the game and controversially I kind of like them due to the dialogue they add, and the three way fights you can get into when you, the soldiers, and necromorphs all meet at the same time.

The Last of Us: Left Behind (2014) - Zombie Horror Videogame DLC Review (Playstation 4)

I reviewed the Playstation 3 version of post apocalyptic zombie game The Last of Us back in 2014 and thought it was amazing. Since then I have brought and completed The Last of Us Remastered which is even better, mainly due to the upgraded graphics making a great game look truly stunning, and that the single player expansion; Left Behind was included in the package (the expansion is now also available to buy as a stand alone game). I'm not planning to do a review for the remastered The Last of Us, though I will say if I had reviewed it I would have gave it a 10/10 due to the added inclusion of this.

In Left Behind you play exclusively as teenager Ellie with the game taking place across two different time periods that constantly swap places with each other over the roughly two hour game. The first story takes place midway through the events of The Last of Us after Joel gets impaled on a metal pole with Ellie taking him to an abandoned shopping centre where she sets out to search for medical supplies. The second story takes place a few weeks before the start of the main game and is set in the human safe zone that starts in. Ellie's best friend Riley reappears after vanishing six months previously. Having joined the Fireflies (a rebel group accused of terrorist acts) she wants to spend one last day with her friend before going away and so takes her to a large shopping centre outside of the safe zone to have some fun. However knowing that Ellie starts the main game with a zombie bite on her arm it is safe to assume things probably wont go swimmingly for the duo...

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk (2016-17) - Fantasy Video Game Review (Playstation 4)

It was my aim this year to stay more up to date with current horror themed video games, my plan was to buy one a month so I can give a timely review. It all started well with the excellent VR treat Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in January, Berserk and the Band of the Hawk was the game I brought in February but a series of constraints meant I had to wait until now to finish playing it. This was made by the people behind Dynasty Warriors and so it takes the form of huge battles against thousands of enemies in war like settings.

In the story mode you play as Guts who starts the game being forced to join a charismatic mercenary named Griffith and his group who are known as the 'Band of the Hawk'. The game covers all three films showing Guts ascent through the ranks, and the ultimate betrayal that occurs during the iconic eclipse moment. I had expected the game to end at this point but it then goes on to cover the events of both season 1 and season 2 of the latest Berserk show, and actually finishes past the end of the second season of the anime. For someone who had only seen last year's anime before playing this it was a revelation to me to discover how Guts came to be the cursed sword man, and also how little monster type stuff was in the world before the Eclipse event. It gave me so much insight on the show that it feels crazy now to think how much I was missing out on. This brought with it new issues though, I was halfway through the game when season 2 came out and I swiftly realised that the game was going to include (the then) new seasons events and so I had to make a decision to stop playing it as I didn't want the show ruined.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition (2014) - Horror Video Game Review (PS4)

When dark fantasy RPG Diablo first came out in 1996 I ended up with a demo of it. The game took place in one huge procedurally generated dungeon under the town of Tristram, it saw you hack and slashing your way to the bottom where the demon Diablo awaited. Up until getting Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition that small demo was all I had played of the series. As such I went into this fully expecting barely any story, and just the one dungeon, much in the way Torchlight was. I was pleased to discover not only quite a big plot, but also that you travel to many, many different places.

The game takes place in a fantasy world where there are three layers of existence; Hell, Sanctuary (Earth) and Heaven. After choosing your character you arrive in the small town of Tristram to investigate reports of a fallen star that has caused the dead to rise from their graves. From this humble beginning you uncover a plot by the arch demons of Hell to once again try and conquer Sanctuary.

Resident Evil (2002) - Zombie Horror Video Game Review (PS4)

I was surprised myself to see that I had never reviewed the 2002 remake of Resident Evil (unfortunately a review of that one exists, albeit one written badly in this blog's infancy back in 2008). When the remake got released on current gen consoles recently I just knew it was time to revisit this lost game. In a twist on the norm I decided to live stream a single sitting play-through which I did yesterday, split into seven parts those videos shall be included after the review.

So set in 1998 the Raccoon City Police Department's Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S) send their Bravo team to investigate bizarre reports of murders on the outskirts of the city. After they fail to report in Alpha team headed by Albert Wesker, and including Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield and Barry Burton are sent out. Soon after arriving in the forest outside of town the group are attacked by a pack of rabid dogs, in the panic their helicopter pilot Brad flies off leaving them stranded. With the dogs hot on their heals the survivors of this attack flee to a mansion they spot in the distance, a place they think will be safe...

Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) - Fantasy Videogame Review (PS4)

I'm never too sure about reviewing fantasy games but with the previous entries in the Dragon Age series reviewed on this site and with the main antagonist being a demonic being this felt like it belonged.

After the events of Dragon Age II there has been all out war between the mages and their previous protectors; the templars. To try and get a peace agreement a summit is arranged at the temple of Sacred Ashes between the leaders of the Chantry and the two warring groups. During this summit there is a terrible explosion that kills all but one person; the character you play as. A huge rip in the veil that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead has been torn asunder above the ruined temple, and all over the land smaller rips have appeared from which demons of the fade flood through. Initially seen as being responsible for this chaos your character manages to prove their innocence, and with the gift to somehow be able to close the rifts due to a magical anchor fused to their arm they are made the figure head of the Inquisition; a force above the law that intends to find out a way to close the giant rift in the sky, to find out who was responsible for creating it, and to find a way to stop them...

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Overview of the zombie segments (Playstation 4)

In November the latest game in the Call of Duty franchise was released, on it's own that doesn't deserve a mention on the blog but of course it features the excellent Zombies mode that Treyarch always include in their games. On top of this mode though there are a couple of other cool extras that make this instalment the most horror packed one yet.

In Zombies up to four players must survive wave based rounds of zombies attacking, each round the zombies get stronger, faster, and more plentiful. Dotted around the map are new items you can buy (using points gained from killing the undead) as well as power ups from vending machines, and new areas to open up. New to Black Ops III are 'Gobblegum' machines that give you a limited time perk such as having your knife do five times as much damage or being able to quickly reload.

Prototype 2 (2012) - Horror Video Game Review (X-Box 360)

Back in 2010 I played through Prototype which is an open world horror game set in New York after zombie apocalypse erupts. In that game you played as hoodie wearing Alex Mercer who has gained monstrous powers that lets him absorb humans letting him see their memories, as well as turning his body into a deadly weapon. I did enjoy it but felt it got far too hard and frustrating. Maybe Prototype 2 will learn from the mistakes...

Prototype 2 takes place three years after the conclusion of the first game, you play as U.S Marine James Heller who returns from a tour in Iraq to discover his wife and daughter have been killed after a second zombie outbreak in New York. Figuring Alex Mercer is to blame the solider tracks him down but is easily defeated by the super being, yet rather than kill Heller, Mercer instead infects him, turning him into a mutant like him. Mercer then tells him that he wasn't the one who started this new outbreak, it is instead an evil organisation called Blackwatch who are using the chaos as a way to test out new strains of a mutant virus. Full of anger Heller sets out to destroy all those to blame for his loss.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Exo Zombies Map 4 'Descent' (2015) - Video Game Map Impressions (Playstation 4)

With Call of Duty: Black Ops III coming out in only a matter of hours now I thought it was about time I put down my impressions of Descent; the fourth and final Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Exo Zombies map. This last map is included in the Reckoning map pack and I reckon I have not really got value for money as this is yet another map pack I own purely so I can play Exo Zombies.

At the conclusion of Carrier the four strong team of Captain Lennox (Bruce Campbell), Lilith (Rose McGowan), Kahn (Bill Paxton), and Decker (Jon Bernthal) encounter the now zombified Oz (John Malkovich) and after briefly fighting him they leave the doomed carrier in an escape pod. They arrive at an underwater Atlas base known as 'The Trident Retreat', but after dispatching the surface guards they find out Oz has already seized control of the base which is now swarming with zombies...

The Walking Dead: Season Two (2013-14) - Zombie Horror Video Game Review (X-Box 360)

I really loved season one of Telltales The Walking Dead adventure game, it made you care about the characters, especially the relationship between Lee and his ward Clementine. That game ended relatively optimistically and so I never felt a sequel was needed. Finally after putting it off for a year I played through season two, but should this new chapter in Clementine's life have been left untold?

It is nearly two years since Clementine's journey with Lee and after a series of misadventures she finds herself with a new group of survivors. Their plan is to head north as there is rumour of a settlement named Wellington which is walker (zombie) free. However she soon finds this group are being hunted by a ruthless man named Carver and his cronies for reasons unknown and soon she gets caught up in events.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (2014) - Horror Videogame Review (X-Box 360)

The Ninja Gaiden series is known for it's punishing difficulty but is also considered quite a solid series (with the exception of Ninja Gaiden 3) so when a kooky zombie themed spin off was announced there was much concern it would not be very good. Me personally? I have always found the series too difficult and actually a bit boring so despite Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z getting near universal low scores when I saw it cheap I picked it up to see for myself what it was like.

In Yaiba you play as ninja Yaiba Kamikaze who is actually a bad guy. In the introduction sequence he squares off against series hero Ryu Hayabusa but after a brief sword fight his sword is shattered and he himself is sliced into chunks. Sometime later he reawakens to discover he has been reborn as a cyborg by Forge Industries, while he was dead zombie apocalypse swept the world but that doesn't bother him, all he wants to do is track down Ryu and defeat him once and for all.  Ryu meanwhile is on a quest to stop the zombie outbreak and so Yaiba follows his path, but does the shady Forge Industries have a ulterior motive for bring the angry ninja back from the dead?

Fallout: New Vegas (2010) - Post Apocalyptic Video Game Review (X-Box 360)

I brought Fallout: New Vegas when it came out back in 2010, so yes, it did take me five years to finish. In that time I had two playthroughs, my first took me all the way to the end of the game but my interest faded as I waited for the DLC to be released. My next play through started a year or so back, I have finally finished it today. Now I kind of had to panic play as I learnt Fallout 4 is due out next month and I didn't want this to still be hanging around. As such for my final push I put the difficulty down to very easy, this was not due to the game being too hard, more that I needed to quickly mop up what was left, namely the four DLC packs.

It is 2281 and four years after the events of Fallout 3, though you play as an unrelated character in an unrelated place. Two hundred and four years since nuclear Armageddon destroyed civilisation, you play as a courier who had been charged with delivering a package to New Vegas, the game starts with you a prisoner of Benny; a small time gangster. He executes you and buries you in a shallow grave. However you somehow survive this ambush and wanting revenge, as well as answers of just what it was you were delivering you head off into the Mojave wasteland. This is a world where two giant armies; that of the NCR (The New California Republic) and Caesar's Legions (modelling themselves on Ancient Romans) are gearing up for war, your actions will have a direct outcome on who wins.

Destiny: The Taken King (2015) - Video Game Expansion Review (Playstation 4)

Destiny: The Taken King is the first major expansion for the much divided game, The Dark Below and House of Wolves add ons were minor updates but this new one brought in a whole host of improvements to the core Destiny experience. As always the price is a sore point for many, people see the asking price of £40 as extortionate for what is not an entirely new game. As it is I am kinda hooked on Destiny, it is my drug of choice and so I had to check it out.

Following on from The Dark Below and this expansions story again concerns itself with The Hive who are the demonic style alien race. In that first DLC Crota; a kind of God like being was prevented from being summoned to Earth, now his father Oryx has brought his almighty Dreadnought to our solar system seeking revenge on the guardian who killed his son. Oryx has a special skill in that he is able to control the Taken army. These soldiers are made up of possessed soldiers from every race of aliens. Your mission is to find a way to breach the Dreadnoughts defences and then hunt down Oryx and stop his threat.

Dead Island: Ryder White (2012) - Video Game DLC Review(Playstation 3)

Having finished Dying Light recently I revisited Dead Island to do the story DLC. Dead Island is an open world survival game in which you play one of four survivors of a zombie outbreak. In Dead Island: Ryder White you play as the titular soldier, who is not immune to the undead virus. There will be spoilers for anyone who has not done the main game.

Soldier Ryder White is put in charge of blowing up the bridges out of Banoi after a zombie outbreak occurs. Despite some difficulties he does this and gets airlifted to safety, however upon learning that his wife Emma is now infected he makes a detour to the prison where she is situated at, to try and cure her.