Category: Consoles

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China. Awesome

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is awesome. It’s one of those games that we at X35 Earthwalker call a master piece. Very few games are master pieces by the way. All the effort and work that went into this game and it most definitely shows.

Assassin’s Creed: China (for short) is a 2.5D action adventure developed by ‘Climax Studios’. Assassin’s Creed: China is set in well… China… but in 1526 as the Ming dynasty starts to crumble. Players control Shao Jun who by the way is such a cool character. She is the last surviving assassin of the Chinese brotherhood. She has returned home and has come back with one serious desire for revenge. If you are wondering how skilled she is, well she was trained by Ezio Auditore who is legend among the creed. 

Straight away we loved Shao Jun. Her mobility has to be the best of all the assassins we have seen so far. Her shuffling, climbing, moving in and out of bushes, doors and cover is so graceful and clean looking. Her attitude and thoughts reveal her character. She is calm, thinks things through and quite honourable. Even when she feels like she messed up, we don’t blame her. She is strong, smart and does everything with style but comes from a hard beginning. 

The game its self is beautiful. Just take a look. The art style is definitely unique. It’s a fusion of the essence of Chinese 16th century traditional brush strokes with more contemporary, impressionistic styles. We have played through so much of the game and each level looks amazing. The graphics are excellent. The environments makes it clear that you are not in the UK or America. The buildings, the waters, the greenery and even the fog and clouds in the sky all look realistic and awesome. This game is setting some real standards right here. Don’t get us started on the music. The music is so authentic. When you hear it and instruments, it makes things quite peaceful and creates an experience for you as you play through the game. The music certainly ain’t no copy and paste from the internet. So visually and audibly Assassin’s Creed: China is outstanding.

The gameplay is also excellent, the controls are easy to understand and work very well. There are no problems controlling Shao Jun. You can hide behind pillars, hid in bushes and bushes, hide in doors and hide in hay (cause why not). The traditional ‘Leap of faith’ is here as well. Get to a high point and leap of, like in the original Assassin’s Creed, and land from an incredibly high height, safely in a small amount of hay. Don’t you just love physics in video games. You can assassinate your enemies, straight up brawl with them or sneak past them. The game rates your performance by three categories. Shadow. Assassin and brawler. Brawler is where you straight up fight the enemies you see in combat with heavy and light slashes and multiple techniques but this way is worth the least amount of points. Assassin is when you sneak around but assassinate your enemies, this is worth the second most points. Shadow is when you get through the areas without being detected and no killing at all; this awards the most points. We have a problem with this. The game is called assassins’s creed and assassinating enemies is what these character do yet the assassin’s don’t give the most points. Yeah we know that sneaking around without killing is harder to do but assassins assassinate. Whatever…

The game also gives you a map of the level. This map reveals where you are, special chests, anima shards (collectibles and objectives and more. The map is quite detailed and straight away displays what you need to know. You can hide the bodies of enemies you kill because if another enemy spots the body, they will call for reinforcements and be aware of you. Assassin’s Creed: China is very realistic in how the soldiers and guards operate and react to certain things. They will investigate noises and sounds. The only unrealistic feature is that when two guards are talking, they do not notice anything you are doing nearby. You can literally stand right next to them and they don’t notice. Still fun though. It must be the best conversation ever. Shao Jun is also armed with quite the equipment. She has throwing knives which can be used to cut ropes and even attack enemies. She has small fire crackers which stun enemies allowing you to assassinate or stun them for a while. Shao also got some sound knives which when thrown emit a noise where it landed which causes enemies to go towards it to check it out. Lastly Shao can whistle to distract enemies and get their attention. Your equipment can be used in different ways to accomplish what you need for all three styles: Shadow assassin and brawler.

There are many factors in this game: Dogs will bark if you come near, giving away your location to enemies, Birds in cages which will give away your position if you run past them, Bells which will ring very loudly if you knock into them and water which makes noise as you move through it. The enemies are different as well. Some enemies just have a sword. Others have a Bisento like weapon so knowing when to block changes. Some have throwing knives so watch out. Others carry crossbows for long range shots. Some have shields to block frontal attacks. Some carry lanterns, meaning they can see into dark areas and pull out whoever tries to hide there. Many guards tend to patrol around but have patterns so watch them for a while to know what’s up. Some guards peep over edges and out of windows so watch where you are climbing and hanging as you may still get caught. This isn’t everything. As you can see, there are so many factors in this game which when they all combine and work together create some very puzzling areas where thinking becomes a necessity. It is all great fun though. The cutscenes are done very well and works with the style of the game. You can see the paint and artwork in this.

Overall we have had so much fun with Assassins Creed Chronicles: China. So much awesome work has gone into this game. This is definitely worth playing.

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Moon Hunter. Yep, it’s about the moon

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Moon Hunters is an adventure RPG, developed by ‘Kitfox Games’ and is already out on PC and PS4 but will be released on Xbox One July 19th. We have never heard of this game until recently but finding information on Moon Hunters is actually easy. This is another great example of how to display information for gamers in a easy way.

On the Moon Hunter official website it says, “Moon Hunters is a myth-weaving adventure for 1-4 players, solving ancient mysteries and building mythologies. Explore a hand-painted pixel art world that’s randomly generated yet rich with legends, non-linear stories, and secrets. How will you be remembered?” This sounds like ancient, fantasy world filled with mythological things and creatures. In the world of Moon Hunter, the moon is the source of all magic and spiritual power. Except one evening the moon doesn’t rise. Wait is this why we are hunting the moon? It’s up to you to solve the mystery of why the moon didn’t rise and return things back to normal. You can either go on this adventure alone or with other chosen children of the moon.

So what does it matter that the moon doesn’t rise? Well monsters show up and chaos increases across the lands. Lands like oceans and mountains. The world is dangerous and constantly changing which is why you must think carefully about what you do and how you use your weapons. You can craft in Moon Hunters as well. It’s about survival. The game does emphasise that your character has personalities. 

The journey in this game is random generated. There is said to be over a hundred different locations. The journey is centered around myths. The landmarks and different territories may contain myths. These are needed to advance your world and character. Your decisions will effect how different factions see you. There are new powers waiting to be unlocked. There are different myths, creatures and items. The story of Moon Hunter is not linear at all. It comes down to your decisions and responses to certain situations. For example, if a villager did you wrong, how would you deal with it? Will you let it go, get the truth out of them or kill them? So what kind of mythology will your character have? Best of all, this game has co-op action so you can play with your family and friends in the strange world of Moon Hunter.

Overall we think this is a good game indeed. We checked out some gameplay and we saw the art style, the different characters in the game, the different constellation that your character could have, some combat and more. The graphics for it’s style is okay, the environments though look cool. The music is nice. Fantasy worlds are just always exciting to explore and play simply because anything could be in it. There is no limit so we hope to see the bigger stuff of Moon Hunter in the future. The developers ‘Kitfox Games’ did a great job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker will wait to see more of this game first but we like what we see. This game is worth checking out. We don’t care about constellations but… we do care about the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Stealth much?

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is a new hardcore tactical stealth game, developed by ‘Mimimi Productions’ and coming out August 1st for Xbox One, PS4, PC also Linux, Apple, Steam.

Shadow Tactics is set around the Edo period in Japan. That’s interesting and specific. We aren’t 100% certain of the games story but we do know quite a bit concerning the game. The player controls a team of ‘deadly specialists’. Assassins. This game is all about stealth and deciding what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Firstly the group that you control is filled with very different individuals indeed but they must work together which initially looks impossible. The good thing though is that the game shows interest in the characters. More will be revealed about them including their own personal demons. So yes friendship and trust is important. There is Hayato who is an agile ninja who makes his way through his enemies silently wielding shuriken and sword. Aiko is all about camouflage and a master at it; she also can distract enemies disguised as a geisha. Yuki is all about traps and decoys. Already we can see the strategies already. Takuma is the markmans armed with a sniper rifle. Mugen is a samurai who rather takes the enemy on and is powerful enough to do so.

In Shadow of tactics, players must think carefully about how to approach the missions which are said to be challenging. So players must take into account how the characters will work together as a team. You will face snowy mountain monasteries, castles and even hidden forest camps. So how will you deal with the enemy? Complete stealth as in no one even knew you was there. Lure enemies into traps with decoys or how about a little bit of poison. 

There will be three difficulty levels so this game does have some mercy. There are multiple ways to take out your enemies so be creative and get experimental. You can move from roof to roof and even climb buildings for that elevation advantage over your enemies. Yes, we are all thinking it. Takuma should always be placed up on buildings for that nice clean shot.

We checked out some gameplay and we are definitely happy about this. The stealth mechanics here are more realistic as in you can’t kill someone standing right next to another enemy and no one notice. The environment can be used to your advantage like having Yuki cause a boulder to fall and cruch enemies below. In shadow mode you can set one action for each character. Then hit execute to have everything happen at once. If the enemy spot a dead body, they will actually do something realistic like alert all other guards and even call for reinforcements. You can hide in bushes and see a line of sight, just like in ‘Assassins creed Chronicles China’, meaning you can see where the enemies can see and what they are looking at. This game has got nothing but positive feedback and really high ratings across the board.

Overall this looks like an outstanding game. We would honestly prefer the game to be a bit more zoomed, like have everything bigger but it’s still great. The graphics are excellent and the environments have proof of work put into them. The sounds are what you would expect from a game set in this time and location and works very well. The developers ‘Mimimi Productions’ did an excellent job with this game. We at X35 Earthwalker are looking forward to more media and information concerning Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Samurais are very popular but… not as popular as the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Serial Cleaner. Available to clean soon

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Serial Cleaner is a new fast paced stealth action game, developed by ‘iFun4all S.A.’ and coming out July 14th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. This game looks like a little 2D game for quick fun but let’s see what’s really going on here in Serial Cleaner.

Serial Cleaner has the 1970s theme and aesthetics going on. Gamers play the main character who’s job is to literally clean. He cleans murder scenes. So the typical stuff like getting rid of blood stains, disposing of evidence, which includes murder weapons and off course… getting rid of the bodies. The developers mentioned that the key words for this game are: Experimenting, fast paced decision (even though that’s three words) and exploring. These words actually say quite a lot about the game. You must watch out for nosy bystanders and itchy-fingered police officers. Getting caught is an absolute no-no.

Here’s an interesting fact. Serial Cleaner uses Real-World Data to modify gameplay according to the time of day in player’s location. The levels take inspiration from actual 1970s murder scenes. The atmosphere and humor is said to be inspired by the Pulp Fiction movie and Fargo series. The game awards exploration. We checked out some gameplay and it’s safe to say that we were right. It’s a simple game meant for quick fun action. That’s it. Nothing to take seriously but something to give a go and have a laugh. Even the theme and style screams this at you. The mechanics are well done and work well so it is a good game but it really comes down to the gamers as to whether it’s their taste or not.

Overall the game has nice graphics for it’s style, the music is good and the inspiration behind the game gave Serial Cleaner and a nice boost. The developers ‘iFun4all S.A.’ did a good job with this game. Serial Cleaner may be worth checking out. Who here likes cleaning? Well we do like… the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Diablo 3: Rise of the Necromancer. Rises Tomorrow

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

Diablo 3: Rise of the Necromancer is the newest pack, developed by ‘Blizzard Entertainment’. It’s coming to Xbox One, PS4 and PC July 27th. This is a purchasable content pack.

We don’t know much about any of the Diablo games but we did learn some stuff about Diablo 3: rise of the Necromancer. The website says “Comprised of controlled, calculating individuals, the Priests of Rathma have long known the true stakes at the heart of the Eternal Conflict. Known to uneducated outsiders as Necromancers, these masters of blood, bone, and the dark arts are often misunderstood. Driven to protect the Balance at all costs, those dedicated to walking this path see neither good nor evil in their actions; simply obedience to the cycle of being.” Now we don’t care how you want to word things, a necromancer is a necromancer, simple as that.

The rise of the Necromancer pack grants full access to the Necromancer class in both campaign and adventure modes. Included also are non-combat pet, two additional stash tabs, pennant, necromancer portrait, two additional character slots and a pair of cosmetic wings. That sounds like quite the bunch. Even so, we believe that the most interesting thing here is the fact that as a necromancer you can use and control an army of the dead which is always cool in games. An army of skeletons or skeleton archers or whatever. This is one of those things were gamers will have to take a look at the pack and make a judgement for themselves. 

Overall we aren’t impressed with the pack at all and it doesn’t make us want to buy but it will be the exact opposite for fans of Diablo 3 and the other packs as it’s always great to have more content. This might be worth checking out. We don’t like Necromancers… but we do like the ‘Earth Walk!’

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Xbox One. Big update

Posted on by X35 Earthwalker

The big update for the Xbox One is here. There have been been some big changes and straight up we can say that we are happy with it. If you are an Xbox gamer then you just have to check this out.

The first thing you’ll notice with this big update is your Xbox will let you know that the ‘Xbox button’ now functions differently. Remember when you wanted to snap an app to your screen so you could do two things at once but then sometimes your double tap doesn’t go through and is counted as a single tap? Well that won’t happen anymore. This big update fixed all that. Now just by pressing the button once you bring up the newly enhanced Guide as an overlay on the left hand side of your screen. Then with one more button you can bring up Game DVR in an instant to record your best moments. This makes things so much easier. X35 Earthwalker has had moments when during a match something happened and he needs to quickly record the last 30 seconds but double taps and instead gets taken to the home page and then has to go back in and maybe get killed trying to record that. That will never happen again thanks to this. Also Game DVR no longer snaps to the right hand side of your  screen reducing the screen of your game. It records in the back ground like it should. Great decision Xbox. We love it! 

Next obvious change you’ll notice, because of the big update, is how the home page and UI looks. It’s a different design. It first of all allows you to see your background much better. It looks more neat we would say and there are additional features to the guide on the left handside like an achievement tracker to make getting those achievements easier since you’ll know how much more you have to do or how many enemies you got left or a reminder of what the achievement was while gaming. There is also an easier access to the achievement leaderboard for those who are in competition with their friends over who can get the gain the most gamer score points and who reigns over their friends. It’s a nice feature as at the end of the day you should always aim to make things easier to do. Nothing is more annoying than knowing you can do something cool but it’s complex or requires too many steps. Make it simple which is what Xbox has done. 

If you checked everything in the guide then you would have noticed another large change thanks to the big update. That’s right. It’s Beam. Have you ever wanted to stream? Wanted your friends and others to watch you live in action kicking butt and making your opponents rage quit? Well now you can and best of all, it’s simple and easy to do. Just select Beam and then if you agree you can do the simple settings for your stream like where your camera (if you have one) would go, where your chat feed would go whether you want microphone enabled etc. Select your name for that stream or keep the default one and then select ‘Start broadcast’ to begin. It’s that simple. Straight away this is an excellent feature to have. Even if you don’t want to use it, you at least have the option which is almost always a good thing. Now there are some more stuff like ‘Screen time limits’ which would allow yourself or parents to set how long you or your child can be on the Xbox for. It’s about responsibility. Don’t be one of those people who sit in front of the Xbox for 12 hours and do nothing else. That’s sad. There’s ‘blue-ray bitstream passthrough’ which basically allows your receiver to decode audio natively. All the formats for bitstream are supported, including newer ones like DTS:X and Dolby Atmos. These are the main changes in the big update.

Overall we at X35 Earthwalker are happy with this big update. It adds some cool new stuff to the Xbox making it a more powerful and useful console for sure. The best part is that quite a lot of things have been made more simple now like streaming and using game DVR. The team at Xbox did a fantastic job and it must be said. Thank you for all your hard work Xbox. This is worth checking out but whether you are happy with the big update or not… be happy with the ‘Earth Walk!’

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