Beyond Two Souls Review

Beyond Two Souls Review

The PS4 port of Beyond: Two Souls doesn’t fix the game's core issues. It’s still a very stilted, awkward experience in spots, usually right after a stretch where the gameplay and narrative get everything right. What it does do--thanks to this edition’s best new feature, where the timeline-hopping narrative can be played in chronological order--is strip away some of the high-concept pretense and deliver a straightforward story that's stronger as a result.

Beyond: Two Souls is about the life of Jodie Holmes (performed by Ellen Page), a girl who, since birth, has been tethered to an otherworldly entity named Aidan. Naturally, having a poltergeist as an impulsive companion doesn’t exactly equal an ideal life--especially since Aidan’s presence leaves Jodie open to frequent visits from the malevolent side of the hereafter. But even when she’s not being dragged around by invisible horrors, Jodie still has to contend with Aidan’s mischievous tendencies. And on days when Aidan is calm, there’s just life as a socially awkward girl who sees things that nobody should ever have to see. We follow Jodie over a stretch of 15 years, watching her deal with the world--and the world deal with her--and make decisions that change the course of her life.

This experiment went well.

Beyond feels right at home on PS4. Textures are noticeably upgraded from the PS3 version and lighting improvements galore create an even more stunning cinematic experience. The actual playing of Beyond hasn’t changed significantly in the transition to PS4. For the most part, it’s still a copy-paste job from Heavy Rain. Most of your time is spent wandering through closed environments, looking for the magical prompt that signifies when you can interact with an object or person.

In keeping with Quantic Dream's trademark style, action is handled by quick time events in a dynamic fashion, taking full advantage of the DualShock 4's motion-sensing functionality. The PS4 edition of the game does add a few tricky bits, where QTEs use diagonals instead of normal up-down-left-right prompts, but those only pop up in two of the chapters. The timing of the prompts seems stricter, which means that Jodie is liable to take a few more brutal hits when the going gets tough, but the QTEs don’t determine the course of the story so much as they bring the action to life. Yes, you could, in theory, just set the controller down during an action scene and let it play out on its own, but you’d be watching a sequence of Jodie getting the crap kicked out of her ad nauseum. Actively participating in Jodie's struggle is much more gratifying.

If only she had a Fulton baloon.

Through the course of the game, the best moments in each action scene require your input, whether you're jumping between moving vehicles, tossing soldiers into the road, stealing a motorcycle, blowing past a police garrison, or saving people from a burning building. There are even a few scattered sequences of stealth combat, where Jodie tackles hapless bad guys into the dirt.

Beyond’s big hook, of course, is the fact that, any time you have full control over Jodie, you can instantly switch to Aidan and roam the world as a phantom, floating through doors, walls, and objects, listening to secret conversations, force-pushing objects around, choking the life out of folks, or even possessing hapless victims. The seams of the gimmick show often. It’s built into the story that Aidan can actively hurt Jodie if he travels too far, but how far exactly seems to be determined by the needs of the scene rather than consistent logic.

Beyond feels right at home on PS4. Textures are noticeably upgraded from the PS3 version and lighting improvements galore create an even more stunning cinematic experience.

Having said that, the puzzles, obstacles, and story points built around Aidan’s powers are wonderfully plotted. A painful goodbye interrupted by Jodie’s irritating father can be salvaged if you choose to give him a much-deserved goodbye choke. More than once, Aidan will have to rescue Jodie from a sticky situation by possessing one of her enemies, forcing him to kill his friends and then himself. Its seldom that we get to see a story through the eyes of a spirit, and the extent to which its used in Beyond leads to some fascinating conclusions.

The chronological version of this story told in the new PS4 version is a marked improvement over the original, where the key points of Jodie’s life were scrambled up and presented as a random series of disparate moments as opposed to a life flashing linearly before her eyes. As a chronological narrative, we get a much better sense of the burden of Jodie’s powers, watching her grow from a curious but sheltered child into a rebellious teenager who longs to live in the real world, and ultimately, into a young woman who finds herself routinely beaten by society.

Page and Dafoe deliver excellent performances.

Much of the story's impact can be laid at the feet of Page. Her performance, both vocal and physical, is powerful; it retreats to hollowly call upon the full weight of Jodie’s collective traumas in one scene, using the same trauma to fuel a deep, embittered rage in the next. Willem Dafoe brings a similar gravitas. His side of the script is steeped in exposition, especially toward the end, but there are times when he demonstrates genuine warmth and paternal concern for Jodie--traits we rarely see from Dafoe. The supporting cast varies. Kadeem Hardison, the only other “name” actor in the game, is solid in his role, but elsewhere, actors fail to keep up and weigh down scenes with poor acting that contrasts with Beyond's more capable cast members.

Beyond remains an imperfect experience but is still compelling for what it accomplishes.

They’re bound to Beyond's schizophrenic script, which flips between sequences of earnest, pensive drama, high-octane action, and well-directed but conceptually goofy supernatural blather. The highs are spectacular: The sequence where Jodie deals with homelessness stands out, and a scene where she reunites with a heavily medicated relative is brutally harrowing. The lows, however, are bewildering in their shallowness: An eye-rolling incident at a bar, a detour into Navajo mythology, and a character’s sudden shift into comic book villainy ultimately disappoint. Occasionally, there are scenes like Jodie’s solo mission to take down an African dictator, which, while delivering a stellar dose of action, feels disconnected from the overarching narrative.

Beyond remains a unique experience, even as the tools implemented in its creation have become commonplace. It's filled with concepts that are immediately odd and illogical, but if you accept them on their own terms, they add up to a fascinating if unconventional tale. Beyond remains an imperfect experience but is still compelling for what it accomplishes.

Source : http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/beyond-two-souls-review/1900-6416326/

Yakuza 5 review

Yakuza 5 review 

Diving back into Japan’s criminal underworld with Yakuza mainstay Kazuma Kiryu as its narrative anchor is like jumping into another season of a well-received cable TV drama. It usually doesn’t take eight years for a show to reach its fifth season but Yakuza 5 was worth the wait. It even manages to be more feature-rich than its predecessors thanks to a robust set of stories and minigames spread across multiple urban districts across Japan. Savoring Yakuza 5 is about being pulled in by not only its woven plotlines and energetic combat, but also the numerous activities that bring its world to life.

Just like the games of Brendan McNamara (The Getaway, L.A. Noire), the Yakuza series has always belonged at that end of the urban open world game spectrum where gameplay takes a backseat to story. We’re talking about Metal Gear Solid levels of exposition through lengthy cutscenes. Yakuza 5’s heavy themes of honor among criminals and workplace loyalty are aptly presented through the lens and production values of a big budget TV show, and you’d be hard pressed to come up with any game outside this series that features this much melodramatic piano music.

Kazuma Kiryu hasn’t aged much since the original Yakuza, and he's never looked better.

If there’s one key feature from Yakuza 4 that this sequel capitalizes on, it is the value of having multiple stories. As much as Kazuma Kiryu could be effective as a solo protagonist, having four other playable characters, each with their own lengthy and fleshed-out storylines, adds immense value to Yakuza 5. These journeys are personal, and plot threads intertwine like those of a Tarantino film, and converge at the end like a narrative Voltron.

Kazuma kicks off Yakuza 5 on an intriguing note: disguised as a taxi driver making a modest living in Fukuoka. Between highway racing challenges and standard driving missions, there’s a lot of entertaining taxi gameplay to distract you from the story for hours. Unlike other games of its ilk, Yakuza 5 treats driving around city streets as a challenge, with strict traffic laws to follow--until you get on the highways, where anything goes. Another chapter puts you in the shoes of ex-con Taiga Saejima, deep in a snowy forest and far away from the game's concrete jungles This leads to a surprisingly engrossing hunting minigame where stalking prey without startling them is harder than it looks--especially when the intensity of snowfall fluctuates frequently--causing you to take a breath and compose yourself before every shot.

Although Yakuza 5 never attempts to be a real simulation of life in Japan, the areas of selective realism within are one of its biggest draws.

Taxi racing and hunting are just two of myriad diversions that support Yakuza 5's tale, and with over two dozen types of minigames, there's a lot to discover when you're out and about. It’s brilliant that arcades in the game feature an arcade-perfect version of Virtua Fighter 2 and that Namco Bandai’s Taiko Drum Master exists, even if it only has a three-song playlist. Casino games like poker and baccarat are well-represented, as are traditional sports practice areas like batting centers and driving ranges. When enduring the failure of my fifth attempt at grabbing a plush toy from a UFO Catcher, I couldn’t help by recall my struggles at the similar games of chance in Shenmue, and in real life.

Yakuza 5 is the closest thing we'll get to a proper Taxi Driver video game.

Nothing in Yakuza 5 underscores the series’ passage of time more than Haruka Sawamura’s story arc. Originally the young girl who was the plot’s focal point in the first game, she is now sixteen years old. Her continued and consistent relevance in the series serves as one of the many rewards to fans who have followed Yakuza since the first game. In Haruka's world, there is only one sensible career path for a Japanese teenage girl: idol singer. I afforded myself one eyeroll at this unoriginal premise before I wholeheartedly jumped into the early stages of her burgeoning career.

Given the series’ history with rhythm-based action, mostly through karaoke, this chapter will be familiar to Yakuza fans. It’s not just about matching button inputs to on-screen prompts during a practice session in the dance studio. There are meet-and-greets with fans, appearances on various TV shows, and even dance-offs in the streets.

Haruka’s songs are more infectious and tolerable than anything by Sega's Hatsune Miku.

Haruka’s variety show appearances are impressively authentic, not just with the banter between her and the host, but also with the lighting and camerawork. It’s not for everybody, but it's a welcome interlude from the heavy doses of suspense and intrigue in the other plotlines. Still, Yakuza 5 never veers too far from the beaten path, with Rival idols and conflicts with competing management companies providing a dash of drama to Haruka's tale.

Although Yakuza 5 never attempts to be a real simulation of life in Japan, the areas of selective realism within are one of its biggest draws. I still remember walking into a convenience store in the first game and admiring the level of detail, from the magazines to the bright and unflattering overhead lighting. This and many other types of business look all the more detailed in Yakuza 5, right down to the pastel color schemes in the pharmacies. And as much as one can survive the game’s more hostile sections with a boost from energy drinks, sometimes you just want a bowl of health-replenishing ramen or curry. Given all of Yakuza 5’s urban attractions and the vibrancy of most of its various large locales, you’d think that Sega received a subsidy from the Japan National Tourism Organization.

The core combat in Yakuza 5 is mostly unchanged since the first game and it’s a credit to the series that this hasn’t become totally stale after all these years. Fans will immediately recognize Kazuma’s fighting animations, especially when he’s smashing opponents’ faces with a unusual weapons, including the likes of a bicycle. The tried-and-tested combat serves Yakuza 5 well, but without any type of counter system for self-defense, it shows its age.

You’d be surprised what Taiga Saejima can pick up.

Make no mistake, though, there is depth to Yakuza 5's combat. Throws, dodges, and opportunities to learn new moves ensure that fights aren't a one-dimensional affair. The series was one of the first street brawlers to include context-sensitive environmental finishing moves, a feature that was improved upon by United Front Games’ Sleeping Dogs, and it's put to great use here. Smashing a thug’s face on the side of a building never gets old; it always looks brutal, but more importantly, it offers a gratifying sense of finality to a fight. As much as you can mash your way to victory with quick attacks, these deadlier moves are doubly effective in scaring off the other gangsters, turning a sixty-second brawl into a fifteen-second display of intimidating might. Of course, moments of slapstick complement the harsh side of combat, including the use of an injured foe as a weapon against his unfortunate buddies, adding insult to injury.

Yakuza 5 makes up for its modest shortcomings with enthralling diversions and eye-popping settings that compel one to look at travel deals to Japan.

While playing the prior games isn’t a prerequisite, loyal fans who have followed the Yakuza series up to this point will feel rewarded with every throwback, whether it’s the return of a supporting character or a revisit to a ramen shop that has remained in business for multiple games. Even if melee combat lacks the sophistication of modern action games, Yakuza 5 makes up for its modest shortcomings with enthralling diversions and eye-popping settings that compel one to look at travel deals to Japan. Come for the stories, but stick around for Yakuza 5's world; it's unconventional in the best way possible

Source : http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/yakuza-5-review/1900-6416325/

Rainbow Six Siege Review

The average Rainbow Six Siege multiplayer match contains a surprisingly small amount of shooting. Gunplay is, of course, still central to the Siege experience, but there's so much more to it. You'll spend just as much time strategizing with your teammates, carefully laying traps, reinforcing destructible walls, and feeling your heart race as the dull, distant rumble of your enemies' breach charges suddenly gives way to intense and immediate chaos. And that's just on defense.

Few modern shooters can match the heart-pounding exhilaration and immense strategic depth Siege achieves with its asymmetrical PvP. With no respawns, no regenerating health, and only five players per team, every life suddenly feels meaningful and precious (though you can still monitor security cameras and communicate with your team in death). Running-and-gunning will almost certainly land you on the sidelines, so you're much better off using your drivable drone to scout ahead or coordinating with your teammates to ensure all sightlines are covered.

Siege's spectacular sound design can save your life. Play with headphones on if you want to know exactly where the enemy's approaching from.

Not only does the intense one-life setup encourage players to approach every encounter thoughtfully and methodically, it also fills a long neglected gap in the FPS genre. While shooters that emphasize twitch shooting over tactics can grow tiresome, Siege's seemingly endless array of viable strategies makes every round memorable and organically begets the kind of brilliant, unpredictable moments you can't wait to tell your friends about.

In any given round, you could repel from a rooftop, smash through a window, and flash the room with a stun grenade, or just lie prone in a dark corner waiting for enemies to wander past. Maybe on defense you'll fortify four team members in a single room but send the fifth out into the wild in hopes of catching the other team off guard. You could also play some mind games by remotely detonating an explosive purely as misdirection before infiltrating through another point of ingress. All these mechanics breed creativity and allow the game to evolve as players develop (and react to) new strategies.

All these mechanics breed creativity and allow the game to evolve as players develop (and react to) new strategies.

Unfortunately, there is a campaign-sized hole where Siege's single-player should be, and while a carefully crafted, story-driven experience would have further solidified the game's position as one of the year's best shooters, Siege still manages to compensate in other ways. Franchises like Halo and Call of Duty have set the bar for the amount of desirable content you can cram into a game, and Siege clearly falls short of that mark. But consider a game like Rocket League, which has delivered serious longevity with a single game mode. Siege, to me, feels like Rocket League or even Team Fortress 2 in that its pure, competitive nature makes it eminently replayable.

Even outside of its natural competitiveness and deep well of mechanics, Siege's PvP provides enough variables to keep players engaged. There are multiple match types, over a dozen maps, randomized objective locations within those maps, differing times of day for every stage, mixed mode servers that automatically scramble all these options together, and, most importantly, 20 distinct Operators, all of whom open new gameplay avenues. Even characters whose unique gadget seemed useless at first inevitably proved me wrong. I assumed Doc's remote revive dart would never come in handy given that allies are far more often killed than wounded; then I saw someone punch a tiny hole through a wall to revive a fallen teammate pinned by gunfire on the other side.

Environmental destruction plays a major role in Siege's multiplayer.

And while Siege may not contain a campaign, it does offer 11 singleplayer "Situations" that are both legitimately helpful and surprisingly robust, considering they're essentially training missions. Each situation features three difficulty options and three optional objectives--which enhances their replayability--and each one focuses on a different aspect of the game like bomb defusal or destructible cover. They lack the cohesion, polish, and narrative drive of a campaign, but they're at least diverse enough to prove worthwhile.

You can also choose to tackle Siege's Terrorist Hunt mode alone, though it's definitely more approachable as a cooperative experience. As with the competitive multiplayer, each player gets one life and only a finite amount of health, but here you must hunt down a preset number of AI-controlled terrorists or disarm bombs while an infinite number of enemies attempt to interfere. Being so outnumbered while having no way to heal turns every round into an intense war of attrition; even if the first guy doesn't kill you outright, he might shave off enough of your health that the next guy can easily take you out. When you make it to the end of a 20-minute round with only a tiny sliver of health remaining, finishing off that final terrorist provides such an incredible high I found it nearly impossible to hold in my reflexive "Hell yeah!"

Despite all this excess adrenaline, Siege still suffers a few rough edges. The progression system, for example, feels slightly empty and metes out experience too slowly. Thankfully, Casual PvP will be available right out of the gate, but you'll have to accrue enough XP to reach level 20 before you'll unlock Ranked PvP. It makes sense the game would gate Ranked matches given that they remove much of the in-game assistance that makes Casual PvP accessible (a fact the game fails to explain, unfortunately), but grinding all the way to level 20 takes far too long. Why not set the limit lower and let players decide when they're ready?

Microtransactions are limited to weapon skins and XP boosts, so you can easily ignore them if you prefer to save your money

In addition to XP, players also earn Renown--Siege's version of in-game currency, which can be used to purchase new Operators, weapon attachments, and weapon skins. Again, forcing players to slowly earn new Operators makes some sense: it creates a sense of connection and ownership while encouraging players to really explore and capitalize on each character's unique skills. I was also able to unlock two attackers and two defenders in roughly three hours (thanks in part to some generous boosts early on), and that collection of four Operators proved substantial enough to enable my enjoyment despite limiting my options.

However, I still encountered situations where my operators had already been selected by other players, which forced me to play as the generic "recruit" stand-in. And more importantly, customization options are extremely limited. You can buy custom sights and scopes or equip your guns with various stabilizers and silencers, but these attachments only marginally impact gameplay, and because you're only outfitting one or two Operators at a time, you'll earn every upgrade with very little effort. This undoubtedly preserves the balance of the game, but it's pretty difficult to feel like you're progressing when there's so little to work towards.

Everything from the strength of your internet connection to the makeup of your team can impact your enjoyment of Siege, but importantly, Siege itself does everything it can to ensure you're able to enjoy the game in spite of these variables.

Being an always-online game, Siege also comes with it's fair share of minor annoyances that, while mostly unobtrusive, are still worth mentioning. Map rotation could be more consistent. Console players could use more in-game communication tools beyond the temporary marker icon. Matchmaking needs to be just as smooth on PC as it currently is on consoles. Purchasing and equipping new gear shouldn't require players to back out of matches. There needs to be an easier way to kick and report disruptive players.

Everything from the strength of your internet connection to the makeup of your team can impact your enjoyment of Siege, but importantly, Siege itself does everything it can to ensure you're able to enjoy the game in spite of these variables. Across all the hours I spent online, players were consistently cooperative and communicative, and to some degree, I have to credit Siege's tutorials and situations for adequately conveying how the game is meant to be played.

My experiences weren't always perfect, but when Siege works, there's nothing else like it. It's not designed to appeal to all players, and that's exactly what allows it to be something special. With so much strategic depth, those periods between firefights actually become some of the most rewarding, while firefights themselves are made all the more intense by the knowledge that you're fighting for your life, not just your kill/death ratio.

Source : http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/rainbow-six-siege-review/1900-6416324/

Just cause 3 review

Just cause 3 review

Just Cause 3 makes no apologies for its outrageous nature. It's a power fantasy in every sense of the phrase, placing you in a world rife with destructible environments and giving you creative instruments with which to destroy them. There are intermittent technical problems, and scripted moments detract from the freedom found elsewhere, but in the end, Just Cause 3 provides a spectacular, explosive sandbox experience.

The plot revolves around returning protagonist Rico Rodriguez, who's arrived in the fictional Republic of Medici during the height of Sebastiano Di Ravello's military dictatorship. The story here is forgettable, but delivers an effective invitation: dozens of military installations cover the world map, and it's your job to blow them up for the rebel forces.

Rodriguez himself is a mashup of masculine action stars and comic book characters, so it makes sense that I often felt like a superhero in his shoes. By supplying you with a wingsuit, parachute, and grappling hook, Just Cause 3 gives you an effective means of transportation, as well as a smooth, nuanced traversal system.

There is a steep learning curve, but with practice, I was leaping from helicopters, gliding through enemy bases, and floating over farmland with ease. It's thrilling to leap from a cliff, free-fall for 10 seconds, grapple to a nearby rock, and use the momentum to launch back into the air with parachute deployed. Rico actually felt like a hero learning his new skillset. It's as if Avalanche Studios combined Batman, Spider-Man, and The Punisher, and thrust its creation into a vivid Mediterranean landscape.

For a place soon to be covered in explosions, Medici is gorgeous.

What follows is a collision of spectacle and scale. Helicopters dot the sky. Explosions chain across the screen. Combining a parachute and grenade launcher transforms Rodriguez into a floating artillery battery from above. In a world teetering toward total destruction, Just Cause 3 grants you the tools to push it over the edge.

The traditional grenades, remote mines, and numerous land, air, and sea vehicles are all on call in the rebel arsenal. Then there's the tether: this grappling hook modification attaches two separate objects, and flings them toward each other, often with hilarious results. Rodriguez can reel enemies toward explosive barrels, collapse watchtowers, and pull attack helicopters into a fiery end. It's a testament to this game's creativity that guns were my last resort.

There's a sequence in Just Cause 3 in which a fleet of helicopters pursue you over a mountain range. In any other game, I may have resorted to the RPG slung across my back. But in keeping with this game's lack of convention, I grappled to the nearest attack chopper, pulled the pilot out, and assumed control in his place.

Just Cause 3 makes you feel like Batman, Spider-Man, and The Punisher combined.

But that somehow still felt too normal. So I evacuated my helicopter mid-air, opened my wingsuit, glided toward another nearby enemy, and grappled to his chopper door. By repeating the process, I ditched helicopter after helicopter, sending both pilots and machines soaring into the mountain range below, all without firing a single shot.

The game provided no hint to this approach. I just devised a plan and watched it unfold. Just Cause 3 doesn't nudge you in one direction or the other--it shows you the possibilities, and gets out of the way.

Like all of Just Cause 3's best moments, the tether encourages experimentation, rather than thoughtless reaction, and as the hours passed, the destruction remained creative and unpredictable. New domino reactions and car crashes were always on the horizon. It's a small mechanic, but its effects can be massive, and it encapsulates what makes Just Cause 3 so fun. Even now, after 30 hours in this idyllic sandbox, I'm sure I haven't seen every use for the tether.

And just when it seems the well of experiments might be running dry, Avalanche Studios adds variety to proceedings. As you liberate new provinces from enemy hands, challenges pop up across the map, including vehicle races, machine gun score contests, and wingsuit dives. They're fun on their own, but they're also well worth pursuing. By completing these, you'll unlock new gear mods, which change the functions of certain items.

Much of the action takes place mid-air.

While some of these are minor, such as increased grenade capacity or a nitrous boost for vehicles, others reveal dynamic new ways to experiment in Just Cause 3's sandbox.

Take the rocket boost mines, for example. Whereas previous iterations of the device just detonated at a chosen time, this modification sends objects careening into distant structures before exploding. I used this on cars numerous times, creating two-ton bombs that flew toward enemy fuel tanks with increased velocity after I dove from the driver’s seat.

This cascading structure is what makes Just Cause 3 so great. There's a cadence to how you approach its world: outpost liberation leads to challenges, which leads to gear mods, which leads to experimentation. And more often than not, each tier of this formula is entertaining in itself. That each flows so well into the next makes the overall experience all the more rewarding. Just Cause 3 excels because it adds variety to the equation throughout, making destruction and mayhem entertaining far past the early hours.

However, Just Cause 3 does deviate from its open-world freedom at times, and when it does, it falters. The scripted story missions progress the plot, but the actual gameplay involved is repetitive at best, and broken at worst.

Despite its spectacle, Just Cause 3 is filled with bugs, bad AI, and other rough edges.

The vast majority of these tasks are escort missions, in which you defend a plane, or boat, or caravan of jeeps. Protecting another character can be tiresome to begin with, and because their behavior is unpredictable and often unintelligent, I restarted checkpoints far more than felt fair. Halting progress because of my own mistakes is one thing, but when it was out of my hands, my patience grew thin.

Just Cause 3 is also filled with bugs and other rough edges. The parachute closed at random, cars disappeared while moving, and AI behavior made several story objectives impossible for a short time. One mission required me to steal a prototype combat tank from Di Ravello's forces, and extract it by boat to the hidden rebel base. However, the boat was too far from the dock for me to board it, and I had to reload the previous checkpoint. It repeated the same mistake twice more after that.

For a game that places death front and center, it was often inconsistent with whether I should die. I'm happy Just Cause 3 is lenient with its falling damage--considering I'm in the sky more often than not--but I survived a 500-foot fall at one point, only to die from a shorter one soon thereafter. These mishaps would be easy to overlook if they didn't disrupt an otherwise fluid experience too often.

Late-game upgrades make traversal even smoother.

When Just Cause 3 is consistent, however, it's a stunning display of cause and effect, as watchtowers topple into fuel tanks, which blow up nearby helicopters, which sail into oncoming vehicles. I often spent hours setting up outlandish chain reactions, or trying new gear mods, knowing full well I wasn't making any progress in the traditional sense. I was content to just sit back and marvel as it all happened.

But there's a more thoughtful undercurrent as well. Despite the explosions and instant gratification throughout, Just Cause 3 also encourages experimentation and foresight, planning and careful approaches. The results are as rewarding as they are entertaining.

Editor's Note: The majority of our time with Just Cause 3 was spent with the PC version, followed by several hours on both PS4 and Xbox One. Based on the review builds provided, the game performed better on PC, with higher and more stable frame rates, fewer bugs, and better looking environments. However, the problems did not affect the overall experience enough to impact individual scores.

SOURCE :  http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/just-cause-3-review/1900-6416323/

Rainbow Six Siege Review

Rainbow Six Siege Review

The average Rainbow Six Siege multiplayer match contains a surprisingly small amount of shooting. Gunplay is, of course, still central to the Siege experience, but there's so much more to it. You'll spend just as much time strategizing with your teammates, carefully laying traps, reinforcing destructible walls, and feeling your heart race as the dull, distant rumble of your enemies' breach charges suddenly gives way to intense and immediate chaos. And that's just on defense.

Few modern shooters can match the heart-pounding exhilaration and immense strategic depth Siege achieves with its asymmetrical PvP. With no respawns, no regenerating health, and only five players per team, every life suddenly feels meaningful and precious (though you can still monitor security cameras and communicate with your team in death). Running-and-gunning will almost certainly land you on the sidelines, so you're much better off using your drivable drone to scout ahead or coordinating with your teammates to ensure all sightlines are covered.

Siege's spectacular sound design can save your life. Play with headphones on if you want to know exactly where the enemy's approaching from.

Not only does the intense one-life setup encourage players to approach every encounter thoughtfully and methodically, it also fills a long neglected gap in the FPS genre. While shooters that emphasize twitch shooting over tactics can grow tiresome, Siege's seemingly endless array of viable strategies makes every round memorable and organically begets the kind of brilliant, unpredictable moments you can't wait to tell your friends about.

In any given round, you could repel from a rooftop, smash through a window, and flash the room with a stun grenade, or just lie prone in a dark corner waiting for enemies to wander past. Maybe on defense you'll fortify four team members in a single room but send the fifth out into the wild in hopes of catching the other team off guard. You could also play some mind games by remotely detonating an explosive purely as misdirection before infiltrating through another point of ingress. All these mechanics breed creativity and allow the game to evolve as players develop (and react to) new strategies.

All these mechanics breed creativity and allow the game to evolve as players develop (and react to) new strategies.

Unfortunately, there is a campaign-sized hole where Siege's single-player should be, and while a carefully crafted, story-driven experience would have further solidified the game's position as one of the year's best shooters, Siege still manages to compensate in other ways. Franchises like Halo and Call of Duty have set the bar for the amount of desirable content you can cram into a game, and Siege clearly falls short of that mark. But consider a game like Rocket League, which has delivered serious longevity with a single game mode. Siege, to me, feels like Rocket League or even Team Fortress 2 in that its pure, competitive nature makes it eminently replayable.

Even outside of its natural competitiveness and deep well of mechanics, Siege's PvP provides enough variables to keep players engaged. There are multiple match types, over a dozen maps, randomized objective locations within those maps, differing times of day for every stage, mixed mode servers that automatically scramble all these options together, and, most importantly, 20 distinct Operators, all of whom open new gameplay avenues. Even characters whose unique gadget seemed useless at first inevitably proved me wrong. I assumed Doc's remote revive dart would never come in handy given that allies are far more often killed than wounded; then I saw someone punch a tiny hole through a wall to revive a fallen teammate pinned by gunfire on the other side.

Environmental destruction plays a major role in Siege's multiplayer.

And while Siege may not contain a campaign, it does offer 11 singleplayer "Situations" that are both legitimately helpful and surprisingly robust, considering they're essentially training missions. Each situation features three difficulty options and three optional objectives--which enhances their replayability--and each one focuses on a different aspect of the game like bomb defusal or destructible cover. They lack the cohesion, polish, and narrative drive of a campaign, but they're at least diverse enough to prove worthwhile.

You can also choose to tackle Siege's Terrorist Hunt mode alone, though it's definitely more approachable as a cooperative experience. As with the competitive multiplayer, each player gets one life and only a finite amount of health, but here you must hunt down a preset number of AI-controlled terrorists or disarm bombs while an infinite number of enemies attempt to interfere. Being so outnumbered while having no way to heal turns every round into an intense war of attrition; even if the first guy doesn't kill you outright, he might shave off enough of your health that the next guy can easily take you out. When you make it to the end of a 20-minute round with only a tiny sliver of health remaining, finishing off that final terrorist provides such an incredible high I found it nearly impossible to hold in my reflexive "Hell yeah!"

Despite all this excess adrenaline, Siege still suffers a few rough edges. The progression system, for example, feels slightly empty and metes out experience too slowly. Thankfully, Casual PvP will be available right out of the gate, but you'll have to accrue enough XP to reach level 20 before you'll unlock Ranked PvP. It makes sense the game would gate Ranked matches given that they remove much of the in-game assistance that makes Casual PvP accessible (a fact the game fails to explain, unfortunately), but grinding all the way to level 20 takes far too long. Why not set the limit lower and let players decide when they're ready?

Microtransactions are limited to weapon skins and XP boosts, so you can easily ignore them if you prefer to save your money

In addition to XP, players also earn Renown--Siege's version of in-game currency, which can be used to purchase new Operators, weapon attachments, and weapon skins. Again, forcing players to slowly earn new Operators makes some sense: it creates a sense of connection and ownership while encouraging players to really explore and capitalize on each character's unique skills. I was also able to unlock two attackers and two defenders in roughly three hours (thanks in part to some generous boosts early on), and that collection of four Operators proved substantial enough to enable my enjoyment despite limiting my options.

However, I still encountered situations where my operators had already been selected by other players, which forced me to play as the generic "recruit" stand-in. And more importantly, customization options are extremely limited. You can buy custom sights and scopes or equip your guns with various stabilizers and silencers, but these attachments only marginally impact gameplay, and because you're only outfitting one or two Operators at a time, you'll earn every upgrade with very little effort. This undoubtedly preserves the balance of the game, but it's pretty difficult to feel like you're progressing when there's so little to work towards.

Everything from the strength of your internet connection to the makeup of your team can impact your enjoyment of Siege, but importantly, Siege itself does everything it can to ensure you're able to enjoy the game in spite of these variables.

Being an always-online game, Siege also comes with it's fair share of minor annoyances that, while mostly unobtrusive, are still worth mentioning. Map rotation could be more consistent. Console players could use more in-game communication tools beyond the temporary marker icon. Matchmaking needs to be just as smooth on PC as it currently is on consoles. Purchasing and equipping new gear shouldn't require players to back out of matches. There needs to be an easier way to kick and report disruptive players.

Everything from the strength of your internet connection to the makeup of your team can impact your enjoyment of Siege, but importantly, Siege itself does everything it can to ensure you're able to enjoy the game in spite of these variables. Across all the hours I spent online, players were consistently cooperative and communicative, and to some degree, I have to credit Siege's tutorials and situations for adequately conveying how the game is meant to be played.

My experiences weren't always perfect, but when Siege works, there's nothing else like it. It's not designed to appeal to all players, and that's exactly what allows it to be something special. With so much strategic depth, those periods between firefights actually become some of the most rewarding, while firefights themselves are made all the more intense by the knowledge that you're fighting for your life, not just your kill/death ratio.

SOURCE : http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/rainbow-six-siege-review/1900-6416324/