Nate Viramontes

This week I want to start a new segment I like to call Hidden Gems, these are the games that I have personally Played and have felt are really fun and in some case pretty cheap that deserve to be played.

The first up is Aragami, the game is a stealth level based game that has a lot of Japanese feeling to it. It feels a lot like the Dishonored franchise, where you have supernatural powers to take down bad guys.

In this game you are Aragami a being literally made from the shadow summon to free a girl name Yamiko, she appears to you as a spirit using her magic in order to save her from the order of the light.

In the game, you get all kinds of amazing shadow power from teleporting to even dissolving bad guys bodies in the shadows. That’s right in this game you can kill bad guys without destroying the world like is some games I have mentioned before.

Your only objective is to save Yamiko and to figure out who you were. The game’s levels are so much fun to play your power comes from the shadow, the light will literally drain you of your powers. The game is a serious stealth game too, you have to kill bad guys quietly otherwise most of them will one shot you. ( kill you in one hit)

That makes the game truly have to use the abilities you are given to the best of your abilities I am constantly observing the area and planning out my attacks before I make a move.

If you like stealth games that reward you for taking your time and making sure you’re doing everything right then you will love this game. The cell shade graphics remind of Okami, another Japanese style game that is a great game to play.

If your a stealth game fan like me you have to give Aragami a look. It’s available on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for $20 bucks. Enjoy this gem everyone!

Currently playing: Aragami: Shadow Edition

What’s up guys one last thing if you enjoy these articles you should also check me out on twitch where I just started streaming with my best, look me up at gh0st_n8 on Twitch come by and say what’s up!

Hidden Gems: Aragami

This week I want to start a new segment I like to call Hidden Gems, these are the games that I have personally Played and have felt are really fun and in some case pretty cheap that deserve to be played.

The first up is Aragami, the game is a stealth level based game that has a lot of Japanese feeling to it. It feels a lot like the Dishonored franchise, where you have supernatural powers to take down bad guys.

In this game you are Aragami a being literally made from the shadow summon to free a girl name Yamiko, she appears to you as a spirit using her magic in order to save her from the order of the light.

In the game, you get all kinds of amazing shadow power from teleporting to even dissolving bad guys bodies in the shadows. That’s right in this game you can kill bad guys without destroying the world like is some games I have mentioned before.

Your only objective is to save Yamiko and to figure out who you were. The game’s levels are so much fun to play your power comes from the shadow, the light will literally drain you of your powers. The game is a serious stealth game too, you have to kill bad guys quietly otherwise most of them will one shot you. ( kill you in one hit)

That makes the game truly have to use the abilities you are given to the best of your abilities I am constantly observing the area and planning out my attacks before I make a move.

If you like stealth games that reward you for taking your time and making sure you’re doing everything right then you will love this game. The cell shade graphics remind of Okami, another Japanese style game that is a great game to play.

If your a stealth game fan like me you have to give Aragami a look. It’s available on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for $20 bucks. Enjoy this gem everyone!

Currently playing: Aragami: Shadow Edition

What’s up guys one last thing if you enjoy these articles you should also check me out on twitch where I just started streaming with my best, look me up at gh0st_n8 on Twitch come by and say what’s up!

This week I wanted to do a segment that I’d like to call “Reevaluated”. Starting it off with taking a look at games that got so much hate back when they first launched and have in years since become really fun thanks to the devs endless support.

The game I want to talk about this time around is Star Wars Battlefront II. Oh boy, when this game originally came out all we would talk about is how bad the mircotransactions were. The perks in the game called Star Cards were allowed to be upgraded using real world money.

Basically, if you were willing to pay you could advance from a weakling to a God in just one purchase. It was an insane way of leveling up that felt like a money grubby mobile phone game over a AAA game release.

Since then though, DICE has revamped everything. While microtransactions are still in the game they take the form of being only cosmetic. For those who don’t know, the cosmetic aspect means you can just buy fancy new looks for your characters.

The other thing with the Star Cards is that now the only way you can upgrade these cards is by playing the game. Even then it’s not very hard to do, just play the character or class you want to upgrade and after each level up you can unlock more upgraded abilities.

To add, the game has had consistent new updates by way of adding new content and heroes with a real focus on the Clone wars. At the time of writing they just added Droid Commandos and ARC Troopers to play as in the game, both are insanely fun. The game does have a balancing issue with some of its heroes (mainly Anakin Skywalker) because let’s face it, if you run into a fully leveled up Anakin then may the force be with you.

The game has also added new modes and maps over the months as well, including my personal favorite  being an infection mode called “Ewok Hunt” where the Stormtroopers are being hunted by Ewoks at night on Endor. It’s truly funny as all hell and had me laughing once I switched over to being an Ewok when I was killed. 

The game is nowhere near being the perfect game but having made some great changes to its mechanics and even adding a whole new DLC campaign to the game really gives you a lot to play and see when you buy the game. The game is insanely cheap, running around 24 bucks and free for those of us who are EA Access members.

I highly recommend taking a look at a game that has really tried to be better than what it first started out as and has truly become a fun engaging Star Wars game.

Currently playing: Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition

What’s up guys! One last quick shout out to my editor, Andrea, who will no longer be editing these articles for me after this week. Just wanted to say thank you to her for all the help she’s given me in making these articles amazing!

For now, I want to say that the game is definitely in the game of the year conversation already. The “Soulsborne” feel from From Software is still there but just completely refined into something brand new.

Gone is the old screw it, dodge, roll and attack. Now this game is more about parrying your opponent and breaking down their posture in order to land a death blow, a powerful attack that will instantly kill most foes unless you’re a boss.

Speaking of bosses, From Software’s signature bosses are back and are a bigger pain in the ass than ever before. The ones I have seen up to this point are amazing to look at and deadly as hell. The new thing about this game is that all bosses have a weakness.

To be successful in the game, you just need to explore the world and eavesdrops on the right characters. These characters will give out helpful bits of information about the bosses and their weaknesses. Information can also be given about where you can find certain items that will be helpful to you.

The one thing this game does better than any of “Soulsborne” games is that it gives you hope. Hope that you can actually win the battle. This is something I have never felt in a “Soulsborne” game before. Usually, when playing these games the mindset is, “How am I going to get destroyed today?”.

That’s not the case in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. In this game it feels more like, “Okay, who is the next challenger?”. The game gives all players the same sword and different prosthetics to find for each character. It has basically all the same tools and it’s all about parrying attacks and striking death blows whenever you can on your enemies.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice came out last week and is $60. If you have always wanted to play a Dark Souls game of Bloodborne before I highly recommend picking this one up, you won’t regret it. Now excuse me, I have to try and beat a giant flaming bull (Yes, that’s in the game). Good luck everyone and get good!

Currently playing : Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Something I’m very adamant about is that gaming is a new way of socializing. I have had multiple conversations with people who believe gamers don’t know how to be socially interactive.

I’m here to tell you as a gamer, this is just not true. Video games have become a key point in peoples’ lives, especially kids and teenagers.

There are in fact multiple studies suggesting video games are not a cause of antisocial behavior. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

Gaming allows communities to be built around gamers’ love of the game. This is what brings people together.

Some examples of games that bring people together are World of Warcraft, Halo, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Overwatch. While having all of these games do have a lot of toxic players in them it also brings people together on these fun adventures that can lead to making lifelong friends.

I can’t tell you how many people my friends and I have met playing games like the ones I have mentioned. Gaming has allowed those who are very quiet and antisocial the chance to have their voice heard and make friends.

There are tons of people who have made lifelong friends because of gaming. These are people who they may never actually meet in person but they know them better than anyone.

Gaming has brought people together in real, loving relationships. It has become a powerful tool for people who may not have the best social skills to learn how to make friends.

It gives us a purpose and a place to call our own with people from all over the world to come together for the love of video games.

While some of us may never see the friends, we make face to face, I am a firm believer that gaming is a strong pillar in helping people, young and old, make friends and find their community.

Currently playing: Crackdown 3

On February 22nd of this year, EA and BioWare released a game called Anthem, which if you are into games at all you will know it is their big loot ‘n shoot Destiny clone.

The issue that I have with Anthem is that it’s a game as a service title. Basically what that means is it’s a game that gets a steady stream of new content over the years but you have to put more money into it with DLC ( Downloadable Content) and every gamer’s favorite thing in the world, microtransactions.

Now, there technically isn’t anything wrong with games bringing out waves of new content over the years to allow it to remain alive. The issue that games like Anthem and Destiny bring to the table is that these games as a service are awful at launch. Anthem has a story at least but lacks a lot of content that we all know for a fact will be there in a year. Look at Destiny, when it was first released it had nothing. It was a short campaign and that’s pretty much it.

Yet, we as gamers were asked to spend $60 on a game that was worth maybe $20 at the time.

This got me thinking, should games as a service titles be sold for cheaper? Or should we just continue to spend the $60 up front and get the DLC content free?

To me, that would be the best way of doing it. I don’t mind spending the $60 if the content is free and good.

Anthem is just another game on a list of many where the game comes out for $60 and has little to nothing to do. 

A lot of reviews have labeled it, “fun but missing something”. This game represents the worst of the game as a service titles because with it we have a really great idea where we can see the great game hiding in it but BioWare, a studio known for making incredibly fun single-player games like the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age, is forced by EA to add a whole lot of microtransactions and post launch content.

With the lack of good sales in any region, I’m hoping gamers are showing EA with their wallets that these types of games are not wanted anymore. Instead, let devs like BioWare make great single-player games again. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Mass Effect 2 run to play.

Currently playing: Mass Effect 2 

Metro Exodus is a departure from the original series roots by being completely out in an open world setting and no longer in the dark tunnels of the Metro.

Now, I love this series of games! They are a part of the survival horror and post-apocalypse genres of games that are incredibly fun. In the older ones, if you went up to the radioactive surface, you’d have to put a gas mask on which meant managing the amount of oxygen you had on hand.

That aspect still exists in this version of the game; However, It never really was as much of big deal. The surface is where you are the whole time with little trips underground every so often.

the environments in the new maps are a lot of fun because they change drastically from level to level. This keeps the game fresh because you’re always learning new mechanics as the game goes on.

Graphically, this game is stunning to look at. I’m running it on the Xbox One S and it’s really quite amazing. Despite this, the game has so many bugs and glitches in certain areas where the bodies of dead enemies are shaking and flinging around. It is very funny for the most part but the worst glitch I experienced was when I first booted up the game. It completely restarted my Xbox One S. While this only happened once, it was still quite frustrating.

Moving on, my biggest issue with this game is the loading times. If you play Skyrim you know that the game is plagued with horrid loading times and this is the same thing with Metro Exodus. The game seems to take about 2-3 minutes sometimes to fully load. So if you die, I guess you can enjoy a few minute break. The issue with the load times really got me out of the game playing experience because it prevented me from enjoying the flow of the game. It forced me to sit and watch the load bar not move.

Metro Exodus’s storyline of Artyom and his fellow rangers looking for new land above ground to call home has a good focus on the protagonist from the past two games. The story is very great and by the end of the game I felt so close to the characters. The only issue being that Artyom is a silent protagonist which feels very weird in this day and age.

Overall, the game is very awesome with great mechanics but it makes me miss the feeling of being in the Metro we all know and love. If the game loading times were faster this game would be absolutely incredible. With all that said, I’m giving this game 7/10 for being a truly entraining game that is plagued with glitches and bugs.

Currently playing: Far Cry New Dawn

This is something I’ve been pondering as of late because games are becoming more and more focused on their stories like Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s becoming apparent that the definition of a game has changed as the years have gone by.

For example, the studio, Telltale Games, was known for making games that were just one long QTE (Quick Time event). This is a gamer’s way of saying, “press that button and press that other button to make the character to do something” during a clip you are watching in the game.

Many of the people I have talked to personally have even said that this is not gaming; However, looking back at this, it is clear that gaming as an industry has changed.

When the industry first began that’s all it was, just gameplay and a quick story as to why you’re doing what you’re doing. The games consisted of stories about saving a princess or stopping aliens from getting to Earth (yes, we saved a lot of kidnapped people back in the day).

As the industry evolved the stories did too. Nowadays, games are sometimes more focused on the story than it’s actual gameplay. Personally, this is okay because it is still a game.

Gaming, I believe, is about choice. We have to make rapid fire decisions as to whatever happens on screen. In this day and age, it is clear that some games are now being known for their stories rather than for their gameplay and this is all right.

At the end of the day, we are stilling making a choice. We are deciding where these awesome stories are going and where they end. The good news is that saving a princess is still a great way to begin a story.

There are plenty of amazing games that have little to no story and focus so much more deeply on the aspects of gameplay. Both of these types of games are still exactly that, games.

They are allowing us to live through the character’s eyes. When all is said and done, a game that feels like a walking simulator is still a game. You are the one doing the interacting and you are still making the choices of what to see and where to go.

Today, a game is lot different than what it used to be when the industry first started. Ultimately, what makes a video game a game is allowing the gamer the freedom to choose.

Currently playing: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Last week, after 13 long years, Kingdom Hearts III was finally released. I can tell you right now that it was one of the most fun and nostalgic experiences I’ve had in such a long time.

I grew up with the Kingdom Hearts series and this wasn’t just simply a great sequel, the game added so much more mechanically and to the story.

Now first off, if you have never played a Kingdom Hearts game before the story is going to make almost zero sense to you from this point. However, Square Enix knows this and tries their best to give a little bit of an understanding of how the story works with five videos (each about one – two minutes long) about major points in the very long story for each character.

However, I would still recommend going back and playing at least the original two games if you can because that will help you somewhat understand this very complex story. Even I sometimes think I follow the story and then ten minutes later it gets confusing again. 

But don’t worry, if you just came here to hang out with Disney characters then fear not, for there are all kinds of worlds for you to explore from Disney movies. From a certain ice queen to the captain of a particular Black Pearl.

There are plenty of fond memories of all types of Disney characters and to see them and be a part of their stories is amazing. I had a lot of fun hanging with some particular olds toys from my childhood in one of the worlds and it was without a doubt my favorite.

Complex story aside, this game is beautiful to look at and mechanically is so smooth. It added a new twist to the original game’s formula by changing it to an array of new fighting styles.  Gone are the drive forms of older games and in its place are keyblades that transform to new weapons when you hit a certain button.

This was such a amazing idea because it made me want to try all the keyblades and see what kind of power they had in store. Another fighting mechanic they added was attractions. This is a summon you could activate whenever the game would allow you to do so to actually hop on classic Disney rides and use them in your fight against the Heartless.

This had to be one of the most awesome experiences ever in the Kingdoms Hearts series. The attractions were always fantastic to look at and ride. Not only that, each of the attraction’s attacks did massive damage in the game. My personal favorite is Astro Blasters. It is so great to see all these rides being used as part of Sora’s arsenal in the game.

With all this being said, Kingdom Hearts III is a great send off to one of the best JRPGs series that I grew up with as a kid. Leaving room for a sequel as well but not ruining the ending either. It was great to play for the roughly 30-hour runtime and leaves me wanting more just like it always has. With that, I’m giving Kingdoms Hearts III a 10/10 for being a great return to such an incredible series.

Currently playing: Dragon Ball FighterZ