RandomReview: Overwatch

Review: Overwatch

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Format: PC, PS4, Xbox One (reviewed)

Released: May 24, 2016

I think I have an addiction. It’s been ruining my life in the recent days. It is the sheer utter brilliance of an addiction - one that grabs you away from reality and forces you to change your own schedule for worse.

I’m talking about Overwatch. Yes, Overwatch has consumed me recently with its excellence in creating an enjoyable class-based shooter. Let me explain.

I’m not the type of person who really enjoys multiplayer-based shooters, actually. I have tried things like Team Fortress before, but I haven’t found myself feeling grabbed into it the way many people are. I needed something there to keep me going. Most multiplayer shooters involve microphones, and as an introverted individual, I don’t feel comfortable speaking with others online - much less strangers in a lobby. Overwatch is more intriguing. It’s wonderful how many little interactions you can have with one another in this game without actually using a microphone. I haven’t heard anyone speak at all during the course of my playtime in Overwatch. The game features a wheel of dialogue options for you to choose from which are used to communicate different things. A simple “Hello” may suffice, or perhaps you’ll let your team know that your ultimate is ready.

Despite the endearing simplicity of this dialogue system, the dialogue wheel is much too sensitive - at least on consoles. There are plenty times where a mere “Hello” instead results in a “My ultimate is charging!” This is an annoyance at times, whereas the chaos of a match can lead to your death just because you have to hold down the analog stick a few more moments just to make sure you pick the correct dialog option. Although, the dialogue wheel can prove quite useful at times. I found one instance where Lucio told the team, “Group Up On Me!” followed by a “My ultimate is ready!” The team grouped on him and took an advantage from his Sound Barrier. Things like that can really help in a match, which is why I love it.

GradeAUnderA reference?

Besides the dialogue options, there are a few minor, but friendly ways to interact with one another. I found one instance where me as D.Va and a teammate as McCree tried to put our spray on top of the other’s until the match started. It had me a giggling mess for a few moments, which was awesome. No mics. Just fun. That’s the joy I’ve had about Overwatch. I don’t need to grab friends to enjoy a multiplayer game. Nobody on your team is trying to grief you or anything. It’s all very enjoyable.

Microtransactions do appear in the game. Although I am typically against microtransactions as most gamers are, I don’t feel like these are as bad. Upon raising a level or using a microtransaction, you will receive loot boxes, which give the player four random items. The items can involve new sprays, voice lines, skins, highlight intros or emotes. None of which enhance the player in anyway besides looking nice. Some of the sprays, like the Pixel ones, are only unlocked via achievements/trophies. So I can sort of flex in a match by showing off my Pixel Pharah logo. So in this case, the microtransactions aren’t that bad. As long as it doesn’t enhance the user in anyway, it’s okay in my book, but the concept is still generally displeasing. I just wish there was a different way to earn credits besides getting duplicate items. I don’t want to buy credits, of course, but perhaps earn them from accolades in matches. Something like that maybe. It’s troubling when you unlock plenty of things via loot boxes, only to find that they’re divided among heroes you don’t use often. I feel lucky to have the most items unlocked for D.Va and Widowmaker, but the ones that come after (Hanzo, Bastion, and Roadhog) are heroes I don’t use really. It’d be nice to have a way to get credits.

All of the heroes feel unique and different in their own ways, which is a great change from standard shooters. Occasionally, they’ll even chat with one another. My personal favorite is between Mercy and Reaper. Where Mercy innocently asks, “What happened to you?”, Reaper responds with “You tell me, doc.” Lovely. There’s plenty of interactions of that sort. I’ve noticed Widowmaker say “And a legend falls…” when she shoots down Soldier:76 or Reaper in combat.

Heroes are split into four categories: Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support. Of those categories, the game will suggest what heroes your team requires in order to be balanced. It’d be wise to listen. One hero can make a difference depending on your choice. Of course, players are able to switch between heroes at will while in their spawn area. On defensive modes, you’ll see subcategories like “Sniper” or “Builder.” Although there are only two of each, it’d be good to add them to your team’s roster to improve it’s overall defense. I wouldn’t say any hero is similar to another, either. They’re all really easy to use. Overwatch also allows you to view a hero’s info at any time with the touch of a button. Each hero is rated out of three stars in terms of how difficult they are to use. Personally, I think this can help ease some people into the game with certain characters. I generally use the two star characters like D.Va or Lucio. None feel Overpowered in any way, either. They’re all given hard counters. People thought Bastion was OP for a while, but Widowmaker, Genji or Hanzo absolutely wreck Bastion. If anyone is OP, it’s definitely Genji. Maybe Tracer too. Those two heroes are just pests to play against and can tear apart an offense if the user is competent enough, which is not fun. I would put sanctions on those two, maybe Genji more so than Tracer. Although Tracer is an annoyance, Soldier:76 can take her out rather easily. I saw Genji literally contest a point by jumping in the air from a post in the middle of the point over and over. He stalled long enough until his team respawned. Genji is OP and an annoyance when someone who is good with him plays.

Offense heroes generally are used for... Well, offense. Purely offense. Many of them are better as harassment heroes, like Genji, Reaper or Tracer - but others like McCree (Anyone else get a John Marsten vibe from McCree? I mean, he even has the Deadeye!), Pharah and Soldier:76 are capable of fighting out in the frontlines with the Tank heroes. Every hero has a unique design. I love Reaper’s design. Probably my favorite take on a grim reaper-themed character in gaming so far, mostly because I can’t recall any other instances I enjoy. He also has one of the most badass reloading animations out there, where he just drops the guns he currently has and grabs two more from thin air. What a boss. The Offense heroes are also generally easy to get a hang of as well. When I first jumped into the Open Beta, I took a liking to Pharah right away as a go-to character. I achieved plenty “Player of the Game” awards with her. Now she remains as one of my favorites. I sort of use her as artillery at times, by finding a vantage point and lobbing rockets down on the enemy position. Besides her, all of the offense heroes feel very nice to use. Genji may be too difficult for new players, though.

Next is Defense. These characters are annoyances to play against, but I wouldn’t say that they feel cheap in anyway. They’re easy to counter once you know their tendencies. The ones that comes to mind in that sense are Mei and Junkrat. Once prepared and seasoned enough in the game, you’ll know what to do when facing these two. Defense also features the two snipers, Hanzo and Widowmaker. I prefer Widowmaker over Hanzo personally, mostly because her goth skin is amazing - but I just like her playstyle more. Despite that, I see people using Hanzo often, so it’s probably just me. One of the game’s builders, Torbjorn is here as well, who I use on occasion when the team needs a builder. He’s more of a frontline builder than the other hero builder, which helps in chaotic defensive matches. He’s also really easy to get kills with, since anything his upgradable turret kills counts towards his own kill count. Lastly, the infamous Bastion is here. Bastion earned a reputation for being OP back in the beta, but he’s not really that OP. He is definitely OP when paired with Mercy’s damage boosting, which basically allows Bastion to cut down literally anything that comes into sight. Combined with the fact that Bastion can repair itself, he is definitely a defensive monster when paired with Mercy.

I’ve noticed that across the categories, the amount of heroes in each shrinks. It makes me wonder if Blizzard will eventually add more heroes to help even things off between each category. Offense has six heroes, while defense has five. Tanks have five as well, but support only has four. When it comes to Tanks, the one you’ll be seeing a lot of probably is Reinhardt. I guarantee you’ll see Reinhardt within your first few hours of playing Overwatch. He’s an absolute monster with his shield and plowing abilities, which makes him a good focal point for a team to get behind on offense or defense. You’ll probably see Winston and Roadhog from time to time as well, who are tanks of their own right. I’ve noticed that a majority of tank characters are great in close range, while of course stacking plenty of health. I don’t see people using Zarya, really. Mostly because I feel like she’s difficult to use and get a hang of, I suppose. If you play against A.I. you’ll end up seeing her a lot since she’s one of the few A.I. heroes programmed into the game. I don’t like Tank characters much, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed D.Va. She’s awesome! From what I hear, she’s a gamer too, which is pretty cool. She has quotes like “Ugh… AFK!”, “GG!” or things of that nature. Her boosters allow her to get to the fight rather quickly after respawning, and I feel like I’m a very competent player with her. I like boosting up to sniper positions and tearing them a new one. So awesome to see them back up in fear from this young girl who’s like nineteen but sounds like she’s twelve.

Support heroes are the last category, and have the least amount of heroes out of the twenty-one available. These heroes include Mercy, Lucio, Symmetra, and Zenyatta. I love Mercy, since she can both heal and damage boost allies, but she gets killed a lot. If you don’t care about dying, Mercy might be the way to go. She isn’t very mobile, and her backup pistol is the weakest weapon in the game, but she can change the momentum of games with her ability to resurrect allies with her ultimate ability. Symmetra is really cool too. I had to read up on how to use her at first, but I realize that she can be a very good defensive hero. She’s the other builder in the game, putting down Sentry Turrets and Teleporters, which allow allies to return to the fight quicker. Her constructs are very fragile, however, so they need to be placed at choke points where the enemy won’t expect them. So it’s a strategy you must have with her in order to utilize her abilities best. She’s also one of the few heroes (if not the only one) that can shoot through Reinhardt’s shield with the energy orbs she launches. An overall cool character. Then we get to Zenyatta, who is a healer like Mercy or Lucio, but he’s not as effective, in my opinion. Mercy and Lucio are much more direct with their methods, but Zenyatta feels like a really cool character too. He can increase the damage done to specific enemies with his Discord Orbs, which proves useful. My personal favorite is Lucio though, who’s probably my favorite character overall. Lucio, unlike Mercy and Zenyatta who have to target specific teammates in order to heal them, Lucio uses a AOE via his healing music. His blaster does decent enough damage to certain enemies, and he’s pretty fast when getting back to the fight. His ultimate, Sound Barrier, can give allies an advantage in the middle of a match. He’s also the chillest character in the game, who in the chaos that is an Overwatch Quick Play match, just jams out to his music amidst the chaos. “This is my jam!”

The game consists of only four different game modes. Although they do vary enough between consecutive matches, it’s surprising that there aren’t enough of these available. It’s part of the reason why some are feeling iffy about the price tag in terms of the content available. A minimum of four modes feels a bit too low for this kind of game. The games are usually played on offense or defense, where one team has to defend a position from being captured, while the other has to try to capture it. These usually consist of another position afterwards, or a payload that needs to be escorted after taking the point. At other times, a payload will be the central focus of the mission and needs to be escorted by one team, while being pushed back by the other. The other mode included is “Control.” Each team tries to capture and maintain a common control point until their capture percentage reaches 100%. This game mode is played in a best-of-three format. If an objective is not yet completed by an attacking team, an “Overtime” period will start ticking down, where the attacking team has a small window to redeem themselves. These modes are very enjoyable despite there being so few. The fact there’s so few available allows new players to face a shorter learning curve than they’d expect.

The modes are played on a variety of maps that are inspired by real-world locations. I really think they’re pretty varied and enjoyable. I do think that some characters are better on some maps than others, though. Defending the first point in Temple of Anubis has great vantage points for Widowmaker and Hanzo, but there is a severe lack of vantage spots around the second point. Maps without any chokepoints or bottlenecks can be hard for Symmetra to set up effectively on as well. It really encourages you to become efficient with several heroes. My tip is to get the hang of one hero from each category, so you don’t have to worry about switching to someone you’re not comfortable with. Also try to avoid picking the same hero as someone else. Variation is key to success. The maps look great, however. The art style chosen with this game is not graphically impressive by any means, but it looks beautiful on some maps, especially with “Hanamura.” So there’s a certain novelty to behold with the style the maps are done within. That goes for the characters as well.

These four modes are played in four styles of play - Quick Play, Play Vs AI, Custom Game, or Arcade. Again, with the lack of content. Besides the Training modes, these are the only ways to go about playing. There’s no campaign, which is disappointing in some aspects, but I think a Star Wars Battlefront (the PS2 versions) type of campaign would’ve worked, that resembled the multiplayer in a lot of ways. Quick Play is definitely where you’ll spend most of your time, but I recommend playing against some AI to brush up on the heroes you want to use.

Going into AI first, I can see how it’s definitely appealing to new users. Easy is like ridiculously easy. Only the noobiest of noobs will have trouble. I like to think of myself as a good Overwatch player, but not ridiculously good like MLG level. I think I’m just alright at the game. Competent, for lack of a better term. Medium AI feels much too easy though. As long as you have a decent healer on your squad, you’ll wreck the Medium AI. Hard AI feels like a big jump from Medium, perhaps too much of a jump. I do like the challenge though, but it seems like others don’t. It’s harder to find a match against Hard AI than it is for Medium. Unfortunate, since Medium isn’t really fun besides being a place to test new heroes. There isn’t even a good variety of enemies! The AI uses the same heroes over and over. Reaper, Zenyatta, Roadhog, Zarya, Soldier:76, and Bastion. Every time. I do hope they look at the AI mode and see things to fix within it, because I think it could be a lot more popular given a few improvements. Some variety to the AI heroes, along with some more variety to the AI cosmetics would be nice. Perhaps make Medium a tad more difficult as well? I don’t understand how this can be a game mode when it doesn’t feel enough effort has been put into it. It just feels like a testing ground for heroes you don’t use often, while the Hard AI is the real challenge that you can never find a match for.

I haven’t played any Arcade, really. I played a match or two, but it’s hectic. It’s a challenge mode, sort of, that resembles quick play besides some special rules put in place. Cool to see, but not my thing. Maybe you’ll like it, but I don’t. I have a similar go around with Custom Game. It’s where you invite that guy who says “1v1 me m8” and tear him a new one. Or it’s your escape. Fill each team with AI and you can just chill out. Maybe even start up a league. Quick Play is where you’ll spend most of your time, though. You will get put into a match relatively quickly. The most I’ve ever had to wait is seven seconds.

And that’s it! That’s all the content in the game. There’s a training mode, of course, but that’s not really necessary to go into. I do recommend it for new players, but it’s your run-of-the-mill tutorial mode. One for basic gameplay, one for playing around with each hero, one for playing against AI to practice. Not really too special. While the game is 40 bucks on Steam, I got my Xbox copy for 50 via Amazon. Everyone else will get it for 60 on console. Seems a bit high for this lack of content. I like 40 as a price for this game, at least until more content is added on. Now with that said, I feel like the game is fun enough to grab right now and get into. If you’re confident in it from the beta, then I’d say grab it. It’s almost too much fun once you start playing. Overwatch deserves the great reception it’s getting. Is it better than Team Fortress? In my opinion, it is. Having heroes instead of generic classes feels so much more interesting and it provides a different experience than other FPS games. Overwatch is a wonderful game, that I highly recommend if you’re looking for a fresh experience.

9/10

Excellent

Edit: Forgot to add some things...

Love the fact you can map buttons in the options. You can turn off the kill cam and kill feed as well, which I love.

Kills are also titled as "eliminations". Kill assists aren't really a thing unless you're a healer. As long as you do damage to an enemy, you'll be credit for an elimination. The amount of damage done leads to the amount of points you get from it. I don't know specifically how it works, but that's the gist I get. It's a good way to keep you from feeling worthless. Just wanted to add those in as things I liked, but forgot to add.

RandomReview: Buffalo Classic USB Controller For PC

Accessory Review: Buffalo Classic USB Controller For PC

This going to be a short review. There isn’t that much to say here, really.

So I wanted a USB controller to play emulated games on my PC. I checked Amazon for something retro. I found this controller from a company titled “Buffalo.” You should see it above. It looks like a Super Famicom controller, which is pretty cool.

First off, the controller is pretty lightweight. It fits in your hands nicely, but it doesn’t feel flimsy to me at all. It’s just very light. It’s perfect for tossing across the room when you get angry at a game, surely. The cord is a decent size, which is very useful. The face buttons push well and feel nice to press, although the d-pad feels a bit rubbery. That might turn some people off, but I’m fine with it. The Select and Start buttons are a bit hard to push at first as well. After some breaking in, they should be fine. As for the L and R buttons, they work just fine.

There’s a Turbo and Clear button in the center, but they don’t seem to be working with my PC. I don’t want to pin this on the controller outright, since I may be doing something wrong. I just want to point that out beforehand, since they don’t seem to be working properly. If you can figure out how to get them working, then please go ahead and say so.

I put the controller to the test with Pokemon FireRed. As well all know, the A button gets absolutely abused in Pokemon games. So I played a few hours with it and broke it in. It feels like the button got pushed in a bit, actually. Like it looks as if it’s lower than the rest of the buttons now. Weird. The button still works fine, though.

One other thing I noticed was that the right button on the d-pad randomly presses itself at times. This can be troublesome at times, especially when I was playing something like Pokemon. I want to use Tackle, not Growl! I know it’s not just me, based on the Amazon reviews. So this is definitely something wrong with the controller itself.

Overall, the controller is my go-to for playing on an emulator now, but you could do a lot better than this one. It’s around 12 bucks on Amazon, but I don’t think I can recommend it. It’s okay, but not good. If you have the extra money to spend, that yeah, go for it. If you’re on a budget, I’d say you should stick with alternatives instead, unless you can deal with the detriments this controller has.

6/10

Okay

RetroReview: Game Dev Tycoon (PC)

Game Dev Tycoon Review

Developer: Greenhart Games

Publisher: Greenhart Games

Format: PC

Released: December 10, 2012

I know it's not that retro, but it's not recent either, but that's the term I'll use for any reviews that are earlier than the current year.

Game Dev Tycoon is a fun experience that I am pleasantly surprised with. I had not heard about this game until I found a stream that TotalBiscuit did where he played the game rather well. It intrigued me greatly, and I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about it sooner. The game did not disappoint.

The game isn't huge, I must admit, so I remain unsure of how long this review will be actually. Regardless, I just want to express what I've experienced in my time playing.

You get to choose between a male and female player model at the beginning of the game, with minimal customization options available. Not really too special besides simple clothing changes or changes to hair and skin color. You never see your character’s face at all anyway, so this doesn't matter too much. Despite that, the game does indeed have faces for their player models, that you'll likely see when you hire more people to your business.

You're placed into an 80s garage with a computer desk, complete with your own cool Pong poster taped to the wall. Very humble beginnings, I must say. Making games from your garage. I found my first disappointment with the game straight away, to be totally honest. First off, the game makes all of these parody companies based on different console companies that we’re familiar with - like “Vonny” for Sony, or “Ninvento” for Nintendo. (For the purposes of this review, I'll use the real company names.) Why can't I develop for the Atari parody then? Or the Intellivision? You made a game tycoon in the 80s without Atari? That's just crazy to me. So your options at the start are pretty barren - you're basically stuck between the PC or Commodore 64. True to form, the Commodore will hold most of the marketshare before it’s inevitable downward spiral into failure. I capitalized on the Commodore for the most part early on, eventually moving on to the NES once it became available.

The game making process is not too complicated, but it's still engaging enough to be entertaining. You're given a set of topics to choose from after naming your game, which can vary from “Sci-Fi” to “Fashion.” Then you pick your genre, a selection from Action, Adventure, RPG, Simulation, or Strategy. Later on, Casual becomes another genre for you to use. You'll also be able to mix and match these genres as well. This gives a lot of replayability to the game as a whole in my opinion. Your company could specialize in a certain genre, or perhaps a certain topic. The choice is yours. My main company became successful from Airplane/Simulation games for the most part, combined with the innovation of the Virtual Pet genre. We made millions.

Over time, you'll improve and receive the ability to do contract work, which is basically quick work you can do for quick money should the need arise. If your character fails to complete the contract in the allotted time, they will be hit with a fine instead. My mistake in my first playthrough was to do a bunch of these, which led me to receive hefty fines for my character’s slow working skills. Although I eventually fought out of the red with game releases, it really was difficult. The game is very punishing once you get into the negative amount of money in your bank account, since money is needed in order to make games. You're basically stuck if you don't get a hit game while in the red. The lurking danger of repaying the game’s emergency bailout also hangs over you. When you do end up bankrupt, though, a parody of Electronic Arts buys your company over, which I found hilarious.

You'll eventually get audience choices as well, which allows you to make games projected towards certain age groups. This plays a factor in tune with the genres, topics and consoles. For example - a mature government simulator would work well on PC, but would do horrible on GameBoy. A young Virtual Pet RPG (Pokemon) would work wonders on GameBoy, though, while failing to do well on the Xbox. It gives a sense of challenge to figuring out what would work on certain consoles without becoming too repetitive. After making a successful Virtual Pet RPG on GameBoy, my company made an airplane simulator on PC rated for everyone, which allowed me to move out of my garage from how much money I made. You can't live like Tai Lopez for long. It's best to move to a new office when you're ready so you can reap the benefits of hiring staff.

As the years went on, I began wishing that I had more consoles to choose from. Sure, the Genesis and SNES were the main ones out there, but I wanted some more minor options. One point that I heard TotalBiscuit bring up, actually, was perhaps an option for branching alternate history. It'd be cool to see if the Commodore never fizzled out, or maybe what would've happened if Sega never got out of hardware. Maybe that'd bring the opportunity for new, fictional consoles only seen in those branching storylines.

The game engines also play a part in game development. Over time, you'll develop game engines with added features that you've researched in order to further enhance your games. These can be things as simple as save points or stereo sound to more complicated things, like branching storylines or AI companions. Your company’s fans will sometimes request that you release your older engines, to which you can choose between releasing it for free or selling it. The choice is between money or fans, really, and I usually choose to give the engine away for free.

One small thing I had a problem with was the fact that the years are counted in the format of “Y1” instead of “1980.” It sort of bothered me when I got far in the game, since I really wanted to know how far into the future I was exactly. I must be in about 2040 by now... Just a minor nuisance I had, personally.

There's some other nice references hidden in the game too. There's an achievement for hiring “someone famous” to your company. Simply put, you'll find staff members with parody names of real developers that are known in real life. I wanted to hire someone like Miyamoto to my company, but instead I got stuck with Phil Fish, Tim Schafer, and Sid Meier. Oh well. Miyamoto is in the game, by the way. Just gotta get lucky. I do wish there were more famous people, though. Guys like Keiji Inafune or Gabe Newell would've been cool to hire on as staff. Looking at the wiki list, it seems like there could've been room for way more famous developers.

As you go far into the future, you'll be introduced to newer consoles. This is where it'd be handy to utilize the game’s modding system. The game is very mod-friendly via Steam Workshop, which allows you to spice up your experience with more options like an entire new generation of consoles, more consoles in previous generations (like the NeoGeo), and research for AAA games. This really becomes useful, especially since the game essentially stops producing new consoles at a certain point. For me, the market was barren besides the Playstation5, Xbox NeXt and PC. Most of my games went to PC at that point, which was currently in the lead in my game.

By this time, I had a ton of money in the bank from a variety of hits. I took to remaking past games starting from 1980 and onwards. My remake of Ultima really took off with PC, PS5 and NeXt players. When you have loads of money saved up, it's probably time to invest it. The game opens up into two extra tabs of your office eventually - one for R&D, the other being a lab.

R&D allows you to research a variety of things to enhance your company further. My company, for example, researched an online marketplace (which I assumed is like Origin or Uplay) to make added income every month. Some of the mods I found add extra research options to this section as well, which is pretty awesome on the game’s part. It presents itself as something highly moddable for its fans. The other tab available is for the lab, which is mainly for developing your own console. I released the SS 2600 to the market after putting a load of money into its development to make sure it did well. Developing consoles feels like something you should do after accomplishing a lot in the game and earning plenty of money, which I found really fitting. The culmination of the long journey from the 80s feels complete when your own console is on the market.

My console dominated the marketshare right away. I guess I released it in a time where a new console hadn't been released in years! Currently, it sits at over 100M units sold, which is pretty crazy, but I guess that's how starved the world was for a new console after so long. The game does a nice job at making sure you micromanage things for your new console, R&D, and game development. I feel like the console making system could be fleshed out a bit more, but overall it's still really cool.

Wrapping up, I don't think many bugs will be encountered during the game. They do warn you to use mods at your own risk, of course. Many of the mods conflict with one another, since they attempt to add things that overlap a majority of the time. Are mods the reason why I can't research the topic of RTS? I have every topic researched except for RTS, yet the game won't let me research. I assume it's glitched out at this point, since I researched everything else thus far. Just let me make an RTS, please? I want to remake Command & Conquer is all! I won't screw it up like EA did! Other than that, it does seem technically sound for the most part.

Overall, I have to say that Game Dev Tycoon is utterly addicting and adorable. Anything that is wrong with the game is only a minor nuisance at worst, and doesn't cause the game detriment whatsoever - a sign of a game that was done well. It executed it's intended purpose very well. If you want a game that you can just lose hours to, then Game Dev Tycoon is totally worth your time.

Before you possibly go buy it, please actually buy the game. Don't pirate the game. Game Dev Tycoon has a genius DRM implemented that combats any would-be pirates. Pirates of the game will play identical to the regular version, for the most part, barring one fatal flaw. Pirated versions of the game will find that their company’s games will be pirated themselves, causing a huge loss in profits for your company and eventually leading you to go bankrupt. This is not a joke. This actually happens if you pirated the game. It happens every time, too. I think the idea is genius! I wish more games would do this to combat pirates. Well, good games, at least. Support the developers, guys and gals. This game is worth the ten bucks.

9/10

Excellent

RandomReview: "Midnight Machines" by Lights

Album Review: "Midnight Machines" by Lights

An underrated singer that I'm a big fan of is Lights, a female singer who finds the right balance between EDM and pop in her music. She has a beautiful voice that fits perfectly over the beats she has. Despite how good her music is, she is also a quality acoustic singer, and isn't afraid to share it. Videos of her acoustic songs are common to find on YouTube, and she makes albums after her albums, in which she sings the previously made songs in acoustic form. Her recent acoustic album, "Midnight Machines" bases itself off the previous 2014 album "Little Machines." While "Little Machines" maintained an upbeat vibe, "Midnight Machines" is a much different case. The melodies of "Midnight Machines" are much more calmer, sad at times. If we judged on instrumental alone, this album would be a 10/10. The instrumental music is absolutely beautiful.

I took the liberty to judge each song individually out of 10.

"Up We Go" gets a 10/10. While the hit song from "Little Machines" was vibrant and preppy in its previous iteration, this version is much more methodical. It's sweet and more to the heart. It flows nicely, and the voice Lights gives in this version is beautiful. I would say it's superior the original in every way. It's definitely one of the best on the album. I recommend giving it a listen when you get the chance.

"Same Sea" gets a 7/10. It's alright. Not her best, assuredly, but still pretty good. She starts the song a tad awkwardly, but she still does a nice job throughout. My main problem is the way she delivers here at times. I feel like she'll put more passion into the words, but she remains in her calm tone. She also changed the chorus slightly in delivery as well. Instead of singing "Same Sea", Lights instead goes for "Same... Sea." I'm not sure what she was going for with that. It would've sounded better if she used the original style of chorus. The original was definitely better. This version isn't bad, though.

"Follow You Down" gets a 9/10. This is one of the two original songs Lights made for this album. This isn't a version of a previous song at all. It's utterly beautiful, to put it simply. I listened it for a few times, though, to get that verdict. At first, I settled on a 7, but this one is definitely worth higher than that. The "down, down, down" part of the chorus could've ended a little better, which kind of irks me, but otherwise it's one I'll definitely be downloading and listening to now.

"Meteorites" gets a 9/10. Lights is a beautiful harmonizer, especially in the gap before her last chorus here. I think she broke away from the acoustic slightly here, with some editing towards the end if I'm hearing right. I sort of like the original a bit better, though. The catch in her voice was a bit more replay-worthy in the original, but it shouldn't discredit this one. This version is very beautiful as well.

"Don't Go Home Without Me" gets a 6/10. My main problem with this one is that the vocals and instrumental don't really feel like they match. If we were to separate the two, I'm sure they'd sound great on their own. It didn't really click for me in this sense. That really ruins it for me. It doesn't go any lower than a 6, though, since they're both beautiful aspects on their lonesome, and do end up clicking at certain points. I like the original more compared to this one.

"Running With The Boys" gets a 9/10. I've noticed by now that Lights has a talent for ending songs very well. She always starts off very subtle and calm, while increasing towards a overwhelmingly great ending chorus. "Running With The Boys" is lovable from its gentle chorus, succeeding in surpassing the original from how casually uplifting it is in its calm melodies. She has single-handedly turned a song I was lukewarm on into one that I dearly enjoy.

"Head Cold" gets a 5/10. Thankfully, this isn't the last song. Else, it would've left the album on a sour note for me. It's the second original song on the album, but I don't think she did a good job. I know she can do better than this. Her delivery on the chorus endings sounds like a cat. Ugh. Not good.

"Muscle Memory" gets a 10/10. "Muscle Memory" was one of my favorite songs on the original album besides "Oil and Water." The song was catchy and upbeat. This version is much different. It's a much darker, more sorrowful song, with a sad instrumental best behind it. I would have to put it a tad higher than the original, I must say. I don't often here a sad song delivered in such a calm, gentle, tone. She puts a ton of passion behind the final chorus, and it's beautiful. Lovely work.

If I averaged the scores for each song individually, the number I'd reach would be an 8.1/10. I think that's pretty accurate for this album. It's only eight songs in total, which is a shame. I wish the album was much longer than that. The two original songs were nice to have as well, to keep things fresh, although I wish "Head Cold" turned out better. Overall, I think Lights did a great job with this album. The renditions of the previous songs were great, though I do think her previous acoustic album was much better. I would definitely recommend checking out her songs if you've never heard of her. She's really good at what she does, and is totally an underrated singer.

8.1/10

Great