Metro Exodus Review

By: Logan Manfredi on PC

Overview
       From the outside looking in Metro Exodus may seem like just another triple-A game, hidden within it though maybe some of the best character design I've seen this generation. The game world isn't exactly what I would call open, but it allows for an ample amount of exploration. The lack of size of the world makes every stop between main quests completely worth it. Each location on the map offers insight into the lore of Metro, and there's a massive number of NPCs each with unique motivations and shockingly detailed design. The main cast of characters are voiced excellently, and I found myself almost caring for them like my own family. All these hyper-detailed characters make it possible for some intense moments that I did not see coming. Going in, I assumed shooting things would be the focus of the big-budget shooter, and man was I wrong. The beauty of Metros design is that it creates incredibly human moments, moments that often invoked the post-apocalyptic debate of survival VS retaining one's humanity. Artoyms' (the players' character) decisions have lasting effects on the newly developing post-war world. I often found myself reloading checkpoints so that I could handle a conflict nonviolently. Such efforts were rewarded in new cutscenes or chunks of dialogue that would offer insight into how your actions affected different groups in the world. The gunplay is on par with most modern shooters, but with a haunting level of realism that made me question using lethal levels of force. 

Minimal HUD

        Health bars and other HUD elements are non-existent and instead replaced with a compass and hyper-realistic bullet damage. If an enemy spots you in the open, you will rarely survive. Most guns are a one shit kill, and all are with the proper aim. Another notable mechanic is the enemy A.I. In Metro, enemies don't just try and shoot you from cover or rush at you as soon as they spawn. Instead, the enemies react to how you form your attack. Some even have unique voice lines that tell were they or looking or what they think is happening. Their intelligence goes as far as to show self-preservation in enemies. From giant cat monsters to the many different bandit tribes, specific shared characteristics are present. Killing multiple enemies causes a direct reaction that can range from surrendering to charging in to attack in a rage, or even just panicking and running out of fear. These many nuanced details mesh together perfectly to deliver an experience that feels like a step forward in terms of storytelling in games.

The details
        The level of immersion present makes it easy to forget you're playing a video game. Almost every location and character are fully fleshed out. All NPC's have a purpose, something they are working towards. Each is entirely free of such video-gamey tropes as repeating voice lines or standing aimlessly doing nothing waiting for the player to progress. The environments themselves have as much to do with the worldbuilding as the NPCs living in it. Each zone is drastically different from the prior and offers new and unique looks as to how that region has adjusted to life after the war.

The Caspian Sea

 From the frozen wastelands of Moscow to the scorching deserts of the Caspian Sea. Each location has its own unique population, climate and day/night cycles that all interact simultaneously to immerse the player further in the game. From the second level, the player has the option to continue at night or during the day. Each option offers a different experience in the same local, and individual objectives are easier or harder to tackle depending on the time of day. The differences of day versus night can vary wildly. During the day, other humans in the world are awake and going about their daily tasks; this leads to more interactions with NPC's, violent or not. The night is a different beast in that there are far fewer humans to deal with and sneaking into locations is much easier, but the mutated beasts of the wasteland are everywhere. This freedom in decision making doesn't have significant effects on the story of the game but offers variances in gameplay that feels refreshing. These decisions helped make me feel more connected to the main character as a player.

Caspian Sea Night 

My favorite thing

        The thing that made me fall in love with this game was the world itself and the characters in it.  For the first time in my long gaming career, I wanted to complete every side quest. I found my self doing quests not just to "level up" but because I cared for the characters and wanted to spend as much time with the game world as I could. Side quests differ from other games in that they are not just icons on the map, but instead, they're personal requests made by your companions. The rewards for these quests in place of items are cut scenes or optional dialogue with the character you helped. What blew me away was the gargantuan amount of detail that's present in these scenes that only a small percentage of players might see.  Often, I found myself waiting for the dialogue to end and the NPC to stand there and wait, but that moment never came. Every chance I had, I would listen, sometimes for fifteen minutes or more, and there would still be new non-repeating voice lines. Each extra scene I experienced not only added another layer to the story but also made me feel that much more connected to my companions. I was and still, am shocked at the sheer amount of time the dev team and voice actors must have spent in the studio. Smaller details like the way you pass items to other characters or the fact that your radio can be heard by enemies when sneaking around may seem insignificant. Truthfully though there are so many of them that work together perfectly that they give the game a level of polish I've rarely seen. Often, I found myself trying wild things like shooting lanterns to set enemies on fire and being surprised by it working. 

In the end
        Saying Metro shocked me would be putting it mildly; in the end, the game was beyond a pleasant surprise to play. The level of detail and polish present is near impossible to capture in a trailer. Although I was skeptical if I would finish the game before starting it, 5 minutes in and I knew I was hooked. The lack of HUD elements and incredibly real-feeling characters make it one of the most immersive games I've played this year. Vibrant and passionate performances from the voice cast make every scene a joy to watch. The numerous optional dialogues offer as much insight into the game world as any player could ask for and, graphically speaking Metro looks as good as any game this generation. The addition of Metro to Xbox Gamepass is massive and if you have and Xbox or pc capable of playing it, there is no reason to skip this game. I would consider it a hidden gem of this generation and recommend it to anyone. I give Metro Exodus 4.5 out of 5 Snails.

Here's a bonus montage video I made of some of my favorite moments from the game with a song from a side quest. 

Monster Hunter World Iceborne Preview Video

By Logan Manfredi on PS4 Pro

Please enjoy our first ever video!

Fallout 76 Nuclear Winter Preview

By Logan Manfredi on PS4 Pro

Overview
        Nuclear Winter is a new update for Fallout 76 that brings along with it a new and exciting battle royal mode or BR. Unlike the rest of the game, this mode focuses on PVP and has a separate progression system more akin to Call of Duty than Fallout. Nuclear Winter or NW for short revolves around the citizens of Vault 51 and the mystery of what happened to them. One of the more unique things being that this story is told entirely through the new game mode. Before each match, there is about a two-and-a-half-minute period where players can explore and interact with many things inside of vault 51. As players level up, they will unlock access to different parts of the Vault and be able to piece together what exactly happened to its citizens or jam out on what we call the Chuckie Cheese stage.

Gameplay in NW is like that of most Battle Royal games, but with some signature Fallout twists. Focusing more on scavenging and preparation than direct gunplay, it adds a refreshing new take on the genre. Players start with nothing, but with Fallouts massive RPG stock of items that quickly changes. There are countless variations of load outs, all with their own pros and cons to explore. There are not as many cosmetic items available as in the free BR games, but in the first week, there have already been numerous free and paid cosmetic items added to the Atomic shop. Experience is not shared between the game modes, but both caps and experience points can be earned by doing well in NW. When the match ends, there will be a screen displayed that shows everything you did that round and what rewards your performance has earned you. There's no punishment for dying in this game mode so for new players it's great to get the feel of the games core mechanics and see some items that may remain hidden till later in the regular game.

The first five minutes
        Before the round begins, a small bit of planning is needed. Unlike other battle royal games, you don't "drop" onto the map. Instead in Nuclear Winter players pick their spawn point on a map overview before the round starts.

My favorite part of this being that after you choose your spawn area, the game shows you the spawn locations of all 50 other players. Which leads to some intense starting minutes.  At the beginning of a round, you and your teammates will be invisible for approximately 27 secs. (we timed it, patch notes say "some time"). That invisibility will end the second you interact with or pick up an item, and everyone can see you. Our best advice would be to find some sort of armor before engaging in a fight. There are three tiers of armor present in NW wood, scout, and Marine. (Pictures below) Each is stronger than the last. Just having Wood armor puts you at a steep advantage over a player with none. Beyond finding armor, your first step should be determining where you are headed. Wondering aimlessly looking for loot might work in some battle royals, but in NW where movement is more limited getting caught in a firefight without cover is a death sentence. Instead, pick a point on the map be it a small town or outpost and do your best to fortify that location to attack. This is also a great time to kill any NPC's present as they hold valuable loot such as Nuclear launch codes. The crossbow is best for taking out NPC's because it is silent and doesn't reveal your location to enemies. VATS doesn't work on enemy players but is still the ideal way to deal with an NPC. As you get to the mid-game focus on stocking Chems and Stimpacks for the inevitable massive battle at the end of the round.

Wood armor

Scout armor

Marine armor (The Best one)

Mechanics to Watch out for
        Power armor is excellent in Fallout 99% of the time. The one time it's not great is in Nuclear Winter. The problem is that the ratio of armor value to the volume of footsteps is severely disproportionate. For example, if two players with the same gun were the final two but one had power armor, and one had marine armor. The player with power armor would be heard long before he was seen giving the advantage to the player with the Marine armor. Also, in the current state, there is a bug where players in power armor may become stuck in the armor unable to attack or take damage making the player just waste time until they are killed by the storm. My advice is to avoid power armor for now.
        Sniper rifles and scoped weapons have zero bullet drop, rather all guns have a pre-determined range at which they can hit. So, if you're aiming at an enemy and wondering why you're not hitting, it's most likely the range, not your aim. This leads to another mechanic to watch out for which is weapon stats. This is the first time in a Fallout game that we have had true PVP, so the weapons we know and have used for years might not have the same effect as we are used too. For example, the hunting rifle is one of my favorite weapons in all Fallouts, but in NW its range combined with damage output is far less effective than say the Lever rifle or any of the scoped laser weapons. An excellent way to see what weapons to prioritize is to check in your Pip-boy when you have cover. Just like in any Fallout all the weapons stats will be listed there so you can see exactly which items you prefer. 

Click to zoom weapon stats.

Tips and tricks

• Zooming in when deploying will allow for much more precise spawns and even spawning inside buildings.
• ADS (aim down sights) can be used to show hard to spot or not yet rendered enemies. When your cursor is over a target even if obstructed their health and name will be displayed.
• Use the foliage to your advantage. You won't be completely invisible in a bush, buts its much harder to see than out in the open.
• If your opponent is using the bush technique, you can use ADS, and his health bar will display when you aim where he is hiding. 
• Marine Armor > Power armor
• Watch out for cars, they blow up very quickly and are a one-shot KO if you're next to it.
• The time you have to revive a downed teammate is less than 10 seconds. Hopefully, this will get patched soon because it's nearly impossible to do unless you're touching each other. 
• Use those Chems! Chems have zero negative impact in NW.
• Rad X and Buffout are essential for surviving if you get caught in the firestorm and make a massive difference in any fight. 

If you like it
        The Nuclear Winter update has done an excellent job a revitalizing a game that has not had the best beginnings. Along with the battle royal game mode, the patch has fixed several bugs that honestly made me stop playing about six months ago. New items and quests fill the already vast game world, and soon raids will allow for an entirely new type of endgame content. That combined with the developers' plans for free regular updates makes for many more enjoyable hours of Fallout ahead. Adventure mode has tons of lore and is one of the most fun and immersive co-op experiences on this generation of consoles. Nuclear Winter is looking very promising in its first week and offers a much less demanding way to play Fallout 76 that doesn't require any of the time-consuming mechanics such as thirst and hunger. Overall Nuclear Winter has been great for 76, and I would recommend it to any fan of the franchise or anyone who's bored with their current battle royal. 

Here are some bonus pics of our Fallout shenanigans. 

Conan Exiles Preview

By: Logan Manfredi on Ps4

***NSFW DISCLAIMER***
        Conan Exiles is a VERY adult game. There are themes far beyond violence or nudity present in it. If you are offended by things like cannibalism, necrophilia, and having slavery present in the game world, then this is NOT the game for you. This game is about surviving as a barbarian, and it's as brutal as possible in that regard. 

Overview:        
        Conan Exiles is a beast of a game. A beast in ferocity and mechanics, Exiles spends zero time holding the player's hand. From the get-go, the player starts in the desert, Naked if the server allows it, hungry and thirsty. It took me a good five minutes to realize that I could interact with anything near me because the level design of the desert is barren, but not empty. Once I realized that I can press square to interact with almost anything in the environment, I was hooked. Instantly I was flashing back to those first moments in Breath of the Wild when I could climb or eat anything. As a player, I appreciate it when developers remove the "invisible wall" or things like doors that don't open, or areas being time gated. Exiles bulldozed that invisible wall. Any surface you can touch is climbable, including the ceiling. The gathering is tedious, but the intuitive design in the crafting system combats that perfectly and makes it work. The building on console is a delicate dance of radial wheels and inventory management that makes me think this game is best on PC. That being said it's not unbearable and the large variety of shapes and depth of the building system allow for the creation of mind-boggling player made cities.

        At its core Exiles is a survival game, and for the first few hours, that's most likely what the player will experience. Once the core mechanics feel comfortable, and you can establish a starter base the game busts wide open. Inventory management and armor weight become crucial factors of how you build your character. Exploring outward farther into the map reveals dungeons and areas lush with other players to meet or wage war against. The middle or leveling portion of the game will see players crafting gradually stronger items and learning exactly how to use the world around them. This is when bases grow to ridiculous sizes, and some of the more unique features like taking thralls or capturing pets are possible. In and towards the endgame, PVP (if you're on a PVP server) picks up, it is at this time that I found myself raiding other players' structures and causing general havoc across the map.  

(Here's a picture of me stealing a players inventory and replacing it with dung)

        Conan Exiles is tough and has one of the steepest learning curves I've seen in recent years. Personally, I found the first few hours pushing me to my limits, but as I survived longer in the world and began to master the detailed mechanics, I felt a sense of accomplishment that few games provide. I would recommend it to anyone who's up for a challenge or appreciates detailed mechanic driven games they can get lost in with numerous friends. 

 The First 5 minutes:

        Immediately after the cut scene, the player starts in the desert with an empty inventory. This first thing you should do is find a Waterskin and note somewhere in your immediate vicinity. The Waterskin will make maintaining thirst in the early game much more manageable, and the note will provide essential XP for leveling up. XP is granted numerous ways, killing animals harvesting resources or even just surviving a certain amount of time. The fastest way to gain XP is by completing "Journey steps" these steps are sometimes listed sometimes unknown but share a common concept in that accomplishing each one helps the player to better understand and play the game. That's why I highly recommend keeping track of these and doing them as often as possible. You can grab bugs from bushes that will help fend off your hunger, but to do any substantial healing, you're going to need meat. The easiest way to get meat is to kill an animal and carve it from its body. Full disclosure this took me WAY longer than I expected to figure out. Just killing an animal will not give you meat. You must first craft a hatchet (with sticks and stone) and then use it to carve the meat from the animal. When you craft an item you can equip it will not go in your inventory, but instead, automatically assign it to the radial menu. Hopefully, this will save you some time, and no more turtles have to get punched to death for no reason, I'm sorry. Once you've found the Waterskin and have some meat, it's time to pick a direction and just go. The biggest mistake beginning players make is setting up camp too close to the starting area. What this does is it limits the resources you can gather to the starter resources, and that stops the player from progressing and enjoying the game. So that's why I say when you think you've found a home, go just a little farther. Once you have reliable location deep enough into the map that's when the game opens up, and you can explore crafting recipes and the incredible depth this game has to offer.

Mechanics to watch out for:

        Some mechanics that hide from you are your attributes and feats. Attributes being your typical RPG skill tree, with areas for combat, survival, and so on. Feats, on the other hand, are a little more complicated, in all reality, they're just recipes for crafting. Unlocking feats will help to unlock subsequent recipes resulting in more powerful weapons, armor, and items in general. Not all the recipes will go to your default crafting screen, but rather to the blacksmith bench, or whichever station the recipe is crafted at. 

Armor and weapons alike will have varying weights and rates at which they drain stamina. This is important to consider as you go on more extended harvesting missions and want to maximize how much you can carry back. Something I did was invest in multiple sets of armor and weapons that catered to specific tasks I was trying to accomplish, such as a light armor set for harvesting, and a damage heavy defense set for excessive combat excursions.


Notable Tips and Tricks: 
*You can eat insects to regain small amounts of health and fight off hunger.
*To more greatly heal and fend off hunger for longer you can cook meat from animals at campfires. 
*To get meat from animals you need to attack the corpse with a hatchet.
*Different meats will heal you at different rates.
*You can drink water from a lake or small body of water without penalty.
*Use any source of water to fill a Waterskin.
*Tools for harvesting are different from weapons, so even though your hatchet looks cool, you better make a dedicated weapon fast.
*You learn new crafting recipes through leveling up and the "Feats" page of your character sheet.
*Not all NPC will attack on-site, just most of them.
*Add friends to a Clan to be able to always see their location on the map and share buildings.
*When you're offline, other players can see your unconscious body and access your inventory so make sure you log off in a safe place.
*If you're having a hard time with online servers, you can be the admin of your own solo or coop server and have full control over all aspects of the game. This is what I did for a few hours to feel more comfortable before real people tried to murder and enslave me. NOTE* if you play solo/co-op whoever starts the game will control the save and need to be online to use the server.

If you like it:
        If you find yourself enjoying Exiles as I did, then there is a vast mechanical survival game full of secrets to explore and fascinating PVP waiting for you. Some of my favorite features later in the game are the Thrall and pet system. Players can find baby animals of just about any species in the game and with the use of the animal pen and the proper food you can raise a loyal beast to guard your base or follow you into battle. My faithful companion is Steve the hyena.  

The thralls work similarly, first, you need the Cudgel to knock them out safely and some rope to drag them back to camp. Then like with your animals you merely put the thrall into a wheel of pain (a structure like the animal pen for humans) and add some food. After some time, you'll have your very own Thrall. Captured NPC's can be set to follow or guard just like your pets, but they can also be assigned to specific crafting stations to speed up the crafting process significantly. Not any thrall can work a job efficiently, it takes a carpenter to woodwork or a blacksmith to smelt faster, so you should keep a lookout for these specific types of NPC's out in the world. Beyond thralls, there is still a ton of late-game content in Exiles. There are numerous dungeons around the map filled with epic bosses that drop legendary loot, along with world bosses on the map that will require cooperation and teamwork to take down. A recent patch added a large jungle section to the game, and future updates are imminent making me quite excited to see what comes next. If you have a PS4, it would be a shame not to get this game while it's free with PS plus. There is a hundred hours of content at least, and the community is more active than ever. 
                                                                                                                   

Deep Dive #1 Coming Soon!

        Currently, I’m deep into the lore and side quests of Andromeda. I’m having a shocking amount of fun playing a game that was universally dumped on, but I can see why it got the flack it did. The idea of Andromeda sounds outstanding to me. Explore uncharted space, meet aliens, and even violate Star Fleets prime directive, a true open world sci-fi RPG. Twenty hours in and it’s clear that there are amazing parts of this game, but it’s just how those parts fit together that’s seems to be the critical fault. Well, that and the facial animations.

        As of now, I’m enjoying the game and want to finish it. Mainly just to see how narratives play out and if any of my choices matter. Andromeda has done a spectacular job so far of satisfying my Star Trekian cravings, and that alone has been enough to push me through the bugs and questionable design choices. Hopefully, that will remain the case throughout the last 15 or so hours. For now, I’m still diving into side quests and exploring the relationships between Ryder (the player character) and her companions. I can tell there is an excellent game hiding somewhere within Andromeda and I’m determined to find it. There’s a small moon-sized heap of content I want to dive into and discuss, and hopefully shed some light on what stifled the potential of this once great franchise. So stay tuned, coming soon a deep dive into