Month: February 2017

Enjoying Horizon Zero Dawn so far

Posted on by avideogamelife.com

Last night after work I played about an hour and a half of Horizon Zero Dawn, and I’m pretty impressed so far. It looks downright amazing on a PS4 Pro and a 4K HDR TV. I also really like how they try to make the tutorial into something that actually has a narrative, and is more interesting than following prompts on screen. Things really get fun once you’re given control over the adult Aloy, and I’m really enjoying the combat so far. The bow feels like it has real impact when you land a shot on a critical part, and everything just looks and sounds great during combat. It’s especially thrilling to get into a scuffle with several enemies as once, and the music during these instances works to amp up the adrenaline as enemies close in on you.

I’m looking forward to putting some more time into Horizon Zero Dawn as the week goes on, but I can already tell it’s going to be a great time. The last thing I’ll say is that the game has a real polish, and I’ve run into zero bugs or hiccups so far which is rare for games on their release days lately. I can’t wait to play more!

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MLB The Show 16’s beginner mode is a tad too easy…

Posted on by avideogamelife.com

MLB The Show 16 too easy

I’ve been playing MLB The Show 16 on the PS4 Pro I picked up this weekend, and it’s felt great to be able to play baseball again (after too many years of hoping for an MLB game to return to Xbox). That said, I think I need to step it up from the beginner difficulty setting. I won my first game of the season 17-0 (with a little help from two created players with uber stats), and I hit six consecutive home runs in a single inning! Regardless I’ve been playing a blast, and just wanted to share! I hope to share my first impressions of the PS4 Pro after I spend some more time with it. Until then, enjoy the hilarity:

 

Halo Wars 2 first impressions

Posted on by avideogamelife.com

Yesterday I excitedly fired up Halo Wars 2 on PC, and from its first moments it was impressive. There is one problem I’m having with it, however, and that’s the way it controls on PC. It doesn’t control like an RTS at all, which I assume is because the game was designed with console gamers in mind (it is a Play Anywhere title). I had to dig into the key bindings menu a lot, even after finishing the tutorials, just to figure out how to do things that should be common sense. I’m incredibly puzzled by some of the control decisions they’ve made on PC. For example, to rotate or zoom the camera you must first hold down the ALT key. It just doesn’t feel right. The worst problem of all, however, came when I tried to figure out how to bring up the pause menu. The ESC key did nothing, and I tried just about every key I could think of, but nothing happened. Eventually I turned on my Xbox controller and took control that way just to get into the key bindings menu to find out that F10 is the pause / menu key, not ESC. What the heck?

I haven’t tried to play Halo Wars 2 with a controller yet, so maybe that will end up being the way to play it, but I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t control as smoothly as I expected it to on PC. Other than that it runs great, and I’ve had a fun time with it despite the control hiccups.