The Games I played during my Revision

Mount And Blade Warband: Veiled Stars Mod

Quick recap of what Mount and Blade is: M & B is a RPG style game, where you are dumped in the land of Calradia and have to make your way, raising armies, besieging cities and gaining power. The great thing about this game is the vibrant modding society. A mod is a modification of the game which is written by the fans which changes the gameplay. The veiled stairs mod is one I have followed for a long while, and recently this has finally been released for open beta. The reason I have been looking forward to this is because it is a total conversion of M & B to Lord of the Rings! Yes you read right, Lord of the Rings. You are dumped in the wonderful world of Middle earth, and for now are a human (more content to be added over time) roaming the land. You can recruit orcs, rohirrim, warg riders and swan knights among many others. Not only that but you can do quests for famous characters of the series as well as visit famous locations. This mod is executed very well, and while it is still buggy (keep in mind it is in beta), I expect much from this gorgeous game.

If you want to get this mod, you first need to own Mount and Blade Warband. It is quite cheap on steam, and in fact if you trawl the internet a bit you might be able to get it on mac as well. Then just head over to Veiled Stars website and download the mod (yay, its free!) and follow the instructions. Voilá you are now ready to forge your adventure in the land of the one ring.

Prototype

This game was super big in its day and actually was incredibly successful. However, recently I feel that with the advent of other open world games, and the releases of GTA 5, this game and its successor has slipped a bit under the radar. Basically imagine GTA on steroids. You are a mutant, with incredible mutant powers (who to be honest can defy the laws of physics), who has lost all his memory. The aim of the game is for you to figure out who you are while traversing a very accurate rendition of New York which is slowly being taken over by zombies. Throughout the game you can to take on soldiers of the crack Blacklight squad, normal soldiers, zombies and generally

If you don’t have this game just watch out for humble bundles and steam sales for this game, and you might get an absolute steal. Furthermore, since it’s a game from 2009 it will run quite well on your rig while still looking very pretty.

I found that this game was the perfect way to relax during exams and studying, morphing my hands into giant claws, hammers or an epic sword and then mowing through enemies. Furthermore it is quite easy to just jump into the game have fun and return to studying very quickly.

Pokémon Zeta & Omicron

At the moment Pokémon games seem to be popping out of thin air at the moment. Not even a year ago we had the release of X and Y, and now remakes of Ruby and Sapphire have been also announced, which will be released in November 2014.

Now lets say you have gotten bored of the other versions and don’t know what to do till alpha sapphire and omega ruby. Then I have a Pokémon game for you, but waits there is more; have you always dreamed of encountering starters in the wild? Want to be able to get all Pokémon without the trading stuff or because you chose the wrong version?

If you answered yes to all the above, you may want to check out Pokémon Zeta and Omicron. This is a free game made on RPG maker for your PC, and is completely free. Furthermore this is actually not, it is just an executable file and therefore you don’t need any emulator to make it work!

This game is also in Beta, however it is almost fully complete and at the time of speaking there are approximately 80 hours of gameplay. So what is different you ask? Well for starters, you have different starters. These are Magby, Horsea and Bellsprout. The normal ones that you expect are actually now wild Pokémon that you can encounter in the wild! Furthermore, you now have shiny Pokémon and shadow Pokémon. Theses are like the shiny ones, however with a dark colour palette. Furthermore we are now in a completely different zone, namely the Vesryn region, and a completely story for you to get lost in.

As I said before this game is completely free, just head over to Reddit and search for Omicron and Zeta and get downloading!

Planetary annihilation

If you read my Christmas list you may have noticed that I wanted this game. Well, the steam gods answered my prayers (albeit at a bad time which was exam time) and put this bad boy on steam. I love strategy games. However, sadly for now I have to say that this is not the game I was hoping for. Basically you are a group of robots planning to take over a solar system planet by planet, fighting epic battles on the way.

The premise sounds amazing, but I found that the game itself was extremely complicated, the tutorial was a youtube video (really??) and the commands for controlling the camera were iffy at best. This made it very frustrating to actually get anywhere. I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing, while constantly zooming in and out and in the end when finally promised some action, failed to pan over to the battle and missed out.

Given that I wanted to play this game to relax while studying for exams and that I was becoming increasingly agitated while trying unsuccessfully to control some robots, I quickly became so frustrated I stopped playing.

I haven’t played this game since. However, I watched some longer more descriptive tutorials and I have now figured out the game works and the correct controls to use. Therefore once my exams are finished I promise I will decdicate more time to this and supply a proper review.

Just Cause 2: Multiplayer Mod

Another one of those games that was big in its day and that has recently slipped somehow under the radar. Furthermore it is also just like a GTA on steroids. Instead of being a mutant you are now spy on the island state of Panau. You have a grappling hook that also lets you defy the laws of physics. Basically your mission is to cause as much chaos as possible, destroying things, killing people and just causing mayhem while roaming the biggest continuous map currently available in gaming.

However it is not the single player I am talking about (which is awesome in its own right), but the multiplayer element that this game was crying out for. Released less than 6 months ago, modders have now tackled this challenge and emerged victoriously. However not only that they have also improved the base game with a more informative hud, fuel on vehicles are just the first I noticed of many.

When I talked about this with a friend we both agreed, this mod extends the possibilities of this game past the realm of fun and into the realm of amazing. Want to have fighter jet races and dog fights, check! Sniper battles over an enormous area, check! All out warfare in an urban, desert or jungle environment, check! In fact at this point you are just limited by your own creativity!