Geek of Oz

The more I think on it, the more I realise I enjoyed Yakuza 0  more than I thought I did. The colourful, quirky combination of sandbox gameplay, beat-em-ups and karaoke - the latter only one amongst the game's host of other noteworthy minigames - was jarring for someone bred on the immediate, easy thuggishness of  GTA  and Saint's Row , but grew on me more in retrospect. So it made me all the more excited for Yakuza 6 ; now that I had a foot in the door, I was keen to explore the franchise in general. Trouble is, its sixth numbered entry happens to be the end of the line. Curse my poor timing. While it may not be the end of the franchise, given its array of colourful characters with plots yet untapped, Yakuza 6  draws a line under the tale of lead protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. In the wake of his near-death experience at the end of Yakuza 5  (which, full disclosure, I haven't played), Kiryu winds up in hospital to recover before being thrown into prison for wh...

THE SHORT VERSION   Comparisons between Nier Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn may be inevitable, but not wholly accurate. Though the two games emerged at roughly the same time, the former is a tightly-focused and coherent single character journey across a well-paced and thoughtfully written plot. Nier: Automata is...a little different. THE SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION  In a post-apocalyptic future with the drabbest colour palette ever conceived, humanity is attacked by aliens. The resulting conflict wipes humanity from the face of the Earth, relegating the survivors to a colony on the moon. To defend them, the humans commission a number of androids in the YoRHa initiative to reclaim Earth from the aliens and their swarm of robots who now occupy the planet. One of these androids, 2B, teams up with another android, 9S, to defend humanity and learn more about the alien threat. The plot quickly spirals out from that point. To call the story of Nier: Automata ab...

THE SHORT VERSION Gorgeous post-apocalyptic vistas, unique creature designs and an engrossing, personal plot combine to forge one of the best games of the last decade, and certainly the best exclusive offering for the PS4. It's pretty, it's got a good story, and you fight robot dinosaurs with a spear. THE SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSION Horizon Zero Dawn 's concept ultimately boils down to a strong, intelligently-written female protagonist killing bandits whilst battling mechanical beasts in a tribal, "Mad Max by way of that post-apocalypse story in Cloud Atlas " setting. I've certainly heard worse elevator pitches. Humanity has slowly grown in the shadow of an apocalypse, now living in segregated pre-medieval tribes across the world. These tribes are threatened by deadly robot creatures, which infest the wild and spawn from an unknown source. Aloy, a motherless, martially-proficient young warrior born as an outcast to the Nora tribe, sets out into ...

As this review is a First Impressions of a game that is still in development, there will be no */10 Geeks score at the end. Any aspects of the game discussed here are subject to change in the final version. --- Whether or not you enjoy Get Even is going to depend on how much you don't like having every question answered - or even most questions, for that matter. If you're the kind of pop culture consumer who avoids things like Inception , Minority Report , Silent Hill and the collected works of David Lynch, you'll want to add Get Even to that list, then go and reassess your life choices. Those of us who are keen on all of the above will, most likely, have a ball . After reading a few reports which detailed several different incarnations of its story, dating as far back as 2013, the version of Get Even that I played had a plot somewhere between Deadly Premonition and Paycheck , with a healthy dose of P.T. mixed in. You play as Cole Black, a Sean Bean-accen...

THE SHORT VERSION   If you're after a complex, occasionally melodramatic plot with no shortage of beating the snot out of gangsters, then here's the game for you, my friend!     STORY   It's 1988, and the Japanese underworld is battling it out for control of an empty patch of land. This empty patch - ominously titled the Empty Lot - acts as the key to control of a substantial amount of Japanese real estate. Two men each with their own criminal stake in the conflict - young yakuza enforcer Kazuma Kiryu, and cabaret club ooperator Goro Majima - operate separate agendas to in relation to the Lot, while a number of backroom deals, deceptions and unholy alliances play out around them. Against the grand canvas of operatic criminal dealings, Kiryu and Majima also deal with personal struggles; the former is dealing with the fallout after being wrongfully accused of murder, and the latter is tasked to assassinate a young blind woman whom he late...

NOTE: This review compiles an experience of both the pre-release and final versions of Dark Souls III . The following section, concerning the pre-release was published on March 3rd 2016, and is reproduced here in its entirety. An updated section for the final version of the game follows at the end of this review. ---  PRE-RELEASE: THE SHORT VERSION 'I may be but small, but I shall die a colossus.' - Lord of Cinder. Dark Souls III is everything you could be wanting from a From Software game. It balances the tonal feel of the first game, the better player orientation of the second , and the faster combat of Bloodborne . It is, in every sense, a From Software "Best Of Gameplay", a number of excellent factors struck through with an enticing plot, sumptuous visuals and killer sound design. Sounds perfect, right? Well, maybe, but only if you're a certain kind of person. We'll get to that. STORY What little narrative is given at the outset is f...