Recent reviews by My Little B

Rating: 7.5/10

"Final Fantasy IV" was the first Final Fantasy game to release for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). When it was released in 1991 it was very well received by fans of the series and newcomers alike and it was the first game in the franchise to use what's called Active Time Battles (ATB) which was used for most of the Final Fantasy games following this one. Fast forward 16 years and a 3D remake is released with voice acting and improved graphics. The question is, is it still any good?

Just to clarify, this review is about the 3D remake (which is the version that can be found here on steam).


So, what is this game about?

This game is a JRPG that focuses on the story of Cecil, a Dark Knight who is the Captain of the Red Wings from the Kingdom of Baron. The game starts with Cecil being on an airship carrying out the king's orders. He goes with the Red Wings to Mysidia to seize the Water Crystal. Cecil takes the crystal back to Baron thinking about his action and deeming his actions as being wrong. With this on his mind he confronts the king about the reasoning behind the orders. When the king hears of this he strips Cecil of his rank and sends him and his friend Kain as messengers to the town of Mist. From there starts an epic journey about friendship, love, war, and betrayal.


Ok, so what influence did this game have on the franchise?

This game is the game that introduced the mechanic called Active Time Battles (ATB) to the series. The ATB system has been used for most of the Final Fantasy games after this one and it has given the battles of these games a depth that was previously impossible to give them due to the turn based battle system where everyone would get the chance to attack once without any cast time every turn and then it would just loop this process. With the ATB system you can use tactics that just wasn't possible in the same way without the speed factor.


Well, is this game any good?

Yes, this game is very good! The game always keeps a good pace and you get introduced to new characters along the way. A minor issue that was present before this remake was that the difficulty was either too low (like in the GBA version) or too high (like in the DS version). This game, however, let's you choose between Hard (The DS difficulty) and Normal (Easier than the DS version but not as easy as the GBA version). The only other problem I had with the game was with the augment system, there is no way you'll know how to get the better augments unless you either google it or play it multiple times. And trust me, you definitely want the better augments, some of them are really cool. An example of one such augment is the Omnicast augment which gives you the ability to use single target spells as an AOE spell. That means that you can either A) Buff your party with a lot of defensive stats rather quickly, or B) You can deal very high amounts of damage with expensive high level spells to a group of enemies. It's really cool but it's rather tricky to just figure out how to get it. You might just get lucky and get some of the augments but if you don't look it up you're generally going to miss out on a lot of the augments. Apart from that the game is very good. I really liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the voice acting. I don't know what more to say, it's simply a good game.


So, should I buy this game?

Yes, I really think you should. This game is great and I would absolutely recommend it for any Final Fantasy fan out there if you somehow missed this entry in the series. Also, luckily, if you're new to the series this game is a great starting point along with "Final Fantasy VI", and "Final Fantasy VII".

Rating: 6.5/10

The Final Fantasy series started in 1987 with the game "Final Fantasy" for the NES. This game was revolutionary for it's time and really made an impact on the gaming industry with it's take on the JRPG formula. Fast forward 3 years to the release of "Final Fantasy III" which was the last of the NES Final Fantasy titles. This game changed the core mechanics of the class system and made a lot of changes for the better when it comes to Final Fantasy as a whole. The question is, how does it hold up today, and more importantly, does the 3D remake hold up?

Just so there's no confusion, I'm going to be talking about this version of the game which is the 3D remake.


So, what is this game about?

This game is a JRPG about 4 kids who are the "Warriors of the Light". You start the game off by taking control of our main protagonist named "Luneth". You later meet up with the 3 others who have been chosen by the light. These 3 characters are "Arc", "Refia", and "Ingus". Your job is to restore balance to the world by finding the crystals of Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth.


Okay, what influence did this game have on the franchise?

Well, as I stated earlier this game really changed the core mechanics of the class system. In the first one you chose 4 classes from the start and then you had to roll with it for the rest of the game. In this game you don't have that. In this game you start as a Freelancer which does absolutely nothing of value. However after you find the Crystal of Wind early on in the game you start getting access to jobs. You gain more and more jobs for every crystal you gather. These jobs work like classes did in the first game except that you can switch whenever you feel like it. There is a downside to this system though which I'll come to later. When you want to switch someone's job you just press "Job" in the menu and pick what character's job you want to change and what you want to change the job to. After you select a new job there is a Job Adjustment Phase. The length of this phase is decided by the job level of the job you're switching from and what kind of job you're switching to relative to the kind of job you're switching from. Another thing that this game introduced was the special abilities that the different jobs had.


But is this game any good?

Well, here is where it gets tricky to say how I feel about the game. The game is super well paced almost all the way through and it is actually one of the better games in the franchise when it comes to the pace throughout the game. You never really have to stop to grind for EXP. The only thing I decided to grind was Gil for a few rods for my mages. This amazing pace keeps up all the way through the game, until you get to this one point in the game... The place I'm talking about is the World of Darkness and that's really a shame since it's the last place you traverse before fighting the final boss (which is not any better btw). And the problem is that once you enter the area you can't in any way leave it. And you may think you're a little underleveled when you get there and say to yourself "No, I'm fine, I'll just use some elixirs so I'm able to use my stronger magic spells for enemies. That kind of works until you get to the final boss and get 2-shot. Oh and btw, did I mention that you can only save on the world map? This leads to you losing 1-2.5 hours of progress just because of bad game design. I had to sit and grind for 20 levels before I was able to comfortably finish the game. Another problem is when it comes to the job system. There are some jobs that are FAR superior to others and when you realize you have a bad job it's probably already leveled to the point where you feel like you should just stick with it because it would take forever to get another job to be as high leveled as the one you currently have. At some points the game also kind of wants to force you to have certain jobs. There is one place for example where you absolutely want one of the jobs or it's a real pain to get through since the enemies multiply if you don't attack with a certain kind of weapons. Except for these issues the game is actually really enjoyable!


So, should I buy this game?

That depends. If you're new to the franchise I would rather point you to IV, VI, or VII. If you're however a fan of the franchise and you feel like you want another fresh Final Fantasy experience I would totally recommend this one. Just be prepared for the long hours of grinding at the end and you'll be fine!

As my final words I want to say that it can be a very enjoyable game! You just need to know what you're in for.

Rating: 9/10

The gaming community consists of a lot of people with a lot of different tastes in games. One thing that most gamers have in common however is that almost everyone knows what Half-Life is and most people have also at some point or another played a game that is, or originated as a mod to Half-Life. This is something that makes this game so special; there are very few games and game series that can compare to this one in fame.


So, what is Half-Life?

Well, Half-Life is a First Person Shooter game that was introduced to the world in 1998. The game was made by a newly founded company called Valve. The game is about a man named Dr. Gordon Freeman who works at a research facility called Black Mesa. The game is divided into 18 chapters that vary in length and creativity. Some chapters are around 15 minutes and some are almost an hour long. The game is based on the Goldsource engine which actually looks kind of decent to this day and behaves much like the later source engine.


Okay, what's the plot of the game?

In the beginning of the game you go to work to do an experiment. This experiment, however, goes horribly wrong and accidentaly opens a portal to an alien dimension called Xen. This grants the aliens access to our dimension which soon leads to the aliens trying to take over our world. Your job as Dr. Gordon Freeman is to escape the underground facility and try to stop this chaos. On your way you will have to fight enviromental hazards, aliens from Xen, soldiers ordered to cover up the accident and more.


So, should I consider buying this game?

Yes, absolutely. This game may be 18 years old but it's still very up to date. It has okay graphics, and thankfully it's easy to see if you can interract with an object or not. It also has a great feel to it's gameplay, and you can improve your playthroughs a lot and try learning some tricks to make it enjoyable a lot longer. If you would however feel like this game is a little too old for your taste I would absolutely recommend the game Black Mesa to you. It is a remake/reimagination of the original Half-Life that changes the worse parts of the game e.g the chapter "On a Rail", and it also makes the areas a lot bigger as it does not have the same hardware limitations. This means that some areas (e.g outside of a lab) is about 5 times larger and that adds for some interesting encounters.

To end this I just want to say that this is a truly amazing game. If you pass on this game you will have missed something very spectacular.

I will just do a simple review and not go far too much in depth.

Why this is a positive review:
I don't know what to say. As a standalone game it's a good game, it really is. That's why I'm giving this a positive review. It has an okay story, pretty good character and enemy design and it has very good gameplay.
The setting in some areas are kind of cool while I feel like the transition between areas could have been done a lot better.

What else I have to say:
While I will finish this game some day since I love the Soul series as much as I do, I still always start thinking about how the first Dark Souls was so much better when playing this. The one thing I think Dark Souls 2 improves on is the player character design. The rest Dark Souls did better... Now you might ask "Why was it better? Is there really such a huge difference?". Well... yeah... and now I'll tell you why (Note that I'm focusing on PvE here). In Dark Souls 2: Humanity is worthless since it just restores your HP to maximum, the enemy design is far less creative, the bosses feel far less rewarding, the areas don't seem connected at all, the game is made hard because it succeded in the other ones which leaves level design and enemy placements suffering. Well... that's just a few of the things I've noticed.

Final notes:
After all my talking about Dark Souls 2:s flaws maybe you're wondering "So should I skip playing it?..." Well no... I just liked Dark Souls 1 so much more which led to this game being a huge dissappointment... So go ahead, play it. Maybe even I will learn to really enjoy it some day ;)

The most one-handed experience I'll ever have

The interface of the game broke, forced me to exit the game through my task manager and then when I restarted it sent me back to the first mission in level 5 while I couldn't progress.

When this happens after 1.2 hours I can't recommend this product.

It's fun while it lasts anyways...

Anyways, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a team based tactical shooter where you play as 2 teams. You play as Terrorists (T) and Counter Terrorists (CT).

The Objective:
The objective in this game is for the T:s to either plant a C4 on 1 of the 2 bombsites or to eliminate the whole opposing team. The objective for the CT:s is to either eliminate the whole opposing team or to defuse the C4 that the T:s have planted.

There is also another gamemode called "hostage rescue" but it's not as good as the original one so just skip playing it.

But the ones I've talked about now are only the competetive game modes so there are a few more casual gamemodes as well.

The Skill Group System

Something you need to know is that Counter-Strike is a VERY difficult game. The good thing is that valve has solved this with so called skill groups (or ranks) where Silver 1 is the lowest rank and The Global Elite is the best one.

The good thing with this system is that you will always face opponents who give you a entertaining match no matter what rank you are (if you just forget about the smurfs and hackers for a moment) but the downside of the system is that it is a very luck-based system if you don't always play with 4 of your friends. "Why is this?" you may ask. Well, if you are very lucky you can get teammates who know what they're doing and opponents who don't and if you are very unlucky the exact opposite may happen. But overall it's a pretty good system.

The Things You Need to Learn

When you start playing this game you probably won't really know what to do so here are a few things you will need to practice to get better.

#1. How the aim in CS works.

Yes. You aim very differently in CS compared to other FPS games. I'm also including learning how to control your spray, how to be at top accuracy and where you should hold your crosshair.

#2 Where people usually are.

If you know where the enemy usually is and you take advantage of it that will help you tremendously.

#3 The Economy System

If you learn to keep track of everyones economy you can tell as an example when you need to eco (buy nothing but maybe a pistol and some nades) and when the enemy needs to eco. This will help because then you know how you should play that round based on your's and your opponents weapons.

The Verdict

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a very enjoyable game that is for anyone who is ready to play it a lot (we're talking houndreds of hours here) and it's overall very fun and balanced.

10/10

I mindlessly took medication and after that drank alcohol to my death by accident... Later the same day I did the same thing in reverse...

11/10 would kill myself again!

Assassin's Creed II

Pros:
+Awesome Story
+Excellent Parkour System
+Fun and Creative Missions
+Extremely Well Made Characters

Cons:
-Really Bad Ending
-Too Much Focus on Gaining Value to Monteriggioni
-Assassination Side Missions

The game has a few flaws just like pretty much every other game out there but is still a really good and enjoyable game. In the end this game deserves 8.5/10 since the game is so excellently done with no time leaving you bored and the flaws that it has are no gamebreakers... Well the ending kind of is but you see my point!

I'll keep this short since there's already too many long reviews of this game.

+Good story
+Great gameplay
+Started an absolutely amazing franchise

-Repetetive
-Like many other of the Assassin's Creed games this game has a really bad ending

7/10

Play it if you want the full story of Assassin's Creed