Delta's Variety Corner

Just Cause 3 is the third title in the popular Just Cause franchise. Developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Square Enix. The Just Cause series became famous for the level of destruction offered players. But how well does the third instalment match up to the others? Is it an improvement over the previous games or does it fall short? I'll take a look at it in this review to find out. Just Cause 3 features many of the same gameplay elements of the previous titles. However, there are a few new additions. The player now has access to a wingsuit alongside their parachute, which allows them to travel quickly across the world (provided they don't immediately dive into the ground) The wingsuit allows quick travel at the expense of the manoeuvrability of the parachute and with the right altitude you can get very far (I was able to travel from the top of a cliff all the way to an off-shore Oil Rig). Vehicle handling has also been changed, at least as far as land vehicles go. An...

XCOM 2 is the followup to 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Unlike many other titles, XCOM 2 chooses to play off of the bad ending from the first game. This meant that the gameplay had to be overhauled in order to suit the new style of play that would be introduced in this game. But do these additions help or hinder the game? And does it live up to the legacy of the series as a whole? As XCOM 2 is based off of the bad ending of the first game, the gameplay has been redesigned to focus around guerilla warfare. A lot more of the missions are hit and run based objectives, where you have to get in, complete the task and get out again in as short a time as possible. This of course, means the introduction of timers. There were timed missions in the first XCOM game, but they were generally relegated to Council missions, and usually only Bomb Disposal, where you could increase the amount of time available to you by disabling power nodes scattered across the map. XCOM 2 has no such luxury, you...

Mass Effect 2 is the second installment of the highly acclaimed Sci-fi franchise by Bioware. For the second game, Bioware took a look at the feedback they'd recieved from Mass Effect 1, in order to know where they had to improve. Because of this. Mass Effect 2 has much tighter gunplay, which is a lot more responsive than before, however it also lacks the vehicle segements from the first game. So today I'll take a look at it, and see whether these changes and others help or hurt the game. As I mentioned in the intro, the gameplay has clearly been a focus for Bioware, as it's a much more fluid experience, the cover system has seen major improvements and minigames invovled with hacking have been changed as well, now any class is able to hack into things, however there is no option to use omni-gel to bypass the minigames anymore, in fact, omni-gel seems to be missing from the game completely. The inventory system is also gone, meaning you'll be spending less time managing...

With Metro Exodus rapidly approaching I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the first game in the franchise. Released in 2010, Metro 2033 achieved critical success, and was almost universally well recieved. However it didn't fare as well commercially. Under performing in America. Needless to say, the game was at least successful enough to warrant a sequel, Last Light; which was published by Deep Silver after they aquired the rights to the franchise and developers 4A Games, after THQ went bankrupt. Unlike the other big post apocalypse series, Fallout; the Metro series is very story focused and unlike Fallout, linear. This means that encounters cannot happen randomly. Each play-through you'll find the same enemies in the same places doing the same things and though there are what you could call side-quests, they're fairly basic. Such as giving a begger some money or not, with the reward simply being some karma points. This is an interesting feature in Metro. A...

Something a little different from me this time, I've decided to take a look at one of my favourite television shows from my Childhood. Robot Wars first aired on BBC Two; on the 20th of February 1998. The first season was hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, who many people will recognise from Top Gear and The Grand Tour. For the first series it was quite clear to the producers and roboteers that Robot Combat in the UK hadn't got to the point where two machines could battle it out at that be the basis for the entire show. Many of the robots seen in the first season were just boxes with wheels, some were even owned by the studio and had to pull out of the competition before the battle rounds. In order to make sure the show would stay interesting, the producers decided that instead of just battling one another, the teams would have to complete a series of challenge rounds, such as the Gauntlet, Pinball, Sumo, and Tug of War. The teams that did the worst in each round were eliminated, leavin...

Halo 3 is probably the most popular game in the long running Halo Franchise. It was a system seller for the Xbox 360 and for many people, it was their gateway into the series. So while Halo 3 has managed to craft this legendary status around itself. Does it live up to it? And, looking back over 10 years since its launch, has it held up compared to modern games. These are the questions I intend to answer as I take a look back at the heavy hitting title of 2007 and give my honest opinions of it. Starting with the story, we have to talk about the fact that Halo 2 was originally going to be the end of the franchise, and that Halo 3 only came about because Bungie set their sights too high and had to end Halo 2 on a cliffhanger. Because of this, Halo 3 has to both tell its own story, as well as finishing off Halo 2's. Halo 3 is comprised of 10 missions, though one is just a cutscene and doesn't really count. So all in all there are 9 missions in the game, making it somewhat shorter...

Due to mounting work at college and a desire to have more free time to myself. I'm changing the rate at which I upload reviews to my site. Previously I've tried to maintain a '1 game per week' schedule. As a 1 man team this means it's quite demanding for me to write the reviews, and it also gives me a pretty short window in which I can choose what game I want to review next. I also feel that if I take more time between my reviews, then I'll be able to improve the quality of them. They'll be longer and may even have images as well. As it stands, I'm not completely satisfied with the reviews I've done so far as I feel that I could have gone more in depth if I'd had more time to type them up. So from now on I'll be uploading a review every two weeks. This means next week there won't be a review, and I'll take the extra time to pick a game and review it more thorougly. I hope you can understand my reasons for doing this.