Gamescom Report

Instead of visiting a gaming convention in The Netherlands, this time me and my brother drove to Cologne in order to enter Gamescom, which is the equivalent of Electronic Entertainment Expo, but then in Europe.

Featuring the latest upcoming video games as the central theme, including Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the place was enormously busy, even on a sunday.

The queues were ridiculously long and similar to rollercoaster times, so we simply skipped checking out of the new stuff and we walked through the several halls of gaming booths and such instead. The mood was like any gaming convention, alive and busy, with shops, booths, demo's and esports doing their thing to entertain.

The various Virtual Reality devices also made their presence, but because of the queue's, none were touched by us. Instead, we will await the reviews and look at the objective consensus before we decide on 1 of them.

Next to the gaming, there were food stalls, a PC hall focusing on electronics supplementary towards computer games, and cosplay village, where it nowadays is normal to hold a competition at conventions like these and others like comics or horror related.

Gamescom in overall was an average at best convention for us, and frankly, we could had sticked with a Dutch convention for this year. Still, it's nice to see and try something different, and now it's time to game again!

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Let’s go on an ancient treasure hunt, one more time.

Nathan Drake is dragged into his last big adventure because his brother Samuel Drake has a huge debt to pay towards getting out of prison. The third person gameplay returns polished with beautiful stunning graphics, gunplay and corners, climbing platforming and the marvelous dialogue between the characters.

Newcomers in the cast are fun with Sam sticking out the most, while Victor and Elena also return as fan favorites. This time, the adventure brings us in flashbacks to Panama, and in present time to Italy, Scotland and the wonderful Madagascar.

Uncharted 4 features robust multiplayer madness online, is filled with secret treasures and the dialogue remains humane, humoristic and touching. Climbing around remains a great balance towards the shootouts against another private army.

Filling up the challenge with several brutal difficulties, adding in a photo capture and of course the silly cheats are returning, Naughty Dog has once again delivered like the respectful developer they are for Sony's platforms.

A Thief’s End says it all in the subtitle and it’s a fitting end to the Uncharted franchise, although it can also be considered an open ending, especially seeming as singleplayer DLC is on the way. It’s easily another very strong entry, but Among Thieves remains king objectively.

Rating: 8.7

Star Fox Zero

 

Re-imagination or remake of Star Fox 64, which is the crème de la crème of the franchise. Star Fox Zero brings gyro controls and a second screen from the cockpit towards the table, and a new machine lets you run and hover distances, aside from the Landmaster and the Arwing.

There’s also a mini R.O.B. which is able to hack computers, the graphics are 60 frames per second and it is co-developed by Platinum Games. The campaign lets you do various routes upon replay, and it features some hidden secrets as you collect special items, or move in particular ways.

It's odd to experience this game quite late in the Wii U's library, as the presentation could be better for instance. Super Mario Maker, Xenoblade Chronicles X and Splatoon are frankly more pleasurable to play, and feature obviously more content wise.

Also, the controls take a while to get used to, similar to Kid Icarus Uprising. Assets wise, it definitely ain't original, but it's familiar. I understand that this is a decent pick up and play kind of game, but at times it just feels underwhelming.

Star Fox Zero is pretty good, but merely a shadow of Star Fox 64 or even it’s 3D incarnation, simply because that game did everything better and it was more original.

Rating: 7.8