Evolve's New Hunters and Monster

Here I am again, sorry that this one is hilariously late. On the note of Evolve's new DLC, I have decided not to review the two new maps since, despite their differences from current maps, they aren't much except "Hey, we have new maps, let's see what they do!"

So, why not start with the monster.

The Behemoth is useless.

It sounds good in concept, having a tank monster that moves slowly and has good damage would cater to a different play style and diversify the monster roster. But in practice, it doesn't work. This is mainly because (and I'm going to grace the developers by ignoring the bugs I've heard about) the Behemoth's tanking capability doesn't come until after it evolves and gains a lot of health and shield, but until you have evolved at least once, you need to survive by outrunning the Hunters, which the Behemoth can't do. He is so slow that he can barely keep up with the Hunters (who will probably be both running and jet-packing, like normal), and he certainly can't outrun their bullets. He doesn't have the flight or invisibility needed to outthink the Hunters either (while he can roll around, he doesn't have enough open spaces to make this work), leading to a lot of early game deaths. His one saving quality is that if you somehow get him to evolve, he quickly becomes very hard to kill.

Next, the Assault. Torvald, like the Behemoth, caters to a different play style. While the other Assaults have been mostly "direct" damage dealers (meaning that their weapons shoot straight), Torvald loves bombs. His mortars deal alot of damage, and his shrapnel can greatly multiply damage done. His shotgun can deal very good damage up close, but won't work well against anything but the Behemoth.

The Trapper, Crow, is actually not that good. I genuinely want to like him, but I just can't. His bird can find the Monster, but actually fails more often than it succeeds, and only highlights the monster in view, not on the map itself, and doesn't last very long. I simpler words, he can't track the Monster. His other weapons, can respectively slow the monster by shooting it and do damage, even skipping the armor entirely. Both sound like good ideas, but because of how the slow gun works you have to choose one or the other, sacrificing part of your arsenal.

Sunny, the Support, is ok. She works about as well as any other Support, and she has a defensive play style  (like Hank). That's all that can really be said.

The Medic, Slim, is probably the most innovative character in this pack. He is the only one who can really be described as a combat medic, since his main healing is by the healing burst (which has incredible range), which is recharged by shooting the Monster, and he has drones to heal teammates in between fights. This system works very well, and ensures that your allies are usually fully healed. His spore launcher doesn't work as well by comparison, as the Monster needs to be hit for it to work, which makes it pointless by telling the Monster where you are. The only instance in which it works is if Slim is somehow the last one alive, and needs to get away (which shouldn't be happening).

The new characters are meant to add something new to each class, but half of them fall flat. I would suggest that if any of the characters seem good for you, buy them separately, it'll probably be cheaper.

Today's funny quote is:
"Incredible! Using your brain, and all the hurdles that implies, you have correctly identified a piece of the Vault Key." -Patricia Tannis (Borderlands)

Fire Emblem: Awakening; Difficulties and Permadeath

I know that I already reviewed Awakening, but I failed to mention the permadeath system of the game, along with it's difficulty settings.

The difficulties are Normal, which is, well, normal; Hard, which is like Normal but with more and tougher enemies; Lunatic, which is for true tactical geniuses, extremely experienced players, and people who have no idea what they are getting into; and he unlockable Lunatic+, which is for masochists. Further explanation: in Hard, enemies also get more skills, including ones they shouldn't be able to have, also possibly having Forged weapons starting at Chapter 21; in Lunatic enemies are extremely tough (possibly one-hit killing the Avatar very early in the game) and have even earlier access to skills; in Lunatic+ the trend continues, but now enemies are randomly given skills that it is impossible to have, there is no class in the entire game that can unlock these skills (so your characters can't get them). The only other thing worth mentioning is that it can be hard to go to higher difficulties initially, as your tactics from the previous difficulty might not work thanks to the higher enemy numbers.

Now onto the topic of permadeath. I know that veteran fans of most strategy series might not like me for this, but I'll say it anyway: I don't think permadeath in this game is a good idea. I like permadeath, I think that it adds to the games it's in, makes your decisions more important and can make you care about your soldiers. This still applies to most Fire Emblem games, where it does basically the same thing, but Awakening is different in that it has post-story content. Even if you finish the story, you still have random Risen encounters and tons of DLC, both free and paid. This makes losing units not only worse in the long run, but more likely to happen as more battles=more chances for someone to die. There are only two options to prevent this: you can either only play the story mode and possibly paralouges, giving the game a definite ending; or you can never lose a unit, which, as you will quickly learn, is a bad idea. You will lose a unit at some point, even if you're only in story mode, which will cause you to restart the level and try something else to not lose the unit, after a few times this makes the game boring at best and intensely aggravating at worst. So, permadeath is a difficult thing to manage in this game unless you're not going to play the post-story.

Today's funny game quote is:

"Have you no respect for our ancient profession? We're supposed to be harbingers of pestilence and famine and doom!"

"Mm... I love doom." -Tharja and Henry (Fire Emblem: Awakening)