2019
The 100+ levels in story mode, with their different themes and gimmicks and objectives, already provide a fun 2D Mario experience. While it may verrrry bare in terms of plot, the little things like hidden characters with extra jobs help give it personality. Plus it gives an important role to coins again, something which in most Mario games are ignorable collectibles that seem to just be there since they’ve been a staple since the start.
But then there’s the meat of the game. Making levels, playing user created levels, playing versus, playing co-op, playing speed runs. There’s literally endless fun to be had.
But then there’s the meat of the game. Making levels, playing user created levels, playing versus, playing co-op, playing speed runs. There’s literally endless fun to be had.
2019
The game genuinely made me terrified in my first run thanks to Mr X, something few games have managed to achieve these days.
It's a short game that survives solely off replays. I ended up doing 7 playthroughs and got the plat, and I still didn't manage to actually 100% the games in-game objectives. It does get a little stale doing it that many times in a row however, and certain lines that always come out can get grating (Hearing that guy shouting for help near the beginning of the game comes to mind)
I love how many quality of life stuff there is in the game. Having an in-game map that shows when you've collected everything in a room is just pure bliss. Having the ability to combine herbs and gunpowder even when your inventory is full avoids backtracking.
The objectives, for those who want to complete all of them (I ended up doing 74/87) can provide either extra challenges, or brand new ways to play. Doing a no item box challenge in particular was the run I found to be a huge breath of fresh air as it changed my gameplay style completely.
There are a couple of extra modes. 4th survivor which came out with the game is like a more arcadey type game where you have to get from point A to point B with only the resources on you. I actually found this to be harder than both of my hardcore playthroughs. That unlocks more and more variants of the same mode, which I wasn't in a hurry to play.
There's also some DLC stuff, which seems to take an hour according to youtube videos. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll probably at least give it a shot, even though I'm dying to move onto another game after playing through this one so many times.
So overall great game, survival horror at its scariest. Replay-ability is high, but also relies on it far too much.
It's a short game that survives solely off replays. I ended up doing 7 playthroughs and got the plat, and I still didn't manage to actually 100% the games in-game objectives. It does get a little stale doing it that many times in a row however, and certain lines that always come out can get grating (Hearing that guy shouting for help near the beginning of the game comes to mind)
I love how many quality of life stuff there is in the game. Having an in-game map that shows when you've collected everything in a room is just pure bliss. Having the ability to combine herbs and gunpowder even when your inventory is full avoids backtracking.
The objectives, for those who want to complete all of them (I ended up doing 74/87) can provide either extra challenges, or brand new ways to play. Doing a no item box challenge in particular was the run I found to be a huge breath of fresh air as it changed my gameplay style completely.
There are a couple of extra modes. 4th survivor which came out with the game is like a more arcadey type game where you have to get from point A to point B with only the resources on you. I actually found this to be harder than both of my hardcore playthroughs. That unlocks more and more variants of the same mode, which I wasn't in a hurry to play.
There's also some DLC stuff, which seems to take an hour according to youtube videos. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll probably at least give it a shot, even though I'm dying to move onto another game after playing through this one so many times.
So overall great game, survival horror at its scariest. Replay-ability is high, but also relies on it far too much.
2019
A fun game that has a really great set of dialogue choices, and characters full of personality and diversity. Especially the companions you can recruit, all with their own little quest-lines. In fact their quests are probably my favourite in the game, as they all provide much different experiences than normal quests; it's not all about taking down corporations and saving the universe, you might just need to help your companion go on a date.
On the other hand the many factions in the game can get a bit repetitive and blend together as they all seem to follow the exact same plotlines. I loved it in the first world, as I learned about the first town, and then the deserters and had to make a choice about which one to side with. But then a similar situation happens later on, and by that point I had met so many factions and been through so many sidequests that I couldn't even remember enough about what made each one unique.
Also while I enjoy the story, I do wish it was a bit more subtle at times. The theme of fighting the big bad corporation is interesting, but sometimes they just shove it in your face that "These are the bad guys" as you read computer terminals and read countless "Screw human life. Acquire money" messages.
The game is also let down by some missing quality of life stuff. Cursors on the map speed are slow; you can't sort consumables by effect despite there being hundreds of them but only a few actual given benefits between them; can't sort weapons and armour by power/defense when equipping them to companions - which is insanely weird because you can do so in any other situation; legendary/unique weapons don't really do enough to tell you what makes them so special other than having an actual name.
Otherwise tight controls, great companions, excellent dialogue and characters, rewarding level up system all make it a worthwhile RPG to play.
On the other hand the many factions in the game can get a bit repetitive and blend together as they all seem to follow the exact same plotlines. I loved it in the first world, as I learned about the first town, and then the deserters and had to make a choice about which one to side with. But then a similar situation happens later on, and by that point I had met so many factions and been through so many sidequests that I couldn't even remember enough about what made each one unique.
Also while I enjoy the story, I do wish it was a bit more subtle at times. The theme of fighting the big bad corporation is interesting, but sometimes they just shove it in your face that "These are the bad guys" as you read computer terminals and read countless "Screw human life. Acquire money" messages.
The game is also let down by some missing quality of life stuff. Cursors on the map speed are slow; you can't sort consumables by effect despite there being hundreds of them but only a few actual given benefits between them; can't sort weapons and armour by power/defense when equipping them to companions - which is insanely weird because you can do so in any other situation; legendary/unique weapons don't really do enough to tell you what makes them so special other than having an actual name.
Otherwise tight controls, great companions, excellent dialogue and characters, rewarding level up system all make it a worthwhile RPG to play.
I'll start by saying that this high rating is purely because I am a massive Dragon Ball fan, so I enjoyed the game far more than I would have if I wasn't. It's also given with the hope that the many bugs that plague the game are patched out, since it's still only 1 week since release. I don't feel like it's an unfair reason to rate the game highly though since regardless of the bias reasons, I DID get a ton of enjoyment out of the game, and that's what they're for.
Anyway... The presentation of the game I found really neat. It comes out as if it's a real "playable anime", with each arc of DBZ getting it's own little preview and title card. The feeling of truly playing the show is made more apparent by just how much detail goes into the cutscenes. While it obviously doesn't fit in all 291 episodes, this game goes out of its way to tell the full story of Dragon Ball Z, rather than just using the basic footnotes as most other games do in order to get you from fight A to fight B. This can be a bit of a pain in some times though, as you go through 20+ minutes of cutscene and dialogue in a run, which happened mostly in the Boo saga. Cutscenes themself vary in quality, some of them, like Vegetto vs Boo, had outstanding animation and action, while others felt stiff.
The controls definitely feel unconventional at first, but after getting used to them, flying around the map feels as natural and fun as ever. I do like how easy they make it to traverse the world, since slow and tedious journeys in open world games can often be a problem for me.
Subquests provide a ton of fun. Some of them are funny, some help fill in plot holes or missing story sections and some of them actually develop characters (Chaozu's sidequest in this game provided more character than he's ever had in the series). Some of them even have recurring game-only characters, like the cook who keeps getting attacked or the tourists. Unfortunately the majority of quests are just "Fight these robots" or "Gather these things", with a handful implementing the mini-games of driving, baseball and fishing. One other problem with these was the lack of enemy variety, as they used the same basic pirate robot enemy every single time, just with a new coat of paint in some cases. There's even one mission where Pilaf threatens you with his new machine, and I was expecting to fight the Pilaf Machine from Dragon Ball, but nope, just more pirate robots. A huge wasted opportunity.
The combat isn't at all deep or combo-oriented, but it's just so fast paced and is more focused on timing and rapid actions that I found it really enjoyable. The fact that there's so few playable characters actually allowed them to go all out and make villains feel like real boss fights, with moves that would be game-breaking under the players control, while in most DB games the enemies are restricted to the human-controlled movesets.
While there isn't a whole ton of amount to do relative to some bigger open-world RPGs, there is a constant sense of progression after finishing each saga as more options are added to the intermissions, which serve as the times you essentially get free-roam of the world.
One thing I absolutely loved was the community board. I spent hours and hours mix and matching the icons of characters to try and find the best results. I hope every franchise-based game gets something like this. It's surprisingly addicting and unlocking a new emblem was far more exciting than it should be.
The game has an "instant victory" mechanic where if you're way above the level of an enemy while dashing into them in the overworld, you just win the fight and get the exp and rewards. I thought it was a great way to prevent monotonous fighting while still letting you get the rewards. A nice bonus for those who go out of their way to get as much exp as possible.
Post game has some great content for you too, with a huge chunk of side missions and a secret boss.
I finished everything in the game, including filling out the Z-encyclopedia, getting all community boards to max and the emblems to max friendship, and in all that time I never got bored. The only time I even felt overly frustrated with the game was the crappy controls for the robo-walker time trials (which luckily are fully optional).
Anyway... The presentation of the game I found really neat. It comes out as if it's a real "playable anime", with each arc of DBZ getting it's own little preview and title card. The feeling of truly playing the show is made more apparent by just how much detail goes into the cutscenes. While it obviously doesn't fit in all 291 episodes, this game goes out of its way to tell the full story of Dragon Ball Z, rather than just using the basic footnotes as most other games do in order to get you from fight A to fight B. This can be a bit of a pain in some times though, as you go through 20+ minutes of cutscene and dialogue in a run, which happened mostly in the Boo saga. Cutscenes themself vary in quality, some of them, like Vegetto vs Boo, had outstanding animation and action, while others felt stiff.
The controls definitely feel unconventional at first, but after getting used to them, flying around the map feels as natural and fun as ever. I do like how easy they make it to traverse the world, since slow and tedious journeys in open world games can often be a problem for me.
Subquests provide a ton of fun. Some of them are funny, some help fill in plot holes or missing story sections and some of them actually develop characters (Chaozu's sidequest in this game provided more character than he's ever had in the series). Some of them even have recurring game-only characters, like the cook who keeps getting attacked or the tourists. Unfortunately the majority of quests are just "Fight these robots" or "Gather these things", with a handful implementing the mini-games of driving, baseball and fishing. One other problem with these was the lack of enemy variety, as they used the same basic pirate robot enemy every single time, just with a new coat of paint in some cases. There's even one mission where Pilaf threatens you with his new machine, and I was expecting to fight the Pilaf Machine from Dragon Ball, but nope, just more pirate robots. A huge wasted opportunity.
The combat isn't at all deep or combo-oriented, but it's just so fast paced and is more focused on timing and rapid actions that I found it really enjoyable. The fact that there's so few playable characters actually allowed them to go all out and make villains feel like real boss fights, with moves that would be game-breaking under the players control, while in most DB games the enemies are restricted to the human-controlled movesets.
While there isn't a whole ton of amount to do relative to some bigger open-world RPGs, there is a constant sense of progression after finishing each saga as more options are added to the intermissions, which serve as the times you essentially get free-roam of the world.
One thing I absolutely loved was the community board. I spent hours and hours mix and matching the icons of characters to try and find the best results. I hope every franchise-based game gets something like this. It's surprisingly addicting and unlocking a new emblem was far more exciting than it should be.
The game has an "instant victory" mechanic where if you're way above the level of an enemy while dashing into them in the overworld, you just win the fight and get the exp and rewards. I thought it was a great way to prevent monotonous fighting while still letting you get the rewards. A nice bonus for those who go out of their way to get as much exp as possible.
Post game has some great content for you too, with a huge chunk of side missions and a secret boss.
I finished everything in the game, including filling out the Z-encyclopedia, getting all community boards to max and the emblems to max friendship, and in all that time I never got bored. The only time I even felt overly frustrated with the game was the crappy controls for the robo-walker time trials (which luckily are fully optional).
Hard mode DLC for Mario Bros. With too many unfair versions of difficulty, like invisible blocks.
Almost everything from this game is straight from the first game, from sprites to music. Even the less than perfect physics are still here, except now they're worse because the game demands even more tight platforming.
Also the amount of BS looping levels has increased.
Almost everything from this game is straight from the first game, from sprites to music. Even the less than perfect physics are still here, except now they're worse because the game demands even more tight platforming.
Also the amount of BS looping levels has increased.
Pros:
+The Colossi look amazing
+Riding around on one, especially the flying ones, is cinematic and incredible-feeling
+The environment looks incredible
+The puzzle elements of the boss fights feels rewarding to figure out for the first time
+The soundtrack is epic
Cons:
-Despite the amazing looking scenery, the world itself is devoid of anything, making going through it 16 times in a row a huge slog, which is made worse by the two following cons:
-The horse controls like crap
-The camera is pretty bad, but especially so while riding the horse
-The fact you need to raise your sword and draw power before you stab makes the CONSTANT losing of grip due to the Colossi moving around unbearable
-Same with trying to climb around the Colossi, as you often manage to make zero progress because your character keeps swaying for like 30 seconds straight
-Too much of the boss fights is just playing the waiting game
-Being knocked down takes way too long to get back up. Especially annoying in fights where the enemy will knock you down, then as soon as you start getting back up they knock you down again, over and over and over.
Mixed:
~The sword acting as a homing beacon is a neat idea, but the vagueness of it just leads to dead ends.
+The Colossi look amazing
+Riding around on one, especially the flying ones, is cinematic and incredible-feeling
+The environment looks incredible
+The puzzle elements of the boss fights feels rewarding to figure out for the first time
+The soundtrack is epic
Cons:
-Despite the amazing looking scenery, the world itself is devoid of anything, making going through it 16 times in a row a huge slog, which is made worse by the two following cons:
-The horse controls like crap
-The camera is pretty bad, but especially so while riding the horse
-The fact you need to raise your sword and draw power before you stab makes the CONSTANT losing of grip due to the Colossi moving around unbearable
-Same with trying to climb around the Colossi, as you often manage to make zero progress because your character keeps swaying for like 30 seconds straight
-Too much of the boss fights is just playing the waiting game
-Being knocked down takes way too long to get back up. Especially annoying in fights where the enemy will knock you down, then as soon as you start getting back up they knock you down again, over and over and over.
Mixed:
~The sword acting as a homing beacon is a neat idea, but the vagueness of it just leads to dead ends.
Kind of funny, although nothing more than a cute little game that gets old before you even manage to wake up the owner. For a guy who complains about his garbage cat, he seems to be able to sleep through multiple atomic bombs going off in his room.
Pros:
+While not revolutionary, the game has some quality turn based RPG gameplay, which for me is a fun way to play despite it being a bit ancient.
+Soundtrack is lively and fun.
+Enemy designs are creative and varied. I actually got pretty excited to get to a new area and find new enemies.
+The 2D side-missions (as well as full 2D optional mode) were a nice callback, even though I couldn't truly appreciate them as this is my first Dragon Quest game.
+There's some decent quality of life stuff, like if you're missing purchasable items for forging, you can buy them right there instead of having to go to a shop.
+All the different prep power animations look gorgeous. Also prep powers in general having unique teammate set ups adds some personality to them.
+Toriyama art style. As a huge Dragon Ball fan I had to add this.
+There are a whole bunch of costumes you can find to dress your characters, ranging from silly fun ones, to story-related ones, to downright cool looking ones.
+There's a few times when you get specific moves or skill trees based directly on the happenings from the plot. Like Jade learning Re-Vamp, or Rab's Pearly Gates.
+The main cast are all charming and fun.
+A toooon of content, even post-game. Hell, especially post-game.
Cons
-The way items are managed in this game is awful:
-You can't use any item from the bag in battle. You have to specifically equip it to a character. And it's not like a "Battle bag" either, you have to give each individual item to each individual character. I honestly just gave up on this about 5 hours in and never used an item in battle all game.
-Items don’t merge in a characters bag. If you give a character 5 potions they'll take up 5 slots, which just looks messy and cluttered.
-If you steal from an enemy, it goes into the characters personal inventory, meaning you have to manually remove every single one (there is a way to remove all non-equipment at once, but that would mean removing all the items you want to keep on them)
-The battle music gets overused too much. I don't mean "there's too many battles", but like during the last lap of a horse race it suddenly starts to use the battle music and it feels so out of place.
-When you're looking at a list of items in a shop or forging you can't compare them to your parties current equipment. It'll show only ONE stat of the new item and whether it's lower or higher than the same stat on your party. I bought or forged so many items only to realise the other 5 stats provided are lower than my current one.
-There's too many invisible barriers everywhere. Can't just jump over this little fence to take a short cut, gotta go the long way around.
-The silent protagonist is common in RPGs, but as the story gets more and more involved, and spoken dialogue becomes more common place, it makes them look really out of place. It's so distracting for this huge story to unfold around the main character as he just stands there silent, emotionless. There's one point where he actually starts crying and I was so taken aback because I just can't see him as a character.
-There's no way to find out battle information on enemies like their weaknesses or their immunities. It led to a lot of trial and error, or more likely just avoiding using any status moves and powering through with my strongest attacks rather than waste time experimenting and wasting turns with things that might not even work.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~Tactics always being the first option that comes up in battle. It’s very very minor but it slows things down a bit for every fight. Since pressing X already brings up the tactics menu there’s no need to have it be the default as the amount of times I didn't want to change my tactics every battle far outweighed the ones I did.
~The variety of rideable enemies you find are fun, but they're so limited and are often just there to solve an easy "puzzle". It feels less immersive when only one out of the thousands of other enemies of the same type you find can be ridable.
Neutral/Notes:
•The game doesn’t pause when using menus. It doesn't really matter at all, it just feels weird to me.
•There's an option for "Heal All" and "Handy Heal All" in the menu. The first option heals your party to full health, the second one does the same thing but "in the most optimised way". I just don't understand why I'd ever want to use the option that heals me in a way that isn't the most optimised.
•The Slime Slot Machine feels way too overly complex for a mini game...
+While not revolutionary, the game has some quality turn based RPG gameplay, which for me is a fun way to play despite it being a bit ancient.
+Soundtrack is lively and fun.
+Enemy designs are creative and varied. I actually got pretty excited to get to a new area and find new enemies.
+The 2D side-missions (as well as full 2D optional mode) were a nice callback, even though I couldn't truly appreciate them as this is my first Dragon Quest game.
+There's some decent quality of life stuff, like if you're missing purchasable items for forging, you can buy them right there instead of having to go to a shop.
+All the different prep power animations look gorgeous. Also prep powers in general having unique teammate set ups adds some personality to them.
+Toriyama art style. As a huge Dragon Ball fan I had to add this.
+There are a whole bunch of costumes you can find to dress your characters, ranging from silly fun ones, to story-related ones, to downright cool looking ones.
+There's a few times when you get specific moves or skill trees based directly on the happenings from the plot. Like Jade learning Re-Vamp, or Rab's Pearly Gates.
+The main cast are all charming and fun.
+A toooon of content, even post-game. Hell, especially post-game.
Cons
-The way items are managed in this game is awful:
-You can't use any item from the bag in battle. You have to specifically equip it to a character. And it's not like a "Battle bag" either, you have to give each individual item to each individual character. I honestly just gave up on this about 5 hours in and never used an item in battle all game.
-Items don’t merge in a characters bag. If you give a character 5 potions they'll take up 5 slots, which just looks messy and cluttered.
-If you steal from an enemy, it goes into the characters personal inventory, meaning you have to manually remove every single one (there is a way to remove all non-equipment at once, but that would mean removing all the items you want to keep on them)
-The battle music gets overused too much. I don't mean "there's too many battles", but like during the last lap of a horse race it suddenly starts to use the battle music and it feels so out of place.
-When you're looking at a list of items in a shop or forging you can't compare them to your parties current equipment. It'll show only ONE stat of the new item and whether it's lower or higher than the same stat on your party. I bought or forged so many items only to realise the other 5 stats provided are lower than my current one.
-There's too many invisible barriers everywhere. Can't just jump over this little fence to take a short cut, gotta go the long way around.
-The silent protagonist is common in RPGs, but as the story gets more and more involved, and spoken dialogue becomes more common place, it makes them look really out of place. It's so distracting for this huge story to unfold around the main character as he just stands there silent, emotionless. There's one point where he actually starts crying and I was so taken aback because I just can't see him as a character.
-There's no way to find out battle information on enemies like their weaknesses or their immunities. It led to a lot of trial and error, or more likely just avoiding using any status moves and powering through with my strongest attacks rather than waste time experimenting and wasting turns with things that might not even work.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~Tactics always being the first option that comes up in battle. It’s very very minor but it slows things down a bit for every fight. Since pressing X already brings up the tactics menu there’s no need to have it be the default as the amount of times I didn't want to change my tactics every battle far outweighed the ones I did.
~The variety of rideable enemies you find are fun, but they're so limited and are often just there to solve an easy "puzzle". It feels less immersive when only one out of the thousands of other enemies of the same type you find can be ridable.
Neutral/Notes:
•The game doesn’t pause when using menus. It doesn't really matter at all, it just feels weird to me.
•There's an option for "Heal All" and "Handy Heal All" in the menu. The first option heals your party to full health, the second one does the same thing but "in the most optimised way". I just don't understand why I'd ever want to use the option that heals me in a way that isn't the most optimised.
•The Slime Slot Machine feels way too overly complex for a mini game...
2016
I actually ended up playing this for free with the 7 day PS Now trial, in preparation for Doom Eternal. It was much better than I was expecting.
Pros:
+The action is so fast paced and explosive. It's some of the most fun single player FPS I've ever played.
+Menu shows total amount of collectables in the area so you can know if you’ve missed anything
+Constant upgrades left a great feeling of progression, speaking of which:
+The difficulty curve was perfect. I always felt I had the same level of "just right" challenge. This is partly due to the upgrades mentioned above, and also the introduction or more and more enemy types.
+The weapons for the most part don't suffer power creep. Thanks to the upgrade system, even the starter shotgun was useful to me well into the end of the game.
+Multiplayer is fun, even if it doesn't do much to stand out from every other FPS multiplayer.
Cons:
-The map is absolutely horrible. If you're using it to try and find out where the collectables are, you're going to struggle through the lack of any indication of where walls are, making the different rooms and floor levels impossible to tell where you can get to room A from room B. You also can't zoom or pan much further than where your icon is, so if you're trying to look for where that one collectable you missed is, you're out of luck.
-Some levels have arbitrary point of no returns, which goes against the entire of exploring every nook and cranny for secrets and upgrades. It wouldn't be so bad, but thanks to the huge open-nature of the stages, and the horrible-to-read map, it can be hard to know exactly which parts you can get to at the current moment, and which parts will be locked out if you go through this door and it locks behind you.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~I ended up with a glitched trophy that didn't pop, preventing me from getting the Plat without playing the entire game again. While a glitch is a clear con, the fact it only affects the trophy system, which isn't technically part of the game, means I can't give the game a con for it.
Pros:
+The action is so fast paced and explosive. It's some of the most fun single player FPS I've ever played.
+Menu shows total amount of collectables in the area so you can know if you’ve missed anything
+Constant upgrades left a great feeling of progression, speaking of which:
+The difficulty curve was perfect. I always felt I had the same level of "just right" challenge. This is partly due to the upgrades mentioned above, and also the introduction or more and more enemy types.
+The weapons for the most part don't suffer power creep. Thanks to the upgrade system, even the starter shotgun was useful to me well into the end of the game.
+Multiplayer is fun, even if it doesn't do much to stand out from every other FPS multiplayer.
Cons:
-The map is absolutely horrible. If you're using it to try and find out where the collectables are, you're going to struggle through the lack of any indication of where walls are, making the different rooms and floor levels impossible to tell where you can get to room A from room B. You also can't zoom or pan much further than where your icon is, so if you're trying to look for where that one collectable you missed is, you're out of luck.
-Some levels have arbitrary point of no returns, which goes against the entire of exploring every nook and cranny for secrets and upgrades. It wouldn't be so bad, but thanks to the huge open-nature of the stages, and the horrible-to-read map, it can be hard to know exactly which parts you can get to at the current moment, and which parts will be locked out if you go through this door and it locks behind you.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con:
~I ended up with a glitched trophy that didn't pop, preventing me from getting the Plat without playing the entire game again. While a glitch is a clear con, the fact it only affects the trophy system, which isn't technically part of the game, means I can't give the game a con for it.
2018
Pros:
+Web swinging around the city is great. Any kind of open world game that can make travelling enjoyable is a plus in my book.
+The constant snarky Spider-Man dialogue adds some fun personality.
+Combat is fun and has enough variety to feel like more than a simple button masher.
+Action-packed cutscenes that look like they come right out of a Marvel movie
+The ending cutscene is some of the most emotion I've felt in a video game
+The game does a fantastic job of setting the mood during the villain escape section.
Cons:
-Too much padding of content. There's 4 different "crime" side quests, with 5 of each per district. It gets very repetitive.
-The stealth missions broke the flow of the game and were generally unfun to play. And there's way too many of them.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The powers you get via the suits don't seem to scale with the game. The power that lets you spin around and send out multiple webs was generally the one I found most useful for large mob fights (which are 99% of fights) and it's literally the first suit you can purchase.
+Web swinging around the city is great. Any kind of open world game that can make travelling enjoyable is a plus in my book.
+The constant snarky Spider-Man dialogue adds some fun personality.
+Combat is fun and has enough variety to feel like more than a simple button masher.
+Action-packed cutscenes that look like they come right out of a Marvel movie
+The ending cutscene is some of the most emotion I've felt in a video game
+The game does a fantastic job of setting the mood during the villain escape section.
Cons:
-Too much padding of content. There's 4 different "crime" side quests, with 5 of each per district. It gets very repetitive.
-The stealth missions broke the flow of the game and were generally unfun to play. And there's way too many of them.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The powers you get via the suits don't seem to scale with the game. The power that lets you spin around and send out multiple webs was generally the one I found most useful for large mob fights (which are 99% of fights) and it's literally the first suit you can purchase.
Pros:
+The story is pretty good, albeit short.
+Each move has its own level, meaning that if you level up flamethrower on one mon, every other mon who gets flamethrower will have the powered up version. It's a great quality of life thing.
+The post game is huge. It's almost like the main story is just a tutorial for the larger, but less narrative-driven post-game.
+Having Pokémon as actual characters is fun.
+The constant rewards you get from completing missions makes it so easy for that "just one more dungeon" feeling.
+The water colour aesthetic is pretty nice.
Cons:
-The power of moves and accuracy only shows up as a bar instead of as numbers in the main game, making it kind of hard to compare.
-You can’t filter Pokémon by rare quality, so if you want to find a specific one, good luck searching through the entire list.
-Shiny Pokémon are locked to “Strong” Pokémon, meaning about 20 in total. It's a pretty weird decision that ruins the surprise of finding random shinies.
-Since you can only control the three main teammates, if any of your recruits gets attacked at the back of the group, you have literally no way to get to them to save them. There's not even a tactics option where you can send a main teammate to stay at the rear of a group for such situations. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly get interrupted every step because your Pidgey at the back is being attacked every turn and you can't do anything about it.
-Moves are unbalanced as fuck. Multi-hit moves and room-wide moves are basically the only viable ones in the endgame. Moves with only one tile are borderline useless, making a large section of the mons useless.
-You can only recruit wild Pokémon if the player kills enemy. So you can deal 199/200 damage, but if your teammate Weedle does that last 1hp you won't get a chance to recruit.
-The item inventory stops expanding after a certain rank (until the very last rank, which is a huge grind). Considering it's the most important rank-up reward, having it be stagnant for like 70% of ranks is annoying.
-If your current party is full, you can't just send recruited mons to camp. You have to choose between letting them go or switching another party member and letting THEM go. This means you can recruit at max 5 mons per dungeon (or 7 if you wanna get rid of 2 of your main teammates). It's basically just forcing extra playtime by making you re-run dungeons multiple times.
-99 floor dungeons. Screw them.
-Dungeons that reset your level to 5. If this was a single dungeon as a one-off challenge it might not be so bad, but there are THREE dungeons like this.
-Can’t feed multiple stat boosting items at once. Have a bunch of gummis or vitamins to give your mon? Gotta do it one by one.
-Dungeons are all basically the same. The themes (of which are limited and reused) never really add any actual gimmicks outside of weather.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's really repetitive, but kind of addicting at the same time.
~Most of the power-up orbs in the game only last for a single room or floor. Keep in mind that some dungeons have up to 99 floors. Trying to use them as any kind of strategy doesn't really work.
~Controls in a dungeon feel stiff and clunky. But it also has an automode which negates this. The fact that letting the game play itself is a SOLUTION feels like a con to me, but if it makes the game more fun to play then that can't be a bad thing.
Note:
•Alakazam’s team is presented as the best team in the game for the story, but it's only gold rank. For reference that's the 5th rank in the game, out of a total of 12. It's kind of embarrassing to see them get so much praise for being a rank that I managed to get to in the main story alone, let alone the 6 (apparently unattainable by anyone) ranks I reached after that.
•Being Pokémon saved this game. Like without the Pokémon coat of paint I think this would be a below-average game.
•I wanted to fully complete this, but gave up on Purity Forest because it's an RNG-filled mess.
+The story is pretty good, albeit short.
+Each move has its own level, meaning that if you level up flamethrower on one mon, every other mon who gets flamethrower will have the powered up version. It's a great quality of life thing.
+The post game is huge. It's almost like the main story is just a tutorial for the larger, but less narrative-driven post-game.
+Having Pokémon as actual characters is fun.
+The constant rewards you get from completing missions makes it so easy for that "just one more dungeon" feeling.
+The water colour aesthetic is pretty nice.
Cons:
-The power of moves and accuracy only shows up as a bar instead of as numbers in the main game, making it kind of hard to compare.
-You can’t filter Pokémon by rare quality, so if you want to find a specific one, good luck searching through the entire list.
-Shiny Pokémon are locked to “Strong” Pokémon, meaning about 20 in total. It's a pretty weird decision that ruins the surprise of finding random shinies.
-Since you can only control the three main teammates, if any of your recruits gets attacked at the back of the group, you have literally no way to get to them to save them. There's not even a tactics option where you can send a main teammate to stay at the rear of a group for such situations. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly get interrupted every step because your Pidgey at the back is being attacked every turn and you can't do anything about it.
-Moves are unbalanced as fuck. Multi-hit moves and room-wide moves are basically the only viable ones in the endgame. Moves with only one tile are borderline useless, making a large section of the mons useless.
-You can only recruit wild Pokémon if the player kills enemy. So you can deal 199/200 damage, but if your teammate Weedle does that last 1hp you won't get a chance to recruit.
-The item inventory stops expanding after a certain rank (until the very last rank, which is a huge grind). Considering it's the most important rank-up reward, having it be stagnant for like 70% of ranks is annoying.
-If your current party is full, you can't just send recruited mons to camp. You have to choose between letting them go or switching another party member and letting THEM go. This means you can recruit at max 5 mons per dungeon (or 7 if you wanna get rid of 2 of your main teammates). It's basically just forcing extra playtime by making you re-run dungeons multiple times.
-99 floor dungeons. Screw them.
-Dungeons that reset your level to 5. If this was a single dungeon as a one-off challenge it might not be so bad, but there are THREE dungeons like this.
-Can’t feed multiple stat boosting items at once. Have a bunch of gummis or vitamins to give your mon? Gotta do it one by one.
-Dungeons are all basically the same. The themes (of which are limited and reused) never really add any actual gimmicks outside of weather.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's really repetitive, but kind of addicting at the same time.
~Most of the power-up orbs in the game only last for a single room or floor. Keep in mind that some dungeons have up to 99 floors. Trying to use them as any kind of strategy doesn't really work.
~Controls in a dungeon feel stiff and clunky. But it also has an automode which negates this. The fact that letting the game play itself is a SOLUTION feels like a con to me, but if it makes the game more fun to play then that can't be a bad thing.
Note:
•Alakazam’s team is presented as the best team in the game for the story, but it's only gold rank. For reference that's the 5th rank in the game, out of a total of 12. It's kind of embarrassing to see them get so much praise for being a rank that I managed to get to in the main story alone, let alone the 6 (apparently unattainable by anyone) ranks I reached after that.
•Being Pokémon saved this game. Like without the Pokémon coat of paint I think this would be a below-average game.
•I wanted to fully complete this, but gave up on Purity Forest because it's an RNG-filled mess.
2016
Pros:
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
2017
Pros:
+Colourful cast of characters. In games like this I find that having a varied-looking roster is a big deal, and I'm happy to say that everyone in this game have their own unique look and personality about them. Some (all?) of them even have unique traits, although these seem to be minor, like a character who does an auto-side step when he blocks an attack.
+The variety of different arm types. I didn't know enough about this game before going in, so the fact there was so many different arms surprised me. They each have unique properties, and for a game called "Arms", they did a great job of making the arms feel like different weapons.
+The stages are another thing that I didn't realise were so diverse. I figured it'd just be big empty boxing ring-like stages, but there's quite a few nice looking ones with their own gimmicks, like those beyblade-type things.
Cons:
-Very light on content. Even with DLC there's only 15 characters and stages. There's no story mode and arcade mode is basically the exact same for each character. There's a couple of extra modes, like 1v100 or the 3 types of mini-games, but they feel like nothing more than a few minutes of distraction.
-Control customisation is severely limited. I had problems with both the motion controls and the joycons in grip controls. In motion controls I found moving with motion control to be a pain, but you can't change it to the joystick, and in the joycon grip the block button is in an awkward place and you can't change that either.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~So I haven't unlocked every arm for every character, but with what I have unlocked, it looks like every character can actually unlock every arm? On one hand it's nice that they basically let you use any character you want without worrying about how good their arms are, on the other hand it does have a huge impact on how unique the characters are.
~The game clearly emphasises motion controls above any other control scheme, but to me it just felt like movement with that was way too slow. I can't call it a complete con because it does let you use the controller, but I can't call that a pro either because when you do use the control you can't help but feel like you're not getting the full game experience (and I'm pretty sure the control you have over the arms is limited when you play with a controller too, since you can't control each arm separately). So even though the game gives you some choice, it felt like no matter what I picked I was missing out on something. I think that if I was fully invested in the game (I'm only playing it as part of the free trial for Nintendo Online members) I would put more effort into getting used to the motion controls.
Notes:
•I haven't played a ton of online, but what I did try out was super smooth and fun.
+Colourful cast of characters. In games like this I find that having a varied-looking roster is a big deal, and I'm happy to say that everyone in this game have their own unique look and personality about them. Some (all?) of them even have unique traits, although these seem to be minor, like a character who does an auto-side step when he blocks an attack.
+The variety of different arm types. I didn't know enough about this game before going in, so the fact there was so many different arms surprised me. They each have unique properties, and for a game called "Arms", they did a great job of making the arms feel like different weapons.
+The stages are another thing that I didn't realise were so diverse. I figured it'd just be big empty boxing ring-like stages, but there's quite a few nice looking ones with their own gimmicks, like those beyblade-type things.
Cons:
-Very light on content. Even with DLC there's only 15 characters and stages. There's no story mode and arcade mode is basically the exact same for each character. There's a couple of extra modes, like 1v100 or the 3 types of mini-games, but they feel like nothing more than a few minutes of distraction.
-Control customisation is severely limited. I had problems with both the motion controls and the joycons in grip controls. In motion controls I found moving with motion control to be a pain, but you can't change it to the joystick, and in the joycon grip the block button is in an awkward place and you can't change that either.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~So I haven't unlocked every arm for every character, but with what I have unlocked, it looks like every character can actually unlock every arm? On one hand it's nice that they basically let you use any character you want without worrying about how good their arms are, on the other hand it does have a huge impact on how unique the characters are.
~The game clearly emphasises motion controls above any other control scheme, but to me it just felt like movement with that was way too slow. I can't call it a complete con because it does let you use the controller, but I can't call that a pro either because when you do use the control you can't help but feel like you're not getting the full game experience (and I'm pretty sure the control you have over the arms is limited when you play with a controller too, since you can't control each arm separately). So even though the game gives you some choice, it felt like no matter what I picked I was missing out on something. I think that if I was fully invested in the game (I'm only playing it as part of the free trial for Nintendo Online members) I would put more effort into getting used to the motion controls.
Notes:
•I haven't played a ton of online, but what I did try out was super smooth and fun.
Pros:
+I absolutely love the Gulag. The whole atmosphere is perfect.
+The map is great. I don't have much experience in battle royale games, but this map really does feel like a bunch of well connected smaller maps into a comprehensive city.
Cons:
-For a battle royale game with the COD title AND crossplay, it seems to takes ages to start a match.
-This isn't really specific to this battle royale game, but is a flaw in all of them that carries over to this one, and that's that there's so many people that you can rarely ever get into a firefight with someone without alerting your position to the hundreds of others who may be nearby and instantly able to pick you off from their hidden spots.
-Another problem that I imagine is in most BR games - Too much camping potential. The huge map and many buildings to explore make simply hiding in one spot too viable an option that people do. Why run out into the open and risk being seen by hundreds of people from the safety of their windows when you can just hide until the circle becomes too small?
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~Contracts. It seems like a weird addition to add these little bonus objectives in a game where everyone in the map wants to kill you. To be fair the hitman ones are fine as they actively help the style of gameplay. But the capture the objective ones? They literally just force you to be exposed. It doesn't seem like its ever safe to take part in these (again, except the hitman one)
Notes:
•When the update came, I tried to download it and didn't have enough space. The game is already 100GB and I had 80GB left. Apparently to download the single update you need the space for the full game and not just the update file? It's wack. At this point the only viable way to keep playing is to keep re-deleting the game and downloading the massive 100+GB file every time an update comes, or remove every other game from the PS4 so I can always have a spare 100GB available.
•I played this as a standalone. Never played the Modern Warfare main game. No idea how that impacts my experience.
Edit: One of the cons I previously mentioned (See below) seems to have been changed in a recent update, so I changed the rating from 2 stars to 2.5:
"-There seems to be an inconsistent killcam? Or at least it only showed up like 10% of the time for me. I'd really like to know how I was killed a lot of the times, it feels like an important aspect in these kind of games."
+I absolutely love the Gulag. The whole atmosphere is perfect.
+The map is great. I don't have much experience in battle royale games, but this map really does feel like a bunch of well connected smaller maps into a comprehensive city.
Cons:
-For a battle royale game with the COD title AND crossplay, it seems to takes ages to start a match.
-This isn't really specific to this battle royale game, but is a flaw in all of them that carries over to this one, and that's that there's so many people that you can rarely ever get into a firefight with someone without alerting your position to the hundreds of others who may be nearby and instantly able to pick you off from their hidden spots.
-Another problem that I imagine is in most BR games - Too much camping potential. The huge map and many buildings to explore make simply hiding in one spot too viable an option that people do. Why run out into the open and risk being seen by hundreds of people from the safety of their windows when you can just hide until the circle becomes too small?
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~Contracts. It seems like a weird addition to add these little bonus objectives in a game where everyone in the map wants to kill you. To be fair the hitman ones are fine as they actively help the style of gameplay. But the capture the objective ones? They literally just force you to be exposed. It doesn't seem like its ever safe to take part in these (again, except the hitman one)
Notes:
•When the update came, I tried to download it and didn't have enough space. The game is already 100GB and I had 80GB left. Apparently to download the single update you need the space for the full game and not just the update file? It's wack. At this point the only viable way to keep playing is to keep re-deleting the game and downloading the massive 100+GB file every time an update comes, or remove every other game from the PS4 so I can always have a spare 100GB available.
•I played this as a standalone. Never played the Modern Warfare main game. No idea how that impacts my experience.
Edit: One of the cons I previously mentioned (See below) seems to have been changed in a recent update, so I changed the rating from 2 stars to 2.5:
"-There seems to be an inconsistent killcam? Or at least it only showed up like 10% of the time for me. I'd really like to know how I was killed a lot of the times, it feels like an important aspect in these kind of games."
1992
Pros:
+The way all the different power ups have their own unique abilities is really neat. They're not just extra hit points or extra powers (mostly), they really add unique ways to get through a level.
+There's a lot of great designs, from the various power ups to the enemies. The stages look quite nice too.
Cons:
-Controls are slippery as hell and make any kind of platforming on small blocks impossible.
-It's got that unfair old-school difficulty, with many terrible game design choices.
-The level layouts are pure ass. Each stage is like a huge labyrinth with multiple dead ends. A game with multiple paths is great, especially when you can tailor each one to the specific power ups. What isn't great is making like 50 paths in a level and having 49 of them just lead to nothing.
-Enemy placements/bottomless pits and the like are placed in often unfair positions, making a lot of blind drops or sliding down a hill straight into a row of spikes.
-Many times the game requires you to progress via a random hole in the wall that is indistinguishable from a normal wall.
-The game is very unintuitive. I got a power up that sent huge lasers from my mask, so I figured it'd be a damaging thing. Turns out they reveal hidden blocks. That costume with the giant knights helmet? It lets you climb walls for some reason.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~This goes in with the unintuitive, the first obvious assumption for the collectable gems is that they grant an extra life at 100 like all platformer collectables that are everywhere. Then I got 99 and the rest just kind of disappeared...weird. Turns out the gems grant you a bonus power that changes depending on your costume. That's such a neat idea, but why to activate it do you need to press a button combination that makes no sense? It isn't even mentioned on the controls screen in the options.
Note:
•So I was planning on completing this, but my save state got ruined. Probably fair to call it abandoned though since there's no real in-game save so you're supposed to complete it all in one sitting, despite the fact it has over 100 levels of pure BS.
+The way all the different power ups have their own unique abilities is really neat. They're not just extra hit points or extra powers (mostly), they really add unique ways to get through a level.
+There's a lot of great designs, from the various power ups to the enemies. The stages look quite nice too.
Cons:
-Controls are slippery as hell and make any kind of platforming on small blocks impossible.
-It's got that unfair old-school difficulty, with many terrible game design choices.
-The level layouts are pure ass. Each stage is like a huge labyrinth with multiple dead ends. A game with multiple paths is great, especially when you can tailor each one to the specific power ups. What isn't great is making like 50 paths in a level and having 49 of them just lead to nothing.
-Enemy placements/bottomless pits and the like are placed in often unfair positions, making a lot of blind drops or sliding down a hill straight into a row of spikes.
-Many times the game requires you to progress via a random hole in the wall that is indistinguishable from a normal wall.
-The game is very unintuitive. I got a power up that sent huge lasers from my mask, so I figured it'd be a damaging thing. Turns out they reveal hidden blocks. That costume with the giant knights helmet? It lets you climb walls for some reason.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~This goes in with the unintuitive, the first obvious assumption for the collectable gems is that they grant an extra life at 100 like all platformer collectables that are everywhere. Then I got 99 and the rest just kind of disappeared...weird. Turns out the gems grant you a bonus power that changes depending on your costume. That's such a neat idea, but why to activate it do you need to press a button combination that makes no sense? It isn't even mentioned on the controls screen in the options.
Note:
•So I was planning on completing this, but my save state got ruined. Probably fair to call it abandoned though since there's no real in-game save so you're supposed to complete it all in one sitting, despite the fact it has over 100 levels of pure BS.