2002
Sunshine is like the polar opposite of 64. This game feels AMAZING to control. It's no coincidence that my favourite parts are the pure platforming sections without Fludd.
The actual content itself is heavily padded though, which is likely due to the fact there's now a measly 7 levels, instead of 64's 15. Every stage has 2 red coin missions, every stage has 30 blue coins to collect (a total of 24 of the 120 shine sprites are from collecting freaking blue coins), every single level has a "chase shadow Mario" mission. Bosses get repeated. Despite each stage having 10 missions (including 2 "hidden" missions, which 90% of the time is just "replay the platforming stage again but this time collect even more red coins), the amount of actual unique ideas here is shockingly low.
Collecting 100 coins in every stage is also back, which is fine, but for some reason collecting that shine will exit you out of the level, meaning unlike in the past game you can't do that mission along with another mission, making it a direct quality of life degrade.
The worst part of all this is that some of the blue coins require a lot of fun or otherwise unused areas and mechanics of the game. If they just fleshed out the good blue coins and made them shines, while removing all the bad ones, it would have improved the game massively.
The game is mostly okay, it just feels like there's 25% good content that is copy/pasted four times to make a full game.
The actual content itself is heavily padded though, which is likely due to the fact there's now a measly 7 levels, instead of 64's 15. Every stage has 2 red coin missions, every stage has 30 blue coins to collect (a total of 24 of the 120 shine sprites are from collecting freaking blue coins), every single level has a "chase shadow Mario" mission. Bosses get repeated. Despite each stage having 10 missions (including 2 "hidden" missions, which 90% of the time is just "replay the platforming stage again but this time collect even more red coins), the amount of actual unique ideas here is shockingly low.
Collecting 100 coins in every stage is also back, which is fine, but for some reason collecting that shine will exit you out of the level, meaning unlike in the past game you can't do that mission along with another mission, making it a direct quality of life degrade.
The worst part of all this is that some of the blue coins require a lot of fun or otherwise unused areas and mechanics of the game. If they just fleshed out the good blue coins and made them shines, while removing all the bad ones, it would have improved the game massively.
The game is mostly okay, it just feels like there's 25% good content that is copy/pasted four times to make a full game.
1996
An absolutely revolutionary 3D game that is still more than playable in 2020, although its age shows in its horrible camera and less than precise controls (seriously sometimes I just wanted to turn around from a standstill and Mario decided to best way to do that was to do run half a circle to face the other way, which can be really annoying on the many tight platforms).
So much about the game is just iconic, like the catchy music or colourful and varied levels. Even the hub world is famous in video gaming. It truly feels like care was put into it.
Its got insane replayability thanks to its pick up and play nature.
There's lots of secrets to find, both in the castle and in the levels.
Outside of the controls and camera, my main complaint comes from how often missions are repeated. The haunted house level 3 missions where you fight Big Boo. That's half the damn missions for that level. That's probably the biggest example in the game, but some levels definitely feel like they pad out the content like that.
The fact that extra lives reset upon closing the game is also a weird thing. It's not the biggest deal since game over only puts you back to the start of the castle, I just don't get why it happens.
It's a 10/10 game for its time that still holds up today, but can be a bit frustrating at times thanks to its aged technical aspects. Of course without any nostalgia it's hard to say how much I would have put up with.
So much about the game is just iconic, like the catchy music or colourful and varied levels. Even the hub world is famous in video gaming. It truly feels like care was put into it.
Its got insane replayability thanks to its pick up and play nature.
There's lots of secrets to find, both in the castle and in the levels.
Outside of the controls and camera, my main complaint comes from how often missions are repeated. The haunted house level 3 missions where you fight Big Boo. That's half the damn missions for that level. That's probably the biggest example in the game, but some levels definitely feel like they pad out the content like that.
The fact that extra lives reset upon closing the game is also a weird thing. It's not the biggest deal since game over only puts you back to the start of the castle, I just don't get why it happens.
It's a 10/10 game for its time that still holds up today, but can be a bit frustrating at times thanks to its aged technical aspects. Of course without any nostalgia it's hard to say how much I would have put up with.
2015
Towards the end of the PS4's life I finally got around to playing what was considered the first "must play" exclusive. I wasn't massively impressed to be playing one of the best games ever, let alone best on the PS4, honestly. It felt like a very average-good game.
This was also my first ever real soulsborne game, so a steep learning curve was needed. It is pretty rewarding to see your own improvements. At the start I pretty much got walled by every single boss after the first 2, and needed co-op help, but by the end I was taking most bosses down in a few tries by myself.
However even once I "got good" the game felt like it was just hard for the wrong reasons many times. Having enemies that can kill you in 2 hits, even normal enemies that come in massive mobs, and can attack you far faster than you can attack, and have ranges far longer than you have, doesn't feel fair. With a few exceptions I never felt like I was doing any kind of strategy to beat anything, it was just a case of being overly defensive while trying to get a hit in every now and then with an extremely high consequence for any single error.
Speaking of being defensive, the amount of options is shockingly low. You have your dodge/side step of course which is what you'll use most of the time. Then there's the parry system which is pretty neat, but doesn't even work against 90% of bosses. And personally, although this is probably my own fault, I found it to be wildly inconsistent even on bosses it does work on. Sometimes they'll just ignore it and attack through the shot, sometimes my locked-on gun will just miss the target 1 foot in front of it completely. There's no blocking or anything like that.
Unfortunately the bad parry system also meant the gun felt useless 99% of the time too, since it's not really used as a ranged weapon but just as a parry button.
There are other annoying features that made it a drag to play. The whole losing souls system upon dying twice just felt frustrating and did little more than to waste the players time and efforts. Having consumables not be replenished after dying to a boss isn't "hard", all it means is the player wastes more time grinding for each try. Having the closest checkpoint to a boss be a 5 minute trek isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. Losing to a boss 10 times before finally figuring out how to beat it can be satisfying. Having to grind for potions and walk back to it every time only serves to be anti-fun, which is the worst thing a game can be.
The co-op system kinda sucks. It didn't work a lot of the time I tried to use it, or it took about 10 minutes to actually find a password-set partner standing in the exact same spot as me. And then you and your partner can only explore the single area you summoned them in, and if either of you die it doesn't auto-join back, and beating a boss will cause your partner to leave. So you have to constantly re-apply a summon if you want to play through with a friend.
Plus for some reason the game has some enemies that ring a bell, which will allow other plays to come into your own game and grief you. That happened to me twice while I was just minding my own business and I can't think of a worse system in a game that let's other plays actually just barge into you while you're trying to have fun and just ruin it for you. I could turn the game to offline mode, but then I'd lose all the player-written notes or the ability to see other players ghosts playing at the same time as me, and I liked those.
The game often felt like it struggled, having a few frame rate drops or weird pop-ins. And NPCs mouths that don't even move when they talk, making the animation in the game feel like ps1-era cheapness.
The entire aesthetic of the game is boring. Only like 2 locations actually standout while everywhere else looks exactly the same as everywhere else. However a lot of locations can be memorable through the experiences you have there, which in many ways is more impressive than simply remembering an area because it stands out.
The actual monster designs on the other hand look incredible.
The map itself is pretty great. It's highly explorable, and rewards you by giving you shortcuts back to safe spots, meaning each time you explore a new area you give yourself a way to traverse through parts you've explored faster.
There's quite a few great little details, hidden things, choices you can make etc. I had a friend who was walking me through the game so I found a lot of them on my first playthrough, but it's a system that massively rewards replays.
it really sucks to not like a game that everyone else seems to think is perfect, but I just don't get it. It's a game that at its best can be pretty fun with a lot of details to uncover, while at its worst it's dull to look at, is full of frustrating features and time wasting mechanics, and generally feels unpolished.
This was also my first ever real soulsborne game, so a steep learning curve was needed. It is pretty rewarding to see your own improvements. At the start I pretty much got walled by every single boss after the first 2, and needed co-op help, but by the end I was taking most bosses down in a few tries by myself.
However even once I "got good" the game felt like it was just hard for the wrong reasons many times. Having enemies that can kill you in 2 hits, even normal enemies that come in massive mobs, and can attack you far faster than you can attack, and have ranges far longer than you have, doesn't feel fair. With a few exceptions I never felt like I was doing any kind of strategy to beat anything, it was just a case of being overly defensive while trying to get a hit in every now and then with an extremely high consequence for any single error.
Speaking of being defensive, the amount of options is shockingly low. You have your dodge/side step of course which is what you'll use most of the time. Then there's the parry system which is pretty neat, but doesn't even work against 90% of bosses. And personally, although this is probably my own fault, I found it to be wildly inconsistent even on bosses it does work on. Sometimes they'll just ignore it and attack through the shot, sometimes my locked-on gun will just miss the target 1 foot in front of it completely. There's no blocking or anything like that.
Unfortunately the bad parry system also meant the gun felt useless 99% of the time too, since it's not really used as a ranged weapon but just as a parry button.
There are other annoying features that made it a drag to play. The whole losing souls system upon dying twice just felt frustrating and did little more than to waste the players time and efforts. Having consumables not be replenished after dying to a boss isn't "hard", all it means is the player wastes more time grinding for each try. Having the closest checkpoint to a boss be a 5 minute trek isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. Losing to a boss 10 times before finally figuring out how to beat it can be satisfying. Having to grind for potions and walk back to it every time only serves to be anti-fun, which is the worst thing a game can be.
The co-op system kinda sucks. It didn't work a lot of the time I tried to use it, or it took about 10 minutes to actually find a password-set partner standing in the exact same spot as me. And then you and your partner can only explore the single area you summoned them in, and if either of you die it doesn't auto-join back, and beating a boss will cause your partner to leave. So you have to constantly re-apply a summon if you want to play through with a friend.
Plus for some reason the game has some enemies that ring a bell, which will allow other plays to come into your own game and grief you. That happened to me twice while I was just minding my own business and I can't think of a worse system in a game that let's other plays actually just barge into you while you're trying to have fun and just ruin it for you. I could turn the game to offline mode, but then I'd lose all the player-written notes or the ability to see other players ghosts playing at the same time as me, and I liked those.
The game often felt like it struggled, having a few frame rate drops or weird pop-ins. And NPCs mouths that don't even move when they talk, making the animation in the game feel like ps1-era cheapness.
The entire aesthetic of the game is boring. Only like 2 locations actually standout while everywhere else looks exactly the same as everywhere else. However a lot of locations can be memorable through the experiences you have there, which in many ways is more impressive than simply remembering an area because it stands out.
The actual monster designs on the other hand look incredible.
The map itself is pretty great. It's highly explorable, and rewards you by giving you shortcuts back to safe spots, meaning each time you explore a new area you give yourself a way to traverse through parts you've explored faster.
There's quite a few great little details, hidden things, choices you can make etc. I had a friend who was walking me through the game so I found a lot of them on my first playthrough, but it's a system that massively rewards replays.
it really sucks to not like a game that everyone else seems to think is perfect, but I just don't get it. It's a game that at its best can be pretty fun with a lot of details to uncover, while at its worst it's dull to look at, is full of frustrating features and time wasting mechanics, and generally feels unpolished.
2020
The game made me laugh so much the first few times I played it. Now it's devolved into one of those games that are just addicting and so easy to jump in to that I play a lot of even though I find it repetitive.
1994
Silicon Graphics Computers.
This review has been brought to you by George Wood.
It's a decent platformer, but it doesn't hold up as well as Super Mario World in most regards. Revolutionary graphics for the time now look uglier than most other SNES games. This is especially the case in stages with heavy foreground effects like snow or fog levels.
Controls are extremely tight and responsive, so I never felt like any platforming deaths were any fault but my own; however, enemy placement often felt extremely unfair and gave you little time to react.
Soundtrack is good, but honestly after the first world very little of the music really stood out to me more than being just good ambient music. Which is a shame because the first stage in the game has such a classic, catchy tune.
This review has been brought to you by George Wood.
It's a decent platformer, but it doesn't hold up as well as Super Mario World in most regards. Revolutionary graphics for the time now look uglier than most other SNES games. This is especially the case in stages with heavy foreground effects like snow or fog levels.
Controls are extremely tight and responsive, so I never felt like any platforming deaths were any fault but my own; however, enemy placement often felt extremely unfair and gave you little time to react.
Soundtrack is good, but honestly after the first world very little of the music really stood out to me more than being just good ambient music. Which is a shame because the first stage in the game has such a classic, catchy tune.
2020
Got big Breath of the Wild vibes from this, but while BOTW has a ton of tiny details and secrets to find, this game can feel rather shallow in comparison. But on the other hand it doesn't have any big things I disliked while BOTW had breakable weapons or slippery climbing surfaces during rain. Ghost of Tsushima feels like a very user-friendly version of an open world game compared to many these days which go for so much realism that it gets frustrating.
The only real problem were some relatively minor bugs. Way more than I've seen in most AAA titles in recent times, but none of them game breaking.
The story is decent to start with, but it really gets good around the middle-end of act 2, and the last mission in particular is powerfully emotional.
The graphics in the game are great, but nothing revolutionary, however the scenery in the game is gorgeous and really makes it stand out.
Combat can be approached in multiple ways and feels very satisfying. Which is lucky because there's very little variety to the missions, and most of them result in just fighting hordes and hordes of enemies, and even with the vast array of techniques it can get repetitive. The only time this type of action gets broken up is to do boring "search objects of the area" sections, "slowly tail the enemy" sections or the duels, which are definitely the most enjoyable part.
Speaking of missions, the game tries to pull a "Supernatural element is actually just a regular human" twist too many times for a game that tries to be grounded in reality. Whether people are telling stories of spirits or kappa's, you always know it's just going to end with a duel against a normal human.
There's a decent amount of side activities, but it's the same 8 pretty much copy/pasted throughout. And of these only about 2 of them are actually fun. The shinto shrines are by far the most fun, involving an adventurous trek, usually up a mountain or scaling a cliff face. Bamboo strikes present a pretty fun mini game. Fox dens are a neat idea, but after the first couple aren't really that engaging. The rest you either just come across and do nothing, such as vanity shrines, or it involves a task that's nothing more than pressing a single button, such as light houses, hot springs or haikus.
Funnily enough I never really cared for the huge "immersion" aspect in terms of using wind instead of a minimap. It presented the exact same purpose except now I had to keep swiping up on the touchpad instead making it slightly more annoying. The golden birds on the other hand were pretty sweet, but half the time I found them it just took me to the place I had already marked on the map and was heading to anyway. It doesn't go all the way of removing these traditional game conveniences regarding maps (and I have no idea if it should), but the small part is removed it just replaced with something that's the same but slightly more time consuming.
Overall it's a really fun game that doesn't quite reach a level of depth that may be expected from AAA open world games in 2020, but it makes up for it by doing nothing wrong and not being loaded with slow, chore mechanics in the name of realism (which is also a staple in open world games these days unfortunately).
The only real problem were some relatively minor bugs. Way more than I've seen in most AAA titles in recent times, but none of them game breaking.
The story is decent to start with, but it really gets good around the middle-end of act 2, and the last mission in particular is powerfully emotional.
The graphics in the game are great, but nothing revolutionary, however the scenery in the game is gorgeous and really makes it stand out.
Combat can be approached in multiple ways and feels very satisfying. Which is lucky because there's very little variety to the missions, and most of them result in just fighting hordes and hordes of enemies, and even with the vast array of techniques it can get repetitive. The only time this type of action gets broken up is to do boring "search objects of the area" sections, "slowly tail the enemy" sections or the duels, which are definitely the most enjoyable part.
Speaking of missions, the game tries to pull a "Supernatural element is actually just a regular human" twist too many times for a game that tries to be grounded in reality. Whether people are telling stories of spirits or kappa's, you always know it's just going to end with a duel against a normal human.
There's a decent amount of side activities, but it's the same 8 pretty much copy/pasted throughout. And of these only about 2 of them are actually fun. The shinto shrines are by far the most fun, involving an adventurous trek, usually up a mountain or scaling a cliff face. Bamboo strikes present a pretty fun mini game. Fox dens are a neat idea, but after the first couple aren't really that engaging. The rest you either just come across and do nothing, such as vanity shrines, or it involves a task that's nothing more than pressing a single button, such as light houses, hot springs or haikus.
Funnily enough I never really cared for the huge "immersion" aspect in terms of using wind instead of a minimap. It presented the exact same purpose except now I had to keep swiping up on the touchpad instead making it slightly more annoying. The golden birds on the other hand were pretty sweet, but half the time I found them it just took me to the place I had already marked on the map and was heading to anyway. It doesn't go all the way of removing these traditional game conveniences regarding maps (and I have no idea if it should), but the small part is removed it just replaced with something that's the same but slightly more time consuming.
Overall it's a really fun game that doesn't quite reach a level of depth that may be expected from AAA open world games in 2020, but it makes up for it by doing nothing wrong and not being loaded with slow, chore mechanics in the name of realism (which is also a staple in open world games these days unfortunately).
2017
The presentation in this game is incredible. The stages were all so beautiful and super attacks were flashy and impressive. The Pokémon themselves could look a bit off-putting or off model to fit in the aesthetic, but overall the game looks great.
I'm a big fan of the variety of Pokémon they chose to. It would have been so easy to just put in the bipedal creatures, but they added in mons like Chandelure or Suicune for some truly diverse fighting styles. Not that the bipedal pokémon aren't unique at all, every Pokémon has a wide arsenal of moves that all feel different. I was only playing this as the week free trial, but if I had the full game I'd love to get to know and use all the Pokémon in the roster.
The missions encourage you to use different Pokémon and supports, or try out different fighting styles (such as using more grabs), while providing some neat aesthetic rewards.
Training mode is pretty well fleshed out. You've got standard tutorials, but also combo examples for every single character, so if there's a Pokémon you're interested in, it's really easy to get to grips with some basics of them instead of blindly mashing buttons in practice.
As for the fighting itself, the phase mechanic is definitely a great way to set it apart from other fighters, and I love it in theory, how it makes you adapt to two completely different fighting styles. In practice it did feel like it happened a bit too much, especially in field mode. It can also break combos in duel phase which got annoying. I definitely got used to the flow of battles, but something just felt a bit off by how it was implemented. Not that I'm sure what alternative I'd suggest.
Overall a fantastic Pokémon spinoff, and if there was ever a sequel I'd definitely buy it.
I'm a big fan of the variety of Pokémon they chose to. It would have been so easy to just put in the bipedal creatures, but they added in mons like Chandelure or Suicune for some truly diverse fighting styles. Not that the bipedal pokémon aren't unique at all, every Pokémon has a wide arsenal of moves that all feel different. I was only playing this as the week free trial, but if I had the full game I'd love to get to know and use all the Pokémon in the roster.
The missions encourage you to use different Pokémon and supports, or try out different fighting styles (such as using more grabs), while providing some neat aesthetic rewards.
Training mode is pretty well fleshed out. You've got standard tutorials, but also combo examples for every single character, so if there's a Pokémon you're interested in, it's really easy to get to grips with some basics of them instead of blindly mashing buttons in practice.
As for the fighting itself, the phase mechanic is definitely a great way to set it apart from other fighters, and I love it in theory, how it makes you adapt to two completely different fighting styles. In practice it did feel like it happened a bit too much, especially in field mode. It can also break combos in duel phase which got annoying. I definitely got used to the flow of battles, but something just felt a bit off by how it was implemented. Not that I'm sure what alternative I'd suggest.
Overall a fantastic Pokémon spinoff, and if there was ever a sequel I'd definitely buy it.
2000
Very similar to the previous game despite the leap in console generation. There's a few new mechanics, like hyper beast drive, an extra super move per character and some kind of sway dodge, but none of them are explained in game. Presumably they're in the game manual, but if you don't have that gotta look it up online (and I could still never get the sway to work consistently).
It even suffers that extremely horrible difficulty curve the previous 2 games have had. Placing the game on the medium difficulty will make the first fight insanely easy, and the 9th and final fight plays like a pro. I don't get why they bother having difficulty options when a single arcade run differs so damn much.
Story mode is gone, now arcade mode tries to take its place, except instead of having a fully fledged story with each character, we instead get a few "cutscenes" before the first battle and after the last. These cutscenes are just like in 2, where they're still images with text overlayed, which was already cheap feeling in 2, but now that they've got a brand new powerful hardware to work with AND they reduced this story to two small segments, it's far less forgivable. Also not gonna lie but the story lost me on this one, it felt like there was tons of new lore and terms being thrown around that were never in the second game.
There's a lack of new characters too, going from 6 or 7 in the second game to only 3 in this one. And of those 3 one is a robot clone of another. The other two characters are a chimera and "unborn". These are all cool concepts in theory, but when the draw of your game series is being able to play as humans who transform into animals, it'd be nice to get new real animals to play as instead of 3 "special" forms.
This game did improve training a lot, input display is now back from the first game after being mysteriously gone from the second, but they now also show whether each hit in a combo is high, middle or low, so if you want to get really indepth the training is very accommodating to that.
Overall it feels more or less like the last game with better graphics. I gave it a slightly lower score because making the story near non-existent really hurt how much characters were able to stand out.
It even suffers that extremely horrible difficulty curve the previous 2 games have had. Placing the game on the medium difficulty will make the first fight insanely easy, and the 9th and final fight plays like a pro. I don't get why they bother having difficulty options when a single arcade run differs so damn much.
Story mode is gone, now arcade mode tries to take its place, except instead of having a fully fledged story with each character, we instead get a few "cutscenes" before the first battle and after the last. These cutscenes are just like in 2, where they're still images with text overlayed, which was already cheap feeling in 2, but now that they've got a brand new powerful hardware to work with AND they reduced this story to two small segments, it's far less forgivable. Also not gonna lie but the story lost me on this one, it felt like there was tons of new lore and terms being thrown around that were never in the second game.
There's a lack of new characters too, going from 6 or 7 in the second game to only 3 in this one. And of those 3 one is a robot clone of another. The other two characters are a chimera and "unborn". These are all cool concepts in theory, but when the draw of your game series is being able to play as humans who transform into animals, it'd be nice to get new real animals to play as instead of 3 "special" forms.
This game did improve training a lot, input display is now back from the first game after being mysteriously gone from the second, but they now also show whether each hit in a combo is high, middle or low, so if you want to get really indepth the training is very accommodating to that.
Overall it feels more or less like the last game with better graphics. I gave it a slightly lower score because making the story near non-existent really hurt how much characters were able to stand out.
Review contains spoilers, of course.
But starting with a non-spoiler, the graphics in this game are gorgeous. Definitely a great way for the PS4 to go out before we move onto the PS5, and leaving big shoes to fill.
Ever since games have advanced to the point they became interactive movies, games like TLOU are kinda hit or miss for me due to extreme pacing problems. It used to be that you’d get cutscenes, then gameplay, while now they essentially mix the two, and have you walk through environments at a painfully slow pace while the characters converse. It has tarnished so many games for me, but it never bothered me during The Last of Us due to me just loving the characters and the writing, and the sequel delivers on that front. I actually CARE what happens to these characters as much as I would as if I was watching a movie. Hell there are many scenes that evoked reactions and emotions from me far more than any other game, and I’d possibly say most other forms of fiction. The characters are just that well developed and written that they feel real.
I’ve also often felt like way too many stories involving dangerous situations are too soft when it comes to killing characters, it gets boring when your good guy characters goes through hundreds of life or death fights but you know they’ll never actually die because plot power. This game absolutely shatters that idea within the first 2 hours or so when THE main character from the last game is unceremoniously murdered. It sets the tone that no one is safe, and I actually spent most of the game expecting that Ellie herself could die, because the standard rules are already broken. While Ellie and Abby (the 2 main characters of this game) do end up surviving, almost all their friends die in realistic and swift ways. It’s a game that fully embraces the danger of the world and I love it.
Moving onto gameplay, TLOU is funnily enough one of the few times I actually find myself wanting the gameplay to take a backseat to the story. It’s not bad by any means, but it can be a bit repetitive. It also feels a little broken; obviously stealth is a huge mechanic in the game, but I found I could rarely ever position myself to stealthily take down opponents without notifying the rest of the enemies of my position because the takedown animation takes so long and enemies are placed in ways that they rarely leave each others sight for long. This meant I tended to do 1 stealth kill and perform the rest of the battle in a shootout more often than not.
That said there’s a ton of options in battles, and you can help keep a stealth approach with things like crafting silencers or using throwable objects to distract enemies.
Just like the first game the scare amount of ammo means every shot counts, every single enemy, no matter how “common” they are, demands a decision of how to take them down.
I think the worst thing about the game for me was the level designs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them in general, but they’ve made them more pseudo open world, so even though the way forward may be near enough a straight line, there’s an entire mini-world to explore. That SOUNDS great, and it would be, but the collectables real ruin this experience. If it was just crafting materials it’d be fine, but the game hides weapon and ability upgrade materials, along with new weapons and training manuals which will provide extra ability stat trees. Having these hidden in large open areas, with no kind of map or other way to track progress meant that I spent pretty much the ENTIRE game having this nagging feeling that I was missing stuff. I could never fully enjoy myself because I was thinking “What if I missed an important item? What if I end up underpowered because I missed too many materials?” It’s far worse when you accidentally take the right path straight away, and the game blocks the path back meaning you could actually miss an entire area of collectables because you accidentally went the right way without knowing. Most games reward exploration, this game makes exploration an anxiety-inducing near impossible fare, while straight up punishing the player for going through the story-progressing door.
Going back to the story for a bit, I think it’s worth talking about how the game splits you up into two campaigns that go over the same 3 days, one from Ellie’s point of view and one from Abby’s. I think it’s a great idea, and helps highlight how both have their good qualities and look completely evil from the other side. It’s an idea that has literally divided the playerbase into who was right and wrong. It does feel like a huge risk to make you play as the character most players likely hated at that point though. I’ll admit to letting Abby die on purpose while playing as her multiple times.
I do feel like there’s a huge missed opportunity here though, despite both stories taking place over the exact same 3 days, it isn’t until the last day that we start to hear about Ellie’s story while playing as Abby. It seems like the entire point of doing it this way was to open up so many possibilities to see “So that’s what she was doing while Ellie was doing this” but the two pretty much never cross each other’s warpaths until the end. The closest I can think of is in Ellie’s second day, when she ends up in the hospital basement/lower floors one of the WLF soldiers asks “Why is the power on?” which we later find out was due to Abby turning it on in her playthrough. It’s a neat little detail, but it feels like it would have worked much better if the power came on during that scene, rather than it just being on beforehand.
The playable character swap also introduced a problem in regards to a complete character reset in terms of weapon upgrades and abilities. It feels kind of bad to grow your weapons and character only to be pushed back into factory reset mid-way through the game and have to do it again.
And now I’m going to end the review by talking about the end of the game and its pacing problem. When the game looks like we’ve reached Ellie and Abby’s final confrontation, the game skips ahead about a year to show Ellie and Dina at their new farmhouse. It feels like an epilogue, but it keeps going… Then you’re playing as Abby and you think “Well okay it makes sense to see how both characters get to live their happy endings”, but then a brand new conflict happens to Abby, and suddenly Ellie still has desire for revenge so we get an entire extra chapter that not only feels out of place, but paints Ellie in a really bad light after we got an ending that put her on par with Abby. It’s such a weird decision; the game had already had its climax, having to play an extra 3 hours after that felt way too tacked on.
Good game, not without its flaws. Would have been an 8/10 if the last chapter wasn’t a thing.
But starting with a non-spoiler, the graphics in this game are gorgeous. Definitely a great way for the PS4 to go out before we move onto the PS5, and leaving big shoes to fill.
Ever since games have advanced to the point they became interactive movies, games like TLOU are kinda hit or miss for me due to extreme pacing problems. It used to be that you’d get cutscenes, then gameplay, while now they essentially mix the two, and have you walk through environments at a painfully slow pace while the characters converse. It has tarnished so many games for me, but it never bothered me during The Last of Us due to me just loving the characters and the writing, and the sequel delivers on that front. I actually CARE what happens to these characters as much as I would as if I was watching a movie. Hell there are many scenes that evoked reactions and emotions from me far more than any other game, and I’d possibly say most other forms of fiction. The characters are just that well developed and written that they feel real.
I’ve also often felt like way too many stories involving dangerous situations are too soft when it comes to killing characters, it gets boring when your good guy characters goes through hundreds of life or death fights but you know they’ll never actually die because plot power. This game absolutely shatters that idea within the first 2 hours or so when THE main character from the last game is unceremoniously murdered. It sets the tone that no one is safe, and I actually spent most of the game expecting that Ellie herself could die, because the standard rules are already broken. While Ellie and Abby (the 2 main characters of this game) do end up surviving, almost all their friends die in realistic and swift ways. It’s a game that fully embraces the danger of the world and I love it.
Moving onto gameplay, TLOU is funnily enough one of the few times I actually find myself wanting the gameplay to take a backseat to the story. It’s not bad by any means, but it can be a bit repetitive. It also feels a little broken; obviously stealth is a huge mechanic in the game, but I found I could rarely ever position myself to stealthily take down opponents without notifying the rest of the enemies of my position because the takedown animation takes so long and enemies are placed in ways that they rarely leave each others sight for long. This meant I tended to do 1 stealth kill and perform the rest of the battle in a shootout more often than not.
That said there’s a ton of options in battles, and you can help keep a stealth approach with things like crafting silencers or using throwable objects to distract enemies.
Just like the first game the scare amount of ammo means every shot counts, every single enemy, no matter how “common” they are, demands a decision of how to take them down.
I think the worst thing about the game for me was the level designs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them in general, but they’ve made them more pseudo open world, so even though the way forward may be near enough a straight line, there’s an entire mini-world to explore. That SOUNDS great, and it would be, but the collectables real ruin this experience. If it was just crafting materials it’d be fine, but the game hides weapon and ability upgrade materials, along with new weapons and training manuals which will provide extra ability stat trees. Having these hidden in large open areas, with no kind of map or other way to track progress meant that I spent pretty much the ENTIRE game having this nagging feeling that I was missing stuff. I could never fully enjoy myself because I was thinking “What if I missed an important item? What if I end up underpowered because I missed too many materials?” It’s far worse when you accidentally take the right path straight away, and the game blocks the path back meaning you could actually miss an entire area of collectables because you accidentally went the right way without knowing. Most games reward exploration, this game makes exploration an anxiety-inducing near impossible fare, while straight up punishing the player for going through the story-progressing door.
Going back to the story for a bit, I think it’s worth talking about how the game splits you up into two campaigns that go over the same 3 days, one from Ellie’s point of view and one from Abby’s. I think it’s a great idea, and helps highlight how both have their good qualities and look completely evil from the other side. It’s an idea that has literally divided the playerbase into who was right and wrong. It does feel like a huge risk to make you play as the character most players likely hated at that point though. I’ll admit to letting Abby die on purpose while playing as her multiple times.
I do feel like there’s a huge missed opportunity here though, despite both stories taking place over the exact same 3 days, it isn’t until the last day that we start to hear about Ellie’s story while playing as Abby. It seems like the entire point of doing it this way was to open up so many possibilities to see “So that’s what she was doing while Ellie was doing this” but the two pretty much never cross each other’s warpaths until the end. The closest I can think of is in Ellie’s second day, when she ends up in the hospital basement/lower floors one of the WLF soldiers asks “Why is the power on?” which we later find out was due to Abby turning it on in her playthrough. It’s a neat little detail, but it feels like it would have worked much better if the power came on during that scene, rather than it just being on beforehand.
The playable character swap also introduced a problem in regards to a complete character reset in terms of weapon upgrades and abilities. It feels kind of bad to grow your weapons and character only to be pushed back into factory reset mid-way through the game and have to do it again.
And now I’m going to end the review by talking about the end of the game and its pacing problem. When the game looks like we’ve reached Ellie and Abby’s final confrontation, the game skips ahead about a year to show Ellie and Dina at their new farmhouse. It feels like an epilogue, but it keeps going… Then you’re playing as Abby and you think “Well okay it makes sense to see how both characters get to live their happy endings”, but then a brand new conflict happens to Abby, and suddenly Ellie still has desire for revenge so we get an entire extra chapter that not only feels out of place, but paints Ellie in a really bad light after we got an ending that put her on par with Abby. It’s such a weird decision; the game had already had its climax, having to play an extra 3 hours after that felt way too tacked on.
Good game, not without its flaws. Would have been an 8/10 if the last chapter wasn’t a thing.
2019
Persona 5 is one of my favourite games of all time. This is a better version of Persona 5. This is one of my favourite games of all time.
1999
Much smoother than the original, leading it to be better to play. There seems to be far more combos – although still no combo list, and practice mode has removed the option to turn on input displays making practising even harder – and each beast now has an ultimate move, which can be activated with a single button press for a weak version or through a complex combination for a full power one.
The game introduces story mode which is basically just arcade mode again, but with a few “cutscenes” for each characters inbetween each fight. There’s not much to this, the story is just still images with text, and for each character it adds up to less than 5 minutes of story each. Not to mention that many of the things in the story don’t make much sense and characters appear just to fight and then disappear. I guess it would be hard to make a fully-fledged detailed story for everyone with only 10 other characters to fight across everyone’s campaign.
However, the story does help add a lot of personality to the characters, and while any individuals story isn’t THAT interesting and full of filler fights, adding everyone’s story together creates a nice little Bloody Roar tale overall.
Speaking of developing characters personalities, more interesting-looking characters and creatures join the crew this time. The new characters have a lot of charm not just in their animal forms but even their human forms. They really all stand out from each other now.
In between the characters storylines, interactions with others and even their body language, they’re all really unique and I love them.
The difficulty in this game is all out of wack though. I keep it on 4, which is the default since I’m not very good at fighting games, and the first fights in arcade/story are super easy, but the last 2 or 3 are insanely hard with the Ai pulling off massive combos and blocking everything. Instead of feeling like a consistent “medium” difficulty like I put it on, it seems to just go from “Very easy” to “Very hard” in the course of a single run.
Also for some reason sidestep is disabled in any mode except custom battle. Except the Ai can still use it, putting you at an inherent disadvantage permanently. I’m not sure if that was a bug or what.
The game introduces story mode which is basically just arcade mode again, but with a few “cutscenes” for each characters inbetween each fight. There’s not much to this, the story is just still images with text, and for each character it adds up to less than 5 minutes of story each. Not to mention that many of the things in the story don’t make much sense and characters appear just to fight and then disappear. I guess it would be hard to make a fully-fledged detailed story for everyone with only 10 other characters to fight across everyone’s campaign.
However, the story does help add a lot of personality to the characters, and while any individuals story isn’t THAT interesting and full of filler fights, adding everyone’s story together creates a nice little Bloody Roar tale overall.
Speaking of developing characters personalities, more interesting-looking characters and creatures join the crew this time. The new characters have a lot of charm not just in their animal forms but even their human forms. They really all stand out from each other now.
In between the characters storylines, interactions with others and even their body language, they’re all really unique and I love them.
The difficulty in this game is all out of wack though. I keep it on 4, which is the default since I’m not very good at fighting games, and the first fights in arcade/story are super easy, but the last 2 or 3 are insanely hard with the Ai pulling off massive combos and blocking everything. Instead of feeling like a consistent “medium” difficulty like I put it on, it seems to just go from “Very easy” to “Very hard” in the course of a single run.
Also for some reason sidestep is disabled in any mode except custom battle. Except the Ai can still use it, putting you at an inherent disadvantage permanently. I’m not sure if that was a bug or what.
1998
A truly horrendous game. They got the "South Park" part of it right to be fair, with unique weapon types to this game, like snowballs being your regular weapon, dodgeballs that act as good indoor weapons due to bouncing off walls, nerf guns for rapid fire, Terrance and Phillip dolls for poison grenades. The humour is pretty good for what you'd expect from that era of South Park.
But as a game it is so BAD. The first and worst is the controls. The movement is so unbelievably sensitive, making trying to actually aim at anything near impossible, which became a huge problem in boss fights that only have a tiny area you can actually damage, or air-borne enemies, or skinny enemies like the aliens. I honestly gave up on the alien stages because trying to hit a target like that, with these controls, while they could fire off their projectiles that ate at health was just too much when the levels have no checkpoints.
Speaking of no checkpoints, the levels just feel like they drag forever. Not helped by the fact that the level design is pure ass and the only gameplay is to fight the exact same hordes of enemies over and over. Literally you start a level, move forward a few feet and fight a few mooks and a tank, walk a few more feet and do the same. It's so boring, repetitive and the bland aesthetics don't make it any better.
Sound design is also terrible, with the same character stock phrases said over and over.
If the controls were any better I could probably have at least played this to the end, but as the game got harder the controls just became too much of a handicap.
But as a game it is so BAD. The first and worst is the controls. The movement is so unbelievably sensitive, making trying to actually aim at anything near impossible, which became a huge problem in boss fights that only have a tiny area you can actually damage, or air-borne enemies, or skinny enemies like the aliens. I honestly gave up on the alien stages because trying to hit a target like that, with these controls, while they could fire off their projectiles that ate at health was just too much when the levels have no checkpoints.
Speaking of no checkpoints, the levels just feel like they drag forever. Not helped by the fact that the level design is pure ass and the only gameplay is to fight the exact same hordes of enemies over and over. Literally you start a level, move forward a few feet and fight a few mooks and a tank, walk a few more feet and do the same. It's so boring, repetitive and the bland aesthetics don't make it any better.
Sound design is also terrible, with the same character stock phrases said over and over.
If the controls were any better I could probably have at least played this to the end, but as the game got harder the controls just became too much of a handicap.
2019
Story is still as convoluted as ever. Exploring Disney worlds is fun and all, but the game definitely tries to make itself out to be far deeper than it really is.
1997
Favourite game of all time. I even enjoy the blocky, lego visuals. I think it works perfectly. Also my favourite video game soundtrack of all time.
1985
I know it's an absolute classic, but playing it in the modern day is just a bit of a struggle. The controls don't feel tight enough for a platformer, and the way that they try to extend gameplay by making you restart games on gameovers in this era feels like too much of a time waster these days (luckily most modern releases of the game does have save states, but you may feel like that's cheating).
There's still some fun to be had here, and the music is always great.
Regardless of my low-ish score, the game is a 10/10 for history purposes.
There's still some fun to be had here, and the music is always great.
Regardless of my low-ish score, the game is a 10/10 for history purposes.