CretinWorkshop
2001
Mega Man Xtreme must have sold pretty well because Capcom decided to pump out a sequel less than a year later. Mega Man Xtreme 2 seems to be a fairly polarizing title because depending on where you go, fans either consider it considerably superior or inferior to the original. I went in with somewhat optimistic but tempered expectations because although Xtreme wasn't exactly a good game, you really could only go up from there. Unfortunately, director Koji Okohara and his team at Capcom proved me wrong.
Xtreme 2's story is a bit...odd, to say the least. A group of Mavericks, led by Berkana and Gareth, known as the Soul Erasers is going around erasing the "souls" of innocent reploids and using them to increase their power. Apparently, reploids possess something known as a "DNA soul" which is comparable to a human soul. The weird science-fiction terminology confuses me, and the game, being a portable platformer, never really bothers to take the opportunity to elaborate further. Antagonists Berkana and Gareth aren't given any motivation beyond "we want MOAR POWER" and of course, Sigma was behind it all, intending to use the captured souls to repair himself after the events of Mega Man X3. It's rather odd how X and Zero have no qualms with using captured Maverick souls to create upgrades, despite that being exactly what Berkana and Gareth were doing. I can see Zero feeling indifferent, but X would at the very least question it. The plot is somehow both simplistic and confusing at the same time, but hey, it's a platformer for the Game Boy Color, it's not what I started the game for.
Shino Okamura served as the game's lead designer, and I can't help but wonder what went wrong. The game proposes some interesting ideas, bringing in the shop from Mega Man 4 GB and allowing you to play as Zero, but these are either poorly implemented or simply functional. Playing as X is generally the same as the first game, but Zero is just infuriating. His saber has a very small range and his special weapons all share the same bar, meaning you can only use them once or twice before you're out in totality. Why did they do this? X's special weapons work normally so I don't understand the reasoning here. I criticized the original game for copy-pasting levels from the SNES games, so Capcom decided to create entirely new levels based on the first three SNES games, and in theory, I'd consider this a major improvement. The main issue is that the level design is perhaps some of the worst in the series, filled with instant death traps right offscreen and enough electrified walls to make Mighty No 9 cry like an anime fan on prom night. At most it's acceptable, but at worst it is infuriating. Xtreme 2, similar to the first game, also requires you to complete it multiple times to see everything it has to offer. Normally, you'd pick X or Zero, and you'd play through the game as normal, with the story or special weapons differing, but fundamentally it'd be the same game. However, X only gets to fight the first four bosses and to fight the other four, you have to replay the game as Zero. If you want to fight the true final boss, you have to replay all 8 stages plus the fortress stages. This tedium is why I dropped the game and due to its plethora of game design issues, I do not intend to try it again.
On the contrary, Capcom's art team was firing on all cylinders. The art direction was led by Haruki Suetsugu, who was responsible for all of the original designs. The game impresses from a visual standpoint, with detailed sprite work and fluid animation. Backgrounds are more detailed compared to the original and character portraits are expressive. Berkana and Gareth are cool designs and it's a shame they're not in a better game. The game also does give a good sense that X and Zero are actually working together, as they interact frequently throughout the stages. It still suffers from somewhat garish colors, but most games on the GBC do.
The game's soundtrack was composed by Toshio Kajino and Mitsuhiko Takano, and consists of no original music whatsoever, simply music ripped from the SNES games. However, the music more closely resembles the originals this time around and it serves the game quite well. I do wish they were a little more ambitious, but what's here is good.
Mega Man Xtreme 2 is a game that I went into with optimism but came out with spite. Capcom had every opportunity to turn the framework of Xtreme 1 into a pretty solid platformer, but due to a plethora of questionable game design decisions, it's just a painful chore to play. The story is weak, too, but the visuals and soundtrack are strong. Not recommended, even to Mega Man diehards.
Xtreme 2's story is a bit...odd, to say the least. A group of Mavericks, led by Berkana and Gareth, known as the Soul Erasers is going around erasing the "souls" of innocent reploids and using them to increase their power. Apparently, reploids possess something known as a "DNA soul" which is comparable to a human soul. The weird science-fiction terminology confuses me, and the game, being a portable platformer, never really bothers to take the opportunity to elaborate further. Antagonists Berkana and Gareth aren't given any motivation beyond "we want MOAR POWER" and of course, Sigma was behind it all, intending to use the captured souls to repair himself after the events of Mega Man X3. It's rather odd how X and Zero have no qualms with using captured Maverick souls to create upgrades, despite that being exactly what Berkana and Gareth were doing. I can see Zero feeling indifferent, but X would at the very least question it. The plot is somehow both simplistic and confusing at the same time, but hey, it's a platformer for the Game Boy Color, it's not what I started the game for.
Shino Okamura served as the game's lead designer, and I can't help but wonder what went wrong. The game proposes some interesting ideas, bringing in the shop from Mega Man 4 GB and allowing you to play as Zero, but these are either poorly implemented or simply functional. Playing as X is generally the same as the first game, but Zero is just infuriating. His saber has a very small range and his special weapons all share the same bar, meaning you can only use them once or twice before you're out in totality. Why did they do this? X's special weapons work normally so I don't understand the reasoning here. I criticized the original game for copy-pasting levels from the SNES games, so Capcom decided to create entirely new levels based on the first three SNES games, and in theory, I'd consider this a major improvement. The main issue is that the level design is perhaps some of the worst in the series, filled with instant death traps right offscreen and enough electrified walls to make Mighty No 9 cry like an anime fan on prom night. At most it's acceptable, but at worst it is infuriating. Xtreme 2, similar to the first game, also requires you to complete it multiple times to see everything it has to offer. Normally, you'd pick X or Zero, and you'd play through the game as normal, with the story or special weapons differing, but fundamentally it'd be the same game. However, X only gets to fight the first four bosses and to fight the other four, you have to replay the game as Zero. If you want to fight the true final boss, you have to replay all 8 stages plus the fortress stages. This tedium is why I dropped the game and due to its plethora of game design issues, I do not intend to try it again.
On the contrary, Capcom's art team was firing on all cylinders. The art direction was led by Haruki Suetsugu, who was responsible for all of the original designs. The game impresses from a visual standpoint, with detailed sprite work and fluid animation. Backgrounds are more detailed compared to the original and character portraits are expressive. Berkana and Gareth are cool designs and it's a shame they're not in a better game. The game also does give a good sense that X and Zero are actually working together, as they interact frequently throughout the stages. It still suffers from somewhat garish colors, but most games on the GBC do.
The game's soundtrack was composed by Toshio Kajino and Mitsuhiko Takano, and consists of no original music whatsoever, simply music ripped from the SNES games. However, the music more closely resembles the originals this time around and it serves the game quite well. I do wish they were a little more ambitious, but what's here is good.
Mega Man Xtreme 2 is a game that I went into with optimism but came out with spite. Capcom had every opportunity to turn the framework of Xtreme 1 into a pretty solid platformer, but due to a plethora of questionable game design decisions, it's just a painful chore to play. The story is weak, too, but the visuals and soundtrack are strong. Not recommended, even to Mega Man diehards.
2012
Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season One is a landmark event in gaming, reviving the dormant point-n-click adventure genre and bringing it back to the mainstream. Directed primarily by Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, the game was acclaimed by critics and is often considered by fans to be the definitive interpretation of the original comic book. I've played this game a few years back but after incessant pestering from my little brother, I've returned for another playthrough. I'm glad to say the game lives up to my fond memories.
Unlike the television series of the same name, Telltale's game is not a direct adaptation of the comic, instead telling an original story about the bond between a young girl and her adopted protector. The main theme is: don't let a person's past define their current identity, which is channeled through protagonist Lee Everett, who had been sentenced to prison after murdering his unfaithful wife. Vanaman and Rodkin handle each character with empathy, even the less than savory types. No character is simply pure evil or good, there is genuine emotional complexity to each individual. You get to choose how Lee responds to things, and unlike Mass Effect where Shepard is a blank slate, each dialog
option is something Lee would reasonably say given his personality, which goes a long way in making him feel more grounded. Clementine, the young girl Lee is tasked with protecting, is a true writing wonder. It would have been very easy for her to come off as annoying or emotionally manipulative, but you simply can't help but care for her. The father-daughter relationship built between her and Lee is easily the best part of the narrative and it makes the game's masterful ending all the more heartbreaking. Supporting characters such as Kenny or Lily add an interesting dynamic, as their perception of you does change based on how you speak to them and choose actions in the game. As stated earlier, they're mostly all fleshed out and given flaws, and even the more grating characters like Larry or Ben have a sympathetic side. The scene with The Stranger was perhaps my favorite, as it felt almost like the ghost of Lee's actions coming back to ask him if he was truly in the right. My only complaint about the characters would be that a few of them, such as Molly or Vernon, only exist for a very brief period before disappearing from the narrative. They're written well enough, but you don't get much time to connect with them, so it's hard to call them memorable.
Another criticism I have of the narrative is Episode 4. Episode 4 sets up our characters being stalked by an unknown individual but that plot element is almost entirely ignored until Episode 5. Instead, the story focuses on Crawford, a totalitarian mini-state that materialized after the outbreak and its fall. It's nice to see some additional worldbuilding but unfortunately, it's not nearly as interesting as the stalking subplot and I wish they had just focused on that instead. Overall, though, The Walking Dead: Season One's story is great and remains one of the most empathetic zombie stories ever told.
The Walking Dead is an important game, mostly for propelling the long-dormant point-n-click adventure genre into the limelight once more. The gameplay isn't much to write home about, though. Telltale's main goal was mostly to use it as a vessel for the player to directly control the cinematic experience. Quick-time events are in abundance, but since the game focuses more on cinematics than general gameplay they don't feel intrusive and can add to the tension at points. Puzzles are the main mechanic here, and they're nothing incredibly difficult or memorable. They exist to move the narrative forward, and they serve that purpose well enough. They can be somewhat obtuse though, such as the puzzle where you have to get into the pharmacy to find Larry some medicine, which requires you to abandon the suffering Larry to go save Glenn, which doesn't feel like a logical progression. They're mostly serviceable overall.
A point of contention in regards to TWD discourse is the choices, and if they actually mean anything. After all, no matter what you choose, you always come to the same ending. Truthfully, in gaming, the illusion of choice is infinitely more important than actual choice. If the developer intends to make a gameplay or narrative-focused game with choices as an element, at some point the choices will inevitably have to take a backseat. The Walking Dead is no different and this isn't a bad thing. It's trying to tell a deeply personal tale, and allowing the player to tailor that experience adds to that. Naturally, though, the game still has key story points that must happen no matter what, because it is a story. The Walking Dead is much better at disguising this than many other games, especially Silent Hill: Downpour, a game I played somewhat recently, which doesn't even pretend your choices matter, or even later Telltale games. Telltale does a very good job at making it feel like your actions matter, even if they only affect so much.
The Walking Dead is a game that shines artistically but does suffer from some technical limitations. The art direction, handled by Derek Sakai, preserves the inked-in comic style of the graphic novel. It looks very distinctive and although I haven't read the comics, accurate to the source material. The Definitive Edition adds graphic blacking, which greatly enhances the comic aesthetic, with the consequence being occasional black crush. This grungy, 90s-influenced comic look is not something you see nowadays in the landscape of bright and colorful Overwatch-inspired games, and it resonates even more with me nowadays than it did on a first playthrough. Telltale games have always been somewhat iffy on a technical level though. Even on maximum settings, texture quality isn't particularly high resolution, and this can become distracting on faces. Speaking of faces, they're somewhat low-poly but surprisingly very expressive, which is essential in a game where conveying emotions is important. The Definitive Edition also adds bokeh depth of field in certain scenes, which can feel somewhat out of place but it's a nice lick of paint on an aging game. The Walking Dead has a great aesthetic as well as technical merits that mostly back it up, with some drawbacks here and there.
The soundtrack was composed by Jared Emerson-Johnson, who had previously worked with Telltale on their Bone and Sam and Max games. He's going for a cinematic style, fitting Telltale's intention, and it fits incredibly well. Although the individual songs tend to blend, the overall sound and atmosphere are strong. Clementine Suite is easily the best, and it perfectly encapsulates the tone of the game, as well as standing on its own as a beautiful composition. The hopelessness runs strong in this score and I love it.
The Walking Dead: Season One is a great game, and one that I find is a truly unique experience that even future Telltale games have failed to replicate. Sure, the free choice may be an illusion, and the game design nothing special, but the tale of coming to terms with your past actions and the bond between father and daughter is truly touching, and one that deserves to be experienced by as many people as possible. Highly recommended.
Unlike the television series of the same name, Telltale's game is not a direct adaptation of the comic, instead telling an original story about the bond between a young girl and her adopted protector. The main theme is: don't let a person's past define their current identity, which is channeled through protagonist Lee Everett, who had been sentenced to prison after murdering his unfaithful wife. Vanaman and Rodkin handle each character with empathy, even the less than savory types. No character is simply pure evil or good, there is genuine emotional complexity to each individual. You get to choose how Lee responds to things, and unlike Mass Effect where Shepard is a blank slate, each dialog
option is something Lee would reasonably say given his personality, which goes a long way in making him feel more grounded. Clementine, the young girl Lee is tasked with protecting, is a true writing wonder. It would have been very easy for her to come off as annoying or emotionally manipulative, but you simply can't help but care for her. The father-daughter relationship built between her and Lee is easily the best part of the narrative and it makes the game's masterful ending all the more heartbreaking. Supporting characters such as Kenny or Lily add an interesting dynamic, as their perception of you does change based on how you speak to them and choose actions in the game. As stated earlier, they're mostly all fleshed out and given flaws, and even the more grating characters like Larry or Ben have a sympathetic side. The scene with The Stranger was perhaps my favorite, as it felt almost like the ghost of Lee's actions coming back to ask him if he was truly in the right. My only complaint about the characters would be that a few of them, such as Molly or Vernon, only exist for a very brief period before disappearing from the narrative. They're written well enough, but you don't get much time to connect with them, so it's hard to call them memorable.
Another criticism I have of the narrative is Episode 4. Episode 4 sets up our characters being stalked by an unknown individual but that plot element is almost entirely ignored until Episode 5. Instead, the story focuses on Crawford, a totalitarian mini-state that materialized after the outbreak and its fall. It's nice to see some additional worldbuilding but unfortunately, it's not nearly as interesting as the stalking subplot and I wish they had just focused on that instead. Overall, though, The Walking Dead: Season One's story is great and remains one of the most empathetic zombie stories ever told.
The Walking Dead is an important game, mostly for propelling the long-dormant point-n-click adventure genre into the limelight once more. The gameplay isn't much to write home about, though. Telltale's main goal was mostly to use it as a vessel for the player to directly control the cinematic experience. Quick-time events are in abundance, but since the game focuses more on cinematics than general gameplay they don't feel intrusive and can add to the tension at points. Puzzles are the main mechanic here, and they're nothing incredibly difficult or memorable. They exist to move the narrative forward, and they serve that purpose well enough. They can be somewhat obtuse though, such as the puzzle where you have to get into the pharmacy to find Larry some medicine, which requires you to abandon the suffering Larry to go save Glenn, which doesn't feel like a logical progression. They're mostly serviceable overall.
A point of contention in regards to TWD discourse is the choices, and if they actually mean anything. After all, no matter what you choose, you always come to the same ending. Truthfully, in gaming, the illusion of choice is infinitely more important than actual choice. If the developer intends to make a gameplay or narrative-focused game with choices as an element, at some point the choices will inevitably have to take a backseat. The Walking Dead is no different and this isn't a bad thing. It's trying to tell a deeply personal tale, and allowing the player to tailor that experience adds to that. Naturally, though, the game still has key story points that must happen no matter what, because it is a story. The Walking Dead is much better at disguising this than many other games, especially Silent Hill: Downpour, a game I played somewhat recently, which doesn't even pretend your choices matter, or even later Telltale games. Telltale does a very good job at making it feel like your actions matter, even if they only affect so much.
The Walking Dead is a game that shines artistically but does suffer from some technical limitations. The art direction, handled by Derek Sakai, preserves the inked-in comic style of the graphic novel. It looks very distinctive and although I haven't read the comics, accurate to the source material. The Definitive Edition adds graphic blacking, which greatly enhances the comic aesthetic, with the consequence being occasional black crush. This grungy, 90s-influenced comic look is not something you see nowadays in the landscape of bright and colorful Overwatch-inspired games, and it resonates even more with me nowadays than it did on a first playthrough. Telltale games have always been somewhat iffy on a technical level though. Even on maximum settings, texture quality isn't particularly high resolution, and this can become distracting on faces. Speaking of faces, they're somewhat low-poly but surprisingly very expressive, which is essential in a game where conveying emotions is important. The Definitive Edition also adds bokeh depth of field in certain scenes, which can feel somewhat out of place but it's a nice lick of paint on an aging game. The Walking Dead has a great aesthetic as well as technical merits that mostly back it up, with some drawbacks here and there.
The soundtrack was composed by Jared Emerson-Johnson, who had previously worked with Telltale on their Bone and Sam and Max games. He's going for a cinematic style, fitting Telltale's intention, and it fits incredibly well. Although the individual songs tend to blend, the overall sound and atmosphere are strong. Clementine Suite is easily the best, and it perfectly encapsulates the tone of the game, as well as standing on its own as a beautiful composition. The hopelessness runs strong in this score and I love it.
The Walking Dead: Season One is a great game, and one that I find is a truly unique experience that even future Telltale games have failed to replicate. Sure, the free choice may be an illusion, and the game design nothing special, but the tale of coming to terms with your past actions and the bond between father and daughter is truly touching, and one that deserves to be experienced by as many people as possible. Highly recommended.
Resident Evil Survivor 2 is just such a "nothing" game. The original Survivor was pretty awful, but at least some entertainment could be derived from its cheesy voice acting and pick up and play nature. Survivor 2 is essentially the original game but soulless. The charm is entirely wiped away and is replaced by what is essentially an asset flip of Code Veronica. I played with a gamepad this time as I couldn't figure out how to emulate a Namco GunCon in PCSX2 and found myself wrestling with the controls. You have to use the bumpers to turn, which while I got used to it, isn't smooth or intuitive at all, especially since bosses require you to circle strafe. The game tasks you with running through assorted locations from Code Veronica, collecting keys to leave before a timer runs out. If the timer runs out, Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 shows up for some reason, and he isn't much of a threat and can be outpaced fairly easily. It's an incredibly basic gameplay loop that isn't very fun and doesn't begin to rival Sega's House of the Dead series, which Capcom is trying to ape.
There's also dungeon mode, where the player is put within a maze and must explore a series of rooms to collect all the gems or kill a boss enemy. You're not given a map so exploring these levels is repetitive and uninteresting, and given that all the rooms look the same it's hard to tell where you are going. It's where the meat of this game is but it's decidedly less fun.
The presentation is also fairly bad. Every asset is simply ripped from Code Veronica directly with no attempt to use the increased power of the PlayStation 2 to improve them. Lighting is flat and inexpressive, models look like puppets on strings, and there isn't even any voice acting. All the lines are delivered with the grace of text that moves too quickly, which is for the better considering the translation is rather poor. Steve and Claire calling each other "sis" and "Mr. Knight" is rather hilarious, even if it doesn't reach the hilarity levels of Survivor 1.
It's hard to write a review of a game that doesn't offer anything. If you wanted to play a zombie-themed light gun shooter, you could just play The House of the Dead 2 on Dreamcast, which is where the original Code Veronica is anyways. Not recommended at all.
There's also dungeon mode, where the player is put within a maze and must explore a series of rooms to collect all the gems or kill a boss enemy. You're not given a map so exploring these levels is repetitive and uninteresting, and given that all the rooms look the same it's hard to tell where you are going. It's where the meat of this game is but it's decidedly less fun.
The presentation is also fairly bad. Every asset is simply ripped from Code Veronica directly with no attempt to use the increased power of the PlayStation 2 to improve them. Lighting is flat and inexpressive, models look like puppets on strings, and there isn't even any voice acting. All the lines are delivered with the grace of text that moves too quickly, which is for the better considering the translation is rather poor. Steve and Claire calling each other "sis" and "Mr. Knight" is rather hilarious, even if it doesn't reach the hilarity levels of Survivor 1.
It's hard to write a review of a game that doesn't offer anything. If you wanted to play a zombie-themed light gun shooter, you could just play The House of the Dead 2 on Dreamcast, which is where the original Code Veronica is anyways. Not recommended at all.
2001
I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it. I was rather excited to play Resident Evil Gaiden since I always found it to be a bit of a mystifying title, but almost immediately something was off. Everything about this game is just painful in numerous ways. Developer M4 possibly dethroned Survivor 2 as being the worst Resident Evil game.
Written by Code Veronica director Hiroki Kato, Gaiden's story is as generic as it gets. The evil Umbrella Corporation is up to no good, and Barry Burton must return from the shadows to save Leon S. Kennedy and a strange girl from a generic BOW. The story is as standard as it gets and while I never saw Kato as a particularly good writer, it's clear he did this one in his sleep. Capcom considers this game non-canon because it kills off Leon, which of course would make Resident Evil 4 impossible. It's just such a cynical and boring story and I'm honestly glad it's non-canon.
The game design is just pitifully unfun. Puzzles have been boiled down to "find a key, open door, find another key, open door". The combat is now done in this weird way where you have to time your attacks to hit enemies, and it's somewhat fun in short bursts, but it very quickly becomes repetitive. The map is even more mazelike than RE standard, with the most utterly unhelpful map I've ever seen. All of the rooms look the same so it's hard to tell where you are, which makes traversing the four floors uniquely difficult because you will often forget where the entrances are. Enemies are incredibly annoying and M4 likes to put them in the tightest possible corners forcing you to encounter them. The game technically lets you run, but it means zombies get a few hits in, severely crippling you and making the feature entirely useless. Combine that with the obscene amount of wandering you need to do and it makes for a miserable gaming experience.
Presentation is average at best and downright awful at worst. Graphics are average, the only standout is the detailed zombie sprites during combat. The game's color palette is dull and doesn't help to distinguish rooms from one another. The music, composed by Shahid Ahmad, is ear grating and entirely diminishes any eerie atmosphere it could have had. It's mostly all variations on the same short jingle and it begins to grate on the ears especially when wandering the same hallways.
I don't know what to say. Gaiden is the antithesis of fun. I don't like to act like an angry reviewer on YouTube or anything but I cannot name a single significant good thing about this game. Avoid at all costs.
Written by Code Veronica director Hiroki Kato, Gaiden's story is as generic as it gets. The evil Umbrella Corporation is up to no good, and Barry Burton must return from the shadows to save Leon S. Kennedy and a strange girl from a generic BOW. The story is as standard as it gets and while I never saw Kato as a particularly good writer, it's clear he did this one in his sleep. Capcom considers this game non-canon because it kills off Leon, which of course would make Resident Evil 4 impossible. It's just such a cynical and boring story and I'm honestly glad it's non-canon.
The game design is just pitifully unfun. Puzzles have been boiled down to "find a key, open door, find another key, open door". The combat is now done in this weird way where you have to time your attacks to hit enemies, and it's somewhat fun in short bursts, but it very quickly becomes repetitive. The map is even more mazelike than RE standard, with the most utterly unhelpful map I've ever seen. All of the rooms look the same so it's hard to tell where you are, which makes traversing the four floors uniquely difficult because you will often forget where the entrances are. Enemies are incredibly annoying and M4 likes to put them in the tightest possible corners forcing you to encounter them. The game technically lets you run, but it means zombies get a few hits in, severely crippling you and making the feature entirely useless. Combine that with the obscene amount of wandering you need to do and it makes for a miserable gaming experience.
Presentation is average at best and downright awful at worst. Graphics are average, the only standout is the detailed zombie sprites during combat. The game's color palette is dull and doesn't help to distinguish rooms from one another. The music, composed by Shahid Ahmad, is ear grating and entirely diminishes any eerie atmosphere it could have had. It's mostly all variations on the same short jingle and it begins to grate on the ears especially when wandering the same hallways.
I don't know what to say. Gaiden is the antithesis of fun. I don't like to act like an angry reviewer on YouTube or anything but I cannot name a single significant good thing about this game. Avoid at all costs.
2002
The original Resident Evil is a great game, but it is a little rough around the edges. Although it has aged rather well, a remake was warranted. However, how does one remake Resident Evil, especially after a relatively short period? You hire Shinji Mikami as director, of course. After all, who would know more about Resident Evil than the original's director? Capcom intended for REmake to be a darker, scarier, and overall more realistic interpretation of the original, and I'd say they leaped above and beyond expectations, creating what I'd argue is the best survival horror game of all time.
The plot, originally written by Kenichi Iwao and Yasuyuki Saga, is relatively unchanged, so I won't be going into specific details. If you've played the original, you know what to expect here. The original game had quite a good story, but it was marred by haphazard execution. Said execution is mostly improved here. Plot reveals are set up much better and character motivations are explored in more detail. There is a genuinely interesting mystery here and if you're not familiar with the original you'll find yourself invested. Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are still somewhat flat protagonists, but it's more than made up for by the supporting cast. Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers (my favorite), and Albert Wesker are all great additions to the cast and remain memorable over two decades later. The only outright new plot element is Lisa Trevor, and while I will not spoil the mystery surrounding her, she adds to the story's emotional core in an effective way.
While the central narrative involving the STARS members is certainly good, I found the environmental storytelling much more interesting. The bottles of alcohol lining a scientist's bedroom. The swaying zombie corpse hung from the banister. The letter to a lover, pleading her to forgive him. It feels like you've stepped into a world where you don't belong, that you're intruding on the personal lives of everyone who used to be here. It feels like this whole area used to be filled with people, but they all just up and left. It helps to flesh out the world in a masterful way.
Capcom was not simply content with remaking Resident Evil with better graphics and narrative tweaks. Instead, the entire game has been redesigned from a gameplay perspective, forming the ultimate survival horror experience. Not only do you have to struggle with limited health and ammunition, but also kerosene. In REmake, zombies do not die. When defeated, their corpses will reanimate later on as a crimson head, which is faster and stronger than the average shambling husk. To prevent this, the player must burn the corpses using kerosene. However, there isn't much of it, and not every corpse can be burned. In addition to carefully planning which zombies are worth killing, one now has to consider the potential dangers of doing so, which adds yet another layer of strategy to a game already so mechanically complex. The game is also incredibly difficult but in a way that comes off as ridiculously satisfying. When I died, it is because I had poorly planned a run rather than Capcom pulling out some unperceivable trick. You can't take very much damage, and enemies deal a lot, which helps make every encounter terrifying as even the lowliest zombie can end potentially 20 minutes of progress. If you play your cards right, and properly plan for any potential encounters, you will eventually become a survival machine that can handle any encounter, though the game does not lose its difficulty even then. Puzzles are also moderately improved. While they may not be particularly challenging they are creative and are satisfying to complete. They add to the sense that you are not just exploring the Spencer Mansion but slowly unwrapping its layers.
Another thing I enjoy is the playable characters. Unlike most games, where choosing a protagonist tends to only affect the story, there is an inherent gameplay difference between Jill and Chris. Jill may be more of a glass cannon, but she has two extra inventory slots, which goes a long way. Chris on the other hand is a bit tankier, but he is missing two slots and this makes backtracking to safe rooms a more frequent endeavor. Jill also has a lockpick which can be used to open simple locks throughout the mansion. Instead, Chris has to locate a limited number of old keys to open these doors, putting additional strain on your resource management. Chris, needless to say, is the game's hard mode and should be reserved for second playthroughs. Nevertheless, I still find his campaign particularly rewarding and I enjoy how Capcom went out of their way to make sure each character played differently.
REmake is a visual masterpiece. From the art direction down to the technical elements, every single visual element of this game works perfectly within intention. The dark, cobwebbed corridors of the mansion are beautifully rendered via pre-rendered backgrounds, providing significantly more detail than the GameCube's hardware could ever hope to provide in real-time. The backgrounds are impressively dynamic and layered, too. Dynamic lighting bounces off the walls and 3D models pass beneath pre-rendered elements. Even when rendered at 1440p, the effect remains convincing. Character models are detailed and while facial animation isn't mindblowing it's better than a lot of games at the time. Monsters are realized with disgusting fidelity and remain disturbing even today. REmake is probably the best-looking game on the GameCube and reaches levels of realism unparalleled by even other 6th generation visual masterworks like Silent Hill 3.
The soundtrack, rearranged by Shusaku Uchiyama, features the same songs from the original game redone to better fit the tone. Although I don't exactly know if I'd say they're better than the originals, they're more fitting for Mikami's differing vision. It adds to the more realistic atmosphere while still keeping the musical themes that made the original's score so iconic. Which one is overall better will be up to personal taste, but I find REmake's score to be at least on par and a perfect complement to the visuals.
The original game's voice acting is infamous for being hilariously bad, ruining a lot of the tension in cutscenes. Naturally, REmake being a more realistic interpretation of RE1, redubbed the voice lines to be more natural. The voice acting in REmake is still not great, though it is an improvement. There is not a single line of dialog that is nearly as bad as the original's, but it can still be spotty at points. Joe Whyte, Ed Smaron, and Hope Levy do a decent job with their roles despite occasional iffy line delivery. I found that Heidi Anderson-Swan, Jill's actress, was the least convincing with her performance. I wouldn't call her bad necessarily but she could have been cast better. Peter Jessop gives the game's best performance, portraying Wesker as a truly manipulative and evil man. Overall, not bad, but not fantastic either.
The only major criticism I have isn't of the game itself, but rather, the PC port of the HD Remaster. It's a bit of a mess. Firstly, the port is unnecessarily demanding on lower to mid-end hardware, leading to an inconsistent framerate on those machines. Secondly, despite supporting 120 FPS, the game forces your monitor to output in 60 hertz in fullscreen mode, causing screen-tearing. The game also has no borderless fullscreen mode, meaning that when alt-tabbing, the game has to not only defocus the game but also change the refresh rate back to your monitor's default. This is incredibly inconvenient. Some music tracks even play faster than they're supposed to. These issues can all be fixed with relative ease, but shouldn't exist in the first place. Nevertheless, the PC port is the only way you can currently experience this game in 60 FPS or greater, so it's worth it if you're willing to spend 20 minutes downloading some fixes.
Shinji Mikami's Resident Evil Remake is a survival horror masterpiece. Everything that matters in this game is done perfectly. From the atmosphere to game design, to horror, to visuals, it accomplishes it all. It even expands on the story in a meaningful way, which I greatly appreciate. Insanely difficult, incredibly terrifying, and unfathomably gorgeous, REmake is a game everyone needs to play.
The plot, originally written by Kenichi Iwao and Yasuyuki Saga, is relatively unchanged, so I won't be going into specific details. If you've played the original, you know what to expect here. The original game had quite a good story, but it was marred by haphazard execution. Said execution is mostly improved here. Plot reveals are set up much better and character motivations are explored in more detail. There is a genuinely interesting mystery here and if you're not familiar with the original you'll find yourself invested. Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are still somewhat flat protagonists, but it's more than made up for by the supporting cast. Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers (my favorite), and Albert Wesker are all great additions to the cast and remain memorable over two decades later. The only outright new plot element is Lisa Trevor, and while I will not spoil the mystery surrounding her, she adds to the story's emotional core in an effective way.
While the central narrative involving the STARS members is certainly good, I found the environmental storytelling much more interesting. The bottles of alcohol lining a scientist's bedroom. The swaying zombie corpse hung from the banister. The letter to a lover, pleading her to forgive him. It feels like you've stepped into a world where you don't belong, that you're intruding on the personal lives of everyone who used to be here. It feels like this whole area used to be filled with people, but they all just up and left. It helps to flesh out the world in a masterful way.
Capcom was not simply content with remaking Resident Evil with better graphics and narrative tweaks. Instead, the entire game has been redesigned from a gameplay perspective, forming the ultimate survival horror experience. Not only do you have to struggle with limited health and ammunition, but also kerosene. In REmake, zombies do not die. When defeated, their corpses will reanimate later on as a crimson head, which is faster and stronger than the average shambling husk. To prevent this, the player must burn the corpses using kerosene. However, there isn't much of it, and not every corpse can be burned. In addition to carefully planning which zombies are worth killing, one now has to consider the potential dangers of doing so, which adds yet another layer of strategy to a game already so mechanically complex. The game is also incredibly difficult but in a way that comes off as ridiculously satisfying. When I died, it is because I had poorly planned a run rather than Capcom pulling out some unperceivable trick. You can't take very much damage, and enemies deal a lot, which helps make every encounter terrifying as even the lowliest zombie can end potentially 20 minutes of progress. If you play your cards right, and properly plan for any potential encounters, you will eventually become a survival machine that can handle any encounter, though the game does not lose its difficulty even then. Puzzles are also moderately improved. While they may not be particularly challenging they are creative and are satisfying to complete. They add to the sense that you are not just exploring the Spencer Mansion but slowly unwrapping its layers.
Another thing I enjoy is the playable characters. Unlike most games, where choosing a protagonist tends to only affect the story, there is an inherent gameplay difference between Jill and Chris. Jill may be more of a glass cannon, but she has two extra inventory slots, which goes a long way. Chris on the other hand is a bit tankier, but he is missing two slots and this makes backtracking to safe rooms a more frequent endeavor. Jill also has a lockpick which can be used to open simple locks throughout the mansion. Instead, Chris has to locate a limited number of old keys to open these doors, putting additional strain on your resource management. Chris, needless to say, is the game's hard mode and should be reserved for second playthroughs. Nevertheless, I still find his campaign particularly rewarding and I enjoy how Capcom went out of their way to make sure each character played differently.
REmake is a visual masterpiece. From the art direction down to the technical elements, every single visual element of this game works perfectly within intention. The dark, cobwebbed corridors of the mansion are beautifully rendered via pre-rendered backgrounds, providing significantly more detail than the GameCube's hardware could ever hope to provide in real-time. The backgrounds are impressively dynamic and layered, too. Dynamic lighting bounces off the walls and 3D models pass beneath pre-rendered elements. Even when rendered at 1440p, the effect remains convincing. Character models are detailed and while facial animation isn't mindblowing it's better than a lot of games at the time. Monsters are realized with disgusting fidelity and remain disturbing even today. REmake is probably the best-looking game on the GameCube and reaches levels of realism unparalleled by even other 6th generation visual masterworks like Silent Hill 3.
The soundtrack, rearranged by Shusaku Uchiyama, features the same songs from the original game redone to better fit the tone. Although I don't exactly know if I'd say they're better than the originals, they're more fitting for Mikami's differing vision. It adds to the more realistic atmosphere while still keeping the musical themes that made the original's score so iconic. Which one is overall better will be up to personal taste, but I find REmake's score to be at least on par and a perfect complement to the visuals.
The original game's voice acting is infamous for being hilariously bad, ruining a lot of the tension in cutscenes. Naturally, REmake being a more realistic interpretation of RE1, redubbed the voice lines to be more natural. The voice acting in REmake is still not great, though it is an improvement. There is not a single line of dialog that is nearly as bad as the original's, but it can still be spotty at points. Joe Whyte, Ed Smaron, and Hope Levy do a decent job with their roles despite occasional iffy line delivery. I found that Heidi Anderson-Swan, Jill's actress, was the least convincing with her performance. I wouldn't call her bad necessarily but she could have been cast better. Peter Jessop gives the game's best performance, portraying Wesker as a truly manipulative and evil man. Overall, not bad, but not fantastic either.
The only major criticism I have isn't of the game itself, but rather, the PC port of the HD Remaster. It's a bit of a mess. Firstly, the port is unnecessarily demanding on lower to mid-end hardware, leading to an inconsistent framerate on those machines. Secondly, despite supporting 120 FPS, the game forces your monitor to output in 60 hertz in fullscreen mode, causing screen-tearing. The game also has no borderless fullscreen mode, meaning that when alt-tabbing, the game has to not only defocus the game but also change the refresh rate back to your monitor's default. This is incredibly inconvenient. Some music tracks even play faster than they're supposed to. These issues can all be fixed with relative ease, but shouldn't exist in the first place. Nevertheless, the PC port is the only way you can currently experience this game in 60 FPS or greater, so it's worth it if you're willing to spend 20 minutes downloading some fixes.
Shinji Mikami's Resident Evil Remake is a survival horror masterpiece. Everything that matters in this game is done perfectly. From the atmosphere to game design, to horror, to visuals, it accomplishes it all. It even expands on the story in a meaningful way, which I greatly appreciate. Insanely difficult, incredibly terrifying, and unfathomably gorgeous, REmake is a game everyone needs to play.
This is fine I guess? I mean, it was entertaining for what it was, but it really adds nothing of real value. It's just more Walking Dead, and for that intention it serves its purpose well enough. You're not given nearly enough time with the characters to even remotely care about them, meaning its hard to get invested. I wouldn't really recommend getting it as it really doesn't add much to the world nor is it a great standalone experience in and of itself. If you own The Definitive Edition though, I guess its worth a shot.
This review contains spoilers
I had nearly finished this game a few years back, but for whatever reason dropped it almost 30 minutes from the end. After replaying Season One, I figured I should give this one a shot. Season Two is a very polarizing game within the Walking Dead fanbase, and I can kind of see why. None of Season One's writers and only half of its directors returned for the sequel and in many ways, it shows. However, despite this, Telltale Games still tells a rough and emotional tale, even if it borders on misery porn at points.
In this sequel, you play as Clementine two years later, returning from Season One. She's not the same little girl that Lee Everett found in a treehouse two years ago. She's experienced extreme hardship and as a result, has become jaded with the world. Telltale does not play nice with her, giving her zero slack for being a child character, and the weight of your decisions often rests on her shoulders. Her decisions and behavior feel like a justified extension of her character after the events of Season One. The supporting cast, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. Most of them, such as Luke, Nick, Jane, and Carlos are layered well enough to care about them, but some like Bonnie or Mike aren't nearly fleshed out enough. Unlike Season One, where building relationships with certain characters was often challenging, I never really thought twice about my preferences for characters in the sequel. The first two episodes are relatively decent but lack a lot of the "wow" factor that Season One's first two episodes have, and it's not really until the introduction of antagonist William Carver when the story kicks into gear. Carver is such a strong villain that he essentially carries the entire second act on his shoulders. His internal morality, while disgusting, seems to make logical sense within the universe. You can almost see where he is coming from in a loose sense, but his depraved and sociopathic behavior completely prevents him from being anything other than a villain. The strongest aspect of the narrative is how Telltale handled Kenny, taking an already base-breaking character and pushing him even further. His suffering is truly palpable, having truly lost absolutely everything, pushing him to the very brinks of his sanity. There are times when the player truly feels for him and times when the player questions his loyalty, especially effective if you had a good relationship with him in Season One.
My main criticism of Season Two's story is its fourth episode, "Beyond the Trees". Similar to Season One, it seems as if Telltale didn't know how to handle the fallout from the game's second act, providing an episode that is both meandering in pace and also desperately trying to keep the player's attention. They mix at least three character deaths into the episode and none of them feel all that meaningful, especially since they all happen within half an hour of each other. It's unsatisfying and feels like cheap shock value rather than genuine emotional weight.
I also take issue with the character of Jane. She's not a bad character at all, but I feel she is a missed opportunity. She resembles Molly from Season One in appearance, personality, voice, and backstory, so why isn't she Molly? Molly wasn't a particularly fleshed-out character, so Telltale easily could have brought her back in a similar fashion to Kenny, lending much-needed depth to the character. As it stands, Jane is good, but it feels like she could have been so much more.
Overall, despite my criticisms, Season Two does tell a genuinely good and often emotionally powerful story, even if it's a bit uneven. It's a story worth experiencing, even if it has its frustrating moments.
Season Two's gameplay is not a large deviation from its predecessor. Once again, it is a point-n-click adventure game that involves exploring certain areas and solving puzzles. However, this time around there are fewer hub worlds, and therefore a lesser emphasis on puzzles. I didn't notice this while playing, so I suppose it isn't much of a bad thing, but in retrospect, more engaging puzzles would certainly have helped the game feel more involved. Telltale also made quick time events a little more involved, requiring quick button presses or swiping the mouse in a certain way. It's fine I guess, but they don't enhance the experience by much. It's mostly just more of the same, which isn't a bad thing.
Derek Sakai returns to lead Season Two's art direction, and once again lends the game a beautiful inky comic aesthetic. My comments regarding Season One's art direction can essentially be copy-pasted here, as he once again does an excellent job designing the decrepit locations Clementine inhabits. Telltale has moderately, but not significantly, upgraded the visuals in Season Two as well. Telltale Tool was never a visual powerhouse of an engine, but the upgrade is appreciated. Faces are very expressive and much less polygonal, appearing more natural. Texture quality is also generally improved, appearing less pixelated. It's not a significant increase in fidelity, but an appreciated one nonetheless.
I simply cannot imagine a Walking Dead game without an iconic score from the incredibly talented Jared Emerson-Johnson. He fully understands the narrative complexities of the scenarios he's been hired to score, mixing themes of despair with hope. His soundtrack perfectly underscores moments of tension, excitement, horror, and sorrow, and I cannot imagine a better musical accompaniment to Season Two.
Despite my reservations with certain characters, the voice cast does a remarkable job with each one of them. It's hard to note any standout jobs when they all portray their characters with admirable realism. Michael Madsen, an actor I primarily knew for his roles in Quentin Tarantino films, does an exceptional job portraying Carver, lending a voice so gravelly and rough that legend has it Telltale had to completely redesign the character from the ground up to match.
The Walking Dead: Season Two is a pretty good adventure game that excels in delivering a satisfyingly emotional story and a tense atmosphere underscored by fantastic art direction and music. Unfortunately, the game's many good qualities are held back by inconsistent writing and cheap character deaths. Despite this, Season Two is still a worthwhile experience for adventure game fans, and a must-play for fans of Season One.
In this sequel, you play as Clementine two years later, returning from Season One. She's not the same little girl that Lee Everett found in a treehouse two years ago. She's experienced extreme hardship and as a result, has become jaded with the world. Telltale does not play nice with her, giving her zero slack for being a child character, and the weight of your decisions often rests on her shoulders. Her decisions and behavior feel like a justified extension of her character after the events of Season One. The supporting cast, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. Most of them, such as Luke, Nick, Jane, and Carlos are layered well enough to care about them, but some like Bonnie or Mike aren't nearly fleshed out enough. Unlike Season One, where building relationships with certain characters was often challenging, I never really thought twice about my preferences for characters in the sequel. The first two episodes are relatively decent but lack a lot of the "wow" factor that Season One's first two episodes have, and it's not really until the introduction of antagonist William Carver when the story kicks into gear. Carver is such a strong villain that he essentially carries the entire second act on his shoulders. His internal morality, while disgusting, seems to make logical sense within the universe. You can almost see where he is coming from in a loose sense, but his depraved and sociopathic behavior completely prevents him from being anything other than a villain. The strongest aspect of the narrative is how Telltale handled Kenny, taking an already base-breaking character and pushing him even further. His suffering is truly palpable, having truly lost absolutely everything, pushing him to the very brinks of his sanity. There are times when the player truly feels for him and times when the player questions his loyalty, especially effective if you had a good relationship with him in Season One.
My main criticism of Season Two's story is its fourth episode, "Beyond the Trees". Similar to Season One, it seems as if Telltale didn't know how to handle the fallout from the game's second act, providing an episode that is both meandering in pace and also desperately trying to keep the player's attention. They mix at least three character deaths into the episode and none of them feel all that meaningful, especially since they all happen within half an hour of each other. It's unsatisfying and feels like cheap shock value rather than genuine emotional weight.
I also take issue with the character of Jane. She's not a bad character at all, but I feel she is a missed opportunity. She resembles Molly from Season One in appearance, personality, voice, and backstory, so why isn't she Molly? Molly wasn't a particularly fleshed-out character, so Telltale easily could have brought her back in a similar fashion to Kenny, lending much-needed depth to the character. As it stands, Jane is good, but it feels like she could have been so much more.
Overall, despite my criticisms, Season Two does tell a genuinely good and often emotionally powerful story, even if it's a bit uneven. It's a story worth experiencing, even if it has its frustrating moments.
Season Two's gameplay is not a large deviation from its predecessor. Once again, it is a point-n-click adventure game that involves exploring certain areas and solving puzzles. However, this time around there are fewer hub worlds, and therefore a lesser emphasis on puzzles. I didn't notice this while playing, so I suppose it isn't much of a bad thing, but in retrospect, more engaging puzzles would certainly have helped the game feel more involved. Telltale also made quick time events a little more involved, requiring quick button presses or swiping the mouse in a certain way. It's fine I guess, but they don't enhance the experience by much. It's mostly just more of the same, which isn't a bad thing.
Derek Sakai returns to lead Season Two's art direction, and once again lends the game a beautiful inky comic aesthetic. My comments regarding Season One's art direction can essentially be copy-pasted here, as he once again does an excellent job designing the decrepit locations Clementine inhabits. Telltale has moderately, but not significantly, upgraded the visuals in Season Two as well. Telltale Tool was never a visual powerhouse of an engine, but the upgrade is appreciated. Faces are very expressive and much less polygonal, appearing more natural. Texture quality is also generally improved, appearing less pixelated. It's not a significant increase in fidelity, but an appreciated one nonetheless.
I simply cannot imagine a Walking Dead game without an iconic score from the incredibly talented Jared Emerson-Johnson. He fully understands the narrative complexities of the scenarios he's been hired to score, mixing themes of despair with hope. His soundtrack perfectly underscores moments of tension, excitement, horror, and sorrow, and I cannot imagine a better musical accompaniment to Season Two.
Despite my reservations with certain characters, the voice cast does a remarkable job with each one of them. It's hard to note any standout jobs when they all portray their characters with admirable realism. Michael Madsen, an actor I primarily knew for his roles in Quentin Tarantino films, does an exceptional job portraying Carver, lending a voice so gravelly and rough that legend has it Telltale had to completely redesign the character from the ground up to match.
The Walking Dead: Season Two is a pretty good adventure game that excels in delivering a satisfyingly emotional story and a tense atmosphere underscored by fantastic art direction and music. Unfortunately, the game's many good qualities are held back by inconsistent writing and cheap character deaths. Despite this, Season Two is still a worthwhile experience for adventure game fans, and a must-play for fans of Season One.
2022
Obviously, Valve's Aperture Desk Job is not a properly great game or anything, but it is a great tech demo, which is all Valve set out to do. It serves as a tech demo for the new Steam Deck, which I do not own, so I played it on my PC instead. It still works quite well with a Steam Controller (though it does function with other controllers too). The gameplay is nothing all that special, going from a controls demo to a pretty standard rail shooter, but Valve's typically witty writing elevates the experience beyond average. The graphics look quite great considering they're designed for low-level hardware, with very expressive animation and impressive use of materials, though the lack of any configurable settings beyond resolution is a little disappointing for those not playing on a Deck. My favorite aspect of Desk Job is how many Portal mythology gags they include. For example, Cave Johnson being trapped in a computer and begging you to kill him was originally a cut concept from Portal 2! They even brought back JK Simmons to reprise his role! My only complaint is Grady's voice actor, who does a competent enough job but doesn't really seem to fit his character. Nevertheless, Valve's clear love and passion for the Portal universe brings a big smile to my face and I'm excited to see what else they have in store.
Not particularly interesting in any sense of the word. The characters are standard archetypes and you don't really spend very much time with them and as a result never get to truly know them. The mystery surrounding the titular case file is uninteresting and ends in a very unsatisfying fashion. The artwork is fine overall, serviceable and nothing special, but the assets appear rather low-resolution. There are a few "gameplay" segments but they do nothing but remind you that you could be playing a much better visual novel. Even if you wanted to get immersed in the world of Ghostwire: Tokyo before the game's release, this VN doesn't give you a good sense of the game's world. Not necessarily bad, but give it a pass.
2016
This review contains spoilers
Capcom's Resident Evil Zero remains a controversial game in the Resident Evil franchise, so it's only natural that such a controversial game was subject to a very rough development cycle. Originally being developed for the Nintendo 64, Zero's development was completely restarted for the GameCube when it became abundantly clear that the N64's storage constraints were insurmountable and the 64DD add-on sold too poorly to justify development for it. Director Koji Oda made a point to differentiate Zero from previous games, partly due to hardware constraints and partly due to wanting to innovate on the survival horror formula. These departures have received a variety of reactions, some praising them for shaking up the formula and some criticizing them for being unintuitive. I'd say I generally lean more positive than most, but I'd still argue the game has some glaring flaws.
The original screenplay was written by Noboru Sugimura, writer of Resident Evil 2, before being significantly retooled post-reboot by Hiromichi Nakamoto and Junichi Miyashita. Resident Evil Zero serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. You play as Rebecca Chambers, the rookie medic from the first game, investigating the strange murders occurring within the Arklay Mountains with the rest of the STARS Bravo Team. After a dangerous helicopter crash and increasingly hostile weather conditions, she is separated from her team and boards the Ecliptic Express, an abandoned luxury train now populated by the living dead. On the train, she meets escaped death-row inmate Billy Coen, with whom she forms an uneasy alliance. Together, they must survive the horrors that lurk beyond.
Zero's story is a mixed bag, to say the least, suffering from often ridiculous tonal shifts and a general lack of focus. The biggest problem with the narrative is the antagonist, a mysterious man who controls an army of shapeshifting leeches, which he controls by singing opera. This feels entirely out of place and only gets more ridiculous when his true nature is revealed. Another issue I had with the story was its connection to the rest of the series. Despite being a prequel, Zero does very little to expand on the first game in a meaningful way, only really delving into what Rebecca had been up to before it. Characters from previous games like Albert Wesker, William Birkin, and Enrico Marini appear very briefly simply to remind you that this is a prequel, and their inclusion feels like hollow fanservice as a result. Like previous Resident Evil games, most of the narrative is told through memos that can be found in the environment, and these memos do wonders fleshing out Zero's story. However, previous RE games told you their stories with both memos and more traditional cutscenes, but Zero seems content to stick to the former. Because of this, the game lacks narrative flow, and it's hard to stay invested when the writers themselves seemingly aren't. You need to have a balance between the two, and Zero simply fails to achieve this. It's not all leeches and zombies though, there is one narrative aspect that Zero's writing succeeds in, and that is the relationship between Rebecca and Billy. Initially hostile, they eventually become blood brothers on the battlefield. The scene where Billy opens up to Rebecca about his PTSD from his service in Africa, reminiscing on how his squad was ordered to fire upon unarmed civilians, is genuinely emotional and you can hear the pain in his voice. The two feel like a real pair by the end of the game and it's heartwarming when Rebecca, despite her orders to capture Billy, decides to falsely report him as a casualty instead of turning him in. It's the only element of this story that actually works and I wish it were part of a much more engaging narrative.
Zero's most controversial element was its gameplay, originally designed by the legendary Hideki Kamiya before being iterated upon by a myriad of other designers. The biggest change is the partner system. RE2 had the "zapping system" which showed that Leon and Claire were working together, though in actuality it was a thinly veiled illusion. Zero, however, gives you control of both Rebecca and Billy simultaneously. Although this has proved controversial as all elements of Zero have, I found it to be a refreshing innovation in the Resident Evil formula, especially after Code Veronica had done so little to change it. It fundamentally changes how you strategize and divide resources, after all, now you have two mouths to feed. This forces you to think a lot more carefully than you would in a comparatively easier game like RE2. The puzzles designed around this mechanic were generally quite fun, too, minus a particularly repetitive box puzzle in the late game. The partner AI is pretty decent, and you can even give it commands if you don't want it wasting ammo on every zombie in sight. You can also leave them behind in a safe room if they've taken too much damage. It's surprisingly very intuitive for a mechanic often described as "cumbersome". The lack of item boxes, on the other hand, I am not fond of. I don't think it makes the game "unplayable" as some reviews have stated, far from it, but it doesn't really add any new strategy to the game either. Any seasoned RE player will just dump all of their nonessential items in the main hall, where nothing will attack them, and just leave them there until necessary. It trivializes any potential difficulty or strategy that the mechanic could have brought since I don't have to worry about backtracking to some potentially dangerous location to find ink ribbons, I can just go back to the always enemy-free main hall. Since the new inventory system doesn't really add anything, Capcom should have just stuck with the traditional item box system, which would have at least made some of the backtracking less tedious. That's another problem this game has: the backtracking. Backtracking is just an inherent part of survival horror and isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in Zero it feels a tad excessive. For the most part, it's a little uneven, but generally fine. However, in the final stage of the game, every single puzzle is spread out so far from the rest that it becomes an act of herculean willpower to actually get through it. The game's difficulty balancing is also fairly unrefined. I played on hard mode, as I want survival horror games to push me to my limits, but Zero goes too far at points. Despite having two health bars to tend to, the game only gives you barely enough to maintain one. The game's new enemies are also ridiculously frustrating at points. The mimicry marcuses aren't too bad, they are the "elite mook" of the game similar to the hunters and lickers in the previous games respectively. The threat they represent is genuinely terrifying. The problem is, the game has two more elite mooks in the form of the hunters and eliminators, so a good amount of the game's enemies can really put the hurt on you. It feels excessive and leads to many frustrating encounters.
When you complete Zero, you unlock an extra game mode called Leech Hunter. In this mode, you have to collect as many crystal leeches as you can throughout the training facility. Essentially, this is Zero's battle/mercenaries mode. Each leech is either blue or green, and each color can only be picked up by one of the characters respectively. I only gave Leech Hunter a brief spin, as it did not hold my interest for too long, but I found it to be an interesting little minigame. The most interesting part is how it doesn't have any timer whatsoever. You can explore the facility collecting leeches to your heart's content, leaving whenever you feel you've got enough. This does mean the mode lacks the tension of The Mercenaries, but I can imagine spending more time on it at a later date. It's decent for what it is.
If the gameplay has so many flaws, why exactly have I rated the game so highly? Well, because when it works, which is most of the time, it's a very solid survival horror experience. The flaws are hard-to-ignore and drag the experience down, but the moment-to-moment survival gameplay is still as fun and tense as usual. It's a wonder it still manages to be as fun as it is despite all of its warts.
Resident Evil Zero's visuals are the highlight of the experience. Capcom's previous title, the Resident Evil remake, was a graphical showcase itself, but Zero bests even that. Zero still uses the pre-rendered backgrounds of old but uses them so masterfully you'd have a hard time differentiating them from the 3D elements when playing on a real GameCube with a CRT TV. REmake's backgrounds were also a thing of beauty, but Zero increases the realism further by animating them. The animated pieces layer realistically over the 3D elements, which always had my jaw on the floor, asking "how did they do it?". The way the lighting affects both the backgrounds and the models simultaneously, casting real-time shadows on what are essentially two-dimensional videos is mind-blowing. It's just so seamless. The models look great too. They've been touched up for the HD Remaster, and in some ways look superior. Rebecca no longer looks twelve years old, which is a plus. Billy, however, looks kind of strange at points, and it's hard to put a finger exactly how. Speaking of 3D elements, it's especially impressive how the mimicry marcus enemies can transition so seamlessly between their human form and their swarm-like leech form without missing a single beat. The FMV cutscenes also generally look good, obviously boasting superior fidelity to the in-engine cutscenes. However, the facial animation looks a bit strange at points, with both Birkin and Enrico's lips seemingly not entirely matching what they're saying. The cinematography is also rather silly, with fast pans emphasizing the action, which is at odds with the distant camerawork of the in-engine cutscenes. Nevertheless, they are technically impressive and fun to watch, even if they lean a bit on the ridiculous side.
Although the game's technical presentation is excellent, the art direction has some issues. It ranges from excellent to uninspired, which can cause quite a bit of whiplash. The Ecliptic Express is the best-looking location, and the general fanciness of the luxury railway makes for an interesting and highly immersive setting. The training facility, however, is essentially a rehash of the Spencer Mansion from the first game. It's rendered well but doesn't really have any defining traits that make it memorable, which is a problem as the majority of the game takes place there. The laboratory generally looks a bit more inspired but is still nothing to write home about, and although I appreciated the return of RE2's marshaling yard, things don't really pick up again until the treatment plant, which provides the scale necessary for a final level. The monster designs are also problematic. The mimicry marcuses look fantastic, and it's really cool how they mimic the look of their creator in blind fanaticism. Their transformation into a swarm of loosely connected leeches also looks awesome. However, the majority of the new monsters essentially boil down to "animal but big and rotting" and it's not particularly creative. Sure, previous games have had plenty of monsters befitting that trope, but they had more original freaks of nature to balance it out. Regardless of these issues, Zero is generally a fantastic-looking game, with a few questionable artistic decisions here and there.
Zero's soundtrack was composed by Seiko Kobuchi, and even by the franchise's high standards, it's rock solid. Kobuchi favors sorrowful pianos for more dramatic moments and distorted strings for moments of horror. Taking a cue from Akira Yamaoka, he uses industrial droning noises for ambiance, though perhaps without Yamaoka's signature variety. I think the mimicry marcus' theme got on my nerves a bit, but it's not a bad composition in and of itself. I'm not a huge fan of the opera bits, but I cannot deny they are well performed. There is genuine beauty in Kobuchi's compositions and they perfectly fit every situation they've been placed in. It's not as memorable as, say, RE2's ost, but it works perfectly given the context.
Discussing voice acting within the context of Resident Evil is always going to be an interesting discussion. Many bemoan the cheesy performances in some games, whereas others see them as part of the b-movie charm. I've always been somewhere in the middle, adoring RE1's ridiculous voice acting and appreciating RE3's surprisingly good performances. Similar to the rest of the game, Zero's voice acting is rather mixed. James Kee and Riva Di Paola do pretty solid jobs as the two protagonists, effectively performing emotional beats. Kee manages to make the "gruff badass" voice work, which is rather rare in media, and Di Paola is more expressive as Rebecca than Hope Levy was in REmake. However, that's where the good performances end. Richard Waugh returns to play Wesker, but unlike Code Veronica, I don't think his performance works. He can't seem to tell if Wesker has a British or American accent and it's rather distracting at points. Wesker had an American accent during the events of RE1, so it doesn't make sense that he'd randomly slip into British pronunciation with certain lines. Although it is unknown who exactly voiced Birkin, his delivery is incredibly stilted and provided us with the infamous "I will take over your research! Ha ha ha!". Lyon Smith plays the mysterious leech man, and while his performance is fitting for the character, it shares the same issue of being too over the top to take seriously whatsoever.
After reading the discourse surrounding Resident Evil Zero, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect of the game going in. I'm surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did. Zero is a pretty good survival horror game that, despite issues with difficulty, storytelling, mechanics, and art direction, manages to be a rather fun experience overall. Zero is kind of the ultimate filter, as in I can't imagine the average gamer enjoying this at all, but I'd imagine survival horror junkies like myself will get quite the kick out of it. As for Resident Evil diehards, if you haven't checked Zero out yet, it's definitely worth a shot. Despite its flaws, it's still a worthwhile experience.
The original screenplay was written by Noboru Sugimura, writer of Resident Evil 2, before being significantly retooled post-reboot by Hiromichi Nakamoto and Junichi Miyashita. Resident Evil Zero serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. You play as Rebecca Chambers, the rookie medic from the first game, investigating the strange murders occurring within the Arklay Mountains with the rest of the STARS Bravo Team. After a dangerous helicopter crash and increasingly hostile weather conditions, she is separated from her team and boards the Ecliptic Express, an abandoned luxury train now populated by the living dead. On the train, she meets escaped death-row inmate Billy Coen, with whom she forms an uneasy alliance. Together, they must survive the horrors that lurk beyond.
Zero's story is a mixed bag, to say the least, suffering from often ridiculous tonal shifts and a general lack of focus. The biggest problem with the narrative is the antagonist, a mysterious man who controls an army of shapeshifting leeches, which he controls by singing opera. This feels entirely out of place and only gets more ridiculous when his true nature is revealed. Another issue I had with the story was its connection to the rest of the series. Despite being a prequel, Zero does very little to expand on the first game in a meaningful way, only really delving into what Rebecca had been up to before it. Characters from previous games like Albert Wesker, William Birkin, and Enrico Marini appear very briefly simply to remind you that this is a prequel, and their inclusion feels like hollow fanservice as a result. Like previous Resident Evil games, most of the narrative is told through memos that can be found in the environment, and these memos do wonders fleshing out Zero's story. However, previous RE games told you their stories with both memos and more traditional cutscenes, but Zero seems content to stick to the former. Because of this, the game lacks narrative flow, and it's hard to stay invested when the writers themselves seemingly aren't. You need to have a balance between the two, and Zero simply fails to achieve this. It's not all leeches and zombies though, there is one narrative aspect that Zero's writing succeeds in, and that is the relationship between Rebecca and Billy. Initially hostile, they eventually become blood brothers on the battlefield. The scene where Billy opens up to Rebecca about his PTSD from his service in Africa, reminiscing on how his squad was ordered to fire upon unarmed civilians, is genuinely emotional and you can hear the pain in his voice. The two feel like a real pair by the end of the game and it's heartwarming when Rebecca, despite her orders to capture Billy, decides to falsely report him as a casualty instead of turning him in. It's the only element of this story that actually works and I wish it were part of a much more engaging narrative.
Zero's most controversial element was its gameplay, originally designed by the legendary Hideki Kamiya before being iterated upon by a myriad of other designers. The biggest change is the partner system. RE2 had the "zapping system" which showed that Leon and Claire were working together, though in actuality it was a thinly veiled illusion. Zero, however, gives you control of both Rebecca and Billy simultaneously. Although this has proved controversial as all elements of Zero have, I found it to be a refreshing innovation in the Resident Evil formula, especially after Code Veronica had done so little to change it. It fundamentally changes how you strategize and divide resources, after all, now you have two mouths to feed. This forces you to think a lot more carefully than you would in a comparatively easier game like RE2. The puzzles designed around this mechanic were generally quite fun, too, minus a particularly repetitive box puzzle in the late game. The partner AI is pretty decent, and you can even give it commands if you don't want it wasting ammo on every zombie in sight. You can also leave them behind in a safe room if they've taken too much damage. It's surprisingly very intuitive for a mechanic often described as "cumbersome". The lack of item boxes, on the other hand, I am not fond of. I don't think it makes the game "unplayable" as some reviews have stated, far from it, but it doesn't really add any new strategy to the game either. Any seasoned RE player will just dump all of their nonessential items in the main hall, where nothing will attack them, and just leave them there until necessary. It trivializes any potential difficulty or strategy that the mechanic could have brought since I don't have to worry about backtracking to some potentially dangerous location to find ink ribbons, I can just go back to the always enemy-free main hall. Since the new inventory system doesn't really add anything, Capcom should have just stuck with the traditional item box system, which would have at least made some of the backtracking less tedious. That's another problem this game has: the backtracking. Backtracking is just an inherent part of survival horror and isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in Zero it feels a tad excessive. For the most part, it's a little uneven, but generally fine. However, in the final stage of the game, every single puzzle is spread out so far from the rest that it becomes an act of herculean willpower to actually get through it. The game's difficulty balancing is also fairly unrefined. I played on hard mode, as I want survival horror games to push me to my limits, but Zero goes too far at points. Despite having two health bars to tend to, the game only gives you barely enough to maintain one. The game's new enemies are also ridiculously frustrating at points. The mimicry marcuses aren't too bad, they are the "elite mook" of the game similar to the hunters and lickers in the previous games respectively. The threat they represent is genuinely terrifying. The problem is, the game has two more elite mooks in the form of the hunters and eliminators, so a good amount of the game's enemies can really put the hurt on you. It feels excessive and leads to many frustrating encounters.
When you complete Zero, you unlock an extra game mode called Leech Hunter. In this mode, you have to collect as many crystal leeches as you can throughout the training facility. Essentially, this is Zero's battle/mercenaries mode. Each leech is either blue or green, and each color can only be picked up by one of the characters respectively. I only gave Leech Hunter a brief spin, as it did not hold my interest for too long, but I found it to be an interesting little minigame. The most interesting part is how it doesn't have any timer whatsoever. You can explore the facility collecting leeches to your heart's content, leaving whenever you feel you've got enough. This does mean the mode lacks the tension of The Mercenaries, but I can imagine spending more time on it at a later date. It's decent for what it is.
If the gameplay has so many flaws, why exactly have I rated the game so highly? Well, because when it works, which is most of the time, it's a very solid survival horror experience. The flaws are hard-to-ignore and drag the experience down, but the moment-to-moment survival gameplay is still as fun and tense as usual. It's a wonder it still manages to be as fun as it is despite all of its warts.
Resident Evil Zero's visuals are the highlight of the experience. Capcom's previous title, the Resident Evil remake, was a graphical showcase itself, but Zero bests even that. Zero still uses the pre-rendered backgrounds of old but uses them so masterfully you'd have a hard time differentiating them from the 3D elements when playing on a real GameCube with a CRT TV. REmake's backgrounds were also a thing of beauty, but Zero increases the realism further by animating them. The animated pieces layer realistically over the 3D elements, which always had my jaw on the floor, asking "how did they do it?". The way the lighting affects both the backgrounds and the models simultaneously, casting real-time shadows on what are essentially two-dimensional videos is mind-blowing. It's just so seamless. The models look great too. They've been touched up for the HD Remaster, and in some ways look superior. Rebecca no longer looks twelve years old, which is a plus. Billy, however, looks kind of strange at points, and it's hard to put a finger exactly how. Speaking of 3D elements, it's especially impressive how the mimicry marcus enemies can transition so seamlessly between their human form and their swarm-like leech form without missing a single beat. The FMV cutscenes also generally look good, obviously boasting superior fidelity to the in-engine cutscenes. However, the facial animation looks a bit strange at points, with both Birkin and Enrico's lips seemingly not entirely matching what they're saying. The cinematography is also rather silly, with fast pans emphasizing the action, which is at odds with the distant camerawork of the in-engine cutscenes. Nevertheless, they are technically impressive and fun to watch, even if they lean a bit on the ridiculous side.
Although the game's technical presentation is excellent, the art direction has some issues. It ranges from excellent to uninspired, which can cause quite a bit of whiplash. The Ecliptic Express is the best-looking location, and the general fanciness of the luxury railway makes for an interesting and highly immersive setting. The training facility, however, is essentially a rehash of the Spencer Mansion from the first game. It's rendered well but doesn't really have any defining traits that make it memorable, which is a problem as the majority of the game takes place there. The laboratory generally looks a bit more inspired but is still nothing to write home about, and although I appreciated the return of RE2's marshaling yard, things don't really pick up again until the treatment plant, which provides the scale necessary for a final level. The monster designs are also problematic. The mimicry marcuses look fantastic, and it's really cool how they mimic the look of their creator in blind fanaticism. Their transformation into a swarm of loosely connected leeches also looks awesome. However, the majority of the new monsters essentially boil down to "animal but big and rotting" and it's not particularly creative. Sure, previous games have had plenty of monsters befitting that trope, but they had more original freaks of nature to balance it out. Regardless of these issues, Zero is generally a fantastic-looking game, with a few questionable artistic decisions here and there.
Zero's soundtrack was composed by Seiko Kobuchi, and even by the franchise's high standards, it's rock solid. Kobuchi favors sorrowful pianos for more dramatic moments and distorted strings for moments of horror. Taking a cue from Akira Yamaoka, he uses industrial droning noises for ambiance, though perhaps without Yamaoka's signature variety. I think the mimicry marcus' theme got on my nerves a bit, but it's not a bad composition in and of itself. I'm not a huge fan of the opera bits, but I cannot deny they are well performed. There is genuine beauty in Kobuchi's compositions and they perfectly fit every situation they've been placed in. It's not as memorable as, say, RE2's ost, but it works perfectly given the context.
Discussing voice acting within the context of Resident Evil is always going to be an interesting discussion. Many bemoan the cheesy performances in some games, whereas others see them as part of the b-movie charm. I've always been somewhere in the middle, adoring RE1's ridiculous voice acting and appreciating RE3's surprisingly good performances. Similar to the rest of the game, Zero's voice acting is rather mixed. James Kee and Riva Di Paola do pretty solid jobs as the two protagonists, effectively performing emotional beats. Kee manages to make the "gruff badass" voice work, which is rather rare in media, and Di Paola is more expressive as Rebecca than Hope Levy was in REmake. However, that's where the good performances end. Richard Waugh returns to play Wesker, but unlike Code Veronica, I don't think his performance works. He can't seem to tell if Wesker has a British or American accent and it's rather distracting at points. Wesker had an American accent during the events of RE1, so it doesn't make sense that he'd randomly slip into British pronunciation with certain lines. Although it is unknown who exactly voiced Birkin, his delivery is incredibly stilted and provided us with the infamous "I will take over your research! Ha ha ha!". Lyon Smith plays the mysterious leech man, and while his performance is fitting for the character, it shares the same issue of being too over the top to take seriously whatsoever.
After reading the discourse surrounding Resident Evil Zero, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect of the game going in. I'm surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did. Zero is a pretty good survival horror game that, despite issues with difficulty, storytelling, mechanics, and art direction, manages to be a rather fun experience overall. Zero is kind of the ultimate filter, as in I can't imagine the average gamer enjoying this at all, but I'd imagine survival horror junkies like myself will get quite the kick out of it. As for Resident Evil diehards, if you haven't checked Zero out yet, it's definitely worth a shot. Despite its flaws, it's still a worthwhile experience.
2015
Dropsy is a truly unique point-n-click adventure game from Tendershoot. Originating as a Something Awful "choose your own adventure" comic by Jay Tholen, director Jesse Bull takes a decidedly more lighthearted tone, creating a silly and refreshingly original adventure game that harkens back to times of old.
Bull and Tholen wrote a story about kindness and forgiveness. Dropsy's narrative is rather simple but told uniquely, using symbols instead of any spoken language. This make's Dropsy's story essentially universal, and it adds a lot of personality to the game. However, this can make certain story beats a little difficult to understand at points. The different NPCs you find wandering around town seem to have their own lives, appearing at different places at different times of day, which is an excellent touch. The world ebbs and flows and feels like it breathes, and that is a testament to the smaller details. Dropsy doesn't tell an Oscar-worthy story but it's one that mostly works very well.
As an adventure game, Dropsy follows genre conventions fairly straight. You wander around, solve puzzles, and push the narrative forward. Tendershoot does add variety to this by giving Dropsy a few animal friends who can reach certain areas that he cannot reach himself. Exploring the town is genuinely fun as not only is it visually creative but it has a lot of variety. However, Dropsy falls into a lot of the same pitfalls most adventure games do, such as occasional moon logic for puzzles and at points an aimless direction. There are quite a few points where I had to use a walkthrough because I didn't think to click on a random thing that was barely even in-frame. Since there is no written language, sometimes it's hard to tell what objects exactly are, which can make puzzles confusing at points. This isn't a problem for most of the game, but it can lead to occasional moments of frustration.
Dropsy's strongest element is its presentation. Beautifully detailed and fluidly animated pixel art paints a world full of variety and color. Each character you encounter feels different from the last, some are more exaggerated than others but none clash. Chris Schlarb's original soundtrack has a jazzy feel, with an emphasis on horns and bass, wrapped in a nice blanket of chiptune. The soundtrack is really what pulls the whole experience together and it lends the game a rather laid back, relaxed mood.
Dropsy is a very solid point-n-click adventure game that fans of the genre will adore. Its theme of kindness, its gorgeous presentation, and its fun exploration hold the game above its sometimes confusing puzzle design. Adventure fans itching for a more classic style experience would do right to check this out.
Bull and Tholen wrote a story about kindness and forgiveness. Dropsy's narrative is rather simple but told uniquely, using symbols instead of any spoken language. This make's Dropsy's story essentially universal, and it adds a lot of personality to the game. However, this can make certain story beats a little difficult to understand at points. The different NPCs you find wandering around town seem to have their own lives, appearing at different places at different times of day, which is an excellent touch. The world ebbs and flows and feels like it breathes, and that is a testament to the smaller details. Dropsy doesn't tell an Oscar-worthy story but it's one that mostly works very well.
As an adventure game, Dropsy follows genre conventions fairly straight. You wander around, solve puzzles, and push the narrative forward. Tendershoot does add variety to this by giving Dropsy a few animal friends who can reach certain areas that he cannot reach himself. Exploring the town is genuinely fun as not only is it visually creative but it has a lot of variety. However, Dropsy falls into a lot of the same pitfalls most adventure games do, such as occasional moon logic for puzzles and at points an aimless direction. There are quite a few points where I had to use a walkthrough because I didn't think to click on a random thing that was barely even in-frame. Since there is no written language, sometimes it's hard to tell what objects exactly are, which can make puzzles confusing at points. This isn't a problem for most of the game, but it can lead to occasional moments of frustration.
Dropsy's strongest element is its presentation. Beautifully detailed and fluidly animated pixel art paints a world full of variety and color. Each character you encounter feels different from the last, some are more exaggerated than others but none clash. Chris Schlarb's original soundtrack has a jazzy feel, with an emphasis on horns and bass, wrapped in a nice blanket of chiptune. The soundtrack is really what pulls the whole experience together and it lends the game a rather laid back, relaxed mood.
Dropsy is a very solid point-n-click adventure game that fans of the genre will adore. Its theme of kindness, its gorgeous presentation, and its fun exploration hold the game above its sometimes confusing puzzle design. Adventure fans itching for a more classic style experience would do right to check this out.
If you've kept up with my previous reviews, you'd probably already know that I'm not a huge fan of Capcom's Gun Survivor franchise. I didn't play Dino Stalker, but both Resident Evil: Survivor and its sequel are some of the worst games that franchise has to offer. Resident Evil: Dead Aim was the first RE title developed by Cavia, known for the Drakengard games. Despite Dead Aim's uncharacteristically low sales and mixed reception, they would later go on to develop The Umbrella Chronicles and its sequel for the Nintendo Wii. Directed by Eiro Shirahama and Takuya Iwasaki, Dead Aim would serve as the final nail in the coffin for Gun Survivor. Did they manage to make the franchise good for once? Dead Aim marks a significant improvement over its predecessors, though not enough to make it worthwhile.
The story was written by a trio of writers, with Resident Evil veteran scenario writer Noboru Sugimura heading the pack, being his last contribution to the series. Unfortunately, every single aspect of it is underdeveloped. The game opens in medias res with American secret agent Bruce McGivern held at gunpoint by Morpheus D. Duvall, a rouge Umbrella executive who threatened both the United States and China with bioweapons of mass destruction. A shadowed figure tosses a grenade at the two, giving Bruce time to escape deep into the bowels of the Spencer Rain cruise ship. From there, Bruce meets Fongling, a Chinese agent with whom he forms an uneasy infatuation and alliance. If you think any of this sounds interesting, sadly, it's not explored in any great detail. Bruce and Fongling have no character development and they feel like very blatant stand-ins for Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong respectively, giving off intense "original the character" vibes. Morpheus isn't a strong villain either. He gets very little screentime before suddenly deciding to become the big scary mutated bad guy. His only personality trait is being obsessed with beauty, even asking Bruce why Americans choose the ugliest guns. We barely get enough time to be introduced to these characters, and the plot doesn't take them anywhere. Bruce and Fongling, of course, predictably fall in love, which has no payoff. Naturally, the game ends with Morpheus mutating into a giant, bloated monster who gets blown up with the rest of the underground laboratory, because of course there's an underground lab. None of this is satisfying and it feels more like fanfiction than a screenplay written by the writer of Resident Evil 2.
Dead Aim continues Gun Survivor's tradition of attempting to mix survival horror and light gun shooters, and like the previous games, it does not work. Nothing about Dead Aim's game design really works in general. Exploration is done from a third-person perspective, similarly to Resident Evil 4, but when fighting enemies the camera snaps to a first-person perspective. I still can't figure out exactly how to emulate a Namco GunCon, so I played with a gamepad, and honestly, it doesn't play too bad with one. It takes some getting used to, but it does feel relatively responsive. What I don't like is the camera system, which still has Survivor's problem of jerking around whenever fast-moving enemies are on screen. This not only looks bad but can also be frustrating when fighting the hunter elites, which in hunter fashion tend to leap around the map. Previous games indicated that a zombie was dead by a pool of blood forming underneath, but Dead Aim has no such courtesy. It's hard to tell if zombies are actually dead or not, as they tend to play dead after you've downed them, leading to them sneaking up on you after you've moved on. This is a terrible design oversight that just makes an otherwise easy game so much more frustrating. On the other hand, the block move, if you time it correctly, eliminates any shred of difficulty the game has, even reducing the mighty Tyrant 091 into a joke. This strange difficulty balancing just makes encounters feel weird, as I feel like I shouldn't be cheesing the block, but the game lets me do it anyway. Oddly enough though, the game does remain somewhat fun. Blowing holes in zombies will always have some inherently entertaining element to it no matter how poorly designed, so I wasn't really bored by Dead Aim. The game is also ridiculously short, taking me only 3 hours to beat it. If I paid full price for this back in 2003, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Visually, Dead Aim resembles shovelware of the lowest variety. Running on the id Tech 3 engine of Quake 3 fame, Dead Aim looks flat and lifeless. Environments are sparsely detailed, without any impression that the cruise ship was once populated by living people. Character models are low-poly, resembling a PC game from 1999. They all animate like a design student's first project, rigidly. Zombie models are visibly blocky and enemies, in general, don't leave a lasting impression. Considering this is the same year and console that Silent Hill 3 came out on, this is inexcusable. None of the new enemies have striking designs. The glimmers' glowing heads are kind of cool, but otherwise, they're just yet another frog enemy. The new tyrant actually looks pretty cool, but I wouldn't exactly call its design exceptional. Morpheus's monster design looks like a b-grade Alexia Ashford, which is a design I wasn't particularly fond of, to begin with. Like all previous RE games, Dead Aim uses pre-rendered FMV cutscenes, and these are wildly inconsistent in their quality. The most important scenes are rendered with some pretty slick-looking CGI which looks and animates rather well, they're even shot rather nicely too. The main problem with these FMVs is that the editing is atrocious, with many unnecessary slow-motion scenes and quick cuts which interrupt the action and make it feel like an early 2000s nu-metal video. The less important scenes are treated to FMVs that are less than savory, so to speak. While models are somewhat more detailed and expressive than their in-game counterparts, they animate terribly and this can often lead to faces looking really funny. They're also plagued by aliasing, which frankly makes them look unfinished.
Although I've found the vast majority of this game rather pitiful, I actually found the soundtrack, composed by Nobuyoshi Sano, to be rather unique. While I'm not as big of a fan of it as some are, I have to admit it's an oddly bright spot in an otherwise broken game. In fact, Dead Aim's save room theme is probably my favorite in the entire series. It's simplistic but incredibly evocative and hits an atmosphere the others don't really touch. It's more synth-heavy than previous titles, and I appreciate the constant use of flange and reverb effects. To paraphrase YouTuber ThorHighHeels, it does feel oddly atmospheric. Save Room, Battle Tyrant, and Scream in the Darkness are my favorites of the bunch. Escape Now is the only track I wasn't a fan of, as it is just a repetitive piano being smashed relentlessly.
The voice acting in Dead Aim is, as many would claim, "fits RE standard". It's hilariously bad in every respect. Raj Ramayya sounds uninterested as Bruce, playing him as a ditzy idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Angus Waycott plays Morpheus as a "British villain" and he's probably the best of the bunch, but that really isn't saying much and by and large it isn't a good performance. Claire O'Connor's Fongling is... a slightly offensive Chinese stereotype. None of these performances carry dramatic weight and while some would argue they add to the charm, I didn't find it nearly as funny as say, Survivor or RE1.
Resident Evil: Dead Aim was the last Gun Survivor game for a good reason. Although it does manage to improve upon its predecessors, it still struggles with a cookie-cutter narrative, d-list "original" characters, broken gameplay, and visuals that resemble the worst of Wii shovelware. Thankfully, the soundtrack is pretty interesting, but you're better off just listening to it on YouTube.
The story was written by a trio of writers, with Resident Evil veteran scenario writer Noboru Sugimura heading the pack, being his last contribution to the series. Unfortunately, every single aspect of it is underdeveloped. The game opens in medias res with American secret agent Bruce McGivern held at gunpoint by Morpheus D. Duvall, a rouge Umbrella executive who threatened both the United States and China with bioweapons of mass destruction. A shadowed figure tosses a grenade at the two, giving Bruce time to escape deep into the bowels of the Spencer Rain cruise ship. From there, Bruce meets Fongling, a Chinese agent with whom he forms an uneasy infatuation and alliance. If you think any of this sounds interesting, sadly, it's not explored in any great detail. Bruce and Fongling have no character development and they feel like very blatant stand-ins for Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong respectively, giving off intense "original the character" vibes. Morpheus isn't a strong villain either. He gets very little screentime before suddenly deciding to become the big scary mutated bad guy. His only personality trait is being obsessed with beauty, even asking Bruce why Americans choose the ugliest guns. We barely get enough time to be introduced to these characters, and the plot doesn't take them anywhere. Bruce and Fongling, of course, predictably fall in love, which has no payoff. Naturally, the game ends with Morpheus mutating into a giant, bloated monster who gets blown up with the rest of the underground laboratory, because of course there's an underground lab. None of this is satisfying and it feels more like fanfiction than a screenplay written by the writer of Resident Evil 2.
Dead Aim continues Gun Survivor's tradition of attempting to mix survival horror and light gun shooters, and like the previous games, it does not work. Nothing about Dead Aim's game design really works in general. Exploration is done from a third-person perspective, similarly to Resident Evil 4, but when fighting enemies the camera snaps to a first-person perspective. I still can't figure out exactly how to emulate a Namco GunCon, so I played with a gamepad, and honestly, it doesn't play too bad with one. It takes some getting used to, but it does feel relatively responsive. What I don't like is the camera system, which still has Survivor's problem of jerking around whenever fast-moving enemies are on screen. This not only looks bad but can also be frustrating when fighting the hunter elites, which in hunter fashion tend to leap around the map. Previous games indicated that a zombie was dead by a pool of blood forming underneath, but Dead Aim has no such courtesy. It's hard to tell if zombies are actually dead or not, as they tend to play dead after you've downed them, leading to them sneaking up on you after you've moved on. This is a terrible design oversight that just makes an otherwise easy game so much more frustrating. On the other hand, the block move, if you time it correctly, eliminates any shred of difficulty the game has, even reducing the mighty Tyrant 091 into a joke. This strange difficulty balancing just makes encounters feel weird, as I feel like I shouldn't be cheesing the block, but the game lets me do it anyway. Oddly enough though, the game does remain somewhat fun. Blowing holes in zombies will always have some inherently entertaining element to it no matter how poorly designed, so I wasn't really bored by Dead Aim. The game is also ridiculously short, taking me only 3 hours to beat it. If I paid full price for this back in 2003, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Visually, Dead Aim resembles shovelware of the lowest variety. Running on the id Tech 3 engine of Quake 3 fame, Dead Aim looks flat and lifeless. Environments are sparsely detailed, without any impression that the cruise ship was once populated by living people. Character models are low-poly, resembling a PC game from 1999. They all animate like a design student's first project, rigidly. Zombie models are visibly blocky and enemies, in general, don't leave a lasting impression. Considering this is the same year and console that Silent Hill 3 came out on, this is inexcusable. None of the new enemies have striking designs. The glimmers' glowing heads are kind of cool, but otherwise, they're just yet another frog enemy. The new tyrant actually looks pretty cool, but I wouldn't exactly call its design exceptional. Morpheus's monster design looks like a b-grade Alexia Ashford, which is a design I wasn't particularly fond of, to begin with. Like all previous RE games, Dead Aim uses pre-rendered FMV cutscenes, and these are wildly inconsistent in their quality. The most important scenes are rendered with some pretty slick-looking CGI which looks and animates rather well, they're even shot rather nicely too. The main problem with these FMVs is that the editing is atrocious, with many unnecessary slow-motion scenes and quick cuts which interrupt the action and make it feel like an early 2000s nu-metal video. The less important scenes are treated to FMVs that are less than savory, so to speak. While models are somewhat more detailed and expressive than their in-game counterparts, they animate terribly and this can often lead to faces looking really funny. They're also plagued by aliasing, which frankly makes them look unfinished.
Although I've found the vast majority of this game rather pitiful, I actually found the soundtrack, composed by Nobuyoshi Sano, to be rather unique. While I'm not as big of a fan of it as some are, I have to admit it's an oddly bright spot in an otherwise broken game. In fact, Dead Aim's save room theme is probably my favorite in the entire series. It's simplistic but incredibly evocative and hits an atmosphere the others don't really touch. It's more synth-heavy than previous titles, and I appreciate the constant use of flange and reverb effects. To paraphrase YouTuber ThorHighHeels, it does feel oddly atmospheric. Save Room, Battle Tyrant, and Scream in the Darkness are my favorites of the bunch. Escape Now is the only track I wasn't a fan of, as it is just a repetitive piano being smashed relentlessly.
The voice acting in Dead Aim is, as many would claim, "fits RE standard". It's hilariously bad in every respect. Raj Ramayya sounds uninterested as Bruce, playing him as a ditzy idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Angus Waycott plays Morpheus as a "British villain" and he's probably the best of the bunch, but that really isn't saying much and by and large it isn't a good performance. Claire O'Connor's Fongling is... a slightly offensive Chinese stereotype. None of these performances carry dramatic weight and while some would argue they add to the charm, I didn't find it nearly as funny as say, Survivor or RE1.
Resident Evil: Dead Aim was the last Gun Survivor game for a good reason. Although it does manage to improve upon its predecessors, it still struggles with a cookie-cutter narrative, d-list "original" characters, broken gameplay, and visuals that resemble the worst of Wii shovelware. Thankfully, the soundtrack is pretty interesting, but you're better off just listening to it on YouTube.
2015
Hacknet is, as the title implies, a hacking video game developed by Matt Trobbiani, stemming from a 48-hour game jam idea built into a full game throughout two and a half years. Playing as an unnamed hacker, you are called into the fray to investigate the death of a prominent hacker after downloading Hacknet, a new operating system designed specifically to exploit security issues in consumer servers.
Hacknet's story exists solely to give the player something to do other than poke around. It doesn't get going until halfway through the game, and by then you'd probably have forgotten the initial premise like me. Nevertheless, it's not bad at all, and there is a mildly interesting mystery for the player to solve. What's more interesting are the little side stories you can find just by poking around in the game. A screenwriter who wants to sell his terrible script to a movie exec, a man who is so addicted to an online idle game that he wants you to reset his score, and even a family begging to have their patriarch's heart monitor shut off. There are also small little IRC chat archives you can find, and they tend to be pretty funny too. The problem is that they tend to be repeated numerous times and after a while can lose a bit of their luster. Being a voyeur is a concept I have always found very interesting in gaming and Hacknet lets you excel at that.
The actual gameplay consists of, well, hacking. I have no idea how realistic the actual hacking mechanics are, but Trobbiani did a very good job of making them feel immersive. Everything is designed exactly like a real OS (highly simplified, of course) with command prompt and all. It's essentially a puzzle game, with the player using their newly acquired programs to approach increasingly difficult puzzles. Using a command prompt as your main weapon is a lovely idea and it plays out very well, adding to the immersion much more than Windows-style icons could have. The number of things you have to discover and the different ways you can discover them is insanely impressive and it feels as if an immersive sim and a text adventure game had a baby. My only complaint is that the side missions can become very repetitive, and they don't have a consistently increasing scale of challenge, making some of them feel like busywork instead of your next big heist. Trobbiani does try to add variety, such as having another hacker try to hack you for a change, but this variation does not occur as frequently as I'd like.
It's hard to say anything about the presentation considering the game consists primarily of text, but I'll say Trobbiani achieves the look of a fictionalized OS pretty well. You can activate certain visual effects like bloom and scanlines to make it resemble an old monitor, and these are nice small touches. The soundtrack is often praised but I'm afraid it didn't resonate with me. It's mostly fine but it's a pretty generic electronic score and after a while, I just muted it because I found it actively took away from the immersion for me. I understand why people love it but it just wasn't for me.
Hacknet is a very innovative title and one of the most creative indie games I've played as of late. Sure, it suffers from occasionally repetitive gameplay and storytelling, as well as a mediocre soundtrack, but the puzzle design, immersion, and raw sandbox-esque use of your abilities pull it forward. Not for everyone, but if it sounds remotely interesting to you, I'd recommend it.
Hacknet's story exists solely to give the player something to do other than poke around. It doesn't get going until halfway through the game, and by then you'd probably have forgotten the initial premise like me. Nevertheless, it's not bad at all, and there is a mildly interesting mystery for the player to solve. What's more interesting are the little side stories you can find just by poking around in the game. A screenwriter who wants to sell his terrible script to a movie exec, a man who is so addicted to an online idle game that he wants you to reset his score, and even a family begging to have their patriarch's heart monitor shut off. There are also small little IRC chat archives you can find, and they tend to be pretty funny too. The problem is that they tend to be repeated numerous times and after a while can lose a bit of their luster. Being a voyeur is a concept I have always found very interesting in gaming and Hacknet lets you excel at that.
The actual gameplay consists of, well, hacking. I have no idea how realistic the actual hacking mechanics are, but Trobbiani did a very good job of making them feel immersive. Everything is designed exactly like a real OS (highly simplified, of course) with command prompt and all. It's essentially a puzzle game, with the player using their newly acquired programs to approach increasingly difficult puzzles. Using a command prompt as your main weapon is a lovely idea and it plays out very well, adding to the immersion much more than Windows-style icons could have. The number of things you have to discover and the different ways you can discover them is insanely impressive and it feels as if an immersive sim and a text adventure game had a baby. My only complaint is that the side missions can become very repetitive, and they don't have a consistently increasing scale of challenge, making some of them feel like busywork instead of your next big heist. Trobbiani does try to add variety, such as having another hacker try to hack you for a change, but this variation does not occur as frequently as I'd like.
It's hard to say anything about the presentation considering the game consists primarily of text, but I'll say Trobbiani achieves the look of a fictionalized OS pretty well. You can activate certain visual effects like bloom and scanlines to make it resemble an old monitor, and these are nice small touches. The soundtrack is often praised but I'm afraid it didn't resonate with me. It's mostly fine but it's a pretty generic electronic score and after a while, I just muted it because I found it actively took away from the immersion for me. I understand why people love it but it just wasn't for me.
Hacknet is a very innovative title and one of the most creative indie games I've played as of late. Sure, it suffers from occasionally repetitive gameplay and storytelling, as well as a mediocre soundtrack, but the puzzle design, immersion, and raw sandbox-esque use of your abilities pull it forward. Not for everyone, but if it sounds remotely interesting to you, I'd recommend it.
1992
The Terminator is a platformer developed by Radical Entertainment based on the film of the same name. I'm pretty confident that most people only know of this game due to the Angry Video Game Nerd episode, and it definitely lives up to its nasty reputation.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a platformer developed by Software Creations, based on the film of the same name. Terminator 2 is filled with exciting set pieces, so it feels like a no-brainer to turn into a game. This game is a major improvement over Radical Entertainment's adaptation of the first film, but still doesn't quite hit the mark for many reasons.
Like the majority of movie-based games, Terminator 2 is a platformer, but not a particularly good one. You play as the T-800 and the first level consists of beating up bikers at the bar from the beginning of the film. You have to defeat every single enemy on screen to progress, but the game will let you move beyond where the enemies are, meaning you'll often just be wandering around thinking you can advance but be missing one or two enemies. The T-800 has these tiny arms which can barely reach anyone without being directly in front of him and this can lead to enemies ganging up on you. Level two depicts the motorcycle canal scene and it's frustrating as hell. You have to avoid fast-moving obstacles that you are barely given enough time to react to, while also shooting the T-1000's oncoming truck by mashing the button over and over before he leaves. It's frustrating and took way too many attempts to complete. Level three has you explore the Pescadero hospital in pursuit of Sarah Connor, avoiding security guards and the T-1000. This level isn't too bad, actually, and I can see it being part of a better game, but it's too repetitive. Most of the rooms have nothing in them and they're all the same thing so it's just a matter of chance whether you find what you're looking for or not. You're also supposed to only shoot the guards in the kneecaps, like in the film, but to my knowledge, there isn't any punishment for just killing them. From what I played of the next few levels, they're mostly the same, so I just dropped the game as I wasn't having fun. The game also gives you only four lives and zero continues, so if you die, it's back to the first level. Sure, you can collect extra lives, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. It's a below-average platformer that, while not intolerable, doesn't do anything to stand out from an already flooded market of platformers on NES.
The presentation is somewhat mixed. The visuals aren't too bad but they're fairly average as far as the NES goes, and this late into the console's lifespan I expect a little more. Mega Man 5 was released the same year and looks miles more detailed and expressive in its sprite work and backgrounds. Granted, one is going for relative realism and the other stylization, but on the NES the difference isn't as large as with other platforms. The T-800 himself doesn't resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger at all and looks pretty small and wimpy, with many enemies being larger than him for some reason. I do like how the game actually tries to fill the player in on the film's story if they hadn't seen it before, but I do think the traced character portraits look a little bit off-model. If there's any bright spot though, it would be the soundtrack composed by Geoff Follin, which is very experimental and sounds more like something from a Commodore 64 game than the NES. He channels some musical elements from Brad Fidel's film score, such as the emphasis on repetitive percussion, it's atmospheric and kicks up exactly when it needs to. It's a surprisingly solid score for a relatively bad game.
Terminator 2 on NES isn't an awful game by any means but it's not good either. It's below-average, oftentimes bad, and while there are some interesting elements in isolation, none of them form a cohesive whole. Not recommended to anyone really, even if it improves heavily on the first game.
Like the majority of movie-based games, Terminator 2 is a platformer, but not a particularly good one. You play as the T-800 and the first level consists of beating up bikers at the bar from the beginning of the film. You have to defeat every single enemy on screen to progress, but the game will let you move beyond where the enemies are, meaning you'll often just be wandering around thinking you can advance but be missing one or two enemies. The T-800 has these tiny arms which can barely reach anyone without being directly in front of him and this can lead to enemies ganging up on you. Level two depicts the motorcycle canal scene and it's frustrating as hell. You have to avoid fast-moving obstacles that you are barely given enough time to react to, while also shooting the T-1000's oncoming truck by mashing the button over and over before he leaves. It's frustrating and took way too many attempts to complete. Level three has you explore the Pescadero hospital in pursuit of Sarah Connor, avoiding security guards and the T-1000. This level isn't too bad, actually, and I can see it being part of a better game, but it's too repetitive. Most of the rooms have nothing in them and they're all the same thing so it's just a matter of chance whether you find what you're looking for or not. You're also supposed to only shoot the guards in the kneecaps, like in the film, but to my knowledge, there isn't any punishment for just killing them. From what I played of the next few levels, they're mostly the same, so I just dropped the game as I wasn't having fun. The game also gives you only four lives and zero continues, so if you die, it's back to the first level. Sure, you can collect extra lives, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. It's a below-average platformer that, while not intolerable, doesn't do anything to stand out from an already flooded market of platformers on NES.
The presentation is somewhat mixed. The visuals aren't too bad but they're fairly average as far as the NES goes, and this late into the console's lifespan I expect a little more. Mega Man 5 was released the same year and looks miles more detailed and expressive in its sprite work and backgrounds. Granted, one is going for relative realism and the other stylization, but on the NES the difference isn't as large as with other platforms. The T-800 himself doesn't resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger at all and looks pretty small and wimpy, with many enemies being larger than him for some reason. I do like how the game actually tries to fill the player in on the film's story if they hadn't seen it before, but I do think the traced character portraits look a little bit off-model. If there's any bright spot though, it would be the soundtrack composed by Geoff Follin, which is very experimental and sounds more like something from a Commodore 64 game than the NES. He channels some musical elements from Brad Fidel's film score, such as the emphasis on repetitive percussion, it's atmospheric and kicks up exactly when it needs to. It's a surprisingly solid score for a relatively bad game.
Terminator 2 on NES isn't an awful game by any means but it's not good either. It's below-average, oftentimes bad, and while there are some interesting elements in isolation, none of them form a cohesive whole. Not recommended to anyone really, even if it improves heavily on the first game.