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.
Resident Evil Code: Veronica is a game I knew was going to be somewhat of a polarizing experience, especially since the online discourse surrounding it can be downright hostile at points. Critically acclaimed at the time of its release, there are tons of Resident Evil fans who swear by Veronica that it is the best game in the series. Likewise, there are tons of fans who swear it is the worst. I'm not quite sure how to feel about the game, but it was certainly an interesting experience.
Code Veronica's conception infamously stemmed from a failed attempt to port Resident Evil 2 to the Sega Saturn, which was canceled due to the significant amount of downgrades that would be necessary. Capcom ordered that the dev team still make something to appease Sega fans and Hiroki Kato, having worked as a system planner for the original game, was appointed to the director's chair. I can respect Kato's vision, but due to many reasons, I don't exactly think it pans out.
The story is perhaps one of the most disappointing elements. Kato was trying to tell the story of a man desperately trying to revive his dying noble bloodline, criticizing aristocrat culture and the overzealous rich, but due to numerous missteps, it doesn't pan out. Claire Redfield returns as the protagonist, and although Kato's intention was for her to be tougher, it instead comes off as the exact opposite. Claire comes off as a bit of a wimp in this game, cowering in fear at the sight of even the most basic zombie, which doesn't make too much sense considering she bested mutant Birkin only a few months prior. Steve Burnside is commonly cited as perhaps the most annoying character in the series, and while I did not hate him as much as others, I did not enjoy him as a character. He is quite annoying, and just generally acts like a buffoon, and the budding romance the game tries to portray between them is both unrealistic and downright creepy.
The antagonists, Alfred and Alexia Ashford are entirely unintimidating and hard to take seriously. Alfred is so over the top and silly that it's hard to see him as a serious threat, and Alexia doesn't appear proper until the final half of the game, so there is little time to truly grow to hate her. Throw in a completely unnecessary plot twist where Alfred cross-dresses as his sister and you have villains who are not only unthreatening but rather awkward and silly. The game lets you know in much more effective ways that Alfred is creepily obsessed with his sister via memos you can read, and the cross-dressing twist occurs almost immediately after its set up, so it feels entirely inconsequential to the greater narrative. The return of Albert Wesker is interesting for sure, and I do want to find out where his ongoing feud with Chris goes, but he doesn't do much of anything. Sure, he is the one behind the compound's destruction, but he doesn't show up very often and the last time you see him is when he gets smacked in the face by Alexia. It feels like a cool plot point that doesn't go anywhere. Code Veronica is also when the series went from being relatively grounded to being more like a cartoon, and that can be witnessed in many scenes, such as the opening or the airplane crash. While I do not think it's too intrusive in this game, it laid the groundwork for the more silly nature of later games. It does take away from the believability of some scenes, but it's not the biggest flaw with the writing. Code Veronica's plot has some interesting ideas but they are either underdeveloped or undermined by a few damning decisions. It doesn't outright ruin the game but it can make it hard to get invested at points. I only hope that if they remake the game, they can retool it into something truly interesting
Okay, so the story isn't great, but how does the gameplay? Unfortunately, Code Veronica feels like a bit of a step back. Mechanically, none of the innovations from Resident Evil 3 (gunpowder, being able to seamlessly walk up stairs) are brought over, and the game doesn't have anything to replace that. The only major innovation I can think of is dual-wielding, which can sometimes feel unwieldy rather than cool or useful. Otherwise, it's pretty standard survival horror fare. It plays well enough, and I had fun with it, but the feeling of "that's it?" when playing the supposed next generation of Resident Evil is felt. The only thing I can think of that Code Veronica does better than RE3 are the puzzles, which aren't nearly as tedious.
Code Veronica is somewhat notorious for its increased difficulty compared to previous games, and I will admit, this is true. However, this isn't always a bad thing. As much as I loved RE3, I will admit I didn't struggle with that game very much. It felt nice to have a game that very rarely had me above "caution" on the health bar. However, there are parts of this game that feel cheap. Respawning enemies, while they never seriously messed me up, were an annoyance and kind of nullified the "use resource, kill enemy permanently" element of survival horror. There are also numerous cutoff points in the game, where the player is expected to know when to take certain items with them lest they lose them when they have to play as another character. These are never signaled by the game, and can severely mess people up if they're unaware of them. It's easily the worst part about the game. The boss fights aren't so bad. I honestly cannot see a seasoned Resident Evil player (which I think it's fair to assume you've played RE1-3 if you're playing Code Veronica) getting stuck at the Tyrant fight on the plane, as any RE fan should know to save the heavy-duty weapons for a boss fight. The first Alexia fight I beat with only a pistol, and I've heard many struggled with that. The final boss, however, is a total pain. While it only took me a few tries, the little floor creatures she spawns are nothing but annoying, and they tend to enjoy stunlocking you until the sun rises.
Battle Mode is decent enough, I suppose. It's fun for a little bit and as usual, it's exciting to try to shoot for the best rank, but it is no replacement for the mercenaries. Unlike the mercenaries, where the clock counts down and you must escape before then, battle mode's clock counts up, and this removes a lot of tension. Sure, you're still essentially playing for the best possible time, but removing that tension simply makes it less exciting. Also, the first-person mode is awful. Instead of making a proper first-person mode, Capcom opted to just place a camera inside the player model's head, which means you still use tank controls. While this works perfectly with fixed camera angles, it does not work in first-person, and it proves to be nothing more than a curiosity.
Code Veronica is also significantly longer than the previous games, and this isn't a good thing. It's around 10-15 hours long and doesn't earn this length. Most of this time is spent traversing the same locations as both Claire and Chris, and during Chris's section, the tedium begins to set in. In contrast, RE3 only took me around 5 hours to complete. It has a similar issue to Silent Hill 4: The Room, in which Capcom attempts to artificially extend playtime by simply having you revisit previous areas. It's Chris's section where the game's faults begin to show, and if the game was condensed to about 6-8 hours it would be a much more pleasant experience.
Visually, Code Veronica is a mixed bag. On a technical level, it's very impressive. The cutscenes were famous for their realism at the time and the amount of polygons the cutscene models boast is rather impressive. The move to fully three-dimensional environments does allow for some neat cinematic use of the camera as well. Moreover, the most impressive part is how the game manages to run at 60FPS the whole time. While not expected of console games of the time, it helps make the game feel more fluid and is certainly appreciated. The issue lies in the art direction. It's not particularly inspired, and locations feel dull. Both the prison complex and the Antarctic base are just a series of metal corridors with little to make them stand out. Even areas that are more distinctive feel like they're just watered-down versions of areas from previous games. If I hadn't just finished the game, the imagery the game provides would just mix and I'd most likely struggle to remember specific locations.
This somewhat extends to the monster designs as well. Bandersnatches are fairly unique, but their bright yellow skin and their dopey face make it hard to take them seriously, even if gameplay-wise they represent a large threat. None of the other unique enemies stand out, though. Zombies are to be expected, so it's hard to criticize their inclusion, but the rest all seem like variations of previous enemies. Giant spiders, giant worms, tyrants, even hunters return practically unchanged. It works, but it's not particularly creative.
On the aural side of things, Code Veronica's soundtrack is superb. Done by a trio of talented composers, it takes exactly what made the previous three soundtracks great and kicks it up a notch. It certainly feels grander, and while I criticized the story for being less grounded, I cannot criticize the score for the same thing. It feels perfectly in line with the franchise's sound and blessed us with one of the best save room themes in the series. Tense, exciting, and calming, Code Veronica's OST is a winner.
The voice acting is somewhat iffy, however. Alyson Court returns as Claire and once again gives a rock-solid performance. Chris was recast as Michael Filipowich and although he only appears in this game, he sounds exactly like I imagined Chris would sound. Wesker was recast as Richard Waugh, who gave the villain the incredibly iconic voice we know today. Leila Johnson and Peter Oldring do well enough considering what they were given, I suppose, but the writing and direction bring down their performances. I didn't enjoy Bill Houston as Steve, as I found him very whiney and unpleasant to listen to. It's a mixed bag overall, but the roles that hit score.
Code Veronica is a decent survival horror game, but one that disappoints compared to the legacy of the previous three games. It's not a bad game, but one that is marred by deep flaws. Nevertheless, there is an enjoyable experience here and if you're a Resident Evil fan who hasn't already played it, I'd recommend Code Veronica. If you're a more general survival horror fan, however, there are better options out there for you.
Code Veronica's conception infamously stemmed from a failed attempt to port Resident Evil 2 to the Sega Saturn, which was canceled due to the significant amount of downgrades that would be necessary. Capcom ordered that the dev team still make something to appease Sega fans and Hiroki Kato, having worked as a system planner for the original game, was appointed to the director's chair. I can respect Kato's vision, but due to many reasons, I don't exactly think it pans out.
The story is perhaps one of the most disappointing elements. Kato was trying to tell the story of a man desperately trying to revive his dying noble bloodline, criticizing aristocrat culture and the overzealous rich, but due to numerous missteps, it doesn't pan out. Claire Redfield returns as the protagonist, and although Kato's intention was for her to be tougher, it instead comes off as the exact opposite. Claire comes off as a bit of a wimp in this game, cowering in fear at the sight of even the most basic zombie, which doesn't make too much sense considering she bested mutant Birkin only a few months prior. Steve Burnside is commonly cited as perhaps the most annoying character in the series, and while I did not hate him as much as others, I did not enjoy him as a character. He is quite annoying, and just generally acts like a buffoon, and the budding romance the game tries to portray between them is both unrealistic and downright creepy.
The antagonists, Alfred and Alexia Ashford are entirely unintimidating and hard to take seriously. Alfred is so over the top and silly that it's hard to see him as a serious threat, and Alexia doesn't appear proper until the final half of the game, so there is little time to truly grow to hate her. Throw in a completely unnecessary plot twist where Alfred cross-dresses as his sister and you have villains who are not only unthreatening but rather awkward and silly. The game lets you know in much more effective ways that Alfred is creepily obsessed with his sister via memos you can read, and the cross-dressing twist occurs almost immediately after its set up, so it feels entirely inconsequential to the greater narrative. The return of Albert Wesker is interesting for sure, and I do want to find out where his ongoing feud with Chris goes, but he doesn't do much of anything. Sure, he is the one behind the compound's destruction, but he doesn't show up very often and the last time you see him is when he gets smacked in the face by Alexia. It feels like a cool plot point that doesn't go anywhere. Code Veronica is also when the series went from being relatively grounded to being more like a cartoon, and that can be witnessed in many scenes, such as the opening or the airplane crash. While I do not think it's too intrusive in this game, it laid the groundwork for the more silly nature of later games. It does take away from the believability of some scenes, but it's not the biggest flaw with the writing. Code Veronica's plot has some interesting ideas but they are either underdeveloped or undermined by a few damning decisions. It doesn't outright ruin the game but it can make it hard to get invested at points. I only hope that if they remake the game, they can retool it into something truly interesting
Okay, so the story isn't great, but how does the gameplay? Unfortunately, Code Veronica feels like a bit of a step back. Mechanically, none of the innovations from Resident Evil 3 (gunpowder, being able to seamlessly walk up stairs) are brought over, and the game doesn't have anything to replace that. The only major innovation I can think of is dual-wielding, which can sometimes feel unwieldy rather than cool or useful. Otherwise, it's pretty standard survival horror fare. It plays well enough, and I had fun with it, but the feeling of "that's it?" when playing the supposed next generation of Resident Evil is felt. The only thing I can think of that Code Veronica does better than RE3 are the puzzles, which aren't nearly as tedious.
Code Veronica is somewhat notorious for its increased difficulty compared to previous games, and I will admit, this is true. However, this isn't always a bad thing. As much as I loved RE3, I will admit I didn't struggle with that game very much. It felt nice to have a game that very rarely had me above "caution" on the health bar. However, there are parts of this game that feel cheap. Respawning enemies, while they never seriously messed me up, were an annoyance and kind of nullified the "use resource, kill enemy permanently" element of survival horror. There are also numerous cutoff points in the game, where the player is expected to know when to take certain items with them lest they lose them when they have to play as another character. These are never signaled by the game, and can severely mess people up if they're unaware of them. It's easily the worst part about the game. The boss fights aren't so bad. I honestly cannot see a seasoned Resident Evil player (which I think it's fair to assume you've played RE1-3 if you're playing Code Veronica) getting stuck at the Tyrant fight on the plane, as any RE fan should know to save the heavy-duty weapons for a boss fight. The first Alexia fight I beat with only a pistol, and I've heard many struggled with that. The final boss, however, is a total pain. While it only took me a few tries, the little floor creatures she spawns are nothing but annoying, and they tend to enjoy stunlocking you until the sun rises.
Battle Mode is decent enough, I suppose. It's fun for a little bit and as usual, it's exciting to try to shoot for the best rank, but it is no replacement for the mercenaries. Unlike the mercenaries, where the clock counts down and you must escape before then, battle mode's clock counts up, and this removes a lot of tension. Sure, you're still essentially playing for the best possible time, but removing that tension simply makes it less exciting. Also, the first-person mode is awful. Instead of making a proper first-person mode, Capcom opted to just place a camera inside the player model's head, which means you still use tank controls. While this works perfectly with fixed camera angles, it does not work in first-person, and it proves to be nothing more than a curiosity.
Code Veronica is also significantly longer than the previous games, and this isn't a good thing. It's around 10-15 hours long and doesn't earn this length. Most of this time is spent traversing the same locations as both Claire and Chris, and during Chris's section, the tedium begins to set in. In contrast, RE3 only took me around 5 hours to complete. It has a similar issue to Silent Hill 4: The Room, in which Capcom attempts to artificially extend playtime by simply having you revisit previous areas. It's Chris's section where the game's faults begin to show, and if the game was condensed to about 6-8 hours it would be a much more pleasant experience.
Visually, Code Veronica is a mixed bag. On a technical level, it's very impressive. The cutscenes were famous for their realism at the time and the amount of polygons the cutscene models boast is rather impressive. The move to fully three-dimensional environments does allow for some neat cinematic use of the camera as well. Moreover, the most impressive part is how the game manages to run at 60FPS the whole time. While not expected of console games of the time, it helps make the game feel more fluid and is certainly appreciated. The issue lies in the art direction. It's not particularly inspired, and locations feel dull. Both the prison complex and the Antarctic base are just a series of metal corridors with little to make them stand out. Even areas that are more distinctive feel like they're just watered-down versions of areas from previous games. If I hadn't just finished the game, the imagery the game provides would just mix and I'd most likely struggle to remember specific locations.
This somewhat extends to the monster designs as well. Bandersnatches are fairly unique, but their bright yellow skin and their dopey face make it hard to take them seriously, even if gameplay-wise they represent a large threat. None of the other unique enemies stand out, though. Zombies are to be expected, so it's hard to criticize their inclusion, but the rest all seem like variations of previous enemies. Giant spiders, giant worms, tyrants, even hunters return practically unchanged. It works, but it's not particularly creative.
On the aural side of things, Code Veronica's soundtrack is superb. Done by a trio of talented composers, it takes exactly what made the previous three soundtracks great and kicks it up a notch. It certainly feels grander, and while I criticized the story for being less grounded, I cannot criticize the score for the same thing. It feels perfectly in line with the franchise's sound and blessed us with one of the best save room themes in the series. Tense, exciting, and calming, Code Veronica's OST is a winner.
The voice acting is somewhat iffy, however. Alyson Court returns as Claire and once again gives a rock-solid performance. Chris was recast as Michael Filipowich and although he only appears in this game, he sounds exactly like I imagined Chris would sound. Wesker was recast as Richard Waugh, who gave the villain the incredibly iconic voice we know today. Leila Johnson and Peter Oldring do well enough considering what they were given, I suppose, but the writing and direction bring down their performances. I didn't enjoy Bill Houston as Steve, as I found him very whiney and unpleasant to listen to. It's a mixed bag overall, but the roles that hit score.
Code Veronica is a decent survival horror game, but one that disappoints compared to the legacy of the previous three games. It's not a bad game, but one that is marred by deep flaws. Nevertheless, there is an enjoyable experience here and if you're a Resident Evil fan who hasn't already played it, I'd recommend Code Veronica. If you're a more general survival horror fan, however, there are better options out there for you.
Resident Evil is a universe ripe for exploration via genres other than survival horror, so it only made sense that after the explosive success of the original trilogy a spin-off title with a different genre would be commissioned. Director Hiroyuki Kai decided to make a light gun shooter, but instead of focusing on a tightly-designed on-rails experience, he decided to blend it with the survival horror formula that the series had been known for. Unfortunately, the team at TOSE was unable to pull this off, creating what many people consider to be possibly the worst game in the franchise.
The game's story, written by Noboru Sugimura and Naoyuki Sakai, is rather silly and poorly told. Say what you will about the narratives of the previous entries, the problem mostly lay in somewhat haphazard execution, rather than the scripts themselves. In Survivor, the narrative's problems exist on a conceptual level as well. You play as an unnamed man who, after a helicopter crash, wakes up on an isolated island overrun by a T-Virus outbreak. Suffering from severe amnesia, he believes he is a man named Vincent Goldman, an Umbrella executive that the game makes sure to let you know is unbelievably and cartoonishly cruel. Vincent had been performing inhumane experiments on kidnapped children, inflicting as much pain as possible to almost literally extract fear from their brains, which is used to manufacture T-103 Tyrants. Of course, our protagonist is revealed to not be Vincent, rather he is Ark Thompson, a private detective sent to the island at the request of Leon S. Kennedy. This plot twist could be seen coming from a mile away and any sort of mystery it could have possibly added is just wiped away by how obvious it all is. It's already hard enough to believe that this doofus is a detective, let alone a cruel scientist.
Well, the story is always secondary in Resident Evil, right? The main focus is usually the gameplay and how it creates the horror that we love to experience. Being a light gun shooter, I expected Survivor to be more "horror-themed" than actually scary, but I didn't expect it to be so dull. The game isn't a traditional light gun shooter; instead of being an on-rails experience, the player is allowed to roam freely and even avoid enemies altogether. This sounds like an interesting concept until you realize that they ridiculously simplified the mechanics, due to the Namco GunCon controller only having 4 buttons. The game tries to add variety by allowing you to take different paths, but at no point can you backtrack to see what you missed, making it feel overly linear despite TOSE's poor attempt at the illusion of free choice. Puzzles are ridiculously simplified. All they amount to is finding a key in one room and unlocking something in the next. I understand that RE puzzles were never Silent Hill-level mind-benders, but these can barely even be qualified as puzzles. The actual shooting doesn't manage to feel satisfying either, especially when the camera continuously jerks around when any fast-moving enemies are encountered. Movement is very awkward too. The "run" and "move backward" options are mapped to the same button that makes you move forward, so it's kind of confusing how to trigger one or the other. There isn't any strafing so all movement must be done manually, which isn't necessarily a major problem as much as a minor annoyance. All of these problems would be eliminated if TOSE just made it a normal light gun shooter a la The House of the Dead, but the insistence upon trying multiple things means it fails at all of them when it could have excelled at one.
The game is also a bit of a visual nightmare. Most of the assets are from previous games, which looked pretty good in those due to the camera's distance from models, but up close, they are a blocky pixelated mess. The environments are very basic and lack detail, which would be fine if it was released earlier on in the PlayStation's lifespan, but this was released in 2000, right as the PS1 was breathing its dying breaths. Considering Silent Hill was released the previous year and looks worlds better, this isn't acceptable. Cutscenes are also hilariously poor, with characters animating like stick figures, with horrible cinematography that sometimes obscures characters for whatever reason. Like the previous three games, Survivor uses full-motion video for some of its cutscenes. Previous games used either live-action film or CGI animation to show sequences that the PS1 was simply incapable of rendering believably. Survivor, on the other hand, might as well not even have them. The FMV cutscenes use the same assets as the in-engine cutscenes and all animate the same, so it's pretty confusing why they decided to go through the effort of pre-rendering them all when they look no better.
Resident Evil is infamous for its voice acting, so Survivor living up to that infamy isn't exactly a bad thing as many think it adds to the franchise's cheesy b-movie charm. I think it's worth noting, however, that Survivor's voice acting is miles worse than even the original Resident Evil, and has just as many hilarious lines. Such examples include "I AM NOT VINCENT. I AM ARK!!" "Am IIIIIIIII, Vincent?" and "VINCENT. YOU. ARE. A. MURDERER.". It's generally hilarious stuff and I can't complain about it considering the series pedigree.
If there's any bright spot in this otherwise tedious game, it's the soundtrack composed by Shiro Kohmoto. It's a bit formulaic, lacking in any genuinely memorable tunes, but it does build a half-decent atmosphere and sounds mostly in line with RE2 and RE3's OSTs. It's just more of the same, but it works, which is more than can be said for the rest of this game.
Resident Evil Survivor is an awful game and a sorry excuse for both an RE title and a light gun shooter. The game cannot commit to its premise, the story is silly and unengaging, it's dull to play, and is just generally ugly to look at. Clocking in at only three hours of playtime, I can imagine it being a rather disappointing purchase back in the early 2000s. I suppose if you're a die-hard RE fan it's not the worst way you could spend an afternoon, but that energy is probably best spent playing something else. Both RE fans and fans of the genre should stay away.
The game's story, written by Noboru Sugimura and Naoyuki Sakai, is rather silly and poorly told. Say what you will about the narratives of the previous entries, the problem mostly lay in somewhat haphazard execution, rather than the scripts themselves. In Survivor, the narrative's problems exist on a conceptual level as well. You play as an unnamed man who, after a helicopter crash, wakes up on an isolated island overrun by a T-Virus outbreak. Suffering from severe amnesia, he believes he is a man named Vincent Goldman, an Umbrella executive that the game makes sure to let you know is unbelievably and cartoonishly cruel. Vincent had been performing inhumane experiments on kidnapped children, inflicting as much pain as possible to almost literally extract fear from their brains, which is used to manufacture T-103 Tyrants. Of course, our protagonist is revealed to not be Vincent, rather he is Ark Thompson, a private detective sent to the island at the request of Leon S. Kennedy. This plot twist could be seen coming from a mile away and any sort of mystery it could have possibly added is just wiped away by how obvious it all is. It's already hard enough to believe that this doofus is a detective, let alone a cruel scientist.
Well, the story is always secondary in Resident Evil, right? The main focus is usually the gameplay and how it creates the horror that we love to experience. Being a light gun shooter, I expected Survivor to be more "horror-themed" than actually scary, but I didn't expect it to be so dull. The game isn't a traditional light gun shooter; instead of being an on-rails experience, the player is allowed to roam freely and even avoid enemies altogether. This sounds like an interesting concept until you realize that they ridiculously simplified the mechanics, due to the Namco GunCon controller only having 4 buttons. The game tries to add variety by allowing you to take different paths, but at no point can you backtrack to see what you missed, making it feel overly linear despite TOSE's poor attempt at the illusion of free choice. Puzzles are ridiculously simplified. All they amount to is finding a key in one room and unlocking something in the next. I understand that RE puzzles were never Silent Hill-level mind-benders, but these can barely even be qualified as puzzles. The actual shooting doesn't manage to feel satisfying either, especially when the camera continuously jerks around when any fast-moving enemies are encountered. Movement is very awkward too. The "run" and "move backward" options are mapped to the same button that makes you move forward, so it's kind of confusing how to trigger one or the other. There isn't any strafing so all movement must be done manually, which isn't necessarily a major problem as much as a minor annoyance. All of these problems would be eliminated if TOSE just made it a normal light gun shooter a la The House of the Dead, but the insistence upon trying multiple things means it fails at all of them when it could have excelled at one.
The game is also a bit of a visual nightmare. Most of the assets are from previous games, which looked pretty good in those due to the camera's distance from models, but up close, they are a blocky pixelated mess. The environments are very basic and lack detail, which would be fine if it was released earlier on in the PlayStation's lifespan, but this was released in 2000, right as the PS1 was breathing its dying breaths. Considering Silent Hill was released the previous year and looks worlds better, this isn't acceptable. Cutscenes are also hilariously poor, with characters animating like stick figures, with horrible cinematography that sometimes obscures characters for whatever reason. Like the previous three games, Survivor uses full-motion video for some of its cutscenes. Previous games used either live-action film or CGI animation to show sequences that the PS1 was simply incapable of rendering believably. Survivor, on the other hand, might as well not even have them. The FMV cutscenes use the same assets as the in-engine cutscenes and all animate the same, so it's pretty confusing why they decided to go through the effort of pre-rendering them all when they look no better.
Resident Evil is infamous for its voice acting, so Survivor living up to that infamy isn't exactly a bad thing as many think it adds to the franchise's cheesy b-movie charm. I think it's worth noting, however, that Survivor's voice acting is miles worse than even the original Resident Evil, and has just as many hilarious lines. Such examples include "I AM NOT VINCENT. I AM ARK!!" "Am IIIIIIIII, Vincent?" and "VINCENT. YOU. ARE. A. MURDERER.". It's generally hilarious stuff and I can't complain about it considering the series pedigree.
If there's any bright spot in this otherwise tedious game, it's the soundtrack composed by Shiro Kohmoto. It's a bit formulaic, lacking in any genuinely memorable tunes, but it does build a half-decent atmosphere and sounds mostly in line with RE2 and RE3's OSTs. It's just more of the same, but it works, which is more than can be said for the rest of this game.
Resident Evil Survivor is an awful game and a sorry excuse for both an RE title and a light gun shooter. The game cannot commit to its premise, the story is silly and unengaging, it's dull to play, and is just generally ugly to look at. Clocking in at only three hours of playtime, I can imagine it being a rather disappointing purchase back in the early 2000s. I suppose if you're a die-hard RE fan it's not the worst way you could spend an afternoon, but that energy is probably best spent playing something else. Both RE fans and fans of the genre should stay away.
From what I played of the public beta a while back, it was just yet another mediocre multiplayer third-person shooter with very little to make it stand out other than the universe it inhabits. I mean, it's mostly fine? It's perfectly playable but considering how there's only one game mode at the moment, it's not worth any sort of money. Feels more like a tech demo than a feature-complete beta. It needs some more game modes as well as longer matches to hold my interest for more than a week. For free though, this isn't bad. I hope Capcom greatly improves the game by launch and also doesn't abandon it as they did with Resistance. This has the potential to be something really good in the future but right now it's not worth the money
2020
Omori is a game with a history of a troubled production. After spending 6 years in development where developer Omocat infrequently communicated with Kickstarter backers and even canceled the Nintendo 3DS port, it seemed as if the game would become yet another Kickstarter failure a la Mighty No. 9 or Yooka-Laylee. The game would end up released to acclaim from both critics and general audiences, seemingly averting the Kickstarter curse. Likewise, as any game that becomes ridiculously popular, Omori has also seen a fair share of both entirely fair and overblown criticism. I think it's pretty good, but some of this game's major issues can make it a teensy bit hard to recommend.
You play as two protagonists: Sunny and Omori. Omori is essentially the younger version of Sunny who exists within his dreams, and Sunny is who Omori is in real life. Most of the game is played as Omori, and for the most part, he is a blank protagonist. Inherently not a very expressive protagonist, most of the game's story and humor are conveyed through the supporting cast: Aubrey, Hero, Kel, and Basil, Sunny's childhood friends given immortal youth within his dreams. Suddenly, Basil goes missing and the gang of dream children has to go find him. The story is something that will either leave you enamored with its characters and weeping at the tragic moments, or frustrated by its poor pacing. Omori's story is a solid one, with likable characters who do grow and change between headspace and reality and appropriately handles deeper and more depressing themes. The game does get quite sad at points, and I will admit to getting a little misty-eyed. I will say though, I found it hard to connect to the game's world. For a dream world, it seemed to be pretty standard as far as imagination goes. I never really felt like a part of this world and therefore it became hard to immerse myself just because of how cookie-cutter it could feel at points. The real-world feeling more immersive than the literal fantasy does cause a strange disconnect. After a while, I just got tired of the dream world shenanigans and just wanted to get back to the real world so I could just see what the characters I had grown attached to were doing. Most of the characters in headspace get little to no development and show up maybe once. It's a problem when the character specifically designed to be obnoxious and annoying, Sweetheart, has more screentime than any other headspace character. The poor pacing of this otherwise very well-written story caused me to almost drop the game, as I had become tired of the quirky dream shenanigans by the time I reached Humphrey the whale. Those real-world segments feel so tender and genuine that I wish there was more of that than headspace stuff. Each character I found myself caring about and wanting to see how they grew up and coped with loss and regret. I found myself relating to Hero as the college boy, though the rest of them are memorable too. However, if you can stick through it, I enjoyed the story, its characters, and the darker themes it handles, despite the uninvolving world and frustrating pacing.
Omori is a Japanese-style RPG, a genre that tends to alienate people due to the turn-based combat being oftentimes simplistic and grindy. Omocat tried to make the game a little more involving than your average JRPG though, adding an emotion system that changes character/enemy stats based on how they're feeling. It's similar to the rock paper scissors system from Fire Emblem, and certain emotions will beat others. Being sad, for example, reduces the damage you take while reducing the damage you do. This does add an interesting amount of nuance and strategy to the combat, and the ability to pass attacks to friends for extra damage certainly helps add oomph to the combat. You surprisingly don't have to do very much grinding in this game to succeed, though it's probably recommended. The boss fights aren't very good though. They lean from pretty decent (i.e. Space Ex-Boyfriend) to fine (Mr. Jawsome) to downright unfair (Sweetheart). Sweetheart, for example, has an attack that hits every single party member simultaneously and often does this when the party is at low health, pretty much instantly wiping out your attempt. These boss fights rely a bit too much on luck and cheap attacks and can make them very frustrating roadblocks if you are unwilling to do a little grinding, though they are still possible. Other than the boss fights, the combat is more than passable, and as far as JRPGs go, is more interesting than some of its competitors.
A common criticism of Omori is its length, and I concur with it. It feels like what is maybe a 10-hour game stretched out to 20. Major areas could potentially be cut or made optional because in the late game I felt like everything I was doing was mostly inconsequential. I also did not find many of the side-quests to be all that engaging, mostly being fetch quests, but at the end of the day, it's more Omori for those who want it so I'd rather have it than not.
As mentioned earlier, Omori can be a bit of a mixed bag visually. On a technical level, it looks superb for an RPG Maker game. Everything is fantastically animated, drawn, and detailed, and you can tell that Omocat's artists put their heart and soul into this game. The art direction however is a bit lacking. As stated earlier, the game simply falls in line with what is expected from modern Earthbound-inspired JRPGs. It looks the part and never looks bad, but rather it doesn't have much in the way of unique locations or enemies. This is the primary reason why the world feels a bit unengaging because I feel like I have seen this before.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, composed by Bo En, Jami Lynne, and Pedro Silva is fantastic. Almost every track is incredibly catchy and will stick in your mind for hours after a play session. Each one nails the atmosphere of each location and none feel out of place or strange, at least not in a bad way. My favorite tracks would be Spaces In-between, By Your Side, and World's End Valentine.
I've seen some online label Omori as a "psychological horror" game. To be completely honest, this isn't true. Omori not being a horror game isn't a bad thing, rather the descriptor is simply inaccurate. While yes, there are moments where the game does try to scare you and does so effectively I might add, they are pretty infrequent. Yes, some of the major scenes are horror-themed, but in proportion to the vast majority of the game, they are few and far between. Most of the time you will be wandering around and having fun in the quirky RPG world with the quirky RPG characters and therefore I don't think "psychological horror" is true for about 90% of the game. It's a minor thing, but I figured I might temper the expectations of those hoping to gain sleepless nights from this game.
I do have some miscellaneous observations that I do not know how to categorize, so I will just write them here. A lot of things in this game take too much time. For example, why can't I deposit all of my cans at once in the recycling machine? Why do I have to put them in individually? Why does it take forever to recycle, and why doesn't the game tell me that I can skip that cutscene? WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME TAKE FOREVER.
Omori is a pretty good game. It's got some hard-to-ignore faults, such as poor pacing and a fairly stock world, but it also has great characters and a very solid narrative, and that is the game's major strength. If you never liked JRPGs, Omori won't convince you otherwise, but if you're a fan of the genre you really should check this out.
You play as two protagonists: Sunny and Omori. Omori is essentially the younger version of Sunny who exists within his dreams, and Sunny is who Omori is in real life. Most of the game is played as Omori, and for the most part, he is a blank protagonist. Inherently not a very expressive protagonist, most of the game's story and humor are conveyed through the supporting cast: Aubrey, Hero, Kel, and Basil, Sunny's childhood friends given immortal youth within his dreams. Suddenly, Basil goes missing and the gang of dream children has to go find him. The story is something that will either leave you enamored with its characters and weeping at the tragic moments, or frustrated by its poor pacing. Omori's story is a solid one, with likable characters who do grow and change between headspace and reality and appropriately handles deeper and more depressing themes. The game does get quite sad at points, and I will admit to getting a little misty-eyed. I will say though, I found it hard to connect to the game's world. For a dream world, it seemed to be pretty standard as far as imagination goes. I never really felt like a part of this world and therefore it became hard to immerse myself just because of how cookie-cutter it could feel at points. The real-world feeling more immersive than the literal fantasy does cause a strange disconnect. After a while, I just got tired of the dream world shenanigans and just wanted to get back to the real world so I could just see what the characters I had grown attached to were doing. Most of the characters in headspace get little to no development and show up maybe once. It's a problem when the character specifically designed to be obnoxious and annoying, Sweetheart, has more screentime than any other headspace character. The poor pacing of this otherwise very well-written story caused me to almost drop the game, as I had become tired of the quirky dream shenanigans by the time I reached Humphrey the whale. Those real-world segments feel so tender and genuine that I wish there was more of that than headspace stuff. Each character I found myself caring about and wanting to see how they grew up and coped with loss and regret. I found myself relating to Hero as the college boy, though the rest of them are memorable too. However, if you can stick through it, I enjoyed the story, its characters, and the darker themes it handles, despite the uninvolving world and frustrating pacing.
Omori is a Japanese-style RPG, a genre that tends to alienate people due to the turn-based combat being oftentimes simplistic and grindy. Omocat tried to make the game a little more involving than your average JRPG though, adding an emotion system that changes character/enemy stats based on how they're feeling. It's similar to the rock paper scissors system from Fire Emblem, and certain emotions will beat others. Being sad, for example, reduces the damage you take while reducing the damage you do. This does add an interesting amount of nuance and strategy to the combat, and the ability to pass attacks to friends for extra damage certainly helps add oomph to the combat. You surprisingly don't have to do very much grinding in this game to succeed, though it's probably recommended. The boss fights aren't very good though. They lean from pretty decent (i.e. Space Ex-Boyfriend) to fine (Mr. Jawsome) to downright unfair (Sweetheart). Sweetheart, for example, has an attack that hits every single party member simultaneously and often does this when the party is at low health, pretty much instantly wiping out your attempt. These boss fights rely a bit too much on luck and cheap attacks and can make them very frustrating roadblocks if you are unwilling to do a little grinding, though they are still possible. Other than the boss fights, the combat is more than passable, and as far as JRPGs go, is more interesting than some of its competitors.
A common criticism of Omori is its length, and I concur with it. It feels like what is maybe a 10-hour game stretched out to 20. Major areas could potentially be cut or made optional because in the late game I felt like everything I was doing was mostly inconsequential. I also did not find many of the side-quests to be all that engaging, mostly being fetch quests, but at the end of the day, it's more Omori for those who want it so I'd rather have it than not.
As mentioned earlier, Omori can be a bit of a mixed bag visually. On a technical level, it looks superb for an RPG Maker game. Everything is fantastically animated, drawn, and detailed, and you can tell that Omocat's artists put their heart and soul into this game. The art direction however is a bit lacking. As stated earlier, the game simply falls in line with what is expected from modern Earthbound-inspired JRPGs. It looks the part and never looks bad, but rather it doesn't have much in the way of unique locations or enemies. This is the primary reason why the world feels a bit unengaging because I feel like I have seen this before.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, composed by Bo En, Jami Lynne, and Pedro Silva is fantastic. Almost every track is incredibly catchy and will stick in your mind for hours after a play session. Each one nails the atmosphere of each location and none feel out of place or strange, at least not in a bad way. My favorite tracks would be Spaces In-between, By Your Side, and World's End Valentine.
I've seen some online label Omori as a "psychological horror" game. To be completely honest, this isn't true. Omori not being a horror game isn't a bad thing, rather the descriptor is simply inaccurate. While yes, there are moments where the game does try to scare you and does so effectively I might add, they are pretty infrequent. Yes, some of the major scenes are horror-themed, but in proportion to the vast majority of the game, they are few and far between. Most of the time you will be wandering around and having fun in the quirky RPG world with the quirky RPG characters and therefore I don't think "psychological horror" is true for about 90% of the game. It's a minor thing, but I figured I might temper the expectations of those hoping to gain sleepless nights from this game.
I do have some miscellaneous observations that I do not know how to categorize, so I will just write them here. A lot of things in this game take too much time. For example, why can't I deposit all of my cans at once in the recycling machine? Why do I have to put them in individually? Why does it take forever to recycle, and why doesn't the game tell me that I can skip that cutscene? WHY DOES EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME TAKE FOREVER.
Omori is a pretty good game. It's got some hard-to-ignore faults, such as poor pacing and a fairly stock world, but it also has great characters and a very solid narrative, and that is the game's major strength. If you never liked JRPGs, Omori won't convince you otherwise, but if you're a fan of the genre you really should check this out.
This review contains spoilers
To be completely honest, I wasn't exactly going into Silent Hill: Downpour with particularly high expectations. While I thought Shattered Memories was a quite good if imperfect detour, the sour taste of Homecoming still lingered in my mouth. Not to mention, Konami once again handed the kingdom's keys to a new, inexperienced developer. This time around, it was Vatra Games, a Czech studio whose only prior game was Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot, which was panned by both critics and audiences alike. This didn't fill me with much confidence, but I wanted to give the game a chance. After all, maybe a fresh new take on the series from new eyes is needed? After completing the game, I've concluded that some of my fears were unfounded, and some unfortunately were justified.
In Downpour, you play as Murphy Pendleton, a prisoner being transferred from one prison to another via bus when suddenly the vehicle slides off course and everyone inside is killed, except for yourself and a police officer who seems to have an extreme hatred of you in particular. From this point onwards, you travel throughout the nearby town of Silent Hill to find your way to freedom and, naturally, confront Murphy's trauma and personal struggles. The game's story was written by Brian Gomez and Tom Waltz, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It has some pretty significant issues, but that's mostly in regards to how the game handles pre-established series lore rather than the narrative itself. Firstly, Murphy is a very good character. It's quite interesting to me how this time around, the game doesn't hide that Murphy has a dark and disturbing past. While all previous protagonists seemed relatively normal before their eventual ties to the town were uncovered, Vatra makes it very clear from the beginning that Murphy is a hardened criminal, with the game's combat tutorial consisting of him brutally beating a helpless inmate to death. He's not over the top in any sense of the word and reacts realistically to every situation. It's not uncommon for Murphy to scream expletives whenever encountering a horrifying event, which makes him feel very vulnerable and human.
The supporting cast is generally fine, but there are a couple of exceptions that I think are worth pointing out. Anne Marie Cunningham, the enraged officer with personal ties to Murphy is a pretty solid foil to our protagonist, contrasting his calm concern with fiery anger and occasional hopelessness. John P. Sater, former tour guide of the Devil's Pit, is a suicidal alcoholic who seems to know about Murphy's past and provides a brief but tragic emotional detour in the narrative. My favorite character has to be George Sewell, a corrupt corrections officer at Murphy's old prison. He's a total slimeball who manipulates others into getting exactly what he wants and he serves as easily the strongest supporting character in the game. On the other hand, you have characters like Howard Blackwood or DJ Ricks, who add pretty much nothing to the story, and both serve to further muddy series lore.
On the note of lore, Downpour's understanding of Silent Hill's lore is questionable at best. The game implies at many points that the town itself is sentient and is actively trying to force Murphy and Anne to overcome their trauma and move on with their lives. This is a contradiction as lore states that the town is simply an area with a concentrated amount of power that reflects the darkness in one's heart, and has darkened over time, especially after the Alessa incident. The idea that the town can do things like call DJ Ricks and instruct him to play certain songs is pretty silly and takes away from the believability of the world. Then you sprinkle in a magic mailman and a Native American god who isn't even anywhere near Maine and you've got something that feels a bit more like fan fiction. Don't even get me started on how seemingly everyone sees the same monsters, something which Silent Hill 2 and 3 really push against. Don't get me wrong, the story itself is quite good, but the worldbuilding leaves something to be desired.
From this point on, I will be going into spoiler details about the game's narrative, so if you wish not to be spoiled, skip to the next paragraph.
The major theme of Downpour is personified in one of the monsters: the bogeyman. A tall man clad in a raincoat and gas mask carrying a large hammer around. If you think he sounds like a bit of a Pyramid Head ripoff, you'd be correct, but unlike Origins' butcher, the bogeyman's symbolism is actually quite interesting. He essentially represents what one views as an irredeemable monster, humanity's irrational tendency to demonize others based on their actions and perhaps their own insecurities. Everyone has the capacity to form their own bogeyman. Murphy's trauma is a result of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of his son, Charlie. Murphy intentionally got incarcerated and struck a deal with Sewell so he could kill his son's murderer. Naturally, this doesn't bring back his son nor does it make him feel any better. When the bogeyman is finally unmasked, his face rapidly flickers between the murderer's face and Murphy's, reflecting how he demonized both the murderer and himself for their respective actions. It is also revealed that the reason Anne hates Murphy is that he was forced to murder her father, Officer Coleridge, due to the deal he cut with Sewell. In the final scenes of the game, Anne perceives Murphy as the bogeyman himself and runs in fear, with Murphy being given the option to spare or kill her. Anne irrationally demonized Murphy for something he had no choice in doing, and therefore he became her bogeyman. The game essentially states that revenge will only make us feel worse, and we should strive to move on and be better people rather than let it consume us. It's a very solid theme that carries very well in the game.
Despite some missteps here and there, Downpour tells a rock-solid story with some really good themes, but how does the gameplay fare? Designed by Marek Berka, Downpour finally marks the return to survival horror, something sorely lacking from the previous two games. Fleeing from enemies is now just as viable as combat, and on hard mode, a single enemy can seriously mess you up if you're not careful. Downpour's combat remains quite controversial within the fanbase, but I find it to be a monumental upgrade from Homecoming's, admittedly a low bar. Yes, it is very simplistic, consisting almost entirely of "block, attack, block", but I do not mind this as that's essentially what the combat of 1-4 boiled down to. I concede that they should have added more depth but I didn't particularly mind it. Each enemy is designed in a way that makes them unique on the battlefield and there is an obvious difference between a screamer and a weeping bat, for example. The most interesting of which would be the dolls, where you must locate her host body and kill it while her "shadows" attack you. Another thing that Downpour adds is the destructible weapons system seen in Origins, but unlike that game, you cannot carry an entire arsenal of typewriters with you. Downpour limits it to three maximum, and this can make fights tense when your weapons are always on the verge of breaking. I will say though, I wanted more challenge out of this. Silent Hill has never particularly been difficult from a combat perspective but I rarely ever died from enemy encounters, even if they left me walking away with a limp.
The biggest thing Downpour brings to the table is the semi-open-world structure. While the main narrative is on a linear path, there are fourteen optional sidequests that you can do. These sidequests are mostly pretty interesting and they feel like a real part of the world rather than an arbitrary activity given by generic NPC #67. It's fun exploring every nook and cranny of the town and the game even handles fast travel in a way much more interesting than most generic open-world games nowadays. Vatra made the wise decision to bring back puzzle difficulty options which was a nice return to form. I played on normal puzzles and I found them to be mostly pretty solid. None necessarily blew my mind but they all served their purpose well enough and I don't have many complaints other than simply not being too memorable. Easily the worst part has to be the Otherworld segments, though. Unfortunately following in Shattered Memories' stead, Downpour features chase segments in which you run from a literal red void knocking over harmless monsters to slow its pursuit. These are a little more tolerable than SM's segments since there is technically more to do, but they still have no place in a game like this as they remove any horror or tension that could come about from a proper Otherworld segment. It would have been a lot cooler if they just made traditional Otherworlds where you roamed around a surrealist hellscape battling monsters and solving puzzles. Sure, they're infrequent, but when they replace something as vital in concept as the Otherworld, it hurts.
In regards to length, Downpour is probably the longest Silent Hill game, if you account for me attempting in vain to do all the sidequests before the game crashed yet again. It took me about fifteen hours, and I mostly feel that length was justified and only the final stretch of the game felt overlong. If I paid $60 back in the day I would have felt mostly satisfied by the amount of content given. Overall, the gameplay is pretty decent and the exploration is really what makes the game. It's a neat evolution of that traditional survival horror formula and sets Downpour apart from the other post-Team Silent entries.
But what about the scares? Downpour is part of one of gaming's most prestigious horror franchises after all. Does it live up to the expectations set by 1-4? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Downpour just isn't a very scary game. Vatra tries to make it scary. Bloodied, disfigured monsters lurch from the shadows, and giant, sharp pendulums whiz past your head, yet never once was I shaking in my chair. I think this is because Downpour feels more like a haunted house to me than a portal to a hellish dimension. Things pop out and go "boo!" but it just lacks the substance that made the first four so frightening. Some elements are pretty nightmare retardant, such as the spiked police cars driven by monsters that roam the town. The atmosphere is there but it doesn't feel particularly strong. It's a well-done atmosphere but not one that feels overbearingly oppressive. Essentially, my main criticism of this game is that it just did not scare me, and I doubt it'll scare many seasoned fans.
Silent Hill has always been known for great presentations, so how does Downpour fare on that front? It's a bit of a mixed bag. On a technical level, the game is infamously a mess. The original retail release was prone to crashes, incredibly unstable framerates, and very low resolutions. Vatra would release a patch that mostly alleviated those issues, though the game still looks very low-res. It's not a pretty game on either console. I played the game through RPCS3, and even at higher internal resolutions the game still looks very muddy. Vatra opted for a very cheap FXAA filter which smoothes out details, and it's kind of impossible to get a sharp image out of Downpour. The game runs on Unreal Engine 3 and therefore has a lot of the same quirks that most of those games tend to have. Slow texture pop-in, stuttering framerate, overly shiny and low-res textures, et cetera. I won't even mention the awfully pixelated god rays. Nevertheless, there is some neat attention to detail sprinkled in. Murphy visibly gets soaked when it begins to rain. Character models look good and lip sync isn't even too bad. The actual animation work is quite satisfactory and a lot of the environments, even if they succumb to UE3 shine, are dense and detailed. There IS a lot to appreciate here, even if it's bogged down by a myriad of technical faults.
Downpour's art direction was done by Luděk Farda, and it similarly is just as polarizing. On one hand, I enjoy the look of the town, it's more modern yet still old-timey style. I like the choice of rain as the game's main aesthetic and the general Americana appeals to me. On the other hand, the game's art direction tends to be way too over the top. The Otherworld is a prime example of this. Giant swinging pendulums, a haunted train ride from hell, a giant stretched and bloody face who speaks in a deep voice, it's all just too silly and loses that subtle nature that Masahiro Ito's art direction had. The Otherworlds in 1-4, hell even Origins felt like I was residing in a real place, somewhere between reality and unreality. Downpour feels like a video game, and therefore loses that effect. This extends to the monster designs, which are terrible and easily the worst the series has to offer. They look generic and too humanoid. Our ensemble cast of creatures happens to be: a crazy human who smiles because he's CRAAAZY, an old woman with botched plastic surgery, a free Unity placeholder asset, and a blow-up doll. They're just not scary and oftentimes border on silly. At the very least, Vatra avoided reusing pre-existing monsters like Origins and Homecoming, but these are just pathetic excuses for manifestations.
Downpour is distinctive for another reason: its soundtrack, and not necessarily in a good way. It's the only game in the franchise to lack Akira Yamaoka's signature sound, as he had quit Konami by the time a soundtrack needed to be produced. Instead, Daniel Licht, known for composing for Dexter and Dishonored joined the production. Licht's score is a bit underwhelming. It's not bad by any means and you can tell he had a surface-level understanding of how Silent Hill should sound, but he is missing on one key aspect: variety. Yamaoka's scores always had a ton of variety. From loud industrial noise to beautiful piano ballads to alternative rock songs, there really was something for everybody. In Licht's score, it really is just tamer industrial noise. It suits the game's atmosphere just fine, but none of the songs really pop out to me as particularly memorable or exceptional. Not to mention, the game's title theme performed by Jonathan Davis is cringe incarnate. It not only clashes with the rest of the franchise but also just the game in general tonally. The soundtrack is fine though generally speaking, just disappointing.
Voice acting in Downpour tends to lean on the positive side. There aren't any exceptional performances, but they are all fitting of their roles and I can't name a consistently bad performance. David Boyd Konrad gives a generally good performance as Murphy despite some odd lines here and there. He manages to come off as disinterested but in a fitting way, which is hard to explain, and the rest of the actors do a fine job. Andy Hendrickson is channeling some real William Sanderson energy as JP Sater. Antoine L. Smith is the closest to a "bad" performance in this game, and that's less due to his performance rather the direction he was given, as he plays an incredibly generic DJ voice. The best performance is easily Joel Bernard as Sewell, as his delivery is the most consistent in his quality. He really sells the role of a slimy, corrupt officer. The rest of the cast does a fine job, but nothing that I find worth pointing out.
Downpour is an alright game. It is a deeply flawed title and one that I can imagine some people utterly despising. However, if you're willing to take the plunge, you might find a lot to appreciate here. There's more good than bad, even if the bad is very noticeable. It's hard to recommend this even to horror fans, due to the total lack of scares, but Silent Hill diehards might wanna give this one a shot. If you're willing to accept a fundamentally different yet familiar experience, I would recommend it.
In Downpour, you play as Murphy Pendleton, a prisoner being transferred from one prison to another via bus when suddenly the vehicle slides off course and everyone inside is killed, except for yourself and a police officer who seems to have an extreme hatred of you in particular. From this point onwards, you travel throughout the nearby town of Silent Hill to find your way to freedom and, naturally, confront Murphy's trauma and personal struggles. The game's story was written by Brian Gomez and Tom Waltz, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It has some pretty significant issues, but that's mostly in regards to how the game handles pre-established series lore rather than the narrative itself. Firstly, Murphy is a very good character. It's quite interesting to me how this time around, the game doesn't hide that Murphy has a dark and disturbing past. While all previous protagonists seemed relatively normal before their eventual ties to the town were uncovered, Vatra makes it very clear from the beginning that Murphy is a hardened criminal, with the game's combat tutorial consisting of him brutally beating a helpless inmate to death. He's not over the top in any sense of the word and reacts realistically to every situation. It's not uncommon for Murphy to scream expletives whenever encountering a horrifying event, which makes him feel very vulnerable and human.
The supporting cast is generally fine, but there are a couple of exceptions that I think are worth pointing out. Anne Marie Cunningham, the enraged officer with personal ties to Murphy is a pretty solid foil to our protagonist, contrasting his calm concern with fiery anger and occasional hopelessness. John P. Sater, former tour guide of the Devil's Pit, is a suicidal alcoholic who seems to know about Murphy's past and provides a brief but tragic emotional detour in the narrative. My favorite character has to be George Sewell, a corrupt corrections officer at Murphy's old prison. He's a total slimeball who manipulates others into getting exactly what he wants and he serves as easily the strongest supporting character in the game. On the other hand, you have characters like Howard Blackwood or DJ Ricks, who add pretty much nothing to the story, and both serve to further muddy series lore.
On the note of lore, Downpour's understanding of Silent Hill's lore is questionable at best. The game implies at many points that the town itself is sentient and is actively trying to force Murphy and Anne to overcome their trauma and move on with their lives. This is a contradiction as lore states that the town is simply an area with a concentrated amount of power that reflects the darkness in one's heart, and has darkened over time, especially after the Alessa incident. The idea that the town can do things like call DJ Ricks and instruct him to play certain songs is pretty silly and takes away from the believability of the world. Then you sprinkle in a magic mailman and a Native American god who isn't even anywhere near Maine and you've got something that feels a bit more like fan fiction. Don't even get me started on how seemingly everyone sees the same monsters, something which Silent Hill 2 and 3 really push against. Don't get me wrong, the story itself is quite good, but the worldbuilding leaves something to be desired.
From this point on, I will be going into spoiler details about the game's narrative, so if you wish not to be spoiled, skip to the next paragraph.
The major theme of Downpour is personified in one of the monsters: the bogeyman. A tall man clad in a raincoat and gas mask carrying a large hammer around. If you think he sounds like a bit of a Pyramid Head ripoff, you'd be correct, but unlike Origins' butcher, the bogeyman's symbolism is actually quite interesting. He essentially represents what one views as an irredeemable monster, humanity's irrational tendency to demonize others based on their actions and perhaps their own insecurities. Everyone has the capacity to form their own bogeyman. Murphy's trauma is a result of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of his son, Charlie. Murphy intentionally got incarcerated and struck a deal with Sewell so he could kill his son's murderer. Naturally, this doesn't bring back his son nor does it make him feel any better. When the bogeyman is finally unmasked, his face rapidly flickers between the murderer's face and Murphy's, reflecting how he demonized both the murderer and himself for their respective actions. It is also revealed that the reason Anne hates Murphy is that he was forced to murder her father, Officer Coleridge, due to the deal he cut with Sewell. In the final scenes of the game, Anne perceives Murphy as the bogeyman himself and runs in fear, with Murphy being given the option to spare or kill her. Anne irrationally demonized Murphy for something he had no choice in doing, and therefore he became her bogeyman. The game essentially states that revenge will only make us feel worse, and we should strive to move on and be better people rather than let it consume us. It's a very solid theme that carries very well in the game.
Despite some missteps here and there, Downpour tells a rock-solid story with some really good themes, but how does the gameplay fare? Designed by Marek Berka, Downpour finally marks the return to survival horror, something sorely lacking from the previous two games. Fleeing from enemies is now just as viable as combat, and on hard mode, a single enemy can seriously mess you up if you're not careful. Downpour's combat remains quite controversial within the fanbase, but I find it to be a monumental upgrade from Homecoming's, admittedly a low bar. Yes, it is very simplistic, consisting almost entirely of "block, attack, block", but I do not mind this as that's essentially what the combat of 1-4 boiled down to. I concede that they should have added more depth but I didn't particularly mind it. Each enemy is designed in a way that makes them unique on the battlefield and there is an obvious difference between a screamer and a weeping bat, for example. The most interesting of which would be the dolls, where you must locate her host body and kill it while her "shadows" attack you. Another thing that Downpour adds is the destructible weapons system seen in Origins, but unlike that game, you cannot carry an entire arsenal of typewriters with you. Downpour limits it to three maximum, and this can make fights tense when your weapons are always on the verge of breaking. I will say though, I wanted more challenge out of this. Silent Hill has never particularly been difficult from a combat perspective but I rarely ever died from enemy encounters, even if they left me walking away with a limp.
The biggest thing Downpour brings to the table is the semi-open-world structure. While the main narrative is on a linear path, there are fourteen optional sidequests that you can do. These sidequests are mostly pretty interesting and they feel like a real part of the world rather than an arbitrary activity given by generic NPC #67. It's fun exploring every nook and cranny of the town and the game even handles fast travel in a way much more interesting than most generic open-world games nowadays. Vatra made the wise decision to bring back puzzle difficulty options which was a nice return to form. I played on normal puzzles and I found them to be mostly pretty solid. None necessarily blew my mind but they all served their purpose well enough and I don't have many complaints other than simply not being too memorable. Easily the worst part has to be the Otherworld segments, though. Unfortunately following in Shattered Memories' stead, Downpour features chase segments in which you run from a literal red void knocking over harmless monsters to slow its pursuit. These are a little more tolerable than SM's segments since there is technically more to do, but they still have no place in a game like this as they remove any horror or tension that could come about from a proper Otherworld segment. It would have been a lot cooler if they just made traditional Otherworlds where you roamed around a surrealist hellscape battling monsters and solving puzzles. Sure, they're infrequent, but when they replace something as vital in concept as the Otherworld, it hurts.
In regards to length, Downpour is probably the longest Silent Hill game, if you account for me attempting in vain to do all the sidequests before the game crashed yet again. It took me about fifteen hours, and I mostly feel that length was justified and only the final stretch of the game felt overlong. If I paid $60 back in the day I would have felt mostly satisfied by the amount of content given. Overall, the gameplay is pretty decent and the exploration is really what makes the game. It's a neat evolution of that traditional survival horror formula and sets Downpour apart from the other post-Team Silent entries.
But what about the scares? Downpour is part of one of gaming's most prestigious horror franchises after all. Does it live up to the expectations set by 1-4? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Downpour just isn't a very scary game. Vatra tries to make it scary. Bloodied, disfigured monsters lurch from the shadows, and giant, sharp pendulums whiz past your head, yet never once was I shaking in my chair. I think this is because Downpour feels more like a haunted house to me than a portal to a hellish dimension. Things pop out and go "boo!" but it just lacks the substance that made the first four so frightening. Some elements are pretty nightmare retardant, such as the spiked police cars driven by monsters that roam the town. The atmosphere is there but it doesn't feel particularly strong. It's a well-done atmosphere but not one that feels overbearingly oppressive. Essentially, my main criticism of this game is that it just did not scare me, and I doubt it'll scare many seasoned fans.
Silent Hill has always been known for great presentations, so how does Downpour fare on that front? It's a bit of a mixed bag. On a technical level, the game is infamously a mess. The original retail release was prone to crashes, incredibly unstable framerates, and very low resolutions. Vatra would release a patch that mostly alleviated those issues, though the game still looks very low-res. It's not a pretty game on either console. I played the game through RPCS3, and even at higher internal resolutions the game still looks very muddy. Vatra opted for a very cheap FXAA filter which smoothes out details, and it's kind of impossible to get a sharp image out of Downpour. The game runs on Unreal Engine 3 and therefore has a lot of the same quirks that most of those games tend to have. Slow texture pop-in, stuttering framerate, overly shiny and low-res textures, et cetera. I won't even mention the awfully pixelated god rays. Nevertheless, there is some neat attention to detail sprinkled in. Murphy visibly gets soaked when it begins to rain. Character models look good and lip sync isn't even too bad. The actual animation work is quite satisfactory and a lot of the environments, even if they succumb to UE3 shine, are dense and detailed. There IS a lot to appreciate here, even if it's bogged down by a myriad of technical faults.
Downpour's art direction was done by Luděk Farda, and it similarly is just as polarizing. On one hand, I enjoy the look of the town, it's more modern yet still old-timey style. I like the choice of rain as the game's main aesthetic and the general Americana appeals to me. On the other hand, the game's art direction tends to be way too over the top. The Otherworld is a prime example of this. Giant swinging pendulums, a haunted train ride from hell, a giant stretched and bloody face who speaks in a deep voice, it's all just too silly and loses that subtle nature that Masahiro Ito's art direction had. The Otherworlds in 1-4, hell even Origins felt like I was residing in a real place, somewhere between reality and unreality. Downpour feels like a video game, and therefore loses that effect. This extends to the monster designs, which are terrible and easily the worst the series has to offer. They look generic and too humanoid. Our ensemble cast of creatures happens to be: a crazy human who smiles because he's CRAAAZY, an old woman with botched plastic surgery, a free Unity placeholder asset, and a blow-up doll. They're just not scary and oftentimes border on silly. At the very least, Vatra avoided reusing pre-existing monsters like Origins and Homecoming, but these are just pathetic excuses for manifestations.
Downpour is distinctive for another reason: its soundtrack, and not necessarily in a good way. It's the only game in the franchise to lack Akira Yamaoka's signature sound, as he had quit Konami by the time a soundtrack needed to be produced. Instead, Daniel Licht, known for composing for Dexter and Dishonored joined the production. Licht's score is a bit underwhelming. It's not bad by any means and you can tell he had a surface-level understanding of how Silent Hill should sound, but he is missing on one key aspect: variety. Yamaoka's scores always had a ton of variety. From loud industrial noise to beautiful piano ballads to alternative rock songs, there really was something for everybody. In Licht's score, it really is just tamer industrial noise. It suits the game's atmosphere just fine, but none of the songs really pop out to me as particularly memorable or exceptional. Not to mention, the game's title theme performed by Jonathan Davis is cringe incarnate. It not only clashes with the rest of the franchise but also just the game in general tonally. The soundtrack is fine though generally speaking, just disappointing.
Voice acting in Downpour tends to lean on the positive side. There aren't any exceptional performances, but they are all fitting of their roles and I can't name a consistently bad performance. David Boyd Konrad gives a generally good performance as Murphy despite some odd lines here and there. He manages to come off as disinterested but in a fitting way, which is hard to explain, and the rest of the actors do a fine job. Andy Hendrickson is channeling some real William Sanderson energy as JP Sater. Antoine L. Smith is the closest to a "bad" performance in this game, and that's less due to his performance rather the direction he was given, as he plays an incredibly generic DJ voice. The best performance is easily Joel Bernard as Sewell, as his delivery is the most consistent in his quality. He really sells the role of a slimy, corrupt officer. The rest of the cast does a fine job, but nothing that I find worth pointing out.
Downpour is an alright game. It is a deeply flawed title and one that I can imagine some people utterly despising. However, if you're willing to take the plunge, you might find a lot to appreciate here. There's more good than bad, even if the bad is very noticeable. It's hard to recommend this even to horror fans, due to the total lack of scares, but Silent Hill diehards might wanna give this one a shot. If you're willing to accept a fundamentally different yet familiar experience, I would recommend it.
2016
Moderately better than Brutal Doom simply due to the massively improved presentation but still suffering from the exact same intrusive modern design decisions that clash with Midway's original level design. It's more fun to play but it's basically just more tolerable Brutal Doom, so your mileage will definitely vary based on how much you enjoyed that.
2018
Unironically a decent mod which is hilarious to say. Tons of effort was put into the presentation and unlike similar mods such as Brutal Doom, the developer actually understands how Doom's core gameplay loop functions and does not change it significantly enough to clash with id Software's original design intention. It's hard to rate this without coming off as a coomer or pervert but credit where it's due: it's better than Brutal Doom.
2012
Visually looks great with tons of attention to detail (perhaps too much if you're familiar with the mod's development) but just isn't very fun to play. All of the gameplay additions were clearly designed without Doom or Doom 2's level design in mind and feel extremely out of place and every additional difficulty mode added is total bull and hardly balanced towards a challenging but fair experience. I will refrain from shitting on Sgt. Mark IV since that has little to do with the mod's quality itself, but the man clearly does not have an eye for game design. It's sometimes fun to just boot this up with god mode on if you're having a bad day, but it's not fun to actually play as intended.
2011
An awful port of one of the greatest games ever made. Bringing a platformer designed for a controller to a touchscreen is already a tricky prospect, but add horribly redrawn sprites with significantly fewer animation frames as well as pay-to-win microtransactions and you've got a real blasphemous stinker on your hands. Avoid at all costs, especially since the original can be played easily on smartphones nowadays.
2000
Mega Man Xtreme isn't a bad game by any means, but I see little to no reason to play it in the modern-day. Bringing Mega Man X to the Game Boy Color has a lot of potential, but Capcom has failed to do anything but the bare minimum. Unlike Minakuchi Engineering's classic series Game Boy titles, Xtreme does not take elements from the NES games and create something new with them. Instead, Capcom chose to simply replicate stages from X1 and X2, meaning that if you've played those games, there is literally nothing new for you here. I'm sure it was quite novel in the early 2000s to experience SNES levels on the go, but playing this on PC in 2021 the novelty is lost on me.
Visually, the game looks quite good, as is expected from Capcom. Backgrounds are detailed and colorful, and while character sprites are a little basic, they have plenty of animation frames and move very smoothly. The colors are a bit garish, but that's a more minor complaint compared to the contrast issues the monochrome mode has. In terms of audio, there are no original songs to speak of, with pre-existing MMX songs rearranged by Toshio Kajino and Saori Utsumi. They are generally fine, but they all sound a little bit off like the composers changed just one or two notes but left the rest the same. Overall though, the presentation is solid despite some minor quirks.
The game generally plays fine, but it plays the same as X1 and X2. Those expecting any sort of new gimmick or features will be disappointed. Mega Man games have always been a little repetitive but usually sprinkle in some new mechanics to make things feel fresh. Xtreme doesn't do this and as a result, feels pretty dull to play. The game also has some legitimate design flaws that make it more frustrating than it needs to be. Since all the bosses are from the SNES games, Capcom didn't bother adjusting the boss fights for the smaller screen size, meaning X actually has a greater chance of getting hit than normal, making these fights more frustrating than they need to be. This is a shame because these bosses were pretty great in their original SNES incarnations. The new bosses, like Zain, for example, are pretty lame and don't stand out. There's also the fact that half of the levels aren't even available until a second playthrough, which feels like such a copout since some of the bosses in your first playthrough are weak to weapons that you can't even acquire until a second playthrough. I really couldn't be bothered to play it twice, but from what I sampled, it's once again more of the same.
Mega Man Xtreme was probably alright for its time, but in the modern-day, there is essentially no reason to play it. As a Mega Man die-hard, I found it boring and at times very frustrating, and walk away from this one feeling unfulfilled.
Visually, the game looks quite good, as is expected from Capcom. Backgrounds are detailed and colorful, and while character sprites are a little basic, they have plenty of animation frames and move very smoothly. The colors are a bit garish, but that's a more minor complaint compared to the contrast issues the monochrome mode has. In terms of audio, there are no original songs to speak of, with pre-existing MMX songs rearranged by Toshio Kajino and Saori Utsumi. They are generally fine, but they all sound a little bit off like the composers changed just one or two notes but left the rest the same. Overall though, the presentation is solid despite some minor quirks.
The game generally plays fine, but it plays the same as X1 and X2. Those expecting any sort of new gimmick or features will be disappointed. Mega Man games have always been a little repetitive but usually sprinkle in some new mechanics to make things feel fresh. Xtreme doesn't do this and as a result, feels pretty dull to play. The game also has some legitimate design flaws that make it more frustrating than it needs to be. Since all the bosses are from the SNES games, Capcom didn't bother adjusting the boss fights for the smaller screen size, meaning X actually has a greater chance of getting hit than normal, making these fights more frustrating than they need to be. This is a shame because these bosses were pretty great in their original SNES incarnations. The new bosses, like Zain, for example, are pretty lame and don't stand out. There's also the fact that half of the levels aren't even available until a second playthrough, which feels like such a copout since some of the bosses in your first playthrough are weak to weapons that you can't even acquire until a second playthrough. I really couldn't be bothered to play it twice, but from what I sampled, it's once again more of the same.
Mega Man Xtreme was probably alright for its time, but in the modern-day, there is essentially no reason to play it. As a Mega Man die-hard, I found it boring and at times very frustrating, and walk away from this one feeling unfulfilled.
Obviously not the best game in the series but I have a lot of fun with it for what it is. I was never a hardcore fighting game fan so I find the additions made here to be enjoyable and the slower-paced combat makes it easier to learn, acting as a perfect entry point for the series. The visual style is amazing (if muddy at anything lower than 1440p) and all of the new characters are a lot of fun, both in regards to moveset and personality.
Plus, it has Menat, and she makes any game worth playing.
Plus, it has Menat, and she makes any game worth playing.
Pretty damn solid compilation but it's mostly hurt due to the more inconsistent quality of the X series compared to the classic series. X1, X2, and X4 are the ones worth playing and it's really nice to have Battle and Chase, a game we Americans never got, in one package. Once again lacking in special features but overall at the time, it was still a no-brainer for any platformer fan.
One of the greatest compilations ever made. 10 games in one package (two of which had never been available on home consoles), all of which are at the very least pretty solid was an amazing package in the era of unreliable emulation. Yes, it does suffer from some minor input lag and a lack of special features but it's what introduced me to Mega Man and spurred my long-lasting love for the franchise. A bit redundant nowadays with the modern Mega Man compilations and the increasing accuracy of emulation, but I really have to recognize it's amazing value for the time.
Overall a pretty good remake, but I feel like 343 Industries did not really know what they wanted CEA to be. On one hand, the gameplay and cutscenes are essentially unchanged, leading me to believe that 343 wanted to make CEA a shot-for-shot remake of the original that was faithful to Bungie's original vision. However, the art direction looks pretty damn different compared to the original game, leading me to believe that 343 wanted to make a "new interpretation of the original Halo". Both methods are perfectly reasonable ways to remake the game, but when mixed together it's rather strange, feeling especially inconsistent when you are given the ability to toggle the original visuals. The new visuals look great on their own, but they're not particularly faithful and I personally believe Bungie's art direction was stronger in the end. It's also a shame how 343 did not bother to remake CE's multiplayer, but the new maps for Reach are still rather welcome. Quite good overall and I can easily recommend this to both fans of Halo and FPS games in general