CrispyBoy
182 Reviews liked by CrispyBoy
Peggle Nights
2008
AUGH A UGH UUAUHUHGHUAUHGHU
Peggle Nights
2008
im pegging all night hell ya
Peggle Nights
2008
my dad left but i have peggle so its ok
Peggle Deluxe
2007
peak asf
Borderlands 3
2019
Gameplay mechanics improved greatly from the 2nd game. Story is honestly pretty medioacre. DLCs are better than the 2nd game. The main story is what brings it down though.
This review contains spoilers
(Beat Crimson Flower on Hard.)
Three Houses has one of the more interesting Fire Emblem stories by virtue of actually having themes (and surprisingly ambitious ideas about class, religion, and war--though I don't know if every path is quite as interesting or as complex as the Black Eagles') and branching paths that make at least a couple of your choices genuinely matter. However, exploration of these big ideas is occasionally too spread out by repetitive story beats. Take a shot for every "here's a never-before-mentioned place of strategic significance, we need it!" mission. These less dramatic moments are at least elevated by a charming cast of characters. Even if they lean into archetypal anime tropes a bit too much, they remain memorable, and reading through Support conversations is always a highlight--so long as you don't have so many back-to-back that you get sick of them.
Story missions are interspersed with vignettes with gorgeous, pseudo-medieval art. I honestly wish all of the game's portraits and designs were done in this style; it stands out in a powerful way. Still, the clean and decidedly modern anime-style art the game ended up with looks good in its own right.
The bulk of your time, however, will be spent on leisurely Persona-style social and teaching sequences at the monastery. These start out charming, but by the end, they start to feel like going through the motions. There is very little unique content here; it's all just a few simplistic mechanics, repeated dozens of times. This only accentuates how bare it really is. You might get to read a few dialogue boxes where characters comment vaguely on the current narrative goings-on. You might find a lost item, which involves guesstimating who might have lost it (god forbid you be able to ask other students "who do you think this might belong to?" to get to know the characters better) or, if you care enough to even bother, just asking everyone until you get it right. You might have teatime, where you simulate having a conversation with someone to raise your bond. This sounds neat--more conversations with dialogue choices, great, even if it is just a frivolous slice-of-life minigame. Except, in contrast to the support conversations, teatime offers no actual conversation to read, just the suggestion of one. It's not awful, but it all rings slightly hollow. It clearly wants to crib from content-rich JRPGs with life-sim elements like Persona. It's been a while since I played Persona 5, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall the depth and quality of the side content being worlds beyond Three Houses' offerings, even if Atlus's games have their fair share of padding too. It's cool to see that Fire Emblem tried something new, but it seems like there was a mismatch between their scope and their resources here.
You can automate these parts, but given that you miss out on making choices which meaningfully impact your units' performance during the fun part of the game, it just feels bad to do so. You can also spend your free time playing side battles, which are typically only interesting when tied to a character's backstory. Otherwise, they feel like shameless grinding opportunities when they're easy, and time-wasters when they're not. Three Houses has about 25 hours of the best Fire Emblem game ever in it, but the game is a generous 60 hours.
Within missions, the gameplay is as smooth as ever. The level design isn't always the most interesting, but it's consistently serviceable. Fire Embem's famous "weapon triangle"--axe beats lance beats sword beats axe--is technically gone, but it's just replaced with optional abilities that achieve nearly the same thing, so it's only sort of gone. The abilities themselves can be a bit overwhelming (and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize you can swap them out for new ones)--there's a lot of room for character customization and optimization, but without actually learning how the formulas for the different stats work, it's all a bit much to keep track of. I'm sure there's plenty to chew on for the hardcore challenge runners out there, but for those of us who just enjoy fiddling around with the classes and abilities that look fun, I'm not sure if all those options meaningfully improved my experience, since I never felt encouraged to experiment and actually learn how best to use them.
Monsters are one of the big new mechanics, and they kind of suck. Occasionally, they make for interesting strategic choices, but they're often just annoying bags of hit points and gambit tollbooths. They do require you adapt your strategy, but in my experience, that often just meant "do everything in your power to kill them in one turn, and if you can't, play extremely conservatively until you can." After their introduction, I don't think I ever saw a monster without groaning.
Divine Pulse feels like a great addition that reflects how people actually play Fire Emblem--sure, characters can die, but I will reload 99% of the time that happens. The other 1% is when it happens to a character I don't love in the final mission (rest in peace Hubert, Alois, and Ferdinand, who died in the name of killing the pope). Now, I don't have to reload. I can just get back to having fun in seconds rather than minutes (though I wish I didn't have to skip to my turn to use it every time a non-essential character dies; it's a difference of seconds, but I felt every one of those seconds). The later levels are balanced around having over a dozen or so rewinds, which is objectively fair, but more annoying than interesting in play. The abundance of unpredictable reinforcements and monsters in this stretch of the game feels like a deliberate attrition on Pulses. I think I would prefer a lighter touch on difficulty with more limited rewinds.
Still, for as many little issues as I have, Fire Emblem is fundamentally fun, and this game, for better and worse, is a whole lot of Fire Emblem. I would love to see a title with Three Houses' ambition and depth paired with the tightness (and the stylish pixel art, while I'm asking for things that will never happen) of the GBA games. Until then, this game will have to do.
Three Houses has one of the more interesting Fire Emblem stories by virtue of actually having themes (and surprisingly ambitious ideas about class, religion, and war--though I don't know if every path is quite as interesting or as complex as the Black Eagles') and branching paths that make at least a couple of your choices genuinely matter. However, exploration of these big ideas is occasionally too spread out by repetitive story beats. Take a shot for every "here's a never-before-mentioned place of strategic significance, we need it!" mission. These less dramatic moments are at least elevated by a charming cast of characters. Even if they lean into archetypal anime tropes a bit too much, they remain memorable, and reading through Support conversations is always a highlight--so long as you don't have so many back-to-back that you get sick of them.
Story missions are interspersed with vignettes with gorgeous, pseudo-medieval art. I honestly wish all of the game's portraits and designs were done in this style; it stands out in a powerful way. Still, the clean and decidedly modern anime-style art the game ended up with looks good in its own right.
The bulk of your time, however, will be spent on leisurely Persona-style social and teaching sequences at the monastery. These start out charming, but by the end, they start to feel like going through the motions. There is very little unique content here; it's all just a few simplistic mechanics, repeated dozens of times. This only accentuates how bare it really is. You might get to read a few dialogue boxes where characters comment vaguely on the current narrative goings-on. You might find a lost item, which involves guesstimating who might have lost it (god forbid you be able to ask other students "who do you think this might belong to?" to get to know the characters better) or, if you care enough to even bother, just asking everyone until you get it right. You might have teatime, where you simulate having a conversation with someone to raise your bond. This sounds neat--more conversations with dialogue choices, great, even if it is just a frivolous slice-of-life minigame. Except, in contrast to the support conversations, teatime offers no actual conversation to read, just the suggestion of one. It's not awful, but it all rings slightly hollow. It clearly wants to crib from content-rich JRPGs with life-sim elements like Persona. It's been a while since I played Persona 5, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall the depth and quality of the side content being worlds beyond Three Houses' offerings, even if Atlus's games have their fair share of padding too. It's cool to see that Fire Emblem tried something new, but it seems like there was a mismatch between their scope and their resources here.
You can automate these parts, but given that you miss out on making choices which meaningfully impact your units' performance during the fun part of the game, it just feels bad to do so. You can also spend your free time playing side battles, which are typically only interesting when tied to a character's backstory. Otherwise, they feel like shameless grinding opportunities when they're easy, and time-wasters when they're not. Three Houses has about 25 hours of the best Fire Emblem game ever in it, but the game is a generous 60 hours.
Within missions, the gameplay is as smooth as ever. The level design isn't always the most interesting, but it's consistently serviceable. Fire Embem's famous "weapon triangle"--axe beats lance beats sword beats axe--is technically gone, but it's just replaced with optional abilities that achieve nearly the same thing, so it's only sort of gone. The abilities themselves can be a bit overwhelming (and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize you can swap them out for new ones)--there's a lot of room for character customization and optimization, but without actually learning how the formulas for the different stats work, it's all a bit much to keep track of. I'm sure there's plenty to chew on for the hardcore challenge runners out there, but for those of us who just enjoy fiddling around with the classes and abilities that look fun, I'm not sure if all those options meaningfully improved my experience, since I never felt encouraged to experiment and actually learn how best to use them.
Monsters are one of the big new mechanics, and they kind of suck. Occasionally, they make for interesting strategic choices, but they're often just annoying bags of hit points and gambit tollbooths. They do require you adapt your strategy, but in my experience, that often just meant "do everything in your power to kill them in one turn, and if you can't, play extremely conservatively until you can." After their introduction, I don't think I ever saw a monster without groaning.
Divine Pulse feels like a great addition that reflects how people actually play Fire Emblem--sure, characters can die, but I will reload 99% of the time that happens. The other 1% is when it happens to a character I don't love in the final mission (rest in peace Hubert, Alois, and Ferdinand, who died in the name of killing the pope). Now, I don't have to reload. I can just get back to having fun in seconds rather than minutes (though I wish I didn't have to skip to my turn to use it every time a non-essential character dies; it's a difference of seconds, but I felt every one of those seconds). The later levels are balanced around having over a dozen or so rewinds, which is objectively fair, but more annoying than interesting in play. The abundance of unpredictable reinforcements and monsters in this stretch of the game feels like a deliberate attrition on Pulses. I think I would prefer a lighter touch on difficulty with more limited rewinds.
Still, for as many little issues as I have, Fire Emblem is fundamentally fun, and this game, for better and worse, is a whole lot of Fire Emblem. I would love to see a title with Three Houses' ambition and depth paired with the tightness (and the stylish pixel art, while I'm asking for things that will never happen) of the GBA games. Until then, this game will have to do.
Huh, that's odd, I thought that would be big news.
Superliminal
2019
Such a great and unique take for a puzzle game. I love the narrative as it makes you feel tense and scared throughout. You can really see a lot of influence from the Stanley Parable in the level design and the narrative. Add in some great music to add to the theme and you have yourself a creepy but fun puzzle experience.
Cuphead
2017
So far, it seems like one of the best indie games I have ever played. I love the challenge it gives and in addition, you can see the amount of labour Studio MDHR put into the game when you take a look at the graphics, level design and so on.
Risk of Rain 2
2019
Amazing fun with friends, but every run tends to feel the same with how little items there are and how they stack. The lack of content is really the only thing holding the game back.
Modding community really saves this game.
Modding community really saves this game.
There is only one word i can use to describe this shill of a game and its disappointing. The OG MW3 is my favourite COD and after how great the MW2 reboot was and the teaser for this game, i was really excited, only to be given a campaign with no story, the same multiplayer and a half assed zombies mode. This is gonna be a long one
The campaign
I think this is in contest for the most wasted potential in COD history. Setting up Makarov at the end of MW2 and teasing the No Russian mission got so many people so hyped. But what we got was instead a campaign with literally no stakes whatsoever, and that can be put down to one thing, the open combat missions. This isnt a campaign, its one long DMZ mission. The open combat missions take away any narrative pacing and all of the possible stakes, when you play a linear cod mission, you fear for the characters around you, but in these missions there is none of that at all. I believe this awful mission concept was put down to a greedy Activision and over worked designers, having to pump out a full games worth of content in 16 months. Another reason this games narrative and i will also say this for all of the reboot trilogy, It has been ruined by Warzone, because every character that dies comes back in fucking warzone. Due to this there are far to many characters to deal with and none of them have any decent character moments in this game. Throughout this game its juggling Price, Gaz, Soap, Ghost, Graves, Farah, Alex, Shepard, Laswell and Makarov, which would be fine if its was a full release game but not in a 14 mission character development void campaign. Even the missions that aren't these open combat warzone asset reused things are nothing special. When you look back at the OG MW3 the set pieces are fucking unbelievable, like being in a city with building collapsing around you, chasing a subway train on the back of a truck, shooting you way through a hotel in juggernaut armour and watching the eiffel tower collapse in front of you, this game is 12 years older than it and it has none of this, no cool set pieces, no emotional character moments and no interesting narrative, speaking of character moments, this next one is a big one, SPOILERS AHEAD. So the only thing that happens in this game is that Soap is once again killed by Makarov, while in the old game, there was a whole mission where you try and get Soap to safety and then that really emotional moment when Soap dies which has unfortunately been meme'd to death. In this game there is nothing, Soap gets shot by Makarov and thats it. It really does feel like they didnt have an ending and just went with this as a cliff-hanger in a game thats to short to warrent one. Another issue with this is that none of these characters seem to care about each other, the only obvious character relationship is between Soap and Ghost which was one of the best parts about the last game, but in this they barely interact.
I will say a few positives, Overall the missions are fun, they just lack any substance but i didnt hate my time playing this, the only mission i can remember fully is the stadium one which i do think was an appropriate substitute for No Russian as i doubt you could get away with what the OG did anymore and the plane mission for as short as it was is pretty impactful and i dont get people saying that it wasnt that bad, like everyone on the plane died. I will also say that I like Makarov in this game, obviously not better than the original but I like the performance as a much more level headed leader, also making his motivation about Urzikstan and Verdanzk strengthens my point about Warzone being a huge issue. I also like the scene at the end with Price, Gaz and Ghost spread Soap's ashes. Visuals look great as always.
Multiplayer
From what little of it i have played so far i cant really see many faults, its your average multiplayer. Im a person who buys COD for the campaign stupidly, so the multiplayer is something that i play for a while and normally delete because it takes up so much space. Very similar to MW2 but i liked that one so it doesnt bother me much but again its very copy paste.
Havent touched the Zombies yet and i am scared to because i have a feeling that its going to be terrible.
MW3 should of never came out this year, it should have been made by Infinity Ward and came out at least 2 years after MW2. While i enjoyed my time playing, this game left me with nothing but disappointment for what we could of got.
The campaign
I think this is in contest for the most wasted potential in COD history. Setting up Makarov at the end of MW2 and teasing the No Russian mission got so many people so hyped. But what we got was instead a campaign with literally no stakes whatsoever, and that can be put down to one thing, the open combat missions. This isnt a campaign, its one long DMZ mission. The open combat missions take away any narrative pacing and all of the possible stakes, when you play a linear cod mission, you fear for the characters around you, but in these missions there is none of that at all. I believe this awful mission concept was put down to a greedy Activision and over worked designers, having to pump out a full games worth of content in 16 months. Another reason this games narrative and i will also say this for all of the reboot trilogy, It has been ruined by Warzone, because every character that dies comes back in fucking warzone. Due to this there are far to many characters to deal with and none of them have any decent character moments in this game. Throughout this game its juggling Price, Gaz, Soap, Ghost, Graves, Farah, Alex, Shepard, Laswell and Makarov, which would be fine if its was a full release game but not in a 14 mission character development void campaign. Even the missions that aren't these open combat warzone asset reused things are nothing special. When you look back at the OG MW3 the set pieces are fucking unbelievable, like being in a city with building collapsing around you, chasing a subway train on the back of a truck, shooting you way through a hotel in juggernaut armour and watching the eiffel tower collapse in front of you, this game is 12 years older than it and it has none of this, no cool set pieces, no emotional character moments and no interesting narrative, speaking of character moments, this next one is a big one, SPOILERS AHEAD. So the only thing that happens in this game is that Soap is once again killed by Makarov, while in the old game, there was a whole mission where you try and get Soap to safety and then that really emotional moment when Soap dies which has unfortunately been meme'd to death. In this game there is nothing, Soap gets shot by Makarov and thats it. It really does feel like they didnt have an ending and just went with this as a cliff-hanger in a game thats to short to warrent one. Another issue with this is that none of these characters seem to care about each other, the only obvious character relationship is between Soap and Ghost which was one of the best parts about the last game, but in this they barely interact.
I will say a few positives, Overall the missions are fun, they just lack any substance but i didnt hate my time playing this, the only mission i can remember fully is the stadium one which i do think was an appropriate substitute for No Russian as i doubt you could get away with what the OG did anymore and the plane mission for as short as it was is pretty impactful and i dont get people saying that it wasnt that bad, like everyone on the plane died. I will also say that I like Makarov in this game, obviously not better than the original but I like the performance as a much more level headed leader, also making his motivation about Urzikstan and Verdanzk strengthens my point about Warzone being a huge issue. I also like the scene at the end with Price, Gaz and Ghost spread Soap's ashes. Visuals look great as always.
Multiplayer
From what little of it i have played so far i cant really see many faults, its your average multiplayer. Im a person who buys COD for the campaign stupidly, so the multiplayer is something that i play for a while and normally delete because it takes up so much space. Very similar to MW2 but i liked that one so it doesnt bother me much but again its very copy paste.
Havent touched the Zombies yet and i am scared to because i have a feeling that its going to be terrible.
MW3 should of never came out this year, it should have been made by Infinity Ward and came out at least 2 years after MW2. While i enjoyed my time playing, this game left me with nothing but disappointment for what we could of got.
LEGO The Hobbit
2014
Literally just worse Lego Lord of the Rings in every way. Why the hell would they release it like this
no this genuinenly fucks so hard and is so sexy and dry and gilded and metallic and gushing and electric and blaring its everything
The flame turret is funny
This review contains spoilers
MAJOR STORY SPOILERS
Well the sequel everyone was waiting for finally released, and it did not disappoint. Spiderman 2 has everything I wanted it to have, that being a great story, fluid combat and fantastic and fast-paced traversal.
Overall I think the story is the best in the series but that could change down the line because I hold the first game's story in very high regard. Kraven is a very imposing villain who remained in the shadows for most of the game unfortunately.
Venom is fantastic as well and with the small amount of time he is fully present in the game he steals every scene, but of course that was going to happen when its Tony Todd voicing him. However you also have to give props to Yuri Lowenthal who is fantastic in this game. All performances are very good some notable ones being Harry, Kraven and Norman Osborn. Peter and Miles are at their bests in this game and I think that the developers managed very well to give them both meaningful arcs however it did seem like more was put into peters side of the story which makes sense but especially in the later stages, Miles is put on the back burner. The boss fights were fantastically done especially the Martin Li and Venom fights. Side content is as good as ever with two sidequests specifically introducing the last of spidermans notable villains, Chameleon and Carnage. Also setting up Norman Osborn to be Goblin and possibly working with Doc Ock in the post credit scene has me hyped for the next entry in the series
I will say that the story does feel like two separate games. The Kraven part feels so drastically different to the Venom part. The way I look at it is the first act is all about Kraven, the second act is about Peter with the symbiote and the third act is Venom. Because of this, Kraven feels put to the side. The glue that connects these parts is Harry, whos personality changes along with the acts. He starts off very energetic and trying to start things with Peter and MJ where he left off. The second act he becomes obsessed with spiderman and trying to be just like him, then the third act he becomes Venom. His character is the most essential part of this game which to me is strange as I believed from the marketing that it was going to be Kraven.
The symbiote suit part of the story works quite well as they make peter unlikable enough were you cant wait to get rid of the suit, but also not turning him into a Bully Maguire, I will also say that I prefer that during this section, peter becomes estranged from Miles instead of MJ as that trope has been done before.
Another small complaint that I have is that I don't like that they killed, Vulture, Shocker and Electro off screen. Given that they showed Kraven killing scorpion I would of expected to at least have a couple missions where Kraven is tracking these other villains. This also damages a possible 3rd game as Spidermans rogues gallery has almost been halved.
I didn't experience any major bugs but a couple times I did have to reload a check point as either a prompt would appear to let me open a door or an enemy was stuck underground. Also I had a few instances of dialogue not matching the cutscene but nothing game breaking at all and it didn't inhibit me.
Gameplay has been given the boost it needed. One of my biggest worries of this game was that it would play exactly the same as the 1st game, (Bring in all the £70 DLC comments). But thankfully it doesn't, thanks to the suit abilities and gadgets providing a much needed spice to the combat. To tick a few small things off, The suits are great with an awesome choosing between both peter and miles. The traversal is great and very fast paced, The web wings work really well as well as the new swinging upgrades. Graphically I didn't notice much of a change, but not in a bad way, Normally it isn't something I pay attention to when playing.
Overall Spiderman 2 met my expectations and shattered any doubts I had. I am currently working towards the platinum and I hope that down the line it will get some DLC content.
Well the sequel everyone was waiting for finally released, and it did not disappoint. Spiderman 2 has everything I wanted it to have, that being a great story, fluid combat and fantastic and fast-paced traversal.
Overall I think the story is the best in the series but that could change down the line because I hold the first game's story in very high regard. Kraven is a very imposing villain who remained in the shadows for most of the game unfortunately.
Venom is fantastic as well and with the small amount of time he is fully present in the game he steals every scene, but of course that was going to happen when its Tony Todd voicing him. However you also have to give props to Yuri Lowenthal who is fantastic in this game. All performances are very good some notable ones being Harry, Kraven and Norman Osborn. Peter and Miles are at their bests in this game and I think that the developers managed very well to give them both meaningful arcs however it did seem like more was put into peters side of the story which makes sense but especially in the later stages, Miles is put on the back burner. The boss fights were fantastically done especially the Martin Li and Venom fights. Side content is as good as ever with two sidequests specifically introducing the last of spidermans notable villains, Chameleon and Carnage. Also setting up Norman Osborn to be Goblin and possibly working with Doc Ock in the post credit scene has me hyped for the next entry in the series
I will say that the story does feel like two separate games. The Kraven part feels so drastically different to the Venom part. The way I look at it is the first act is all about Kraven, the second act is about Peter with the symbiote and the third act is Venom. Because of this, Kraven feels put to the side. The glue that connects these parts is Harry, whos personality changes along with the acts. He starts off very energetic and trying to start things with Peter and MJ where he left off. The second act he becomes obsessed with spiderman and trying to be just like him, then the third act he becomes Venom. His character is the most essential part of this game which to me is strange as I believed from the marketing that it was going to be Kraven.
The symbiote suit part of the story works quite well as they make peter unlikable enough were you cant wait to get rid of the suit, but also not turning him into a Bully Maguire, I will also say that I prefer that during this section, peter becomes estranged from Miles instead of MJ as that trope has been done before.
Another small complaint that I have is that I don't like that they killed, Vulture, Shocker and Electro off screen. Given that they showed Kraven killing scorpion I would of expected to at least have a couple missions where Kraven is tracking these other villains. This also damages a possible 3rd game as Spidermans rogues gallery has almost been halved.
I didn't experience any major bugs but a couple times I did have to reload a check point as either a prompt would appear to let me open a door or an enemy was stuck underground. Also I had a few instances of dialogue not matching the cutscene but nothing game breaking at all and it didn't inhibit me.
Gameplay has been given the boost it needed. One of my biggest worries of this game was that it would play exactly the same as the 1st game, (Bring in all the £70 DLC comments). But thankfully it doesn't, thanks to the suit abilities and gadgets providing a much needed spice to the combat. To tick a few small things off, The suits are great with an awesome choosing between both peter and miles. The traversal is great and very fast paced, The web wings work really well as well as the new swinging upgrades. Graphically I didn't notice much of a change, but not in a bad way, Normally it isn't something I pay attention to when playing.
Overall Spiderman 2 met my expectations and shattered any doubts I had. I am currently working towards the platinum and I hope that down the line it will get some DLC content.