DJSCheddar
Actually not a terrible concept for how to structure a 1-player Godzilla game, but it's let down by really weak design in the platforming stages and dull (if functional) combat in the big monster fights. It is at least playable. And the kaiju art is quite good and on model, with some fun choices for the enemies. Baragon! Hedorah! Varan! Overall - eh. Could be worse.
And btw I love that Comedians of Comedy-ass title, lol
And btw I love that Comedians of Comedy-ass title, lol
This review contains spoilers
Can't help but be a bit let down by this, unfortunately. Complaints first:
- I'm not exactly doing the math on hours of gameplay or total playable minigames or whatever else, but despite the marketing, this certainly does not feel like 'the biggest Yakuza game yet'. Honestly, there's just not as much new stuff as I was expecting, and actually not as much returning old stuff either. No meaningful post-game content. No unlockable extra party members. Way too few job classes (I couldn't believe you just ... get them all pretty much right at the beginning). Nowhere near the vast feel of Y0 or even Y7, let alone the absurd scope of Y5. This is a feel thing - again, there may technically be more content here. I dunno, maybe my expectations were too high. At least the Hawaii map is big and well done. (NOTE: Since writing this, I have leared about all the standard-content-in-any-other-game ass DLC that was very clearly just sliced off from the finished build and stuck behind a paywall. Awesome. Great stuff.)
- Weirdly fails as a follow up to MAN WHO ERASED HIS NAME, to the point where it feels like this was written by other people entirely, like a different creative team picking up a storyline they didn't particularly believe in the details of. The broad strokes are there, but some stuff seems to be straight up retconned (from a game that came out like three months before this, ffs) and the one major returning character gets done dirty in a way that is honestly just insulting. Big disappointment given that, uh, leading into this was kind of that game's whole deal!
- The story has a VERY strong start in Hawaii (more on that after I get done bitching) but starts to unravel at around the midpoint, and after that, every successive chapter feels weaker and weaker until it ends on - owing to the split party thing - not one, but two anticlimaxes. Much of this falls on the extremely weak villains and their dumb plan. I kept wishing for someone else to be behind the scenes, waiting to spring the REAL plot of this game on us from out of the shadows.
- They chickened out and punted on Kiryu's fate. I mean, we had to know they would, but still.
- The two main characters/two parties/two major maps thing is really clumsy and ultimately quite unsatisfying. The amount of awkward little contrivances and concessions and systems workarounds they have to employ to get it to work make it feel like a mistake. And in the postgame when everyone is together (kind of) it's even worse.
- Ichiban's story is very weak compared to Kiryu's. Nowhere near how good his stuff was in Y7. I still really like the character and feel just fine about him being the MC for the series moving forward, but I don't think he's getting his due in this one. The Saeko stuff doesn't feel right and overplays his buffoonery, and they end up kind of fumbling the storyline with his mom. Oh well, maybe next time.
- The major returning party members from Y7 don't get much to do in the story, and given that, they feel a bit like wasted space in the roster. Like, when I realized we were gonna get Zhao and fucking lame-ass what-the-fuck-even-are-you Joongi Han towards the end of the game instead of anyone new, I was annoyed. They're all just kind of there.
- They STILL don't know what the fuck to do with Majima, Dojima, Saejima, and Akiyama. (Here's an idea .... PARTY MEMBERS)
Complaining aside, there are definite bright spots. The new supporting characters and party members are REALLY good (hence, again, why I would have liked some more of them) and especially Yamai is a straight-up all-timer. As I said, the plot starts off very strong with you meeting the new cast and working out exactly what's going on behind the scenes in Hawaii. The way you get new jobs is delightful (again, MORE please). Dondoko Island is nuts in its scope. The combat is improved in little but impactful ways. There's lots of good QOL.
But most of all ... the Kiryu stuff. It's absolutely fan service, absolutely an apology for the stubborn way that Y6 basically refused to tie into any previous game, absolutely shameless and maudlin. But the farewell tour stuff here hits HARD. No other game series has this kind of history with one character and one continuous story over so many entires for such a long time, no other series has characters that have aged from kids to adults in real time like it's Linklater's fucking BEFORE trilogy. For someone who played the original on PS2 in 2006 and every one since, there is absolutely no way this stuff wasn't going to rip my heart out, if they were gonna go there with it, and they do. They wring out every ounce. But they've earned it! And there are a few moments in here that I have been waiting for all series - for them to cash in on this incredible legacy. They got me on this stuff, I'm fully marked out. But you do gotta hand it to 'em. They may not follow through with getting rid of him, they may not even actually do justice to the stuff from the end of MAN WHO ERASED HIS NAME, but they go big, and his beats in the main plot and even his side stuff are quite successful. They should leave it at that.
And I guess *I* will leave it at this: I liked Y7 a lot, and I was excited that it really felt like the start of something new and great. This does not feel like a real evolution or even continuation of that. If anything should be called "Gaiden", it's this. It's great in the way that all RGGs are great, but it's muddled and clumsy and feels like it's about 3/4ths done in all aspects. Toward the end of this game, I found myself thinking "oh, that's it?" a LOT, and I was not expecting that at all from the get-go. I hope these guys can kind of sort this stuff out for the next one. I don't want JUDGMENT or continued KIWAMI entries to end up being the 'good ones' of this series.
Yakuza Series Ranking
- I'm not exactly doing the math on hours of gameplay or total playable minigames or whatever else, but despite the marketing, this certainly does not feel like 'the biggest Yakuza game yet'. Honestly, there's just not as much new stuff as I was expecting, and actually not as much returning old stuff either. No meaningful post-game content. No unlockable extra party members. Way too few job classes (I couldn't believe you just ... get them all pretty much right at the beginning). Nowhere near the vast feel of Y0 or even Y7, let alone the absurd scope of Y5. This is a feel thing - again, there may technically be more content here. I dunno, maybe my expectations were too high. At least the Hawaii map is big and well done. (NOTE: Since writing this, I have leared about all the standard-content-in-any-other-game ass DLC that was very clearly just sliced off from the finished build and stuck behind a paywall. Awesome. Great stuff.)
- Weirdly fails as a follow up to MAN WHO ERASED HIS NAME, to the point where it feels like this was written by other people entirely, like a different creative team picking up a storyline they didn't particularly believe in the details of. The broad strokes are there, but some stuff seems to be straight up retconned (from a game that came out like three months before this, ffs) and the one major returning character gets done dirty in a way that is honestly just insulting. Big disappointment given that, uh, leading into this was kind of that game's whole deal!
- The story has a VERY strong start in Hawaii (more on that after I get done bitching) but starts to unravel at around the midpoint, and after that, every successive chapter feels weaker and weaker until it ends on - owing to the split party thing - not one, but two anticlimaxes. Much of this falls on the extremely weak villains and their dumb plan. I kept wishing for someone else to be behind the scenes, waiting to spring the REAL plot of this game on us from out of the shadows.
- They chickened out and punted on Kiryu's fate. I mean, we had to know they would, but still.
- The two main characters/two parties/two major maps thing is really clumsy and ultimately quite unsatisfying. The amount of awkward little contrivances and concessions and systems workarounds they have to employ to get it to work make it feel like a mistake. And in the postgame when everyone is together (kind of) it's even worse.
- Ichiban's story is very weak compared to Kiryu's. Nowhere near how good his stuff was in Y7. I still really like the character and feel just fine about him being the MC for the series moving forward, but I don't think he's getting his due in this one. The Saeko stuff doesn't feel right and overplays his buffoonery, and they end up kind of fumbling the storyline with his mom. Oh well, maybe next time.
- The major returning party members from Y7 don't get much to do in the story, and given that, they feel a bit like wasted space in the roster. Like, when I realized we were gonna get Zhao and fucking lame-ass what-the-fuck-even-are-you Joongi Han towards the end of the game instead of anyone new, I was annoyed. They're all just kind of there.
- They STILL don't know what the fuck to do with Majima, Dojima, Saejima, and Akiyama. (Here's an idea .... PARTY MEMBERS)
Complaining aside, there are definite bright spots. The new supporting characters and party members are REALLY good (hence, again, why I would have liked some more of them) and especially Yamai is a straight-up all-timer. As I said, the plot starts off very strong with you meeting the new cast and working out exactly what's going on behind the scenes in Hawaii. The way you get new jobs is delightful (again, MORE please). Dondoko Island is nuts in its scope. The combat is improved in little but impactful ways. There's lots of good QOL.
But most of all ... the Kiryu stuff. It's absolutely fan service, absolutely an apology for the stubborn way that Y6 basically refused to tie into any previous game, absolutely shameless and maudlin. But the farewell tour stuff here hits HARD. No other game series has this kind of history with one character and one continuous story over so many entires for such a long time, no other series has characters that have aged from kids to adults in real time like it's Linklater's fucking BEFORE trilogy. For someone who played the original on PS2 in 2006 and every one since, there is absolutely no way this stuff wasn't going to rip my heart out, if they were gonna go there with it, and they do. They wring out every ounce. But they've earned it! And there are a few moments in here that I have been waiting for all series - for them to cash in on this incredible legacy. They got me on this stuff, I'm fully marked out. But you do gotta hand it to 'em. They may not follow through with getting rid of him, they may not even actually do justice to the stuff from the end of MAN WHO ERASED HIS NAME, but they go big, and his beats in the main plot and even his side stuff are quite successful. They should leave it at that.
And I guess *I* will leave it at this: I liked Y7 a lot, and I was excited that it really felt like the start of something new and great. This does not feel like a real evolution or even continuation of that. If anything should be called "Gaiden", it's this. It's great in the way that all RGGs are great, but it's muddled and clumsy and feels like it's about 3/4ths done in all aspects. Toward the end of this game, I found myself thinking "oh, that's it?" a LOT, and I was not expecting that at all from the get-go. I hope these guys can kind of sort this stuff out for the next one. I don't want JUDGMENT or continued KIWAMI entries to end up being the 'good ones' of this series.
Yakuza Series Ranking
2002
Occupies a weird middle ground between the PS1 Spidey games and the million open-world titles that would follow. (This one's still level-based - yeah, hard to even imagine, I know.) If you can wrestle the controls and the camera into submission there is some fun to be had, with lots of moves and fairly good traversal. Dafoe's delicious V/O is almost worth it by itself, but Tobey's sleepy delivery is amusing too, for a very different reason lol. Also in one of the cooler unlockables of the era, you get the option to play the entire game as the Green Goblin, with totally different controls and dialogue in the levels. You're actually playing as Harry Osborn after the events of the movie/game, using his dad's tech to try to figure out what happened to him! The integration is bit half-assed at times, but it's kinda neat, nonetheless.
It could have been worse. Not exactly high praise, but eh.
It could have been worse. Not exactly high praise, but eh.
I have never played any major game that comes off this infantile and soy and basic before. It's like a season of Paw Patrol produced by Tesla. Legitimately painful at times.
I guess chalk it up to MILES MORALES being way better than I expected, but in my apparently infinite naivete, I didn't even consider that this would be worse than the first game. It is, though - wow is it - in every way possible, including the above. Traversal, combat, story, quest design, side quests, incidental features, bugs - even the look of the game, which is supposed to be this thing's bread and butter - all took noticeable hits. Shocking how big of a stumble backwards this is.
It's perfectly clear at this point that Insomniac has nothing interesting to say or do with Spider-Man. The story of this game is so straightforward and basic it's embarrassing that it was written by adults. And once again, the dialogue and the extremely shaky and inconsistent motion capture and facial capture^ can't pull off the prestige MCU thing they're desperately reaching for. I'm no Spidey expert, but this is far and away the least interesting rendition of him that I'm familiar with. Nothing at all going on. Zero juice. It seriously feels like it's for little children.
^(not buying into the absurd conspiracies around MJ's face, but I can understand why someone would search for an alternative explanation for what they did to her because it genuinely seems impossible that they're that incompetent)
As for the gameplay, it really exposes itself in this one, with combat now being so overstuffed, spongey, and yet trivially easy that it becomes flat-out boring. And and they seemed to realize it and for variety's sake had no choice but to leaven the experience with UNCHARTED-style hold-forward-while-stuff-happens tunnels and, much worse, SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE of just walking around doing normal ass pointless stuff. It is CRAZY how much time you spend outside of a spider-suit (especially in the first few hours of the game!!!) looking at stuff, walking between nodes, hearing literal science lectures. The BATMAN: ARKHAM games had lots of different applications for its gameplay systems, always had different interesting things to do and discover that felt holistic to that world and story, and it never just felt like a sequence of samey fights (even though it accasionally was). Here, they have just got NOTHING to fall back on.
At one point, there's a sidequest where a Spidey fan has a copy of the first Daily Bugle photo Peter ever took of himself in action (recreating the cover of the real-world first Spider-Man comic, you know, where he's swinging and he's got the criminal under his arm). So Peter starts to flash back and you're like, oh nice, we're going to relive his first big adventure! But no, the sidequest is actually about him riding his bike to work to get the pictures in on time. I'd say that about fucking sums things up.
I guess chalk it up to MILES MORALES being way better than I expected, but in my apparently infinite naivete, I didn't even consider that this would be worse than the first game. It is, though - wow is it - in every way possible, including the above. Traversal, combat, story, quest design, side quests, incidental features, bugs - even the look of the game, which is supposed to be this thing's bread and butter - all took noticeable hits. Shocking how big of a stumble backwards this is.
It's perfectly clear at this point that Insomniac has nothing interesting to say or do with Spider-Man. The story of this game is so straightforward and basic it's embarrassing that it was written by adults. And once again, the dialogue and the extremely shaky and inconsistent motion capture and facial capture^ can't pull off the prestige MCU thing they're desperately reaching for. I'm no Spidey expert, but this is far and away the least interesting rendition of him that I'm familiar with. Nothing at all going on. Zero juice. It seriously feels like it's for little children.
^(not buying into the absurd conspiracies around MJ's face, but I can understand why someone would search for an alternative explanation for what they did to her because it genuinely seems impossible that they're that incompetent)
As for the gameplay, it really exposes itself in this one, with combat now being so overstuffed, spongey, and yet trivially easy that it becomes flat-out boring. And and they seemed to realize it and for variety's sake had no choice but to leaven the experience with UNCHARTED-style hold-forward-while-stuff-happens tunnels and, much worse, SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE after SEQUENCE of just walking around doing normal ass pointless stuff. It is CRAZY how much time you spend outside of a spider-suit (especially in the first few hours of the game!!!) looking at stuff, walking between nodes, hearing literal science lectures. The BATMAN: ARKHAM games had lots of different applications for its gameplay systems, always had different interesting things to do and discover that felt holistic to that world and story, and it never just felt like a sequence of samey fights (even though it accasionally was). Here, they have just got NOTHING to fall back on.
At one point, there's a sidequest where a Spidey fan has a copy of the first Daily Bugle photo Peter ever took of himself in action (recreating the cover of the real-world first Spider-Man comic, you know, where he's swinging and he's got the criminal under his arm). So Peter starts to flash back and you're like, oh nice, we're going to relive his first big adventure! But no, the sidequest is actually about him riding his bike to work to get the pictures in on time. I'd say that about fucking sums things up.
It's basically DLC, but taken as its own product, it stands head and shoulders above the the first SPIDER-MAN just on the strength of Miles the character alone. Good lord, I had not recognized just how much I disliked playing as that absolute rod Peter Parker until now. In the first game, Miles wasn't given any real personality or anything interesting to do, so initially in this he seems a bit off-puttingly like a totally different person, but then you realize, yeah, no, this is much better, thanks, so who cares. His motivations, supporting characters, humor, and crucially his voice performance (so, so sick of Lowenthal's overdone Parker) are all so refreshing coming straight off of the first game, and along with some other miscellaneous improvements make this feel a lot more like the 'real' game to me than that one.
Not too much more to say about it - it looks absolutely phenomenal, some of the new moves are enjoyable (having a Falcon Punch to just instantly ruin any kind of heavy guy is pretty nice), and the combat is tweaked a bit, seemingly to serve a more brash, aggressive style which ties in nicely to Miles' character/age. It's pretty good!
Not exactly looking forward to going back to Peter for 2.
P.S.: One thing though - don't really want to say too much about this, but for a game that features a 100% non-white main cast (aside from the weaksauce, terribly-written corporate villain), has an appropriate if a bit clumsy Black Lives Matter shoutout, was released at the height of the George Floyd protests, and is the sequel to one of more grossy cop-friendly major games in recent memory, this game sure does deal with the issue of the police by literally pretending they don't exist!
Not too much more to say about it - it looks absolutely phenomenal, some of the new moves are enjoyable (having a Falcon Punch to just instantly ruin any kind of heavy guy is pretty nice), and the combat is tweaked a bit, seemingly to serve a more brash, aggressive style which ties in nicely to Miles' character/age. It's pretty good!
Not exactly looking forward to going back to Peter for 2.
P.S.: One thing though - don't really want to say too much about this, but for a game that features a 100% non-white main cast (aside from the weaksauce, terribly-written corporate villain), has an appropriate if a bit clumsy Black Lives Matter shoutout, was released at the height of the George Floyd protests, and is the sequel to one of more grossy cop-friendly major games in recent memory, this game sure does deal with the issue of the police by literally pretending they don't exist!
2018
Playing this again for the second time - and especially right after GOD OF WAR: RAGNAROK - I think I'd say now that this is actually a fair bit below what the floor of our expectations should be for a mega-Triple A event game nowadays. Not a bad game in any functional sense, and its best feature (the truly excellent traversal system) almost guarantees it a thumbs-up all by itself, but it is nevertheless riddled with flaws, shortcuts, lazy design elements, and baffling / oversights, and I'm going to go ahead and complain about them in a bulleted list here:
- Number one, it really is SPIDER-MAN: ARKHAM CITY, down to the littlest design elements. And while it's no crime to take inspiration from an excellent game, a lot of the smaller details cribbed from it do come off as quite lazy in their reuse. There are a lot of "oh, come on" moments
- Although it must be said, there's one big thing they didn't lift from ARKHAM. That game took place in a fantastical crime-nightmare world packed with easter eggs and references and impressive details around every corner - this one takes place in a rigorously realistic facsimile of New York City packed with absolutely nothing of any interest at all
- The scale of everything is all over the place - doors, fuseboxes, items, wildlife (pigeons the size of dogs), even characters - here's Spider-Man fighting villain The Scorpion, listed in-game as 6' 3"
- The music is straight up bad. Like, I don't even have the vocabulary to criticize orchestral score, and I don't think I've ever been in this position with a big-budget full-orchestra movie-like OST, but yeah, it sucks, it's bad
- The writing is pretty poor on a macro- and micro-level. Big story stuff like Dr. Octavius' heel turn - which is foreshadowed for SO long but then feels absurdly rushed and unbelievable when it finally does happens - is inexcusably clumsy and more or less breaks the game's story in two, but also just character dialogue is dopey and unrealistic
- Taken as an overall thing, both plot and story are laughably pedestrian and cartoonish and just nothing in the end. It's actually kind of surprising how basic it is. Sub-MCU stuff. Like, there are three-episode arcs of the '90s cartoon that look like The Wire compared to this
- combat's fine, but it doesn't match ARKHAM at all. In those games, you press a button at the correct time, and you can bet your life that what you want to happen is going to happen, it's so tight it's like a math problem. Here, a little loosey-goosey, delay-y, systems tripping over each other-y. Overall not nearly as satisfying
- There are a lot of villains present, which is awesome and necessary, but good God, their designs are hideous, just terrible. Almost seems a few years out of date with how ugly and tech-y everyone is. Greebled nonsense, feels like getting stabbed in the eyes
- this is a Remaster-specific gripe, but having played both, the new face model for Peter sucks. He looks wooden and unexpressive and has this very punchable constant smirking, looking-down-his-nose thing going on. I actually quite liked the original guy. Not sure that I buy Insomniac's reasoning for replacing him, either - he just looks like Tom Holland and it's hard to believe that's a coincidence
So, I played this again to prepare for MILES MORALES and 2, and I'm hoping that those are stronger. The fact that I've 100%ed it twice should and does say something about this game's baseline playablility and value, but again, I think we should be expecting quite a bit more from the mega-prestige hyper-realistic performance-capture-ass industry-shaking titles. So what I'm saying is .... triple-A Games Awards bait ......... Be Greater
- Number one, it really is SPIDER-MAN: ARKHAM CITY, down to the littlest design elements. And while it's no crime to take inspiration from an excellent game, a lot of the smaller details cribbed from it do come off as quite lazy in their reuse. There are a lot of "oh, come on" moments
- Although it must be said, there's one big thing they didn't lift from ARKHAM. That game took place in a fantastical crime-nightmare world packed with easter eggs and references and impressive details around every corner - this one takes place in a rigorously realistic facsimile of New York City packed with absolutely nothing of any interest at all
- The scale of everything is all over the place - doors, fuseboxes, items, wildlife (pigeons the size of dogs), even characters - here's Spider-Man fighting villain The Scorpion, listed in-game as 6' 3"
- The music is straight up bad. Like, I don't even have the vocabulary to criticize orchestral score, and I don't think I've ever been in this position with a big-budget full-orchestra movie-like OST, but yeah, it sucks, it's bad
- The writing is pretty poor on a macro- and micro-level. Big story stuff like Dr. Octavius' heel turn - which is foreshadowed for SO long but then feels absurdly rushed and unbelievable when it finally does happens - is inexcusably clumsy and more or less breaks the game's story in two, but also just character dialogue is dopey and unrealistic
- Taken as an overall thing, both plot and story are laughably pedestrian and cartoonish and just nothing in the end. It's actually kind of surprising how basic it is. Sub-MCU stuff. Like, there are three-episode arcs of the '90s cartoon that look like The Wire compared to this
- combat's fine, but it doesn't match ARKHAM at all. In those games, you press a button at the correct time, and you can bet your life that what you want to happen is going to happen, it's so tight it's like a math problem. Here, a little loosey-goosey, delay-y, systems tripping over each other-y. Overall not nearly as satisfying
- There are a lot of villains present, which is awesome and necessary, but good God, their designs are hideous, just terrible. Almost seems a few years out of date with how ugly and tech-y everyone is. Greebled nonsense, feels like getting stabbed in the eyes
- this is a Remaster-specific gripe, but having played both, the new face model for Peter sucks. He looks wooden and unexpressive and has this very punchable constant smirking, looking-down-his-nose thing going on. I actually quite liked the original guy. Not sure that I buy Insomniac's reasoning for replacing him, either - he just looks like Tom Holland and it's hard to believe that's a coincidence
So, I played this again to prepare for MILES MORALES and 2, and I'm hoping that those are stronger. The fact that I've 100%ed it twice should and does say something about this game's baseline playablility and value, but again, I think we should be expecting quite a bit more from the mega-prestige hyper-realistic performance-capture-ass industry-shaking titles. So what I'm saying is .... triple-A Games Awards bait ......... Be Greater
The exact same game as the last one with new levels and characters. So, all the same good and bad stuff applies. Eight playable characters in this thing though!
2022
This is a very difficult game for me to rate or even render any kind of final judgment on because I find the tension between its ambitions and the realities of its production in today's gaming landscape hard to reconcile. At its best, it fully transcends the limitations and deficiencies of video game storytelling and is very well-written, well-acted, and at times quite powerful. But it is also a game that is - for lack of a better term - 'triple-A'ed' within an inch of its life, and the experience is deeply and unavoidably compromised as a result.
For starters, it is officially a member of the UNCHARTED 4 Club for games that could and should be literally half as long as they are. Thirty hours for main story only on an action game is absolutely unthinkable. There is nothing that it accomplishes in that amount of time that it could not comfortably do in fifteen. Every mission is at least a third too long. There are whole SECTIONS of the game and GROUPS of characters that could just be hacked off (probably starting with Atreus' narrative-momentum-annihilating adventures with his little FORSPOKEN-ass neurodivergent girlfriend) and do nothing but improve the experience as a result of it. And it's not just the story length - every aspect of the game - areas, sidequests, systems, loot, menus, DIALOGUE - all bloated beyond belief for seemingly no other reason than that the publisher probably mandated what their HowLongToBeat times had to read as.
And this is again where it's hard to come down on one side or the other with the game. Because all the bloat, all the unnecessary collectibles and constant character patter and whatever else are still quite well done, and with the same care and skill as the meat of the game. They did their best! It shows in every corner, truly! But in the end so much of it feels unnecessary.
Less easy to stomach is the very modern feeling you get from minute one of playing - that this is a game that is TERRIFIED of people losing interest in it. The handholding, the tooltips, the pointless loot every X amount of steps (some in the absolute silliest of places, plotwise), the companion characters reminding you verbally of status effects EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CONTRACT ONE - possibly more severe than any other game I've played. There are times when my little guys were giving me puzzle hints before I even knew there was a puzzle, ffs. And that specifically is something that is measurably worse here than even GOW '18, where it was already a minor irritant. Were the devs promised additional days of vacation based on playerbase trophy unlock percentages or something?
So yeah, in short, it's really held back by being a major Sony game made in the 2020s, and it frustrates me. So goddamn Game Awards-core. But you look at so much of it, you look at the masterful final run where it all comes together, and then the ending (which, let me just say, as the recent father of a son ....... it hits! It hits.) and it's tough for me to believe that these truly talented people with real storytelling (and game design! the combat is still great) chops wouldn't want to make a tighter experience that actually respected its audience's intelligence as players, just a smidge.
I really hope this particular industry wave breaks and rolls back at some point. It's gotta, right?
For starters, it is officially a member of the UNCHARTED 4 Club for games that could and should be literally half as long as they are. Thirty hours for main story only on an action game is absolutely unthinkable. There is nothing that it accomplishes in that amount of time that it could not comfortably do in fifteen. Every mission is at least a third too long. There are whole SECTIONS of the game and GROUPS of characters that could just be hacked off (probably starting with Atreus' narrative-momentum-annihilating adventures with his little FORSPOKEN-ass neurodivergent girlfriend) and do nothing but improve the experience as a result of it. And it's not just the story length - every aspect of the game - areas, sidequests, systems, loot, menus, DIALOGUE - all bloated beyond belief for seemingly no other reason than that the publisher probably mandated what their HowLongToBeat times had to read as.
And this is again where it's hard to come down on one side or the other with the game. Because all the bloat, all the unnecessary collectibles and constant character patter and whatever else are still quite well done, and with the same care and skill as the meat of the game. They did their best! It shows in every corner, truly! But in the end so much of it feels unnecessary.
Less easy to stomach is the very modern feeling you get from minute one of playing - that this is a game that is TERRIFIED of people losing interest in it. The handholding, the tooltips, the pointless loot every X amount of steps (some in the absolute silliest of places, plotwise), the companion characters reminding you verbally of status effects EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CONTRACT ONE - possibly more severe than any other game I've played. There are times when my little guys were giving me puzzle hints before I even knew there was a puzzle, ffs. And that specifically is something that is measurably worse here than even GOW '18, where it was already a minor irritant. Were the devs promised additional days of vacation based on playerbase trophy unlock percentages or something?
So yeah, in short, it's really held back by being a major Sony game made in the 2020s, and it frustrates me. So goddamn Game Awards-core. But you look at so much of it, you look at the masterful final run where it all comes together, and then the ending (which, let me just say, as the recent father of a son ....... it hits! It hits.) and it's tough for me to believe that these truly talented people with real storytelling (and game design! the combat is still great) chops wouldn't want to make a tighter experience that actually respected its audience's intelligence as players, just a smidge.
I really hope this particular industry wave breaks and rolls back at some point. It's gotta, right?
1994
Honestly not that bad for Game Gear. There are a surprising amount of playable X-Men in here and they all have their unique powers and stuff, to the point where many of them borderline break the game. Maybe my standards for licensed superhero platformers are too low, but I could see myself getting into this as a kid if my parents had got if for me or something. There are worse things than being somewhat dull but perfectly playable.
The VECTORMAN boys try their hand at Spidey on the 32X and it's ... actually not completely terrible? Makes an extremely bad impression on first glance, looking like some kind of MORTAL KOMBAT/Lawnmower Man hybrid and featuring characters that careen around and pinball off each other and obstacles at 100 mph. But if you play for a few minutes and learn to harness the jank, you can actually get some fun out of this, especially with regard to the surprisingly good-feeling web swinging. Still has shades of kusoge throughout and as a whole certainly not what I would call "good", but it's actually kind of a fun wild ride if you're willing to meet it halfway and it handily clears a good percentage of the other nightmarishly bad Spider-Man side-scrollers out there.
I struggle to understand why this game is so much worse than its predecessor. It's like the same game! But everything sucks now! Totally baffling.
This was an early emulation classic for me, and for some reason I used to discount it as being not good enough, or not what I wanted it to be, or something. I have something like an anti-nostalgia for it. But I think now that I've played a lot of other, much worse games from this era, it comes off a lot better. The character movesets, the gorgeous SNES graphics with great animation and very faithful and detailed renderings of the cast, the music (aside from that goddamned Capcom SNES guitar sound), - everything is pretty far above average for this type of game in this period, and I do finally recognize that.
It's certainly not perfect, or even something you'd call a hidden gem, or whatever. The back half feels weirdly tacked on and bad, and some of the bosses are garbage. But for a licensed game in the mid-90s you can do a lottttttttttt worse.
Also: Psylocke.
It's certainly not perfect, or even something you'd call a hidden gem, or whatever. The back half feels weirdly tacked on and bad, and some of the bosses are garbage. But for a licensed game in the mid-90s you can do a lottttttttttt worse.
Also: Psylocke.
1999
Really excellent presentation all-around. Spielberg's goal with this seems to have been to make a (relatively) realistic, serious-minded FPS game with a cinematic flair, and in that it is certainly a success. The story is grounded but entertaining, the cutscenes, briefings, and menus are all top-notch and quite immersive, and the score is excellent.
Unfortunately, the shooting action and level design simply do not live up to GOLDENEYE, this game's direct and explicit inspiration. The levels are short, linear, and simple with mostly unmissable objectives right on your track. Stealth and long-range combat don't work great. Most of the more impressive gameplay ideas are over too soon. You keep wishing there was more to it!
It's a shame. It's fine and fun to play, but if the actual game lived up to the window dressing, I could see this being a true classic.
Unfortunately, the shooting action and level design simply do not live up to GOLDENEYE, this game's direct and explicit inspiration. The levels are short, linear, and simple with mostly unmissable objectives right on your track. Stealth and long-range combat don't work great. Most of the more impressive gameplay ideas are over too soon. You keep wishing there was more to it!
It's a shame. It's fine and fun to play, but if the actual game lived up to the window dressing, I could see this being a true classic.
1996
I love RAPTOR: CALL OF THE SHADOWS, but is there literally a single other western-made scrolling shooter that is any good at all? Like how did we think stuff like this was acceptable.
After Extremely British Mario 64 (BANJO-KAZOOIE) was a big hit, obviously the world needed Extremely French Mario 64, and here it is.
It's quite beautiful for a game of this type and era, with the painterly style of its stunningly-animated (but otherwise bad) predecessor adeptly moved into 3D. No small task on the N64! Gameplay-wise it is significantly more compelling than the 2D game, but it's mostly just functional rather than truly exciting to play. There unfortunately isn't a real overworld, so you just alternate between unnecessarily involved "oo will 'elp me get zee leed off my zhar of rainbeaus???" story cutscenes and wildly differing-length linear levels with odd structures. For some reason a huge amount of the platforming and obstacles in this game take the form of one-hit or one-mistake equals fail-and-start-over mini challenges that make playing feel like constantly getting on and off a tightrope, which - sorry! - sucks. But there is skill and smarts to the overall design, moreso than some contemporaries.
I respect people's nostalgia for this I guess, but I find it competent at best. Certainly better than GEX.
It's quite beautiful for a game of this type and era, with the painterly style of its stunningly-animated (but otherwise bad) predecessor adeptly moved into 3D. No small task on the N64! Gameplay-wise it is significantly more compelling than the 2D game, but it's mostly just functional rather than truly exciting to play. There unfortunately isn't a real overworld, so you just alternate between unnecessarily involved "oo will 'elp me get zee leed off my zhar of rainbeaus???" story cutscenes and wildly differing-length linear levels with odd structures. For some reason a huge amount of the platforming and obstacles in this game take the form of one-hit or one-mistake equals fail-and-start-over mini challenges that make playing feel like constantly getting on and off a tightrope, which - sorry! - sucks. But there is skill and smarts to the overall design, moreso than some contemporaries.
I respect people's nostalgia for this I guess, but I find it competent at best. Certainly better than GEX.