Dadhunter
234 Reviews liked by Dadhunter
We Overlord fans don't want to talk about this
X-COM: UFO Defense
1994
Nothing short of a miracle of design. It could have been just a damn good tactical combat game, but they decided they wanted more. Instead, we get an extremely in-depth simulation about micromanaging your organization and the combat missions, and both sides are extremely good. The feedback between both sides is great too, as you frantically research the alien technology in hopes of fighting back the continually ramping up band of goons you face, which basically culminates in aliens that entirely turn your own squad against itself (Ethereals and Chryssalids) causing you to consider every single element even more carefully. Let's get this out of the way; if you want X-COM, there is no better game to play than X-COM in regards to what it does.
This all said, this game suffers from issues primarily tied to its longevity. Ships you see start being the same, individual troops get so powerful you can just send them in to kill out entire squads, the alien roster becomes predictable and the research feels meaningless. While I like the idea of hitting dead-ends, outside of the Flying Suit it rarely felt like any of the equipment I got was noticeably a huge improvement past the early game and it's only a problem because even the good stuff you research often feels a bit trivial as time goes on. It's worsened by the time you've realized that you've seen pretty much every consistent ship layout so every mission just becomes "send my one guy in and kill everyone unless there's a chryssalid in which case fuck time for my entire team to die." If campaigns weren't so long this would be a significantly better game IMO, but beggars can't be choosers; what exists here, in its current form, is still amazing and worth a play if any of the bullet points here interest you and you haven't played it. I fucking hate Chryssalids.
This all said, this game suffers from issues primarily tied to its longevity. Ships you see start being the same, individual troops get so powerful you can just send them in to kill out entire squads, the alien roster becomes predictable and the research feels meaningless. While I like the idea of hitting dead-ends, outside of the Flying Suit it rarely felt like any of the equipment I got was noticeably a huge improvement past the early game and it's only a problem because even the good stuff you research often feels a bit trivial as time goes on. It's worsened by the time you've realized that you've seen pretty much every consistent ship layout so every mission just becomes "send my one guy in and kill everyone unless there's a chryssalid in which case fuck time for my entire team to die." If campaigns weren't so long this would be a significantly better game IMO, but beggars can't be choosers; what exists here, in its current form, is still amazing and worth a play if any of the bullet points here interest you and you haven't played it. I fucking hate Chryssalids.
Trek to Yomi
2022
I should just get this out of the way: I've seen one classic samurai film - the original Seven Samurai - and it was so long ago that you could probably convince me that there were actually six samurai total. I recall enjoying it, and I'm broadly familiar with the genre through cultural osmosis. That having been said: I don't know the particulars. I don't know what Trek to Yomi gets right and wrong. I'll leave that to someone better versed in the films the game is inspired by.
Now, the review. Trek to Yomi, whatever it ultimately is, is neither of the things I wanted it to be. Is it good? Definitely. Great sense of style, the combat feels about right for samurai combat. Bold swings, standing your ground, fending off enemies on both sides. It's not driven by agility, by dodges. You wait, you strike, you parry. Well done, although I get the feeling that the difficulty was toned down. If enemies did just a bit more damage, if healing checkpoints were just a bit further apart, if you were punished just a little more often for mistakes then it would be - at least for me - pitch perfect with the theme. As it is, it feels like it was tuned down a bit for accessibility, but the game is short enough that a second run on hard mode is possible for the curious. Beyond that, it feels like a classic story, presents itself seriously and does so well. Hard to ask for much more there.
The problem is, I want Trek to Yomi to be either more game or more film.
More game. Color as highlights, a more dynamic world that feels less like setpieces. More engaging secrets, a greater variety of enemies, a more fantastic underworld. Or more film. A world built by practical effects, with none of the fantastic, impossible for the time set pieces of said underworld. Less of a need to break the narrative flow to look for secrets during dramatic moments. A more concise, film-like structure that feels less like levels and more like a story. Fewer fights with greater drama.
As it is, it straddles the line between film and game well, but not so well that I don't wish it was more one than the other.
Now, the review. Trek to Yomi, whatever it ultimately is, is neither of the things I wanted it to be. Is it good? Definitely. Great sense of style, the combat feels about right for samurai combat. Bold swings, standing your ground, fending off enemies on both sides. It's not driven by agility, by dodges. You wait, you strike, you parry. Well done, although I get the feeling that the difficulty was toned down. If enemies did just a bit more damage, if healing checkpoints were just a bit further apart, if you were punished just a little more often for mistakes then it would be - at least for me - pitch perfect with the theme. As it is, it feels like it was tuned down a bit for accessibility, but the game is short enough that a second run on hard mode is possible for the curious. Beyond that, it feels like a classic story, presents itself seriously and does so well. Hard to ask for much more there.
The problem is, I want Trek to Yomi to be either more game or more film.
More game. Color as highlights, a more dynamic world that feels less like setpieces. More engaging secrets, a greater variety of enemies, a more fantastic underworld. Or more film. A world built by practical effects, with none of the fantastic, impossible for the time set pieces of said underworld. Less of a need to break the narrative flow to look for secrets during dramatic moments. A more concise, film-like structure that feels less like levels and more like a story. Fewer fights with greater drama.
As it is, it straddles the line between film and game well, but not so well that I don't wish it was more one than the other.
Diablo II
2000
you would think with a name like the dark wanderer they wouldnt just let him wander through towns like that huh
Take No Prisoners
1997
A game that feels rather ahead of its time as it's this unique mix of isometric shooter, immersive sim elements, and a bit of Metroidvania. The narrative is essentially a pastiche of Escape from New York and nothing really to write home about, you're playing this solely for the gameplay.
The game has a good deal of freedom as you have free reign to explore each district of the city which are interconnected though transports and shortcuts; though some districts will have enemies that will probably be too tough for your initial loadout. Exploring the city gives you better gear and weapons to help you progress which is where the Metroidvania vibes come in. The level design is also quite neat, the only bad part of the game is the nuclear power plant where you have to do this very drawn out and tedious puzzle, just look up a guide for that section because everything else is good fun.
This game just got recently re-released on GOG and Steam and I urge you to get it if you're interested, it deserves a lot more love.
The game has a good deal of freedom as you have free reign to explore each district of the city which are interconnected though transports and shortcuts; though some districts will have enemies that will probably be too tough for your initial loadout. Exploring the city gives you better gear and weapons to help you progress which is where the Metroidvania vibes come in. The level design is also quite neat, the only bad part of the game is the nuclear power plant where you have to do this very drawn out and tedious puzzle, just look up a guide for that section because everything else is good fun.
This game just got recently re-released on GOG and Steam and I urge you to get it if you're interested, it deserves a lot more love.
Garten of Banban 4
2023
The audacity to ask $10 for this is honestly really funny.
One of the greatest what if stories in gaming. If only the developers weren't put under crunch to finish this game so quick. God, what a game this could've been. I mourn that everytime i remember this game. Still absolutely worth playing.
Another great Night Dive remaster, but this is them polishing kind of a turd here compared to the other boomer shooters they’ve remastered such as Blood, Doom 64, or Powerslave. Rise of the Triad originally was supposed to be a Wolf 3D sequel before Tom Hall left id and man does it show; this game feels more archaic than Doom and it came out two years later. Rise of the Triad exemplifies most of the flaws people levy at classic boomer shooters, its obtuse key hunting in samey labyrinthine corridors; if the in-game map wasn’t such a massive QoL that highlighted pressure plates and what areas open up I probably would have dropped this game. The game doesn’t haven’t much of a consistent aesthetic, it’s very slapdash and amateurish, and so is its game design in general. Feels like they just threw everything at a wall to see what stuck and it doesn’t really work super great. Your arsenal is absolutely anemic, I mainly used the infinite ammo MP40, because most other weapons are pickups with limited ammo so you really just want to save them for the bullet sponge enemies like the Enforcers. The powerups are mostly useless trolls aside from God and Dog mode and are best ignored aside from those two. There’s also a live system that just feels tacked on because you’re better off just quicksaving because dying just sends you to pistol start at the beginning of the level.
The soundtrack is indeed quite a banger though.
I did have enough fun with it and I don’t regret getting this game at all, especially because as I said, Night Dive did great work, but I had my fill after beating the shareware campaign and Dark War. I’d only recommend this if you already a fan of this game or if you’re a boomer shooter fan who’s already played the better games of the era.
The soundtrack is indeed quite a banger though.
I did have enough fun with it and I don’t regret getting this game at all, especially because as I said, Night Dive did great work, but I had my fill after beating the shareware campaign and Dark War. I’d only recommend this if you already a fan of this game or if you’re a boomer shooter fan who’s already played the better games of the era.
This review contains spoilers
Destroy All Humans!: Big Willy Unleashed is a “Soylent Green is made of people” simulator/spin-off (?) of the main series developed by Locomotive Games as a Wii Exclusive. Apparently according to an interview with Ken Allen, a senior game producer on the title; it started off on the PSP, but after it was deemed “non profitable”, they moved development of this spin-off over to the Wii because of technological and profit reasons. Apparently they also had a PS2 port they were in the middle of making too before that was canceled due to lack of system memory and the fact that the game just looked worse on the older system than the Wii. Because of this, it was mainly developed for the Wii and as such was released in Early 2008 while the official mainline sequel, Path of the Furon, was released in December of 2008. I can’t really find much in the way of “Why” this game was developed but if I find any sources for that I’ll put them down, but if this documentary was something to go off of, THQ attempted to hire Pandemic to make a third game on a shorter budget and in nine months but was declined and afterwards they looked towards internal THQ studios, mandating a spin-off and a sequel.
The people they had in mind for it were Locomotive Games, who had their work cut out for them on developing this title as their first and only Wii game from trying to figure out motion controls, paying fees to the Big Boy brand for the likeness to their statue for the Big Willy statue, and issues between development members over features and development time. They had also previously developed games like Jet Moto 3 (under the name Pacific Power & Light) and an old childhood game I remember: Power Rangers Dino Thunder. Seeing that had me in a strange delight because I remember playing that game on Gamecube (though it’s probably not great now of course) and I’ve always wanted to play this game but I never had the funds as a kid to buy the Wii or the game itself until I later grew up and got a job. Once I got that, as a fan of the series and as an exclusive collector I knew I had to buy a copy of this series. However, over the many years it had accumulated dust and I moved on to buy 50,000 other games and held a focus on different titles; however, once I played both of the Destroy All Humans! Remakes I felt it was the time to at least give this game a shot as my Wii game of the year (as I made a promise to myself to beat one game per console I owned this year).
The plot of this game is built around an interesting meta concept: when you kill someone in a video game, where do the bodies go? Oftentimes, dead people just fade into nothingness as you turn the corner due to technical engine limitations, but in this case they decided to build a whole game around it to hilarious intent, which is even referenced in game.
“Pox: Crypto, what do you think happens to the corpses of all the humans of whom you suck out the brain stems?
Crypto: I always figured they just faded away when I went around the corner.”
Oh no, in this game it turns out that Orthopox-13 created a whole fast food franchise named Big Willy’s in order to get rid of all of the evidence of the Furon Invasion whilst also making a profit on the side. The food at Big Willy’s are made of food, and the game that surrounds the concept consists of 70s pastiche references, parodies, double entendres, and more fourth wall breaks. Big Willy’s is under attack by Patty Wurst (a reference of course to both the food and the multi-millionaire dollar heiress Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by revolutionaries in the Seventies), who with her revolutionaries go out of their way to expose the crimes of Big Willy’s Furon owners; whilst Crypto and Pox are dealing with this (with a plot thread involving Pox’s last love for a rich girl fueling his hate for Patty) they also deal with side plots including a Furon Efficiency Expert giving tests, a human with an Ion Detonator messing up Crypto’s assassination missions and Pox’s use of disco to brainwash the human populace. Once Patty Wurst is eliminated in her giant tank using a giant Big Willy statue mech, it’s revealed that her boss is Colonel Kluckin’, a parody of Colonel Sanders from KFC and the main antagonist who rivals Pox and his “Big Willy” with the Kluckin’ restaurants. Fearing for the unveiling of his 500th Big Willy restaurant, Pox insists on going to Fairfield to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.
Farfield’s plot thread is mainly about a gang of roller girls who work for Colonel Kluckin’ led by one Mindy Peters, who try to take down the Big Willy franchise through stealing their recipes and planting bombs. Other side plots include Natalya (the russian spy lover from the second game) trying to give you a call to tell you about something in the middle of another assassination mission only for the human to strike again and fumble your hit, another trial involving the efficiency expert and more disco shenanigans. After a bit of meandering, Crypto and Pox come up with the idea of taking the guise of the Corncob King, Mindy’s boyfriend, and luring her out in public to eliminate her. Eventually Pox just decides to say fuck it and just burn every building down to the ground in a “freak weather accident”, of course except for his “Big Willy”.
Now here’s where I’m going to address my thoughts on the first half as well as address the plot and it’s length in general. Harbor City does an interesting job of getting your attention and moving you along from place to place as you try to stop Colonel Kluckin’, but there is a bit of meandering in terms of missions and such. Harbor City consists of multiple assassination attempts on Patty that just kind of go nowhere and it feels kind of the same for Fairfield besides a few points here and there. That’s not to say stuff like this doesn’t happen in the other games, it’s just that they tend to do stuff in a way that pushes the plot forwards a lot more or at least makes it interesting, in which case this is kind of…not so much. Which is also strange considering the short length this game takes compared to the others, I completed this game I think in about 5 hours or so, which is way less than what the other two games had and it doesn’t really feel like there’s a lot of substance to certain set pieces, which is sad considering it’s kind of an ingenious plot with really cool ideas.
So for the third part of the game you travel to a place called Fantasy Atoll, a parody of the Fantasy Island series, which is owned by Mr. Pork and Ratpoo (Ratpoo as a name is honestly fucking hilarious in hindsight). I don’t even remember why Crypto and Pox go there to be honest, I think it’s to follow a signal from Kluckin’ but truth be told it’s kind of a distraction from the main plot that follows Pox’s obsession for getting a new body after the memories of the past flame made him fall weak to Mr. Pork’s promise of “a new body”. What culminates is a fetch quest (literally named fetch quest, which falls into the category of “Not as funny if you still go along with the tedium of something even if you’re making fun of it” as you gather parts for his new body, trying to turn it into a kaiju monster attraction for other guests. It’s a trick of course, and Colonel Kluckin’ sends soldiers to ambush everyone on the ship as Crypto protects Pox’s physical body and the scientist nearby before everything goes to hell and Pox is sent flying to another side of the island. After finding his body and calling Furon tech support in a somewhat humorous but frustrating mission, Crypto/Pox finally kill Mr. Pork (after learning that his necklace protects him from damage) by brainwashing his servant Ratpoo into grabbing him and jumping into the large volcano (named A’Rkvudal here funny enough for fans of the lore) before finally finishing him off on his Hate Boat, a giant war ship which requires you to take out shields before dropping torpedoes into one of four sides of the ship in a somewhat difficult mission. Before flying out to Kluckin’s last known location, Vietnahml, plot threads include a disco party involving kidnapping people to form a group called “The Village Humans”, the Furon Efficiency guy challenging you to another test and Pox finally believing Crypto about the human interrupting their assassination missions.
Then comes the final part: Vietnahml. Crypto arrives with Pox to help their proprietor Trahn (played by Nolan North, it’s one of those old “have white people play asian people stereotype” roles that shouldn’t be taken seriously but can still be offensive) fight against Colonel Kluckin’ and his Khmer Beige rebels by wiping out a convoy and then infiltrating their base and destroying parts of their operation. However, eventually Crypto ends up captured and it’s revealed that Trahn is both a double agent (with the convoy from earlier being sent to kill Kluckin’) and that Kluckin’ really loves your plan and has been doing the same thing, and wants to team up. Problem is though, he uses the brain stem in his food and the Furons need it for their DNA so that’s out of the picture. After escaping and rescuing his “Big Willy” (lol), and saving his UFO from being torn apart by scientists working with Kluckin, Crypto and Pox destroy the base once and for all. Afterwords Trahn attempts to kill Crypto on a bike with a shield and throwing explosive chickens but dies and it culminates in a final mech battle between Crypto in the Big Willy and Kluckin’ in the statue of a Vietnahmlese robot rock god or something. Kluckin’ dies and the Furons live, though Pox gives up on the fast food industry with the competitiveness of it all and after being given the profits from “A shrimp boat and a mentally disabled war veteran”, Crypto persuades Pox to join him into going to a business venture in Vegas, setting up (but kind of contradicting) the third Destroy All Humans game coming up, Path of the Furon. The game then ends on the credits sequence with a YMCA dance from Crypto, but if you followed the side plot stuff you’ll get no disco mission, but you will learn that the Furon Efficiency Expert is actually a con artist who you chase down and kill before the original clone is locked up in a prison and that the human with the Ion Detonator who keeps ruining Crypto’s hits turns out to be both his and Natalya’s son.
Overall, my feelings on the plot are that it has a lot of cool ideas, but that I don’t think are always expanded upon in the right way or format. Not a lot of it is fleshed out as much as it should be but it’s serviceable enough; what really carries this game is the humor and tone, which isn’t very serious and include references to everything from “the previous two games” to certain music artists to lots of immature sex jokes (“my Big Willy” of course being one of the top cracks) which I have a severe weakness for when done right and this game made me chuckle a couple of times doing it. The only other thing I can think to add in this is the inclusion of Vietnahml: I think it’s an ingenious idea to have the whole fast food thing come from dead bodies, and what produces the most dead bodies? War, specifically in this case a giant parody of the Vietnam War. Personally, I’m not offended by it’s inclusion in this game, even with a deceased grandfather who served in the war but I can see certain people not being okay by the pisstake on the war itself so if you’re one of those people that is in there as a warning. Again though its length, and its pacing feels kind of weak in certain aspects and truth be told even though Fantasy Atoll is my favorite location, my not knowing why we were even there was kind of indicative of how kind of barebones stuff feels. I like it, and it’s one of if not the best part of the game but I wish it was way more developed than it actually was.
The gameplay, being on the Wii, has its fair share of pros and cons on the game’s quality. The whole point of the game series is the namesake, to Destroy All Humans right? So you’ll be able to go around, murder humans with an assortment of weapons both on foot, in your flying saucer and in the Big Willy mech and for that I applaud the game for adding more in what could be considered a limiting experience. On foot you have weapons such as the four main weapons: the Zap-O-Matic being the electric gun, the Disintegrator can follow the namesake and vaporize enemies with ease, the Anal Probe can one shot enemies and have their brains pop out and the Ion Detonator is basically your remote controlled grenade launcher. Other weapons you’ll get are the Zombie Gun and the Lightning Ball, along with the shrink ray; the problem with these weapons is that while the first and last gun are cool and unique, the Lightning ball felt kind of useless whilst the other two are just kind of unceremoniously thrown into your lap by text prompts after beating missions and if you’re not paying attention to the screen when they tell you this, you won’t even know you have the weapon at all unless you scroll through it on accident. For the Shrink Ray even, you unlock it by completing the final mission and as such, using it will shrink people, vehicles, animals and props down to smaller sizes; however I didn’t even know how to use it because the text appeared on screen but it said it was locked in my inventory. After looking it up on the internet, I learned that in order to use it I had to open up the cheat menu and turn it on to have it appear in my inventory. I’m not sure if this was due to the potentially rushed nature of the game, but it’s not a great way to introduce any weapon into the game just by throwing a sentence on screen and I felt it could’ve used some actual practical in game examples, even if to just let people know that these weapons exist. To finish off this section, there are other abilities like PK (the ability to pick people/objects up into the air), throwing stuff with PK (which requires you to thrust your controller forward (heh)), hypnosis (which distracts everyone around you), body snatching (which allows you to hop into a human being and control their body undercover for a while) and transmogrification (which allows you to break down objects into ammo) and all three of the latter abilities require you to complete a small mini game where you click the A button on all the little circles floating around the screen. If you take too long, more circles will spawn but I just kinda spammed the A button and flinged it all around the place and I completed it quickly more often than not. However, that doesn’t stop the overall gameplay package from feeling iffy in certain regards.
Even on foot stuff, the motion controls in general are a mixed bag for me, sometimes they actually worked well and I went on for a specific amount of time and didn’t even notice any issues in this regard. However, a lot of the time I wasn’t in that weird Zen-like state; sometimes trying to move the camera with the nunchuck/motion thing to the left was kind of frustrating and after a while my right wrist would hurt. Aiming the weapons can sometimes be a little jank due to this motion as well, though truth be told, I’m not used to the Wii and I personally believe it’s adapted to the game the best it can be. However, I didn’t really want to go around and engage in it much due to the motion controls, and overall that kind of hurt the experience for me personally. The camera/motion movement was the biggest chore in this regard; with one mission in particular being the bane of my existence in this game: Customer Service. In this mission you have to walk around, zap some satellites then finally defend a building from being attacked by the military. Fair enough, in the OG games this would be cake but in this game you have constantly spawning military planting bombs, which you have to precisely aim on this bomb and toss it (which the throw doesn’t go far in this game compared to the others and kind of hurt my hands a bit) but pile that on in an enclosed beach with people shooting at you right next to the building, the camera flinging me all over the damn place and military boats hitting you with missiles and a limited amount of time to throw the bombs away before they blow up the building and fail the mission? I legitimately got infuriated at the lack of gameplay cohesion in this enclosed space and nearly fucking screamed, the only saving grace being that my death would let me spawn right next to the building but if I failed I had to do the entire mission all over again including getting to the mission in the first place. Other than that mission, it was kind of a struggle but for the most part the on foot stuff was fine, though the lack of being able to read minds for funny quips had me sad and disappointed considering that was one of my favorite things to do in the other games. Also like the other games, going into water will hurt/kill you and it’s even worse in this game as stepping into a puddle will lead Crypto into having a convulsion and instant death which made the first mission in Fantasy Atoll trying to get instructions to the visitor center a bit of a trip with the lack of ability as moving people around via motion controls either gets them killed really quick via accidentally slamming them into things at full force or them also drowning in puddles.
The UFO has the usual three as well: Death Ray, Sonic Boom and Quantum Deconstructor (which each three has its uses being for average destruction on both ground forces/buildings, ground forces mostly and a giant nuke) in every game as well as one more weapon: the Electro Cone, which when you bring down to the ground will vaporize all ground forces in your vicinity in an excellent display which is amazing. The ability to abduct people for DNA and drain vehicles for health are still there as well, though the controls to abduct took me a while to figure out and draining vehicles requires precise aiming on top of a prop or vehicle which led to my death countless times. If I were to give any thoughts on the UFO, it is that the motion controls make it kind of a slog for the most part to actually move around. Moving it around requires you to move your Wiimote stuff left or right, with pushing forward making it go down and backwards making it go up as well; this mixed in with the camera sometimes being finicky and the health drain needing to be accurate can sometimes lead to missing stuff entirely leading to death or alternatively picking something or someone else up entirely. The main thing that popped out to me as genius is the fact that the cloak in the game, instead of making the UFO invisible it just turns it into a blimp which I think is actually a pretty clever stealth mechanic in public, at least aesthetically.
The Big Willy statue, the newest addition into the series, also has the least amount of depth in game and I rarely used it during my time. While cool as hell, it only has four or five functions: one is to grab people by pressing the back trigger and A and you can either grab people to eat their brains for health or pick up objects. Throwing them was kind of a mixed bag requiring you to hold the back trigger and A again at a precise time to actually throw it, and oftentimes I either slammed the prop down onto the ground for a small ranged attack or just accidentally dropped it. Health for the most part in this wasn’t bad, and Big Willy can take a lot of damage (heh) but it’s still tiring trying to fight with the motion controls. The only other weapons for this are laser eyes, vomiting acid which clears ground enemies, or farts which I never used because like the other weapons I didn’t even know this existed until after I beat the game.
And finally, a lot of these weapons require upgrades; however they work a bit different compared to the original games. This game has more of a “Use this weapon and it’ll upgrade itself” system. You’ll still collect pieces of tech out in the open world and via missions but the truth is that the more you use a weapon or power ability in certain ways (like Body Snatching for 25 minutes along with other prerequisites lead to an upgrade), the more effective it’s become. You don’t buy these abilities on your own, but to make them more effective I had to do a tad bit of grinding with certain prerequisites in mind but after some progress was made I dropped it and by the end, I acquired 75% of all of the upgrades by the time the game ended. Other things I want to point out are that when in your a cutscene, be careful of pressing the back trigger (or B Button) as if you do you’ll skip cutscenes (unless you want to do that in which case, ok) and I tended to hit it by accident trying to rest my arm in the middle of everything. By completing the game/side quests and putting in certain codes, you’ll also get a cheat code screen; some of these are just skins for Crypto and the Saucer/Blimp but others include the usual infinite health and ammo, but also stuff like everyone turning into a zombie, or zombies becoming radioactive and killing enemies quicker, the ability to body snatch animals in your environment, and etc.
As for the graphics and sound design stuff, I’ll start with the sound design here as there’s a bit of a mix up between certain sources. Instead of the actors J. Grant Albrecht and Richard Horvitz as Crypto and Pox respectively, they instead went with actors Sean Dennelan (whom I know nothing at all about) and Daryl Kurylo (whom I only know from the first Yakuza game on Playstation 2, one of my all time favorite games ever). As such, Crypto’s voice, while not bad, has changed and it’s clearly obvious that it’s not the same actor but the entire time playing the game I didn’t know that Horvitz wasn’t in it, so Daryl did a pretty good job at imitating Horvitz’s voice work. The reason for this ranges from the original actors wanting percentages of game sales but SAG stuff (funny with the times now) led to that falling through and Richard Horvitz saying that THQ lied about what consoles it would be on as a negotiation tactic to try to pay the actors less money. Regardless, everyone did a decent job on the acting side and I never felt my immersion break once which is pretty good. The soundtrack is ok for the most part, it takes place in the 70s so there will be tracks like YMCA and Disco Inferno but truth be told I don’t think there was much in the way of licensed stuff, probably due to the game’s smaller budget so I’m not surprised it didn’t fully embrace that aspect. Finally, the sound design is actually pretty solid as well, I never once noticed any sound glitches or any noise that felt weak or anything so that’s all good on that front.
Graphically however, the game as I said suffered under budget constraints and you can tell. First is that the game doesn’t look great for the most part, to the point that the original PS2 games look WAY better and they were on the previous generation. This is from what the sources would say due to the fact that the Wii assets were originally from the PSP, so instead of remaking the assets, it was just transferred over to the Wii as is. Due to this and the budget, other things suffered as well, especially lip syncing which was noticeable as immediately as I entered the game. This was something that was in the conflict between development teams as well, but in the end was cut out presumably due to time and money again. Most of the environments look ok, but don’t really become their own until the latter half of the game when you’re in Fantasy Atoll and Vietnamhl (mostly due to the amount of people they have fighting on one screen, especially considering they barely have ragdoll physics in general), though even then I noticed that probably due to limitations that most of the game except Fantasy Atoll is just flat surfaces with no verticality in terms of actual land. In fact, most of the maps are just small as hell in general, which is understandable though sad to see, and I feel what disappoints me the most in this field is the fact that the first half of the game just feels uninspired and unoriginal compared to the other games; Harbor City just reminds me of a sunnier Union City from the first game while Farfield just straight up feels like Rockwell and as such because of it, I felt it was rather dull in that regard. I guess the only thing I can really say about this is that I naturally understand that as a Wii game it was bound to take compromises in this regard, it’s going to look worse and have more limitations (including repetitive Crypto animations during cutscenes, ESPECIALLY his thrusting animation) and I also kind of chalk it up to “it is what it is I suppose”, I just wish stuff was better in these regards, even though I’m not really a graphics guy.
Overall, my thoughts on this game are exactly what the fans and critics thought of it when it came out: it was very mid. I enjoyed the plot for the most part, and the twelve year old humor that still makes me giggle, for the most part you can play the game well enough with the control schemes, the Big Willy mech is a fun addition and for a Destroy All Humans title on the Wii it’s pretty impressive for what it is. However, at the end of the day while frustrating in some regards, it’s also a sort of inoffensive spin-off title for the Wii that kind of misses in certain departments. As I said in my Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed review, it’s a so-so game and truth be told as I haven’t played Path of the Furon yet, to me it’s the worst one in the entire franchise, though that isn’t necessarily bad. However, this is one of those times where even though I’m tired of everybody and their grandmother getting a remake (now Assassin’s Creed 4 is getting one? Why?), just to keep a consistency, I’d love to see Black Forest Games go back and remake this title, but actually expand upon it in terms of gameplay and plot because there’s a lot of ideas in this game that are actually really cool. Would I ever play this game again? I don’t know, maybe just to show some friends what playing this game is like, or maybe if I’m stranded somewhere with just my Wii I’d consider it, but the truth is I’m way more likely to go back to the second and sometimes the first one more than this so I don’t know. It’s not a bad Wii or Destroy All Humans game, but I’d be ok with a remake and if there isn’t one, then there are other Destroy All Humans games or even Wii games in general that feel better to play than what we have here, though if you really want to try it it’s a short 5-7 hour game and could probably be bought on Amazon between 5-30 dollars USD.
Links:
https://www.gamespot.com/games/destroy-all-humans-big-willy-unleashed/cheats/
https://web.archive.org/web/20090113205258/http://wii.ign.com/articles/847/847320p1.html
https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/04/destroy-all-humans-psp-cancelled
https://www.gamerguysreviews.com/2020/11/aliens-stole-my-wii-interview-with.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYUQUHidN8I&t=1886s&ab_channel=GamerGuy%27sReviews
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DestroyAllHumansBigWillyUnleashed
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyAllHumans/comments/ppqrj4/the_history_of_destroy_all_humans_big_willy/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1078189/
The people they had in mind for it were Locomotive Games, who had their work cut out for them on developing this title as their first and only Wii game from trying to figure out motion controls, paying fees to the Big Boy brand for the likeness to their statue for the Big Willy statue, and issues between development members over features and development time. They had also previously developed games like Jet Moto 3 (under the name Pacific Power & Light) and an old childhood game I remember: Power Rangers Dino Thunder. Seeing that had me in a strange delight because I remember playing that game on Gamecube (though it’s probably not great now of course) and I’ve always wanted to play this game but I never had the funds as a kid to buy the Wii or the game itself until I later grew up and got a job. Once I got that, as a fan of the series and as an exclusive collector I knew I had to buy a copy of this series. However, over the many years it had accumulated dust and I moved on to buy 50,000 other games and held a focus on different titles; however, once I played both of the Destroy All Humans! Remakes I felt it was the time to at least give this game a shot as my Wii game of the year (as I made a promise to myself to beat one game per console I owned this year).
The plot of this game is built around an interesting meta concept: when you kill someone in a video game, where do the bodies go? Oftentimes, dead people just fade into nothingness as you turn the corner due to technical engine limitations, but in this case they decided to build a whole game around it to hilarious intent, which is even referenced in game.
“Pox: Crypto, what do you think happens to the corpses of all the humans of whom you suck out the brain stems?
Crypto: I always figured they just faded away when I went around the corner.”
Oh no, in this game it turns out that Orthopox-13 created a whole fast food franchise named Big Willy’s in order to get rid of all of the evidence of the Furon Invasion whilst also making a profit on the side. The food at Big Willy’s are made of food, and the game that surrounds the concept consists of 70s pastiche references, parodies, double entendres, and more fourth wall breaks. Big Willy’s is under attack by Patty Wurst (a reference of course to both the food and the multi-millionaire dollar heiress Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by revolutionaries in the Seventies), who with her revolutionaries go out of their way to expose the crimes of Big Willy’s Furon owners; whilst Crypto and Pox are dealing with this (with a plot thread involving Pox’s last love for a rich girl fueling his hate for Patty) they also deal with side plots including a Furon Efficiency Expert giving tests, a human with an Ion Detonator messing up Crypto’s assassination missions and Pox’s use of disco to brainwash the human populace. Once Patty Wurst is eliminated in her giant tank using a giant Big Willy statue mech, it’s revealed that her boss is Colonel Kluckin’, a parody of Colonel Sanders from KFC and the main antagonist who rivals Pox and his “Big Willy” with the Kluckin’ restaurants. Fearing for the unveiling of his 500th Big Willy restaurant, Pox insists on going to Fairfield to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.
Farfield’s plot thread is mainly about a gang of roller girls who work for Colonel Kluckin’ led by one Mindy Peters, who try to take down the Big Willy franchise through stealing their recipes and planting bombs. Other side plots include Natalya (the russian spy lover from the second game) trying to give you a call to tell you about something in the middle of another assassination mission only for the human to strike again and fumble your hit, another trial involving the efficiency expert and more disco shenanigans. After a bit of meandering, Crypto and Pox come up with the idea of taking the guise of the Corncob King, Mindy’s boyfriend, and luring her out in public to eliminate her. Eventually Pox just decides to say fuck it and just burn every building down to the ground in a “freak weather accident”, of course except for his “Big Willy”.
Now here’s where I’m going to address my thoughts on the first half as well as address the plot and it’s length in general. Harbor City does an interesting job of getting your attention and moving you along from place to place as you try to stop Colonel Kluckin’, but there is a bit of meandering in terms of missions and such. Harbor City consists of multiple assassination attempts on Patty that just kind of go nowhere and it feels kind of the same for Fairfield besides a few points here and there. That’s not to say stuff like this doesn’t happen in the other games, it’s just that they tend to do stuff in a way that pushes the plot forwards a lot more or at least makes it interesting, in which case this is kind of…not so much. Which is also strange considering the short length this game takes compared to the others, I completed this game I think in about 5 hours or so, which is way less than what the other two games had and it doesn’t really feel like there’s a lot of substance to certain set pieces, which is sad considering it’s kind of an ingenious plot with really cool ideas.
So for the third part of the game you travel to a place called Fantasy Atoll, a parody of the Fantasy Island series, which is owned by Mr. Pork and Ratpoo (Ratpoo as a name is honestly fucking hilarious in hindsight). I don’t even remember why Crypto and Pox go there to be honest, I think it’s to follow a signal from Kluckin’ but truth be told it’s kind of a distraction from the main plot that follows Pox’s obsession for getting a new body after the memories of the past flame made him fall weak to Mr. Pork’s promise of “a new body”. What culminates is a fetch quest (literally named fetch quest, which falls into the category of “Not as funny if you still go along with the tedium of something even if you’re making fun of it” as you gather parts for his new body, trying to turn it into a kaiju monster attraction for other guests. It’s a trick of course, and Colonel Kluckin’ sends soldiers to ambush everyone on the ship as Crypto protects Pox’s physical body and the scientist nearby before everything goes to hell and Pox is sent flying to another side of the island. After finding his body and calling Furon tech support in a somewhat humorous but frustrating mission, Crypto/Pox finally kill Mr. Pork (after learning that his necklace protects him from damage) by brainwashing his servant Ratpoo into grabbing him and jumping into the large volcano (named A’Rkvudal here funny enough for fans of the lore) before finally finishing him off on his Hate Boat, a giant war ship which requires you to take out shields before dropping torpedoes into one of four sides of the ship in a somewhat difficult mission. Before flying out to Kluckin’s last known location, Vietnahml, plot threads include a disco party involving kidnapping people to form a group called “The Village Humans”, the Furon Efficiency guy challenging you to another test and Pox finally believing Crypto about the human interrupting their assassination missions.
Then comes the final part: Vietnahml. Crypto arrives with Pox to help their proprietor Trahn (played by Nolan North, it’s one of those old “have white people play asian people stereotype” roles that shouldn’t be taken seriously but can still be offensive) fight against Colonel Kluckin’ and his Khmer Beige rebels by wiping out a convoy and then infiltrating their base and destroying parts of their operation. However, eventually Crypto ends up captured and it’s revealed that Trahn is both a double agent (with the convoy from earlier being sent to kill Kluckin’) and that Kluckin’ really loves your plan and has been doing the same thing, and wants to team up. Problem is though, he uses the brain stem in his food and the Furons need it for their DNA so that’s out of the picture. After escaping and rescuing his “Big Willy” (lol), and saving his UFO from being torn apart by scientists working with Kluckin, Crypto and Pox destroy the base once and for all. Afterwords Trahn attempts to kill Crypto on a bike with a shield and throwing explosive chickens but dies and it culminates in a final mech battle between Crypto in the Big Willy and Kluckin’ in the statue of a Vietnahmlese robot rock god or something. Kluckin’ dies and the Furons live, though Pox gives up on the fast food industry with the competitiveness of it all and after being given the profits from “A shrimp boat and a mentally disabled war veteran”, Crypto persuades Pox to join him into going to a business venture in Vegas, setting up (but kind of contradicting) the third Destroy All Humans game coming up, Path of the Furon. The game then ends on the credits sequence with a YMCA dance from Crypto, but if you followed the side plot stuff you’ll get no disco mission, but you will learn that the Furon Efficiency Expert is actually a con artist who you chase down and kill before the original clone is locked up in a prison and that the human with the Ion Detonator who keeps ruining Crypto’s hits turns out to be both his and Natalya’s son.
Overall, my feelings on the plot are that it has a lot of cool ideas, but that I don’t think are always expanded upon in the right way or format. Not a lot of it is fleshed out as much as it should be but it’s serviceable enough; what really carries this game is the humor and tone, which isn’t very serious and include references to everything from “the previous two games” to certain music artists to lots of immature sex jokes (“my Big Willy” of course being one of the top cracks) which I have a severe weakness for when done right and this game made me chuckle a couple of times doing it. The only other thing I can think to add in this is the inclusion of Vietnahml: I think it’s an ingenious idea to have the whole fast food thing come from dead bodies, and what produces the most dead bodies? War, specifically in this case a giant parody of the Vietnam War. Personally, I’m not offended by it’s inclusion in this game, even with a deceased grandfather who served in the war but I can see certain people not being okay by the pisstake on the war itself so if you’re one of those people that is in there as a warning. Again though its length, and its pacing feels kind of weak in certain aspects and truth be told even though Fantasy Atoll is my favorite location, my not knowing why we were even there was kind of indicative of how kind of barebones stuff feels. I like it, and it’s one of if not the best part of the game but I wish it was way more developed than it actually was.
The gameplay, being on the Wii, has its fair share of pros and cons on the game’s quality. The whole point of the game series is the namesake, to Destroy All Humans right? So you’ll be able to go around, murder humans with an assortment of weapons both on foot, in your flying saucer and in the Big Willy mech and for that I applaud the game for adding more in what could be considered a limiting experience. On foot you have weapons such as the four main weapons: the Zap-O-Matic being the electric gun, the Disintegrator can follow the namesake and vaporize enemies with ease, the Anal Probe can one shot enemies and have their brains pop out and the Ion Detonator is basically your remote controlled grenade launcher. Other weapons you’ll get are the Zombie Gun and the Lightning Ball, along with the shrink ray; the problem with these weapons is that while the first and last gun are cool and unique, the Lightning ball felt kind of useless whilst the other two are just kind of unceremoniously thrown into your lap by text prompts after beating missions and if you’re not paying attention to the screen when they tell you this, you won’t even know you have the weapon at all unless you scroll through it on accident. For the Shrink Ray even, you unlock it by completing the final mission and as such, using it will shrink people, vehicles, animals and props down to smaller sizes; however I didn’t even know how to use it because the text appeared on screen but it said it was locked in my inventory. After looking it up on the internet, I learned that in order to use it I had to open up the cheat menu and turn it on to have it appear in my inventory. I’m not sure if this was due to the potentially rushed nature of the game, but it’s not a great way to introduce any weapon into the game just by throwing a sentence on screen and I felt it could’ve used some actual practical in game examples, even if to just let people know that these weapons exist. To finish off this section, there are other abilities like PK (the ability to pick people/objects up into the air), throwing stuff with PK (which requires you to thrust your controller forward (heh)), hypnosis (which distracts everyone around you), body snatching (which allows you to hop into a human being and control their body undercover for a while) and transmogrification (which allows you to break down objects into ammo) and all three of the latter abilities require you to complete a small mini game where you click the A button on all the little circles floating around the screen. If you take too long, more circles will spawn but I just kinda spammed the A button and flinged it all around the place and I completed it quickly more often than not. However, that doesn’t stop the overall gameplay package from feeling iffy in certain regards.
Even on foot stuff, the motion controls in general are a mixed bag for me, sometimes they actually worked well and I went on for a specific amount of time and didn’t even notice any issues in this regard. However, a lot of the time I wasn’t in that weird Zen-like state; sometimes trying to move the camera with the nunchuck/motion thing to the left was kind of frustrating and after a while my right wrist would hurt. Aiming the weapons can sometimes be a little jank due to this motion as well, though truth be told, I’m not used to the Wii and I personally believe it’s adapted to the game the best it can be. However, I didn’t really want to go around and engage in it much due to the motion controls, and overall that kind of hurt the experience for me personally. The camera/motion movement was the biggest chore in this regard; with one mission in particular being the bane of my existence in this game: Customer Service. In this mission you have to walk around, zap some satellites then finally defend a building from being attacked by the military. Fair enough, in the OG games this would be cake but in this game you have constantly spawning military planting bombs, which you have to precisely aim on this bomb and toss it (which the throw doesn’t go far in this game compared to the others and kind of hurt my hands a bit) but pile that on in an enclosed beach with people shooting at you right next to the building, the camera flinging me all over the damn place and military boats hitting you with missiles and a limited amount of time to throw the bombs away before they blow up the building and fail the mission? I legitimately got infuriated at the lack of gameplay cohesion in this enclosed space and nearly fucking screamed, the only saving grace being that my death would let me spawn right next to the building but if I failed I had to do the entire mission all over again including getting to the mission in the first place. Other than that mission, it was kind of a struggle but for the most part the on foot stuff was fine, though the lack of being able to read minds for funny quips had me sad and disappointed considering that was one of my favorite things to do in the other games. Also like the other games, going into water will hurt/kill you and it’s even worse in this game as stepping into a puddle will lead Crypto into having a convulsion and instant death which made the first mission in Fantasy Atoll trying to get instructions to the visitor center a bit of a trip with the lack of ability as moving people around via motion controls either gets them killed really quick via accidentally slamming them into things at full force or them also drowning in puddles.
The UFO has the usual three as well: Death Ray, Sonic Boom and Quantum Deconstructor (which each three has its uses being for average destruction on both ground forces/buildings, ground forces mostly and a giant nuke) in every game as well as one more weapon: the Electro Cone, which when you bring down to the ground will vaporize all ground forces in your vicinity in an excellent display which is amazing. The ability to abduct people for DNA and drain vehicles for health are still there as well, though the controls to abduct took me a while to figure out and draining vehicles requires precise aiming on top of a prop or vehicle which led to my death countless times. If I were to give any thoughts on the UFO, it is that the motion controls make it kind of a slog for the most part to actually move around. Moving it around requires you to move your Wiimote stuff left or right, with pushing forward making it go down and backwards making it go up as well; this mixed in with the camera sometimes being finicky and the health drain needing to be accurate can sometimes lead to missing stuff entirely leading to death or alternatively picking something or someone else up entirely. The main thing that popped out to me as genius is the fact that the cloak in the game, instead of making the UFO invisible it just turns it into a blimp which I think is actually a pretty clever stealth mechanic in public, at least aesthetically.
The Big Willy statue, the newest addition into the series, also has the least amount of depth in game and I rarely used it during my time. While cool as hell, it only has four or five functions: one is to grab people by pressing the back trigger and A and you can either grab people to eat their brains for health or pick up objects. Throwing them was kind of a mixed bag requiring you to hold the back trigger and A again at a precise time to actually throw it, and oftentimes I either slammed the prop down onto the ground for a small ranged attack or just accidentally dropped it. Health for the most part in this wasn’t bad, and Big Willy can take a lot of damage (heh) but it’s still tiring trying to fight with the motion controls. The only other weapons for this are laser eyes, vomiting acid which clears ground enemies, or farts which I never used because like the other weapons I didn’t even know this existed until after I beat the game.
And finally, a lot of these weapons require upgrades; however they work a bit different compared to the original games. This game has more of a “Use this weapon and it’ll upgrade itself” system. You’ll still collect pieces of tech out in the open world and via missions but the truth is that the more you use a weapon or power ability in certain ways (like Body Snatching for 25 minutes along with other prerequisites lead to an upgrade), the more effective it’s become. You don’t buy these abilities on your own, but to make them more effective I had to do a tad bit of grinding with certain prerequisites in mind but after some progress was made I dropped it and by the end, I acquired 75% of all of the upgrades by the time the game ended. Other things I want to point out are that when in your a cutscene, be careful of pressing the back trigger (or B Button) as if you do you’ll skip cutscenes (unless you want to do that in which case, ok) and I tended to hit it by accident trying to rest my arm in the middle of everything. By completing the game/side quests and putting in certain codes, you’ll also get a cheat code screen; some of these are just skins for Crypto and the Saucer/Blimp but others include the usual infinite health and ammo, but also stuff like everyone turning into a zombie, or zombies becoming radioactive and killing enemies quicker, the ability to body snatch animals in your environment, and etc.
As for the graphics and sound design stuff, I’ll start with the sound design here as there’s a bit of a mix up between certain sources. Instead of the actors J. Grant Albrecht and Richard Horvitz as Crypto and Pox respectively, they instead went with actors Sean Dennelan (whom I know nothing at all about) and Daryl Kurylo (whom I only know from the first Yakuza game on Playstation 2, one of my all time favorite games ever). As such, Crypto’s voice, while not bad, has changed and it’s clearly obvious that it’s not the same actor but the entire time playing the game I didn’t know that Horvitz wasn’t in it, so Daryl did a pretty good job at imitating Horvitz’s voice work. The reason for this ranges from the original actors wanting percentages of game sales but SAG stuff (funny with the times now) led to that falling through and Richard Horvitz saying that THQ lied about what consoles it would be on as a negotiation tactic to try to pay the actors less money. Regardless, everyone did a decent job on the acting side and I never felt my immersion break once which is pretty good. The soundtrack is ok for the most part, it takes place in the 70s so there will be tracks like YMCA and Disco Inferno but truth be told I don’t think there was much in the way of licensed stuff, probably due to the game’s smaller budget so I’m not surprised it didn’t fully embrace that aspect. Finally, the sound design is actually pretty solid as well, I never once noticed any sound glitches or any noise that felt weak or anything so that’s all good on that front.
Graphically however, the game as I said suffered under budget constraints and you can tell. First is that the game doesn’t look great for the most part, to the point that the original PS2 games look WAY better and they were on the previous generation. This is from what the sources would say due to the fact that the Wii assets were originally from the PSP, so instead of remaking the assets, it was just transferred over to the Wii as is. Due to this and the budget, other things suffered as well, especially lip syncing which was noticeable as immediately as I entered the game. This was something that was in the conflict between development teams as well, but in the end was cut out presumably due to time and money again. Most of the environments look ok, but don’t really become their own until the latter half of the game when you’re in Fantasy Atoll and Vietnamhl (mostly due to the amount of people they have fighting on one screen, especially considering they barely have ragdoll physics in general), though even then I noticed that probably due to limitations that most of the game except Fantasy Atoll is just flat surfaces with no verticality in terms of actual land. In fact, most of the maps are just small as hell in general, which is understandable though sad to see, and I feel what disappoints me the most in this field is the fact that the first half of the game just feels uninspired and unoriginal compared to the other games; Harbor City just reminds me of a sunnier Union City from the first game while Farfield just straight up feels like Rockwell and as such because of it, I felt it was rather dull in that regard. I guess the only thing I can really say about this is that I naturally understand that as a Wii game it was bound to take compromises in this regard, it’s going to look worse and have more limitations (including repetitive Crypto animations during cutscenes, ESPECIALLY his thrusting animation) and I also kind of chalk it up to “it is what it is I suppose”, I just wish stuff was better in these regards, even though I’m not really a graphics guy.
Overall, my thoughts on this game are exactly what the fans and critics thought of it when it came out: it was very mid. I enjoyed the plot for the most part, and the twelve year old humor that still makes me giggle, for the most part you can play the game well enough with the control schemes, the Big Willy mech is a fun addition and for a Destroy All Humans title on the Wii it’s pretty impressive for what it is. However, at the end of the day while frustrating in some regards, it’s also a sort of inoffensive spin-off title for the Wii that kind of misses in certain departments. As I said in my Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed review, it’s a so-so game and truth be told as I haven’t played Path of the Furon yet, to me it’s the worst one in the entire franchise, though that isn’t necessarily bad. However, this is one of those times where even though I’m tired of everybody and their grandmother getting a remake (now Assassin’s Creed 4 is getting one? Why?), just to keep a consistency, I’d love to see Black Forest Games go back and remake this title, but actually expand upon it in terms of gameplay and plot because there’s a lot of ideas in this game that are actually really cool. Would I ever play this game again? I don’t know, maybe just to show some friends what playing this game is like, or maybe if I’m stranded somewhere with just my Wii I’d consider it, but the truth is I’m way more likely to go back to the second and sometimes the first one more than this so I don’t know. It’s not a bad Wii or Destroy All Humans game, but I’d be ok with a remake and if there isn’t one, then there are other Destroy All Humans games or even Wii games in general that feel better to play than what we have here, though if you really want to try it it’s a short 5-7 hour game and could probably be bought on Amazon between 5-30 dollars USD.
Links:
https://www.gamespot.com/games/destroy-all-humans-big-willy-unleashed/cheats/
https://web.archive.org/web/20090113205258/http://wii.ign.com/articles/847/847320p1.html
https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/04/destroy-all-humans-psp-cancelled
https://www.gamerguysreviews.com/2020/11/aliens-stole-my-wii-interview-with.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYUQUHidN8I&t=1886s&ab_channel=GamerGuy%27sReviews
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DestroyAllHumansBigWillyUnleashed
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyAllHumans/comments/ppqrj4/the_history_of_destroy_all_humans_big_willy/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1078189/
Detective Gallo
2018
If anything, Detective Gallo was probably the most cock I found in a crowdfunded point'n'click adventure and I'm not even sure the italian studio Footprints Games dressed their anthropomorphic rooster in yellow with the intention of emphasizing a reference to a certain Mr. Tracy, when a complex pun would have worked based on him being a private dick anyway. I would have smiled honestly, if he had been a Gaul as well (because to my knowledge besides cock that's the second possible translation for Gallo). It's just that the game itself isn't all that deep and complicated.
An adventure taking place in an area like a decrepit part of Duckburg doesn't necessarily have to be that and I could imagine inspiration was drawn from Sam & Max Hit The Road, judging from the cartoonish presentation that even improves on the simple icon based user interface. It doesn't seem like coincidence Detective Gallo's partner is a cactus, because the case to solve is actually the murder of exotic plants.
As a debut game, it might have been a good idea to restrict the number of locations and characters. On the other hand Detective Gallo starts out as rather straight forward until I hit the wall of having to hunt for tiny hotspots that I could of course have identified earlier by pressing space. With running back and forth to find the right combination of items, the decently dubbed humor wasn't enough to pick up the game between my first session in April and early July 2023, when I finally wanted to get Detective Gallo off my list.
Luckily, the adventure expands with some relatively surprising plot twists, but even though items usually don't end up as red herrings, the linearity is partly annoying. The designers had a path in their minds for Detective Gallo, so sometimes other actions are required to finalize a thought I had before. This usually leads to getting lost on parts of a puzzle that just isn't next in the queue or that seems self-explanatory, but the realization makes it kinda work counterintuitively.
I ended up looking for hints on the internet for some of them, because I didn't feel like running circles until I accidentally fit the pieces together. It would have helped to keep up contact with the informant for this, but he sadly ignores the private eye's calls later. Instead a limited variety of one liners complement the denial of combinations, making Detective Gallo feel underdeveloped in a world where OG designers make their games more user-friendly these days.
It's sad that compared to another italian genre title, The Wardrobe, Footprints Games tried to establish a more original creation sans all the pop cultural references, but their fellow competitors CINIC Games understood to design the more pleasing product. Whilst the plot is fairly adequate for a cartoon story, Detective Gallo seems to overstay its welcome a wee bit by trying to implement too many puzzles for its narrative limitations of the environment and especially shortage of acting roles.
The almost anticlimactic ending, despite occurring quite rapidly, actually satisfies as a welcome exit, because it fulfills the foreshadowed incompetence of our grumpy investigator in a surprise twist. The humor of Detective Gallo is neither deranged nor overly clever, but would simply work much better in smoother condensing.
It's an interactive sordid Saturday morning cartoon drawn and animated on a gorgeous level, which raised my interest in the first place. I can't say if my expectations are too high for a debut like Detective Gallo, because a lot of things have been done right. But as too often in this day and age what is presented as a final product to me feels more like what should have been a pitch to raise funds for completion.
What's missing maybe was a little more time and money to refine the ideas or, another issue with small teams of independent programmers, the ability to kill darlings. An executive would have had to keep track during a test phase and balance out Detective Gallo much more to the extent of what is an equivalent to a cartoon show episode than the feature film they were trying to cobble together.
Under the maxim of less is more this could have very well functioned as a pilot to a series or maybe even a shorter standalone release shining brighter without its ballast. Assuming nothing was lost in translation from the italian original this I feel would be what I had preferred as a backer as well, looking for a bang for the buck not in playing time alone.
Of course it could have been much worse. I remember Encodya wasting a lot of potential by referencing tropes to a painful degree without reflection. But then there's also Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure, that sure still ain't perfect, but gets plenty of things very right as a crowdfunded debut. It sure plays a role the latter operates at a higher scale of content and Detective Gallo still is kind of promising for future releases, but it's also the game they sent out to their backers and us regular customers spend their well earned money on as well.
It's hard to criticize, when today's big players ship barely more than demos if a physical copy is made available at all and all you get on day one is a beta version to be hopefully patched after the early birds assisted in a testing phase like they purchased green bananas.
Unlike that, independent studios usually are not looking to sell additional content via a game as their shopping platform and so there's often hardly any update unless heavy glitches cause the program's crash. I've read this has been the case during Detective Gallo's finale for some players, but with the version 1.21 installed, I can't confirm any of that, so kudos for providing a working game, I guess?
It's because of these structures I tend to acquire a huge amount of my software via sales to get the most refined game in return and whilst this is a monetary no-brainer, I'd prefer the publishers putting in more effort to satisfy us for full price to make smaller productions like this lucrative. It's a give and take that in my world feels as unbalanced as the creative direction in Detective Gallo.
There's too much "if", not enough that exceeds being just potential which simply doesn't cover the requirements of an independent game anymore, when there are so many studios trying to get a foot on the ground with exactly that as a business model. We can't just accept flaws on a regular basis to give newcomers a chance, when almost everybody is trying and there's no board of trustees to sift through the sheer amount of possibilities.
Please get me right, Detective Gallo is enjoyable on average, but I would like to see the team compete with the legends on an elaborated level and not just give away hints that they might be able to do that. It's great to see more potential is there to keep point'n'click adventures one of my favorite genres, but who's winning when Detective Gallo ends up being the introduction for young gamers, when for instance Broken Age would be a much better amalgamation of old and new?
Facing the truth, Detective Gallo ain't more than just another one of those games to consume because you can't get enough of its type and you hope for a hidden gem. It comes the day you might spend a few hours with this mildly entertaining hardboiled detective story, but I don't see anyone dissecting each and every detail for analysis. You play it, delete it from your hard drive and probably forget about it. The way Detective Gallo is cocky is that the graphic presentation is a lot better than the actual substance.
An adventure taking place in an area like a decrepit part of Duckburg doesn't necessarily have to be that and I could imagine inspiration was drawn from Sam & Max Hit The Road, judging from the cartoonish presentation that even improves on the simple icon based user interface. It doesn't seem like coincidence Detective Gallo's partner is a cactus, because the case to solve is actually the murder of exotic plants.
As a debut game, it might have been a good idea to restrict the number of locations and characters. On the other hand Detective Gallo starts out as rather straight forward until I hit the wall of having to hunt for tiny hotspots that I could of course have identified earlier by pressing space. With running back and forth to find the right combination of items, the decently dubbed humor wasn't enough to pick up the game between my first session in April and early July 2023, when I finally wanted to get Detective Gallo off my list.
Luckily, the adventure expands with some relatively surprising plot twists, but even though items usually don't end up as red herrings, the linearity is partly annoying. The designers had a path in their minds for Detective Gallo, so sometimes other actions are required to finalize a thought I had before. This usually leads to getting lost on parts of a puzzle that just isn't next in the queue or that seems self-explanatory, but the realization makes it kinda work counterintuitively.
I ended up looking for hints on the internet for some of them, because I didn't feel like running circles until I accidentally fit the pieces together. It would have helped to keep up contact with the informant for this, but he sadly ignores the private eye's calls later. Instead a limited variety of one liners complement the denial of combinations, making Detective Gallo feel underdeveloped in a world where OG designers make their games more user-friendly these days.
It's sad that compared to another italian genre title, The Wardrobe, Footprints Games tried to establish a more original creation sans all the pop cultural references, but their fellow competitors CINIC Games understood to design the more pleasing product. Whilst the plot is fairly adequate for a cartoon story, Detective Gallo seems to overstay its welcome a wee bit by trying to implement too many puzzles for its narrative limitations of the environment and especially shortage of acting roles.
The almost anticlimactic ending, despite occurring quite rapidly, actually satisfies as a welcome exit, because it fulfills the foreshadowed incompetence of our grumpy investigator in a surprise twist. The humor of Detective Gallo is neither deranged nor overly clever, but would simply work much better in smoother condensing.
It's an interactive sordid Saturday morning cartoon drawn and animated on a gorgeous level, which raised my interest in the first place. I can't say if my expectations are too high for a debut like Detective Gallo, because a lot of things have been done right. But as too often in this day and age what is presented as a final product to me feels more like what should have been a pitch to raise funds for completion.
What's missing maybe was a little more time and money to refine the ideas or, another issue with small teams of independent programmers, the ability to kill darlings. An executive would have had to keep track during a test phase and balance out Detective Gallo much more to the extent of what is an equivalent to a cartoon show episode than the feature film they were trying to cobble together.
Under the maxim of less is more this could have very well functioned as a pilot to a series or maybe even a shorter standalone release shining brighter without its ballast. Assuming nothing was lost in translation from the italian original this I feel would be what I had preferred as a backer as well, looking for a bang for the buck not in playing time alone.
Of course it could have been much worse. I remember Encodya wasting a lot of potential by referencing tropes to a painful degree without reflection. But then there's also Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure, that sure still ain't perfect, but gets plenty of things very right as a crowdfunded debut. It sure plays a role the latter operates at a higher scale of content and Detective Gallo still is kind of promising for future releases, but it's also the game they sent out to their backers and us regular customers spend their well earned money on as well.
It's hard to criticize, when today's big players ship barely more than demos if a physical copy is made available at all and all you get on day one is a beta version to be hopefully patched after the early birds assisted in a testing phase like they purchased green bananas.
Unlike that, independent studios usually are not looking to sell additional content via a game as their shopping platform and so there's often hardly any update unless heavy glitches cause the program's crash. I've read this has been the case during Detective Gallo's finale for some players, but with the version 1.21 installed, I can't confirm any of that, so kudos for providing a working game, I guess?
It's because of these structures I tend to acquire a huge amount of my software via sales to get the most refined game in return and whilst this is a monetary no-brainer, I'd prefer the publishers putting in more effort to satisfy us for full price to make smaller productions like this lucrative. It's a give and take that in my world feels as unbalanced as the creative direction in Detective Gallo.
There's too much "if", not enough that exceeds being just potential which simply doesn't cover the requirements of an independent game anymore, when there are so many studios trying to get a foot on the ground with exactly that as a business model. We can't just accept flaws on a regular basis to give newcomers a chance, when almost everybody is trying and there's no board of trustees to sift through the sheer amount of possibilities.
Please get me right, Detective Gallo is enjoyable on average, but I would like to see the team compete with the legends on an elaborated level and not just give away hints that they might be able to do that. It's great to see more potential is there to keep point'n'click adventures one of my favorite genres, but who's winning when Detective Gallo ends up being the introduction for young gamers, when for instance Broken Age would be a much better amalgamation of old and new?
Facing the truth, Detective Gallo ain't more than just another one of those games to consume because you can't get enough of its type and you hope for a hidden gem. It comes the day you might spend a few hours with this mildly entertaining hardboiled detective story, but I don't see anyone dissecting each and every detail for analysis. You play it, delete it from your hard drive and probably forget about it. The way Detective Gallo is cocky is that the graphic presentation is a lot better than the actual substance.
Darksiders
2010
"Jack of all trades, master of none" is a phrase that is often used to describe the Darksiders series, usually in a dismissive form. However, I'd like to propose a different way to look at these games. You could just look at the combat in this game and say it's a terrible clone of God of War and DMC with mid as fuck combat, and I would forgive anyone for dropping the game in its first hour or so. It doesn't make a good first impression with that overly long combat tutorial. However, you keep playing and the game becomes more compelling when you reach the first dungeon. Yes, dungeon, this is a Zelda-like too. There are many games with better combat than Darksiders 1, but none of them have exploration and puzzles THIS good.
And on the other hand, sure, you could also say that Zelda has better dungeons and puzzles (if you ask me, they're on about the same level, Zelda's dungeons only having better aesthetics and "concepts"), but what Darksiders is as well, is if classic 3D Zelda had MUCH better combat and freer movement. Remember, it wasn't until BOTW, 7 years later that Link was allowed to manually jump in 3D, and even then, modern Zelda's level of freedom is controversial among fans that prefer to solve puzzles and dungeons that are more structured. Besides, how many 3D Zelda clones do you even know??? When you consider that this was Vigil's first game, and how inexperienced many of the devs were, it's surprising how well they pulled off these elements.
Here's what Darksiders actually is, it's an homage to gaming, more specifically to mechanics from completely different games. The pitch was "An old-school romp for new-school players" The developers are... I'm gonna say it, true gamers, like you and me, that genuinely love video games and simply wanted to put in all their favorite things from their favorite games, and it was something that we didn't see much back then, developers that showed their love for games IN the actual game. It makes Darksiders... The Gamers' Game...
One moment you're suddenly in a shmup segment, then, you're competing with the dude that was trying to kill you moments ago on who can kill the most angels, you pick up their huge guns and do a third-person shooter segment, and almost infamously, you get the Portal gun that even has the orange and blue colors and use it to solve a whole dungeon and fight a giant boss, don't act like that last thing doesn't sound appealing!
But the homages extend to other aspects as well, like the narrative tropes of these games. You have a Navi-type helper, but it has control over you and could kill you whenever. There's a Master Sword, but it's broken and needs to be reforged. The merchant is like a demonic version of RE4's and I love him. A few bosses are very transparently like some memorable encounters of some famous games, and even the final one takes on a form similar to a certain legendary video game villain.
It's not like they're trying to "improve" on the games that inspired them like so many arrogant Western indie devs nowadays making turn-based RPGs or ironic visual novels. They weren't like "oh we're gonna make Zelda but MATURE and with BLOOD", like some reviews here suggest, they were simply making a game with things they like, taking from wildly different influences, and you can tell from interviews how earnest they are. Even BattleChasers, Joe Madureira's old comic from the 90s had these influences from JRPGs and it also became a bit of a cult hit because of it, people hadn't seen things like it in an American comic book. I actually respect this way of making games, even if the end result is unfocused, as long as it has some original flair of its own because such passion always comes with it.
And what a flair Darksiders has. This series' character designs are some of my favorites in gaming, I particularly love the angels, turning them into a super technologically advanced species that uses giant holy machine guns and most of them fly with artificial wings, in contrast with the demons, that are like barbarians at best; and when you see an angel with ACTUAL wings, that's how you know they're important. The story is a pretty simple one, but it's elevated a lot by the excellent voicework and the surprisingly well-directed and stylish cutscenes. There aren't that many "famous" biblical characters in the first game, only War, Samael, and a few angels, but it's pretty inspired that they came up with the main villain, the Destroyer, from ONE line of the Book of the Apocalypse that mentions a Destroyer standing on the ruins of Earth. It all culminates in a genuinely really exciting cliffhanger that still hasn't been resolved! 3 games and 2 more studios later, they continue to just build up to it more and more.
One day, we might see that game with all Four Horsemen that they dreamed of at the start of their journey, and this series could become a small legend, at least in my eyes.
And on the other hand, sure, you could also say that Zelda has better dungeons and puzzles (if you ask me, they're on about the same level, Zelda's dungeons only having better aesthetics and "concepts"), but what Darksiders is as well, is if classic 3D Zelda had MUCH better combat and freer movement. Remember, it wasn't until BOTW, 7 years later that Link was allowed to manually jump in 3D, and even then, modern Zelda's level of freedom is controversial among fans that prefer to solve puzzles and dungeons that are more structured. Besides, how many 3D Zelda clones do you even know??? When you consider that this was Vigil's first game, and how inexperienced many of the devs were, it's surprising how well they pulled off these elements.
Here's what Darksiders actually is, it's an homage to gaming, more specifically to mechanics from completely different games. The pitch was "An old-school romp for new-school players" The developers are... I'm gonna say it, true gamers, like you and me, that genuinely love video games and simply wanted to put in all their favorite things from their favorite games, and it was something that we didn't see much back then, developers that showed their love for games IN the actual game. It makes Darksiders... The Gamers' Game...
One moment you're suddenly in a shmup segment, then, you're competing with the dude that was trying to kill you moments ago on who can kill the most angels, you pick up their huge guns and do a third-person shooter segment, and almost infamously, you get the Portal gun that even has the orange and blue colors and use it to solve a whole dungeon and fight a giant boss, don't act like that last thing doesn't sound appealing!
But the homages extend to other aspects as well, like the narrative tropes of these games. You have a Navi-type helper, but it has control over you and could kill you whenever. There's a Master Sword, but it's broken and needs to be reforged. The merchant is like a demonic version of RE4's and I love him. A few bosses are very transparently like some memorable encounters of some famous games, and even the final one takes on a form similar to a certain legendary video game villain.
It's not like they're trying to "improve" on the games that inspired them like so many arrogant Western indie devs nowadays making turn-based RPGs or ironic visual novels. They weren't like "oh we're gonna make Zelda but MATURE and with BLOOD", like some reviews here suggest, they were simply making a game with things they like, taking from wildly different influences, and you can tell from interviews how earnest they are. Even BattleChasers, Joe Madureira's old comic from the 90s had these influences from JRPGs and it also became a bit of a cult hit because of it, people hadn't seen things like it in an American comic book. I actually respect this way of making games, even if the end result is unfocused, as long as it has some original flair of its own because such passion always comes with it.
And what a flair Darksiders has. This series' character designs are some of my favorites in gaming, I particularly love the angels, turning them into a super technologically advanced species that uses giant holy machine guns and most of them fly with artificial wings, in contrast with the demons, that are like barbarians at best; and when you see an angel with ACTUAL wings, that's how you know they're important. The story is a pretty simple one, but it's elevated a lot by the excellent voicework and the surprisingly well-directed and stylish cutscenes. There aren't that many "famous" biblical characters in the first game, only War, Samael, and a few angels, but it's pretty inspired that they came up with the main villain, the Destroyer, from ONE line of the Book of the Apocalypse that mentions a Destroyer standing on the ruins of Earth. It all culminates in a genuinely really exciting cliffhanger that still hasn't been resolved! 3 games and 2 more studios later, they continue to just build up to it more and more.
One day, we might see that game with all Four Horsemen that they dreamed of at the start of their journey, and this series could become a small legend, at least in my eyes.
Shadows of Doubt
2023
It's pretty easy to be skeptical of this given that the description is a horrendous little salad of exhausted buzzwords - immersive sim, cyberpunk, open world, procedurally generated, dystopian, early access, voxel graphics - but it's actually pretty damn good, even better than expected after their Steam NextFest demo.
Going to get this out of the way early: This game is buggy - you'll get some framerate hitching and some pretty severe pop-in, not to mention the bugs that can occur when something is too close to a wall. I'm sure there's a chance of running into something game-breaking, but I haven't seen it - the closest I've encountered is a single instance of falling through the earth when trying to enter a building (which just resulted in some hospital bills that I... decided not to pay).
If you're not falling through the earth, though, it's magical. You gotta do the actual legwork of piecing everything together, and the game is not going to make any connections for you. Maybe you'll be a little frustrated when your case board fails to connect the address for "K. Zoungrana" to the existing entry for Keyon Zoungrana, but it's a very easy quirk to work around. Once you learn how to arrange the board in a way that suits you, you can begin knocking out these cases like clockwork. Sometimes a murderer may as well write their name at the crime scene, but sometimes you pick up a "freebie" photography assignment only to notice that the only "clue" you have on your target is that they're a 26-year-old security guard... somewhere.
As a detective in a world run by the Coca-Cola Cops, you're treated more like a hobbyist or a DoorDash driver than someone with any authority, and it works pretty well to encourage player creativity. The first time someone spits in your face after you offer them two hundred dollars for their name, you'll probably wonder what else you can even try. There's actually some pretty creative evidence trails and potential solutions I've seen pop up, so your problem is likely one of two things: 1. You haven't explored more creative solutions, or 2. Your conscience is too clean. I, on the other hand, have learned that I have no morals whatsoever. Try this: Knock on the suspect's door, and ask if they'll let you in. You can stand there for ten minutes trying to bribe them with ever-larger sums of cash, or you can close the door in their face and ram through it, knocking them unconscious with the impact, rummaging around in their apartment while they sleep it off. Is it court-admissible evidence? I don't even know if they're taking these guys to court! Not my problem!
Even the largest cities here are pretty small, but they make up for it with their depth. Every person has a place to sleep and something to do during the day, and this alone allows for so many angles of attack on any given case. You might be schlepping back and forth across the city just to collect pieces of paper, but with such a broad tool set it rarely feels tedious when every search is fruitful - at worst, you're building up your database so future investigations are easier.
It does settle into a formula with time, and once you start seeing patterns it's easy to feel like some of the magic is lost. NPCs suffer the most, because you only get a handful of interactions with them - I'm not sure why you can ask someone for their fingerprints but not their occupation, for example. The core investigative loop, though, is still pretty fun even if you feel like you've seen it all. Again, your arsenal of data gathering options is so large that just determining the right approach feels like you've done something clever, and finally being able to clean up a completed case board at the end of the day remains satisfying from hour 1 to hour 20.
For now, I should get back to it. I've just learned that my next door neighbor was murdered while I was searching myunconscious landlord's apartment for a burger that ended up making me sick.
Going to get this out of the way early: This game is buggy - you'll get some framerate hitching and some pretty severe pop-in, not to mention the bugs that can occur when something is too close to a wall. I'm sure there's a chance of running into something game-breaking, but I haven't seen it - the closest I've encountered is a single instance of falling through the earth when trying to enter a building (which just resulted in some hospital bills that I... decided not to pay).
If you're not falling through the earth, though, it's magical. You gotta do the actual legwork of piecing everything together, and the game is not going to make any connections for you. Maybe you'll be a little frustrated when your case board fails to connect the address for "K. Zoungrana" to the existing entry for Keyon Zoungrana, but it's a very easy quirk to work around. Once you learn how to arrange the board in a way that suits you, you can begin knocking out these cases like clockwork. Sometimes a murderer may as well write their name at the crime scene, but sometimes you pick up a "freebie" photography assignment only to notice that the only "clue" you have on your target is that they're a 26-year-old security guard... somewhere.
As a detective in a world run by the Coca-Cola Cops, you're treated more like a hobbyist or a DoorDash driver than someone with any authority, and it works pretty well to encourage player creativity. The first time someone spits in your face after you offer them two hundred dollars for their name, you'll probably wonder what else you can even try. There's actually some pretty creative evidence trails and potential solutions I've seen pop up, so your problem is likely one of two things: 1. You haven't explored more creative solutions, or 2. Your conscience is too clean. I, on the other hand, have learned that I have no morals whatsoever. Try this: Knock on the suspect's door, and ask if they'll let you in. You can stand there for ten minutes trying to bribe them with ever-larger sums of cash, or you can close the door in their face and ram through it, knocking them unconscious with the impact, rummaging around in their apartment while they sleep it off. Is it court-admissible evidence? I don't even know if they're taking these guys to court! Not my problem!
Even the largest cities here are pretty small, but they make up for it with their depth. Every person has a place to sleep and something to do during the day, and this alone allows for so many angles of attack on any given case. You might be schlepping back and forth across the city just to collect pieces of paper, but with such a broad tool set it rarely feels tedious when every search is fruitful - at worst, you're building up your database so future investigations are easier.
It does settle into a formula with time, and once you start seeing patterns it's easy to feel like some of the magic is lost. NPCs suffer the most, because you only get a handful of interactions with them - I'm not sure why you can ask someone for their fingerprints but not their occupation, for example. The core investigative loop, though, is still pretty fun even if you feel like you've seen it all. Again, your arsenal of data gathering options is so large that just determining the right approach feels like you've done something clever, and finally being able to clean up a completed case board at the end of the day remains satisfying from hour 1 to hour 20.
For now, I should get back to it. I've just learned that my next door neighbor was murdered while I was searching my
Hypnospace Outlaw
2019
I don't have much to say about Hypnospace Outlaw itself beyond it being one of the funniest, most heart-warming, most endearing, most sincere, most ironic, most fun depictions of the Internet ever presented.
In my review-cum-memoir on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I bemoaned the death of online spaces noted for their lack of thorough knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that WotLK's release came a mere five days before the launch of Jim Garvin and Ryan McGeary's 'Let Me Google That For You' website. Perhaps by divine providence too, WotLK's release coincided with the steady downward trend of Bill Dyess' then World of Warcraft database Thottbot and the first massive spike in traffic to Wowhead. The coincidence is staggering, but also points to a trend which has irreversibly altered the gaming landscape, and society at large. Much as WoW players sought user-data-verified hard statistics on their MMO of choice, tech savvy individuals' astonishment and contempt for being asked readily verifiable questions reached a tipping point in late 2008. Confirming and corroborating data on WoW would in time become something accomplished by every player. LMGTFY would in time become a site even your grandparents might send as a slight towards a query. The genuine question 'where is Mankrik's wife?' was less the object of ridicule, more a target for sarcasm and eye-rolling as the naive were directed to Wowhead. With ever increasing databases and wikis, games and media in general have become less about a sense of mystery, more one of minutiae. Players no longer revel in not knowing, they would rather examine the entirety of a game's mechanics and lore and history with a finetooth comb.
My point in bringing this up is two-fold. One: Games have genuinely not been the same since players expected to be able to understand them inside and out at whim. Two: The Internet has genuinely not been the same since users expected others to rely on a corporate search engine, largely constructed (especially now) to deliver advertising rather than substantive content, to remedy their perceived ignorance. As Embracer Group, Microsoft, Tencent, Sony, Epic, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and other megacorporations oligopolise the gaming space, so too do Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tencent, Joybuy, Alibaba, Twitter, Spotify, ByteDance, Baidu, Adobe, Block, and others reduce Internet diversity to a minimum. I can't act as if I knew the Internet of eld in its entirety, but a lifelong fascination with Internet obscura and history has me at least somewhat informed.
In my review of GeoGuessr, and corroborated by jobosno's review of Microsoft Flight Simulator, stressed was the importance of appreciating the non-place. So too does this apply to the Internet at large, and Hypnospace Outlaw itself if we wish. Not everything on the Internet is substantive or substantial, nor is every page on Hypnospace. We fall down rabbit holes of Wikipedia deep dives, we examine every page on Hypnospace regardless of its relevance to our duty. Duty and productivity and the confines of time and the constraints of life and gaming guide us towards Internet or Hypnospace use that is conducive to our end goals, but those detours persist as availabilities. In the real world, they dwindle as web diversity shrinks, as webhosts go offline, as swathes of the Internet go unarchives and unremember[ed/able]. In Hypnospace, their finite nature means we cannot search forever.
The Big Crunch theory postulates that at some point, the universe will cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null. We will not go to website, we will go to keywords. That which is unadvertisable, incompatible with commercialisation will in effect go dark. In due time fewer and fewer spaces will exist. In due time, all will be one, and one will be none.
The Big Freeze theory postulates that the universe will never cease expansion, and will drift into entropy until all is returned to absolute zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might expand infinitely to the point of unnavigability. In a web of infinitudes, all will be irrelevant and all will be lost as data becomes unable to be quantified on any scale. In due time, one will be all, and all will be none.
The unknowability of the universe renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
The unknowability of the Internet renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
Enjoy the Internet as it is now. Enjoy the Internet as it was then. Enjoy the Internet as it will be. Forever is it in flux, forever is it a stable constant. Forever does it all drift apart, forever does it all close in. Forever shall it be known and forever shall it be unknown.
We exist in a cosmic nothing of no import.
We exist in a digital nothing of no import.
Every atom in the universe is critical to its being.
Every byte of the Internet is critical to its being.
As a historian, I live on a periphery of data boundless yet intangible. I scour for that which does not exist, may never have existed.
At the end of Hypnospace Outlaw you are tasked with archiving a wasteland.
Archive our wasteland with the Wayback Machine extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
We exist at a time where unfathomable amounts of human knowledge are being erased from existence every hour of every day. This is not a deliberate book burning. This is an incidental blaze.
Save what you can.
What a beautiful thing we are a part of.
Seek the obtuse, obfuscated, and obscure.
A selection of webzones I have found and I enjoy:
https://geocities.restorativland.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20021215085602/http://www.u-ga.com:80/jp/games/mobile.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070902163202/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/
https://web.archive.org/web/20050222012115/http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/
https://prairieecologist.com/2020/01/13/finally-a-practical-guide-for-roadside-wildflower-viewing/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010118210000/http://www.l0pht.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030207171752/http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,50875,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060314162213/http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man/Pac-Games/PacManVR/pac.htm
https://www.geo-grafia.jp/product/
http://erogereport.blog.jp/archives/cat_87375.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515154050/http://users.stargate.net/~glshir/PLAY.HTM
https://dreamlogos.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Logos_Wiki
https://web.archive.org/web/20150222012855/http://quitesoulless.com/story.htm
https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Oi1qbcz2m2SnwUeztGYcnQ
https://web.archive.org/web/20030407094755/http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html
http://www.poetpatriot.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229230522/http://symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kgame.hoax.html
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/camping-in-a-u-haul-they-are-cheeper-than-an-rv-and-better-than-a-tent.53919/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140803164736/http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/
https://tss.asenheim.org/
https://jimedwardsnrx.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20130812175052/http://csbruce.com/tv/clone_high/
https://xercesblau.com/
https://www.walgreens2.com/peach-ring/peach17.html?fbclid=IwAR0iWWPkq0qf2kkYIVmUgL2pPuE1023aImBPnYuwmQXAxtyXNiElOnSDlVs
http://www.secondlivestock.com/
https://origamisimulator.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180818104057/http://underlinestudio.com/linesbreakingnewspaper/
http://blueteethnovel.tilda.ws/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170207203428/http://pacificitysoundvisions.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915100800/http://meryn.ru/portfolia/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415230745/http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.woodswoods.com/new-gallery-5
https://web.archive.org/web/20120807153003/http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2010/11/minstrel-show-visual-art.html
https://glasstire.com/2012/11/23/the-ten-list-walk-as-art/
https://news.ourontario.ca/page.asp?ID=2910113&po=6&n=1
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/teletext/
http://www.teletextart.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060411023755/http://www.gamengai.com/main.php
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/
https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/
http://retroblues.sakura.ne.jp/regeokiba/index.htm
http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/
https://fm-7.com/
https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm
http://p6ers.net/hashi/
http://furuiotoko.la.coocan.jp/
http://85data.world.coocan.jp/
http://ayachi0610.blog65.fc2.com/
https://datafruits.fm/
https://www.catsuka.com/player/binge/
http://myduckisdead.org/
https://historicfilms.com/search/?
https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/
https://contactjuggling.org/
http://www.t0.or.at/scl/agents.htm
https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-TheAndersenTiltWashWindowStory1990s
https://cursed-commercials.fandom.com/wiki/Square_Butts
https://www.yygarchive.org/
https://news.nestia.com/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%AD%A2%E6%9B%B9%E4%B8%95%EF%BC%9A%E8%BF%99%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E6%AE%B5%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%BC%8F%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2/6267619
https://www.jacketsjunction.com/product/wikipedia-editor-jacket/
https://opendirsearch.abifog.com/
https://vimeo.com/729784691
https://ubuweb.com/
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2902/3D%20Images.iso/bmp/a
http://web.archive.org/web/20040405155729/http://www.mbnet.fi:80/apaja/alueet/
https://carta.archive-it.org/
In my review-cum-memoir on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I bemoaned the death of online spaces noted for their lack of thorough knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that WotLK's release came a mere five days before the launch of Jim Garvin and Ryan McGeary's 'Let Me Google That For You' website. Perhaps by divine providence too, WotLK's release coincided with the steady downward trend of Bill Dyess' then World of Warcraft database Thottbot and the first massive spike in traffic to Wowhead. The coincidence is staggering, but also points to a trend which has irreversibly altered the gaming landscape, and society at large. Much as WoW players sought user-data-verified hard statistics on their MMO of choice, tech savvy individuals' astonishment and contempt for being asked readily verifiable questions reached a tipping point in late 2008. Confirming and corroborating data on WoW would in time become something accomplished by every player. LMGTFY would in time become a site even your grandparents might send as a slight towards a query. The genuine question 'where is Mankrik's wife?' was less the object of ridicule, more a target for sarcasm and eye-rolling as the naive were directed to Wowhead. With ever increasing databases and wikis, games and media in general have become less about a sense of mystery, more one of minutiae. Players no longer revel in not knowing, they would rather examine the entirety of a game's mechanics and lore and history with a finetooth comb.
My point in bringing this up is two-fold. One: Games have genuinely not been the same since players expected to be able to understand them inside and out at whim. Two: The Internet has genuinely not been the same since users expected others to rely on a corporate search engine, largely constructed (especially now) to deliver advertising rather than substantive content, to remedy their perceived ignorance. As Embracer Group, Microsoft, Tencent, Sony, Epic, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and other megacorporations oligopolise the gaming space, so too do Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tencent, Joybuy, Alibaba, Twitter, Spotify, ByteDance, Baidu, Adobe, Block, and others reduce Internet diversity to a minimum. I can't act as if I knew the Internet of eld in its entirety, but a lifelong fascination with Internet obscura and history has me at least somewhat informed.
In my review of GeoGuessr, and corroborated by jobosno's review of Microsoft Flight Simulator, stressed was the importance of appreciating the non-place. So too does this apply to the Internet at large, and Hypnospace Outlaw itself if we wish. Not everything on the Internet is substantive or substantial, nor is every page on Hypnospace. We fall down rabbit holes of Wikipedia deep dives, we examine every page on Hypnospace regardless of its relevance to our duty. Duty and productivity and the confines of time and the constraints of life and gaming guide us towards Internet or Hypnospace use that is conducive to our end goals, but those detours persist as availabilities. In the real world, they dwindle as web diversity shrinks, as webhosts go offline, as swathes of the Internet go unarchives and unremember[ed/able]. In Hypnospace, their finite nature means we cannot search forever.
The Big Crunch theory postulates that at some point, the universe will cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null. We will not go to website, we will go to keywords. That which is unadvertisable, incompatible with commercialisation will in effect go dark. In due time fewer and fewer spaces will exist. In due time, all will be one, and one will be none.
The Big Freeze theory postulates that the universe will never cease expansion, and will drift into entropy until all is returned to absolute zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might expand infinitely to the point of unnavigability. In a web of infinitudes, all will be irrelevant and all will be lost as data becomes unable to be quantified on any scale. In due time, one will be all, and all will be none.
The unknowability of the universe renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
The unknowability of the Internet renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
Enjoy the Internet as it is now. Enjoy the Internet as it was then. Enjoy the Internet as it will be. Forever is it in flux, forever is it a stable constant. Forever does it all drift apart, forever does it all close in. Forever shall it be known and forever shall it be unknown.
We exist in a cosmic nothing of no import.
We exist in a digital nothing of no import.
Every atom in the universe is critical to its being.
Every byte of the Internet is critical to its being.
As a historian, I live on a periphery of data boundless yet intangible. I scour for that which does not exist, may never have existed.
At the end of Hypnospace Outlaw you are tasked with archiving a wasteland.
Archive our wasteland with the Wayback Machine extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
We exist at a time where unfathomable amounts of human knowledge are being erased from existence every hour of every day. This is not a deliberate book burning. This is an incidental blaze.
Save what you can.
What a beautiful thing we are a part of.
Seek the obtuse, obfuscated, and obscure.
A selection of webzones I have found and I enjoy:
https://geocities.restorativland.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20021215085602/http://www.u-ga.com:80/jp/games/mobile.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070902163202/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/
https://web.archive.org/web/20050222012115/http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/
https://prairieecologist.com/2020/01/13/finally-a-practical-guide-for-roadside-wildflower-viewing/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010118210000/http://www.l0pht.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030207171752/http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,50875,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060314162213/http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man/Pac-Games/PacManVR/pac.htm
https://www.geo-grafia.jp/product/
http://erogereport.blog.jp/archives/cat_87375.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515154050/http://users.stargate.net/~glshir/PLAY.HTM
https://dreamlogos.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Logos_Wiki
https://web.archive.org/web/20150222012855/http://quitesoulless.com/story.htm
https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Oi1qbcz2m2SnwUeztGYcnQ
https://web.archive.org/web/20030407094755/http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html
http://www.poetpatriot.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229230522/http://symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kgame.hoax.html
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/camping-in-a-u-haul-they-are-cheeper-than-an-rv-and-better-than-a-tent.53919/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140803164736/http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/
https://tss.asenheim.org/
https://jimedwardsnrx.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20130812175052/http://csbruce.com/tv/clone_high/
https://xercesblau.com/
https://www.walgreens2.com/peach-ring/peach17.html?fbclid=IwAR0iWWPkq0qf2kkYIVmUgL2pPuE1023aImBPnYuwmQXAxtyXNiElOnSDlVs
http://www.secondlivestock.com/
https://origamisimulator.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180818104057/http://underlinestudio.com/linesbreakingnewspaper/
http://blueteethnovel.tilda.ws/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170207203428/http://pacificitysoundvisions.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915100800/http://meryn.ru/portfolia/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415230745/http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.woodswoods.com/new-gallery-5
https://web.archive.org/web/20120807153003/http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2010/11/minstrel-show-visual-art.html
https://glasstire.com/2012/11/23/the-ten-list-walk-as-art/
https://news.ourontario.ca/page.asp?ID=2910113&po=6&n=1
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/teletext/
http://www.teletextart.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060411023755/http://www.gamengai.com/main.php
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/
https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/
http://retroblues.sakura.ne.jp/regeokiba/index.htm
http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/
https://fm-7.com/
https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm
http://p6ers.net/hashi/
http://furuiotoko.la.coocan.jp/
http://85data.world.coocan.jp/
http://ayachi0610.blog65.fc2.com/
https://datafruits.fm/
https://www.catsuka.com/player/binge/
http://myduckisdead.org/
https://historicfilms.com/search/?
https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/
https://contactjuggling.org/
http://www.t0.or.at/scl/agents.htm
https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-TheAndersenTiltWashWindowStory1990s
https://cursed-commercials.fandom.com/wiki/Square_Butts
https://www.yygarchive.org/
https://news.nestia.com/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%AD%A2%E6%9B%B9%E4%B8%95%EF%BC%9A%E8%BF%99%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E6%AE%B5%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%BC%8F%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2/6267619
https://www.jacketsjunction.com/product/wikipedia-editor-jacket/
https://opendirsearch.abifog.com/
https://vimeo.com/729784691
https://ubuweb.com/
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2902/3D%20Images.iso/bmp/a
http://web.archive.org/web/20040405155729/http://www.mbnet.fi:80/apaja/alueet/
https://carta.archive-it.org/
Hypnospace Outlaw was a masterful expression of turn of the millennium Internet culture and thematic exploration of the increasing corporatization of the Internet. Slayers X, its boomer shooter spinoff, continues this deft grasp of Internet culture though this time through a complete parody of what was considered cool by teenage boys on the era. Slayers X is the in-universe game that Zane made himself and it’s the kind of self-aggrandizing work only a teen boy could pull off. Zane is the chosen X-Slayer out to stop the Psyko Sindicate and to avenge his loved ones. (RIP Zane’s mom) The whole game is just such a great parody and it’s funny throughout. The aesthetic is also just so good, one of my favorite aspects being how it feels like it hearkens to Blood what with its Build Engine look and how the cut scenes reminded me of Blood’s style, though much more exaggerated.
The gunplay is pretty much all fun, my only complaint is the starter dual pistols feel limp. One of the standout weapons to me is the shotgun which shoots out glass shards so to get ammo for it you have to break glass cases, mirrors, and windows, this added a nice facet of being more aware of the environment when scrounging around. The level design is also really great too, with a great deal of location variety and different avenues of approach. Zane will be blasting his way through Psykos across his hometown among such as locations as a suburban cul-de-sac, trailer-park, and state fair. The levels are rather expansive but rarely confusing, which is what really pushes a boomer shooter to greatness I feel.
The game is unfortunately rather short and I would have liked a few more hours out of it, but on the other hand the game never outlasts its welcome and is always throwing new things at you. Slayers X is just overall a fantastic shooter and genuinely funny game. Now I just eagerly wait for the next Hypnospace game, Dream Settler, because this series is quickly becoming one of my favorite in games.
The gunplay is pretty much all fun, my only complaint is the starter dual pistols feel limp. One of the standout weapons to me is the shotgun which shoots out glass shards so to get ammo for it you have to break glass cases, mirrors, and windows, this added a nice facet of being more aware of the environment when scrounging around. The level design is also really great too, with a great deal of location variety and different avenues of approach. Zane will be blasting his way through Psykos across his hometown among such as locations as a suburban cul-de-sac, trailer-park, and state fair. The levels are rather expansive but rarely confusing, which is what really pushes a boomer shooter to greatness I feel.
The game is unfortunately rather short and I would have liked a few more hours out of it, but on the other hand the game never outlasts its welcome and is always throwing new things at you. Slayers X is just overall a fantastic shooter and genuinely funny game. Now I just eagerly wait for the next Hypnospace game, Dream Settler, because this series is quickly becoming one of my favorite in games.
𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙛𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙤𝙙.
I love vampire media, I love the stories, I love the differentiating styles and tones, and I absolutely love different types of Vampires, and most of all I love the potential vampires have as a monster. Depending on what kind of story you’re writing you can have vampires be mindless beasts, or a group of mindless beasts with a head vampire who rules over them like Dracula. You could have an overly melodramatic and possibly dangerous teen drama with them like Twilight, you can make stupid over the top fun with them like Blade, or you can make shit like Mordius; Vampires as a movie monster have no real limit to their use; which is why I’m so disappointed with the lack of good vampire representation in gaming. I mean don’t get me wrong I’m sure there's loads of good vampire games out there like Legacy of Kain games or Darkwatch, Castlevania kinda, and um………..…..vampyr….um….r..redfall?.....…………ffffffuck this is sad. Regardless of that really depressing statement I’m here to stake (haha) my claim that Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is the probably best vampire game I’ve played in recent memory.
Knowing the backstory behind this game honestly makes this one of the more unfortunate underdog stories. Like outside of the horrid crunch the team was put through near the end of the development is one thing but then legally not being able to even patch the game is just the most evil thing a company could do to its own project. (although it’s fitting knowing activision) Regardless of the state the game was released in that was 19 years ago and now the game has been patched by modders so how's the actual game…..yeah it’s damn good, dare I say “a classic”.
I don’t wanna say much about the story since its narrative is basically its strongest aspect and I feel the best way to approach it is completely blind so I’m mostly gonna talk about its world building and its characters. First thing I wanna get out of the way are the hub maps you explore in the city of LA. The world building is honestly one of the best aspects of the overall game; which is honestly something I’d expect from a game based on a tabletop game but to be far I’ve been burned before. (cough cough Cyberpunk 2077 cough cough) I love this thorough organize the system the vampires have made for themselves; filled with just as much bureaucracy and backstabbing power struggles really being a vampire is no more different then being a human in this world, well you know besides the whole undead thing; drinking human blood and turning to ash in sunlight, but besides those yeah it’s pretty much the same, kind of a crappy deal if you think about it. All the different and unique factions that intertwine with each other really adds a lot to the roleplay element which I feel a lot of RPGs don’t really grasp all that way, the only other game I can honestly think of is New Vegas but that’s kinda a cop out since New Vegas is basically good at everything an RPG should be. Sometimes the game can be kinda blatant when it comes to how the different factions are written and how you’re meant to feel about them. Yes faction A and faction B are the obvious bad ones with a little bit of reason behind them although not so much for faction 8 then faction A, but besides them all other factions have their own pros and cons that do help flesh out not only the city of LA but the different characters of said faction. (this is a little side thing but I just love how early 2000's this game feels, from both a writing and aesthetic angle. althought maybe the game can sometimes be a little too horny for it's own good but I don't mind it that much.)
Now let me make this 100% clear, this game’s characters are one of a kind. Not only are they written to perfection by Brian Mitsoda and the rest of the stupidly talented writers of Troika, with each individual character just written in a way where they feel less like NPCs and more like real people living in this virtual world, but I think their writing is heightened by the cast they got for this, not a single voice sounds out of place or doesn't fit the character every just fits perfectly. It also helps that they got an absolute staked cast; just to name a few they got have John DiMaggio (Jake the Dog, Bender), Grey Griffin (Mandy from Billy and Mandy and problem half your childhood), James Arnold Taylor, (Ratchet and Obi Wan-Clone Wars) Courtenay Taylor ( Jack-Mass Effect 2/3), Phil LaMarr (Samurai Jack and John Stewart-Green lantern), and Steve Blum just to name a few (fuckin Spike Spiegel man) Not only are these VA’s venters of their industry but they giving 101 percent of their voice acting chops to really sell this character as a real living person, the performances in this can honestly that rival the highest paid VAs in current AAA gaming. (I’m looking at you Troy Baker, you NFT selling prick) I honestly think this is probably some of the best voice acting I’ve seen in a video game, the way the VAs just melt into their characters is just amazing and a impressive testament to not only the VA’s but the voice directors as well.
The four hubs this game offer are possibly some of the best hub maps in any rpg I’ve play (besides one but well get to that soonish), not only are they pretty sprawling for their sizes, but regardless of how lost you might feel at times the map always give you enough to identify visual indications on where you are and after a while it’ll just become musial memory on where to go and what you need to do. Santa Monica is probably one of the most well put together tutorial hub maps on par with stuff like The Great Plateau from BOTW or GoodSprings in New Vegas. The whole area perfectly teaches you how you’ll be traversing the hubs and how they can subtly tell you where to go through lighting and amazing map design. A hub map at it’s best when you don’t need to look at a map to see where to go, instead you’ll just know where it is from just learning from your surrounding because that’s what the game taught you, I like it when games actually trust their player to understand their surrounding rather then the whole checkmark open world horse shit we’ve been dealing with for years. Granted now all the hub world is great…well… it’s only one….but we haven’t gotten there yet.
Since this game has multiple different types of vampire factions you can choose what kind of vampire you wanna play as. I can’t really comment on all of them since I only played as one out of 7 different clans you could play as. I guess for my own personal experience I went with Gangrel which is basically the furry clan. It’s more melee focus with being able to tank more hits while also being able to tap into nature’s animale spires, also you can turn into a wolf which is honestly pretty badass.
I don’t really know what to say about the gameplay since honestly it’s kinda basic for an rpg. It has your traditional rpg systems but since this series is based off of a table top game all of the up stats are handed like a spreadsheet. It’s not super deed with its mechanics but what it lacks in depth it doesn't really make up for in combat. Melee combat is super simple and as long as you’re a high enough level with a high level weapon and properly divvy out your xp to the stats you wanna build your character with then you’ll be fine; it still won’t help you with the weird difficulty spikes the game can throw at you but as long as you save scum like me you’ll be alright. The gun play on the other hand, is pure shit. If you don’t level up for firearms perks by at least 3 or 4 then don’t bother using a gun because you won’t be able to hit anything unless you were right up a vampire's nose; and even then that’s being generous. It also doesn't help that all the guns feel like shit to use and don’t have any real impact on them, they feel and sound like airsoft guns and are ultimately useless until the last few hours of the game where they feel borderline necessary if you want to get past them. The combat is nothing to really write home about but to be fair when has an rpg really had combat to write home about, all the classic Fallout games have combat that was never anything to write home about and those games are still considered classics to this day because of their fantastic writing and world building. So besides the rpg systems feeling really simple and the gunplay being shit I can look past them and still enjoy the game. Ok I think it’s time to discuss the later half of the game.
So as the game goes on it starts becoming very apparent when the money dried up and the rush and crunch started. You can tell it started around the time of the finale hub Chinatown. Not only is Chinatown just generally less interesting than the previous hubs but there's also less interesting side missions and the main missions are pretty bland as well. None of the new characters introduced in Chinatown are all that interesting and even now, only finishing the game like a few days ago I’m struggling to even remember most of the new characters. It also doesn't help that even before Chinatown started the second to last level in Hollywood where you plunder the sewers for the secret Nosferatu lair is way too long for its own good and a huge pain in the ass if you didn’t already plan ahead for it. After all of the Chinatown missions are finished you then move on to the last 3 or so hours of the game, which are all combat oriented with a strictly linear design with no deviation and having gunplay being a major focus in all of them. Like I said before, the gunplay in this game is pretty bad; so having it be the main focus for the last few hours honestly tested my patience a lot, and then we got to Werewolf Park. I hate Werewolf Park almost as much as I hate the sewer part. I genuinely don’t know if it was just a me thing but I struggled with that part for like 45 minutes, the werewolf kills you so quickly you don’t really have a good enough time to react to what’s happening, or what you need to do. The game tells you that you need to survive for roughly 5 minutes but those 5 minutes can feel like a fucking eternity when how ruthless the werewolf’s AI is, that ting is out for blood and it will not stop for anything. I genuinely didn’t know what I was supposed to do so eventually I just harkened back to a classic rpg strategy “fuck around and find out”. I did find the way you were supposed to kill the werewolf but the game does such a bad job at communicating it to the player I honestly don’t blame people if they looked it up. After all that bullshit with the crappy liner levels with crappy gunplay and shitty sewer levels and annoying werewolf I got to the second to last boss, and man; it’s fucking dreadful. I spent well up to an hour on Ming Xiao’s fight, mostly because it was stupidly hard and it wasn’t hard in the same a souls boss is hard, more in a horribly balanced and spongy sort of way, top it off with that shitty gunplay and stupidly simple melee combat it makes for one awful fight. I was really tempted to turn on god mode and finish off but I really didn’t wanna cheat on my first playthrough of this so by the end I somehow beat her (I honestly can’t tell you how I did it I’m 97% sure it was just luck) and then I got to the last portion which is just a glorified shooting gallery with a piss easy final boss.
Making it to the end was a challenge in frustration. I didn’t really like anything after Chinatown and even the general writing started to feel rushed at some points; then the ending happened, and everything was great again. For real the ending of this game pretty much saves the game from throwing a flawed 8 out of 10 at it.
As the game stand for me I absolutely adore a lot about this game from the outstanding game design, to the fantastic writing and voice acting; this is one of those very special video games where all the pieces fall together in place to make a magical time, and then big fat bully Kotick stomps over and knocks down the building boxes and tells them “rebuilding it in 5 hours or else you're blacklisted”. It’s not a perfect game as much as I feel like I’m making it out to be, it’s still jank as fuck even with all the bugs ironed out in the unofficial patch and maybe the combat is too simple for it’s own good, but dammit I love the soul dammit. Games like these don’t come out nearly as much anymore, games that have fantastic sections like the Ocean Hotel or the side mission in the crackout in downtown where you fight all the plaguebearers. This game was made by people who genuinely love the medium of video games and dammit I think there’s some merit in that.
I love vampire media, I love the stories, I love the differentiating styles and tones, and I absolutely love different types of Vampires, and most of all I love the potential vampires have as a monster. Depending on what kind of story you’re writing you can have vampires be mindless beasts, or a group of mindless beasts with a head vampire who rules over them like Dracula. You could have an overly melodramatic and possibly dangerous teen drama with them like Twilight, you can make stupid over the top fun with them like Blade, or you can make shit like Mordius; Vampires as a movie monster have no real limit to their use; which is why I’m so disappointed with the lack of good vampire representation in gaming. I mean don’t get me wrong I’m sure there's loads of good vampire games out there like Legacy of Kain games or Darkwatch, Castlevania kinda, and um………..…..vampyr….um….r..redfall?.....…………ffffffuck this is sad. Regardless of that really depressing statement I’m here to stake (haha) my claim that Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is the probably best vampire game I’ve played in recent memory.
Knowing the backstory behind this game honestly makes this one of the more unfortunate underdog stories. Like outside of the horrid crunch the team was put through near the end of the development is one thing but then legally not being able to even patch the game is just the most evil thing a company could do to its own project. (although it’s fitting knowing activision) Regardless of the state the game was released in that was 19 years ago and now the game has been patched by modders so how's the actual game…..yeah it’s damn good, dare I say “a classic”.
I don’t wanna say much about the story since its narrative is basically its strongest aspect and I feel the best way to approach it is completely blind so I’m mostly gonna talk about its world building and its characters. First thing I wanna get out of the way are the hub maps you explore in the city of LA. The world building is honestly one of the best aspects of the overall game; which is honestly something I’d expect from a game based on a tabletop game but to be far I’ve been burned before. (cough cough Cyberpunk 2077 cough cough) I love this thorough organize the system the vampires have made for themselves; filled with just as much bureaucracy and backstabbing power struggles really being a vampire is no more different then being a human in this world, well you know besides the whole undead thing; drinking human blood and turning to ash in sunlight, but besides those yeah it’s pretty much the same, kind of a crappy deal if you think about it. All the different and unique factions that intertwine with each other really adds a lot to the roleplay element which I feel a lot of RPGs don’t really grasp all that way, the only other game I can honestly think of is New Vegas but that’s kinda a cop out since New Vegas is basically good at everything an RPG should be. Sometimes the game can be kinda blatant when it comes to how the different factions are written and how you’re meant to feel about them. Yes faction A and faction B are the obvious bad ones with a little bit of reason behind them although not so much for faction 8 then faction A, but besides them all other factions have their own pros and cons that do help flesh out not only the city of LA but the different characters of said faction. (this is a little side thing but I just love how early 2000's this game feels, from both a writing and aesthetic angle. althought maybe the game can sometimes be a little too horny for it's own good but I don't mind it that much.)
Now let me make this 100% clear, this game’s characters are one of a kind. Not only are they written to perfection by Brian Mitsoda and the rest of the stupidly talented writers of Troika, with each individual character just written in a way where they feel less like NPCs and more like real people living in this virtual world, but I think their writing is heightened by the cast they got for this, not a single voice sounds out of place or doesn't fit the character every just fits perfectly. It also helps that they got an absolute staked cast; just to name a few they got have John DiMaggio (Jake the Dog, Bender), Grey Griffin (Mandy from Billy and Mandy and problem half your childhood), James Arnold Taylor, (Ratchet and Obi Wan-Clone Wars) Courtenay Taylor ( Jack-Mass Effect 2/3), Phil LaMarr (Samurai Jack and John Stewart-Green lantern), and Steve Blum just to name a few (fuckin Spike Spiegel man) Not only are these VA’s venters of their industry but they giving 101 percent of their voice acting chops to really sell this character as a real living person, the performances in this can honestly that rival the highest paid VAs in current AAA gaming. (I’m looking at you Troy Baker, you NFT selling prick) I honestly think this is probably some of the best voice acting I’ve seen in a video game, the way the VAs just melt into their characters is just amazing and a impressive testament to not only the VA’s but the voice directors as well.
The four hubs this game offer are possibly some of the best hub maps in any rpg I’ve play (besides one but well get to that soonish), not only are they pretty sprawling for their sizes, but regardless of how lost you might feel at times the map always give you enough to identify visual indications on where you are and after a while it’ll just become musial memory on where to go and what you need to do. Santa Monica is probably one of the most well put together tutorial hub maps on par with stuff like The Great Plateau from BOTW or GoodSprings in New Vegas. The whole area perfectly teaches you how you’ll be traversing the hubs and how they can subtly tell you where to go through lighting and amazing map design. A hub map at it’s best when you don’t need to look at a map to see where to go, instead you’ll just know where it is from just learning from your surrounding because that’s what the game taught you, I like it when games actually trust their player to understand their surrounding rather then the whole checkmark open world horse shit we’ve been dealing with for years. Granted now all the hub world is great…well… it’s only one….but we haven’t gotten there yet.
Since this game has multiple different types of vampire factions you can choose what kind of vampire you wanna play as. I can’t really comment on all of them since I only played as one out of 7 different clans you could play as. I guess for my own personal experience I went with Gangrel which is basically the furry clan. It’s more melee focus with being able to tank more hits while also being able to tap into nature’s animale spires, also you can turn into a wolf which is honestly pretty badass.
I don’t really know what to say about the gameplay since honestly it’s kinda basic for an rpg. It has your traditional rpg systems but since this series is based off of a table top game all of the up stats are handed like a spreadsheet. It’s not super deed with its mechanics but what it lacks in depth it doesn't really make up for in combat. Melee combat is super simple and as long as you’re a high enough level with a high level weapon and properly divvy out your xp to the stats you wanna build your character with then you’ll be fine; it still won’t help you with the weird difficulty spikes the game can throw at you but as long as you save scum like me you’ll be alright. The gun play on the other hand, is pure shit. If you don’t level up for firearms perks by at least 3 or 4 then don’t bother using a gun because you won’t be able to hit anything unless you were right up a vampire's nose; and even then that’s being generous. It also doesn't help that all the guns feel like shit to use and don’t have any real impact on them, they feel and sound like airsoft guns and are ultimately useless until the last few hours of the game where they feel borderline necessary if you want to get past them. The combat is nothing to really write home about but to be fair when has an rpg really had combat to write home about, all the classic Fallout games have combat that was never anything to write home about and those games are still considered classics to this day because of their fantastic writing and world building. So besides the rpg systems feeling really simple and the gunplay being shit I can look past them and still enjoy the game. Ok I think it’s time to discuss the later half of the game.
So as the game goes on it starts becoming very apparent when the money dried up and the rush and crunch started. You can tell it started around the time of the finale hub Chinatown. Not only is Chinatown just generally less interesting than the previous hubs but there's also less interesting side missions and the main missions are pretty bland as well. None of the new characters introduced in Chinatown are all that interesting and even now, only finishing the game like a few days ago I’m struggling to even remember most of the new characters. It also doesn't help that even before Chinatown started the second to last level in Hollywood where you plunder the sewers for the secret Nosferatu lair is way too long for its own good and a huge pain in the ass if you didn’t already plan ahead for it. After all of the Chinatown missions are finished you then move on to the last 3 or so hours of the game, which are all combat oriented with a strictly linear design with no deviation and having gunplay being a major focus in all of them. Like I said before, the gunplay in this game is pretty bad; so having it be the main focus for the last few hours honestly tested my patience a lot, and then we got to Werewolf Park. I hate Werewolf Park almost as much as I hate the sewer part. I genuinely don’t know if it was just a me thing but I struggled with that part for like 45 minutes, the werewolf kills you so quickly you don’t really have a good enough time to react to what’s happening, or what you need to do. The game tells you that you need to survive for roughly 5 minutes but those 5 minutes can feel like a fucking eternity when how ruthless the werewolf’s AI is, that ting is out for blood and it will not stop for anything. I genuinely didn’t know what I was supposed to do so eventually I just harkened back to a classic rpg strategy “fuck around and find out”. I did find the way you were supposed to kill the werewolf but the game does such a bad job at communicating it to the player I honestly don’t blame people if they looked it up. After all that bullshit with the crappy liner levels with crappy gunplay and shitty sewer levels and annoying werewolf I got to the second to last boss, and man; it’s fucking dreadful. I spent well up to an hour on Ming Xiao’s fight, mostly because it was stupidly hard and it wasn’t hard in the same a souls boss is hard, more in a horribly balanced and spongy sort of way, top it off with that shitty gunplay and stupidly simple melee combat it makes for one awful fight. I was really tempted to turn on god mode and finish off but I really didn’t wanna cheat on my first playthrough of this so by the end I somehow beat her (I honestly can’t tell you how I did it I’m 97% sure it was just luck) and then I got to the last portion which is just a glorified shooting gallery with a piss easy final boss.
Making it to the end was a challenge in frustration. I didn’t really like anything after Chinatown and even the general writing started to feel rushed at some points; then the ending happened, and everything was great again. For real the ending of this game pretty much saves the game from throwing a flawed 8 out of 10 at it.
As the game stand for me I absolutely adore a lot about this game from the outstanding game design, to the fantastic writing and voice acting; this is one of those very special video games where all the pieces fall together in place to make a magical time, and then big fat bully Kotick stomps over and knocks down the building boxes and tells them “rebuilding it in 5 hours or else you're blacklisted”. It’s not a perfect game as much as I feel like I’m making it out to be, it’s still jank as fuck even with all the bugs ironed out in the unofficial patch and maybe the combat is too simple for it’s own good, but dammit I love the soul dammit. Games like these don’t come out nearly as much anymore, games that have fantastic sections like the Ocean Hotel or the side mission in the crackout in downtown where you fight all the plaguebearers. This game was made by people who genuinely love the medium of video games and dammit I think there’s some merit in that.