Resident Evil 4... one of the most well respected and loved games in history, and my fifth Resident Evil game this year. Ultimately I'm not sure this holds up as "One of the Greats" so to speak, but I did really really enjoy it.

The game starts and we return as our favorite Rookie Cop, Leon S Kennedy. You are now a special agent, and you are on a secret mission - Rescue the President's Daughter!! Silly premise, but there is a bigger sin here: Umbrella. This was pointed out by one Michael Huber of Easy Allies, but each Resident Evil prior to this (1 2 and 3) end very specifically on a note of each protagonist being prepared and ready to take the fight directly to Umbrella for what their actions unleashed in Raccoon city. However, in the OPENING TEXT of 4 we learn that Umbrella was just dissolved by UN action and they're all pretty much just in jail at this point. So the Big Bad Corporation we've been psyched up to go after THREE times is just gone now? And we don't even get to see it happen?? Crazy! Anyway, it dumps us into this stupid plot, but it knows it is dumb and it leans REAL hard into it. I think that's kind of the best I can say for it - the game knows what it is, a silly bond movie with zombies, and it at least does it well. Giant bad guy statues that chase you, slow-mo knife fights between old comrades, etc etc. There are only a few main characters, Ashley and Luis are the main two who interact with Leon in a meaningful way (Ada and Leon just do the same basic song and dance from 2) and I quite liked both of them. I was saddened and a bit shocked by Luis's death, I figured it would come much later or not at all. Ashley isn't QUITE as annoying as I thought she would be, and there are very large sections of the game where she is not present for you to have to worry about her which was nice. Escort quests are pretty much always garbage.

Gameplay wise, this game is a RADICAL departure from 1-2-3. Gone is the isometric fixed camera and guns that auto aim for you, gone are the small number of enemies and smaller environments, hello to over the shoulder action! The shooting in the game is very good, because it gives some sense of "you are a real person holding a gun, your aim isn't perfect", but not enough to upset you too much I think. All of the guns have a laser sight that helps you due to the camera angle being fairly wide (which is great for spotting enemies sneaking up on you), which also helps you spot environmental cues for where to shoot. The array of guns is nice, and I always appreciate a good shotgun. In a way its good to have the merchant there (Hello STRAAANGAA), but in another way the weapon selection feels a bit more limited with the inventory management sections, because you invest in the guns you like and now there's no reason to get any other ones? I upgraded the Red9 and Striker all the way, and those bad boys carried me through the game.

There's a robust unlocking and NG+ features which I'm strongly tempted to do, plus there's a DLC chunk called "Separate Ways" starring Ada that I'm strongly contemplating. It is certainly a game that is meant to be run through several times, but I'm not sure I have the time to do it this year.

On an ending note, you can tell the makers of this game played a LOT of Metal Gear Solid. The 'codec' calls, the cutscenes with Awesome Action, a focus on getting to know the antagonists a bit more, some of the hokey dialogue.. Like damn, does Kojima have a lawsuit ready?

I haven't played a great Beat-Em-Up in a while, and I'm still not entirely sure if I have here either haha.. My blurb review for this was "Its like Scott Pilgrim, but not really as good", and the more and more I think about it, that holds up as true. The music is exceptional, but not quite Amananaguchi. The combat is great, but you have to buy your moves instead of just earning them through play and leveling. It has RPG stats, but they come mostly through eating random crap and you have no idea what stats go where, as opposed to just choosing them yourself. The story is funny but barebones with a dumb ending, compared to SP. I'll say it probably looks better at least, but I'm generally a fan of the 'anime' aesthetic.

That being said, this will probably be a shorter review than I generally do because this game is pretty clearly in the same vein as Scott Pilgrim, but it all basically boils down to "yeah its like that but not as good". What I did really like however were the two main characters. Kyoko and Misako are worth the price of entry here, they're the cliche pair of Girly-Girl and Tomboy, but they play off of each other so well and off of the characters they meet that there wasn't any point that I wasn't charmed by both of them. I may or may not do another playthrough as Kyoko, which will count as a new number in this gaming series.

For issues I think the only issue I had was some of the gameplay. A lot of the game is actually quite hard, and some of the bosses took me at least 5 tries until the end game. I didn't realize that stats from eating things were permanent the first time, and I did not fix that until about 80% of the way into the game. You also have to purchase most of your moves which gets a bit tiresome to go and find the dojo, and it doesn't even tell you what the move does or how to do it until you buy it already... this means you've got whole sections of your basic combo locked and you don't even realize it until AFTER you get it. Kind of a pain in the ass.

I certainly quite liked the game despite my issues, the characters dialogue and their designs were top notch and it was fun to get into a beat-em-up again after my love was sparked by Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World so many years ago..

Alan Wake is the game that precedes Control by nearly ten years, but to me is the follow up to that much loved game (literally, the #30 on this list is Control!). This seems to be now setting a pattern with Resident Evil 2 - some games are just so good you feel a need to play everything else like it just to keep it going! I'm not sure if Alan Wake is QUITE as good as the Resi games I've gone through so far, but I did genuinely quite like it.

I have actually played the game previously, I believe I rented it many years ago for the 360, I distinctly recall the beginning hour or so where I stopped, I was just a bit too much of a scaredy cat I believe at the time so I stopped. I finished it this time, mainly on my new laptop and despite its age, it looked quite good. A lot of the game however is very "PS360", the colors tend to be fairly muted, gameplay areas try to LOOK expansive but are actually pretty linear, animations are present and improved but nowhere near where we're at now.. that generation (as I suppose all of them do) has a very distinct feel.

To the story, which is the meat of the experience, you are Alan Wake, a writer heading to a small New England town with his wife for a much needed vacation. You've had intense writers block for two years now, and are trying to reset your batteries so to speak. Soon however things turn to the supernatural and to horror as your wife is seemingly kidnapped by a lake, and you wake up having lost a whole week of your memory in a car crash... You later pick up notes throughout each level of Alan's "manuscript", detailing what happened in your missing week, and what events will shortly transpire. The supernatural event seems to be a clash between Alan and a "dark presence", who resides in the area and is able to overwhelm and possess townsfolk into attacking you. Alan's writings seem to come true, and the game is essentially his writing out the events of the game and you going through them. This is a pretty interesting justifcation for the "game-i-ness" and plot contrivances, for instance there are flash grenades in several areas that Alan will specifically say "There's no reason for these to be here, they were just written into the story and now they're here..." which works in both a creepy 'What's going on here??' sort of way, and as a function of being a game. The game's standout character however is Barry Allen, your book agent/friend who comes to the town to rescue you when you go missing for the week. He's a bit of a slimeball goof, but he's got heart and he's very funny. There are some other side characters as well who range from creepy to likeable, but there is one major problem: Alan's wife.

I don't actually recall the name of Alan's wife, and I will pointedly not look it up because of how badly this game handled Alan's motivation. The brass tacks of the plot is"Your wife is kidnapped, get her back", however they do a very poor job of getting you to care about her, or to show her and Alan's relationship. The beginning portion of the game is just the two of them, but her voice acting is Blah at best, and they have basically no chemistry or real "scenes" together at first to show their current relationship, other than Alan being mad at her for wanting him to write on the trip. Then she gets kidnapped and you're off to the races. Now to the games credit, there are a handful of "dream" scenes where he will remember something about her and their life together, which are IN THEORY a great way for us to get to know her and care about her, BUT they are not particularly good and again, there are like 2 or 3 of them. This is pretty much the only major failing, story wise.

Gameplay-wise, the game is solid but not great. Your main weapon is the standard array of guns, pistol/shotgun/rifle, blah. However, the interesting bit is that enemies are shrouded in darkness that prevents damage, so you have to literally 'light them up' first before you can riddle them with bullets. You have a main flashlight for this, but also get flares, flashbangs and flareguns later on to help with this, and those are fun to use. However a big negative comes in terms of enemy variety. Essentially, there are just 4 enemies in the game-

1. Regular shadowy dudes

2. Big Boy shadowy dudes

3. Crows, shadowy

4. Various floaty objects, shadowy

Adding to that, a good 75+% of the game is "You're now in a spooky forest, make your way through the obvious path to get to the well-lit place far away P.S. all your guns are gone", now is that BAD? No, it's just tiresome. There are some notable and wonderful exceptions (heading through the town at night with the sheriff, the mental 'institution', the concert...), but a bit too much of it is just like all the rest of it to be wholly positive.

While there are many issues to list with this game, it is ultimately more than held up by good characters, interesting theme and storytelling, solid gameplay, and a creepy yet mysterious atmosphere. When the Control DLC was announced a few days ago confirming Alan Wake would be a part of it, I squawked with joy. I'm delighted to go back and get more of this story. Also, it has one of the best ending lines I have ever seen!

Ion Fury, previously known as Ion Maiden, is an Old-School FPS in the vein of Doom, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 3D. You play as Shelly "Bombshell", a policewoman (private security? Something) whose night out drinking is ruined by a mad scientist and his army of cybernetic goons, so you head out into that crazy city to kick some ass with a small army's worth of weapons.

First and foremost, the story is basically nonexistent. You get more from the splash screen than you do for the entire first half of the game that I finished. And hey that's fine, some games don't need a story. There's a few bits here and there of Dr. Bad Guy (not his actual name) monologueing through a screen at Shelly and she has some witty retort to him, but that's about all you get. Shelly herself has comments about things that are going on but they're usually just some hardass/snarky one liners rather than any actual window into who her character is. She's not even a one-dimensional character, just seems to say things just to break up the fights.

Gameplay wise things are thankfully much deeper. There are about 7~8 guns that I unlocked, all of which have some sort of alternate fire mode to play around with. There's a revolver with auto aim, a shot-gun with built in grenade launcher, incediary dual SMGs... a very nice selection of killing tools. Sadly the enemy variety is not quite where it needs to be, the vast majority of enemies are the hooded humanoid goons that just use your own kind of guns against you that you need to maneuver around. There's a few other oddball cybernetic enemies, skulls on spider legs, armored centipedes, that kind of thing, but the bread and butter is the basic humanoid enemies. Their AI is pretty dumb, they are sometimes placed in clever areas to force you to think on your toes in case of a trap, but the actual AI just has them mostly stand there and shoot at you. This is an old school shooter so you are CONSTANTLY flying around the map, so it might be a bit too difficult to judge your shots if you and the enemy are both moving all of the time..

I only completed about half the game and then I stopped. It is a very good game for what it is, the level layouts are very cool and expansive, lots of neat things to look at and potentially shoot, many nooks and crannies to find ammo/health/shields.. but ultimately it wasn't really growing and I just wasn't having too great a time. I've been trying to make sure I don't just "Finish" games because I feel like I Have To for this 52-game challenge, and this is one of the ones I decided to put to bed. All in all a solid retro shooter that while I ultimately have no nostalgia for, I still quite liked.

A generation-appropriate Gears game! Woo! Despite my one mission for 2019 being to replay the Halo series, I have instead finished up the Gears series. Luckily a new Gears is coming out literal days after I have finished the fourth game and an actual day as I type this, so its nice to be on top of things for a little while.

To the game - it is now more than 20 years post the ending of Gears 3, and the world has settled into something like an uneasy peace. The game starts with a rally thanking the Gears for their service during the E-day wars, and we get a neat flashback of E-day itself and Gears freaking the fuck out as monsters emerge from the ground to destroy the ground plus a short intro with Dom during the pre-E wars as a faceless Gear. Was actually a pretty neat way to start things (and introduce the premise to new players) but I thought we'd get a little more actual relevance to the main plot for this but... no dice. Dom is basically never mentioned as far as I could tell for the entire rest of the game, which is a bit disappointing.

So anyway, we meet some new, younger folks JD, Kait and That One Other Guy (his name is Del, I looked him up) who are 'invading' a COG outpost for a fabricator for their outlaw village. We get to know this new crew for a whole chapter of fighting robots, which in a way was pretty cool - we get some world and character building, new guns (which I actually liked!! No more Hammerburst/Shotgun combo the ENTIRE GAME) neat environments, new enemies... Unfortunately it definitely goes on a bit too long, and the stakes for this heist are never really spelled out or shown in any effective way so it just sort of feels "Calm Before the storm" which got a bit tiring.

At the end of the chapter you get to do a new defensive mini-game that pops up a few times in the campaign, which frankly kind of sucked a bit? The controls for this TPS are not made to place defensive structures. It needed to pop out to an RTS map or something to make it better. Also the actual things you build are kind of useless, you do all the heavy lifting anyway. After this, your village gets kidnapped by some kind of monsters that are deliberately hidden (is it the locust? But I thought they were all dead!) and we find out that our main character JD is actually Marcus's son!! They head to get him and we get even more of that old surly bastard.

There's a long chase sequence after that of trying to get Marcus back after he's abducted, which also goes on way too long, but at least it is plot relevant and gives our new characters a chance to show their stuff so overall I liked it. There's some decent character stuff with Marcus and JD, but not enough with everyone else. Like, we learn that Del and Marcus are actually super close (Del had Marcus's doorag!) but we don't really know what they bonded over or hear any stories. Marcus and Kait bond over trauma, and there's a LOT unspoken between Marcus and JD but we never actually get to hear it, or even get to see it healed between them. Sadly the story ends on a bit of a cliffhanger of sorts with our main threat left more or less entirely un-dealt-with. But that's kind of Gears in a nutshell I guess right?

There's a very nice ending sequence for the last chapter where a lot of the old cast shows up for One Last Hurrah (and some fucking sweet giant mechs to play around in) which is great, I just wanted a bit more development from the new folks. The new enemies meanwhile... not sure how I feel about them. The locust definitely needed to get gone, they're too boring of an enemy now after 3 games and the lambent frankly sucked the whole time. The new guys being 50/50 monsters v. men is neat, but the monster enemies never felt super interesting to fight. I'm interested to see where things go gameplay/enemy wise from here.

Definitely not up to par with the previous entries, it does feel a bit more cohesive in narrative and character however and provides a good stepping stone for the rest of the series going forward. Looking forward to putting my Gears 5 review in here soon!

WHAT A GAME

That was my filler text in the post until I was ready to write the review, but I think I will leave it where it is. Control is a game by Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Quantum Break. Their games have always looked interesting to me but outside of most of Max Payne 1 and an hour or so of Alan Wake (the review for which will follow this one shortly I am sure), I'd never given them much attention. But here comes Control with some very cool looking trailers showing off telekinesis powers and weird monsters and bizarre locales and that led me to do something I haven't done in quite a long time - purchase a game for 60 US dollars. Life is full of impulse decisions, and they often don't turn out very well, or at least as good as you hoped. Control however is definitely one of my best choices.

The game stars Jesse Faden (Fayden?), a young woman who has some mysterious incident involving her family and home town in her past that led to enormous amounts of death, and now she's hunting down the people who took her only remaining link to the world - her brother Dylan. She also talks to a mysterious entity only she knows about (who doesn't say anything back we can hear, only odd bright and swirling visual anomalies she seems to understand) pretty frequently, or we hear her thoughts about events and people she meets. I found her to be a compelling protagonist, with just enough relatable traits but also doesn't freak out every time something weird happens like a normal person (because the game would take 80 hours if so). Her growth through the story as a person and with her powers was one of the best parts of the story of the game, which is more interesting in concept than well executed.

The game is set in The Oldest House, a "building" in NYC, that on the outside is one thing, but on the inside is actually a sprawling extradimensional portal of sorts that the Federal Bureau of Control makes their home. This bureau finds all manner of paranormal and magical objects and tries to, well, control them. Ostensibly they say their mission is to contain, but as we learn through the story there is far too much dicking around with these objects of immense power to consider these folks safety oriented. Scattered throughout all the environments are HUNDREDS of notes, memos, pictures, short movies, etc. that talk about the various challenges and items the bureau encounters and how the people who work there deal with things. Each note you pick up is some combination of funny, interesting, or mysterious. They straight up lifted the SCP move of blacking out random nouns and verbs to make things spooky or funny, and it works damn well.

But how about the actual game itself? Oh yeah, that's a joy as well. At first you're limited to telekenis (awesome) and a regular semi-auto pistol (boring), but things mix up pretty fast with other powers and guns. About halfway through you gain the power of levitation however, and that is when shit officially Pops Off. Floating high above a battlefield and raining down missiles, debris, and the bodies of your foes upon those still unlucky enough to still live basically NEVER got old or boring. Environments are hugely destructible along with craploads of items that are able to be interacted with/manipulated. Neat artsy metal spheres in glass cases in a lobby? Grab them with your mind, yank them through the glass and hurl them through tables and chairs and watch all of it neatly fly up into the air and smash into concrete which shatters beaneath the weight of it all. Magnificent! Sadly I can't put gifs into these reviews otherwise you'd see twenty of those...

The last main topic to hit - the visual design. My god this game is gorgeous. Are the graphics great? Yes it looks amazing, but that's not what I'm talking about. The lighting, the cinematography, the layout of everything is just phenomenal. Almost every area that you walk into in this game is a visual feast which made exploration for its own sake a joy. Just look at all the fucking pictures I attached here, it is just stupendous and I feel like I'll never see anything great like this again. Which I suppose isn't fair, Dishonored 2 was only a few years ago and that was also amazing (but not Control amazing).

In the end, this is a fantastic game with only a few tiny niggles bringing it down. Jesse feels way too squishy throughout most of the game, there needs to be a few more guns/powers for offensive use, enemy variety is good, but needs to grow WAY past ordinary looking dudes (granted most of them can do weird shit, that is good), and the ending of the story doesn't really feel like an ending... But OH! It had a fake ending with fake credits!! I fucking loved that. Oh and the Ashtray Maze and when its special soundtrack kicks in and the game goes Doctor Strange/Inception on us...

This is a bit of a difficult review to type as I have essentially spent the past 6 months playing Gears 3... Anyway there's a lot to like about the third Gears, it more or less wraps up the story and characters, lots of neat gameplay improvements, LOOKS tremendously better than the old games. But I guess it isn't as good? Or maybe its the best? I don't really know!!

This was the Gears I had never played and knew basically nothing about (other than, SPOILERS!! DOM DIES?) so I was looking forward to getting to it. That said, it took me 6 months to beat it so I guess I didn't like it all that much, right? The shooting felt good as always, but basically no new guns? Or rather they had some special new ones but I essentially had The Old Standy layout of HammerRifle + Shotgun + bolter/machine pistol. That said it still felt pretty good to shoot up the bad guys... if only it still wasn't the same damn bad guys + some new boring ass ones! The Lambent, which were introduced near the end of 2, show up in full force and they look awesome. Glowy yellow guys who love to blow up 90% of the time, they look very imposing but unfortunately are just reskins of the grubs or just kind of annoying to fight.

Moving to a more positive note, the art direction/level design for 3 is off the charts. This game looks great, a VERY diverse set of levels for each chapter, you're in a brown/grey desert for like a half hour and that's it. And they made a Corpser boss not suck! It wasn't great or anything but... starting off, you're on a big boat and you get to see all the colors of the paintings and items of the crew on board, it feels like a very "lived in" space, and I thought that was great. Also they realized the 'stormy' areas of previous games were the coolest so they decided to end the series on a high note with a bitchin' "Maelstrom" area for the last fight.

However, we do have to talk about the story. The intro was honestly great, set up that General WhoCares had ditched everyone and humanity is on its very last leg - then General WhatsHisFace comes back and everything goes to shit and.... Marcus's dad is still alive?!!? That's nuts, lets go find him!! Then the pacing goes completely to shit as switch to Cole as a main character putzing around the mainland. I actually really like this section, we get a lot about Cole which is great plus we see how "ordinary" folks are trying to get by in this fucked up post apocalyptic world. It just takes WAY too long and doesn't really fit with the stuff they had you do the first hour. And then none of it has basically any pay-off later so.... Also, Dom and Marcus's dad. I thought these would be great scenes, but honestly they felt pretty meh. Dom did a sacrifice to get everyone to safety, but for what? So everyone could get some gas for a dude who had a transport to take them to a town that who even remembers what the fuck is there?

And honestly, that's Gears of Wars story in a nutshell - do a bunch of menial shit, going from random point A to point B to get some menial McGuffin, then mosey your way back to the end point and then NEXT CHAPTER. Nothing feels like it really counts for anything... you feel like a Cog in a machine that stumbles your way into importance. And maybe that's what they're going for, but in the entirely trilogy no one ever calls it out or does anything with that ideology.

THAT SAID - I love the ending. Marcus being a broken shell is a perfect ending, yeah, Lambent and Grubs defeated, but everyone he cares about but Anya is dead... what the hell is left for him? This mirrors humanity in general. Sure the big bads are dead... but what the hell is even left for us?

Every year I feel like there's 5 or so indies that come out that everyone talks about for a while, get a few nods at the GOTY discussions, but never really win out anything. Your Hollow Knights, your Baba is Yous, your Insides. Yuppie Psycho isn't one of those games, but it damn well should be.

You are Brian, a young man, recently graduated, in a dystopian Alt-1990's and you've gotten a dream job at a MegaCorp in The Big City - but something is weird about your work place... its basically a Lovecraftian nightmare? Well not Lovecraft, but there's plenty of messed up shit. There's a witch on the loose in this building, and she's slowly driving everyone to madness and despair. You're a secret Witch Hunter, here to bring her down and save the company. There's a fantastic set of side characters, each are mostly one note of course but they hit that note with charm and style. There's an excellent gag where one of the "faceless" employees (those with a dialogue portrait!) goes to introduce himself, and one of the named characters says they don't have time for everyone's name hahahaha

The gameplay is an isometric style older "puzzle" game, with some light stealth elements as well. You're moving throughout the building trying to find out more about the witch and how to defeat her. You have the help of a handy robot Sitra (who is, unsurprisingly, more human than she appears)and your aforementioned quirky colleagues. The game has a very strong horror element, and there's a great variety of monsters and scares along the way to one of several endings. As it is all pixel art, it can't really be terrifying like Resident Evil 2 REmake, but it is inventively creepy and often enough horrifying to set my toe a tappin'. Ironically, where the Resi series also knows how to cut horror with humor, Yuppie Psycho follows its lead with MANY laugh out loud and quirky moments. A character who rides a horse around the office (that horse later gives you some real sage advice), over the top sound effects for characters, and a scaredy-cat main character provide a superb juxtaposition with horror and humor.

I had to use a guide on a few sections because I really wanted to finish the game today, but after looking up the answers I saw immediately what the dev was going for 99% of the time, no bullshit troll logic puzzles like old adventure games, it is all fairly straightforward. The gameplay may not have been too out there to write home about, but its charm, wit, humor and macabre situations made this a real joy to play.

For a very long time I've wanted to be into Tetris. It was a game I looked at and was like "I'm pretty sure I'd like that, I should get it at some point". But that opportunity never really came but then! Tetris Effect came out late last year on PSVR and everyone said it was amazing! Transcendent! Spiritual! It's announced a few weeks ago it is coming to PC and VR and I say "Here we go! Epic Store be damned..."

Now that I'm 'finished' with it: Yeah this is pretty damn good. Honestly I think I'd prefer a Lumines VR to this but it is pretty great. Tetris is very addicting I just wish I wasn't so terrible at it, hahaha. The main draw is "Journey" mode that takes you through 20~ odd songs and levels that have strong themes tied to moving through the world, and the music accompanying them is generally very very good. The game begins and ends on VERY strong tracks and honestly sags a bit the entire rest of the way, but they're hardly bad or even mediocre. Just not that great? I made it all the way through and I loved the ending, almost Nier Automata-esque in a way. Not that great of course but good!

Then I played a few of the extra modes, they're kinda whatever as far as I could tell EXCEPT: there's a challenge mode that has weird quirks pop up every 15-30 blocks or so - Giant pieces, no ghost drops, inverted view and controls... it was awesome! I will definitely be going back and playing this more, but since I saw the end credits I'm calling it finished!

Nemesis, the supposed black sheep of the family.. in a way I can see why, but I really really liked it! The game has only one protagonist this time: Jill Valentine. Jill is pretty serious in RE1 but generally is portrayed as always out of her depth.. she has developed a bit since then and is more serious and out for revenge on Umbrella. The game however kicks off with the zombies having already overrun Raccoon City, which is great from an action point of view but I was very interested to see "Early" outbreak RC. Where RE2 sort of dropped the ball with "being in a city in a zombie outbreak", you are primarily stuck in a few larger locations and there aren't THAT many zombies, especially at once. RE3 fixes that in a big way.. there are lots of zombies roaming the streets with you and they respawn very often.

The new big bag, Nemesis, is the big talking point of this game. He is definitely terrifying when he shows up and is clearly a response to two big 'weakness' in the first two games - once you clear up an area of enemies, you essentially have free run of the place until a certain small handful of story sections that will repopulate enemies (REmake 1 tried to fix this with Crimson Heads, who will reanimate later on in the game, presumably after you've taken down all the regular zombies) and even then, later in the game you tend to have a good amount of ammo so taking out a few extra enemies is pretty easy. How does Nemesis fix this? By chasing you through zones like a dog and not wanting to go down easy! Like RE2Remake, he goes down with a bunch of hits but not for very long. While Nemesis shows up in the first 30~ minutes and stays until the end of the game, there are plenty of long stretches where he doesn't show up at all for a while that serves fine in terms of breathing room, there's basically no section where the point is to get something complicated done while he is harassing you.

The story isn't bad, Jill has to work with a small mercenary company that may or may not be the bad guys (The Russian guy obviously is, the cute hispanic guy who flirts with Jill obviously isn't) and they have to work their way out of a zombie and puzzle infested city. The usual right? There's a neat twist in that when you get several hours in and it looks like the game might be ending.... BOOM! Nemesis has a rocket launcher and your ticket out of town goes down. What is more unfortunate about the story - the writing and voice acting is garbage. "They won't stop me this is my, last escape.." is a line you'll see a lot - and it was physically painful to read each time. Each document you find is written in Google-Translate level English straight from Japanese, obvious phrases and expressions included. Did they have no editors on this game? At all?! And the voice acting for basically everyone but Jill is horrendous, and even she is not great. Also the ending is a bit meh, we get no real closure on Nemesis, other than we learn he was probably a STARS member. It would've been better as a character we know, like the movies.

I can't believe I said something nice about the movies...

Not as groundbreaking or clever in design as the first game, nor interconnected and charming as the second game, but I really really enjoyed the new look at Raccoon before its fall, and the very spread out area maps and sense of exploration you get to enjoy while being chased by a freaky mutant. Starsssssss....

GRANT US EYES!! Bloodborne is the 4th game in the "Soulsborne" series (and the game that turned it from the Souls series to that silly name), and it is in my opinion, still the best of them. Although in fairness I haven't beaten Dark Souls 1 in a while... Bloodborne has a character creator and RPG elements like leveling and item stats, and that helps play into a nice sense of build and weapon variety. The builds certainly aren't as diverse as the regular Souls series, but Bloodborne has something else going for it - Trick Weapons. The weapons in bloodborne (the main hand ones anyway) all have a unique gimmick: they transform with the L1 button from a one-handed form to a two-handed form and change their attack patterns and style. In my first playthrough of Bloodborne I used one weapon almost exclusively - the Threaded Cane. It is a fancy walking cane you can bludgeon and poke enemies with that can transform into a lengthy whip blade. To transform back, you jam it into the ground with a polite "tut" and a hearty clang that through the entire game NEVER got old. What could top it this playthrough? How about a short-sword turned Massive Hammer and a mace turned BUZZSAW

Now, to be clear, these weapons were not as cool as my first playthrough, and the that diminishing return held true for the rest of the game. Bloodborne was a transcendent experience the first time through, the games shifting horror from confusion to beasts to Eldritch madness to melancholy resignation is really best done only once, but I still was drawn to the game every day I wasn't playing it, for the joy of smashing and rending beasts and bosses. It's just a joy to look at, in a horrifying way, the architecture is beautifully gothic, the enemies are still horrifying and elicit a strong sense of "What the hell is this thing" even when I know exactly what they are and how to kill them.

For this playthrough I focused mainly on the DLC, The Old Hunters, which I never finished during my Platinum run. I do think it is a solid addition to the game, expanding on lore and making the Lovecraft influences even more prominent (Oh hi weird fish people from a small fishing village set to kill outsiders...) and beating the final boss the Orphan in a single attempt felt pretty damn good.

All in all a fantastic experience and I'm so glad I replayed this game. Arcane build playthrough 2021 maybe? The worst part about the game however, is how sharply it contrasted with another From Software/Miyazaki directed game I was playing through at the same time... but we'll get to Sekiro later.

Sekiro is the latest effort by From Software and director Miyazaki, creators of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and I have finally gotten around to playing through about half (it seems, maybe 2/3rds?) the game. I've stopped at that point because after playing it for 3~ hours today and another session or two each 2+ hours I realized: have I ever actually turned off the game after one of these sessions and felt satisfied? Had fun? Felt like I really did something enjoyable or cool or... anything really? The answer to that is just no, honestly.

In fairness to Sekiro, I'm using some cheats on the PC version to make myself a decent amount stronger after having just an annoying time in the early game. I beat 4~ bosses and was frankly REALLY tired of stomping all over the regular enemies and then getting my ass handed to me by the boss repeatedly. I felt like I was making essentially no improvements, and honestly the combat just wasn't very fun. There is an increased emphasis on parrying mechanics, which is cool I dug that in Bloodborne, but it just doesn't really feel satisfying to perform sucessfully because there's not a whole lot of feedback other than the clanging of swords (which does sound great!). The combat is also like 90%+ just regular ass dudes with regular weapons and that is a little... I dunno, not interesting?

Sekiro departs pretty majorly from the Soulsborne games - no levels, no stats (well, very few stats that are raised only after killing enough bosses) no character creation, no piecemeal story... There's real cutscenes in this game! With dialog! And characters who have like... motivations! and arcs! You'd think I would dig this, but honestly? Nah. It is set in Sengoku Japan, and that should be awesome. And in fact, a lot of it IS awesome. But its just not quite what I'm looking for? Or maybe the gameplay isn't as fun so the surrounding stuff just isn't as interesting?

I am tempted to blame it on using the trainer, but honestly I was having 0 fun when I started and began to have minimal fun when I used the boosts because then I actually, ya know, progressed sort of regularly but.. I mean I used trainers for Dark Souls 1 and 3 the first time and I still fucking loved those games.

It is tremendously unfortunate (mostly because I spent like 40 bucks on the game when I could've just borrowed it from ~~~) but I think I am finished with Sekiro. I don't really care to see the ending to the story or characters, I am not interested in seeing what "enemies" are around the next bend or the areas they're set in. I turned off Bloodborne and every time I couldn't wait to get back in. Every time I turned off Sekiro I just felt tired.

One of my favorite games in existence is Super Mario 64. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of that game, and I would credit no small portion of my love to video games for it. And so with a heavy heart I have to say that the successor to Mario 64 - Mario Odyssey - is BAD. Well I don't know if it is bad, but I certainly did not like it very much.

First off, it looks and sounds pretty nice. That's more or less the end of my compliments for the game. Well not really, Cappy as a mechanic and character is quite clever, I just don't think it turns out to ever be very fun? Like, I got turned into a TRex and smashed through boulders and it was.... okay? I feel like something is wrong with me but it's just how I feel. Turning into Goombas and jumping to make giant stacks is also pretty cute.

My real issue with the game - the moons. Moons are the "stars" from old games only in this game, you don't get stars through working your butt off or doing something particularly clever, no, you get stars for anything dumb that looks out of place or special in an area. Now there are plenty of "clever" moons or tough moons that require you to go through a lot to get them, but most are not. Basically just move the camera around a bit to see where they're tucked away at and go ground pound something once and they're yours. But to move on between levels you need a certain number of moons and... why do the difficult moons when the easy ones are right there?

The controls for Mario also feel VERY off. Mario as a character is extremely "slippery" and I constantly felt like I was fighting him more often than the challenges presented. It could be mostly the Joy Cons fault but I don't own a pro-controller (is it time to get one?) so that's what I was working with.

I might go back to it one day just to really finish it, as I only got to about the 2/3rds point in my time with it (according to some guides I looked up), but honest to god - I just wasn't having a damn bit of fun. Waste of $40.

Ugh.

Hollow Knight round 2!! Playing it again with the dlc on the switch. I ended up not even completing that much DLC content but... Damn this is still such a great game. It took a while to get used to the switch's controllers, I definitely felt worse at the game than I did when I originally played it on PC. Visually it is basically identical so that was nice at least, not having to suffer downgrades.

The game is still exceptional, it has an amazing world and plays extremely well. Knowing generally where to go and what to do I feel like I cut my time in half with the game, but I also went out of my way to keep track of little side spots I found (there are now helpful map pins you can get!) so I also found a lot more stuff (I believe I went from 60~% game completion on PC to 90% on Switch) and got all of the caterpillars!! That was my real goal in all this, the caterpillar family.

Oozing in atmosphere and with wonderful sound direction, journeying through Hollow Nest was still very moving. There's enough playfulness, fear, and sorrow in appropriate amounts that the game never feels like One Thing, but does all of them equally well. Deepnest though sweet jesus... The City of Tears is probably still my favorite area, with the music and rain throughout that really pushes a wondrous sense of melancholy for this lost civilization. The side characters are a treat as well, from the sad fate of the miner bug to all of the great shopkeeps (including the map couple, who are just great. I'm sad he sleeps the whole rest of the game though!) and the dream nail that lets you read their minds is great.

Originally I was shooting for one of the new endings added in the last DLC, but frankly the new last boss was so crappy and Not-Fun to fight (in stark contrast to the old last boss, who was awesome) that after the 20th try I said fuck it and just youtubed the ending. I kept the picture though from that ending because it is dope as hell.