DourCricket
2012
Persona 4 the Golden! For at least the fifth time now right? So Persona 4 is a game I first played in 2009 (I know because I have the Amazon receipt to prove it!) immediately after beating Persona 3 FES which was shown to me by my dearest friend and after watching the "Shadows Emerge" cutscene in that game I was like "I need this shit right now".
Persona 4 has the arc words of "Reach out to the truth" which is also the name of one of its MANY 11/10 songs in its soundtrack. You are Yu Narukami (named such in the anime) a transfer student from the Big City moving to small town Japan - Inaba. You move in with some distant relatives as your parents have both moved out of the country for the year and you're kinda the odd man out. Your uncle and cousin seem nice enough but there's a good deal of tension at home... along with the town in general as just a couple of days after you arrive a body is found strung up on the power lines of the town!! Talk about a wham intro huh?? Nah, it takes like an hour for that to happen hahaha..
The game takes place over an entire year with you living and going to school and just kinda doing the whole 'teenager' thing being one half of the game, the other entering the Shadow World with your crew and fighting monsters and rescuing people who've been thrown into that world against their will. Your JRPG party grows with a cast of loveable misfits who for some reason or another are featured on television, and then shortly after appear on the mysterious "Midnight Channel" - a show on rainy nights that seemingly shows the persons inner desires and thoughts in a delightfully over the top fashion. As these people appear they are tossed into the shadow realm and possibly killed if left over there too long - that's where your investigation team comes in and rescues them! The game is ultimately about who is doing this and why - what started the other world and who is using it for murder.
The mystery element of it is done quite well and there are plenty of red herrings and false leads to keep the game going 60+ hours though if you do manage to get the True End there are a FEW too many "We solved the case FOR REAL this time!" by the end haha... While the main story is perfectly good, the characters are what shine here. Each person in your party and several people around town you can form bonds with called "S links" that represent various arcana cards. You go through their stories in 10 parts and forming bonds with them while helping out with their personal problems. Some of these aren't hot, like a girl in your school who is a total dickwad but for sympathetic reasons (but you never actually get to call her out on it..) or a local mother who is having trouble connecting with her stepson. These are rare though and they are mostly VERY good, especially all of your party members stories. Shout out also to your Uncle, Cousin's and Death's social links which are all just frickin' exceptional. Your uncle and cousin are still dealing with the death of their wife/mother a couple years back and neither really know how to talk or interact with each other, even though they love each other very much. Death's arcana is an older woman who became resentful at her husband's mental decline to the point where she was glad he was dead - her immense guilt over this led to her pushing all of her family away. Many of these stories have incredibly moving finales that even after seeing them several times I'm still tearing up a bit while watching them.
The gameplay is standard JRPG with a very neat twist - the "one more" system means that when you hit one of an enemies weak points (be they elemental or otherwise) you are given a follow up attack of your choosing, and if you can knock everyone down you can unleash an almighty "All out attack" that generally OHKO's the bad guys. However the enemies can also do this to you as well, meaning you have to watch your own weaknesses to not get the crap kicked out of you! As you level up you can fuse new personas, which are basically pokemon? However as your S links get higher level your persona receive bonuses to their levels as you make them encouraging you to make more friends and level those links up! Similarly having a persona of a matching type to an slink makes those links go up even faster. A very neat link between the two 'halves' of the game.
While I think the game is one of the best ever made (still sure of that on playthrough 5), it does have a couple of flaws. 1 - the intro is definitely too slow. While you're getting to know everyone in Inaba and see how sleepy the town is is great, it just takes too darn long to get rolling with the story. I think what is there is GOOD, its just not paced perfectly. 2 - the homophobia of one of the characters gets OLD and needs to be called out. 3 - Some of the added Golden stuff isn't that great. Marie is .... okay? Kind of annoying. 4 - The dungeons aren't as bad as 3, but the improvements in 5 are stupendous.
Negatives aside, Persona 4 The Golden is one of the finest damn games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. The gameplay is exciting and tactical, fusing new persona is a fun mini-game, the s links are great, the characters are endearing and funny and heartwarming AND THAT ENDING! Literally perfect. You, the player, and you, the character, are perfectly in line in feeling as the train pulls away from Inaba as your friends chase after you on the platform - you don't want to leave these people... your dear friends. But even though you have to go you will always know that they remain in your heart and the bond you've forged will never be broken.
Persona 4 has the arc words of "Reach out to the truth" which is also the name of one of its MANY 11/10 songs in its soundtrack. You are Yu Narukami (named such in the anime) a transfer student from the Big City moving to small town Japan - Inaba. You move in with some distant relatives as your parents have both moved out of the country for the year and you're kinda the odd man out. Your uncle and cousin seem nice enough but there's a good deal of tension at home... along with the town in general as just a couple of days after you arrive a body is found strung up on the power lines of the town!! Talk about a wham intro huh?? Nah, it takes like an hour for that to happen hahaha..
The game takes place over an entire year with you living and going to school and just kinda doing the whole 'teenager' thing being one half of the game, the other entering the Shadow World with your crew and fighting monsters and rescuing people who've been thrown into that world against their will. Your JRPG party grows with a cast of loveable misfits who for some reason or another are featured on television, and then shortly after appear on the mysterious "Midnight Channel" - a show on rainy nights that seemingly shows the persons inner desires and thoughts in a delightfully over the top fashion. As these people appear they are tossed into the shadow realm and possibly killed if left over there too long - that's where your investigation team comes in and rescues them! The game is ultimately about who is doing this and why - what started the other world and who is using it for murder.
The mystery element of it is done quite well and there are plenty of red herrings and false leads to keep the game going 60+ hours though if you do manage to get the True End there are a FEW too many "We solved the case FOR REAL this time!" by the end haha... While the main story is perfectly good, the characters are what shine here. Each person in your party and several people around town you can form bonds with called "S links" that represent various arcana cards. You go through their stories in 10 parts and forming bonds with them while helping out with their personal problems. Some of these aren't hot, like a girl in your school who is a total dickwad but for sympathetic reasons (but you never actually get to call her out on it..) or a local mother who is having trouble connecting with her stepson. These are rare though and they are mostly VERY good, especially all of your party members stories. Shout out also to your Uncle, Cousin's and Death's social links which are all just frickin' exceptional. Your uncle and cousin are still dealing with the death of their wife/mother a couple years back and neither really know how to talk or interact with each other, even though they love each other very much. Death's arcana is an older woman who became resentful at her husband's mental decline to the point where she was glad he was dead - her immense guilt over this led to her pushing all of her family away. Many of these stories have incredibly moving finales that even after seeing them several times I'm still tearing up a bit while watching them.
The gameplay is standard JRPG with a very neat twist - the "one more" system means that when you hit one of an enemies weak points (be they elemental or otherwise) you are given a follow up attack of your choosing, and if you can knock everyone down you can unleash an almighty "All out attack" that generally OHKO's the bad guys. However the enemies can also do this to you as well, meaning you have to watch your own weaknesses to not get the crap kicked out of you! As you level up you can fuse new personas, which are basically pokemon? However as your S links get higher level your persona receive bonuses to their levels as you make them encouraging you to make more friends and level those links up! Similarly having a persona of a matching type to an slink makes those links go up even faster. A very neat link between the two 'halves' of the game.
While I think the game is one of the best ever made (still sure of that on playthrough 5), it does have a couple of flaws. 1 - the intro is definitely too slow. While you're getting to know everyone in Inaba and see how sleepy the town is is great, it just takes too darn long to get rolling with the story. I think what is there is GOOD, its just not paced perfectly. 2 - the homophobia of one of the characters gets OLD and needs to be called out. 3 - Some of the added Golden stuff isn't that great. Marie is .... okay? Kind of annoying. 4 - The dungeons aren't as bad as 3, but the improvements in 5 are stupendous.
Negatives aside, Persona 4 The Golden is one of the finest damn games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. The gameplay is exciting and tactical, fusing new persona is a fun mini-game, the s links are great, the characters are endearing and funny and heartwarming AND THAT ENDING! Literally perfect. You, the player, and you, the character, are perfectly in line in feeling as the train pulls away from Inaba as your friends chase after you on the platform - you don't want to leave these people... your dear friends. But even though you have to go you will always know that they remain in your heart and the bond you've forged will never be broken.
2013
The sequel to Tomorrow Corporations superb puzzler "World of Goo" is this little oddball game... Little Inferno!
Gameplay in this game is quite simple - your clicker burns shit, and burning shit gets you money. You then use that money to get more shit to burn, until it all comes down... Pretty straightforward right?? YES and too damn so! That is the entire gameplay loop of the game and unfortunately for it the game is about the length of a long~ish movie (took me 3~ hours for the true ending) which makes this unfortunately a bit of a slog through the last section. It does a decent job of making the burn-able items get creative as it keeps going - a moon that has actual gravity, a rabbit plushie that "poops" out a bunch of cards when it is set on fire, a violin that plays a sad reprise as it goes up,up,up... But yeah it doesn't have quite as good a loop as it needs unfortunately to be really something special.
What is quite good - the writing at the end. It does a solid job of making its point: this world is overrun by consumerism and people's need to burn things just to keep warm, and they'll burn literally anything to keep the flames going. Old memories, childhood toys, phoenix eggs.. okay that last one is weird but most of them have a melancholic bent to them. There are only two characters other than yourself - the Chief of the Tomorrow Corporation who wishes you happy burning (of course they're not liable for any accidents mind...) and your upstairs neighbor who likes burning stuff with you. It seems as if she is killed near the 75% mark but at the end once you've escaped your house (and get to see the "Snow" the weatherman keeps talking about is in fact ash) that hits one of the games central themes beautifully
"You can go as far as you like... but you can't go back"
You also get a confrontation with the "Big Bad" at the tomorrow corporation who urges you to DREAM BIGGER but then takes off in a rocket so she doesn't have to face the consequences of her companies actions. Then you head off to meet the weather man and go off into that great unknown.. It's a damn solid ending to a game that unfortunately needs to be about an hour shorter, and that's a bit too much of a dig on a game that is barely three hours long.
While Little Inferno has a rock solid ending and a very cute first 20 minutes of burninating all in your path - the moment to moment of getting more things to burn just wears a bit too thin before you get to that solid meat at the finale. Good characters help it along but its just not quite what it could be and is honestly a bit of a disappointment compared to the revelation that was World of Goo. Maybe next time, Tomorrow Corporation!
Gameplay in this game is quite simple - your clicker burns shit, and burning shit gets you money. You then use that money to get more shit to burn, until it all comes down... Pretty straightforward right?? YES and too damn so! That is the entire gameplay loop of the game and unfortunately for it the game is about the length of a long~ish movie (took me 3~ hours for the true ending) which makes this unfortunately a bit of a slog through the last section. It does a decent job of making the burn-able items get creative as it keeps going - a moon that has actual gravity, a rabbit plushie that "poops" out a bunch of cards when it is set on fire, a violin that plays a sad reprise as it goes up,up,up... But yeah it doesn't have quite as good a loop as it needs unfortunately to be really something special.
What is quite good - the writing at the end. It does a solid job of making its point: this world is overrun by consumerism and people's need to burn things just to keep warm, and they'll burn literally anything to keep the flames going. Old memories, childhood toys, phoenix eggs.. okay that last one is weird but most of them have a melancholic bent to them. There are only two characters other than yourself - the Chief of the Tomorrow Corporation who wishes you happy burning (of course they're not liable for any accidents mind...) and your upstairs neighbor who likes burning stuff with you. It seems as if she is killed near the 75% mark but at the end once you've escaped your house (and get to see the "Snow" the weatherman keeps talking about is in fact ash) that hits one of the games central themes beautifully
"You can go as far as you like... but you can't go back"
You also get a confrontation with the "Big Bad" at the tomorrow corporation who urges you to DREAM BIGGER but then takes off in a rocket so she doesn't have to face the consequences of her companies actions. Then you head off to meet the weather man and go off into that great unknown.. It's a damn solid ending to a game that unfortunately needs to be about an hour shorter, and that's a bit too much of a dig on a game that is barely three hours long.
While Little Inferno has a rock solid ending and a very cute first 20 minutes of burninating all in your path - the moment to moment of getting more things to burn just wears a bit too thin before you get to that solid meat at the finale. Good characters help it along but its just not quite what it could be and is honestly a bit of a disappointment compared to the revelation that was World of Goo. Maybe next time, Tomorrow Corporation!
The sequel to 2011's Deus Ex Human Revolution - a much more straightforward action/stealth game than its predecessors. It looks fricken' beautiful and has a lot going for it - new powers to play with, a much larger main hub city, solid voice acting and vastly improved stealth and shooting mechanics.
Unfortunately though the story is just... not what it should be? Not enough conspiracy and certainly no real resolution to things... Oh and there's only one hub! A few main story missions take place in fancy new places but there's very little to get done there...
Final Grade: B+
Unfortunately though the story is just... not what it should be? Not enough conspiracy and certainly no real resolution to things... Oh and there's only one hub! A few main story missions take place in fancy new places but there's very little to get done there...
Final Grade: B+
The Dark Souls 3 Expansion pass is made up of two different DLC - The Ashes of Ariendel and The Ringed City. The DLC previously in the Dark Souls series is some of the best in the Biz - the expansion in DS1 expands on famous characters and adds killer new bosses, abilities and new areas. DS2 expansions are now famous because of just how much better than the base game they are! How did DS3 fair?
Pretty crap, honestly.
Well, they're not CRAP. That's unduly harsh. They're certainly not very good however... Ariendel is VERY short but takes place in a beautiful winter area. It has some neat ideas like snowdrifts that drop out beneath you + a wolf pack that harasses you throughout much of the adventure (hear that howling on the wind? Better get ready!) and some neat visuals but is ultimately super thin. It sets up some neat lore implications with the additions of how the paintings work and denizens can move between them but has no real narrative meat to it. It DOES however have a very nice final boss with a THREE PHASE transformation that is dope but other than the art style + Friede fight I have nothing really nice to say about it.
Part 2 is the Ringed City - this is a pretty solid DLC but isn't great. Visually it is superb, as basically every DS DLC has ended up being. This one has a bit more meat on its bones however and took me more than like 4 hours to finish. It also ends on a stupid-nothing plot which you need to go back to DLC1 to even GET... but its a nice enough ride I suppose!
So yeah, not great. Looks very nice but not a whole lot underneath the surface but they do have cool~ish boss battles? I'll give it that I suppose.
Pretty crap, honestly.
Well, they're not CRAP. That's unduly harsh. They're certainly not very good however... Ariendel is VERY short but takes place in a beautiful winter area. It has some neat ideas like snowdrifts that drop out beneath you + a wolf pack that harasses you throughout much of the adventure (hear that howling on the wind? Better get ready!) and some neat visuals but is ultimately super thin. It sets up some neat lore implications with the additions of how the paintings work and denizens can move between them but has no real narrative meat to it. It DOES however have a very nice final boss with a THREE PHASE transformation that is dope but other than the art style + Friede fight I have nothing really nice to say about it.
Part 2 is the Ringed City - this is a pretty solid DLC but isn't great. Visually it is superb, as basically every DS DLC has ended up being. This one has a bit more meat on its bones however and took me more than like 4 hours to finish. It also ends on a stupid-nothing plot which you need to go back to DLC1 to even GET... but its a nice enough ride I suppose!
So yeah, not great. Looks very nice but not a whole lot underneath the surface but they do have cool~ish boss battles? I'll give it that I suppose.
The Dark Souls 3 Expansion pass is made up of two different DLC - The Ashes of Ariendel and The Ringed City. The DLC previously in the Dark Souls series is some of the best in the Biz - the expansion in DS1 expands on famous characters and adds killer new bosses, abilities and new areas. DS2 expansions are now famous because of just how much better than the base game they are! How did DS3 fair?
Pretty crap, honestly.
Well, they're not CRAP. That's unduly harsh. They're certainly not very good however... Ariendel is VERY short but takes place in a beautiful winter area. It has some neat ideas like snowdrifts that drop out beneath you + a wolf pack that harasses you throughout much of the adventure (hear that howling on the wind? Better get ready!) and some neat visuals but is ultimately super thin. It sets up some neat lore implications with the additions of how the paintings work and denizens can move between them but has no real narrative meat to it. It DOES however have a very nice final boss with a THREE PHASE transformation that is dope but other than the art style + Friede fight I have nothing really nice to say about it.
Pretty crap, honestly.
Well, they're not CRAP. That's unduly harsh. They're certainly not very good however... Ariendel is VERY short but takes place in a beautiful winter area. It has some neat ideas like snowdrifts that drop out beneath you + a wolf pack that harasses you throughout much of the adventure (hear that howling on the wind? Better get ready!) and some neat visuals but is ultimately super thin. It sets up some neat lore implications with the additions of how the paintings work and denizens can move between them but has no real narrative meat to it. It DOES however have a very nice final boss with a THREE PHASE transformation that is dope but other than the art style + Friede fight I have nothing really nice to say about it.
2020
You are the HELLTAKER - a man with a mission. You want your own harem of Devil ladies so where do you need to go? HELL. And what do you need to go when you get there? ASK DEVIL LADIES TO POLITELY COME HOME WITH YOU. So that's what you do.
Helltaker is a pretty damn adorable puzzle gameplay about moving across a board in X number of moves to get to the girl at the end. Each level is a conundrum of how EXACTLY you need to hop, kick or push things out of your way to get the key and get past the guards. There are only ten levels and unfortunately I only found out you can skip levels you get stuck on at the very end... Even getting stuck it only took me about 90 minutes to complete the game. Once you finish the ten puzzles however one final challenge awaits! A boss lady who isn't a puzzle at all... its an interesting gameplay twist that I appreciated however.
There is a STORY but its pretty bare - the girls are the main interest. At the end of each level there's a specific Devil girl waiting - you have a few dialogue options to get her to come along and if you say the wrong thing you get killed and have to do the level all over again (hope you remember your old path). Once the ladies have joined however there's a very cute "help" section on each level where all the girls talk to you about what is going on. This isn't actually helpful at all I must stress, they're demons after all they don't much care to assist you in figuring out puzzles. Each girl however has a distinct personality and style and they're all looking pretty damn dapper and I am here for it. The ending is a pretty sweet check in with the Helltaker and his harem on a sleepy morning of making pancakes for everyone, then the cops show up and the game is over... or is it?? I'd gladly pay for a sequel to this. The art is great, solid music, cute characters and premise... give me more!
Helltaker is a pretty damn adorable puzzle gameplay about moving across a board in X number of moves to get to the girl at the end. Each level is a conundrum of how EXACTLY you need to hop, kick or push things out of your way to get the key and get past the guards. There are only ten levels and unfortunately I only found out you can skip levels you get stuck on at the very end... Even getting stuck it only took me about 90 minutes to complete the game. Once you finish the ten puzzles however one final challenge awaits! A boss lady who isn't a puzzle at all... its an interesting gameplay twist that I appreciated however.
There is a STORY but its pretty bare - the girls are the main interest. At the end of each level there's a specific Devil girl waiting - you have a few dialogue options to get her to come along and if you say the wrong thing you get killed and have to do the level all over again (hope you remember your old path). Once the ladies have joined however there's a very cute "help" section on each level where all the girls talk to you about what is going on. This isn't actually helpful at all I must stress, they're demons after all they don't much care to assist you in figuring out puzzles. Each girl however has a distinct personality and style and they're all looking pretty damn dapper and I am here for it. The ending is a pretty sweet check in with the Helltaker and his harem on a sleepy morning of making pancakes for everyone, then the cops show up and the game is over... or is it?? I'd gladly pay for a sequel to this. The art is great, solid music, cute characters and premise... give me more!
2016
Dark Souls is a series I have a lot of affection for and a long and interesting history with. Released in 2011 I purchased it for the Xbox due to its excellent art style and even better reviews it was getting. And man - that game was FUCKIN' hard! I played a good deal of it at a friends house and the near-constant sighing and growls I made while playing it are still remarked on to this day! I never did manage to beat the original until the PC version came out and I got myself a trainer to make things somewhat easier but I still dearly love the game.
But we're here to talk about the 3rd~ish game of the series (Demon's and Bloodborne are technically a part of it too, Sekiro kind of also) and not the first. DS3 is the first one on next gen consoles and is the first one released after Bloodborne and carries much of that games DNA. The combat is MUCH faster and more fluid than the previous two Dark Souls games and you feel much more in control of your actions. While that certainly works very well as a GAME it does lower the distinct Dark Souls "FEEL" of heft to its combat and movement that I'm not sure is a strict improvement? I love the increased mobility and kineticism of Bloodborne but I'm not sure Dark Souls is 100% appropriate to that...
Also I said we are here to talk about the third Dark Souls game - but that's not quite right. I have downloaded the "Cinders" mod, a well-regarded overhaul of DS3 that changes up a decent number of things to vastly increase build diversity and make things a bit more "gamey". All weapon infusions are available right away and basically every ordinary weapon is there to purchase right off the bat. That along with even more starting classes and there's no more starting a build that takes half or 2/3rds of the game to come online anymore - you pick the idea of what you want to be when you start and you're pretty much there: You just get a lot better at what you do. There's also a bajillion little QOL changes like infinite (or near) respecs for your builds, items are reshuffled, Dark Souls 1+2 + BB weapons and armors are added to the game, the DLC is much easier to access AND there are several warp points added to the game that make DS3 considerably less linear.
I started the playthrough as a Hexer build which was pretty cool (I've never played a hexer build as they typically take forever to come online) but once I got to a certain point in the game my hexes just were doing fuck-all so I hopped around builds for a while until I landed on a Faith-Dex build based on Archery and a new DLC miracle that shoots lightning arrows and I was pretty damn happy with that. I haven't played through with a ranged character like this since I BELIEVE my original DS build which was a sorcerer!
But anyway - Dark Souls 3. The story is definitely more cogent in this one than in previous: The fire of light is slowly dying and you have to forcibly convince the old embered lords to give up their souls to light the fire one last time... for some reason they don't really care to and as you make your way through the game you start to understand why: this has happened MANY times before, and even the times where the fire has gone out things actually turned out alright again later so... what the heck is the point? There are plenty of great moments and areas in this one, though not quite the tour de force that is DS1. There's no real blighttown analog but there IS a weird poison swamp but its not that annoying. There's several drakes to fight but nothing quite like the wyvern from the bridge in DS1. There are a few areas though that are stunning. Walking into Irythyll of the Boreal Valley is really a sight like no other. A beautiful light blue shimmer over all the buildings and a peaceful snowfall off in the distance with the moon shining bright... it leads to a beautiful feel of calm which is of course interrupted not a minute later when a horrible wolf beast ambushes you on the way into the town haha... There's also the Smouldering Lake, a lava bed you can safely make your way across with ENORMOUS trees dotting the landscape up to the stone above. This area unlike Irythyll is not that fun to fight or move through due to an enormous crossbow enemy blasting you from above.. its an interesting snag but wears out its welcome pretty fast.
Overall I didn't have TOO difficult a time with it, I got some nice grinding spots so when I had an issue I just kept at it and gained a few levels and came back. Even Nameless King who was a REAL son of a bitch my first go around the game fell in only a few tries!! Yeah fuck you King...
All in all this is still an enthralling game where you are in a deadly and obtuse world but it feels satisfying as heck to make your way through it, even knowing 90% of what you're going to run into... Until the Cinders mod throws some tough as nails new NPCs at you to mess you up!! Up next - the new DLC!
But we're here to talk about the 3rd~ish game of the series (Demon's and Bloodborne are technically a part of it too, Sekiro kind of also) and not the first. DS3 is the first one on next gen consoles and is the first one released after Bloodborne and carries much of that games DNA. The combat is MUCH faster and more fluid than the previous two Dark Souls games and you feel much more in control of your actions. While that certainly works very well as a GAME it does lower the distinct Dark Souls "FEEL" of heft to its combat and movement that I'm not sure is a strict improvement? I love the increased mobility and kineticism of Bloodborne but I'm not sure Dark Souls is 100% appropriate to that...
Also I said we are here to talk about the third Dark Souls game - but that's not quite right. I have downloaded the "Cinders" mod, a well-regarded overhaul of DS3 that changes up a decent number of things to vastly increase build diversity and make things a bit more "gamey". All weapon infusions are available right away and basically every ordinary weapon is there to purchase right off the bat. That along with even more starting classes and there's no more starting a build that takes half or 2/3rds of the game to come online anymore - you pick the idea of what you want to be when you start and you're pretty much there: You just get a lot better at what you do. There's also a bajillion little QOL changes like infinite (or near) respecs for your builds, items are reshuffled, Dark Souls 1+2 + BB weapons and armors are added to the game, the DLC is much easier to access AND there are several warp points added to the game that make DS3 considerably less linear.
I started the playthrough as a Hexer build which was pretty cool (I've never played a hexer build as they typically take forever to come online) but once I got to a certain point in the game my hexes just were doing fuck-all so I hopped around builds for a while until I landed on a Faith-Dex build based on Archery and a new DLC miracle that shoots lightning arrows and I was pretty damn happy with that. I haven't played through with a ranged character like this since I BELIEVE my original DS build which was a sorcerer!
But anyway - Dark Souls 3. The story is definitely more cogent in this one than in previous: The fire of light is slowly dying and you have to forcibly convince the old embered lords to give up their souls to light the fire one last time... for some reason they don't really care to and as you make your way through the game you start to understand why: this has happened MANY times before, and even the times where the fire has gone out things actually turned out alright again later so... what the heck is the point? There are plenty of great moments and areas in this one, though not quite the tour de force that is DS1. There's no real blighttown analog but there IS a weird poison swamp but its not that annoying. There's several drakes to fight but nothing quite like the wyvern from the bridge in DS1. There are a few areas though that are stunning. Walking into Irythyll of the Boreal Valley is really a sight like no other. A beautiful light blue shimmer over all the buildings and a peaceful snowfall off in the distance with the moon shining bright... it leads to a beautiful feel of calm which is of course interrupted not a minute later when a horrible wolf beast ambushes you on the way into the town haha... There's also the Smouldering Lake, a lava bed you can safely make your way across with ENORMOUS trees dotting the landscape up to the stone above. This area unlike Irythyll is not that fun to fight or move through due to an enormous crossbow enemy blasting you from above.. its an interesting snag but wears out its welcome pretty fast.
Overall I didn't have TOO difficult a time with it, I got some nice grinding spots so when I had an issue I just kept at it and gained a few levels and came back. Even Nameless King who was a REAL son of a bitch my first go around the game fell in only a few tries!! Yeah fuck you King...
All in all this is still an enthralling game where you are in a deadly and obtuse world but it feels satisfying as heck to make your way through it, even knowing 90% of what you're going to run into... Until the Cinders mod throws some tough as nails new NPCs at you to mess you up!! Up next - the new DLC!
Pathfinder Kingmaker is another game in the cRPG 'renaissance' of the past six years, and one that I have been slowly playing over the past year or so (jeez!). So you may have noticed the "beaten" tag on this one - yeah 80 hours in and I still have not finished the game. In fact, I'm still only in Act 4 of 7. Now, about 20~25 hours of that is my original playthrough from when I first got the game but I restarted a couple of months back when I decided to really give it another go. So this is another game I did not really finish per the intent of this challenge, but I put such a time investment into it and I have such thoughts about it that I'm going to count it anyway, alright???
So the time invested here presents an interesting conundrum - if I liked it enough to play 80 hours, why didn't I finish it? I've played really long games before, why not this one? If I got so damn tired of it I didn't want to even keep playing any more (despite setting the entire Kingdom mechanic on auto and using cheats to speed along several other parts of the game) then I must not have liked it right? Well it's complicated alright! So much of the game is great - the combat is damn damn good, the writing is overall pretty solid, companions are all at least pretty good, the art style is pleasant and the music is near enough to top notch. So what's the hold up, Modest? The pacing is fucking garbage, that's what.
While most cRPGs post-2000s I feel are in some way a response to Baldur's Gate, either in aping or repudiating it (a pretty simple judgement on my part but stick with me) and Kingmaker is VERY much a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate I, even moreso than BG2 itself was. Kingmaker is all about having an expansive world map and making your way about, making discoveries, having random combat encounters and meeting strange new folk - adventure!! And in a way, it does that exceptionally well. It is more 'open world' than I believe any other game I have played and it is stuffed to the brim with content. And all that stuff you find? It's pretty darn good, most of the time. Interesting enemies, engaging story or characters, ethical dilemmas... But there's JUST. SO. MUCH. The world map could take upwards of 5~ minutes to walk across WITHOUT any encounters along the way and you're just watching your pawn slide across the exact same map you've been looking at for dozens of hours... There's a main story of course, and companions who follow you who have their own story, but honestly that must account for MAYBE 10-15% of my play time? The amount of sheer BUSYWORK is just neverending.
Speaking of neverending busywork - the entire Kingdom management mechanic. Is it neat in its own way? Of course it is! You get to pick your advisors in each area of ruling to handle the little shit, and every few days a problem comes to you in the throneroom and you get to rule on it. Sounds neat? It is! Then it happens 1000 times in the first 30 hours and basically none of it means a single god damn thing other than the kingdom stats notching up and down a few points and you just get tired... Oh and you have to watch all the same little animations over and over and over each time....
So to get to the main point - nothing about Pathfinder Kingmaker is bad. But on the flip side - basically nothing is genuinely GREAT either. The combat gets pretty close but only with the turn based mod - and that ends up just slowing down the proceedings even more. The characters are pretty good, but no one is great. The art is nice, but generic. The quests you stumble over are at least a bit interesting, but nothing that genuinely pulls the heart strings or gets the blood pumping. The main quest line is very good and all but it is at most 20% of the actual content you will be DOING in the game which makes it tiring to slog towards. Also there is 'missable' events in your kingdom that can lower your stats and potentially end the game, which makes skipping time towards the main content feel risky each time you do it..
It's been a long time since I did this, stopping a game only most of the way through to review it. With Sekiro and Mario Odyssey last year though it was due to pretty bitter disappointment - with Pathfinder its more a bittersweet resignation - I quite liked everything the game had to offer - it just went too far out of its way to keep me wading through mud to get to the good stuff.
So the time invested here presents an interesting conundrum - if I liked it enough to play 80 hours, why didn't I finish it? I've played really long games before, why not this one? If I got so damn tired of it I didn't want to even keep playing any more (despite setting the entire Kingdom mechanic on auto and using cheats to speed along several other parts of the game) then I must not have liked it right? Well it's complicated alright! So much of the game is great - the combat is damn damn good, the writing is overall pretty solid, companions are all at least pretty good, the art style is pleasant and the music is near enough to top notch. So what's the hold up, Modest? The pacing is fucking garbage, that's what.
While most cRPGs post-2000s I feel are in some way a response to Baldur's Gate, either in aping or repudiating it (a pretty simple judgement on my part but stick with me) and Kingmaker is VERY much a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate I, even moreso than BG2 itself was. Kingmaker is all about having an expansive world map and making your way about, making discoveries, having random combat encounters and meeting strange new folk - adventure!! And in a way, it does that exceptionally well. It is more 'open world' than I believe any other game I have played and it is stuffed to the brim with content. And all that stuff you find? It's pretty darn good, most of the time. Interesting enemies, engaging story or characters, ethical dilemmas... But there's JUST. SO. MUCH. The world map could take upwards of 5~ minutes to walk across WITHOUT any encounters along the way and you're just watching your pawn slide across the exact same map you've been looking at for dozens of hours... There's a main story of course, and companions who follow you who have their own story, but honestly that must account for MAYBE 10-15% of my play time? The amount of sheer BUSYWORK is just neverending.
Speaking of neverending busywork - the entire Kingdom management mechanic. Is it neat in its own way? Of course it is! You get to pick your advisors in each area of ruling to handle the little shit, and every few days a problem comes to you in the throneroom and you get to rule on it. Sounds neat? It is! Then it happens 1000 times in the first 30 hours and basically none of it means a single god damn thing other than the kingdom stats notching up and down a few points and you just get tired... Oh and you have to watch all the same little animations over and over and over each time....
So to get to the main point - nothing about Pathfinder Kingmaker is bad. But on the flip side - basically nothing is genuinely GREAT either. The combat gets pretty close but only with the turn based mod - and that ends up just slowing down the proceedings even more. The characters are pretty good, but no one is great. The art is nice, but generic. The quests you stumble over are at least a bit interesting, but nothing that genuinely pulls the heart strings or gets the blood pumping. The main quest line is very good and all but it is at most 20% of the actual content you will be DOING in the game which makes it tiring to slog towards. Also there is 'missable' events in your kingdom that can lower your stats and potentially end the game, which makes skipping time towards the main content feel risky each time you do it..
It's been a long time since I did this, stopping a game only most of the way through to review it. With Sekiro and Mario Odyssey last year though it was due to pretty bitter disappointment - with Pathfinder its more a bittersweet resignation - I quite liked everything the game had to offer - it just went too far out of its way to keep me wading through mud to get to the good stuff.
Human Revolution is the distant continuation of the Deus Ex franchise, roughly a decade after the previous game "Invisible War" and made by an entirely new studio! Sounds like it would be terrible right? WRONG IT IS AMAZING!!! One of the better roleplaying games I have ever played, one of the 'immersive sim' genre which is a term I'm not wild about but it is also a superb stealth game and I just love it to fuckin' pieces.
My history with the Deus Ex franchise is an odd one - I first played the second game of the series, Invisible War, on my original Xbox and I absolutely adored it. I had never played an 'action' game with so many RPG elements to it, it told an interesting story and had good characters and a heck of a philosophical ending to it - I loved it to bits and it further reinforced my love stealth games and RPGs. Little did I know - this was secretly the vastly inferior sequel to one of the most lauded games ever - Deus Ex 1. I purchased it a few years later on PC and I believe only made my way through it once, though I have tried several times since. Regardless, many years later the new franchise was announced coming from Square Enix, and I was a bit nervous. However fortunately a large chunk of the game leaked to the internet, and I downloaded it illegally and it was WONDERFUL. There were so many routes through each level, the voice acting and art direction were excellent, and a more straightfoward yet deep leveling system unlike the junk one of the previous games. I very much enjoyed the 'demo' and preordered it, and I've held it in dear fondness ever since.
"It isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here"
This is said by Eliza Cassan, an AI who serves as a narrator of sorts for the game, both in and out of it. These words are the scene dressings of the game - the world is at a precipice, and a deep fall seems almost inevitable. This speaks to me even more now than it did on release, trapped as I am during an actual global pandemic that calls forth elements of the original Deus Ex game. This is a world on the edge of a knife about technology however, about man and its advances and not the natural world fighting back against us as we are seeing in the real world. Human augmentation, a rapidly advancing science is currently making people "better" physically and mentally, and every day these advances change the fortunes of the "haves" and "have nots" and the world seems torn on what to do about it. On the eve of a major announcement in the field of augs, you are Adam Jensen, a man who is the head of security of a mid-size Aug company whose former girlfriend is seemingly murdered by shadowy forces, nearly killing him. These wounds cause him to be grievously wounded, and thus becomes the tremendously augmented main character we grow to know and love throughout our time in Human Revolution.
Adam is an excellent "spoken" RPG protagonist, as he has just enough spoken into his lines by his voice actor and snappy dialog writing that we get a crystal clear sense of who he was - an effective and straightfoward cop who tried to do right by others, but after being unfairly maligned for a bust gone wrong, had to take work where he could get it, even if that meant having to work with an old flame. You get such a good read from him that one of my favorite lines of the whole game is in the opening scene - you are with Megan in her office on the eve of the grand announcement (and the night when everything goes to hell for Adam) and you are speaking to her about the mundane plans of security when Adam's tone shifts as he sees her fiddling with her necklace "...and if you keep playing with that necklace Meg, you're going to break it". The sheer acting chops on display of nailing that perfect tone of gentle chiding yet affection speaks enormous volumes between the two, and sets the stage for Adam's unrelenting quest throughout the rest of the game. The company they work for is attacked that night, and you must play through your futile defense of the place and her as augmented soldiers decimate the thing Adam wishes to keep safe. Through the rest of the game you chase clue after clue to find the men and women responsible and WHY such a thing was done - and that leads you all about the world to find the shadowy organization and bring them down.
Where the character writing is top-notch, the main story is only merely quite good. While on the surface tracking down all of these leads is interesting and putting all of the pieces together, unfortunately there are desperately few "Aha!" moments of making a real connection between all the threads that all good mysteries need. It feels more often like a 'A to B then C' type deal. There were several steps on this journey that I forgot - why did we need to go back to Detroit and Hengsha again? And when I did get to those portions of the game, they felt ultimately pretty tacked on. There are the two main hubs in the game along with some decently sized interstitial 'zones' to link them together and they are all pretty excellent - the revitalized Detroit with its seedy underbelly, a FEMA camp that is actually an advanced prison, Hengsha the city that is basically Midgar (odd timing after FF7!), the camp Omega where all the bad guys are, an Antarctic installation for the finale... oh yeah and the DLC area! Which I'm not 100% sure really fits into the story all that well..? The Missing Link DLC was released like a year after the original game came out and re-adds a portion they cut early in development but honestly the length of it doesn't fit its place in the story, it is far too much of a stop-gap. I do enjoy the 'losing the augs' bit so you have to play much more frugally than you normally do. It is an interesting challenge and hints at the horrors you will see at the end of the journey but without some tweaks to the pacing it just never feels quite right?
One more positive note - the environmental design! There is SO much done in this game without dialogue, though there's a lot of that too.. The prevalence graffiti in certain areas, the ambient music and dialogue of people discussing issues of the day (its augs) the lighting and mood set in each area feels beautiful and deliberate. But we must talk about one of the earliest and best examples of level design as character development - Adam Jenson's apartment. We spend the first few hours with Adam mostly as an augmented badass, though many dialogue options can be chosen to be more brazen and confident about his new abilities. Then we get to his home - a simple downtown apartment, with curtains drawn and dim lighting, with a gentle golden light streaming into the gloom, almost enhancing the darkness rather than banishing it. As we look around his apartment we see he is like a drifter - most of things still in boxes, take out food containers strewn about, clothing draped over furniture. If we take an even deeper look we can see someone who is still trying to put the pieces back together with books relating to trauma and adapting to limb injuries. Things like broken clocks and repair guides are everywhere, seemingly a suggested therapy to help Adam begin to recover from his physical trauma. Then we step into the bathroom and we see the truth in a shattered mirror - mentally Adam is still barely holding it all together.
So what negatives are there? Honestly they're all pretty small niggles. The enemy AI is not really up to snuff, they regularly ignore warning signs of your presence and attacks are all almost entirely straightforward rushes on your position during gun fights. It's almost refreshing when they remember they have grenades to try and use on you.. Many of the guns feel quite good but the shotgun is almost offensively bad, which is one of the greatest sins any shooter can commit. Also while the variety of paths through each level feel very nice and rewarding, there's a pretty clear advantage to non-confrontation and mercy baked into the mechanics. I don't think that is BAD at all per-se but it is a bit egregious in some places when Adam is scolded for killing people who not only are trying to kill HIM, but have previously kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians. Also as said previously, the main 'mystery' of the game, while not bad at all, does not really 'snap' into place near the end as good mysteries always should. And I did forget on the voice acting - a lot of it is great. Jensen, Malik, Pritchard, bad guys? Great. Ambient folks? Hit or miss honestly. Sarif even ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.... And the writing in some spots definitely needed an editing pass for sure. Then there's that one Black Lady who has the Most Southern Black Stereotype Accent ever... in the middle of downtown Detroit... oof.
So now we're at the end - how is Human Revolution, nearly 10 years on and many advances in RPGs later? Pretty fucking great actually. The level-up system feels rewarding the entire game, secrets aplenty and build variety is on display with all of the level routes available to you. A decent story with great characters is told and some heart strings get pulled on in a few places. The combat is respectably solid with an RPG-shooter hybrid though a disappointing shotgun stings in the wrong way... Honestly it just makes me desperately miss these types of RPGs and I weep I don't get more of them. You get to choose who you are and how you do things - you get to play a role! I was Adam Jensen, and I was going to make them all pay for hurting what I cared about. Let's see how this story continues though shall we?
Final Grade: A
My Adam Jensen was different than my previous passivist playthroughs - he was a man with some scars. Seeing Megan taken from right in front of him by overwhelming powers set him on a darker path - he would revel a bit in the new power he had, and often killed just for the sport of it. However as a general rule he saved his cruelty for those who deserved it - no one in the police station even got bonked on the head, and random thugs usually were spared whenever possible. But when the shadowy mercenary company revealed itself? Only corpses remained. When Belltower was shown to be in cahoots with the mysterious organization behind it all? No quarter was shown to them, especially after seeing their gruesome experiments in the Missing Link DLC Adam became even more devoted. The game ended with Adam choosing mostly self-preservation after realizing that Megan may well have betrayed them all, even after all he had done to search for here - he choose to spread lies and protect the Augs and his own benefactors at the expense of the truth. He left Panchaea deeply uncertain about the future and what his role might be.... Until next time Deus Ex!
My history with the Deus Ex franchise is an odd one - I first played the second game of the series, Invisible War, on my original Xbox and I absolutely adored it. I had never played an 'action' game with so many RPG elements to it, it told an interesting story and had good characters and a heck of a philosophical ending to it - I loved it to bits and it further reinforced my love stealth games and RPGs. Little did I know - this was secretly the vastly inferior sequel to one of the most lauded games ever - Deus Ex 1. I purchased it a few years later on PC and I believe only made my way through it once, though I have tried several times since. Regardless, many years later the new franchise was announced coming from Square Enix, and I was a bit nervous. However fortunately a large chunk of the game leaked to the internet, and I downloaded it illegally and it was WONDERFUL. There were so many routes through each level, the voice acting and art direction were excellent, and a more straightfoward yet deep leveling system unlike the junk one of the previous games. I very much enjoyed the 'demo' and preordered it, and I've held it in dear fondness ever since.
"It isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here"
This is said by Eliza Cassan, an AI who serves as a narrator of sorts for the game, both in and out of it. These words are the scene dressings of the game - the world is at a precipice, and a deep fall seems almost inevitable. This speaks to me even more now than it did on release, trapped as I am during an actual global pandemic that calls forth elements of the original Deus Ex game. This is a world on the edge of a knife about technology however, about man and its advances and not the natural world fighting back against us as we are seeing in the real world. Human augmentation, a rapidly advancing science is currently making people "better" physically and mentally, and every day these advances change the fortunes of the "haves" and "have nots" and the world seems torn on what to do about it. On the eve of a major announcement in the field of augs, you are Adam Jensen, a man who is the head of security of a mid-size Aug company whose former girlfriend is seemingly murdered by shadowy forces, nearly killing him. These wounds cause him to be grievously wounded, and thus becomes the tremendously augmented main character we grow to know and love throughout our time in Human Revolution.
Adam is an excellent "spoken" RPG protagonist, as he has just enough spoken into his lines by his voice actor and snappy dialog writing that we get a crystal clear sense of who he was - an effective and straightfoward cop who tried to do right by others, but after being unfairly maligned for a bust gone wrong, had to take work where he could get it, even if that meant having to work with an old flame. You get such a good read from him that one of my favorite lines of the whole game is in the opening scene - you are with Megan in her office on the eve of the grand announcement (and the night when everything goes to hell for Adam) and you are speaking to her about the mundane plans of security when Adam's tone shifts as he sees her fiddling with her necklace "...and if you keep playing with that necklace Meg, you're going to break it". The sheer acting chops on display of nailing that perfect tone of gentle chiding yet affection speaks enormous volumes between the two, and sets the stage for Adam's unrelenting quest throughout the rest of the game. The company they work for is attacked that night, and you must play through your futile defense of the place and her as augmented soldiers decimate the thing Adam wishes to keep safe. Through the rest of the game you chase clue after clue to find the men and women responsible and WHY such a thing was done - and that leads you all about the world to find the shadowy organization and bring them down.
Where the character writing is top-notch, the main story is only merely quite good. While on the surface tracking down all of these leads is interesting and putting all of the pieces together, unfortunately there are desperately few "Aha!" moments of making a real connection between all the threads that all good mysteries need. It feels more often like a 'A to B then C' type deal. There were several steps on this journey that I forgot - why did we need to go back to Detroit and Hengsha again? And when I did get to those portions of the game, they felt ultimately pretty tacked on. There are the two main hubs in the game along with some decently sized interstitial 'zones' to link them together and they are all pretty excellent - the revitalized Detroit with its seedy underbelly, a FEMA camp that is actually an advanced prison, Hengsha the city that is basically Midgar (odd timing after FF7!), the camp Omega where all the bad guys are, an Antarctic installation for the finale... oh yeah and the DLC area! Which I'm not 100% sure really fits into the story all that well..? The Missing Link DLC was released like a year after the original game came out and re-adds a portion they cut early in development but honestly the length of it doesn't fit its place in the story, it is far too much of a stop-gap. I do enjoy the 'losing the augs' bit so you have to play much more frugally than you normally do. It is an interesting challenge and hints at the horrors you will see at the end of the journey but without some tweaks to the pacing it just never feels quite right?
One more positive note - the environmental design! There is SO much done in this game without dialogue, though there's a lot of that too.. The prevalence graffiti in certain areas, the ambient music and dialogue of people discussing issues of the day (its augs) the lighting and mood set in each area feels beautiful and deliberate. But we must talk about one of the earliest and best examples of level design as character development - Adam Jenson's apartment. We spend the first few hours with Adam mostly as an augmented badass, though many dialogue options can be chosen to be more brazen and confident about his new abilities. Then we get to his home - a simple downtown apartment, with curtains drawn and dim lighting, with a gentle golden light streaming into the gloom, almost enhancing the darkness rather than banishing it. As we look around his apartment we see he is like a drifter - most of things still in boxes, take out food containers strewn about, clothing draped over furniture. If we take an even deeper look we can see someone who is still trying to put the pieces back together with books relating to trauma and adapting to limb injuries. Things like broken clocks and repair guides are everywhere, seemingly a suggested therapy to help Adam begin to recover from his physical trauma. Then we step into the bathroom and we see the truth in a shattered mirror - mentally Adam is still barely holding it all together.
So what negatives are there? Honestly they're all pretty small niggles. The enemy AI is not really up to snuff, they regularly ignore warning signs of your presence and attacks are all almost entirely straightforward rushes on your position during gun fights. It's almost refreshing when they remember they have grenades to try and use on you.. Many of the guns feel quite good but the shotgun is almost offensively bad, which is one of the greatest sins any shooter can commit. Also while the variety of paths through each level feel very nice and rewarding, there's a pretty clear advantage to non-confrontation and mercy baked into the mechanics. I don't think that is BAD at all per-se but it is a bit egregious in some places when Adam is scolded for killing people who not only are trying to kill HIM, but have previously kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians. Also as said previously, the main 'mystery' of the game, while not bad at all, does not really 'snap' into place near the end as good mysteries always should. And I did forget on the voice acting - a lot of it is great. Jensen, Malik, Pritchard, bad guys? Great. Ambient folks? Hit or miss honestly. Sarif even ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.... And the writing in some spots definitely needed an editing pass for sure. Then there's that one Black Lady who has the Most Southern Black Stereotype Accent ever... in the middle of downtown Detroit... oof.
So now we're at the end - how is Human Revolution, nearly 10 years on and many advances in RPGs later? Pretty fucking great actually. The level-up system feels rewarding the entire game, secrets aplenty and build variety is on display with all of the level routes available to you. A decent story with great characters is told and some heart strings get pulled on in a few places. The combat is respectably solid with an RPG-shooter hybrid though a disappointing shotgun stings in the wrong way... Honestly it just makes me desperately miss these types of RPGs and I weep I don't get more of them. You get to choose who you are and how you do things - you get to play a role! I was Adam Jensen, and I was going to make them all pay for hurting what I cared about. Let's see how this story continues though shall we?
Final Grade: A
My Adam Jensen was different than my previous passivist playthroughs - he was a man with some scars. Seeing Megan taken from right in front of him by overwhelming powers set him on a darker path - he would revel a bit in the new power he had, and often killed just for the sport of it. However as a general rule he saved his cruelty for those who deserved it - no one in the police station even got bonked on the head, and random thugs usually were spared whenever possible. But when the shadowy mercenary company revealed itself? Only corpses remained. When Belltower was shown to be in cahoots with the mysterious organization behind it all? No quarter was shown to them, especially after seeing their gruesome experiments in the Missing Link DLC Adam became even more devoted. The game ended with Adam choosing mostly self-preservation after realizing that Megan may well have betrayed them all, even after all he had done to search for here - he choose to spread lies and protect the Augs and his own benefactors at the expense of the truth. He left Panchaea deeply uncertain about the future and what his role might be.... Until next time Deus Ex!
Splinter Cell is one of my favorite genres of game (Stealth!) and a series that holds a pretty special place in my heart, despite not being super on top of the series in general. One of my fondest memories of my old Xbox was playing through the first VERY difficult Splinter Cell game and being entranced by the tactical gameplay and slowed down pace of action. The main character is a gruff old goat voiced by Michael Ironside who very much brings his A-Game in terms of growl and depth. The first game I replayed very shortly prior to my first 52 game challenge so I do have a decent memory of it and decided to skip it in a Splinter Cell series playthrough. So I decided to buy 3 games on my Xbox One because they're on sale and backwards compatible and started with the second game in the series - Pandora Tomorrow. I never actually got to play this back in the day, I skipped right to Chaos Theory.. so how was this very old stealth game to start off with?
Actually pretty darn good!
Sam is back for another generic adventure with a Bad Guy of the Week, this one an East Timor 'freedom fighter' who plays himself as a new Che Guevara trying to lead a revolution against the US on the world stage. He's basically just a jumped up terrorist and drug dealer however who has a major edge - several smallpox bombs he has smuggled into the US. Plus, he has a dead man's switch on all of the bombs - if he goes down, they go off. So how do we settle this? Sam sneaks about a bunch of a BROAD variety of locales, konking folks over the head and snooping around to get the thing that Lambert snidely wants! While the in-mission goals don't vary too much, the level designs themselves and the art directions for each are pretty wildly different. There's a dense jungle you're sneaking through in the late evening (that sun is still up don't you worry..), a fast moving train that's quite a stand out, a base leading to a fricken' submarine you get to fight your way out of, LAX airport!, and a couple others that were all at least decent if not pretty good? Quick aside as well on the art style - friggen' outstanding. There is such an EXCEPTIONAL use of dynamic lighting in every single level, it makes the darkness you are supposed to be hiding in feel good to make use of. There were several spots in each level where I'd say "Damn this looks tight for a 15+ year old game)
While the maps are solid, and the gameplay fundamentals themselves are good (the light/shadow and sound mechanics are fuckin' rock solid stealth systems, they give the player the perfect amount of info on how concerned the player needs to be on being discovered) sadly the levels a bit too linear to be genuinely great.. 90% of the time there is a very clear path the devs wanted you to take and no derivation from it is acceptable or will be rewarded. There were plenty of low fences I wanted to hop over, doors I wanted to go through out of order, or areas that just respawned bad guys for no reason other than the plot needed to. It was very unfortunate knowing that the sequel (we'll get to that one soon!) does such a great job with it, but honestly I was shocked when I replayed the original a couple of years ago to discover it had the exact same issue.. Well it was one of the first real attempts at the stealth genre on console, you gotta' start somewhere! Also the game lacks a proper save system other than checkpoints, and there were some damn ANNOYING sections I had to do 5+ times to get exactly right because I really had no fuckin' idea where the game wanted me to go or do so I had to wander around - and in a few of those places one mistake period meant going back to the damn load screen... very frustrating.
I don't often love replaying older games - the clunkiness, the graphics, the voice acting and storytelling are just not up to our standards... and in a lot of ways, Pandora Tomorrow has all of that. Picking up items and objects are rote animations, abysmal checkpoint system, voice acting is BAD except for Lambert and Ironside, the story/villain are pretty one-note and simple with no real overarching plot for the series... all of these things are true, but ultimately I had a damn good time just exploring these levels, marveling at a work more than 15 years old and being delighted to lurk in the shadows and pounce on some unsuspecting mercenary goon then slink back off into the shadows to strike again...
Actually pretty darn good!
Sam is back for another generic adventure with a Bad Guy of the Week, this one an East Timor 'freedom fighter' who plays himself as a new Che Guevara trying to lead a revolution against the US on the world stage. He's basically just a jumped up terrorist and drug dealer however who has a major edge - several smallpox bombs he has smuggled into the US. Plus, he has a dead man's switch on all of the bombs - if he goes down, they go off. So how do we settle this? Sam sneaks about a bunch of a BROAD variety of locales, konking folks over the head and snooping around to get the thing that Lambert snidely wants! While the in-mission goals don't vary too much, the level designs themselves and the art directions for each are pretty wildly different. There's a dense jungle you're sneaking through in the late evening (that sun is still up don't you worry..), a fast moving train that's quite a stand out, a base leading to a fricken' submarine you get to fight your way out of, LAX airport!, and a couple others that were all at least decent if not pretty good? Quick aside as well on the art style - friggen' outstanding. There is such an EXCEPTIONAL use of dynamic lighting in every single level, it makes the darkness you are supposed to be hiding in feel good to make use of. There were several spots in each level where I'd say "Damn this looks tight for a 15+ year old game)
While the maps are solid, and the gameplay fundamentals themselves are good (the light/shadow and sound mechanics are fuckin' rock solid stealth systems, they give the player the perfect amount of info on how concerned the player needs to be on being discovered) sadly the levels a bit too linear to be genuinely great.. 90% of the time there is a very clear path the devs wanted you to take and no derivation from it is acceptable or will be rewarded. There were plenty of low fences I wanted to hop over, doors I wanted to go through out of order, or areas that just respawned bad guys for no reason other than the plot needed to. It was very unfortunate knowing that the sequel (we'll get to that one soon!) does such a great job with it, but honestly I was shocked when I replayed the original a couple of years ago to discover it had the exact same issue.. Well it was one of the first real attempts at the stealth genre on console, you gotta' start somewhere! Also the game lacks a proper save system other than checkpoints, and there were some damn ANNOYING sections I had to do 5+ times to get exactly right because I really had no fuckin' idea where the game wanted me to go or do so I had to wander around - and in a few of those places one mistake period meant going back to the damn load screen... very frustrating.
I don't often love replaying older games - the clunkiness, the graphics, the voice acting and storytelling are just not up to our standards... and in a lot of ways, Pandora Tomorrow has all of that. Picking up items and objects are rote animations, abysmal checkpoint system, voice acting is BAD except for Lambert and Ironside, the story/villain are pretty one-note and simple with no real overarching plot for the series... all of these things are true, but ultimately I had a damn good time just exploring these levels, marveling at a work more than 15 years old and being delighted to lurk in the shadows and pounce on some unsuspecting mercenary goon then slink back off into the shadows to strike again...
Continuing our roll of Metal Gear games, Snake Eater! This game I only played many many years after its release, around 2012 or 13 I believe with the release of the HD collection on 360/PS3.. So I don't have QUITE the strong attachment to it that I do for MGS1 and MGS2 especially. However I do remember REALLY loving the game the last few times I played it, I even platinumed it! So this run was a bit disappointing I will not lie..
I played the game on Hard difficulty, keeping with my Twin Snakes and Sons of Liberty playthroughs. And while those were definitely TOUGH, I felt the hard mode in Snake Eater was a REAL son of a bitch in many places and honestly hampered my enjoyment of the game. It feels much more like a Stealth game than the other two, which is surprising that I did not respond better to that as I love the stealth genre? However I have two major issues with the game - 1. The camo system and 2. the lack of any enemy tracking system. MGS3 does a lot to be more Systems driven in its gameplay than the first two Metal Gear games are and in a lot of ways that is superb and well appreciated, but in these two instances it was the cause of a lot of frustration for me. The camo system makes the stealth system have some semblance of SENSE to it (why couldn't those genetically enhanced guards see more than 10 feet in front of their face in MGS1?) and that is great - but why do I have to dig through 3 menu screens to put on a proper camo to fit my location? MGS4 fixes this but I do think a simple menu selection system would've helped greatly here. It was just SO damn frustrating to be crawling around and because I went from one type of ground to another (often very similar colors...) the guards got suspicious and spotted me leading to a whole rigamarole of trying to get the guards to kill me so I could retstart because I do NOT want to wait 4 entire fuckin' minutes for the alert phase to end and I can get back to moving about NO MATTER HOW DAMN GOOD THE MUSIC IS OKAY
Secondly, the lack of enemy tracking. No soliton radar? Great, it was OP as shit anyway and kinda holding back the gameplay anyway, and doesn't really make sense/work with the camo system. However the replacement system is... a heartbeat monitor that beeps more when you get closer to enemies? But it has no directional function and enemies can see you from a huge distance away, making it more or less worthless. There are NVG/Heat sensors as well but honestly it always felt very clunky trying to make sure I wasn't seen as I was creeping about.. In the hard mode there definitely needs to be more feedback in who is where and what they know - that's critical to a stealth game I feel. Or I just need to play on Normal from now on unless I'm willing to play it more often haha...
So anyway onto the good - the music is top-fuckin-notch. The other Metal Gear games are no slouches in that department, but this game really sets the bar. I could listen to the alert/caution music all day, and am in fact listening to it right now. It plays so well with the tension of the scene that I never got tired of hearing it, and that's good since I got a bajillion alerts! The story is told very well - it is a much more straightforward event than MGS2 and that feels deliberate - I feel like MGS 3 is Kojima basically telling everyone "I could've made the perfect MGS1 sequel the entire time, I just didn't WANT TO that was the point". The stakes are very clear - Your former mentor has betrayed you to a crazy splinter faction of the soviet union, you need to take her and her team of badasses down so you can stop the new Metal Gear Shagohod from destroying world peace as a nuclear armed tank. And this one actually even makes sense as a nuclear tank! You meet a young Ocelot and another young spy named Eva who help you out on your quest, and there's the usual amount of double/triple/quadruple crossing going on for an MGS story, with just enough poignancy to make the ending tremendously bittersweet and impactful. You see where Big Boss is heading - a driven man who only wants to make a safe "Haven" for soldiers, no longer to be used and thrown away by their governments when convenient. Outer Heaven!!
Solid but nail-biting difficulty, frustrating menu systems for stealth and healing, compelling story that's actually well edited.. A fantastic game that may ultimately just be the best MGS overall - but honestly just not my favorite? Or I just was overconfident on this one haha...
I played the game on Hard difficulty, keeping with my Twin Snakes and Sons of Liberty playthroughs. And while those were definitely TOUGH, I felt the hard mode in Snake Eater was a REAL son of a bitch in many places and honestly hampered my enjoyment of the game. It feels much more like a Stealth game than the other two, which is surprising that I did not respond better to that as I love the stealth genre? However I have two major issues with the game - 1. The camo system and 2. the lack of any enemy tracking system. MGS3 does a lot to be more Systems driven in its gameplay than the first two Metal Gear games are and in a lot of ways that is superb and well appreciated, but in these two instances it was the cause of a lot of frustration for me. The camo system makes the stealth system have some semblance of SENSE to it (why couldn't those genetically enhanced guards see more than 10 feet in front of their face in MGS1?) and that is great - but why do I have to dig through 3 menu screens to put on a proper camo to fit my location? MGS4 fixes this but I do think a simple menu selection system would've helped greatly here. It was just SO damn frustrating to be crawling around and because I went from one type of ground to another (often very similar colors...) the guards got suspicious and spotted me leading to a whole rigamarole of trying to get the guards to kill me so I could retstart because I do NOT want to wait 4 entire fuckin' minutes for the alert phase to end and I can get back to moving about NO MATTER HOW DAMN GOOD THE MUSIC IS OKAY
Secondly, the lack of enemy tracking. No soliton radar? Great, it was OP as shit anyway and kinda holding back the gameplay anyway, and doesn't really make sense/work with the camo system. However the replacement system is... a heartbeat monitor that beeps more when you get closer to enemies? But it has no directional function and enemies can see you from a huge distance away, making it more or less worthless. There are NVG/Heat sensors as well but honestly it always felt very clunky trying to make sure I wasn't seen as I was creeping about.. In the hard mode there definitely needs to be more feedback in who is where and what they know - that's critical to a stealth game I feel. Or I just need to play on Normal from now on unless I'm willing to play it more often haha...
So anyway onto the good - the music is top-fuckin-notch. The other Metal Gear games are no slouches in that department, but this game really sets the bar. I could listen to the alert/caution music all day, and am in fact listening to it right now. It plays so well with the tension of the scene that I never got tired of hearing it, and that's good since I got a bajillion alerts! The story is told very well - it is a much more straightforward event than MGS2 and that feels deliberate - I feel like MGS 3 is Kojima basically telling everyone "I could've made the perfect MGS1 sequel the entire time, I just didn't WANT TO that was the point". The stakes are very clear - Your former mentor has betrayed you to a crazy splinter faction of the soviet union, you need to take her and her team of badasses down so you can stop the new Metal Gear Shagohod from destroying world peace as a nuclear armed tank. And this one actually even makes sense as a nuclear tank! You meet a young Ocelot and another young spy named Eva who help you out on your quest, and there's the usual amount of double/triple/quadruple crossing going on for an MGS story, with just enough poignancy to make the ending tremendously bittersweet and impactful. You see where Big Boss is heading - a driven man who only wants to make a safe "Haven" for soldiers, no longer to be used and thrown away by their governments when convenient. Outer Heaven!!
Solid but nail-biting difficulty, frustrating menu systems for stealth and healing, compelling story that's actually well edited.. A fantastic game that may ultimately just be the best MGS overall - but honestly just not my favorite? Or I just was overconfident on this one haha...
Metal Gear Solid 2... another game of immense importance to me in both my gaming history and personal life. I had not a lot of connection to MGS 1, which leads to an stark difference in how I feel about the game compared to many others. MGS2 has a complicated history in how much it was HYPED back in the day - the return of Solid Snake and the continuation of a 10/10 game from the PS1 era, transitioning to the PS2 with grand new graphics and systems to play with. A revolution waiting to happen... instead it is more or less a retread of the first game. Completely intentionally however!
There are so many layers to this game it is difficult to get through in a review, so basically just watch SuperBunnyHop's videos on the MGS series to go over the whole crazy shenanigans with the subversion of the new main character, and the metacommentary on the thirst for sequals and "scripted" content like video games that Hideo Kojima was trying to say - we're going to skip all of that shit because it didn't really matter to me at the time and it still does not. We're going to talk about what I think is the thesis of the game, stated directly by Snake at the end, and a motto by which I approach every game and encapsulates what I am trying to do here with my 52 game challenge:
"It doesn't matter if it was real or not..everything you felt, thought about during this mission is yours, and what you decide to do with them is your choice"
"Building the future, and keeping the past alive are one in the same thing"
Where MGS1 was about "Genes" and CHOOSING your place in the world even after what you're given to start with - MGS2 is about "Memes": what information do you want to pass on to those that come after? This game doesn't hit that theme QUITE so hard as MGS1 does its own, but it does it in a more amusing way of having Snake speak directly to the player - "What do you find important? What do you value and what will you pass on?" I understood back then what Kojima was trying to say to me directly - it doesn't matter what I want you to think, it only matters what you think and feel here: it is real to you and you should keep it close. And then pass it on. That's what I'm doing here.. I wish I had a better answer sometimes on what I value and who and when I will pass these things on but.. I'm doing my best I think for now.
Anyway, to the actual game - more stealth goodness! I played on the Hard difficulty setting due to never beating it as a teenager when I first played the game... it was definitely tough and I got my ass beat a lot, but ultimately felt pretty good. Some very tense boss battles with the Rays for sure... but Fatman was a REAL bastard, damn. The early game had lots of difficulty as well as I was stuck on how to get around a lot of guards without any weapons, and it felt great to finally get them haha, I imagine Raiden felt the same! Ludonarrative convergence??
The game still plays great, looks great, excellent cinematography and music.. I guess the only negative is the obvious one - some of the cutscenes near the end are too damn long with too little going on, the melodrama with Otacon and his family history is just ughhh, and there's way too much interrupting the player early in the Plant chapter. Otacon's stuff very much felt like "Oh we gotta do something interesting with his character this game... give him a more tragic backstory??" and it never really lands. BUT the stuff with him and Emma is pretty ace, and her death/his reactions fucking got me. Yet more FEELS for Otacon as he yet again is left behind by those he loves..
These are some actual negatives, but honestly I don't think they detracted too much from my experience, especially since I've finished it so many times I know what to skip. Objectively I do think its a problem with the game that I would warn others about but for me? Damn this is great shit.
Now I need to decide what to pass on...
There are so many layers to this game it is difficult to get through in a review, so basically just watch SuperBunnyHop's videos on the MGS series to go over the whole crazy shenanigans with the subversion of the new main character, and the metacommentary on the thirst for sequals and "scripted" content like video games that Hideo Kojima was trying to say - we're going to skip all of that shit because it didn't really matter to me at the time and it still does not. We're going to talk about what I think is the thesis of the game, stated directly by Snake at the end, and a motto by which I approach every game and encapsulates what I am trying to do here with my 52 game challenge:
"It doesn't matter if it was real or not..everything you felt, thought about during this mission is yours, and what you decide to do with them is your choice"
"Building the future, and keeping the past alive are one in the same thing"
Where MGS1 was about "Genes" and CHOOSING your place in the world even after what you're given to start with - MGS2 is about "Memes": what information do you want to pass on to those that come after? This game doesn't hit that theme QUITE so hard as MGS1 does its own, but it does it in a more amusing way of having Snake speak directly to the player - "What do you find important? What do you value and what will you pass on?" I understood back then what Kojima was trying to say to me directly - it doesn't matter what I want you to think, it only matters what you think and feel here: it is real to you and you should keep it close. And then pass it on. That's what I'm doing here.. I wish I had a better answer sometimes on what I value and who and when I will pass these things on but.. I'm doing my best I think for now.
Anyway, to the actual game - more stealth goodness! I played on the Hard difficulty setting due to never beating it as a teenager when I first played the game... it was definitely tough and I got my ass beat a lot, but ultimately felt pretty good. Some very tense boss battles with the Rays for sure... but Fatman was a REAL bastard, damn. The early game had lots of difficulty as well as I was stuck on how to get around a lot of guards without any weapons, and it felt great to finally get them haha, I imagine Raiden felt the same! Ludonarrative convergence??
The game still plays great, looks great, excellent cinematography and music.. I guess the only negative is the obvious one - some of the cutscenes near the end are too damn long with too little going on, the melodrama with Otacon and his family history is just ughhh, and there's way too much interrupting the player early in the Plant chapter. Otacon's stuff very much felt like "Oh we gotta do something interesting with his character this game... give him a more tragic backstory??" and it never really lands. BUT the stuff with him and Emma is pretty ace, and her death/his reactions fucking got me. Yet more FEELS for Otacon as he yet again is left behind by those he loves..
These are some actual negatives, but honestly I don't think they detracted too much from my experience, especially since I've finished it so many times I know what to skip. Objectively I do think its a problem with the game that I would warn others about but for me? Damn this is great shit.
Now I need to decide what to pass on...
2020
The newest entry to our Resi Series playthrough - RE3 Remake! I was pretty fond of the original RE3 but definitely did not love it as much as the previous couple games and that sorta unfortunately remains true??? After the system shock to me last year that was Resi 2 REmake, I was definitely psyched to be getting another main RE game so quickly to sink my teeth into. Jill is one of my favorite RE protagonists after REmake 1 + 3, and she got done real dirty in 5 - so I was happy to get this chance to play as her again and boy is she SASSY in this one. Though in fairness she was pretty sassy in RE3 original as well so it tracks "You want STARS? I'll give you STARS!" which hardly even makes sense... but it was replaced by the 11/10 line about Nemesis after he plunges into a river
"Bitch can't even swim"
which honest to god might increase the game a whole letter grade..
So RE3 is very much in the vein of RE2 Remake - over the shoulder camera, zombies and other enemies are tough as nails while the atmosphere is off the damn charts. It feels like there's fewer puzzles in this one and the areas are certainly less densely designed as RE2. 2 often feels like half of the challenge is "I have this piece that needs to go over there - what's my best route and what am I going to face on the way?" which is not really a thing in RE3. It's mostly just going from place to place and getting what you need and moving on - the pace is MUCH faster all around, as evident by the fact it only took me part of a day to beat this, unlike the couple weeks it took for RE2 lololol. Also I'm just not fucking terrified of everything like I was playing RE2 lololol. There's a great sense of progression with weaponry as well, most REs do this at least, but 3 feels like quite a jump in terms of how I felt at the end of the game with fully loaded grenade launchers, 40 shotgun shells and 400 assault rifle bullets! I was nigh unstoppable at the end there.. The end with Nemesis was pretty great, though I do miss VARIETY in my boss battles, seeing Nemesis just keep coming was amusing and vexing!
Nemesis though - I feel like he was done a LOT better in RE3 vanilla, not gonna lie. There's much less backtracking in this game, and Nemesis chasing you feels almost entirely scripted in a way that is disaapointing - Mr. X felt a lot cooler in terms of an unflappable enemy, though Nemesis is far more deadly than him, rather than a regular obstacle. I'm just not a huge fan of scripted sequences honestly so a decent amount of his stuff fell a bit flat. Still liked him as a "Oh he can do what now?" at the start of each beat, but it felt odd almost never actually worrying about him while playing the game regularly when he's such a part of the original. Though in fairness while he may show up more in the original - he was much easier to get away from since all you had to do was change screens, albeit sometimes frequently, and there were pretty large sections of the game where he basically never showed up also. So while in a way it's a tad disappointing, it is also expected a bit - and a bit more appreciated? Not sure I'd like being stalked the entire time lolol
Story wise we're talking a MAJOR upgrade because obviously? There is no more ridiculous translation bullshit and just terrible editing everywhere "This is my, last escape", everything is competently written now! Nicholai is a damn fine villain for this, acted very well and I think pretty obviously working for Wesker right..? They should've hinted at that more! Carlos is even more likeable than last time, and he and Jill have a great relationship and banter. The Carlos sections are super good as well, though it feels like this could've easily been another A-B scenario business especially at the end - Carlos disappears from the story after saving Jill and then just pops up with like no explanation... where were you buddy?! Glad he made it though, I thought for sure he died! No Barry at the end though in the helicopter stings a bit but eh, didn't make a lot of sense the first time around haha..Oh one more thing!! Carlos's partner Tyrell who I'm 90% sure is new for this version - fuckin' loved that dude. I spent the whole game being like "Oh yeah this dude is totally gonna stab us in the back.. I like him though!" but he didn't! He was just a damn bro and Nemesis killed him :'( RIP in peace Tyrell
So Resident Evil 3 Remake is a damn fine game on the whole. The things that are missing are unfortunate (STILL no giant spiders!?) but the additions and how well the things that are there ARE done is so great I can mind all that much. A competent story with genuinely likeable characters keeps the plot moving, two great antagonists one human and one very not. The gameplay of manuevering around infested areas and carefully taking your shots is nerve wracking and the off the fuckin' charts atmosphere and sound effects make this a damn fine horror game. It is unfortunately short and lacks some of the extras that RE2 has which is unfortunate in terms of how much value I will get out of it, and ultimately the lack of tight design and maps of RE2 make this a bit of a step down overall. That said, I still loved my time with it and am eager to return some day in the near future..
"Bitch can't even swim"
which honest to god might increase the game a whole letter grade..
So RE3 is very much in the vein of RE2 Remake - over the shoulder camera, zombies and other enemies are tough as nails while the atmosphere is off the damn charts. It feels like there's fewer puzzles in this one and the areas are certainly less densely designed as RE2. 2 often feels like half of the challenge is "I have this piece that needs to go over there - what's my best route and what am I going to face on the way?" which is not really a thing in RE3. It's mostly just going from place to place and getting what you need and moving on - the pace is MUCH faster all around, as evident by the fact it only took me part of a day to beat this, unlike the couple weeks it took for RE2 lololol. Also I'm just not fucking terrified of everything like I was playing RE2 lololol. There's a great sense of progression with weaponry as well, most REs do this at least, but 3 feels like quite a jump in terms of how I felt at the end of the game with fully loaded grenade launchers, 40 shotgun shells and 400 assault rifle bullets! I was nigh unstoppable at the end there.. The end with Nemesis was pretty great, though I do miss VARIETY in my boss battles, seeing Nemesis just keep coming was amusing and vexing!
Nemesis though - I feel like he was done a LOT better in RE3 vanilla, not gonna lie. There's much less backtracking in this game, and Nemesis chasing you feels almost entirely scripted in a way that is disaapointing - Mr. X felt a lot cooler in terms of an unflappable enemy, though Nemesis is far more deadly than him, rather than a regular obstacle. I'm just not a huge fan of scripted sequences honestly so a decent amount of his stuff fell a bit flat. Still liked him as a "Oh he can do what now?" at the start of each beat, but it felt odd almost never actually worrying about him while playing the game regularly when he's such a part of the original. Though in fairness while he may show up more in the original - he was much easier to get away from since all you had to do was change screens, albeit sometimes frequently, and there were pretty large sections of the game where he basically never showed up also. So while in a way it's a tad disappointing, it is also expected a bit - and a bit more appreciated? Not sure I'd like being stalked the entire time lolol
Story wise we're talking a MAJOR upgrade because obviously? There is no more ridiculous translation bullshit and just terrible editing everywhere "This is my, last escape", everything is competently written now! Nicholai is a damn fine villain for this, acted very well and I think pretty obviously working for Wesker right..? They should've hinted at that more! Carlos is even more likeable than last time, and he and Jill have a great relationship and banter. The Carlos sections are super good as well, though it feels like this could've easily been another A-B scenario business especially at the end - Carlos disappears from the story after saving Jill and then just pops up with like no explanation... where were you buddy?! Glad he made it though, I thought for sure he died! No Barry at the end though in the helicopter stings a bit but eh, didn't make a lot of sense the first time around haha..Oh one more thing!! Carlos's partner Tyrell who I'm 90% sure is new for this version - fuckin' loved that dude. I spent the whole game being like "Oh yeah this dude is totally gonna stab us in the back.. I like him though!" but he didn't! He was just a damn bro and Nemesis killed him :'( RIP in peace Tyrell
So Resident Evil 3 Remake is a damn fine game on the whole. The things that are missing are unfortunate (STILL no giant spiders!?) but the additions and how well the things that are there ARE done is so great I can mind all that much. A competent story with genuinely likeable characters keeps the plot moving, two great antagonists one human and one very not. The gameplay of manuevering around infested areas and carefully taking your shots is nerve wracking and the off the fuckin' charts atmosphere and sound effects make this a damn fine horror game. It is unfortunately short and lacks some of the extras that RE2 has which is unfortunate in terms of how much value I will get out of it, and ultimately the lack of tight design and maps of RE2 make this a bit of a step down overall. That said, I still loved my time with it and am eager to return some day in the near future..
2020
Half Life Alyx is the latest game from Valve! A game! from VALVE!! Man when was the last time that happened? Last I recall is Portal 2, which was like 2012? And of course the last Half Life Game was a bit before that right?? So my history with the Half Life series is not a super one - I played the original in middle school for a while but have no particular memory of it? The opening scene is fuckin' ace though, riding through the train in Black Mesa, awesome! We might actually see the remake Black Mesa on this review list soon enough actually... I managed to force myself through the Half Life 2 series (didn't get through episode 2) because I kinda hated it? Hahaha..
Anyway, so Alyx is a shooter/puzzler like the Half Life games before it - you move through very well curated environments and occasionally get into some gun fights. Alyx adds a very strong survival horror vibe that I am ALL about though. There's loads of places full of darkness and shadow and creepies crawling through the vents or along the rooftops you need to be aware of - pretty damn scary in some places actually. Those fuckin headcrabs flying at you out of the darkness is always terrifying... And I think this leads into the games focus - VR. This game uses virtual reality so god damn well. I felt MANY times that I was IN this place, and would often forget my own surroundings. At least twice I knelt on the ground to look about for resources and I would lift my hand to brace myself on a nearby table to stand up - only to remember just before my hand phased through that the table was not real!! Or the amount of times a headcrap snuck up on me successfully and I just EMPTIED a clip into them to put it down because I was so damn scared... it takes like 2 or 3 bullets to put one down, btw. Just saying fuck those things.
So the atmosphere is off the damn charts, the graphics are great, the sound design is solid, the gunplay is pretty good... okay, the negatives I guess? The story is a bit one note? We are chasing down our dad (formerly played by the superb 'Isaac Jaffe') who has been captured by the Combine - they we find him, talk to him for LITERALLY 30 seconds, then he talks to us a bit over the radio and we get to the twist ending: we're liberating Gordon Freeman! Bit rote, honestly? I do REALLY like the ending, and I like that we pick up essentially where we are leaving off with the Half Life story previously. Also it is always awesome to see the G-man... a bit sad we'll be playing as Gordon next time though??
All in all - holy hell VR is the real fuckin' deal. Gun fights may not be superb, but the world-building and sense PRESENCE to this game, drawing you in and immersing you, is like none other. I can't wait to dive in for more.
Anyway, so Alyx is a shooter/puzzler like the Half Life games before it - you move through very well curated environments and occasionally get into some gun fights. Alyx adds a very strong survival horror vibe that I am ALL about though. There's loads of places full of darkness and shadow and creepies crawling through the vents or along the rooftops you need to be aware of - pretty damn scary in some places actually. Those fuckin headcrabs flying at you out of the darkness is always terrifying... And I think this leads into the games focus - VR. This game uses virtual reality so god damn well. I felt MANY times that I was IN this place, and would often forget my own surroundings. At least twice I knelt on the ground to look about for resources and I would lift my hand to brace myself on a nearby table to stand up - only to remember just before my hand phased through that the table was not real!! Or the amount of times a headcrap snuck up on me successfully and I just EMPTIED a clip into them to put it down because I was so damn scared... it takes like 2 or 3 bullets to put one down, btw. Just saying fuck those things.
So the atmosphere is off the damn charts, the graphics are great, the sound design is solid, the gunplay is pretty good... okay, the negatives I guess? The story is a bit one note? We are chasing down our dad (formerly played by the superb 'Isaac Jaffe') who has been captured by the Combine - they we find him, talk to him for LITERALLY 30 seconds, then he talks to us a bit over the radio and we get to the twist ending: we're liberating Gordon Freeman! Bit rote, honestly? I do REALLY like the ending, and I like that we pick up essentially where we are leaving off with the Half Life story previously. Also it is always awesome to see the G-man... a bit sad we'll be playing as Gordon next time though??
All in all - holy hell VR is the real fuckin' deal. Gun fights may not be superb, but the world-building and sense PRESENCE to this game, drawing you in and immersing you, is like none other. I can't wait to dive in for more.
The New Animal Crossing is finally here!! And Brynne plays it WAY more than I do!! Haha yeah didn't quite expect that... AC New Horizons for the switch has been out a couple weeks now and I've finally 'finished' it as of yesterday morning, but honestly, we aint done here for QUITE a while! While the credits may have rolled for me, Animal Crossing is not really a game made to be finished in such a convenient or easy manner..
So the formula of previous Animal Crossing's is still very much here - you've got your home 'town' and you kinda just live there! There are lots of villagers to talk to and play with, bugs to catch, fossils to dig up, bugs to catch, fruit to grow, capitalist power structures to overthrow.. Tom Nook is back baby! The major difference with this game however is the beginning week or so - instead of moving to a full town and getting into the full swing of things, you start on a 'deserted' island with a couple of folks and slowly build up to the full 'Animal Crossing' experience as you progress along. Tom Nook essentially gives you 'quests' to complete each day - finding a few fish to get Blathers interested in moving, asking for building materials for his nephews' shop to expand, inviting new people to live there, etc. It all culminates in asking KK Slider to start a concert on your island, and when he does so the credits roll! That's more or less where I'm at, and then the game just kinda lets you do your thing. In a way I do appreciate the more 'structured' beginning as it teaches newcomers more of the game to get started with, and makes your beginning more directed so you don't feel so overwhelmed with what all is going on in the game. Though at the same time I do worry once it is all finished up - are you going to miss that directed gameplay? We'll see how people feel in a month!
I personally spent most of the time building my orchards, as I believe I always do in these games haha. My trees are so dense in some areas I can barely see anything! That's part of the fun for me, it gives me a 'check list' to accomplish each day along with finding fossils for my museum to expand it. I've been falling off the bug catching and fishing though as I've been trying to play other games as well. I do enjoy the 'collection' elements a lot, and that museum is STELLAR in this game, its like the fanciest damn museum I've ever seen! Blathers also now has a fear of all bugs (despite being an owl that.. eats bugs) that is hilarious every time you turn one into him. There's a very chill atmosphere of how much time you're given to do things, and I think that fits very well with the real time nature of it. The game doesn't really WANT you to pour your entire day into it (though Brynne certainly seems to enjoy that), it just wants you to visit from time to time!
There's a lot going on in the world right now with the Coronavirus and being everyone being shut in that gives this game a very special feeling - like everything out there is nuts but here? Everything is pretty chill and happy. The social features are kinda crap but you still can hang out with your friends here if you want - and show off all the cool decorating you've done! Animal Crossing didn't intend to be a balm in deeply troubled times, but somehow it seemed to fit right in help calm our troubled times, at least for a little while...
So the formula of previous Animal Crossing's is still very much here - you've got your home 'town' and you kinda just live there! There are lots of villagers to talk to and play with, bugs to catch, fossils to dig up, bugs to catch, fruit to grow, capitalist power structures to overthrow.. Tom Nook is back baby! The major difference with this game however is the beginning week or so - instead of moving to a full town and getting into the full swing of things, you start on a 'deserted' island with a couple of folks and slowly build up to the full 'Animal Crossing' experience as you progress along. Tom Nook essentially gives you 'quests' to complete each day - finding a few fish to get Blathers interested in moving, asking for building materials for his nephews' shop to expand, inviting new people to live there, etc. It all culminates in asking KK Slider to start a concert on your island, and when he does so the credits roll! That's more or less where I'm at, and then the game just kinda lets you do your thing. In a way I do appreciate the more 'structured' beginning as it teaches newcomers more of the game to get started with, and makes your beginning more directed so you don't feel so overwhelmed with what all is going on in the game. Though at the same time I do worry once it is all finished up - are you going to miss that directed gameplay? We'll see how people feel in a month!
I personally spent most of the time building my orchards, as I believe I always do in these games haha. My trees are so dense in some areas I can barely see anything! That's part of the fun for me, it gives me a 'check list' to accomplish each day along with finding fossils for my museum to expand it. I've been falling off the bug catching and fishing though as I've been trying to play other games as well. I do enjoy the 'collection' elements a lot, and that museum is STELLAR in this game, its like the fanciest damn museum I've ever seen! Blathers also now has a fear of all bugs (despite being an owl that.. eats bugs) that is hilarious every time you turn one into him. There's a very chill atmosphere of how much time you're given to do things, and I think that fits very well with the real time nature of it. The game doesn't really WANT you to pour your entire day into it (though Brynne certainly seems to enjoy that), it just wants you to visit from time to time!
There's a lot going on in the world right now with the Coronavirus and being everyone being shut in that gives this game a very special feeling - like everything out there is nuts but here? Everything is pretty chill and happy. The social features are kinda crap but you still can hang out with your friends here if you want - and show off all the cool decorating you've done! Animal Crossing didn't intend to be a balm in deeply troubled times, but somehow it seemed to fit right in help calm our troubled times, at least for a little while...