11/24/19: Definitely a Kojima game; where he thought of a premise that makes very little sense in a practical world. It could just as easily be a game about being a postal worker in 2019 who encounters ghosts on his route, but it has to be the most overly complicated nonsensical plot ever. I've played every single Kojima game (MGS and MGS4 being my all time favorite) and there is usually a sense of accomplishments between the gameplay and the overly long cinematic and dialog trees... but this game feels way more tedious in the ladder. He nailed the presentation aspect though; that opening gameplay segment with the music (low Roar "Don't be so serious") playing as you're running through the green open fields. That was beautiful. I just fixed up the bike, so my route's between bases will be quicker. But god damn it's still a game about delivering packages.

I found my Vita yesterday and eventually hooked it up to remote play to my PS4... so I think I'll be able to play this a lot more than I originally thought.

11/25/19: I just reached episode 3, right after you are thrown into the most convoluted, obscene boss battle ever convinced by man, and my game is hung on the loading scene. Time for a break I suppose.

Oh and protip, don't try and ride your bike through a BT area. Doesn't work.

11/26/19: This game is a metaphor to everyone in cinema saying we need more original ideas and less super hero films. In 2019, this game is equivalent to Under the Silver Lake.

The annoyances start to shine through- I still find it fucking hilarous that after I travel what is equivalent to 1/10th the distance across the United States (it's only refereed to as "America" in the game, which is also hilarous), plop my delivery down on the conveyor belt as it gets processed through a bunch of elevators and hooks, a nifty little hologram boots up and tells me how valuable I am to rebuilding "America"... I look around these giant delivery facilities and realize there isn't another soul in these buildings. Everyone is communicating to me remote via hologram or codec (gee Kojima, still can't get past the codec from MGS eh?) . Like, we have the technology for holograms, for these BB devices, giant beautiful structures, weird ass vehicles, but can't figure out how to deliver supplies across the country unmanned? They do reference drones at one point but I forget the reason why they stopped using them.

11/27/19: The more I play Death Stranding, the more I feel like the game was designed so Kojima could see what he could get away with in a game.

There's a lot to be annoyed with...

Like the self-congratulations after delivering a tiny package is comical; there's like 37 different lines of measure you see every single time, that you eventually just skip through it all. From the dialog of the guy accepting the package to whatever you are being graded on; Quality of the package, time it took you to deliver, which THEN translate to your rewards and ranking system- which feels never ending. Normal ranking systems have what? 1-30, 1-60? With Recruit, Captain, Colonel, General etc etc? Not a Kojima game. It's ranking system goes from 1- infinity+... from all kinds of different names like Veteran Porter, Expert Hiker, Expert Transporter... etc etc. I can't remember most of them because you can breeze through them with one large delivery.

If that wasn't complicated enough, lets make every city have a similar name so you can never remember which is which or where you are or where you need to go without looking at the Arial map, which btw is completely useless. You can't tell the different between a huge canyon or a giant mountain so good luck traversing until you come across an obstacle you wish you were aware of before you started on your journey. The names of places are: Capital Knot City, Mountain Knot City, Waystation Knot, Edge Knot City... wtf is this shit?

But hey... I'm still playing it I guess.

For some reason I’ve been ignoring Ubisoft over the last several years but they have won me back with their current triple threat lineup; The Division, Siege and Wildlands and may be one of the last AAA developers to bring quality to their named franchises while improving on every subsequent update and full release. Wildlands is one of the best (and largest) sandbox games I’ve ever played. Add in drop-in / drop-out co-op and you have the perfect receipt for games with this kind of mechanic.

Want to play solo? No problem. Want to play with three other friends? No problem? Want to roam casually via GTA style wile matchmaking? No problem.

Want a leveling system that isn’t just XP > Level up > Max out? No problem. Wildlands offers a way to continue amp up difficulty as you progress. As you reach level 30, the game allows you to turn on a 2nd tiering system while on Extreme Difficulty. IT also allows you to level up your guns damage so the difficulty scales with your weaponry. When there three other players in your party, the game scales back the difficulty automatically based on the average level of all players.

There’s a few annoying things about the game. The driving mechanic needs a bit of work as some vehicles are difficult to steer.

The re-spawn area may sometimes throw you outside of your party, or may spawn you in the middle of a firefight. Good luck figuring that one out.

And probably the biggest thing that needs tweaking is the extreme difficulty as you approach Tier 1; The game prides itself on allowing players to complete missions in a verity of different ways. Go stealth, go in from the air, go in on ground assault, call in reinforcements, go in at night/day- however in the extreme Tier 1 difficulty, your only option is stealth. If you even try to go in Rambo style enemies will spot you quicker, kill you faster with no time to react. In that regard the game becomes a little stale doing the missions the exact same way every single time.

It looks as though Ubisoft will be supporting these games for a while which is fine by me. I don’t need a sequel until there’s another country that needs to be Reconed.

Far Cry 5 is Ubisoft’s continued AAA dominance. I don’t think there’s another AAA developer out there that continuously pushes out solid entries in all of their franchises as consistently as Ubisoft does. The Division, Siege, Far Cry, Ghost Recon…hell even Assassin’s Creed… all solid. For reference, I skipped Far Cry 4 and Primal, but after enjoying some of Ubisoft’s more recent tiles picked this up on launch. I’ll likely be going back and playing them after enjoying this game.

Running out of interesting sandbox locations to base a game in, Far Cry 5 takes place in the wilderness of Montana, where a local cult has grown to the size of a small governing state, wreaking havoc for local civilians. You play, as a silent protagonist, a U.S. Marshall, who is flown in to arrest the leader of the cult. Naturally, things go wrong, and you find yourself escaping the crazy cult members, needing help from locals and resources to rescue your colleagues and put an end to the cult for good.

FC5 borrows a little bit of the mechanics from Wildlands where the game doesn’t put you up against one big baddie from the start, you need to conquer the three lieutenants before taking on the head honcho. You do this by liberating the three providences under the regime, by liberating towns, taking out convoy trucks, saving civilians upgrading your weapons and moving on to the next area.

The game goes out of it’s way to make sure you realize there is precisely ONE tower to climb and unlock. And that’s really only for you to learn about the zipline tutorial. Thank you, Ubisoft. I was getting tired of climbing towers in every one of your other installments. Climbing 17 towers in FC3 was getting much too repetitive and boring.
I thought the Division and Wildlands looked good but game looks gorgeous. They really have opened up the world for you to dive into; so big they allow the use of helicopters and planes. Beautiful color pallet has made the environment much more stunning and immersive.

The best newest idea in the Far Cry franchise is allowing players to add in an NPC that will fight along your side. Each NPC has a different strength, whether it be sniping, stealth, flam thrower and even a guy that flies in a plane above you and drops bombs on targets. You even get a dog and/or bear sidekick who will seek out enemies and revive you if you’re wounded. The side missions are fun and relatively original so you do not have to worry about doing the same mission over and over again. In fact, there is one side mission involving UFOs that was practically joyous.

Overall, I’d say this is the best entry in the series thus far. I honestly wouldn’t expect anything less from Ubisoft at this point. The deathmatch multiplayer modes are quite fun as well.

You can also have fun with some hilarious co-op

Creating a successful horror game is tricky. There needs to be just enough of a blend tension, fear and scare tactics so the game does not fall to mundane generic enemies jumping out at players. Dead Space not only creates the one of the best atmospheres in a horror video game, it’s full of enough puzzles, frights and dilemmas to make even the most jaded 3rd Person Shooter player sit up and take notice.

You play as Isaac Clarke, a space engineer, traveling to the USG Ishimura, a “Planet Cracker” which is emitting a distress call. After a tense opening sequence, Isaac boards the ship with his coworkers, Lt. Zach Hammond, security officer, and Kendra Daniels, a computer expert, and soon realizes this is no ordinary distress call as the ship has been overrun by an alien race. Isaac gets separated from his coworkers and must fight his way through the alien monsters to bring the ship back online and find a way off the Ishimura.

Gameplay:

Dead Space has taken every great piece of third person gameplay in the history of video games and combines it together to deliver an entertaining, enjoyable journey. You navigate Isaac from an over-the-shoulder view. There is no Heads Up Display (HUD) in Dead Space. Your health is indicated by the light meter embedded in the spine of your suit spine. Your ammo is displayed above your weapon when you aim and your stasis meter is also located on the back of your suit. What is stasis? It is a piece of technology that gives you the ability to slow down objects and enemies for puzzle solving and reaction time. You can recharge your stasis by accessing stations located throughout the ship or by finding portable stasis packs. Isaac also has the ability to use Kinesis, which allows him to move heavy objects or acquire objects that are out of reach. Stasis becomes available to Isaac a few minutes into the game, and Kinesis becomes available for use when entering the second chapter and has unlimited use.

The game's most unique and striking appeal is operating in zero gravity or a vacuum. When entering a Zero-G zone, Isaac has the ability to jump from one side of the area to another. This opens up an new realm of puzzle solving and is some of the most fun sequences in the game.

The enemies in Dead Space are deformed humans that were killed and turned into monsters by a race of alien creatures. There are a dozen or so different styles of enemies that navigate their way through the ships ventilation system, which means you may encounter an enemy at any given time. As many enemies as there are, they all can be taken out with the same technique: begin by shooting off their limbs first. Direct hits to the body will waste ammo, especially during fights with the tougher, more advanced enemies. Some of the more memorable enemies are the epic boss fights that also combine a little Zero-G action. The threats on the ship are sometimes not always enemy related. Dead Space shifts gears twice for a little Han Solo, “Don’t Get Cocky” turret action.

So how do you take out all the enemies? With a wide range of weaponry of course. Isaac begins the game with a Cutter, an extremely accurate “laser” that fires a wide beam either horizontally or vertically. There are tons of lockers and chests to explore during the course of the game. Some lockers may contain ammo and others may contain credits, which can be used in Stores. At these Store locations, Isaac can store, ammo and items. Isaac is limited in the number of items he can carry, however the number of items can be increased if he upgrades his suit. Usually near by a store, is a Workbench, where Isaac can upgrade his weapons and gear.

There is a lot of backtracking in Dead Space. At the beginning of each chapter, Issac exits a tram which carries passengers from one section of the ship to another, and at the end of each chapter he makes his way back to the same tram to journey to the next section of the ship. Isaac visits some sections of the ship more than once. There are tons of save points throughout Dead Space, probably more than there should be. Even if you don not save, Dead Space autosaves so much that you really do not have to save once through the entire game, unless you want to exit out of Dead Space or turn off your PS3. To make the game even easier, the developers also added in a feature that actually maps out the direction Isaac needs to travel to complete his next objective. This feature is displayed by a blue outline on the ground. (see pic below)

The problem that most avid gamers will notice is that everything, aside from the zero gravity gameplay, has been borrowed from past films, novels, or other games. The over the shoulder view bares a striking resemblance to Resident Evil 4, the monsters are mere replicas of John Carpenter's The Thing, parallels in Event Horizon are seen throughout the entire game including some obvious set design rip offs and features in Doom 3 and System Shock are also used in Dead Space. It is at this point where we stop and think: are these references by the EA Readwood Game designers an homage to their favs or are they simply thefts? No matter, the similarities are not enough to take away from the Dead Space experience which delivers a terrifying story, but the influences are definitely obvious.

Graphics and Sound:

Dead Space does everything right graphically. It looks beautiful in full 1080p when staring out into the vast ocean of space, blowing an enemies head off, or playing through some beautiful level designs of what a 'Planet Cracker's' engine room, maintenance bay and mining section may look like.

The sound effects are also top notch in Dead Space. As Isaac communicates with his team, a 2D holograph image appears before Isaac, which the player can rotate. The static overlaid onto the video and audio logs is incorporated nicely, and the creeks and cracks heard throughout the broken ship add much to the atmosphere. Listen for the lullaby.

Players may pick up quickly on how Visceral tries to scare its players. They use the same formula that Hollywood does, during a tense or critical moment in the game they play loud music like the typical brass pieces you hear in most horror movies. More often than not this takes place when a player looks in the direction of an enemy. So this tactic may help a player in certain areas rather than scare him or her. If a player is not paying attention and some random horns start playing, that is a pretty good indication that there was probably a monster that ran past the door that they probably missed.

Pros: controls work extremely well on the PS3, terrifying boss battles, graphics and sound are gripping,

Cons: : unoriginal enemies, predictable but engaging story, very easy to beat, lots of backtracking

Bottom Line: I recommend this game in spite of my criticism of the unoriginality of some of its elements but it is defendable to question why this game has been so highly touted. Some have labeled Dead Space as the ‘Worlds Scariest Game’ and people are shouting from roof tops to “Buy this game immediately!”. The game isn’t perfect, but what is? It has a wonderfully smooth flowing story, a great environment, near perfect controls and graphics that can make a grown man cry. Dead Space is solid game that should be experienced by as many players as possible. There are striking resemblances to a dozen pieces of work, but they are forgivable. Expect a sequel.

There are a ton of bugs. There are buildings that flat out don’t work. The Post Office Sorting is broken. Garbage Pick Up is broken. Cargo import / export is broken. CIMs behave irrationally; i.e. if you charge $100 parking on the street, and offer a $10 parking garage to park, they will still choose the street. There are graphical issues (things look blurry and flickery when zooming). Traffic ignores traffic laws and a lot of the easy, quality of life building that didn’t exist in the first game, exist here.

I am pushing through a lot of these bugs, and ultimately, I do not have the sense of enjoyment I had in the first game. We all need to remember we are talking about a game studio with a team of 30 or so developers; so I have no doubt these issues will be fixed eventually, but for right now, this is a thumbs down rushed launch.

f you're coming off the disappointment of Amnesia: March of the Pigs (not to be confused with the brilliance of Amnesia: The Dark Descent), look no further for legitimate mood and tone. Feel the of breath in the pitch black of enemies bearing down on you; someone or something constantly pursing you... to which you are unarmed and you're only defense is the black of night and your ability to hide. Outlast does everything great that Amnesia does, only to a much more frantic and chilling setting. Yes there are jump scares, but they are scarce and cleverly placed. Outlast is a true horror experience

In the days of AAA developers steering away from single player games, in favor of online multiplayer Destiny clones, one developer listened to their fans and delivered a refreshing take on the classic Playstation game, Resident Evil 2, only 24 months after delivering a refreshing sequel (Resident Evil VII) to a close to dead franchise.

Resident Evil franchise was all but dead. Resident Evil 5
wasn’t really a Resident Evil game (More action than Survival horror). Resident Evil 6
was worse. Resident Evil Revelations 2 was a step in the right direction, but Capcom is starting to really shine and get some momentum with their releases in terms of quality, performance and surprises.

This is the scariest game I’ve ever played period. And the game isn’t filled with dozens of jump scares like Outlast. Resident Evil 2 REmake is legitimately filled with dread, that can probably single handedly be pointed to the re-arrival of Mr X., who stalks you throughout the game, wherever you go. It’s brilliant and it keeps you guessing throughout your playthroughs with Leon and Claire.

Players who have experienced the 1998 original, will be happy to know that although Point A and Point Z might be similar, playing through the game points B, C, D, E, F, G........W, X, Y, are completely different. The puzzles are different. The interaction with NPCs are different. Ada Wong and Sheri are handled differently. And there’s just enough surprises to keep the pacing good and the fear great.

Scariest Games Ranked
HM: P.T.
HM: F.E.A.R.
12. Alien Isolation
11. Condemned 2: Bloodshot
10. Dino Crisis
9. Dead Space
8. Silent Hill
7. Resident Evil 2
6. Condemned: Criminal Origin
5. Amnesia: The Dark Decent
4. Outlast
3. Silent Hill 2
2. Resident Evil
1. Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Resident Evil Franchise Ranked

1. Resident Evil 2
2. Resident Evil Director’s Cut
3. Resident Evil 2 REmake
4. Resident Evil 4
5. Resident Evil REmake
6. Resident Evil: Code Veronica
7. Resident Evil 7
8. Resident Evil Revelations
9. Resident Evil Zero
10. Resident Evil Revelations 2
11. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
12. Resident Evil Dead Aim
13. Resident Evil 5
14. Resident Evil 6

Knowing what I know now, if one of my friends wanted to play this over the slew of other co-op zombie games? Well the ranking would be like this.

1. Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve)
2. Left 4 Dead (Valve)
3. Dying Light (Techland)
4. Resident Evil Revelations (Capcom)
5. Nation Red
6. Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Capcom)
7. Resident Evil 5 (Capcom)
------------Quality Drops------------
8. Dead Rising 3 (Capcom)
9. Killing Floor (Tripwire Interactive)
10. Dead Island Riptide (Techland)
11. Dead Island (Techland)
12. Resident Evil 6 (Capcom)



The problem is the gaps in quality from the games on the lower half of this list. Dying Light is by far the most technical superior game where it has very minimal technical issues (glitches), clarity in missions, user interface; these are all things that suffer from the Dead Island games and Dead Rising 3. Dead Rising 3 also has a time limit that distracts you from the fun of what could have been killing zombies with all the objects in the world. Why would Capcom want to limit you like this? The final boss is barely a final boss. If you happen to get the C-Ending or F-Ending, the game just ends with a text crawl and brings you back to the main menu with options of starting a new game (no new game+) or skip to a chapter. There’s no casual roam the world option.

As far as gameplay Dead Rising is fun as hell. It’s very satisfying killing zombies with vehicles and weapons you can create with the hundreds of objects. The drop in and drop out co-op option is pretty great too. This is a must for games like this and I’m saddened to hear Dead Rising 4 will not have this option. The story element is a huge miss with Capcom- it doesn’t have to be a stellar story, just make it seamless and have it make sense!

Edit: 12/31/16 - To make matters worse, Capcom, for whatever reason, decided to make the DLC unplayable in co-op. This means that 50% of the game is single player and 50% of the game can be played co-op. (took me 15 hours to play through the main campaign, and 15 hours to do all four DLC episodes) So if you purchased the game for the co-op element, and expecting to play with friends, you will be out of luck playing through the Four Episodes. Makes little sense.

Very late to the party on this one, but just reaffirming what everyone else has already said. Outside of the OG GTA games, this might be the most satisfying sandbox game I’ve ever played, simply because the traversing is so damn good. Web swinging from building to building in classic Spider-man form, heading to new missions, challenges, or Spider-man lore side quests was extremely fun. Insomniac has a winning formula here which probably was borrowed and modified from the Arkham games. If you have been patiently waiting for the next Batman Arkham game, this just might check all your boxes. Oh, and it plays wonderfully on the deck.

Obviously will be checking out the stand alone Miles game and Spider-man 2 when available.

It’s great. It’s exactly what you would expect to be. Fallout in Space. There are a billion things to do and its fun doing all of it. Last year, I played and loved No Man’s Sky. And in my review, I specially called out Starfield to make sure the un-fun things in that game, were not repeated in this game. For the most part, that turned out true. The ONLY thing No Man’s Skydoes better is space flight/landing/taking off. It’s seamless in No Man’s Sky; In Starfield taking off and landing is a cutscene. I’m sure they tried to get it to work but it’s OK that it doesn’t. No Man’s Sky is a Space Sim. Starfield is an RPG where the dialog is what drives the game. Space combat is still fun as VATs has found it’s way in the form of locking on an enemy ship.

There’s no co-op in Starfield, which was a tall order, but you can still build your ship, customize your homes, customize your outposts, there’s just no one to share it with (not counting screenshots of course).

The biggest negative that come to mind is the inventory system, which is awful. And I’m not even really referring to being encumbered 99% of the time. It’s when you dump all of your inventory into storage boxes, and then try to craft something that is in the same base as your inventory boxes, the crafting system does not recognize your inventory unless you are holding it. I’m sure that will be patched in, but it’s a huge pain in the ass right now.

Frankly, the fact that the inventory system is the biggest complaint rather than performance or bugs is a good thing for Bethesda. I have not experienced any performance issues (running 3080, Ryzen), just a couple of fun physics issues and an occasional game crash. Luckily the game excelles in every other area where these negatives do not ruin the game experience.

Half-Life fans need to play this immediately.

You may not get to play as Gordon Freeman or see any familiar characters… but you’ll see plenty of combine enemies and crab heads. You’ll even get to use a modified version of the gravity gun giving the nameless player the ability to “rocket jump” to solve puzzles and escape enemies. The puzzle solving is definitely unique to “Half-Life” adding a stealth element allowing the player to sneak past enemies in the dark if they choose. There are two wonderfully setup climax battles in the middle of the campaign and the end- which by the end will leave you wanting more. Much more.

Disclaimer: I'm going to use this a moving assessment of the game as Ubisoft addresses bugs, glitches and overall improvements over the next few months. Breakpoint made the news recently being called out for it's poor sales performance.

Total Playtime as of 11/5/19: 33 hours Solo & 33 hours Coop

The game isn't radically different than Wildlands, even if Ubisoft's press briefing wants you to believe it being different hurt sales of the game. The open world is still huge, the graphics are top notch and a huge step up from Wildlands playing in 4K.

It's the little changes that made fans of the franchise weary. First, you do not have three AI teammates like Nomad had in Wildlands. You are completely solo unless one of your uPlay friends joins your game. That's the other big annoyance; the game is only available on uPlay OR Epic's new storefront. No steam this time around like the first game.

They wanted the game to be more realistic when your character is injured. So they added things like water and food that your character can use when you are fatigued, but you barely use these items as the idea was scrapped before the game launched. So these items are still in the game, but are barely used.

Base jumping is nearly impossible and needs to be fixed to be easier to jump off cliffs. If you are running down a hill, your character will start falling / sliding and rolling until your stamina is depleted. This makes escaping enemies very difficult at times.

They added a cameo prone feature that allows your character to hide in mud, as aerial or soldier patrols pass by, allowing your character to hide even better than before. This is a nice feature when drones flyby overhead.

I love the addition of Jon Bernthal in the game, but I wish his character was Nomad and not the villain, because once the main story is complete, you never see or hear Bernthal ever again... for obvious reasons.

Ubisoft has come out and said they will make changes to the game over the next months, including adding back 3 AI teammates, so I'll check back when these changes are made to see what other improvements were added.