2024
It's a survival/crafting game! It has very nice visuals and you walk around in a giant mech which is cool but it's a survival/crafting game! And moreso than almost any genre out there I'm starting to feel like when you've played one, you've played 'em all. (I guess calling it a "survival" game is a bit of a misnomer bc there's no enemies or hostility in this game, you get what I mean lol)
I really do have to give Lightyear Frontier some credit for its visuals, it's super gorgeous, it has a far more artistically interesting world than most of these games. The glowing green lights in the night sky, the pink trees and neon flora. It's nice! I found myself quite interested in the relics and artefacts and stuff, as well as the giant skeleton in the Yellow Forest, it has some cool stuff going on in its world!
But, like most of these games, it's a bit of a slog. It's still in Early Access so I give it somewhat of a pass, but even with your Titanfall mech thing, movement didn't feel fun! It felt sluggish, and almost every day you're having to venture out to a different corner of the map for some resource that can only be found there, and it takes ages to get there and back with basically nothing going on in-between! And it's so easy to get overencumbered without inventory upgrades that certainly early on, you're gonna have to be making multiple trips! Multiple boring trips! I didn't feel like setting up multiple base camps all over the world, that would have drained my resources and made things take even longer! (Also, there's some glitches present, naturally. I fired about 6 red paint blobs at my Upgrade Depot and it simply did not change colour when everything else did, lmao)
But monotony aside, this is a solid foundation. It's got a gorgeous world, some beautiful stuff to make and some gorgeous ways to customise your camp. You could get a real pretty looking homestead if you invest enough time in this! It just needs to be a bit more, uh, fun to get there! Needs a little more life in it! It's still early days, so I'm confident they can bring that, and maybe fix that voice actor's attempt at what I think is supposed to be a Southern accent? Because SHEESH that shit is bad
I really do have to give Lightyear Frontier some credit for its visuals, it's super gorgeous, it has a far more artistically interesting world than most of these games. The glowing green lights in the night sky, the pink trees and neon flora. It's nice! I found myself quite interested in the relics and artefacts and stuff, as well as the giant skeleton in the Yellow Forest, it has some cool stuff going on in its world!
But, like most of these games, it's a bit of a slog. It's still in Early Access so I give it somewhat of a pass, but even with your Titanfall mech thing, movement didn't feel fun! It felt sluggish, and almost every day you're having to venture out to a different corner of the map for some resource that can only be found there, and it takes ages to get there and back with basically nothing going on in-between! And it's so easy to get overencumbered without inventory upgrades that certainly early on, you're gonna have to be making multiple trips! Multiple boring trips! I didn't feel like setting up multiple base camps all over the world, that would have drained my resources and made things take even longer! (Also, there's some glitches present, naturally. I fired about 6 red paint blobs at my Upgrade Depot and it simply did not change colour when everything else did, lmao)
But monotony aside, this is a solid foundation. It's got a gorgeous world, some beautiful stuff to make and some gorgeous ways to customise your camp. You could get a real pretty looking homestead if you invest enough time in this! It just needs to be a bit more, uh, fun to get there! Needs a little more life in it! It's still early days, so I'm confident they can bring that, and maybe fix that voice actor's attempt at what I think is supposed to be a Southern accent? Because SHEESH that shit is bad
2014
I first started playing Hearthstone around the tail end of the Knights Of The Frozen Throne expansion about halfway through 2017, just before Kobolds and Catacombs was released. And man, let me tell ya - Kobolds and Catacombs, certainly balance-wise, was a mess! Warlock was broken as shit! I still have nightmares about Cubelock; Skull of the Man'ari, Bloodreaver Guldan, Voidlord etc. every few months. I picked Hearthstone up because while I'd never played World Of Warcraft (and didn't particularly care for what I'd seen) I liked card games and thought this one looked cool. It had a ton of charm and colour and personality, a sense of style and humour that WoW seemed to be lacking. To this day, this is still one of my favourite things about Hearthstone. It's not hugely self-serious like WoW, not constantly trying to force an unearned sense of grandeur or epicness. This game just has a ton of fun with itself. Recently they had a wild-western themed expansion where Paladin got a card called "Holy Cowboy" who discounts your holy spells. They referenced Leeroy Jenkins and gave him a card. He's one of the most broken cards in history! It's fun!
In 2017 I liked everything about Hearthstone except for playing Hearthstone. Decks stayed broken and oppressive to play against for a long time. Either the balance team were asleep at the wheel for years on end, or they didn't exist. Corridor Creeper, Shudderwock, Call To Arms, Ultimate Infestation, THE CAVERNS BELOW. I can list off so many notoriously diabolical Hearthstone cards that made the game unfun to play for months at a time off my head like that, it's so easy. Beyond this, the game's monetization model, whilst not the most evil thing I've ever seen, was still pretty manipulative, as all monetization models are. Hearthstone was very stingy with handing out rewards of any kind. Card packs were few and far between, and getting the arcane dust needed to make the cards and decks you want practically necessitated shelling out a bit of money for some packs and getting lucky, or waiting a week for your weekly quests. Y'know, all that mobile game shit.
But it's not 2017 anymore, it's 2024, and Hearthstone has just recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and man how things have changed. Maybe you could argue the improvements have come too late, that positive changes being enacted 10 games into a game's lifespan isn't particularly impressive, and I think that'd be fair! But the fact remains the same, Hearthstone has been improved massively, and after years of considering my relationship with this game "complicated", I've finally come to terms with the fact that I just like this game. A lot. In 2024, Hearthstone comes dangerously close to being what I'd call "generous" with its rewards. There's a rewards track that's honestly been a godsend for the game. You're meted out gold fairly frequently now for just playing with the game, you're given extra points towards levelling up on the reward track (which results in gold and free arena runs and other stuff) by completing achievements, which are usually fulfilling fun, silly stipulations based on certain card effects. I just got one for copying a certain amount of minions with Celestial Projectionist, for example. This gave me gold versions of the card for free, and allowed me to trade in my original, non-gold versions for other random rare cards! It's good stuff! It's honestly not that hard to make the decks or cards you want anymore, I haven't felt behoved to spend money on Hearthstone in ages and that's awesome.
Equally as importantly, the balance team are super on top of things nowadays. Things rarely stay broken or oppressive for long. Hotfixes and balance patches are far more regular, and they also buff cards now too instead of just nerfing stuff into the ground. Handbuff Paladin just recently was hideously broken. Now it's reasonable! Now Tempo Demon Hunter is totally ludicrous, the devs have already acknowledged it and hinted at a hotfix! The game is simply more fun to play when you can actually have faith that the balance will be ironed out within a reasonable time if/when ever it gets out of whack.
And with this in mind, I struggle to find much to dislike about Hearthstone nowadays. I think it doesn't get enough credit for its incredible art and theming. Hearthstone card art is so consistently incredible, so colourful and cartoony, yet so detailed and expressive, I could stare at it for days. Baku The Mooneater, Cat Trick, Kobold Librarian. Some of my favourite card art ever! And the soundtrack? Bro. I've probably used the Hearthstone soundtrack more in my videos than any other video game OST. Ballroom Slink from One Night In Karazhan is one of my favourite pieces of video game music ever - so silly and groovy and tonally perfect both for a zany card game, and - as it turns out, my YouTube videos! I love love love the very cosy, baroque feeling Hearthstone's music goes for, it really does capture the feeling of being in a tavern by the fireside, but also kinda...Immersing yourself in other settings, imagining being in the desert for Saviours Of Uldum, or atop a volcano in Blackrock Mountain. I don't think I've ever heard as many guitar slides in any game's music as much as I do in Hearthstone, the peeps on the woodwinds and acoustics in these songs are pros, bro. This is all without mentioning the incredible attention to detail. Every. Single Card. Gets a little bit of flavour text in the Collection Manager, generally, these are actually pretty funny and well-written jokes! And the fact that every playable minion, including ones that aren't cards themselves and are only tokens summoned or generated by them have voiced lines of dialogue for when they're summoned! That's super impressive! I don't think people talk about that enough! I don't think they give enough credit to how good this game feels to control! "How it feels to control? It's a card game lol" your hater-ass is thinking, throwing in a little passive-aggressive "lol" at the end just to piss me off. Fuck you. You can cue up actions in Hearthstone, there's like a buffer of actions that lets you perform about 30 different inputs without card animations or voice lines slowing you down. You can easily cancel a summon if you think twice about it by just pulling it back to your hand. It's super intuitive! It has great game feel!
I guess I still fundamentally disagree with the Hearthstone devs' philosophy on randomness. Hearthstone has been criticised for years for relying too much on randomness. On random card effects, random targets of damage, random cards that can be summoned or generated in any number of ways. Against classes who practically rely on generating random shit like Priest or Mage (both of whom I hardly ever play out of spite) this can just be really frustrating! It's basically impossible to keep track of what cards they have at any time! And you can end up losing to some random bullshit they have that you could never have possibly predicted! The devs maintain that the randomness spices up the game, it keeps it fun and fresh and stops people from falling into predictable play patterns. I get what they're saying, and I'd agree if this wasn't a game that leant so hard into competitive, if there was any more substantial single-player experience where this randomness could go, never to interfere in matches with actual stakes. Hearthstone has had great single-player experiences before like Dungeon Run, which I loved! And it also had Mercenaries, which is...Fine! But I don't think, and have never thought that Hearthstone's reliance on randomness is worth the supposed variety it brings. Okay, yeah it spices things up, but at what cost? Again, if the game didn't lean so heavily towards being for people wanting a high-level, competitive experience, I'd get it! But as it is, this weird championing of random generation and crazy shit just feels totally at odds with what the game is otherwise trying to be.
But y'know, if it weren't for that randomness, I think in 2024 I might consider giving this game 5 stars. It was maybe 3, 3 and a half back in 2017, but it really has come a long way. I was pretty surprised, and to be honest a bit saddened to see this game's average rating sat at 2.9/5 on here. Maybe these reviews were left back in the day? Maybe people were angry about the monetization, or the balance, maybe - like me, they felt kinda dirty about lavishing praise on any game associated with Activision Blizzard. But those first two things have been largely remedied, and closer inspection will show you that Hearthstone's dev team seem to be a diverse and inclusive group of people who were often appauled by the decisions of ActiBlizz. They've made a gorgeous, charming, artful card game that I've found myself going back to many times over the years, and it's a shame that their game is often caught in the crossfire of their overlords' controversies. If you played Hearthstone a long time ago and found yourself frustrated and disheartened by it, I implore you to go back and give it a second look. You might be surprised by what you find.
In 2017 I liked everything about Hearthstone except for playing Hearthstone. Decks stayed broken and oppressive to play against for a long time. Either the balance team were asleep at the wheel for years on end, or they didn't exist. Corridor Creeper, Shudderwock, Call To Arms, Ultimate Infestation, THE CAVERNS BELOW. I can list off so many notoriously diabolical Hearthstone cards that made the game unfun to play for months at a time off my head like that, it's so easy. Beyond this, the game's monetization model, whilst not the most evil thing I've ever seen, was still pretty manipulative, as all monetization models are. Hearthstone was very stingy with handing out rewards of any kind. Card packs were few and far between, and getting the arcane dust needed to make the cards and decks you want practically necessitated shelling out a bit of money for some packs and getting lucky, or waiting a week for your weekly quests. Y'know, all that mobile game shit.
But it's not 2017 anymore, it's 2024, and Hearthstone has just recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and man how things have changed. Maybe you could argue the improvements have come too late, that positive changes being enacted 10 games into a game's lifespan isn't particularly impressive, and I think that'd be fair! But the fact remains the same, Hearthstone has been improved massively, and after years of considering my relationship with this game "complicated", I've finally come to terms with the fact that I just like this game. A lot. In 2024, Hearthstone comes dangerously close to being what I'd call "generous" with its rewards. There's a rewards track that's honestly been a godsend for the game. You're meted out gold fairly frequently now for just playing with the game, you're given extra points towards levelling up on the reward track (which results in gold and free arena runs and other stuff) by completing achievements, which are usually fulfilling fun, silly stipulations based on certain card effects. I just got one for copying a certain amount of minions with Celestial Projectionist, for example. This gave me gold versions of the card for free, and allowed me to trade in my original, non-gold versions for other random rare cards! It's good stuff! It's honestly not that hard to make the decks or cards you want anymore, I haven't felt behoved to spend money on Hearthstone in ages and that's awesome.
Equally as importantly, the balance team are super on top of things nowadays. Things rarely stay broken or oppressive for long. Hotfixes and balance patches are far more regular, and they also buff cards now too instead of just nerfing stuff into the ground. Handbuff Paladin just recently was hideously broken. Now it's reasonable! Now Tempo Demon Hunter is totally ludicrous, the devs have already acknowledged it and hinted at a hotfix! The game is simply more fun to play when you can actually have faith that the balance will be ironed out within a reasonable time if/when ever it gets out of whack.
And with this in mind, I struggle to find much to dislike about Hearthstone nowadays. I think it doesn't get enough credit for its incredible art and theming. Hearthstone card art is so consistently incredible, so colourful and cartoony, yet so detailed and expressive, I could stare at it for days. Baku The Mooneater, Cat Trick, Kobold Librarian. Some of my favourite card art ever! And the soundtrack? Bro. I've probably used the Hearthstone soundtrack more in my videos than any other video game OST. Ballroom Slink from One Night In Karazhan is one of my favourite pieces of video game music ever - so silly and groovy and tonally perfect both for a zany card game, and - as it turns out, my YouTube videos! I love love love the very cosy, baroque feeling Hearthstone's music goes for, it really does capture the feeling of being in a tavern by the fireside, but also kinda...Immersing yourself in other settings, imagining being in the desert for Saviours Of Uldum, or atop a volcano in Blackrock Mountain. I don't think I've ever heard as many guitar slides in any game's music as much as I do in Hearthstone, the peeps on the woodwinds and acoustics in these songs are pros, bro. This is all without mentioning the incredible attention to detail. Every. Single Card. Gets a little bit of flavour text in the Collection Manager, generally, these are actually pretty funny and well-written jokes! And the fact that every playable minion, including ones that aren't cards themselves and are only tokens summoned or generated by them have voiced lines of dialogue for when they're summoned! That's super impressive! I don't think people talk about that enough! I don't think they give enough credit to how good this game feels to control! "How it feels to control? It's a card game lol" your hater-ass is thinking, throwing in a little passive-aggressive "lol" at the end just to piss me off. Fuck you. You can cue up actions in Hearthstone, there's like a buffer of actions that lets you perform about 30 different inputs without card animations or voice lines slowing you down. You can easily cancel a summon if you think twice about it by just pulling it back to your hand. It's super intuitive! It has great game feel!
I guess I still fundamentally disagree with the Hearthstone devs' philosophy on randomness. Hearthstone has been criticised for years for relying too much on randomness. On random card effects, random targets of damage, random cards that can be summoned or generated in any number of ways. Against classes who practically rely on generating random shit like Priest or Mage (both of whom I hardly ever play out of spite) this can just be really frustrating! It's basically impossible to keep track of what cards they have at any time! And you can end up losing to some random bullshit they have that you could never have possibly predicted! The devs maintain that the randomness spices up the game, it keeps it fun and fresh and stops people from falling into predictable play patterns. I get what they're saying, and I'd agree if this wasn't a game that leant so hard into competitive, if there was any more substantial single-player experience where this randomness could go, never to interfere in matches with actual stakes. Hearthstone has had great single-player experiences before like Dungeon Run, which I loved! And it also had Mercenaries, which is...Fine! But I don't think, and have never thought that Hearthstone's reliance on randomness is worth the supposed variety it brings. Okay, yeah it spices things up, but at what cost? Again, if the game didn't lean so heavily towards being for people wanting a high-level, competitive experience, I'd get it! But as it is, this weird championing of random generation and crazy shit just feels totally at odds with what the game is otherwise trying to be.
But y'know, if it weren't for that randomness, I think in 2024 I might consider giving this game 5 stars. It was maybe 3, 3 and a half back in 2017, but it really has come a long way. I was pretty surprised, and to be honest a bit saddened to see this game's average rating sat at 2.9/5 on here. Maybe these reviews were left back in the day? Maybe people were angry about the monetization, or the balance, maybe - like me, they felt kinda dirty about lavishing praise on any game associated with Activision Blizzard. But those first two things have been largely remedied, and closer inspection will show you that Hearthstone's dev team seem to be a diverse and inclusive group of people who were often appauled by the decisions of ActiBlizz. They've made a gorgeous, charming, artful card game that I've found myself going back to many times over the years, and it's a shame that their game is often caught in the crossfire of their overlords' controversies. If you played Hearthstone a long time ago and found yourself frustrated and disheartened by it, I implore you to go back and give it a second look. You might be surprised by what you find.
Yes, I played one of those oldfangled car games. Why did I play the car game, you may ask? Well, I saw some footage of Burnout 3: Takedown the other day and thought it looked fun and really wanted to play it! Plus, I'm coming up on my 100th review and wanted to diversify my portfolio, so to speak. (I do not have a real job.) Alas, Burnout 3: Takedown is practically impossible to play today without an emulator, and that'd require sitting at my desk - and I don't wanna play games at my desk for the sake of my back! Also, I suspect someone sprinkled 17 Testosterone pills down my mouth some weeks ago whilst I was sleeping, and thus cars have now become my sole personality trait. I like it when they go fast and the engine makes a noise. Now that I have successfully transitioned into a car guy, I decided to fill the Burnout 3: Takedown-shaped hole in my life by playing the nearest thing I could, which was Burnout Paradise: Remastered on Game Pass.
And it was pretty fun! The core conceit of Burnout being that it's not so much a game for people who love cars as it is for people who love crashing things and wrecking shit is awesome! It's why I sought Burnout 3 out and not fuckiiiin, Need For Speed or Garfield Kart or any of those other more stripped back driving sims. And Burnout Paradise definitely delivers on the promise of mayhem, there's a lot of smart design decisions here that make the action real arcade-y and simple and fun in a super uncomplicated way. I love how "wrecking" your car is such a temporary setback, you just see a sick slow-mo vid of how badly you crashed for a few seconds and then you're back on the road, ready to go! Driving feels super good, you go like fast in this game - "no shit" you're thinking, it's a fucking drivey racey game, but like no man, you can go fuckin fast, there's nary a better feeling in video games than going full speed in Burnout, pumping your whole-ass boost meter and driving down the highway w some 2000's hard rock playing. Except maybe taking out like, 5 other drivers in a row w some 2000's hard rock playing! That shit owns! Road Rage is far and away the best overworld event in this game,
This is one of the most late 2000's games ever made, not just because Jimmy Eat World and Seether are on the OST, but because it did the fashionable thing that every series was doing at the time and took a previously non-open world series, open world! And that's where the problems start. Because you're racing around an open world instead of designated race tracks, you often find yourself driving into oncoming traffic, which makes Race and Marked Man events in particular more annoying than they need to be. Annoying, not hard. They're still extremely easy, but if you ever wreck, it's because you were constantly having to divert your attention between the objective marker at the top of the screen, the minimap in the bottom left to see if you're coming up on any alternative routes and shortcuts, and the fuckin' road in front of you! It's really pace-breaking to wreck so constantly. Once or twice isn't so bad, but in my experience when I wrecked it almost never really felt like my fault, it was because I was looking at the minimap while driving (bc I felt like I had to), then looked up at the road to find I'm speeding directly into a fuckin' pickup truck with no time to react! It really sucks the wind out of fast-paced events that should otherwise be so much fun.
Also it's a testament to how poorly this open world meshes with a driving game when I'm advocating for fast travel, but this game needed fast travel. Overworld events are dotted all over the open world, but said events can only ever end in 1 of 8 specific places in that world. So if you wanna tackle any of the many things moreso in the middle of the map and away from these landmarks (and this is where most of the Road Rage events are) then you've gotta go really out of your way to seek them out. And there's no ping system! You can't mark anything on your map as far as I can tell! Am I missing something? If you wanna seek out a specific event, I'm pretty sure you've just gotta keep stop-starting and checking your map to see if you're going in the right direction! That's the best way I could find! Again, talk about a pacebreaker! This is compounded by the fact that you can't just retry events! If you fail an event - and again, all of them end in only 1 of 8 places, you've gotta drive 20% of the way back across the map just to get the starting point! Huh?
ALSO also this game does not tutorialise things very well at all. I did not know how to start Showtime mode (a fan favourite that I thought was just fine) until the fuckin' DJ announcer guy mentioned it, and I forgot how he explained to do a Barrel Roll and a Top Spin and couldn't find any in-game tutorial to brush up on it, so I just had to look it up!
Burnout Paradise is fundamentally really fun, it's like the Skate to Need For Speed or Forza's Tony Hawk. It's not concerned about realism, it's silly and arcade-y. It encourages you to wreck shit and get hurt and that's dope! But it should be more dope. It keeps getting in its own way with this open world structure, a total noose around its neck. Just let me drive and make people explode! Stop making me navigate and check my map and divert my attention between like 3 different fuckin' things! And also let me play Burnout 3: Takedown you freaks
And it was pretty fun! The core conceit of Burnout being that it's not so much a game for people who love cars as it is for people who love crashing things and wrecking shit is awesome! It's why I sought Burnout 3 out and not fuckiiiin, Need For Speed or Garfield Kart or any of those other more stripped back driving sims. And Burnout Paradise definitely delivers on the promise of mayhem, there's a lot of smart design decisions here that make the action real arcade-y and simple and fun in a super uncomplicated way. I love how "wrecking" your car is such a temporary setback, you just see a sick slow-mo vid of how badly you crashed for a few seconds and then you're back on the road, ready to go! Driving feels super good, you go like fast in this game - "no shit" you're thinking, it's a fucking drivey racey game, but like no man, you can go fuckin fast, there's nary a better feeling in video games than going full speed in Burnout, pumping your whole-ass boost meter and driving down the highway w some 2000's hard rock playing. Except maybe taking out like, 5 other drivers in a row w some 2000's hard rock playing! That shit owns! Road Rage is far and away the best overworld event in this game,
This is one of the most late 2000's games ever made, not just because Jimmy Eat World and Seether are on the OST, but because it did the fashionable thing that every series was doing at the time and took a previously non-open world series, open world! And that's where the problems start. Because you're racing around an open world instead of designated race tracks, you often find yourself driving into oncoming traffic, which makes Race and Marked Man events in particular more annoying than they need to be. Annoying, not hard. They're still extremely easy, but if you ever wreck, it's because you were constantly having to divert your attention between the objective marker at the top of the screen, the minimap in the bottom left to see if you're coming up on any alternative routes and shortcuts, and the fuckin' road in front of you! It's really pace-breaking to wreck so constantly. Once or twice isn't so bad, but in my experience when I wrecked it almost never really felt like my fault, it was because I was looking at the minimap while driving (bc I felt like I had to), then looked up at the road to find I'm speeding directly into a fuckin' pickup truck with no time to react! It really sucks the wind out of fast-paced events that should otherwise be so much fun.
Also it's a testament to how poorly this open world meshes with a driving game when I'm advocating for fast travel, but this game needed fast travel. Overworld events are dotted all over the open world, but said events can only ever end in 1 of 8 specific places in that world. So if you wanna tackle any of the many things moreso in the middle of the map and away from these landmarks (and this is where most of the Road Rage events are) then you've gotta go really out of your way to seek them out. And there's no ping system! You can't mark anything on your map as far as I can tell! Am I missing something? If you wanna seek out a specific event, I'm pretty sure you've just gotta keep stop-starting and checking your map to see if you're going in the right direction! That's the best way I could find! Again, talk about a pacebreaker! This is compounded by the fact that you can't just retry events! If you fail an event - and again, all of them end in only 1 of 8 places, you've gotta drive 20% of the way back across the map just to get the starting point! Huh?
ALSO also this game does not tutorialise things very well at all. I did not know how to start Showtime mode (a fan favourite that I thought was just fine) until the fuckin' DJ announcer guy mentioned it, and I forgot how he explained to do a Barrel Roll and a Top Spin and couldn't find any in-game tutorial to brush up on it, so I just had to look it up!
Burnout Paradise is fundamentally really fun, it's like the Skate to Need For Speed or Forza's Tony Hawk. It's not concerned about realism, it's silly and arcade-y. It encourages you to wreck shit and get hurt and that's dope! But it should be more dope. It keeps getting in its own way with this open world structure, a total noose around its neck. Just let me drive and make people explode! Stop making me navigate and check my map and divert my attention between like 3 different fuckin' things! And also let me play Burnout 3: Takedown you freaks
2019
I went on a hike once, but it was nothing like this. My Father and I were trekking through the Cairngorms in the heart of Scotland. If you haven't seen it, it's a beautiful place. Flowing rivers, glistening lochs, bustling forests, the works. Every way you look, you're encircled by these white-capped hills that lap over eachother like great waves on a distant ocean.
Needless to say, when the time finally came for us to begin our hike -- I was excited. Heart pumping, legs twitching, balls tingling, (they do that when I'm excited) I couldn't wait to challenge these mountains, to duel with them with my own hands and feet. So voracious was my climbing appetite, that by the time I topped my first tableland, I realised I'd left my Dad behind. At first, I was struck with concern -- he had a history of heart complications and a poor sense of direction, it wasn't out of the question he'd get lost, or worse -- perish. Then I remembered all the times he'd forgotten my birthday and cheated on his wives and realised I didn't care. I pressed on, determined to reach the highest point of these mountaintops. My feet became warriors, my Limited Edition Ahegao Yeezys their Spartan helms. My balls were still tingling. I crested over every crevice, I powered through every plateau, I marched across every arch. Needless to say, my progress without my deadbeat Father was incredible. "Soon," I thought, "that summit will submit."
And then the snow fell.
And it kept falling.
And it kept falling until all of the Cairngorms were a sheet of paper. I, a small mark only impressed upon it by the dirt of a fingernail. Beginning to panic, I scoured the area for shelter, and found a small cave overlooking a gentle slope. I nestled my way in and sparked a small fire with some twigs and my trusty M1A1 U.S. Military Flamethrower, which I never leave the house without. I checked the time on my phone -- 14:51. "I really hope it stops snowing soon," I thought.
But it didn't.
It snowed and it snowed and it snowed for what felt like eons. I swore I saw entire families of deer cross the mountains from my left, and come back days later from the right, smaller in number. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. I began to ponder my life and all the things I'd seen, suspecting I was coming to the end of it. I reminisced on the times I'd burnt the midnight oil at my desk as though some kind of infernal engine built for the sole purpose of generating laughs from strangers online. I wondered, was it worth it? I began to ruminate on what had caused this endless blizzard. Some kind of freak weather incident no one could have predicted? Or some kind of cosmic karma, cast down from the heavens as if to show me how futile and trivial my pursuits had been all along? As if even my own mind was turning against me, the one thing I could think of before long, the sole remaining thought I had to distract me from my impending freezing demise...Was that of the look a woman gives you when you kiss her. When you hold her close, press your face up against hers, and then look down at her after you're done, foreheads meeting in a holy union, like what swans do. The look she gives you in return, when she looks back up and her eyes meet yours? There is nothing more beautiful in this life. Nothing more tender. It is the most innocent smile, the purest expression of affection. Nothing in the world can emulate that. I should know, I've tried. I've spent countless hours trying to do it in the mirror. I'm doing it right now.
I look at my phone again. 14:56. "I'm finished", I tell myself. "This is it". I close my eyes, ready to drift off into the chilling embrace of death. And then? Precious memories begin flickering through my mind, like pictures in a film reel. Moments of joy from my childhood, moments of sadness from my adolescence, moments of frustration from my adulthood. All of them roll through my mind at a speed I'm surprised I can even comprehend, but I can...And then...Suddenly...I can feel my fingers again...I can feel my nose running again..."Am I dead?" I wonder. "Is this a near-death experience? Do you get the feeling back just before you die or something?"
But no, soon I realise what's really going on.
Finally, the heroin has kicked in.
The 8 mg's of heroin I'd snorted shortly before the snow began falling and shortly after I'd twisted my ankle a little bit trying to do a Michael-Jackson-Smooth-Criminal lean over the edge of a steep mesa had finally taken effect. I'm fucking back baby. Enough "remembering" and all that pussy shit. I pick up my flamethrower, blast this Nightcore version of "Word Up" by Cameo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5CyOl5dJY) and decide it's time to re-enter society and make this mountain my bitch. Stepping outside, frothing at the mouth like a rabid badger, with a gait not entirely unlike Theresa May's "Dancing Queen" entrance to the 2018 Conservative Party Conference played in 3x speed, I dart around every orifice of the mountain range, the snow that nearly doomed me now a mere triviality. It's as if I don't even know how fast I'm going, nor can I control myself. I have no thoughts of pain or fatigue or cold, all I'm seeing are dazzling lights, rapturous kaleidoscopes firing off before my eyes. At one point, I'm pretty sure I see the entirety of the movie "Get Out" by Jordan Peele, which is a great movie and all -- but as a white guy I feel a bit weird about that, almost like I'm being insensitive somehow. I don't know. I just don't feel like that's the one movie that should be playing in my mind of all people, y'know?
And before I know it, when my senses finally return to me. I'm there. I'm at the summit. My heartbeat seems to have slowed somewhat, my breathing somewhat normal again, save for a heavy pant. The entirety of the majestic Scottish highlands stretches out before. I shake my head in disbelief, "what a rich tapestry...Not everyone gets to appreciate a view like this." And after taking it all in, I know of only one way to celebrate.
Without even touching my own penis, I ejaculate. I ejaculate with the force of 5000 men in what can only be described as a kind of semen spirit bomb. I struggle to find other ways to describe the amount of fluid I dispersed here, so let's just say that if they made cannons that fired PVA glue, it'd be a bit like that. If the local park rangers and hikers thought the snow was thick, "wait until they get a load of this," I smirk. Of course, my logic is flawed. Because I'm far too busy appreciating the view to notice that the sub-zero temperature has frozen my semen solid midway through its descent, and so it's likely to be believed to be typical ice by most casual onlookers, with no one to ever conceive of the incredible cum shower I produced here. Worse still, my penis has frozen solid, and when I reach for it to warm it up, it falls off my body entirely, which I assume is a symptom of hypothermia. I passed out promptly after, and woke up several days later in this chair, writing this review.
All of this is to say, A Short Hike is not a particularly realistic hiking experience. And hey, it doesn't need to be! What it is is a lovely, cosy little game with great visuals, some fun traversal and a very charming personality. A Long Hike next, please!
Needless to say, when the time finally came for us to begin our hike -- I was excited. Heart pumping, legs twitching, balls tingling, (they do that when I'm excited) I couldn't wait to challenge these mountains, to duel with them with my own hands and feet. So voracious was my climbing appetite, that by the time I topped my first tableland, I realised I'd left my Dad behind. At first, I was struck with concern -- he had a history of heart complications and a poor sense of direction, it wasn't out of the question he'd get lost, or worse -- perish. Then I remembered all the times he'd forgotten my birthday and cheated on his wives and realised I didn't care. I pressed on, determined to reach the highest point of these mountaintops. My feet became warriors, my Limited Edition Ahegao Yeezys their Spartan helms. My balls were still tingling. I crested over every crevice, I powered through every plateau, I marched across every arch. Needless to say, my progress without my deadbeat Father was incredible. "Soon," I thought, "that summit will submit."
And then the snow fell.
And it kept falling.
And it kept falling until all of the Cairngorms were a sheet of paper. I, a small mark only impressed upon it by the dirt of a fingernail. Beginning to panic, I scoured the area for shelter, and found a small cave overlooking a gentle slope. I nestled my way in and sparked a small fire with some twigs and my trusty M1A1 U.S. Military Flamethrower, which I never leave the house without. I checked the time on my phone -- 14:51. "I really hope it stops snowing soon," I thought.
But it didn't.
It snowed and it snowed and it snowed for what felt like eons. I swore I saw entire families of deer cross the mountains from my left, and come back days later from the right, smaller in number. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. I began to ponder my life and all the things I'd seen, suspecting I was coming to the end of it. I reminisced on the times I'd burnt the midnight oil at my desk as though some kind of infernal engine built for the sole purpose of generating laughs from strangers online. I wondered, was it worth it? I began to ruminate on what had caused this endless blizzard. Some kind of freak weather incident no one could have predicted? Or some kind of cosmic karma, cast down from the heavens as if to show me how futile and trivial my pursuits had been all along? As if even my own mind was turning against me, the one thing I could think of before long, the sole remaining thought I had to distract me from my impending freezing demise...Was that of the look a woman gives you when you kiss her. When you hold her close, press your face up against hers, and then look down at her after you're done, foreheads meeting in a holy union, like what swans do. The look she gives you in return, when she looks back up and her eyes meet yours? There is nothing more beautiful in this life. Nothing more tender. It is the most innocent smile, the purest expression of affection. Nothing in the world can emulate that. I should know, I've tried. I've spent countless hours trying to do it in the mirror. I'm doing it right now.
I look at my phone again. 14:56. "I'm finished", I tell myself. "This is it". I close my eyes, ready to drift off into the chilling embrace of death. And then? Precious memories begin flickering through my mind, like pictures in a film reel. Moments of joy from my childhood, moments of sadness from my adolescence, moments of frustration from my adulthood. All of them roll through my mind at a speed I'm surprised I can even comprehend, but I can...And then...Suddenly...I can feel my fingers again...I can feel my nose running again..."Am I dead?" I wonder. "Is this a near-death experience? Do you get the feeling back just before you die or something?"
But no, soon I realise what's really going on.
Finally, the heroin has kicked in.
The 8 mg's of heroin I'd snorted shortly before the snow began falling and shortly after I'd twisted my ankle a little bit trying to do a Michael-Jackson-Smooth-Criminal lean over the edge of a steep mesa had finally taken effect. I'm fucking back baby. Enough "remembering" and all that pussy shit. I pick up my flamethrower, blast this Nightcore version of "Word Up" by Cameo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5CyOl5dJY) and decide it's time to re-enter society and make this mountain my bitch. Stepping outside, frothing at the mouth like a rabid badger, with a gait not entirely unlike Theresa May's "Dancing Queen" entrance to the 2018 Conservative Party Conference played in 3x speed, I dart around every orifice of the mountain range, the snow that nearly doomed me now a mere triviality. It's as if I don't even know how fast I'm going, nor can I control myself. I have no thoughts of pain or fatigue or cold, all I'm seeing are dazzling lights, rapturous kaleidoscopes firing off before my eyes. At one point, I'm pretty sure I see the entirety of the movie "Get Out" by Jordan Peele, which is a great movie and all -- but as a white guy I feel a bit weird about that, almost like I'm being insensitive somehow. I don't know. I just don't feel like that's the one movie that should be playing in my mind of all people, y'know?
And before I know it, when my senses finally return to me. I'm there. I'm at the summit. My heartbeat seems to have slowed somewhat, my breathing somewhat normal again, save for a heavy pant. The entirety of the majestic Scottish highlands stretches out before. I shake my head in disbelief, "what a rich tapestry...Not everyone gets to appreciate a view like this." And after taking it all in, I know of only one way to celebrate.
Without even touching my own penis, I ejaculate. I ejaculate with the force of 5000 men in what can only be described as a kind of semen spirit bomb. I struggle to find other ways to describe the amount of fluid I dispersed here, so let's just say that if they made cannons that fired PVA glue, it'd be a bit like that. If the local park rangers and hikers thought the snow was thick, "wait until they get a load of this," I smirk. Of course, my logic is flawed. Because I'm far too busy appreciating the view to notice that the sub-zero temperature has frozen my semen solid midway through its descent, and so it's likely to be believed to be typical ice by most casual onlookers, with no one to ever conceive of the incredible cum shower I produced here. Worse still, my penis has frozen solid, and when I reach for it to warm it up, it falls off my body entirely, which I assume is a symptom of hypothermia. I passed out promptly after, and woke up several days later in this chair, writing this review.
All of this is to say, A Short Hike is not a particularly realistic hiking experience. And hey, it doesn't need to be! What it is is a lovely, cosy little game with great visuals, some fun traversal and a very charming personality. A Long Hike next, please!
2024
This review contains spoilers
Two things you should know about me before you read this review; I have never played the original Persona 3 (this is my first ever Persona game of any kind in fact) and I am typically not a fan of JRPGs -- I find them overly long, tropey and samey. But Persona is a series I've always been meaning to tick off my list, so when this remake was announced I decided to go in with a completely open mind and finish the thing start to finish no matter how I feel about it.
So, having now finished Persona 3 Reload, did it do anything to change my perceptions?
No!
I don't know if I've ever played a game that felt like it dragged quite as much as Persona 3. For the first third of the game it feels like practically nothing happens, you just crawl along a bunch of setup and mundane character interactions at a snail's pace, but then the final act I feel is also super dragged out. In the last month (and likely well before) your social skills are maxed out and you're just skipping through the days, waiting for the end to come. It has some serious pacing issues, and I think you could literally cut it down to half the length and maybe call that reasonable pacing. I can honestly say I did not hate this game at all, but any game that overstays its welcome like this makes you enjoy it less than you would otherwise by result of its insistence. I do not think this game justifies its own length at all.
And a large part of this is owed to the characters and story, which...Man, if you're gonna be like 60% visual novel...You've gotta have a better story and characters than this. I'm really trying not to judge too harshly in this regard because this is a remake of a 2006 game and I think it's fair to say a lot of the characters probably wouldn't have felt quite so played out back then. But damn if I didn't feel like I could predict basically every scene as soon as it started up. The moment Junpei says whatever he says about how you're always the one saving the day or whatever after the 3rd or 4th major shadow I was like "oh this is the beginning of his jealousy arc, isn't it?" and I was right. The moment we showed up with him in tow for this super unnecessary scene with all the female characters in kimonos at the shrine towards the end I was like "oh he's gonna be a sex pest about this isn't he" and I was right (dude seriously wtf is up with that scene at the shrine I still can't figure out the point of it). I distinctly remember thinking to myself early on in the game "there's gonna be a fat guy character whose whole personality trait is eating isn't there" and SURE ENOUGH. GUESS WHO I FUCKING MET LIKE 20 MINUTES LATER.
When I tell you this game is tropey I mean that 5 of the main cast have dead parents at the start of the game, and then another one's dies right in front of you too! Technically, 6 of the main cast start with dead parents if you count the fucking dog, who was the best character by the way! Because he didn't talk! This game truly has no idea how to give characters tragic backstories or grief to get over without killing off their parents, lmao. I get that the game is about death, but c'mon. I just didn't particularly like any of the characters in this game. I kinda like Takeba because she was one of the few characters who felt like they didn't boil down to the same one or two things they like talking about? Junpei is a sex pest! Akihiko likes boxing! Aigis is Elizabeth again but was less entertaining! I kinda liked Takeba and Amada and that's about it. And on the note of characters being predictable, how about that heel turn for Ikutsuki, huh? Didn't see that one coming! (Disclaimer: I saw that one coming. Somehow it still managed to underwhelm me.)
I'm harping on the story and characters a lot because it's a significant part of the game. I just found it mostly mindnumbing, I'm sorry. In the lead up to the 12th major Shadow fight it's basically all characters will talk about. They all just spend days on end going "this is the last fight! hope you're ready!" and like...You know it's not the last fight. You've just unlocked a whole new bunch of Special Fusions that go waaayyy past your current level, Fuuka specifically mentions you not even being close to the end of Tartarus on one of your recent trips, and you can see that the game's calendar goes into March of next year! They are just saying nothing of consequence. It's all they can say. The same thing happens in the final month! You've got this big decision to make, but the characters spend the whole month telling you about how they've already made their decision, even though it's literally your decision to make! But what else are they gonna say? Is Junpei gonna talk about wanting to look at cute girls for the 10,000th time? Is Akihiko gonna say some shit about training? This game is spread way too thin for characters that are nowhere near deep, interesting or likeable enough to support its runtime. I've decided to be nice here and not talk about the summer vacation or school trip sections. I consider this mercy.
I'm giving this game some points because - like everything I've seen from all Persona games, its presentation is genuinely the best in video games right now. The soundtrack is of course incredible (if not a bit repetitive) and the UI and menus? Man. Idk wtf the UX designers at Atlus are smoking but they are just on another fuckin' level man. I don't think another team have ever been so clearly head-and-shoulders above every studio in the world on one specific thing. FromSoft and architecture, maybe? What blows me away is the little touches. The way the character icons change depending on the status effect they're inflicted with, those gorgeous win-screens, the coloured backgrounds in all the social menus. Ugh, oh my fucking god, man. Why does this series about anime teenagers of all things have so much fucking sauce? Western games are yearning for just a bit of this style. All these intangibles come together to mean that Persona 3, whilst an exercise in narrative monotony does at least have incredible vibes, which is the least you can do. You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it around in glitter.
I also wanna say that I actually liked the combat quite a lot. It's among my favourite JRPG battle systems I've seen. Snappy, surprisingly deep, highly customisable -- yeah, I liked it! I'm aware that combat was given a lot of quality-of-life changes from the original, and that's one of the other things that holds me back from giving this a 2 star rating or lower. I really can tell that this is an excellent remake on its own merits, and was very appreciative of its modern sensibilities (in particular, the fast-forward button. Holy shit, thank you god.) Unfortunately, the combat was delivered to me in the form of Tartarus, which got old about as fast as everything else! I did appreciate the occasional layout/aesthetic changes, but it's not enough to make up for the monotony. Have me doing combat in any context more interesting than trawling through 250+ hallways, and I'd just call combat an objective plus for Persona 3.
So, yeah. It didn't really do it for me unfortunately. It puts a lot into its story and characters and I just did not think they were good enough. I genuinely did try and go in with an open mind! But I also don't really know what I was expecting, I kinda knew that it did a lot of stuff I hate in video games before I began. It even does that "multiple choice questions where your answer doesn't matter at all" thing that JRPGs love doing for some reason! But hey, I've finished a Persona game now, no one can ever bug me about it again, and I did make literal Satan towards the end of the game and he did have what looked like 6 titties, so that was pretty cool.
So, having now finished Persona 3 Reload, did it do anything to change my perceptions?
No!
I don't know if I've ever played a game that felt like it dragged quite as much as Persona 3. For the first third of the game it feels like practically nothing happens, you just crawl along a bunch of setup and mundane character interactions at a snail's pace, but then the final act I feel is also super dragged out. In the last month (and likely well before) your social skills are maxed out and you're just skipping through the days, waiting for the end to come. It has some serious pacing issues, and I think you could literally cut it down to half the length and maybe call that reasonable pacing. I can honestly say I did not hate this game at all, but any game that overstays its welcome like this makes you enjoy it less than you would otherwise by result of its insistence. I do not think this game justifies its own length at all.
And a large part of this is owed to the characters and story, which...Man, if you're gonna be like 60% visual novel...You've gotta have a better story and characters than this. I'm really trying not to judge too harshly in this regard because this is a remake of a 2006 game and I think it's fair to say a lot of the characters probably wouldn't have felt quite so played out back then. But damn if I didn't feel like I could predict basically every scene as soon as it started up. The moment Junpei says whatever he says about how you're always the one saving the day or whatever after the 3rd or 4th major shadow I was like "oh this is the beginning of his jealousy arc, isn't it?" and I was right. The moment we showed up with him in tow for this super unnecessary scene with all the female characters in kimonos at the shrine towards the end I was like "oh he's gonna be a sex pest about this isn't he" and I was right (dude seriously wtf is up with that scene at the shrine I still can't figure out the point of it). I distinctly remember thinking to myself early on in the game "there's gonna be a fat guy character whose whole personality trait is eating isn't there" and SURE ENOUGH. GUESS WHO I FUCKING MET LIKE 20 MINUTES LATER.
When I tell you this game is tropey I mean that 5 of the main cast have dead parents at the start of the game, and then another one's dies right in front of you too! Technically, 6 of the main cast start with dead parents if you count the fucking dog, who was the best character by the way! Because he didn't talk! This game truly has no idea how to give characters tragic backstories or grief to get over without killing off their parents, lmao. I get that the game is about death, but c'mon. I just didn't particularly like any of the characters in this game. I kinda like Takeba because she was one of the few characters who felt like they didn't boil down to the same one or two things they like talking about? Junpei is a sex pest! Akihiko likes boxing! Aigis is Elizabeth again but was less entertaining! I kinda liked Takeba and Amada and that's about it. And on the note of characters being predictable, how about that heel turn for Ikutsuki, huh? Didn't see that one coming! (Disclaimer: I saw that one coming. Somehow it still managed to underwhelm me.)
I'm harping on the story and characters a lot because it's a significant part of the game. I just found it mostly mindnumbing, I'm sorry. In the lead up to the 12th major Shadow fight it's basically all characters will talk about. They all just spend days on end going "this is the last fight! hope you're ready!" and like...You know it's not the last fight. You've just unlocked a whole new bunch of Special Fusions that go waaayyy past your current level, Fuuka specifically mentions you not even being close to the end of Tartarus on one of your recent trips, and you can see that the game's calendar goes into March of next year! They are just saying nothing of consequence. It's all they can say. The same thing happens in the final month! You've got this big decision to make, but the characters spend the whole month telling you about how they've already made their decision, even though it's literally your decision to make! But what else are they gonna say? Is Junpei gonna talk about wanting to look at cute girls for the 10,000th time? Is Akihiko gonna say some shit about training? This game is spread way too thin for characters that are nowhere near deep, interesting or likeable enough to support its runtime. I've decided to be nice here and not talk about the summer vacation or school trip sections. I consider this mercy.
I'm giving this game some points because - like everything I've seen from all Persona games, its presentation is genuinely the best in video games right now. The soundtrack is of course incredible (if not a bit repetitive) and the UI and menus? Man. Idk wtf the UX designers at Atlus are smoking but they are just on another fuckin' level man. I don't think another team have ever been so clearly head-and-shoulders above every studio in the world on one specific thing. FromSoft and architecture, maybe? What blows me away is the little touches. The way the character icons change depending on the status effect they're inflicted with, those gorgeous win-screens, the coloured backgrounds in all the social menus. Ugh, oh my fucking god, man. Why does this series about anime teenagers of all things have so much fucking sauce? Western games are yearning for just a bit of this style. All these intangibles come together to mean that Persona 3, whilst an exercise in narrative monotony does at least have incredible vibes, which is the least you can do. You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it around in glitter.
I also wanna say that I actually liked the combat quite a lot. It's among my favourite JRPG battle systems I've seen. Snappy, surprisingly deep, highly customisable -- yeah, I liked it! I'm aware that combat was given a lot of quality-of-life changes from the original, and that's one of the other things that holds me back from giving this a 2 star rating or lower. I really can tell that this is an excellent remake on its own merits, and was very appreciative of its modern sensibilities (in particular, the fast-forward button. Holy shit, thank you god.) Unfortunately, the combat was delivered to me in the form of Tartarus, which got old about as fast as everything else! I did appreciate the occasional layout/aesthetic changes, but it's not enough to make up for the monotony. Have me doing combat in any context more interesting than trawling through 250+ hallways, and I'd just call combat an objective plus for Persona 3.
So, yeah. It didn't really do it for me unfortunately. It puts a lot into its story and characters and I just did not think they were good enough. I genuinely did try and go in with an open mind! But I also don't really know what I was expecting, I kinda knew that it did a lot of stuff I hate in video games before I began. It even does that "multiple choice questions where your answer doesn't matter at all" thing that JRPGs love doing for some reason! But hey, I've finished a Persona game now, no one can ever bug me about it again, and I did make literal Satan towards the end of the game and he did have what looked like 6 titties, so that was pretty cool.
As someone who considers Monster Hunter World: Iceborne to be among their favourite games of all time, I kinda regret that I never reviewed the base game and its expansion separately. That's because Iceborne was already out by the time I started this Backloggd account, and I didn't think I'd really be able to remember my thoughts on World separately from Iceborne enough to make a full-fledged review. Now THE TURNS HAVE TABLED however, as Sunbreak did release after the creation of this Backloggd account and - if you can believe it after I have reviewed base Monster Hunter Rise. I don't know why I didn't write a review at the time of finishing, maybe because I knew there was post-launch content to come? Maybe because I was feeling lazy or depressed or dealing with another case of old-man-back which made me wanna avoid sitting at my desk or hunching over my laptop and typing. (Realistically, it is the latter.)
Now that the dust has settled and my chiropractor has snapped me like a wishbone, I can confidently say that Monster Hunter Rise's expansion, Sunbreak is - good! Like Monster Hunter Rise itself, it's just kinda good! I like it! But it's not a patch on the combo that is World and Iceborne imo. It does all the stuff that's worth getting excited about for a Monster Hunter game's expansion. It adds a bunch of dope ass monsters, a new hub, some super tough endgame fights and a couple other little niceties here and there. That stuff alone is enough to make an expansion worth it, but it does feel like a noticeable step down from the way Iceborne transformed World. Iceborne's new hub was a significant improvement over the base game's, it added the Raider Ride to make traversal much easier, as well as the Guiding Lands and the Clutch Claw (the latter of which, don't get me wrong did not work out as intended and hugely fucked with the game's balance, but it was something significant.)
Maybe you could argue Sunbreak didn't need to bring such big changes because the Palamute which Rise introduced is already basically the Raider Ride and no one really had any problem with the hub world (except me, I do not like Kamura Village, lmao.) But what we get in these things' stead just feel super inconsequential. NPC followers? A bunch of drab, unlikable characters who talk too much to come along with you and trivialise fights even more? Sunbreak desperately needed to make Rise harder imo, not even easier. The new hub, Elgado is like...Nice, I guess? I prefer it over Kamura at least, I find its music less annoying and think it's more aesthetically pleasing, but as far as layout is concerned it's super uninspired. There's really not much to see here. When you see how little Sunbreak actually does to change or iterate on Rise fundamentally, I think you realise how much the Switch's hardware truly hampered them. Yes, the game eventually got ported to PC, Xbox & Playstation, but it started out as a Switch exclusive and what I would've liked to see from an expansion like Sunbreak is some of the nifty little details World has that Rise is missing. Seeing monsters you've captured in pens back at the hub, seeing the environment of the maps change when an Elder Dragon is present. None of that came, and I think it's clear to me that it's because the Switch just couldn't handle it. What we're left with is some pretty limp stuff like...New Silkbind moves, which I just don't think is something we really needed. Rise already gives you enough options as is, gameplay was never the problem.
I like Sunbreak, but it's not an evolution of Rise the way Iceborne is for World. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table, it's just more Rise. Which is fine! Rise is fun! And getting to play a version of Rise where I can fight Astalos and Seregios and fuckiiin' Espinas is fine by me. Including a Monster Hunter Frontier-exclusive monster like Espinas in a main series game for the first time might be the coolest thing Sunbreak does. The monster himself might be pretty whatever but it sets such an exciting precedent, I really hope we can expect some of the cooler Fronter-exclusive monsters like Lightenna and Akira Vashimu/Jebia down the line in main series games. That'd get me pogging in my fuckin pants
Anyway, it's more Rise! If you like Rise, good! If you were hoping for its difficulty to be ramped up at all, gotta wait for those Risen Elder Dragon fights! Which are good, don't get me wrong (Risen Shagaru Magala actually gave me like 6 heart attacks) - but you gotta wade through a lot of the same old boring characters and iffy presentation to get there. Thankfully, as was always the case, the gameplay might just make it worth it!
Now that the dust has settled and my chiropractor has snapped me like a wishbone, I can confidently say that Monster Hunter Rise's expansion, Sunbreak is - good! Like Monster Hunter Rise itself, it's just kinda good! I like it! But it's not a patch on the combo that is World and Iceborne imo. It does all the stuff that's worth getting excited about for a Monster Hunter game's expansion. It adds a bunch of dope ass monsters, a new hub, some super tough endgame fights and a couple other little niceties here and there. That stuff alone is enough to make an expansion worth it, but it does feel like a noticeable step down from the way Iceborne transformed World. Iceborne's new hub was a significant improvement over the base game's, it added the Raider Ride to make traversal much easier, as well as the Guiding Lands and the Clutch Claw (the latter of which, don't get me wrong did not work out as intended and hugely fucked with the game's balance, but it was something significant.)
Maybe you could argue Sunbreak didn't need to bring such big changes because the Palamute which Rise introduced is already basically the Raider Ride and no one really had any problem with the hub world (except me, I do not like Kamura Village, lmao.) But what we get in these things' stead just feel super inconsequential. NPC followers? A bunch of drab, unlikable characters who talk too much to come along with you and trivialise fights even more? Sunbreak desperately needed to make Rise harder imo, not even easier. The new hub, Elgado is like...Nice, I guess? I prefer it over Kamura at least, I find its music less annoying and think it's more aesthetically pleasing, but as far as layout is concerned it's super uninspired. There's really not much to see here. When you see how little Sunbreak actually does to change or iterate on Rise fundamentally, I think you realise how much the Switch's hardware truly hampered them. Yes, the game eventually got ported to PC, Xbox & Playstation, but it started out as a Switch exclusive and what I would've liked to see from an expansion like Sunbreak is some of the nifty little details World has that Rise is missing. Seeing monsters you've captured in pens back at the hub, seeing the environment of the maps change when an Elder Dragon is present. None of that came, and I think it's clear to me that it's because the Switch just couldn't handle it. What we're left with is some pretty limp stuff like...New Silkbind moves, which I just don't think is something we really needed. Rise already gives you enough options as is, gameplay was never the problem.
I like Sunbreak, but it's not an evolution of Rise the way Iceborne is for World. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table, it's just more Rise. Which is fine! Rise is fun! And getting to play a version of Rise where I can fight Astalos and Seregios and fuckiiin' Espinas is fine by me. Including a Monster Hunter Frontier-exclusive monster like Espinas in a main series game for the first time might be the coolest thing Sunbreak does. The monster himself might be pretty whatever but it sets such an exciting precedent, I really hope we can expect some of the cooler Fronter-exclusive monsters like Lightenna and Akira Vashimu/Jebia down the line in main series games. That'd get me pogging in my fuckin pants
Anyway, it's more Rise! If you like Rise, good! If you were hoping for its difficulty to be ramped up at all, gotta wait for those Risen Elder Dragon fights! Which are good, don't get me wrong (Risen Shagaru Magala actually gave me like 6 heart attacks) - but you gotta wade through a lot of the same old boring characters and iffy presentation to get there. Thankfully, as was always the case, the gameplay might just make it worth it!
2019
Marking this as completed even though I only finished Leon's story and got like an hour into Claire's before walking away - please don't revoke my gamer license. (Even though I'm sure what I'm about to say will make you do that)
Um, man! Seems I really don't like this as much as other people! For what it's worth, at time of playing this I have never played any other Resident Evil game aside from 4 and its remake. I have no frame of reference for this version compared to the original. I suspect it's very impressive as a remake based on what I've seen and what I've heard from others! To take a classic, PS1-era Resident Evil game and rebuild it from the ground up with a whole new, over-the-shoulder perspective? That's really impressive! And damn this game is visually gorgeous and so well-done on every technical level.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's particularly fun or scary! It's trying to be a more survival horror-oriented game than say - RE4, right? So it makes sense if it's a lot less straight up fun than RE4, but yeah - damn! I also just think it's way less scary! Mr. X gives you a good fright every now and then, sure. But if you let fuckin' Mr. Blobby loose in that police station with me and he followed me around the map, standing outside doors to punch me every time I open them with the music changing whenever he draws near - I reckon I'd be pretty scared of him too! And imo the novelty with Mr. X, well executed as he is, wears off pretty quickly! Eventually he stops being scary and just becomes tedious! When trying to push the bookshelves together in the library to form a walkway across a broken balcony in Leon's story, I wound up having to push one of four bookshelves halfway across to their desired destination at a time to avoid getting nutted by Mr. X and killed because I was one hit from death with no healing items. In between every half-way push, I had to kite him around the whole room to just get him far enough away from me that I could push the bookshelf the rest of the way before he caught up to me and killed me. This shit wound up taking me like 10 minutes! It wasn't scary, it was kinda just an inconvenience!
And this "things being more tedious than scary" thing kinda extends to basically every enemy in the game for me. I really hate how zombies just get back up after a while in this game. I understand in a survival horror game you need to strip power from the player to make them feel vulnerable, but the fact that zombies infinitely respawn unless you blow them to bits just made traversal and exploration really annoying. I felt actively discouraged from exploring the police station because any ammo or healing items I could find I felt I basically wasted as soon as I found them, because I'd expended the equivalent in resources just wading through the endlessly respawning zombies on the fuckin' way! Is manoeuvring around these things any time you wanna get somewhere fun? No! But is it scary? Also, not really! I mean, they're just zombies. I've been lunged at by zombies in video games 1000's of times. I get that this is a remake of an old ass game and so this was maybe a bit more of a novel concept in video games at the time, but that has me wondering if maybe RE2's DNA doesn't really translate that well to a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective? I think it super works in RE4, I don't think it works here. It's funny because the tank controls and wonky movement are supposed to restrict you, to make you feel weakened. That should work way better in a more survival horror-oriented game like RE2 than an action-oriented game like RE4, but when I feel so disincentivised from fighting zombies who I know are just gonna come back, I'd at least like to be able to move around them with some kind of confidence or finesse. Instead I have to fumble my way around every single one unless I feel like wasting some ammo on them to keep them down for a short while, and it just gets trivial and tedious real fast.
There's some really dumb stuff on the critical path as well like inexplicably having to "examine" and look at the bottom of a trophy for a code that you need to enter at a terminal in the greenhouse. Like, some real 1998 shit. Some of this game's puzzles drove me a bit insane. I appreciate not being handheld, but I would have loved some hint or explanation as to what the fuck to do with the fuckin' wave-finding gadget towards the end of Leon's story, and the way you have to examine key items to get other key items off them in the first place I just found to be pretty silly and unnecessary. I got a USB Stick by examining a police badge I got for putting a ruby in a box. I got that ruby from a sceptre which I got by putting a red book that I got in the library in a statue's hand. Okay. The clock tower blew my mind. How you're supposed to know solving it will do that is beyond me. This is not the remake's fault, this is just the craziness of 1998 game design being given modern sensibilities, hahaha. One modern sensibility the original had that the remake doesn't tho - is this little thing me and the boys in the lab have coined music. Bro, where is the music in this game? This game is so quiet at all times, dry, even. Lacking in personality because of just a total lack of music except for when Mr. X shows up, the occasional save room and like, the final boss. I would love to know Capcom's rationale behind this. I think music could have added a lot of atmosphere to an otherwise limp game that lacked in tension a lot, and I'd be fascinated to know why there just...Isn't any.
I'm giving this 3 stars because I admire the craft behind it. I like the way the game handles resources (even if I think it's marred by constantly regenerating zombies) and think its weapons and upgrades are fun to play around with. But man, everything it does well I think RE4 does better. From traversal to resource economy to kinetic fun to straight-up fear factor. I found it very hard to come back to this game and appreciate it in the shadow of RE4.
Um, man! Seems I really don't like this as much as other people! For what it's worth, at time of playing this I have never played any other Resident Evil game aside from 4 and its remake. I have no frame of reference for this version compared to the original. I suspect it's very impressive as a remake based on what I've seen and what I've heard from others! To take a classic, PS1-era Resident Evil game and rebuild it from the ground up with a whole new, over-the-shoulder perspective? That's really impressive! And damn this game is visually gorgeous and so well-done on every technical level.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's particularly fun or scary! It's trying to be a more survival horror-oriented game than say - RE4, right? So it makes sense if it's a lot less straight up fun than RE4, but yeah - damn! I also just think it's way less scary! Mr. X gives you a good fright every now and then, sure. But if you let fuckin' Mr. Blobby loose in that police station with me and he followed me around the map, standing outside doors to punch me every time I open them with the music changing whenever he draws near - I reckon I'd be pretty scared of him too! And imo the novelty with Mr. X, well executed as he is, wears off pretty quickly! Eventually he stops being scary and just becomes tedious! When trying to push the bookshelves together in the library to form a walkway across a broken balcony in Leon's story, I wound up having to push one of four bookshelves halfway across to their desired destination at a time to avoid getting nutted by Mr. X and killed because I was one hit from death with no healing items. In between every half-way push, I had to kite him around the whole room to just get him far enough away from me that I could push the bookshelf the rest of the way before he caught up to me and killed me. This shit wound up taking me like 10 minutes! It wasn't scary, it was kinda just an inconvenience!
And this "things being more tedious than scary" thing kinda extends to basically every enemy in the game for me. I really hate how zombies just get back up after a while in this game. I understand in a survival horror game you need to strip power from the player to make them feel vulnerable, but the fact that zombies infinitely respawn unless you blow them to bits just made traversal and exploration really annoying. I felt actively discouraged from exploring the police station because any ammo or healing items I could find I felt I basically wasted as soon as I found them, because I'd expended the equivalent in resources just wading through the endlessly respawning zombies on the fuckin' way! Is manoeuvring around these things any time you wanna get somewhere fun? No! But is it scary? Also, not really! I mean, they're just zombies. I've been lunged at by zombies in video games 1000's of times. I get that this is a remake of an old ass game and so this was maybe a bit more of a novel concept in video games at the time, but that has me wondering if maybe RE2's DNA doesn't really translate that well to a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective? I think it super works in RE4, I don't think it works here. It's funny because the tank controls and wonky movement are supposed to restrict you, to make you feel weakened. That should work way better in a more survival horror-oriented game like RE2 than an action-oriented game like RE4, but when I feel so disincentivised from fighting zombies who I know are just gonna come back, I'd at least like to be able to move around them with some kind of confidence or finesse. Instead I have to fumble my way around every single one unless I feel like wasting some ammo on them to keep them down for a short while, and it just gets trivial and tedious real fast.
There's some really dumb stuff on the critical path as well like inexplicably having to "examine" and look at the bottom of a trophy for a code that you need to enter at a terminal in the greenhouse. Like, some real 1998 shit. Some of this game's puzzles drove me a bit insane. I appreciate not being handheld, but I would have loved some hint or explanation as to what the fuck to do with the fuckin' wave-finding gadget towards the end of Leon's story, and the way you have to examine key items to get other key items off them in the first place I just found to be pretty silly and unnecessary. I got a USB Stick by examining a police badge I got for putting a ruby in a box. I got that ruby from a sceptre which I got by putting a red book that I got in the library in a statue's hand. Okay. The clock tower blew my mind. How you're supposed to know solving it will do that is beyond me. This is not the remake's fault, this is just the craziness of 1998 game design being given modern sensibilities, hahaha. One modern sensibility the original had that the remake doesn't tho - is this little thing me and the boys in the lab have coined music. Bro, where is the music in this game? This game is so quiet at all times, dry, even. Lacking in personality because of just a total lack of music except for when Mr. X shows up, the occasional save room and like, the final boss. I would love to know Capcom's rationale behind this. I think music could have added a lot of atmosphere to an otherwise limp game that lacked in tension a lot, and I'd be fascinated to know why there just...Isn't any.
I'm giving this 3 stars because I admire the craft behind it. I like the way the game handles resources (even if I think it's marred by constantly regenerating zombies) and think its weapons and upgrades are fun to play around with. But man, everything it does well I think RE4 does better. From traversal to resource economy to kinetic fun to straight-up fear factor. I found it very hard to come back to this game and appreciate it in the shadow of RE4.
Been a while since I reviewed a Pokemon game, let's give this a go again! Platinum is of course - the definitive Gen 4 experience. It follows in the footsteps of Crystal & Emerald by elaborating on and perfecting many of the ideas put forth by its predecessors. (In this case, Diamond & Pearl.) We can argue all day about the ethics and integrity of the way Pokemon just releases a "better" version of their main releases like a year after they come out - but the fact remains, Platinum is good, and it's the best way to experience Sinnoh.
I like Gen 4 Pokemon a lot. Diamond & Pearl certainly have their flaws, but they have very likable, acceptable flaws. Okay, the battle animations are slow! There's poor type distribution! These are a far cry from the forced Exp. Share and railroady design we'd have to suffer through for the next 10+ years of the series after this. Gen 4 are the last Pokemon games to be truly open in their design until Gen 9. People love Black & White and all, but it doesn't get talked about enough how they started Pokemon's downward-world-design-spiral into linearity. Boxing you into small locations and forcing you to progress there before you can move on, completely eliminating any potential for simple exploration or interesting sequence breaking.
DPP (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) are not quite as open as the Gen 2 & 3 games, but they're open enough to still give you that sense of adventure. The games in particular really open up around when you reach Hearthome City, and then have access to Veilstone and Pastoria City. I've always liked this about them. I like that you can have fun with the order in which you challenge Maylene, Crasher Wake & Fantina, I like that you can visit the Trophy Gardens and the Valor Lakefront as soon as you can make it to Hearthome. I like that you get teased with the route to Sunyshore well before you'll even get there! It's a rare case of Pokemon blocking a place off, and it actually feeling quite cool! You've got enough of the rest of the world open to you, so this builds up some anticipation! When this path finally clears up to you en route to your 8th gym badge, it's a great feeling! It can be done right! It's sensible here!
Of course this is a boon of Gen 4's design as a whole, but Platinum - on top of obviously sharing this design, then fixes or at least improves on basically every little problem Diamond & Pearl had. Battle animations are sped up now! Pokemon type distributions are way better! (There are more Fire types in the game than just the Chimchar line & Ponyta/Rapidash, lmao. Seriously, they had a Fire type Elite Four member in Diamond & Pearl who had two Fire type Pokemon, because that's all he could have! There were no more actually in the game! How does something like that slip past design?) And Team Galactic & Cyrus - who were really pretty shallow and generic are given more screentime with an awesome expanded Galactic HQ segment. I still don't care much for Cyrus as a character at all, but he's at least a bit less forgettable here - largely due to his involvement with one of the other coolest parts of the game; The Distortion World. Goddamn, how did they get this shit to work on the DS? It's like, seriously technically impressive. Giratina's appearance and general presentation towards the end of the game is so sick, maybe the most imposing a legendary Pokemon has ever felt. Capturing this thing almost feels wrong. I feel like I just threw a fuckin' Poke Ball at actual Satan.
On the note of things that I'm astounded worked on the DS, how about that soundtrack, huh? I know it's not a new opinion but Gen 4 Pokemon probably has the best soundtrack of the main games. It's got this serene, evocative, dream-like vibe. So much elegant piano and bluesy woodwind. It gets the idea of a rustic, mountainous region across perfectly. Eterna City and the Lake songs are among the most gorgeous pieces of music Pokemon has yet contributed, and it's no surprise so many people remember these games' OST's so fondly all these years later.
Platinum takes an already good Pokemon game and smooths out most of the edges. It doesn't fix every flaw. Even with more time with Cyrus & Team Galactic I still find them pretty generic, even for Pokemon antagonists. And imo these are the games where Pokemon stories delved into melodrama a bit too much! A few too many world-ending threats and abstract nouns getting thrown around here for my taste. You could also probably make the argument that the Pokemon designs what with stuff like Dialga, Palkia & Regigias start to go a bit far here. (Though I will forever love these games for introducing so many evolutions to previously underappreciated Pokemon. Honchkrow, Magnezone, Mamoswine my beloved.)
Sure, I could have stood for the world to be a bit more open a la Gens 2 & 3 as I always could! But Gen 4 and Platinum get way more right than they do wrong. They look and sound gorgeous, they feel like an adventure with some open and inspired world design, and then Platinum goes ahead and beefs up their already great post-game and Battle Frontier even more. It's just more of a good thing! And it's aged just as well as all of the other games from the golden age of Pokemon.
I like Gen 4 Pokemon a lot. Diamond & Pearl certainly have their flaws, but they have very likable, acceptable flaws. Okay, the battle animations are slow! There's poor type distribution! These are a far cry from the forced Exp. Share and railroady design we'd have to suffer through for the next 10+ years of the series after this. Gen 4 are the last Pokemon games to be truly open in their design until Gen 9. People love Black & White and all, but it doesn't get talked about enough how they started Pokemon's downward-world-design-spiral into linearity. Boxing you into small locations and forcing you to progress there before you can move on, completely eliminating any potential for simple exploration or interesting sequence breaking.
DPP (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum) are not quite as open as the Gen 2 & 3 games, but they're open enough to still give you that sense of adventure. The games in particular really open up around when you reach Hearthome City, and then have access to Veilstone and Pastoria City. I've always liked this about them. I like that you can have fun with the order in which you challenge Maylene, Crasher Wake & Fantina, I like that you can visit the Trophy Gardens and the Valor Lakefront as soon as you can make it to Hearthome. I like that you get teased with the route to Sunyshore well before you'll even get there! It's a rare case of Pokemon blocking a place off, and it actually feeling quite cool! You've got enough of the rest of the world open to you, so this builds up some anticipation! When this path finally clears up to you en route to your 8th gym badge, it's a great feeling! It can be done right! It's sensible here!
Of course this is a boon of Gen 4's design as a whole, but Platinum - on top of obviously sharing this design, then fixes or at least improves on basically every little problem Diamond & Pearl had. Battle animations are sped up now! Pokemon type distributions are way better! (There are more Fire types in the game than just the Chimchar line & Ponyta/Rapidash, lmao. Seriously, they had a Fire type Elite Four member in Diamond & Pearl who had two Fire type Pokemon, because that's all he could have! There were no more actually in the game! How does something like that slip past design?) And Team Galactic & Cyrus - who were really pretty shallow and generic are given more screentime with an awesome expanded Galactic HQ segment. I still don't care much for Cyrus as a character at all, but he's at least a bit less forgettable here - largely due to his involvement with one of the other coolest parts of the game; The Distortion World. Goddamn, how did they get this shit to work on the DS? It's like, seriously technically impressive. Giratina's appearance and general presentation towards the end of the game is so sick, maybe the most imposing a legendary Pokemon has ever felt. Capturing this thing almost feels wrong. I feel like I just threw a fuckin' Poke Ball at actual Satan.
On the note of things that I'm astounded worked on the DS, how about that soundtrack, huh? I know it's not a new opinion but Gen 4 Pokemon probably has the best soundtrack of the main games. It's got this serene, evocative, dream-like vibe. So much elegant piano and bluesy woodwind. It gets the idea of a rustic, mountainous region across perfectly. Eterna City and the Lake songs are among the most gorgeous pieces of music Pokemon has yet contributed, and it's no surprise so many people remember these games' OST's so fondly all these years later.
Platinum takes an already good Pokemon game and smooths out most of the edges. It doesn't fix every flaw. Even with more time with Cyrus & Team Galactic I still find them pretty generic, even for Pokemon antagonists. And imo these are the games where Pokemon stories delved into melodrama a bit too much! A few too many world-ending threats and abstract nouns getting thrown around here for my taste. You could also probably make the argument that the Pokemon designs what with stuff like Dialga, Palkia & Regigias start to go a bit far here. (Though I will forever love these games for introducing so many evolutions to previously underappreciated Pokemon. Honchkrow, Magnezone, Mamoswine my beloved.)
Sure, I could have stood for the world to be a bit more open a la Gens 2 & 3 as I always could! But Gen 4 and Platinum get way more right than they do wrong. They look and sound gorgeous, they feel like an adventure with some open and inspired world design, and then Platinum goes ahead and beefs up their already great post-game and Battle Frontier even more. It's just more of a good thing! And it's aged just as well as all of the other games from the golden age of Pokemon.
2022
I had this recommended to me by a friend after raving about Titanfall 2 and ULTRAKILL to him. He had glowing praise for it - but having just rolled credits, eh, me not so much! I think it's good, especially considering that it was made by one guy! But by the time I got to the final boss I was very ready to be done with it, and doubt I'll be coming back to see what gets added to the game down the line.
Cultic is a very competent retro-style FPS with a super unique artstyle, perhaps my favourite thing about it. Thing is, in the world of New Blood you've gotta do a lot to stand out as a boomer shooter, and I just don't think Cultic does quite enough. It's fun to lob molotovs and dynamite, and the game's occasional use of light as a mechanic was neat - but mostly it felt a little tired. It clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4. I mean, it's a game set in a rural countryside where you're fighting religious cultists who soon start whipping out shields that look pretty much exactly like the ones from RE4 and eventually you even get the classic Chainsaw Ganado-style guys coming after you. As an FPS that takes such heavy inspiration from a third-person shooter, it often slows things down for the sake of atmosphere, but I didn't really feel that this meshed with the mechanics. I never felt scared because of how powerful I was. If it was trying to instil in me a sense of dread, it didn't really work because whatever could have possibly jumped out at me would've instantly gotten shotgun blasted in the head.
Cultic also takes some cues from old-school DOOM level design, and that's not really my thing! I like the new-school DOOM philosophy (particularly DOOM 2016) of "hey, here's a fuck-ton of enemies, go wild!" instead of the more labyrinthine, lock-and-key, exploration-based design of classic DOOM. In a game like this, where shooting feels so good, I do not want to be looking around and backtracking to find ways to progress. I certainly don't wanna be reading journal entries! Stop putting journal entries in your high-octane boomer shooters, you gosh darn freaks! I am not playing this game to fuckin' read! All the moments in which Cultic stops - which it does quite frequently, I found a bit frustrating. Particularly annoying was the 2nd level, The Shipyard, which has you progress by identifying extremely missable vents in tiny floor tiles in the corners of dimly lit rooms. This was not a hard level, but I spent over 30 minutes in it trying to find a way forward, scouring the entire level. Eventually I had to look it up only to discover the way forward was to shoot a vent (which is not a mechanic the game had taught me was a thing) that was just hiding in the corner of a random-ass room.
(On the note of spending more time in levels than I wanted to, I found the music a little repetitive! It's like, fine! But mostly a bit too simple and again - not really fitting for a game like this! I need a bit more energy and a bit less melancholy if your mechanics are gonna make me so busted!)
So, it's a perfectly enjoyable boomer shooter-style FPS that can be really fun when it gets going. But it takes almost a little too much inspiration from other things to the point where it ends up making design decisions that clash with the core gameplay, in my opinion. In an objective sense, it probably deserves a slightly higher rating than I've given it, but it does a lot of things that annoy me personally. I think it lacks a bit of an identity of its own! And I don't really see a reason to come back to this when I could just as easily slap on ULTRAKILL or DUSK or DOOM or, hell - even Resi 4.
Cultic is a very competent retro-style FPS with a super unique artstyle, perhaps my favourite thing about it. Thing is, in the world of New Blood you've gotta do a lot to stand out as a boomer shooter, and I just don't think Cultic does quite enough. It's fun to lob molotovs and dynamite, and the game's occasional use of light as a mechanic was neat - but mostly it felt a little tired. It clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4. I mean, it's a game set in a rural countryside where you're fighting religious cultists who soon start whipping out shields that look pretty much exactly like the ones from RE4 and eventually you even get the classic Chainsaw Ganado-style guys coming after you. As an FPS that takes such heavy inspiration from a third-person shooter, it often slows things down for the sake of atmosphere, but I didn't really feel that this meshed with the mechanics. I never felt scared because of how powerful I was. If it was trying to instil in me a sense of dread, it didn't really work because whatever could have possibly jumped out at me would've instantly gotten shotgun blasted in the head.
Cultic also takes some cues from old-school DOOM level design, and that's not really my thing! I like the new-school DOOM philosophy (particularly DOOM 2016) of "hey, here's a fuck-ton of enemies, go wild!" instead of the more labyrinthine, lock-and-key, exploration-based design of classic DOOM. In a game like this, where shooting feels so good, I do not want to be looking around and backtracking to find ways to progress. I certainly don't wanna be reading journal entries! Stop putting journal entries in your high-octane boomer shooters, you gosh darn freaks! I am not playing this game to fuckin' read! All the moments in which Cultic stops - which it does quite frequently, I found a bit frustrating. Particularly annoying was the 2nd level, The Shipyard, which has you progress by identifying extremely missable vents in tiny floor tiles in the corners of dimly lit rooms. This was not a hard level, but I spent over 30 minutes in it trying to find a way forward, scouring the entire level. Eventually I had to look it up only to discover the way forward was to shoot a vent (which is not a mechanic the game had taught me was a thing) that was just hiding in the corner of a random-ass room.
(On the note of spending more time in levels than I wanted to, I found the music a little repetitive! It's like, fine! But mostly a bit too simple and again - not really fitting for a game like this! I need a bit more energy and a bit less melancholy if your mechanics are gonna make me so busted!)
So, it's a perfectly enjoyable boomer shooter-style FPS that can be really fun when it gets going. But it takes almost a little too much inspiration from other things to the point where it ends up making design decisions that clash with the core gameplay, in my opinion. In an objective sense, it probably deserves a slightly higher rating than I've given it, but it does a lot of things that annoy me personally. I think it lacks a bit of an identity of its own! And I don't really see a reason to come back to this when I could just as easily slap on ULTRAKILL or DUSK or DOOM or, hell - even Resi 4.
Hmm, I don't know! I think The Stanley Parable was somewhat of a moment in history, and a big part of its charm was that it came and went. This "Ultra Deluxe" expansion is basically an excuse to add in a bunch more jokes, and that's fine - and they're pretty funny and elaborate and all but...I'm not sure this justifies its own existence so much?
For one thing, you basically need to replay the original to an ending like 4 or 5 times before you can even start seeing the new stuff, and then the new stuff is good but I think the novelty has just worn off. The tedium of just kinda walking around a room in circles waiting for the narrator to say something new, to see if he'll even remark on the fact that you're staying in insert silly room has gotten pretty grating by now. That's the game. You do a silly thing, see if the narrator says anything about it. The original had just about enough stuff that you could walk away before that got old, but underneath all the bells and whistles, Ultra Deluxe is just more of the same.
Maybe my criticism is flawed in that regard, maybe it's me! I could hardly have expected this to overhaul any kind of gameplay system or fundamentally change what The Stanley Parable is - I just think it got a bit old a bit too fast. There's some really good jokes in here. The Endless Hole, The Bucket, The Button That Says Jim, all funny stuff. So why do I feel like coming back is such a chore? I really appreciate what this game does, but I think Ultra Deluxe is them taking the idea bigger but not further, if that makes sense? The jokes are different, and yet it still feels pretty "been there, done that." It's weird! This is a hard game to talk about and an even harder game to criticise. I like it, I think it's funny, I appreciate what it's going for, I'm just a bit over it by now!
For one thing, you basically need to replay the original to an ending like 4 or 5 times before you can even start seeing the new stuff, and then the new stuff is good but I think the novelty has just worn off. The tedium of just kinda walking around a room in circles waiting for the narrator to say something new, to see if he'll even remark on the fact that you're staying in insert silly room has gotten pretty grating by now. That's the game. You do a silly thing, see if the narrator says anything about it. The original had just about enough stuff that you could walk away before that got old, but underneath all the bells and whistles, Ultra Deluxe is just more of the same.
Maybe my criticism is flawed in that regard, maybe it's me! I could hardly have expected this to overhaul any kind of gameplay system or fundamentally change what The Stanley Parable is - I just think it got a bit old a bit too fast. There's some really good jokes in here. The Endless Hole, The Bucket, The Button That Says Jim, all funny stuff. So why do I feel like coming back is such a chore? I really appreciate what this game does, but I think Ultra Deluxe is them taking the idea bigger but not further, if that makes sense? The jokes are different, and yet it still feels pretty "been there, done that." It's weird! This is a hard game to talk about and an even harder game to criticise. I like it, I think it's funny, I appreciate what it's going for, I'm just a bit over it by now!
A brilliant, insanely charming, instantly enjoyable gem of a game. A relic of a sadly bygone era, where Playstation (for which Katamari Damacy was originally an exclusive) were willing to publish weird, mid-budget games with eccentric presentation and weird ideas. There's nothing like Katamari out there anymore.
Its controls are really wonky in that up and down on the directional stick don't move you forward and back, but they move you around the circumference of the ball - and then you use the other stick to move once you've oriented yourself. It's a bit hard to get used to - but I think it's to the game's benefit and adds a lot of personality. If it were as cut-and-dry as "move forward to go forward" and "move back to go back" the game would be too easy, this gives it a unique feeling and makes it satisfying to get to grips with, and I think also adds a bit of depth to what would otherwise be a pretty shallow experience.
Katamari has this brilliant, off-kilter sense of humour. The King is such a fucking weido, frequently making weird remarks during levels in which he's asked you to roll up as many women or bears or crabs or whatever-the-fuck-else as you can possibly find. He lambasts you in-between levels and makes fun of your height and the size of your head, he roasts you for your failures but also gets really excited if you manage to roll up a big enough cow. I love him. He's my absolute GOAT. We will never see another video game character like The King Of All Cosmos. The game's levels also just frequently throw shit at the wall with no care for logic. Here's a couple of giant 100-foot-tall wrestlers swinging eachother around in the middle of the beach, here's a panda bear floating down from the sky on balloons, here's a random-ass unnamed kaiju that looks like Gigan from Godzilla rampaging through the middle of the ocean. Sure. Fuck it. Why not?
I'm particularly impressed by levels like the bear level and the cow level in which you're tasked with rolling up one of a single thing in the world and can finish the level no matter how big or small that thing (bear or cow) is, but are encouraged to get a bigger one to get a better score. In these levels it's not just about what you can roll up, it's about what you can't roll up (or, shouldn't, which is small bears or cows). You go around the whole level trying to pick stuff up and get bigger so you can get a bigger bear/cow for a better score, but the whole time you're having to dodge smaller bears and cows like your fucking life depends on it so the level doesn't just end and your hard work isn't wasted for nothing. It gets increasingly harder to dodge these things the bigger you get and the more ambitious you become in your bear/cow size hunt! It's a super smart inversion of the game's mechanics and in a really gutbusting way gets you super paranoid that you're about to roll over a tiny bear that you're too big to see now en route to the one you actually want! You start hallucinating bears and cows that aren't even there!! What the fuck do you mean this tiny-ass milk carton with a picture of a cow on it counts as a cow?? In the most loving way possible, absolutely fuck off man!! (I love this shit)
It's funny all the time, and it's fun all the time, because it wraps up in like 5 hours before it can even begin to get old. And do I even need to mention the soundtrack? This shit could chart it's that good, I mean it in the best way when I say that this game's OST is like a bunch of people doing bad impressions of Nujabes and Frank Sinatra. I fucking loved it, it's everything modern Playstation should be but isn't
Its controls are really wonky in that up and down on the directional stick don't move you forward and back, but they move you around the circumference of the ball - and then you use the other stick to move once you've oriented yourself. It's a bit hard to get used to - but I think it's to the game's benefit and adds a lot of personality. If it were as cut-and-dry as "move forward to go forward" and "move back to go back" the game would be too easy, this gives it a unique feeling and makes it satisfying to get to grips with, and I think also adds a bit of depth to what would otherwise be a pretty shallow experience.
Katamari has this brilliant, off-kilter sense of humour. The King is such a fucking weido, frequently making weird remarks during levels in which he's asked you to roll up as many women or bears or crabs or whatever-the-fuck-else as you can possibly find. He lambasts you in-between levels and makes fun of your height and the size of your head, he roasts you for your failures but also gets really excited if you manage to roll up a big enough cow. I love him. He's my absolute GOAT. We will never see another video game character like The King Of All Cosmos. The game's levels also just frequently throw shit at the wall with no care for logic. Here's a couple of giant 100-foot-tall wrestlers swinging eachother around in the middle of the beach, here's a panda bear floating down from the sky on balloons, here's a random-ass unnamed kaiju that looks like Gigan from Godzilla rampaging through the middle of the ocean. Sure. Fuck it. Why not?
I'm particularly impressed by levels like the bear level and the cow level in which you're tasked with rolling up one of a single thing in the world and can finish the level no matter how big or small that thing (bear or cow) is, but are encouraged to get a bigger one to get a better score. In these levels it's not just about what you can roll up, it's about what you can't roll up (or, shouldn't, which is small bears or cows). You go around the whole level trying to pick stuff up and get bigger so you can get a bigger bear/cow for a better score, but the whole time you're having to dodge smaller bears and cows like your fucking life depends on it so the level doesn't just end and your hard work isn't wasted for nothing. It gets increasingly harder to dodge these things the bigger you get and the more ambitious you become in your bear/cow size hunt! It's a super smart inversion of the game's mechanics and in a really gutbusting way gets you super paranoid that you're about to roll over a tiny bear that you're too big to see now en route to the one you actually want! You start hallucinating bears and cows that aren't even there!! What the fuck do you mean this tiny-ass milk carton with a picture of a cow on it counts as a cow?? In the most loving way possible, absolutely fuck off man!! (I love this shit)
It's funny all the time, and it's fun all the time, because it wraps up in like 5 hours before it can even begin to get old. And do I even need to mention the soundtrack? This shit could chart it's that good, I mean it in the best way when I say that this game's OST is like a bunch of people doing bad impressions of Nujabes and Frank Sinatra. I fucking loved it, it's everything modern Playstation should be but isn't
2020
This review contains spoilers
"Immense" is the only word I can think of when it comes to Baldur's Gate 3. Rarely ever is a game as deep as it is wide, and yet this is one of the few that is - it is incredibly replayable due to just how many ways the game can diverge and change based on your actions. It's the most reactive RPG I've seen yet, and I can't recall playing anything that felt this ahead of other games of its kind since The Witcher 3 (which is a game that this one made me think of quite a lot, actually.)
I will almost definitely replay BG3 one day - maybe pretty soon! Despite the fact that it's so massive, I'm not sick of it at all. Its combat and systems offer so much expression and variety, its characters and dialogue so much nuance and depth. There's just a ton to see and it's astonishing to think that having rolled credits on an 80+ hour playthrough, I still feel like there's so much more to do! Different companions to recruit, different builds to try, different decisions to make and then watch in awe as the game reacts to them up to 50 hours later. For a long time RPGs have promised that "your decisions matter" and that you can be "whoever" you want and whilst no game - not even Baldur's Gate 3 has ever fully been able to live up to that premise, I'd say it's maybe the closest we've yet gotten. It feels like a benchmark, like a huge step forward in actually achieving the promises made by the likes of Fable and The Elder Scrolls.
In my playthrough as an opportunistic Dragonborn Warlock who sought power but never wanted to bow to gods, I felt served almost every step of the way. I played nice with The Absolute right up until the last moment, when I stuck the knife into Ketheric Thorm, I let murderous urges overtake me until I was right in front of the God of Murder himself - and then I rejected him, when the Githyanki goddess confronted me and I was commanded to kneel - I gave her a sarcastic wave and turned my back on her. These were all choices I was able to make through gameplay and dialogue, which meld together more beautifully here than most any other RPG I've played. I could go on, this is a huge game and there's so much to see. It's a great big, huge, beautiful RPG that allowed me more player expression than anything I can remember.
This being said - it is janky, still, especially in Act 3. The last stretch leading up to the final battle is technically a bit of a disaster right now. The game could not handle this many enemies and effects on-screen at once, models started glitching out, idle animations stopped playing so everyone was just sat there like a stone statue whilst sound effects and damage numbers fired off all like a half-second too late - and the audio started getting all fuzzy and crackly like this part of the game's brokenness was about to blow my fuckin' TV up. Really, all of Act 3 is all still in need of some polish. Acts 1 and 2 are so beautiful both visually and in terms of content, but the game is a bit scuppered by Act 3. It's not a disastrous fall-off by any means, but I think BG3 definitely peaks early.
It also needs be to said that while it is basically bigger and better than Larian's last game - Divinity: Original Sin 2 in almost every way, I can honestly say I think it suffers with almost all of the same flaws. By which I mean that constant quicksaving and save-scumming is basically a necessity in this game. Baldur's Gate 3's cardinal sin is that failure isn't fun like it is in say - Disco Elysium, usually it's just combat or missed content. And if you aren't constantly quicksaving, what's gonna stop you from losing out on 2+ hours of progress if you suddenly get roped into an incredibly hard combat encounter you were woefully unprepared for and had no way of knowing was gonna occur when you picked this particular dialogue option or wandered onto this highly-specific part of the map? A word of advice for anyone playing their first Larian game - QUICKSAVE. LIKE, A LOT.
The actual maps and level design geometry of BG3 is also - like Divinity: Original Sin 2, pretty wonky and hard to orient yourself around. Paths often don't wind or extend in the way you expect them to, you'll occasionally be roadblocked by some pretty surprising invisible walls and the "gnarled roots" and "cragged rocks" that you can sometimes climb up and down to navigate your way around some of the game's weird path design are often weirdly hard to see and easy to miss, which can make orienting yourself in BG3 pretty frustrating sometimes. Also - damn D&D is complicated as fuck!! Like I'm sure this game is doing the best it can to ease people in and make it all make sense to new players but sheesh was I glad to have played another Larian game before this!
The negatives and flaws are there, but if the speed and effectiveness of Larian's patches so far are anything to go by, this game's rating is liable to go up to 5 stars for me, because the good already outweighs the bad to the fuckin' Nth degree. It's just a masterpiece, especially in Acts 1 & 2, which are so visually gorgeous and dense with content. It again makes me lament the relative brokenness of Act 3 bc damn I need to see that city in a higher framerate. Baldur's Gate itself when it isn't chugging along like we're back in D:OS 2 would probably be more stunning than anything else in the game! Alas, again, it can not yet really handle that much stuff on the screen at one time I don't think, hahaha
This is the new measuring stick for RPGs. Colossal in content and endlessly replayable. This is what happens when a privately owned studio with 2 decades of experience in the genre get as much time and money as they need to execute on their vision. That's the reason this game has set the world on fire the way it has - a lack of corporate intervention. Artists and creatives having the resources to do their job, and then just being left the fuck alone. That's why you don't get games like Baldur's Gate 3 very often, and you need to cherish them when they come around.
EDIT: I've decided to go back and give this 5 stars. Its flaws are still there but man, this game is too good at what it sets out to do. It's dominated my headspace since I finished it. I did a second playthrough on Tactician and loved it even more, its combat and systems absolutely sing at higher difficulty, this is just the best, most immense and deep and enjoyable RPG in a long time.
I will almost definitely replay BG3 one day - maybe pretty soon! Despite the fact that it's so massive, I'm not sick of it at all. Its combat and systems offer so much expression and variety, its characters and dialogue so much nuance and depth. There's just a ton to see and it's astonishing to think that having rolled credits on an 80+ hour playthrough, I still feel like there's so much more to do! Different companions to recruit, different builds to try, different decisions to make and then watch in awe as the game reacts to them up to 50 hours later. For a long time RPGs have promised that "your decisions matter" and that you can be "whoever" you want and whilst no game - not even Baldur's Gate 3 has ever fully been able to live up to that premise, I'd say it's maybe the closest we've yet gotten. It feels like a benchmark, like a huge step forward in actually achieving the promises made by the likes of Fable and The Elder Scrolls.
In my playthrough as an opportunistic Dragonborn Warlock who sought power but never wanted to bow to gods, I felt served almost every step of the way. I played nice with The Absolute right up until the last moment, when I stuck the knife into Ketheric Thorm, I let murderous urges overtake me until I was right in front of the God of Murder himself - and then I rejected him, when the Githyanki goddess confronted me and I was commanded to kneel - I gave her a sarcastic wave and turned my back on her. These were all choices I was able to make through gameplay and dialogue, which meld together more beautifully here than most any other RPG I've played. I could go on, this is a huge game and there's so much to see. It's a great big, huge, beautiful RPG that allowed me more player expression than anything I can remember.
This being said - it is janky, still, especially in Act 3. The last stretch leading up to the final battle is technically a bit of a disaster right now. The game could not handle this many enemies and effects on-screen at once, models started glitching out, idle animations stopped playing so everyone was just sat there like a stone statue whilst sound effects and damage numbers fired off all like a half-second too late - and the audio started getting all fuzzy and crackly like this part of the game's brokenness was about to blow my fuckin' TV up. Really, all of Act 3 is all still in need of some polish. Acts 1 and 2 are so beautiful both visually and in terms of content, but the game is a bit scuppered by Act 3. It's not a disastrous fall-off by any means, but I think BG3 definitely peaks early.
It also needs be to said that while it is basically bigger and better than Larian's last game - Divinity: Original Sin 2 in almost every way, I can honestly say I think it suffers with almost all of the same flaws. By which I mean that constant quicksaving and save-scumming is basically a necessity in this game. Baldur's Gate 3's cardinal sin is that failure isn't fun like it is in say - Disco Elysium, usually it's just combat or missed content. And if you aren't constantly quicksaving, what's gonna stop you from losing out on 2+ hours of progress if you suddenly get roped into an incredibly hard combat encounter you were woefully unprepared for and had no way of knowing was gonna occur when you picked this particular dialogue option or wandered onto this highly-specific part of the map? A word of advice for anyone playing their first Larian game - QUICKSAVE. LIKE, A LOT.
The actual maps and level design geometry of BG3 is also - like Divinity: Original Sin 2, pretty wonky and hard to orient yourself around. Paths often don't wind or extend in the way you expect them to, you'll occasionally be roadblocked by some pretty surprising invisible walls and the "gnarled roots" and "cragged rocks" that you can sometimes climb up and down to navigate your way around some of the game's weird path design are often weirdly hard to see and easy to miss, which can make orienting yourself in BG3 pretty frustrating sometimes. Also - damn D&D is complicated as fuck!! Like I'm sure this game is doing the best it can to ease people in and make it all make sense to new players but sheesh was I glad to have played another Larian game before this!
The negatives and flaws are there, but if the speed and effectiveness of Larian's patches so far are anything to go by, this game's rating is liable to go up to 5 stars for me, because the good already outweighs the bad to the fuckin' Nth degree. It's just a masterpiece, especially in Acts 1 & 2, which are so visually gorgeous and dense with content. It again makes me lament the relative brokenness of Act 3 bc damn I need to see that city in a higher framerate. Baldur's Gate itself when it isn't chugging along like we're back in D:OS 2 would probably be more stunning than anything else in the game! Alas, again, it can not yet really handle that much stuff on the screen at one time I don't think, hahaha
This is the new measuring stick for RPGs. Colossal in content and endlessly replayable. This is what happens when a privately owned studio with 2 decades of experience in the genre get as much time and money as they need to execute on their vision. That's the reason this game has set the world on fire the way it has - a lack of corporate intervention. Artists and creatives having the resources to do their job, and then just being left the fuck alone. That's why you don't get games like Baldur's Gate 3 very often, and you need to cherish them when they come around.
EDIT: I've decided to go back and give this 5 stars. Its flaws are still there but man, this game is too good at what it sets out to do. It's dominated my headspace since I finished it. I did a second playthrough on Tactician and loved it even more, its combat and systems absolutely sing at higher difficulty, this is just the best, most immense and deep and enjoyable RPG in a long time.
2016
I had fun with this for a bit but I'm shelving it for now! For an indie game from 2016, its art and visuals hold up super well and it has a very fun and quirky sense of humour without being overbearing and a bit embarrassing like a lot of indie games. I actually think the core gameplay just leaves a bit to be desired? I'm not sure that dodge-rolling with I-frames really works in a 2D perspective, it feels a bit awkward to me. (Though I think the table-flipping mechanic is pretty cool.)
I also think it's a bit too cryptic for me, I really don't like consulting walkthroughs if I can help it but there's so many NPCs I've rescued who I've just never seen again (or maybe don't know how to find) and I don't get what the deal with the crypts are and the game makes no attempts explain wtf the "Prime Primer" is as far as I can see and so on.
I'm shelving it for now bc it's just gotten a bit repetitive (and Ammo-Conda can absolutely go and fucking do one) but I might come back later and update this if I do because it is fun! I've gotten as far as The Forge so far, and I wanna push through and see what more is in the game, but I'm not sure I can push through the tedium of Acts 2-4 again. That's a roguelike for ya
I also think it's a bit too cryptic for me, I really don't like consulting walkthroughs if I can help it but there's so many NPCs I've rescued who I've just never seen again (or maybe don't know how to find) and I don't get what the deal with the crypts are and the game makes no attempts explain wtf the "Prime Primer" is as far as I can see and so on.
I'm shelving it for now bc it's just gotten a bit repetitive (and Ammo-Conda can absolutely go and fucking do one) but I might come back later and update this if I do because it is fun! I've gotten as far as The Forge so far, and I wanna push through and see what more is in the game, but I'm not sure I can push through the tedium of Acts 2-4 again. That's a roguelike for ya
2016
At time of writing, I hadn't given any game a rating of 5 stars for nearly a year until Batman: Arkham City about a week ago. I've logged over 400 games on this site and until Arkham City, had only given 5 stars to...9? 10? What I'm saying is a 5 star rating doesn't come easily, and it's something I think carefully about.
I'd heard whispers of Titanfall 2's supposed greatness for a long time now from a lot of different people whose opinions I respect. I know now that it's widely considered one of the most underrated games of the last decade. So, yeah! I went into this game thinking it'd be good! What I wasn't expecting was for it to be (as far as its campaign is concerned) the best single-player shooter I've ever played. It's better than any Half-Life, it's better than any DOOM, fuck, it's better than Ultrakill. I'm serious. I really feel that way. And this campaign is barely like 6 hours long! Yet they pack so much amazing shit into it.
Finding out that the team behind this was comprised of some of the key minds behind the rise of Call of Duty is like finding out Macklemore ghostwrote a Kendrick Lamar album. This talent, this creativity has been there the whole time and we've had them fucking slaving away on COD? For shame, man. For shame. Titanfall 2 is a fucking marvel. Okay, yeah. Gameplay is amazing. This, most people talk about. Sliding, wall-running, wall-jumping, DOUBLE JUMPING all feels so good and the level design constantly encourages you to use all those platforming abilities, hopping around combat puzzles like a fuckin' jungle gym. The Titan itself also feels incredible. Hulking, clunky, unable to jump! Restricted in movement but overwhelming in firepower, they really commit to you piloting a giant mech in the game design. It'd be so easy to just give the Titan a jump or a hover or something for "convenience" but they don't and the game's vision is purer for it. The restriction of the Titan not being able to jump also aids the game's level design when you as Jack have to split up from your Titan! That, and your size difference makes for an interesting dichotomy between the two characters, which makes sections revolving mostly around either one feel consistently fresh.
But let's go back to level design for a second, shall we? How is a first-person shooter that's - as of writing, over 7 years old and made by a bunch of fuckin' COD heads consistently pulling out some of the most imaginative, artistic and straight-up mind-blowing level design I've ever seen? Parkouring through prefab houses mid-construction on an assembly line, time-travelling between the past and the present to navigate the ruins of a research facility, hopping across military spacecraft in the midst of a high-speed chase and literally fucking wall-jumping between ships hundreds of feet above the ground to catch up to our target. Oh my god man, it's unreal. This game made me chuckle to myself in disbelief, made my jaw drop in awe at some of its setpieces more in 6 hours than most games do across 50.
And would you believe it, I am about to praise of all things - the ART DIRECTION and ENVIRONMENT DESIGN of a game made by Call of Duty figureheads. It's incredible, and I worry that maybe not enough people give it the credit it deserves whilst distracted by everything else but holy shit! The planets are so lush and colourful! The lighting is so futuristic and evocative! All these neon blues and reds absolutely drench the game's various hangars and skylines in this atmosphere the balls of which a COD game couldn't even fucking tickle. I couldn't believe how good this game looked, how consistently, visually interesting it was. A bit of Far Cry 3, a bit of Crysis, a bit of Transformers. This is the artistry Western AAA game developers are so often lacking. This is the rare, military-inspired FPS you could show to a Japanese video game enjoyer and not be embarrassed about. You could say "this is Western engineering, bitch" and then you find his nearest Gundam, knock it over, take a piss on it and watch his fuckin' head explode. What the fuck even is Dragon Quest? We don't even need it over here motherfucker. Giant robot wall-running game
Even the story is decent. It's nothing to write home about and the villains are very generic and uninteresting, but there's some nifty little bits of worldbuilding here and as bland as he may be (and he is VERY bland, and a bit Marvel-ish for my tastes) - protagonist Jack's relationship with BT is really charming. It genuinely evolves throughout the game to the point where some of their late-game interactions actually forced a wry smile out of me. Story-wise, it has all the American military lingo and infallible heroes saluting eachother that I usually fucking hate, and yet this is the easiest 5 star rating I've ever given. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I'd heard whispers of Titanfall 2's supposed greatness for a long time now from a lot of different people whose opinions I respect. I know now that it's widely considered one of the most underrated games of the last decade. So, yeah! I went into this game thinking it'd be good! What I wasn't expecting was for it to be (as far as its campaign is concerned) the best single-player shooter I've ever played. It's better than any Half-Life, it's better than any DOOM, fuck, it's better than Ultrakill. I'm serious. I really feel that way. And this campaign is barely like 6 hours long! Yet they pack so much amazing shit into it.
Finding out that the team behind this was comprised of some of the key minds behind the rise of Call of Duty is like finding out Macklemore ghostwrote a Kendrick Lamar album. This talent, this creativity has been there the whole time and we've had them fucking slaving away on COD? For shame, man. For shame. Titanfall 2 is a fucking marvel. Okay, yeah. Gameplay is amazing. This, most people talk about. Sliding, wall-running, wall-jumping, DOUBLE JUMPING all feels so good and the level design constantly encourages you to use all those platforming abilities, hopping around combat puzzles like a fuckin' jungle gym. The Titan itself also feels incredible. Hulking, clunky, unable to jump! Restricted in movement but overwhelming in firepower, they really commit to you piloting a giant mech in the game design. It'd be so easy to just give the Titan a jump or a hover or something for "convenience" but they don't and the game's vision is purer for it. The restriction of the Titan not being able to jump also aids the game's level design when you as Jack have to split up from your Titan! That, and your size difference makes for an interesting dichotomy between the two characters, which makes sections revolving mostly around either one feel consistently fresh.
But let's go back to level design for a second, shall we? How is a first-person shooter that's - as of writing, over 7 years old and made by a bunch of fuckin' COD heads consistently pulling out some of the most imaginative, artistic and straight-up mind-blowing level design I've ever seen? Parkouring through prefab houses mid-construction on an assembly line, time-travelling between the past and the present to navigate the ruins of a research facility, hopping across military spacecraft in the midst of a high-speed chase and literally fucking wall-jumping between ships hundreds of feet above the ground to catch up to our target. Oh my god man, it's unreal. This game made me chuckle to myself in disbelief, made my jaw drop in awe at some of its setpieces more in 6 hours than most games do across 50.
And would you believe it, I am about to praise of all things - the ART DIRECTION and ENVIRONMENT DESIGN of a game made by Call of Duty figureheads. It's incredible, and I worry that maybe not enough people give it the credit it deserves whilst distracted by everything else but holy shit! The planets are so lush and colourful! The lighting is so futuristic and evocative! All these neon blues and reds absolutely drench the game's various hangars and skylines in this atmosphere the balls of which a COD game couldn't even fucking tickle. I couldn't believe how good this game looked, how consistently, visually interesting it was. A bit of Far Cry 3, a bit of Crysis, a bit of Transformers. This is the artistry Western AAA game developers are so often lacking. This is the rare, military-inspired FPS you could show to a Japanese video game enjoyer and not be embarrassed about. You could say "this is Western engineering, bitch" and then you find his nearest Gundam, knock it over, take a piss on it and watch his fuckin' head explode. What the fuck even is Dragon Quest? We don't even need it over here motherfucker. Giant robot wall-running game
Even the story is decent. It's nothing to write home about and the villains are very generic and uninteresting, but there's some nifty little bits of worldbuilding here and as bland as he may be (and he is VERY bland, and a bit Marvel-ish for my tastes) - protagonist Jack's relationship with BT is really charming. It genuinely evolves throughout the game to the point where some of their late-game interactions actually forced a wry smile out of me. Story-wise, it has all the American military lingo and infallible heroes saluting eachother that I usually fucking hate, and yet this is the easiest 5 star rating I've ever given. That should tell you everything you need to know.
2011
Anyone who knows me knows that I do not care for superheroes and have not done since even before the MCU took over. I am a certified hater and have been for a long time. However, in 2009 before I received my Hater Certificate from Based University I played Batman: Arkham Asylum and actually wound up enjoying it a lot.
So I'm gonna make a confession. I kinda like Batman. I don't really care for the character himself (cliche backstory, generic personality, silly looking costume imo) but I like the world of Batman, I like Gotham; the villains, the darkness, the (somewhat light) social commentary, I think it's all pretty neat. When Batman: Arkham City came out a couple years after Arkham Asylum, I was pretty excited to play it. But I remember messing around with it for a few hours and it not really jiving with me, perhaps related to the Hater Certificate I had received shortly after my Dad & Brother dragged me along to see shitty-ass Iron Man 2
In the years since, Arkham City has generally gone down as the best of the bunch - an even better game than Asylum and one of the best superhero games ever and I've always been curious to give it another try and see for myself. Some 12-or-so years later, I've come back to give it another whirl and, yeah. I mean, whaddaya want me to say? "It really makes you feel like Batman"??? Well guess what!! It does!! It just fucking does!! That is a true statement! That is an extremely correct thing to say and I'm tired of pretending like it's not! It pulls a bit of DNA from Metal Gear Solid, Metroid and honestly a little bit from Legend of Zelda, but also still manages to create something wholly its own. Over 10 years later now, Arkham City was doing so many of the things that people still pine for from modern video games.
It set the bar for combat in a third-person action game. It hardly looks sophisticated by today's standards, but its job is to make you feel cool - like badass mfin Batman and it succeeds to the point where practically every superhero game since has been copying its style of target-switching, counter-based combat. Almost every combat encounter is fun owed to incredible sound design, responsive and fluid controls and that awesome zoomed-in camera on the final hit of every fight. It's open world, but said open world is not this big, obnoxious, bloated mess of towers and checklists; it's carefully crafted, beautifully detailed and mercifully small. It's not big, it's DENSE. You can get from one side of Arkham City to another in like less than 5 actual minutes, but there's something worth doing in almost every dingy alley and dilapidated building you glide over. Also on the note of the world, a quick shoutout to art and environment design. Well over 10 years after its release Arkham City is still an absolutely peak videogame interpretation of the world of Batman, there is so much detail and artistry in just a single hallway, let alone all the neon green and towering setpieces that adorn some of the game's most memorable locales like the Museum and Wonder City. Penguin's "exhibits" in the Museum are one of the highlights of the whole game for me.
It fires on all cylinders in regards to being a game where you are Batman. Hell, even his running animation looks ripped straight out of the old cartoons from the 70's, it's perfect. With tons of cool gadgets to experiment with, some serviceable stealth and some incredible voice acting performances to match fascinating depictions of so many legendary characters from the mythos, it really does not set a foot wrong in what it sets out to achieve. It's a pretty short game in terms of main story (which was honestly welcome in 2023) but it packs so many awesome moments in that short time, including one of the coolest (pun not intended) boss fights I've ever seen against Mr. Freeze. The story gets spread a little thin between too many villains in the final act, and the last boss is pretty underwhelming, but it's not enough of a blemish to negatively impact my opinion at all. And hey if you didn't get your fill out of the main story, there's tons of worthwhile side content and DLC to boot! It achieves everything it sets out to do to near-perfection. It's goated. Fuck superheroes
So I'm gonna make a confession. I kinda like Batman. I don't really care for the character himself (cliche backstory, generic personality, silly looking costume imo) but I like the world of Batman, I like Gotham; the villains, the darkness, the (somewhat light) social commentary, I think it's all pretty neat. When Batman: Arkham City came out a couple years after Arkham Asylum, I was pretty excited to play it. But I remember messing around with it for a few hours and it not really jiving with me, perhaps related to the Hater Certificate I had received shortly after my Dad & Brother dragged me along to see shitty-ass Iron Man 2
In the years since, Arkham City has generally gone down as the best of the bunch - an even better game than Asylum and one of the best superhero games ever and I've always been curious to give it another try and see for myself. Some 12-or-so years later, I've come back to give it another whirl and, yeah. I mean, whaddaya want me to say? "It really makes you feel like Batman"??? Well guess what!! It does!! It just fucking does!! That is a true statement! That is an extremely correct thing to say and I'm tired of pretending like it's not! It pulls a bit of DNA from Metal Gear Solid, Metroid and honestly a little bit from Legend of Zelda, but also still manages to create something wholly its own. Over 10 years later now, Arkham City was doing so many of the things that people still pine for from modern video games.
It set the bar for combat in a third-person action game. It hardly looks sophisticated by today's standards, but its job is to make you feel cool - like badass mfin Batman and it succeeds to the point where practically every superhero game since has been copying its style of target-switching, counter-based combat. Almost every combat encounter is fun owed to incredible sound design, responsive and fluid controls and that awesome zoomed-in camera on the final hit of every fight. It's open world, but said open world is not this big, obnoxious, bloated mess of towers and checklists; it's carefully crafted, beautifully detailed and mercifully small. It's not big, it's DENSE. You can get from one side of Arkham City to another in like less than 5 actual minutes, but there's something worth doing in almost every dingy alley and dilapidated building you glide over. Also on the note of the world, a quick shoutout to art and environment design. Well over 10 years after its release Arkham City is still an absolutely peak videogame interpretation of the world of Batman, there is so much detail and artistry in just a single hallway, let alone all the neon green and towering setpieces that adorn some of the game's most memorable locales like the Museum and Wonder City. Penguin's "exhibits" in the Museum are one of the highlights of the whole game for me.
It fires on all cylinders in regards to being a game where you are Batman. Hell, even his running animation looks ripped straight out of the old cartoons from the 70's, it's perfect. With tons of cool gadgets to experiment with, some serviceable stealth and some incredible voice acting performances to match fascinating depictions of so many legendary characters from the mythos, it really does not set a foot wrong in what it sets out to achieve. It's a pretty short game in terms of main story (which was honestly welcome in 2023) but it packs so many awesome moments in that short time, including one of the coolest (pun not intended) boss fights I've ever seen against Mr. Freeze. The story gets spread a little thin between too many villains in the final act, and the last boss is pretty underwhelming, but it's not enough of a blemish to negatively impact my opinion at all. And hey if you didn't get your fill out of the main story, there's tons of worthwhile side content and DLC to boot! It achieves everything it sets out to do to near-perfection. It's goated. Fuck superheroes