Gandheezy22
2020
When Netflix dropped Bandersnatch, a choose-your-own-adventure story playable on any TV, we were moderately entertained but less than impressed. The Complex is yet another live-action movie that ostensibly changes according to player choice, and it could not have possibly come at a worse time. The story is about a pharmaceutical research group funded by a fictional Asian country called Kindar creating a pandemic-worthy virus. The virus essentially escapes containment and the Complex, the aforementioned entity, tries to cover it up before their secret gets out.
If you are perhaps reading this in the far future, we are currently square in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. I won't fault Wales Interactive for their subject choice as they obviously didn't know this would happen. Still, even a well-crafted game about a pandemic could be a hard sell in the middle of such a crisis. However, even disregarding the virus-related story content, The Complex leaves a lot to be desired.
There are about a dozen choices players make during a playthrough, eventually leading to one of eight endings. Pressing the pause button opens up a summary page where players can view their progress and the status of each character. The screen marks out faces if a character dies. It also shows a percentage for each face indicating the health of their relationship with main character Amy. It's clear that this kind of a stats screen attempts to emulate Supermassive Games' cult hit Until Dawn. There is, however, one key difference between Until Dawn and The Complex that the developers did not account for: The Complex is boring beyond belief.
Until Dawn has become a go-to for groups of friends to sit together in a dark room, drinks in hand, on a Saturday night and yell unreservedly at the person holding the controller what decisions to make to keep their hot, horny teens alive through the night. The Complex attempts to emulate these features to not just lackluster, but actively detrimental results.
There are nine faces belonging to "main characters," though only three of them get more than ten minutes of screen time across the two-ish hour campaign. The player controls Amy (I use the word "control" loosely here) via multiple-choice questions, akin to a Telltale game. At certain junctions, the player chooses how she should act from up to three options. This formula can work - it certainly worked better than this in Bandersnatch - but choices seem to have little to no effect on what actually happens, regardless of how Amy acts. After about 45 minutes, I restarted the game and made different decisions to see how they would impact the story. In that particular run, they didn't. Amy just did or said different things that ended with the same result. Games are sometimes accused of having an "illusion of player choice," but The Complex doesn't even provide that. The player feels very distinctly that their choices are not making a difference in the story. Wales Interactive advertises eight distinct endings, but that doesn't seem to extend to telling eight different stories.
Each choice has a five second timer, which hardly gives the player agency to make any sort of impactful decision. This is where The Complex's nature as a linear FMV truly hampers it. Real humans cannot just idle indefinitely while you make a decision, or even wait more than three or four seconds to continue a conversation without saying anything.
In Until Dawn, the real fun is in sitting in agony and pondering which of the two paths you'd like to go down. Emulating the quick decision-making of Telltale games further removes the player from the consequences of their decisions, as they aren't given time to care. There is an option in the settings to pause time while you make a decision, which the developers indicate is intended for streamers to use with live audiences. I applaud this kind of foresight at the very least; if this had been an interesting game, it would certainly make for excellent material for a livestream. Needless to say, you should use that option if you're absolutely hellbent on entering this Complex.
The Complex 1 "The unregulated human trials ended in massive bloodshed, but we learned a lot."
Amy is at once utterly boring and completely irrational. It is impossible at any given time to track what her motivations, goals or feelings are because she intentionally has no defined character. This was likely done on purpose to give the player a feeling of agency, similar to the voiceless bland protagonists of so many JRPGs. However, watching a living human woman stare blank-faced at the camera while she waits for your command feels awkward at best. Amy's intentional lack of personality results in failing to endear her to the player and it becomes very difficult to care about her or her conflicts. The secondary characters were so dull I forgot their names as soon as they introduced themselves.
In some cases, more impressive elements hold up a film despite bad acting. In this case, thewy only adds fuel to the already-burning dumpster fire. The story feels convoluted, relying on pretend sci-fi jargon far too often and asking the audience to pay close attention to exposition dumps every four minutes to follow the plot. The motivations of all the characters are inscrutable, the camera work is amateur at best, and even the musical score was completely out of tonal sync with the scenes it played over.
This tale never fully explains its world either, so the audience will be left with a lot of questions. So many that it feels as if the writers want to leave parts of the "lore" a mystery in each run to encourage players to go back multiple times to process the whole narrative. The strategy of making it mandatory to play a game twice barely works in a masterpiece like Nier: Automata, so the idea becomes utterly laughable in reference to The Complex. The almost absent level of interactivity pushes it much farther towards being just a movie than a video game. The only gameplay comes through quick-time choices, which don't appear to affect the story in any meaningful way. The player feels entirely separated from the decisions they're making and the characters they're impacting. After finishing, most will feel that they've just lost two and a half hours of their lives. Even if you're waiting out a pandemic, there are better ways to do that.
If you are perhaps reading this in the far future, we are currently square in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. I won't fault Wales Interactive for their subject choice as they obviously didn't know this would happen. Still, even a well-crafted game about a pandemic could be a hard sell in the middle of such a crisis. However, even disregarding the virus-related story content, The Complex leaves a lot to be desired.
There are about a dozen choices players make during a playthrough, eventually leading to one of eight endings. Pressing the pause button opens up a summary page where players can view their progress and the status of each character. The screen marks out faces if a character dies. It also shows a percentage for each face indicating the health of their relationship with main character Amy. It's clear that this kind of a stats screen attempts to emulate Supermassive Games' cult hit Until Dawn. There is, however, one key difference between Until Dawn and The Complex that the developers did not account for: The Complex is boring beyond belief.
Until Dawn has become a go-to for groups of friends to sit together in a dark room, drinks in hand, on a Saturday night and yell unreservedly at the person holding the controller what decisions to make to keep their hot, horny teens alive through the night. The Complex attempts to emulate these features to not just lackluster, but actively detrimental results.
There are nine faces belonging to "main characters," though only three of them get more than ten minutes of screen time across the two-ish hour campaign. The player controls Amy (I use the word "control" loosely here) via multiple-choice questions, akin to a Telltale game. At certain junctions, the player chooses how she should act from up to three options. This formula can work - it certainly worked better than this in Bandersnatch - but choices seem to have little to no effect on what actually happens, regardless of how Amy acts. After about 45 minutes, I restarted the game and made different decisions to see how they would impact the story. In that particular run, they didn't. Amy just did or said different things that ended with the same result. Games are sometimes accused of having an "illusion of player choice," but The Complex doesn't even provide that. The player feels very distinctly that their choices are not making a difference in the story. Wales Interactive advertises eight distinct endings, but that doesn't seem to extend to telling eight different stories.
Each choice has a five second timer, which hardly gives the player agency to make any sort of impactful decision. This is where The Complex's nature as a linear FMV truly hampers it. Real humans cannot just idle indefinitely while you make a decision, or even wait more than three or four seconds to continue a conversation without saying anything.
In Until Dawn, the real fun is in sitting in agony and pondering which of the two paths you'd like to go down. Emulating the quick decision-making of Telltale games further removes the player from the consequences of their decisions, as they aren't given time to care. There is an option in the settings to pause time while you make a decision, which the developers indicate is intended for streamers to use with live audiences. I applaud this kind of foresight at the very least; if this had been an interesting game, it would certainly make for excellent material for a livestream. Needless to say, you should use that option if you're absolutely hellbent on entering this Complex.
The Complex 1 "The unregulated human trials ended in massive bloodshed, but we learned a lot."
Amy is at once utterly boring and completely irrational. It is impossible at any given time to track what her motivations, goals or feelings are because she intentionally has no defined character. This was likely done on purpose to give the player a feeling of agency, similar to the voiceless bland protagonists of so many JRPGs. However, watching a living human woman stare blank-faced at the camera while she waits for your command feels awkward at best. Amy's intentional lack of personality results in failing to endear her to the player and it becomes very difficult to care about her or her conflicts. The secondary characters were so dull I forgot their names as soon as they introduced themselves.
In some cases, more impressive elements hold up a film despite bad acting. In this case, thewy only adds fuel to the already-burning dumpster fire. The story feels convoluted, relying on pretend sci-fi jargon far too often and asking the audience to pay close attention to exposition dumps every four minutes to follow the plot. The motivations of all the characters are inscrutable, the camera work is amateur at best, and even the musical score was completely out of tonal sync with the scenes it played over.
This tale never fully explains its world either, so the audience will be left with a lot of questions. So many that it feels as if the writers want to leave parts of the "lore" a mystery in each run to encourage players to go back multiple times to process the whole narrative. The strategy of making it mandatory to play a game twice barely works in a masterpiece like Nier: Automata, so the idea becomes utterly laughable in reference to The Complex. The almost absent level of interactivity pushes it much farther towards being just a movie than a video game. The only gameplay comes through quick-time choices, which don't appear to affect the story in any meaningful way. The player feels entirely separated from the decisions they're making and the characters they're impacting. After finishing, most will feel that they've just lost two and a half hours of their lives. Even if you're waiting out a pandemic, there are better ways to do that.
2019
This game far outstays its welcome. The beginning is interesting enough, with a fun premise that is trying hard to evoke the vibes of Night School Studio's previous title, Oxenfree, but it quickly falls into a slump. The main positive is that the charming realistic dialogue of free-speaking from Oxenfree is back, and the music is quite good. Interesting NPCs, too. Voice acting is excellent.
Unfortunately, the game becomes a matter of slowly moving back and forth between places you've already been to learn more about characters you don't particularly care about (Milo and Lola). The thing that makes it so insufferable is that the game is acutely aware that it is too long and that you're feeling a sense of impatience. Characters will frequently say things like "Come on, it's just another hour and you'll be done!" or "Sorry, I don't want to slow you down, I know you kind of just want to get to the end." and "Sorry about holding up the game, but that's what the game is!" If you know your game is too long, don't lampshade it, shorten it. I kind of felt insulted playing it. Overall it was okay but a far cry from Oxenfree, which is one of my favorite indies ever. Don't spend more than $10 on this and prepare for it to be a drag. This could have been a 3 hour experience and had the same impact but is stretched to twice that length by having you do busywork. Am I supposed to feel better when one of the NPCs says "Sorry, I hope you didn't feel like that was all busywork" ? Because I do not.
Unfortunately, the game becomes a matter of slowly moving back and forth between places you've already been to learn more about characters you don't particularly care about (Milo and Lola). The thing that makes it so insufferable is that the game is acutely aware that it is too long and that you're feeling a sense of impatience. Characters will frequently say things like "Come on, it's just another hour and you'll be done!" or "Sorry, I don't want to slow you down, I know you kind of just want to get to the end." and "Sorry about holding up the game, but that's what the game is!" If you know your game is too long, don't lampshade it, shorten it. I kind of felt insulted playing it. Overall it was okay but a far cry from Oxenfree, which is one of my favorite indies ever. Don't spend more than $10 on this and prepare for it to be a drag. This could have been a 3 hour experience and had the same impact but is stretched to twice that length by having you do busywork. Am I supposed to feel better when one of the NPCs says "Sorry, I hope you didn't feel like that was all busywork" ? Because I do not.
2020
Limbo with better visuals and much worse gameplay.
Do not play this on the Switch.
Before beginning The Last of Us Part II, I jotted down some of my quick thoughts on worries and hopes for what the game would present to me. The meta-narrative surrounding The Last of Us Part II has dominated the internet for months since the story leaked, and I must acknowledge that even though I avoided leaks, it’s possible my experience with Neil Druckmann’s seminal work was compromised by toxic online discourse. Nevertheless, this is just a journal of my thoughts on my time with Ellie and Abby. I have very mixed feelings about The Last of Us Part II, but ultimately it’s a game about how severing connections brings out the worst in people. You are your worst self when you are alone, and you are at your weakest when you refuse help from others.
Setting aside the story for a moment, The Last of Us Part II is a technical masterpiece. Naughty Dog has definitively pushed the industry forward with their latest game, and all action-adventure games will be held to this standard for years to come. I genuinely couldn’t believe it was running on my base PS4, and moreover that it never once dropped in frame rate. I could sit here listing everything spectacular about The Last of Us Part II… so I will.
The Last of Us Part II features the most intelligent AI I’ve ever seen in an action game, and the cinematic nature of my actions left me awestruck that it was all being generated on the fly. Every action you choose to make looks like a cutscene, regardless of how random you felt your decisions were. Every time I struck someone with a crowbar or threw a grenade at a horde of clickers looked like a movie. This video is a great example of what I mean. None of this was pre-programmed — you’re living inside a procedurally generated movie.
When I was playing as Ellie and accompanied by Jesse, I left a building, walked out in the rain, and pulled out my map. After about 30 seconds spent studying it, I folded up the map and turned to find that Jesse was standing about 30 feet away under a covered awning, waiting for me to finish. Just a few seconds after I started walking, he jogged out to join me in the downpour and asked where we were going next. It’s such a basic thing — humans don’t stand out in the rain while waiting for someone — but this set of data struck me as so human in that moment. There are hundreds of instances of such humanity in the AI in The Last of Us Part II, from characters choosing to passively stand in sun patches after getting wet to absentmindedly petting horses or dogs while in gameplay.
I haven’t even mentioned the lighting effects of running through the forest with a torch, again adapting to whatever way the player wishes to run. I’ve never seen lighting that real, maybe not even in real life.The way that Ellie and Abby actually take apart and modify guns at the workbenches is amazing, and that reminds me that the sound editing is also astoundingly well done. You can hear the individual clinks and clanks of bolts as they modify the guns. On a much more morbid level, you can hear bones and tendons snapping when you kill people. If your headphones are good enough, you can hear the gums separating from teeth as you bash someone’s head in with a pipe. You can hear the waning gurgling of a cultist as you slit their throat wide open and try to hold their organs inside so as not to leave a trail.
Which leads me to my next point. The Last of Us Part II is the most dementedly violent game I’ve ever played, and if there is a game anywhere in the world that revels more in its own violence I do not know of it. More than once I felt so physically ill while playing that I had to shut down my PlayStation for the night. In excruciatingly accurate audial and visual detail, both the player and the NPCs showcase the most sadistic, animalistic violence in our lizard brains when killing one another. If you bash someone’s head in with a bat, pieces of their brain and skull will come flying out. If you cut someones stomach open, their intestines will begin to spill out. Blood spatter patterns are rendered in unbelievable accuracy. At one point, cultists were torturing a woman by breaking her arm with a hammer until the bones visibly came out and then using her own bones to cut the rest of her flesh. I believe I’ve gotten the point across, so I’ll stop here, but The Last of Us Part II has slipped into the “uncanny valley” of video game violence, completely by intention. That is to say, we as humans can disconnect from video game violence because no matter how “realistic” games are, they don’t want to make you uncomfortable. The Last of Us Part II wants to make you sick, and will celebrate when it does.
Alas, we can avoid it no longer; after taking a few days to reflect on it, I still feel that the story of The Last of Us Part II is incredibly stupid. The thesis statement of The Last of Us Part II is that we are weaker when we split apart — we are all weaker when we fight. Yes, I believe that is true. It also tells a story of how revenge will consume you, it will destroy you, it will control you. Yes, that is also true. However, The Last of Us Part II is quite simply a story about a girl who refuses to learn or grow.
Ellie, our protagonist, sets out on a revenge mission, killing hundreds of people indiscriminately to get a chance at killing Abby. When she reaches Abby and attempts to kill her, Abby fights her off and shows mercy by sparing her. Abby, having killed Joel at the beginning of the game, has learned her lesson. She has grown. She is capable of the very basic human process of understanding how her actions were a mistake and that she needs to change. Abby ends this story as a compelling protagonist, and someone who’s story of finding justice in mercy needs to be heard.
Ellie, our beloved deuteroganist from the original The Last of Us, is the villain of the sequel. Over time she has grown hard and cold, and despite the number of people in her life who love her and want desperately to connect with her (Joel, Tommy, Jesse, Dina etc) she has become something else entirely. Spending the last few years in Jackson, surrounded by loving friends and family and a structured life, I have a very hard time believing this is the woman she became. Consumed by hatred, revenge, ready to lead anyone who loves her to slaughter. The Last of Us Part II treats Ellie’s singular act of mercy at the end as some sort of act of heroism — it is not. This is where the story’s fatal flaw comes in. Ellie is irredeemable. She is despicable by the game’s own design.
Ellie is unable, even after a year of time to learn, grow or change in any way, to let go of her need for revenge. And it isn’t reactionary. The woman she loves tearfully begs her not to abandon her and their son in the name of avenging an evil man she outwardly hated. But Ellie goes. Remember in Game of Thrones when Jaime runs back to Cersei at the end, even after supposedly learning and growing? Ellie’s story is that for video games. The Last of Us Part II wants the player to believe that Ellie has learned not to rely on hatred and anger to drive her when she and Dina retire to the farm. Then it “subverts expectations” by having her go out and fuck over the only person patient enough to still love her. It’s so wildly out of character I can barely put it into words. Ellie’s actions are for the sake of pushing the narrative that Druckmann wanted, not the other way around. At the end, I found myself asking how I could possibly care about Ellie at all anymore. She failed me, and through her Naughty Dog failed me. Yes, I am being dramatic, but I was very much looking forward to this game.
But, at the end of the day, this is just a video game, and a damn impressive one at that. Many reviewers felt it was something more, but I assure you it is not. While parts of the story were brilliant (such as the opening and Abby and Lev’s story), any positive commendations for the story as a whole unit are completely beyond my comprehension. Druckmann has presented himself to be sort of the anti-Hideo Kojima once again: Druckmann’s broad story beats are almost nonsensical, but his line-to-line writing is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Contrast that to Kojima, whose line-to-line writing borders on gibberish, but has produced some insanely intelligent story maps. By the time the credits roll, Druckmann has nothing to say except “don’t kill hundreds of people in pursuit of killing one person. Killing is bad.” Thanks Neil, I missed that day of Kindergarten, I guess.
You may be surprised after my very cynical review of The Last of Us Part II, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of the genre. I get it. It’s just a sad story about a miserable woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s badly written — it’s just not a story I want to hear or consume. I’ve realized that what I really don’t like about the story is all stuff that other people have imposed on it in discussions. Not anything that the actual game says. I think I’ve just been angry at people who are calling this the greatest thing of all time and don’t understand the story and I’ve been taking it out on the game itself.
As I stated before, it will most certainly push the entire gaming industry into the future. If I were to discount the story altogether, it might even be a perfect 10. But that’s not the world we live in, is it? Maybe The Last of Us Part II, a cynical look at how a pandemic will cause people to revert to their animalistic violent tendencies, could have come out at a better time. I’m trying not to blame Naughty Dog, as they obviously didn’t know, but this story must be analyzed as a product of this time. The Last of Us Part II delivers a message that we’ve all heard a thousand times before and then pats itself on the back for doing so. This should have been a story about Abby and Lev in the universe of The Last of Us; I strongly believe Ellie didn’t need to be a part of it. She’ll go down in gaming history as one of our most sadistic villains ever, and I hope Druckmann feels that using her as a vehicle for his weird art piece was worth it.
Setting aside the story for a moment, The Last of Us Part II is a technical masterpiece. Naughty Dog has definitively pushed the industry forward with their latest game, and all action-adventure games will be held to this standard for years to come. I genuinely couldn’t believe it was running on my base PS4, and moreover that it never once dropped in frame rate. I could sit here listing everything spectacular about The Last of Us Part II… so I will.
The Last of Us Part II features the most intelligent AI I’ve ever seen in an action game, and the cinematic nature of my actions left me awestruck that it was all being generated on the fly. Every action you choose to make looks like a cutscene, regardless of how random you felt your decisions were. Every time I struck someone with a crowbar or threw a grenade at a horde of clickers looked like a movie. This video is a great example of what I mean. None of this was pre-programmed — you’re living inside a procedurally generated movie.
When I was playing as Ellie and accompanied by Jesse, I left a building, walked out in the rain, and pulled out my map. After about 30 seconds spent studying it, I folded up the map and turned to find that Jesse was standing about 30 feet away under a covered awning, waiting for me to finish. Just a few seconds after I started walking, he jogged out to join me in the downpour and asked where we were going next. It’s such a basic thing — humans don’t stand out in the rain while waiting for someone — but this set of data struck me as so human in that moment. There are hundreds of instances of such humanity in the AI in The Last of Us Part II, from characters choosing to passively stand in sun patches after getting wet to absentmindedly petting horses or dogs while in gameplay.
I haven’t even mentioned the lighting effects of running through the forest with a torch, again adapting to whatever way the player wishes to run. I’ve never seen lighting that real, maybe not even in real life.The way that Ellie and Abby actually take apart and modify guns at the workbenches is amazing, and that reminds me that the sound editing is also astoundingly well done. You can hear the individual clinks and clanks of bolts as they modify the guns. On a much more morbid level, you can hear bones and tendons snapping when you kill people. If your headphones are good enough, you can hear the gums separating from teeth as you bash someone’s head in with a pipe. You can hear the waning gurgling of a cultist as you slit their throat wide open and try to hold their organs inside so as not to leave a trail.
Which leads me to my next point. The Last of Us Part II is the most dementedly violent game I’ve ever played, and if there is a game anywhere in the world that revels more in its own violence I do not know of it. More than once I felt so physically ill while playing that I had to shut down my PlayStation for the night. In excruciatingly accurate audial and visual detail, both the player and the NPCs showcase the most sadistic, animalistic violence in our lizard brains when killing one another. If you bash someone’s head in with a bat, pieces of their brain and skull will come flying out. If you cut someones stomach open, their intestines will begin to spill out. Blood spatter patterns are rendered in unbelievable accuracy. At one point, cultists were torturing a woman by breaking her arm with a hammer until the bones visibly came out and then using her own bones to cut the rest of her flesh. I believe I’ve gotten the point across, so I’ll stop here, but The Last of Us Part II has slipped into the “uncanny valley” of video game violence, completely by intention. That is to say, we as humans can disconnect from video game violence because no matter how “realistic” games are, they don’t want to make you uncomfortable. The Last of Us Part II wants to make you sick, and will celebrate when it does.
Alas, we can avoid it no longer; after taking a few days to reflect on it, I still feel that the story of The Last of Us Part II is incredibly stupid. The thesis statement of The Last of Us Part II is that we are weaker when we split apart — we are all weaker when we fight. Yes, I believe that is true. It also tells a story of how revenge will consume you, it will destroy you, it will control you. Yes, that is also true. However, The Last of Us Part II is quite simply a story about a girl who refuses to learn or grow.
Ellie, our protagonist, sets out on a revenge mission, killing hundreds of people indiscriminately to get a chance at killing Abby. When she reaches Abby and attempts to kill her, Abby fights her off and shows mercy by sparing her. Abby, having killed Joel at the beginning of the game, has learned her lesson. She has grown. She is capable of the very basic human process of understanding how her actions were a mistake and that she needs to change. Abby ends this story as a compelling protagonist, and someone who’s story of finding justice in mercy needs to be heard.
Ellie, our beloved deuteroganist from the original The Last of Us, is the villain of the sequel. Over time she has grown hard and cold, and despite the number of people in her life who love her and want desperately to connect with her (Joel, Tommy, Jesse, Dina etc) she has become something else entirely. Spending the last few years in Jackson, surrounded by loving friends and family and a structured life, I have a very hard time believing this is the woman she became. Consumed by hatred, revenge, ready to lead anyone who loves her to slaughter. The Last of Us Part II treats Ellie’s singular act of mercy at the end as some sort of act of heroism — it is not. This is where the story’s fatal flaw comes in. Ellie is irredeemable. She is despicable by the game’s own design.
Ellie is unable, even after a year of time to learn, grow or change in any way, to let go of her need for revenge. And it isn’t reactionary. The woman she loves tearfully begs her not to abandon her and their son in the name of avenging an evil man she outwardly hated. But Ellie goes. Remember in Game of Thrones when Jaime runs back to Cersei at the end, even after supposedly learning and growing? Ellie’s story is that for video games. The Last of Us Part II wants the player to believe that Ellie has learned not to rely on hatred and anger to drive her when she and Dina retire to the farm. Then it “subverts expectations” by having her go out and fuck over the only person patient enough to still love her. It’s so wildly out of character I can barely put it into words. Ellie’s actions are for the sake of pushing the narrative that Druckmann wanted, not the other way around. At the end, I found myself asking how I could possibly care about Ellie at all anymore. She failed me, and through her Naughty Dog failed me. Yes, I am being dramatic, but I was very much looking forward to this game.
But, at the end of the day, this is just a video game, and a damn impressive one at that. Many reviewers felt it was something more, but I assure you it is not. While parts of the story were brilliant (such as the opening and Abby and Lev’s story), any positive commendations for the story as a whole unit are completely beyond my comprehension. Druckmann has presented himself to be sort of the anti-Hideo Kojima once again: Druckmann’s broad story beats are almost nonsensical, but his line-to-line writing is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Contrast that to Kojima, whose line-to-line writing borders on gibberish, but has produced some insanely intelligent story maps. By the time the credits roll, Druckmann has nothing to say except “don’t kill hundreds of people in pursuit of killing one person. Killing is bad.” Thanks Neil, I missed that day of Kindergarten, I guess.
You may be surprised after my very cynical review of The Last of Us Part II, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of the genre. I get it. It’s just a sad story about a miserable woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s badly written — it’s just not a story I want to hear or consume. I’ve realized that what I really don’t like about the story is all stuff that other people have imposed on it in discussions. Not anything that the actual game says. I think I’ve just been angry at people who are calling this the greatest thing of all time and don’t understand the story and I’ve been taking it out on the game itself.
As I stated before, it will most certainly push the entire gaming industry into the future. If I were to discount the story altogether, it might even be a perfect 10. But that’s not the world we live in, is it? Maybe The Last of Us Part II, a cynical look at how a pandemic will cause people to revert to their animalistic violent tendencies, could have come out at a better time. I’m trying not to blame Naughty Dog, as they obviously didn’t know, but this story must be analyzed as a product of this time. The Last of Us Part II delivers a message that we’ve all heard a thousand times before and then pats itself on the back for doing so. This should have been a story about Abby and Lev in the universe of The Last of Us; I strongly believe Ellie didn’t need to be a part of it. She’ll go down in gaming history as one of our most sadistic villains ever, and I hope Druckmann feels that using her as a vehicle for his weird art piece was worth it.
2020
Cyberpunk 2077 was ambitious beyond its capabilities, and that shows. While it has a lot of flaws and is unequivocally problematic and exploitative in how it handles racial stereotypes, the glitz and glamor of night city feels real if you don’t examine it too hard. Cyberpunk 2077 claims to be satire, but it never makes it clear what it’s actually satirizing.
The main story is thematically cohesive and brilliantly written, perhaps some of the best writing I've seen in a complex game like this, but it is contradicted at every turn by the mechanics and systems of the open world. Keanu Reeves actually turns in a much better performance than I anticipated, and, just like Johnny Depp with Jack Sparrow, no one else on earth could have played this character. In the overall product, however, what we're left with thematically is that crime is okay when V does it but is bad when other people do it. Don’t think about it too much.
Not every game needs to be a cerebral experience. Sometimes it’s okay to just live in the world, take it in, and feel it. Immerse yourself. Walking into a club with music pounding and a cyborg bartender pouring drinks for neon-clad gangsters is exhilarating. It feels cool. I feel for a moment that I’m in Akira, or Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner. The dialogue is cleverly written if not cleverly organized , but the ability to complete quests my way just isn’t a priority for the game. The lack of organic quest discovery soured my experience greatly, and the lite RPG mechanics were disappointing after CDPR promised even more depth than the Witcher 3. Of course the AI is almost indescribably dysfunctional even in the working version of the game, but behind all of that is the most elaborate and possibly most beautiful world in video game history. Stick to playing the game the way CDPR designed it to be played and you’ll enjoy it.
I recommend Cyberpunk 2077 for fans of Fallout 4 or GTA V, or for folks who just want to play around in a Cyberpunk world and pretend they’re a Blade Runner for a few hours. I don’t recommend it for anyone looking for a deep RPG experience or for a game that allows you to play your way or for complex dialogue trees.
The main story is thematically cohesive and brilliantly written, perhaps some of the best writing I've seen in a complex game like this, but it is contradicted at every turn by the mechanics and systems of the open world. Keanu Reeves actually turns in a much better performance than I anticipated, and, just like Johnny Depp with Jack Sparrow, no one else on earth could have played this character. In the overall product, however, what we're left with thematically is that crime is okay when V does it but is bad when other people do it. Don’t think about it too much.
Not every game needs to be a cerebral experience. Sometimes it’s okay to just live in the world, take it in, and feel it. Immerse yourself. Walking into a club with music pounding and a cyborg bartender pouring drinks for neon-clad gangsters is exhilarating. It feels cool. I feel for a moment that I’m in Akira, or Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner. The dialogue is cleverly written if not cleverly organized , but the ability to complete quests my way just isn’t a priority for the game. The lack of organic quest discovery soured my experience greatly, and the lite RPG mechanics were disappointing after CDPR promised even more depth than the Witcher 3. Of course the AI is almost indescribably dysfunctional even in the working version of the game, but behind all of that is the most elaborate and possibly most beautiful world in video game history. Stick to playing the game the way CDPR designed it to be played and you’ll enjoy it.
I recommend Cyberpunk 2077 for fans of Fallout 4 or GTA V, or for folks who just want to play around in a Cyberpunk world and pretend they’re a Blade Runner for a few hours. I don’t recommend it for anyone looking for a deep RPG experience or for a game that allows you to play your way or for complex dialogue trees.
2012
This is one the most heartfelt and emotional games I have ever played. The characters really broke through to me. I felt Lee's pain, I felt Clementine's fear, I felt the sadness and I felt the hope. This was one of the most cathartic experiences in gaming for me, and I dropped a few tears here and there for sure. The game tells a better story than even the source comics and puts the TV show to absolute shame. Some of the best, most intelligent writing I've ever seen in a game. The second half of the game is much more engaging than the first half, but I think the slow burn is by design. By the time you reach the ending that was inevitable all along, you are not shocked. You're not surprised. There is no twist. You feel. I feel the prolonged heartache of knowing something awful is coming and watching it come to pass. My heart is broken. What a wonderful and horrible tale.
2019
I often tell people I love horror, and I do. I certainly subject myself to it enough, whether it’s through Stephen King books or American Horror Story or any horror anime I can get my grubby hands on. But I’ve never been able to quite lay my finger on why I love horror. There is a joy in being frightened, but where does it come from? I believe that the true draw of horror is that the genre is based around discovering things that are unknown. Every horror movie is also a mystery movie, even if it’s a bad one. A lot of times the capital-U Unknown isn’t resolved by the end of the story, and that’s great. That leaves the Unknown as an all powerful entity. If you know something, you can fight it. What is Unknown is unkillable, and that is fascinating. The terror in Resident Evil 2 does not lie in the jump scares or the grotesque monsters, of which there are plenty. It lies in the Unknowable, the unkillable, the unsolvable, the incomprehensible. I cannot make sense of what I have seen over the course of these past 15 hours, despite my tedious detective work. And I couldn’t be happier about that.
Resident Evil 2 is comprised of two somewhat different stories. Choosing your character is essentially splitting the timeline, and you play through both scenarios, one as college student Claire Redfield and the other as young hot rookie cop Leon Kennedy. Their stories intersect with each other in a weird way, but they’re not two sides of the same story. The themes of each story are quite different, too. Leon’s story is a police thriller that features an investigation into a gigantic corporation’s shady activities. Claire’s story is a story of motherhood, and strongly follows the theme of finding your own family. I will not spoil anything from the story past the opening of the game.
RE2 is a puzzle/survival horror game. Resident Evil actually is responsible for popularizing survival horror games back in the 90s, and helped lead to renewed interest in zombies in pop culture that we saw going into the 2000s. I’ll be honest, I was completely unfamiliar with the franchise until now. I never played any of the games or saw the movies, didn’t know who Jill Valentine was, didn’t even know the franchise was about a zombie outbreak. After seeing all the Game of the Year praise a remake got in 2019, I thought to myself “this must be a pretty damn good remake then.” And it is.
I was not sold on this game in its first hour. I kept thinking “where’s the thing that makes this a game of the year contender?” I chose Claire to play as because she seemed confident and cool while Leon looked like the lost 8th member of BTS. Traversing the police station, collecting weird items, finding dead ends and dead friends scattered this way and that. I basically was in a state of being jump scared every 10 seconds by a zombie I thought was dead, always being low on ammo, and busting my brain trying to solve these 1998-ass puzzles.
And then suddenly I found the rhythm. A long string of Aah! moments cascaded forth! If I open the box and use the jewel to open the other box, then use that picture to decipher the statue puzzle and get the scepter, then I’ll have the key that’s printed on the back of it and can use it for the vault lock that’s stopping me from getting the goddess coin! The dopamine rush that comes with feeling yourself to be really intelligent hit hard, and I suddenly got what the game was about: it’s just a scary puzzle game. There’s nothing I’m missing. Put simply, scary puzzle game good.
The enemies are wonderfully grotesque. I have a rather high tolerance for gore but my big weakness in horror is people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. So you can imagine I had to do a little soul-searching with RE2, a game that is exclusively about people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. I have no problem with zombies, and quickly became relieved when I saw them. I know zombies, they’re not scary. Shoot them in the head, like every other piece of zombie media for the last hundred years. What I don’t know are the lickers, the ivy, the BOWs. I don’t know what the hell G is. And I haven’t the faintest idea what Mr. X is. Spoilers in the next paragraph, skip ahead if you don’t want to see.
I would like to talk about Mr. X for a moment. Mr. X is a large, broad shouldered, blue faced indestructible dad wearing a trench coat and a fedora. Once he appears in the police station, he continually stalks you for the duration of that area (probably about an hour or so of gameplay). He cannot be hurt, he cannot die. He does not speak, has no emotions, and walks exactly half as fast as you can run, never changing speed. It is absolutely terrifying. I was so scared of what was going to happen when he caught me. Would he break my neck? Eat me? Maybe a fade to black? No, it’s much worse. When Mr. X catches you, he punches you. Hard. I don’t know why it’s worse, but I do NOT want to get punched by the big stone man in the fedora. I just don’t. Do you? No, you don’t. Don’t get punched. He is the best and worst part of this game all at the same time and has been an inspiration to me. I recently featured him in the Dungeons and Dragons game I DM and my players are losing their goddamn minds.
RE2 is one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen, like ever. Beyond the basic stuff like textures and animations, the lighting is so… purposeful. The angle of every light that reaches every room is precisely calculated to maximize your fear. Directional lighting is a much bigger factor than we realize while playing games, but just keep an eye out when you play through this game. The music is not a top 10 of all time or anything, but it is sufficiently scary for sure. Mr. X’s Theme is the real standout. Hearing it as he slams open the door to the next room while you cower under the desk… Jesus Christ. Perfect horror.
There a few characters besides the main two that I won’t spoil the story of, but I really came to love Sherry and hate Ada. Like I mentioned before, Leon’s story is more the story of the Umbrella Corporation, what they did, why they did it, and how it started the apocalypse. Claire’s story is that of family, how people hold together and fall apart when all is lost. You’ll find that each of them feels different to play as, even if it feels like you’re playing the same game again. Claire gets a grenade launcher and Leon gets a shotgun, so they actually handle quite differently. The crafting is simple and as such lends itself to being fun. I find gunpowder, I immediately combine it with my one other gunpowder to make bullets. Easy, fast, and doesn’t kill the momentum of the scares. I played as Claire first and I found her story to be much more interesting than Leon’s, but I’m sure that’s a matter of preference. Remember to either play a 2nd run to get the true ending, or just look it up on Youtube when you finish your first runs. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Calling Resident Evil 2 a remake is almost disservice to the love, care, and passion that was obviously poured into this project. You will have a hard time finding another game with this amount of polish that doesn’t have Mario in it. It’s not the scariest game I’ve ever played, not by a long shot, but it does deliver the best scares that I’ve experienced. Mr. X, while overall not a huge part of the game, sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable video game villains I’ve ever faced off against, and the other creatures created by the Umbrella Corporation are the stuff of nightmares. The lighting, camera angling, pacing, and sound design come together to push you to the edge of suspense. The unrelenting bombardment of having the Unknown loom over you for 15 hours is something that cannot be replicated through a movie or TV. This is absolutely one of the best games of 2019. If you have the stomach for it, I must insist that you strap on your glock, dive into the sewer, and pray that something can truly deliver us from this evil.
Resident Evil 2 is comprised of two somewhat different stories. Choosing your character is essentially splitting the timeline, and you play through both scenarios, one as college student Claire Redfield and the other as young hot rookie cop Leon Kennedy. Their stories intersect with each other in a weird way, but they’re not two sides of the same story. The themes of each story are quite different, too. Leon’s story is a police thriller that features an investigation into a gigantic corporation’s shady activities. Claire’s story is a story of motherhood, and strongly follows the theme of finding your own family. I will not spoil anything from the story past the opening of the game.
RE2 is a puzzle/survival horror game. Resident Evil actually is responsible for popularizing survival horror games back in the 90s, and helped lead to renewed interest in zombies in pop culture that we saw going into the 2000s. I’ll be honest, I was completely unfamiliar with the franchise until now. I never played any of the games or saw the movies, didn’t know who Jill Valentine was, didn’t even know the franchise was about a zombie outbreak. After seeing all the Game of the Year praise a remake got in 2019, I thought to myself “this must be a pretty damn good remake then.” And it is.
I was not sold on this game in its first hour. I kept thinking “where’s the thing that makes this a game of the year contender?” I chose Claire to play as because she seemed confident and cool while Leon looked like the lost 8th member of BTS. Traversing the police station, collecting weird items, finding dead ends and dead friends scattered this way and that. I basically was in a state of being jump scared every 10 seconds by a zombie I thought was dead, always being low on ammo, and busting my brain trying to solve these 1998-ass puzzles.
And then suddenly I found the rhythm. A long string of Aah! moments cascaded forth! If I open the box and use the jewel to open the other box, then use that picture to decipher the statue puzzle and get the scepter, then I’ll have the key that’s printed on the back of it and can use it for the vault lock that’s stopping me from getting the goddess coin! The dopamine rush that comes with feeling yourself to be really intelligent hit hard, and I suddenly got what the game was about: it’s just a scary puzzle game. There’s nothing I’m missing. Put simply, scary puzzle game good.
The enemies are wonderfully grotesque. I have a rather high tolerance for gore but my big weakness in horror is people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. So you can imagine I had to do a little soul-searching with RE2, a game that is exclusively about people that have been forcefully mutated into monsters. I have no problem with zombies, and quickly became relieved when I saw them. I know zombies, they’re not scary. Shoot them in the head, like every other piece of zombie media for the last hundred years. What I don’t know are the lickers, the ivy, the BOWs. I don’t know what the hell G is. And I haven’t the faintest idea what Mr. X is. Spoilers in the next paragraph, skip ahead if you don’t want to see.
I would like to talk about Mr. X for a moment. Mr. X is a large, broad shouldered, blue faced indestructible dad wearing a trench coat and a fedora. Once he appears in the police station, he continually stalks you for the duration of that area (probably about an hour or so of gameplay). He cannot be hurt, he cannot die. He does not speak, has no emotions, and walks exactly half as fast as you can run, never changing speed. It is absolutely terrifying. I was so scared of what was going to happen when he caught me. Would he break my neck? Eat me? Maybe a fade to black? No, it’s much worse. When Mr. X catches you, he punches you. Hard. I don’t know why it’s worse, but I do NOT want to get punched by the big stone man in the fedora. I just don’t. Do you? No, you don’t. Don’t get punched. He is the best and worst part of this game all at the same time and has been an inspiration to me. I recently featured him in the Dungeons and Dragons game I DM and my players are losing their goddamn minds.
RE2 is one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen, like ever. Beyond the basic stuff like textures and animations, the lighting is so… purposeful. The angle of every light that reaches every room is precisely calculated to maximize your fear. Directional lighting is a much bigger factor than we realize while playing games, but just keep an eye out when you play through this game. The music is not a top 10 of all time or anything, but it is sufficiently scary for sure. Mr. X’s Theme is the real standout. Hearing it as he slams open the door to the next room while you cower under the desk… Jesus Christ. Perfect horror.
There a few characters besides the main two that I won’t spoil the story of, but I really came to love Sherry and hate Ada. Like I mentioned before, Leon’s story is more the story of the Umbrella Corporation, what they did, why they did it, and how it started the apocalypse. Claire’s story is that of family, how people hold together and fall apart when all is lost. You’ll find that each of them feels different to play as, even if it feels like you’re playing the same game again. Claire gets a grenade launcher and Leon gets a shotgun, so they actually handle quite differently. The crafting is simple and as such lends itself to being fun. I find gunpowder, I immediately combine it with my one other gunpowder to make bullets. Easy, fast, and doesn’t kill the momentum of the scares. I played as Claire first and I found her story to be much more interesting than Leon’s, but I’m sure that’s a matter of preference. Remember to either play a 2nd run to get the true ending, or just look it up on Youtube when you finish your first runs. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Calling Resident Evil 2 a remake is almost disservice to the love, care, and passion that was obviously poured into this project. You will have a hard time finding another game with this amount of polish that doesn’t have Mario in it. It’s not the scariest game I’ve ever played, not by a long shot, but it does deliver the best scares that I’ve experienced. Mr. X, while overall not a huge part of the game, sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable video game villains I’ve ever faced off against, and the other creatures created by the Umbrella Corporation are the stuff of nightmares. The lighting, camera angling, pacing, and sound design come together to push you to the edge of suspense. The unrelenting bombardment of having the Unknown loom over you for 15 hours is something that cannot be replicated through a movie or TV. This is absolutely one of the best games of 2019. If you have the stomach for it, I must insist that you strap on your glock, dive into the sewer, and pray that something can truly deliver us from this evil.
2020
Had a great night playing through the campaign with a friend in one sitting.
2019
Does right what it says on the tin.
2020
This studio reached into my brain and manifested the game I never knew would be my dream game. Co-op ghost hunting with your friends. I mean, how could it get better? And the updates have been frequent and great.
2020
City builders and management games have always been a bit hit or miss for me. Most of them eventually become repetitive, and I begin to tire of the same atmosphere, environments and mechanics while I try desperately to keep my citizens alive. Airborne Kingdom seeks to throw the entire genre upside by having the player build a flying city while simultaneously exploring the open world and completing quests - and succeeds mightily.
In Airborne Kingdom, we begin our journey with an enormous task - rebuild the legendary flying kingdom of old and secure the alliances of the twelve disconnected kingdoms that lay scattered across the land. These kingdoms were once a whole, and now each struggles to stay alive. Beginning with the last remnants of the ancient civilization's technology, your kingdom sets sail for new horizons with a crew of ten tiny, but determined citizens.
I found many familiar components of city builder games in Airborne Kingdom; food, water, coal to run the motor, wood, clay, iron and glass to build and of course citizen happiness. Just as important as the materials, however, are the physics. The pull of gravity will begin to weight down your town as you build, and only by providing more Lift can your kingdom-in-the-making stay afloat. Beyond that, you'll also need to account for Tilt. It is exactly what it sounds like; as you build, you'll need to keep weight distribution even on all four sides, lest your city tip sideways and your little polygonal citizens tumble into the vast below.
AK2 We've started a community garden to widespread town approval.
Soon you'll have your first row of houses built, and that's when the magic happens. Before you lies a vast open world to explore from the skies, full of resources, wonders, ancient ruins and settlements aplenty. You'll need to keep your citizens happy by providing them with "desires" to plants and streetlights while maintaining the Lift and Tilt of the kingdom. Resources like wood or water are collected from the ground by sending down scouts as you pass overhead, and the rate at which you gather can of course be upgraded through a city-builder staple: a technology tree.
You'll need to be conscious about zoning, too; if you place the industrial district too close to a residential district your citizens will file complaints about the noise and odor. In the most flattering way possible, the entire thing is exceedingly cute. This is as close as a video game will ever get to Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.There's also a robust photo mode you can use to show off your healthily growing kingdom to your friends. Building colors are totally customizable too, and you'll discover new pallets for buildings along the journey that can be applied to building types wholesale to keep a consistency in your town's aesthetic.
Building research centers will allow you to upgrade your town and build new machines to in the pursuit of resources, storage, lift and propulsion, or luxuries. The tech tree is very simple and easy to progress through - research doesn't require any materials, just your time and a few citizens for labor. This means you're always researching, always in pursuit of the next upgrade, and being able to research without any materials got me out of one or two scrapes with total calamity. I was never worried during the six hour campaign about keeping my people alive; I was simply worried about them leading comfortable, fulfilling lives aboard my kingdom.
When flying past ruins, you can send in a scout to collect relics. These relics can then be traded at any one of the twelve kingdoms for different blueprints for new technology. The excitement of rolling up to a new kingdom, relics weighing down your pockets and checking what new technologies they boast is legitimately exhilarating. After you acquire a blueprint, you can research it and its upgrades at any time to begin utilizing it, again, for free. Additionally, each kingdom will trade materials with you based on cost determined by their local resources - if they're near a forest and far from a mine, they'll value any wood you try to trade them less than coal. The map can stay open while you continue flying so you don't waste any time or resources making plans.
Now, the real kicker; this open world adventure game has RPG-like quests to complete. Upon reaching a kingdom and making contact, you'll receive a unique quest to complete in order to gain the kingdom's favor and have them join your empire. Each quest is considerably different, and only a few of them were "go find this and bring it back." You can pop open your quest log with your map at any time and hold as many quests as you'd like at once, and Airborne Kingdom never tells you exactly where to go, only a general direction. The progression loop is smooth, and I never felt I was progressing or growing too slowly. Each expansion to my kingdom felt earned without me ever having to truly struggle for it.
The dialogue is surprisingly well-written and intriguing, and the depth of the descriptions in the flavor text make me feel like there exists somewhere a thousand page lore document for the world of the Airborne Kingdom. Each place I visited was unique and intriguing, and only the first biome kept the Middle Eastern art style that the game seems to be built around. As I traveled into the swamp I found myself in a fantasy version of North Ireland, and out in the mountain crags things began to look a lot like a dwarven kingdom from The Lord of the Rings.
The map is divided into three regions; the desert, the mountain crags, and the marshlands. The map is divided into clearly numbered tiles that were each hand-designed by an artist, so expect them to adhere to a high design standard; however, each tile's placement on the world map is procedurally generated each time you begin a new game. You'll never see the same thing in the same location twice, and new Wonders, biomes and Kingdoms will appear each campaign as well.
When I interviewed the developers, The Wandering Band, earlier this year, they did indeed note the similarities between their map's art style and the infamous Game of Thrones intro about halfway through development and leaned into it. The art style stays consistent around the many different map features and styles of architecture, and the pleasant hum of the Arab-inspired music keeps things relaxed. Which brings me to my next point.
Airborne Kingdom is not a particularly difficult or punishing game. In my experience, city builders and management games are typically about survival. Airborne Kingdom is about happiness. Keeping your kingdom afloat is extremely easy - keeping it balanced to maintain citizen happiness is not. Keeping your citizens fed and watered isn't too hard, but if you do run out of those resources they do not die - they simply leave to go live in the nearest kingdom. Without the extreme stress of survival on the line, exploration is the focus of Airborne Kingdom, and in that it excels greatly. I was never worried during the six hour campaign about keeping my people alive; I was simply worried about them leading comfortable, fulfilling lives aboard my kingdom. The entire thing is just plain cozy.
My only real issue with Airborne Kingdom is that even my high end PC (RTX 2060 Super and Ryzen 5 3600) was barely chugging along by the last hour. While I was able to hold 144 FPS on Ultra graphics for most of the game, eventually there were too many moving parts on screen and my computer was struggling to keep 20 FPS by the end. I hope the developers have an optimization patch incoming - this game is too pretty to play on lower settings.
Airborne Kingdom is hands down the best city builder/management game I've ever played, even topping 2018's excellent offering Frostpunk. The focus on narrative, lore, quests and exploration puts the management aspects in second while still keeping your on your toes. I was thrilled to be working in pursuit of happiness for my citizens instead of just their survival, and by the end my expansive kingdom put anything back down on the ground to shame. Uniting the kingdoms was just as satisfying as promised, and I recommend Airborne Kingdom as a must-play to any fans of management, sim, city builder or just pure exploration games.
In Airborne Kingdom, we begin our journey with an enormous task - rebuild the legendary flying kingdom of old and secure the alliances of the twelve disconnected kingdoms that lay scattered across the land. These kingdoms were once a whole, and now each struggles to stay alive. Beginning with the last remnants of the ancient civilization's technology, your kingdom sets sail for new horizons with a crew of ten tiny, but determined citizens.
I found many familiar components of city builder games in Airborne Kingdom; food, water, coal to run the motor, wood, clay, iron and glass to build and of course citizen happiness. Just as important as the materials, however, are the physics. The pull of gravity will begin to weight down your town as you build, and only by providing more Lift can your kingdom-in-the-making stay afloat. Beyond that, you'll also need to account for Tilt. It is exactly what it sounds like; as you build, you'll need to keep weight distribution even on all four sides, lest your city tip sideways and your little polygonal citizens tumble into the vast below.
AK2 We've started a community garden to widespread town approval.
Soon you'll have your first row of houses built, and that's when the magic happens. Before you lies a vast open world to explore from the skies, full of resources, wonders, ancient ruins and settlements aplenty. You'll need to keep your citizens happy by providing them with "desires" to plants and streetlights while maintaining the Lift and Tilt of the kingdom. Resources like wood or water are collected from the ground by sending down scouts as you pass overhead, and the rate at which you gather can of course be upgraded through a city-builder staple: a technology tree.
You'll need to be conscious about zoning, too; if you place the industrial district too close to a residential district your citizens will file complaints about the noise and odor. In the most flattering way possible, the entire thing is exceedingly cute. This is as close as a video game will ever get to Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.There's also a robust photo mode you can use to show off your healthily growing kingdom to your friends. Building colors are totally customizable too, and you'll discover new pallets for buildings along the journey that can be applied to building types wholesale to keep a consistency in your town's aesthetic.
Building research centers will allow you to upgrade your town and build new machines to in the pursuit of resources, storage, lift and propulsion, or luxuries. The tech tree is very simple and easy to progress through - research doesn't require any materials, just your time and a few citizens for labor. This means you're always researching, always in pursuit of the next upgrade, and being able to research without any materials got me out of one or two scrapes with total calamity. I was never worried during the six hour campaign about keeping my people alive; I was simply worried about them leading comfortable, fulfilling lives aboard my kingdom.
When flying past ruins, you can send in a scout to collect relics. These relics can then be traded at any one of the twelve kingdoms for different blueprints for new technology. The excitement of rolling up to a new kingdom, relics weighing down your pockets and checking what new technologies they boast is legitimately exhilarating. After you acquire a blueprint, you can research it and its upgrades at any time to begin utilizing it, again, for free. Additionally, each kingdom will trade materials with you based on cost determined by their local resources - if they're near a forest and far from a mine, they'll value any wood you try to trade them less than coal. The map can stay open while you continue flying so you don't waste any time or resources making plans.
Now, the real kicker; this open world adventure game has RPG-like quests to complete. Upon reaching a kingdom and making contact, you'll receive a unique quest to complete in order to gain the kingdom's favor and have them join your empire. Each quest is considerably different, and only a few of them were "go find this and bring it back." You can pop open your quest log with your map at any time and hold as many quests as you'd like at once, and Airborne Kingdom never tells you exactly where to go, only a general direction. The progression loop is smooth, and I never felt I was progressing or growing too slowly. Each expansion to my kingdom felt earned without me ever having to truly struggle for it.
The dialogue is surprisingly well-written and intriguing, and the depth of the descriptions in the flavor text make me feel like there exists somewhere a thousand page lore document for the world of the Airborne Kingdom. Each place I visited was unique and intriguing, and only the first biome kept the Middle Eastern art style that the game seems to be built around. As I traveled into the swamp I found myself in a fantasy version of North Ireland, and out in the mountain crags things began to look a lot like a dwarven kingdom from The Lord of the Rings.
The map is divided into three regions; the desert, the mountain crags, and the marshlands. The map is divided into clearly numbered tiles that were each hand-designed by an artist, so expect them to adhere to a high design standard; however, each tile's placement on the world map is procedurally generated each time you begin a new game. You'll never see the same thing in the same location twice, and new Wonders, biomes and Kingdoms will appear each campaign as well.
When I interviewed the developers, The Wandering Band, earlier this year, they did indeed note the similarities between their map's art style and the infamous Game of Thrones intro about halfway through development and leaned into it. The art style stays consistent around the many different map features and styles of architecture, and the pleasant hum of the Arab-inspired music keeps things relaxed. Which brings me to my next point.
Airborne Kingdom is not a particularly difficult or punishing game. In my experience, city builders and management games are typically about survival. Airborne Kingdom is about happiness. Keeping your kingdom afloat is extremely easy - keeping it balanced to maintain citizen happiness is not. Keeping your citizens fed and watered isn't too hard, but if you do run out of those resources they do not die - they simply leave to go live in the nearest kingdom. Without the extreme stress of survival on the line, exploration is the focus of Airborne Kingdom, and in that it excels greatly. I was never worried during the six hour campaign about keeping my people alive; I was simply worried about them leading comfortable, fulfilling lives aboard my kingdom. The entire thing is just plain cozy.
My only real issue with Airborne Kingdom is that even my high end PC (RTX 2060 Super and Ryzen 5 3600) was barely chugging along by the last hour. While I was able to hold 144 FPS on Ultra graphics for most of the game, eventually there were too many moving parts on screen and my computer was struggling to keep 20 FPS by the end. I hope the developers have an optimization patch incoming - this game is too pretty to play on lower settings.
Airborne Kingdom is hands down the best city builder/management game I've ever played, even topping 2018's excellent offering Frostpunk. The focus on narrative, lore, quests and exploration puts the management aspects in second while still keeping your on your toes. I was thrilled to be working in pursuit of happiness for my citizens instead of just their survival, and by the end my expansive kingdom put anything back down on the ground to shame. Uniting the kingdoms was just as satisfying as promised, and I recommend Airborne Kingdom as a must-play to any fans of management, sim, city builder or just pure exploration games.
2018
I reviewed Hades with a key provided for free by the publisher.
On paper, Hades appears to be a rogue-like dungeon crawler, similar to The Binding of Isaac or Darkest Dungeon, but in practice it feels much more like a Platinum Games (Bayonetta, Nier Automata) affair. I have never been the biggest fan of rogue-like games. I typically don't like isometric perspectives or games that force you to restart at the beginning upon death. I was even feeling burned out on Greek Mythology after Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but as a lover of Supergiant's previous titles, Bastion and Transistor, I had to see what they had cooked up this time. It speaks to the game's quality that, despite my reluctance towards its components, Hades has become my favorite game of 2020 thus far.
You can read my full review here: https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/hades-review .
On paper, Hades appears to be a rogue-like dungeon crawler, similar to The Binding of Isaac or Darkest Dungeon, but in practice it feels much more like a Platinum Games (Bayonetta, Nier Automata) affair. I have never been the biggest fan of rogue-like games. I typically don't like isometric perspectives or games that force you to restart at the beginning upon death. I was even feeling burned out on Greek Mythology after Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but as a lover of Supergiant's previous titles, Bastion and Transistor, I had to see what they had cooked up this time. It speaks to the game's quality that, despite my reluctance towards its components, Hades has become my favorite game of 2020 thus far.
You can read my full review here: https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/hades-review .
2020
Although it wasn’t until recently that Ghost of Tsushima became a “day one” title for me, I’ve had my eye on it for what feels like four years now. Ah, okay. Looks like it actually was four years. Here’s the headline — worth it.
Ghost of Tsushima puts the player in the shoes of Jin Sakai, the last samurai left standing after the Battle at Komoda Beach, marking the beginning of the Mongol invasion of Japan. The fictional Khoutun Khan, cousin of Kublai Khan, sails 8,000 Mongols to Tsushima in November of 1274. His forces decimate the samurai, killing all 80 of them in minutes and leaving only Jin and his uncle, the Jito, alive. Ghost of Tsushima is pretty explicitly historical fiction, but if you’re interested in seeing what really happened I’ve made a cool video about just that (https://youtu.be/gE7YzTdtDbU) ! Nevertheless, the fiction of Ghost of Tsushima places Jin in a very perilous position — he is the last one that can protect his home island of Tsushima, and by extension all of Japan, from becoming part of the Mongol Empire.
The open world of Ghost of Tsushima is, in the most non-memey way possible, breathtaking. I will state with confidence that it is the best open world map I’ve seen since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There are occasionally open world games that lean on being open world as a buzzword, and not due to the design of the game necessitating it (Sucker Punch’s own Infamous: Second Son immediately comes to mind) but Ghost of Tsushima could not possibly exist in another state. The flowing winds, the blooming flowers, the herds of wild animals, the quiet stare of the sunset over the marshes… it is the apex of beauty.
I do not say this lightly: Ghost of Tsushima is the most beautiful video game ever made. I don’t mean that it has the best graphics, or the most powerful lighting engine, or the most realistic faces — it has none of those things. Instead, the artists at Sucker Punch have stumbled onto the perfect balance of contrast, saturation and variety in their coloring to provide a more wondrous landscape than I’ve ever seen put to screen. The piercing moonlight reflects over the quiet black ponds. The stoic stone monuments to ancestors long forgotten. The hum of a shakuhachi flute from around the bend, the clacking of wooden sandals clacking against a stone path. The sights, sounds, and feelings of Tsushima come together to make the most gorgeous map in video games to date. Take a close look at a field of flowers, the skeletons of the sakura trees, the vivid greens of the hills and the ardent blues of the sky. The foxes scurry to their hidden shrines and the songbirds flee to secret gardens constantly enticing the player to just explore. I can do nothing to describe the beauty of the music except to entice you to listen to the soundtrack. It will speak for itself as the unquestioned best score of 2020. Ghost of Tsushima is beautiful beyond compare.
I want to avoid spoilers, but I found the main story to be enthralling. Jin’s struggle externally is with both his uncle, Lord Shimura, and Khoutun Khan. These external struggles are the b-plot — the real story is Jin’s fight against himself. The struggle for who Jin was vs. who he must become is engaging enough to keep you going right up until the end, even when tired tropes are used to drive the external conflicts. Honor takes front and center stage here, as Jin fights to balance the mandates of the Bushido code with the ever-looming truth — the only way to defeat the Mongols is to follow the way of the ninja.
Jin is accompanied by his faithful partner in crime, Yuna, an archer who saves him from the Mongols and helps him build his legend as the Ghost. After seemingly rising from the dead on the beach where the samurai were eradicated, she helps turn Jin into a living legend. Serfs whisper stories round the campfire of the 10-foot tall demon-faced Ghost who can cut down Mongols with a glance, who walks from the fire and cuts down armies unharmed. Yuna’s place in building the morale for the Japanese and creating a deity out of a man cannot be understated, and besides being moral support (and Jin’s only real friend through this), her blunt and forceful nature serves as a perfect juxtaposition to Jin’s calm, calculative nature. Jin and Yuna are well-supported by a cast of other colorful characters, including but not limited to Taka (your #1 fan), Norio the Warrior Monk, Masako the Killer Grandma, Ishekawa the Grumpy Grandpa and Kenji the Drunken Idiot.
Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay is smooth and variable all at once. There are two fighting styles — samurai and ghost (ninja). One thing that Ghost of Tsushima might have been more upfront about is that you are required to use a combination of those two styles, rather than focusing on which way you want to play, to fight. This keeps the combat from getting stale. One moment you’re having a 1v1 Kursoawa-style samurai showdown and the next you’re throwing sticky bombs and shooting poison darts at Mongols. Flipping between sneaking around and honorable duels does cause some dissonance in continuity, but it’s meant to work in tandem with Jin’s own dissonance with his dual identities as a samurai and as the Ghost. There are four stances available, each made to fight against a different weapon type, so during combat with groups you’ll be constantly firing arrows, switching stances, throwing kunai, dodging and parrying all at once. It is, in a word, electrifying.
Jin will rely on his trusty steed (who you pick out and name at the beginning) to traverse the gorgeous terrain, as well as grappling, climbing and parkour straight out of the newer Assassin’s Creed games. This may not be as hot a take as I’d like, but Ghost of Tsushima is the best Assassin’s Creed game by a mile. The overworld is not overloaded with icons, the UI when battling is minimal (I suggest you turn it off entirely) and every element of the menus is designed specifically to get you through them quickly and back into the world as quickly as possible. There are several skill trees accompanied by gear and sword upgrades from crafting, so Jin will constantly be learning new skills and combos.
There are four types of quests; main quests that advance the story, character quests that develop the supporting cast, side quests that usually involve tracking down and killing mongols, and Mythic quests to retrieve legendary weapons and armor. One of my only negatives about Ghost of Tsushima is a big one — the side quests are mostly uninspired “go here, kill this, come back”, although they’re occasionally broken up with something really interesting. The character quests, while much more interesting, mostly lead to anticlimactic endings. The Mythic quests are essentially parkour courses, and I highly recommend getting into them. This leaves the main story, which is excellently written and provides just the right amount of urgency to motivate while allowing for side quests. I will mention that one of the character quests left me in actual tears.
This is all to say that the best way to play this game is simply by walking in a direction and doing things you come upon. Don’t keep checking the map to unfog areas and check off boxes. Turn off the HUD. Use the ridiculously robust photo mode (with which I took all of the above pictures) and make your own samurai story. Sucker Punch has magnificently crafted a set of variable tools. Do not be afraid to use them. Find the freedom that Ghost of Tsushima offers; it’s in that freedom that the heart of the game lies. Simply ride your horse through the plains, the forest, over the hills, wherever you desire — the world is your sandbox. Somewhere along the way, Ghost of Tsushima became my favorite Playstation exclusive ever, narrowly beating Spider-Man, and will almost certainly be my 2020 Game of the Year.
Ghost of Tsushima brings harnesses the true strength of its open world in encouraging traversal, freedom and a wide variety of tools and weapons. The entire game is built to encourage the player to explore. The main story is well-written and engaging; Khoutun Khan provides a charismatic and compelling antagonist while Lord Shimura represents the dying age of the samurai in contrast to Jin’s determination to do whatever it takes. Supporting characters provide compelling quest lines, albeit with ultimately anticlimactic endings. There’s only one word for the feeling evoked by fighting 1v1 Kurosawa-style duels in black and white with the ronin, getting the kill, and then wiping and sheathing your blade: badass. Find your fighting style, hone it to mastery, defeat the Mongol hordes and save Japan from the threat of certain destruction. Forsake honor and fight for peace. There is no place left in Tsushima for a samurai — this island belongs to The Ghost.
Ghost of Tsushima puts the player in the shoes of Jin Sakai, the last samurai left standing after the Battle at Komoda Beach, marking the beginning of the Mongol invasion of Japan. The fictional Khoutun Khan, cousin of Kublai Khan, sails 8,000 Mongols to Tsushima in November of 1274. His forces decimate the samurai, killing all 80 of them in minutes and leaving only Jin and his uncle, the Jito, alive. Ghost of Tsushima is pretty explicitly historical fiction, but if you’re interested in seeing what really happened I’ve made a cool video about just that (https://youtu.be/gE7YzTdtDbU) ! Nevertheless, the fiction of Ghost of Tsushima places Jin in a very perilous position — he is the last one that can protect his home island of Tsushima, and by extension all of Japan, from becoming part of the Mongol Empire.
The open world of Ghost of Tsushima is, in the most non-memey way possible, breathtaking. I will state with confidence that it is the best open world map I’ve seen since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There are occasionally open world games that lean on being open world as a buzzword, and not due to the design of the game necessitating it (Sucker Punch’s own Infamous: Second Son immediately comes to mind) but Ghost of Tsushima could not possibly exist in another state. The flowing winds, the blooming flowers, the herds of wild animals, the quiet stare of the sunset over the marshes… it is the apex of beauty.
I do not say this lightly: Ghost of Tsushima is the most beautiful video game ever made. I don’t mean that it has the best graphics, or the most powerful lighting engine, or the most realistic faces — it has none of those things. Instead, the artists at Sucker Punch have stumbled onto the perfect balance of contrast, saturation and variety in their coloring to provide a more wondrous landscape than I’ve ever seen put to screen. The piercing moonlight reflects over the quiet black ponds. The stoic stone monuments to ancestors long forgotten. The hum of a shakuhachi flute from around the bend, the clacking of wooden sandals clacking against a stone path. The sights, sounds, and feelings of Tsushima come together to make the most gorgeous map in video games to date. Take a close look at a field of flowers, the skeletons of the sakura trees, the vivid greens of the hills and the ardent blues of the sky. The foxes scurry to their hidden shrines and the songbirds flee to secret gardens constantly enticing the player to just explore. I can do nothing to describe the beauty of the music except to entice you to listen to the soundtrack. It will speak for itself as the unquestioned best score of 2020. Ghost of Tsushima is beautiful beyond compare.
I want to avoid spoilers, but I found the main story to be enthralling. Jin’s struggle externally is with both his uncle, Lord Shimura, and Khoutun Khan. These external struggles are the b-plot — the real story is Jin’s fight against himself. The struggle for who Jin was vs. who he must become is engaging enough to keep you going right up until the end, even when tired tropes are used to drive the external conflicts. Honor takes front and center stage here, as Jin fights to balance the mandates of the Bushido code with the ever-looming truth — the only way to defeat the Mongols is to follow the way of the ninja.
Jin is accompanied by his faithful partner in crime, Yuna, an archer who saves him from the Mongols and helps him build his legend as the Ghost. After seemingly rising from the dead on the beach where the samurai were eradicated, she helps turn Jin into a living legend. Serfs whisper stories round the campfire of the 10-foot tall demon-faced Ghost who can cut down Mongols with a glance, who walks from the fire and cuts down armies unharmed. Yuna’s place in building the morale for the Japanese and creating a deity out of a man cannot be understated, and besides being moral support (and Jin’s only real friend through this), her blunt and forceful nature serves as a perfect juxtaposition to Jin’s calm, calculative nature. Jin and Yuna are well-supported by a cast of other colorful characters, including but not limited to Taka (your #1 fan), Norio the Warrior Monk, Masako the Killer Grandma, Ishekawa the Grumpy Grandpa and Kenji the Drunken Idiot.
Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay is smooth and variable all at once. There are two fighting styles — samurai and ghost (ninja). One thing that Ghost of Tsushima might have been more upfront about is that you are required to use a combination of those two styles, rather than focusing on which way you want to play, to fight. This keeps the combat from getting stale. One moment you’re having a 1v1 Kursoawa-style samurai showdown and the next you’re throwing sticky bombs and shooting poison darts at Mongols. Flipping between sneaking around and honorable duels does cause some dissonance in continuity, but it’s meant to work in tandem with Jin’s own dissonance with his dual identities as a samurai and as the Ghost. There are four stances available, each made to fight against a different weapon type, so during combat with groups you’ll be constantly firing arrows, switching stances, throwing kunai, dodging and parrying all at once. It is, in a word, electrifying.
Jin will rely on his trusty steed (who you pick out and name at the beginning) to traverse the gorgeous terrain, as well as grappling, climbing and parkour straight out of the newer Assassin’s Creed games. This may not be as hot a take as I’d like, but Ghost of Tsushima is the best Assassin’s Creed game by a mile. The overworld is not overloaded with icons, the UI when battling is minimal (I suggest you turn it off entirely) and every element of the menus is designed specifically to get you through them quickly and back into the world as quickly as possible. There are several skill trees accompanied by gear and sword upgrades from crafting, so Jin will constantly be learning new skills and combos.
There are four types of quests; main quests that advance the story, character quests that develop the supporting cast, side quests that usually involve tracking down and killing mongols, and Mythic quests to retrieve legendary weapons and armor. One of my only negatives about Ghost of Tsushima is a big one — the side quests are mostly uninspired “go here, kill this, come back”, although they’re occasionally broken up with something really interesting. The character quests, while much more interesting, mostly lead to anticlimactic endings. The Mythic quests are essentially parkour courses, and I highly recommend getting into them. This leaves the main story, which is excellently written and provides just the right amount of urgency to motivate while allowing for side quests. I will mention that one of the character quests left me in actual tears.
This is all to say that the best way to play this game is simply by walking in a direction and doing things you come upon. Don’t keep checking the map to unfog areas and check off boxes. Turn off the HUD. Use the ridiculously robust photo mode (with which I took all of the above pictures) and make your own samurai story. Sucker Punch has magnificently crafted a set of variable tools. Do not be afraid to use them. Find the freedom that Ghost of Tsushima offers; it’s in that freedom that the heart of the game lies. Simply ride your horse through the plains, the forest, over the hills, wherever you desire — the world is your sandbox. Somewhere along the way, Ghost of Tsushima became my favorite Playstation exclusive ever, narrowly beating Spider-Man, and will almost certainly be my 2020 Game of the Year.
Ghost of Tsushima brings harnesses the true strength of its open world in encouraging traversal, freedom and a wide variety of tools and weapons. The entire game is built to encourage the player to explore. The main story is well-written and engaging; Khoutun Khan provides a charismatic and compelling antagonist while Lord Shimura represents the dying age of the samurai in contrast to Jin’s determination to do whatever it takes. Supporting characters provide compelling quest lines, albeit with ultimately anticlimactic endings. There’s only one word for the feeling evoked by fighting 1v1 Kurosawa-style duels in black and white with the ronin, getting the kill, and then wiping and sheathing your blade: badass. Find your fighting style, hone it to mastery, defeat the Mongol hordes and save Japan from the threat of certain destruction. Forsake honor and fight for peace. There is no place left in Tsushima for a samurai — this island belongs to The Ghost.
2019
Death Stranding is possibly the best video game ever made. It certainly has impressed, exhilarated, and stayed with me more than any other game before or since.
Death Stranding has completely reinvented social interaction in games. Although Death Stranding is a single-player campaign, it necessitates a connection to the internet. It is here that Kojima's purpose begins to take shape; the theme of "we are stronger when connected" bleeds into every aspect of gameplay. As Sam reconnects the chiral network and puts America back online, portions of the map connect to the grid. This means that the player can build structures like generators, rain shelters, player homes, zip lines, bridges, roads, etc using a PCC kit to 3D print structures out in the world. Once another player connects that same area to the grid in their own game, there's a chance that your structure will appear in their world, and vice versa.
You can also collect lost cargo from other people's games and request deliveries from other players. Once, I desperately needed a floating carrier but didn't have the resources. I estimated I'd arrive at the Distro Center West of Lake Knot City in about 30 minutes, so I requested that someone deliver a floating carrier. Lo and behold, it was waiting for me when I arrived! I felt loved at that moment; some stranger had put aside what they were doing and spent 30 minutes of their time bringing me this carrier for no reward or recognition.
Each structure has the name of the player floating above it, and you can "Like" other players' structures if they helped you. I cannot begin to count the number of times other players' structures saved my life. BTs are chasing me - I come upon a shelter. BB is crying, and my exoskeleton is sputtering out - there's a generator. My boots have worn out, and the MULEs are charging at me - but someone has left a motorcycle at the edge of the road for me. A ladder to cross a chasm, a belaying hook to scale a cliff, all left by strangers for strangers.
I felt truly connected to everyone else playing Death Stranding because everything I did had real-world implications. These were real people out there, with real goals and real aspirations. This infinite loop of everyone in the world delivering packages to each other, Liking each other's structures, and positively affirming each other was beautiful. If we all give, no one is left wanting.
Death Stranding has completely reinvented social interaction in games. Although Death Stranding is a single-player campaign, it necessitates a connection to the internet. It is here that Kojima's purpose begins to take shape; the theme of "we are stronger when connected" bleeds into every aspect of gameplay. As Sam reconnects the chiral network and puts America back online, portions of the map connect to the grid. This means that the player can build structures like generators, rain shelters, player homes, zip lines, bridges, roads, etc using a PCC kit to 3D print structures out in the world. Once another player connects that same area to the grid in their own game, there's a chance that your structure will appear in their world, and vice versa.
You can also collect lost cargo from other people's games and request deliveries from other players. Once, I desperately needed a floating carrier but didn't have the resources. I estimated I'd arrive at the Distro Center West of Lake Knot City in about 30 minutes, so I requested that someone deliver a floating carrier. Lo and behold, it was waiting for me when I arrived! I felt loved at that moment; some stranger had put aside what they were doing and spent 30 minutes of their time bringing me this carrier for no reward or recognition.
Each structure has the name of the player floating above it, and you can "Like" other players' structures if they helped you. I cannot begin to count the number of times other players' structures saved my life. BTs are chasing me - I come upon a shelter. BB is crying, and my exoskeleton is sputtering out - there's a generator. My boots have worn out, and the MULEs are charging at me - but someone has left a motorcycle at the edge of the road for me. A ladder to cross a chasm, a belaying hook to scale a cliff, all left by strangers for strangers.
I felt truly connected to everyone else playing Death Stranding because everything I did had real-world implications. These were real people out there, with real goals and real aspirations. This infinite loop of everyone in the world delivering packages to each other, Liking each other's structures, and positively affirming each other was beautiful. If we all give, no one is left wanting.