LCSnoogs
2022
This is a fast-paced action platformer with short levels meant for rushing through as fast as possible. Completing a level requires getting to the end while killing on the enemies. Movement feels great, and playing the levels well ensures you don't ever have to stop moving. There are guns placed in the levels to use to fight off enemies and to traverse the environment as they all have a discard ability that serves as a double jump, air dash, or grappling hook depending on the gun. The game provides the necessary guns needed to progress through the levels in the spaces where they're needed. The player is awarded bronze, silver, gold, and ace medals based on their times. Getting at least a gold medal will raise White's Neon rank which will progress the story and unlock new levels. This forces the player to take on speed-running challenges which are a major part of the fun of this game.
Each level also has a gift hidden in them. These gifts can be used to give to the characters in the game when they are retrieved. They are worth getting because giving gifts to the characters unlocks sidequest levels which are also fun. These levels are focused on reaching the end without dying instead of speed-running. Getting the gifts in the levels are platforming puzzles. Once I find where they are, I have to figure out what combination of guns used from which platform can help me get to it. The puzzle is fun, finding where they are in the level can suck sometimes. They can be too well-hidden sometimes which leads to me moving slowly through levels searching platform-by-platform which can be a frustrating experience.
The story is pretty flat in this game, and there's a significant amount of time spent on telling it. I highly recommend just skipping it all. Playing through the levels are fun as hell, and the only reason to play this game.
Each level also has a gift hidden in them. These gifts can be used to give to the characters in the game when they are retrieved. They are worth getting because giving gifts to the characters unlocks sidequest levels which are also fun. These levels are focused on reaching the end without dying instead of speed-running. Getting the gifts in the levels are platforming puzzles. Once I find where they are, I have to figure out what combination of guns used from which platform can help me get to it. The puzzle is fun, finding where they are in the level can suck sometimes. They can be too well-hidden sometimes which leads to me moving slowly through levels searching platform-by-platform which can be a frustrating experience.
The story is pretty flat in this game, and there's a significant amount of time spent on telling it. I highly recommend just skipping it all. Playing through the levels are fun as hell, and the only reason to play this game.
2020
It's more of the style of game that Resident Evil 2 Remake delivered, but it fixed a lot of issues I had with that game.
Resident Evil 3 Remake nails its tone. RE2R didn't seem to realize how silly it was which made it campy but not in a fun way. RE3R comes off like a B action movie, and Jill is a great action hero. She is my favorite Resident Evil character now. Since this is her second time dealing with zombies, she's already over this bullshit. She's cracking jokes, delivering one-liners, and talking shit to Nemesis. She is really fun.
I prefer how they handled Nemesis than what they did with Mr. X. Mr. X's constant roaming around the police station was meant to sustain tension in the player, but it ended up just being annoying. Nemesis is set up to appear at certain times in the story instead of being a constant prescence. It allowed for the enemy to evolve between encounters, and it allowed for encounters to be different. It creates a sudden rise in tension and made game hectic during his encounters. It's not as original as what they did with Mr. X, but it's better. They couldn't repeat what they did with Mr. X anyways because Resident Evil 3 doesn't stay in one location for as long as Resident Evil 2 did. This new structure helps with another issue I had with RE2R: zombies getting back up after you seemed to have killed them. Not staying in one place for too long makes that less of a hassle.
RE3 Remake is too similar to RE2. There are too many environments that are similar to the locations in the previous game: city streets, sewers, laboratory, etc. I wish they found some more original locations to make the game stand out more. You also use the same weapons and materials. It makes RE3 seem more like the Campaign B of RE2, but at least it is a much better Campaign B than RE2 actually had.
Resident Evil 3 Remake nails its tone. RE2R didn't seem to realize how silly it was which made it campy but not in a fun way. RE3R comes off like a B action movie, and Jill is a great action hero. She is my favorite Resident Evil character now. Since this is her second time dealing with zombies, she's already over this bullshit. She's cracking jokes, delivering one-liners, and talking shit to Nemesis. She is really fun.
I prefer how they handled Nemesis than what they did with Mr. X. Mr. X's constant roaming around the police station was meant to sustain tension in the player, but it ended up just being annoying. Nemesis is set up to appear at certain times in the story instead of being a constant prescence. It allowed for the enemy to evolve between encounters, and it allowed for encounters to be different. It creates a sudden rise in tension and made game hectic during his encounters. It's not as original as what they did with Mr. X, but it's better. They couldn't repeat what they did with Mr. X anyways because Resident Evil 3 doesn't stay in one location for as long as Resident Evil 2 did. This new structure helps with another issue I had with RE2R: zombies getting back up after you seemed to have killed them. Not staying in one place for too long makes that less of a hassle.
RE3 Remake is too similar to RE2. There are too many environments that are similar to the locations in the previous game: city streets, sewers, laboratory, etc. I wish they found some more original locations to make the game stand out more. You also use the same weapons and materials. It makes RE3 seem more like the Campaign B of RE2, but at least it is a much better Campaign B than RE2 actually had.
This perfectly captures and updates the old TMNT beat 'em ups. It's fun and adds something extra to the combat so it doesn't get old. There's a lot of nice nods to TMNT history along with some fun music made for the game. It's exactly want you want it to be. My only issue is the challenges. Each level has them, but for some of the levels the challenge is to not get hit. This just exposes how much the game cheap shots you. Taking on those challenges are just frustrating and ruin the fun, so I stopped bothering with them. The collectibles are fun to find and collect at least.
2022
The best Supermassive has delivered so far is Until Dawn and House of Ashes. The Quarry is an improvement in some areas over those and a disappointment in other places.
The quality of the character models and facial capture is taken to another level here. Everyone looks great. The performance of the actress that plays Laura shows off how much nuance in facial expressions this tech can capture realistically. Brenda Song's character model is so realistic that it just feels like I'm just staring at the real Brenda Song at times. While the faces look good, the limb movements can often look pretty bad and stiff. Also, some effects such as water splashing can look pretty bad too.
The cast is great. The writing gives them more depth than I have seen Supermassive give to any of their characters in previous games. I found myself moved by moments between characters in a way that Supermassive's previous games never pulled off. But this deeper look into the characters came at a cost. There's often scenes of characters taking their time walking and getting to know each other when they are in a life-or-death situation with people depending on them. I would watch these scenes, which are amusing to be fair, feeling annoyed that they aren't rushing as fast as possible. The scenes feel out of place.
The story is a retread of what they've already done in Until Dawn and even House of Ashes retreads this territory a bit too. I wish they had brought something fresh to the table. It's mostly handled well still. There are great moments that feel they came naturally out of the choices I made. The ending feels anti-climactic, and I wish there was some sort of epilogue of the characters, who spent majority of the game split up, come back together. The game just abruptly ends. They spent so much time building characters and relationships, but they deliver a payoff to most of them. Rolling credits felt so unsatisfying that I had to look up to see if there was a "true ending" that I could get by making different choices. There isn't one. In fact, I had gotten the "good ending", so this is the best the game had to offer. Also, there's some bullshit choices in the final chapter of this game where the options I was given were unclear leading to the death of a couple of my characters. I replayed that chapter three times to get the version that saves these characters which just further exposed how bullshit the choices were.
The QTEs this time around are much easier to a fault. I don't think I ever missed a QTE. All of them are either, tap "A" as fast as you can, hold "A" until you are out of danger, or move the left thumbstick in the direction it tells you to. The thumbstick ones give you plenty of time to get ready and react. This is nice, but there was a nerve-wracking tension that came from being asked to suddenly push a random button that worked really well in these games. It's part of what made the finale to House of Ashes so great. The moments where it asks you to tap "A" quickly are the only moments that come close to this.
The quality of the character models and facial capture is taken to another level here. Everyone looks great. The performance of the actress that plays Laura shows off how much nuance in facial expressions this tech can capture realistically. Brenda Song's character model is so realistic that it just feels like I'm just staring at the real Brenda Song at times. While the faces look good, the limb movements can often look pretty bad and stiff. Also, some effects such as water splashing can look pretty bad too.
The cast is great. The writing gives them more depth than I have seen Supermassive give to any of their characters in previous games. I found myself moved by moments between characters in a way that Supermassive's previous games never pulled off. But this deeper look into the characters came at a cost. There's often scenes of characters taking their time walking and getting to know each other when they are in a life-or-death situation with people depending on them. I would watch these scenes, which are amusing to be fair, feeling annoyed that they aren't rushing as fast as possible. The scenes feel out of place.
The story is a retread of what they've already done in Until Dawn and even House of Ashes retreads this territory a bit too. I wish they had brought something fresh to the table. It's mostly handled well still. There are great moments that feel they came naturally out of the choices I made. The ending feels anti-climactic, and I wish there was some sort of epilogue of the characters, who spent majority of the game split up, come back together. The game just abruptly ends. They spent so much time building characters and relationships, but they deliver a payoff to most of them. Rolling credits felt so unsatisfying that I had to look up to see if there was a "true ending" that I could get by making different choices. There isn't one. In fact, I had gotten the "good ending", so this is the best the game had to offer. Also, there's some bullshit choices in the final chapter of this game where the options I was given were unclear leading to the death of a couple of my characters. I replayed that chapter three times to get the version that saves these characters which just further exposed how bullshit the choices were.
The QTEs this time around are much easier to a fault. I don't think I ever missed a QTE. All of them are either, tap "A" as fast as you can, hold "A" until you are out of danger, or move the left thumbstick in the direction it tells you to. The thumbstick ones give you plenty of time to get ready and react. This is nice, but there was a nerve-wracking tension that came from being asked to suddenly push a random button that worked really well in these games. It's part of what made the finale to House of Ashes so great. The moments where it asks you to tap "A" quickly are the only moments that come close to this.
Way better than the last two. Better characters, better writing, and a better story. There were some scary QTEs in this that had me freaking out trying to keep my characters alive. There were some neat presentation choices such as cut scenes designed to look like old stock footage from the early 1900s. The best thing I can say is that this would've made a really good movie too.
This was worse than Man of Medan. A lot of bad dialogue exchanged between characters who have unexplained, wild mood swings, most of the playtime is just walking around on an empty street or forest path, and the story doesn't get interesting until close to the end. There's a least some fun QTE encounters.
This has better puzzles than the Zero Escape series, but the story isn't as mind-blowing. It's like Inception but a murder mystery instead of heist movie. Kaname Date is investigating the murder of a woman he knows while also uncovering the mystery of who he was before six years ago when he lost his memories. He works for a special police unit called ABIS who specialize in synching into suspects' dreams to uncover what secrets they are hiding related to investigations. The story has a flow chart like in Zero Escape where the player must go through all paths in order to uncover the whole story. Each path focuses on a character in the game. The weakest part of the story is Ota's path since he doesn't have much of a connection to the murder or Date's past. It feels like a storyline that could have been removed with the important details included the the Iris or Mizuki paths. It still overall maintains a compelling mystery with shocking twists and turns. It also has a pretty good sense of humor and fun characters.
2022
An empty Tokyo is a great setting. That feeling of isolation and the creepy noises that enemies make to keep you alert and tense make for an engaging world to explore. There's also plenty of verticality as you can jump and climb up buildings and glide around. It leads to some fun platforming challenges to get to where you need to go. The combat is good except in boss fights. Mixing different types of magic projectiles, bow and arrows, and talismans makes it fun to go up against groups of enemies. When in boss fights, talismans and sometimes arrows don't work against them making combat much less fun. The skill tree is boring. It's mostly dedicated to increasing your effectiveness in combat and traversal instead of giving you new abilities. Over time, I lost interest in upgrading my abilities. The banter between Akito and KK is good, and their relationship changes over time during the story as they warm to each other more. The story is about saving Akito's sister, but they don't really develop that relationship until the end. The back story of Akito and Mari's relationship is still emotionally effective once it's revealed though. The world is full of ghost stories that serve as side missions which is really cool. Some are based around urban legends, yokai, and some of them even make refences to horror movies. I enjoyed this much more than The Evil Within 2. The Evil Within 1 is still my favorite from this developer though.
This wasn't really worth the time. It's short and there's very little interaction. The story and characters are weak too. It has a nice art style at least.
This is a solid story with some good twists, humor, and heart. The final boss was hilarious, and I'm curious what Kaito will be like in future games after this. The new fighting styles for Kaito makes fighting as him more button-mashy than Yagami, but I think that fits Kaito well. Overall, this DLC has the same level of quality as the main game. I think Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios are still one of the better storytellers working in games.
This was fun and an overall delightful experience. I like the mission setup for each level and enjoyed completing them all. The side levels provided a surprising amount of difficulty with their bonus challenges involving completing them within a given time limit. It pushed me to dig deeper into the different powers Kirby can use. The mouthful abilities are a fun surprise throughout the game. Easily one of the best Kirby games.
2021
I came to this looking for a Star Fox-like experience. It delivers on that somewhat. There are a few large Star Fox-worthy bosses in this that are great, but most of the time, I am just fighting small fighter ships. I wish they provided more bosses and enemy variety like Star Fox does, but the game is still really good anyways.
Moving on from the Star Fox comparison, what makes this game different is that it's a semi open-world game in that you fly around multiple large areas in space taking on main missions, side missions, and small conflicts that seem to randomly occur. The side missions were done right. They are meaty with story and characters (some which pop up again in other side missions). The main story is very heavy-handed on it's message of accepting yourself. There are some interesting bits around the relationship with the main character Nara, and the artificial intelligence in her ship named Forsaken though.
The combat is good. Flying and shooting down ships feels fun and satisfying. Dog fights are appropriately tense and the ability to drift is fun and extremely useful. There's a redundancy in attacks that seems to be a poor design choice as the game features laser guns for Nara's ship that are useful for destroying shields of enemy ships while also giving Nara a special ability that can destroy shields in one go. The laser guns take two shots to destroy shields, so I stuck to the special ability once I got it. Eventually in the late game, I got a laser gun powerful enough to not only destroy the shield of the standard shielded enemy, but also completely destroy the ship along with it. At that point, I spent about half the game ignoring the laser guns on my ship.
Moving on from the Star Fox comparison, what makes this game different is that it's a semi open-world game in that you fly around multiple large areas in space taking on main missions, side missions, and small conflicts that seem to randomly occur. The side missions were done right. They are meaty with story and characters (some which pop up again in other side missions). The main story is very heavy-handed on it's message of accepting yourself. There are some interesting bits around the relationship with the main character Nara, and the artificial intelligence in her ship named Forsaken though.
The combat is good. Flying and shooting down ships feels fun and satisfying. Dog fights are appropriately tense and the ability to drift is fun and extremely useful. There's a redundancy in attacks that seems to be a poor design choice as the game features laser guns for Nara's ship that are useful for destroying shields of enemy ships while also giving Nara a special ability that can destroy shields in one go. The laser guns take two shots to destroy shields, so I stuck to the special ability once I got it. Eventually in the late game, I got a laser gun powerful enough to not only destroy the shield of the standard shielded enemy, but also completely destroy the ship along with it. At that point, I spent about half the game ignoring the laser guns on my ship.
2021
I wasn't hearing good things about this game, but I played it anyways because I'm a fan of Giancarlo Esposito. This game is great. I had such a good time with this. I wasn't a fan of Far Cry 5, but that wasn't because I didn't like Ubisoft open world games or were sick of them. It was because I wasn't interested in anything the filled that world with. The world, the story, the characters were all boring to me. Far Cry 6 is way better in those areas making it the best Far Cry game I've played so far, and the music in the game is so good.
2021
The best thing Halo: Infinite's campaign's got going for it is that Halo's combat is great, but I am unimpressed by the open world. It's a standard Ubisoft type of open world game but unlike Ubisoft's open worlds, Halo: Infinite's world is empty. It's just a large battlefield to run around end filled with enemies. There are no characters to meet or side stories to engage in. It's just combat. I definitely felt the emptiness and repetitiveness when playing this game. The story didn't grab me either.
They pretty much skip over everything the set up at the end of Halo 5: Guardians to tell a story similar to Halo: Combat Evolved. There's a new ring, some enemies are trying to use it to attack Earth, and Master Chief is the only one who can stop them. There are two major characters that interact with Chief in this story, and I didn't care for any of them. The Weapon is the new upbeat and perky version of Cortana, and I found her unamusing. The other character is the pilot who came off too whiny. Master Chief I did enjoy here as the most experienced soldier who is straight forward and always on mission. Chief juxtaposed against the Weapon, who is a newly created A.I., and the pilot, who is scared and wants to go home, comes off as wise and brave. His ability to keep pushing forward against ridiculous odds is inspiring. The issue is the story keeps hitting that same beat over and over again.
The world is filled with audio logs, and I didn't bother listening to all of them. There were way too many of them. There also Spartan Cores scattered around the world that can be used to upgrade Master Chief's equipment. Master Chief has 4 equipment/abilities in this game, and I mostly only used the grapple shot which is a great new addition to the game. Outside of using the sensor in cases to detect invisible enemies, I didn't bother much with the other equipment and got through the game fine.
The multiplayer is Halo which seems to be what everyone wants. I always found Halo to be fun, and it's still fun. I've been having a good time playing with my friends. There are things that I've never liked about the multiplayer that are still intact here though such as Big Team Battle and vehicles (which all suck to use in the campaign except for the Ghost). There is a non-Big Team Battle playlist thankfully, so I played there most of the time. I wish there were more filter options though, so I can jump into a Team Slayer match when that's all I'm in the mood for or to remove game modes I don't like.
Halo: infinite is really good, but it feels like there should've been more here. I don't see this as a step up from Halo 4 and 5 as I've heard it preached as.
They pretty much skip over everything the set up at the end of Halo 5: Guardians to tell a story similar to Halo: Combat Evolved. There's a new ring, some enemies are trying to use it to attack Earth, and Master Chief is the only one who can stop them. There are two major characters that interact with Chief in this story, and I didn't care for any of them. The Weapon is the new upbeat and perky version of Cortana, and I found her unamusing. The other character is the pilot who came off too whiny. Master Chief I did enjoy here as the most experienced soldier who is straight forward and always on mission. Chief juxtaposed against the Weapon, who is a newly created A.I., and the pilot, who is scared and wants to go home, comes off as wise and brave. His ability to keep pushing forward against ridiculous odds is inspiring. The issue is the story keeps hitting that same beat over and over again.
The world is filled with audio logs, and I didn't bother listening to all of them. There were way too many of them. There also Spartan Cores scattered around the world that can be used to upgrade Master Chief's equipment. Master Chief has 4 equipment/abilities in this game, and I mostly only used the grapple shot which is a great new addition to the game. Outside of using the sensor in cases to detect invisible enemies, I didn't bother much with the other equipment and got through the game fine.
The multiplayer is Halo which seems to be what everyone wants. I always found Halo to be fun, and it's still fun. I've been having a good time playing with my friends. There are things that I've never liked about the multiplayer that are still intact here though such as Big Team Battle and vehicles (which all suck to use in the campaign except for the Ghost). There is a non-Big Team Battle playlist thankfully, so I played there most of the time. I wish there were more filter options though, so I can jump into a Team Slayer match when that's all I'm in the mood for or to remove game modes I don't like.
Halo: infinite is really good, but it feels like there should've been more here. I don't see this as a step up from Halo 4 and 5 as I've heard it preached as.
2021
The combat is great. It's the best part of the game. It's challenging. Always requires thought and strategy even when fighting standard enemies walking around in the world. The demon fusion also helps keep combat compelling as I'm always forced to upgrade my team by sacrificing demons in my roster to create new, more powerful ones. The game is full of interesting looking demons. Some are recognizable mythological creatures with a unique take in design and some are unlike anything I've seen before. The special fusions are cool because it allowed me to create demons that were bosses I fought earlier in the game. Having these bosses on my side made me fill powerful.
The world is split into multiple large, open areas and dungeons. Exploring these spaces is rewarding, and I spent a lot of time going over every area in these maps. The game features great music to make battles exciting and to create an ominous tone in the story. The ominous tone in particular makes this game stand out. The story is fascinating and has some shocking reveals, but it's too cold for its own good. I didn't find myself that invested in it. The game is mostly well-paced even with the long runtime until the end where it gets grind-heavy in a way the rest of the game wasn't.
This is the second best Shin Megami Tensei game I've played behind Devil Survivor Overclocked.
The world is split into multiple large, open areas and dungeons. Exploring these spaces is rewarding, and I spent a lot of time going over every area in these maps. The game features great music to make battles exciting and to create an ominous tone in the story. The ominous tone in particular makes this game stand out. The story is fascinating and has some shocking reveals, but it's too cold for its own good. I didn't find myself that invested in it. The game is mostly well-paced even with the long runtime until the end where it gets grind-heavy in a way the rest of the game wasn't.
This is the second best Shin Megami Tensei game I've played behind Devil Survivor Overclocked.