LeahThe3th
Being forced to play on controller to even compete feels like trying to drive a car with a brain interface, You don't have to learn shit to do averagely, but it is NOT designed for this, and it sure as hell feels like shit.
I am confidently above average at FPS games, especially ones where you play very aggressively, but you have to be near perfect if you want to compete with even the worst controller players, movement is super fast but aim assist is INSANELY strong at close range, triple so if you're moving at all.
I know this, because I am a confidently BELOW-average controller user, I have barely used them in the last 10 years, and I play just as good as I did when I was like 11, which is to say; badly.
But I confidently compete with my numbers on KB&M while I'm trying pretty damn hard.
There is no KB&M only playlist, there is no crossplay toggle, there is no mercy.
The only time KB&M is a hot contender is with sniping, and it sure as hell isn't what it was in the first Warzone, TTK is vastly lower which means snipers have less impact, and all the snipers right now are either weighty hunks of junk, or won't guarantee as many downs on a good hit.
Aim assist is triggering on people you haven't even seen yet, promoting mindless pre-fire.
It triggers on people zipping around, so unless you're either super far away or right up in their face and can cross their screen in a second you're going to get aimbotted short-mid range.
It even triggers on people super far away, just very weakly.
If Halo, the one FPS series that has ever made playing a FPS on a controller feel anything less than dogshit (but still not BETTER) can still not balance it to the point, where they have to just throw up their hands and say "I give up." and add aim assist to MOUSE (BAD COMPROMISE!) you KNOW that aim assist arms races do not work.
It's not even as if controller aiming methods haven't been found, gyro aiming and flick stick have been around for years now, and they're perfectly good options, removing the need for aim assist this strong, and allowing there to be an engaging skill curve on consoles.
There's absolutely NO skill expression outside of how good you are at running around, I've found more success playing with controller on one hand, and keyboard with my other, this works better than it should and if I was right handed, would be straight-up viable.
Thankfully with the dawn of Twitch, accessibility of information and parts, as well as consoles going from being overpriced shitboxes with no good games on them to VERY overpriced shitboxes with no games PERIOD on them, the PC market is growing, and yet again Goliath will fall, because who the fuck wants to play a FPS game on a PC using a controller, it's like building a car just so you can have something to tow around as you walk.
I am confidently above average at FPS games, especially ones where you play very aggressively, but you have to be near perfect if you want to compete with even the worst controller players, movement is super fast but aim assist is INSANELY strong at close range, triple so if you're moving at all.
I know this, because I am a confidently BELOW-average controller user, I have barely used them in the last 10 years, and I play just as good as I did when I was like 11, which is to say; badly.
But I confidently compete with my numbers on KB&M while I'm trying pretty damn hard.
There is no KB&M only playlist, there is no crossplay toggle, there is no mercy.
The only time KB&M is a hot contender is with sniping, and it sure as hell isn't what it was in the first Warzone, TTK is vastly lower which means snipers have less impact, and all the snipers right now are either weighty hunks of junk, or won't guarantee as many downs on a good hit.
Aim assist is triggering on people you haven't even seen yet, promoting mindless pre-fire.
It triggers on people zipping around, so unless you're either super far away or right up in their face and can cross their screen in a second you're going to get aimbotted short-mid range.
It even triggers on people super far away, just very weakly.
If Halo, the one FPS series that has ever made playing a FPS on a controller feel anything less than dogshit (but still not BETTER) can still not balance it to the point, where they have to just throw up their hands and say "I give up." and add aim assist to MOUSE (BAD COMPROMISE!) you KNOW that aim assist arms races do not work.
It's not even as if controller aiming methods haven't been found, gyro aiming and flick stick have been around for years now, and they're perfectly good options, removing the need for aim assist this strong, and allowing there to be an engaging skill curve on consoles.
There's absolutely NO skill expression outside of how good you are at running around, I've found more success playing with controller on one hand, and keyboard with my other, this works better than it should and if I was right handed, would be straight-up viable.
Thankfully with the dawn of Twitch, accessibility of information and parts, as well as consoles going from being overpriced shitboxes with no good games on them to VERY overpriced shitboxes with no games PERIOD on them, the PC market is growing, and yet again Goliath will fall, because who the fuck wants to play a FPS game on a PC using a controller, it's like building a car just so you can have something to tow around as you walk.
2016
This is a basic port of a goddamn card game, so all the criticisms here are in on the quality of the port, you're hopefully not looking to game reviews to see if Uno is a good game, but rather if this version of Uno is.
It's a shit port, you're jumping through the hoops of UPlay which has historically been very clunky, you'll deal with plenty of hiccups and limitations trying to join people, and somehow a port of a fucking card game manages to be unstable.
I had a friend who couldn't even boot the damn game up on their system.
Also, you have to click a button in the bottom right to "call" Uno, but if you have a rule on where you can stack cards you have to throw down your card and then immediately snap to the bottom right, but if during that small in-between period someone clicks on the bottom right of THEIR screen, you draw 2.
Glad that an oversight added obnoxious QTEs to a fucking card game.
It's a shit port, you're jumping through the hoops of UPlay which has historically been very clunky, you'll deal with plenty of hiccups and limitations trying to join people, and somehow a port of a fucking card game manages to be unstable.
I had a friend who couldn't even boot the damn game up on their system.
Also, you have to click a button in the bottom right to "call" Uno, but if you have a rule on where you can stack cards you have to throw down your card and then immediately snap to the bottom right, but if during that small in-between period someone clicks on the bottom right of THEIR screen, you draw 2.
Glad that an oversight added obnoxious QTEs to a fucking card game.
2023
Quake 1 is the SM64 of the FPS genre, the level designers were terrible, but the guys working on the core gameplay loop accidentally created perfection with the perfect stew of talent mixed with creativity. (as well as dumb luck just finding the right shit to stick)
Part of that creativity is people like John Romero and John Carmack.
You take the Carmack away from Romero, you get a game with an idea, but a team that's too slow and uncreative, which is Daikatana.
You take the Romero away from Carmack, and you get a game that's just a scientifically calculated game-shaped grey slop, that's Quake 2.
Yeah, sure, having more standard hitscan weapons, having less frustrating major enemies, having a more grounded style, not having powerups be automatically consumed, having more realistic air control and having easier to find secrets sounds better for the average player... but you're left with a game that's just empty.
The roster of enemies is just dull, the weapon pool is generic, the AI has like 2 modes, either run directly towards you or run in your general direction then hit-scan, and it's just draining, sometimes they shoot a few shots directly in-front of them after dying for some reason?
No idea who thought making the pistol a slow annoying projectile was a good idea, makes the first impressions of the game egregious until you get the shotgun, and then you get to bask in how disgustingly ugly all the weapon models are, just a bunch of AI generated weapon blobs, at the very least they kept the weapons shooting straight.
Remember how Quake's rocket jumping was like, the best thing to ever happen to movement in FPS games? Yeah, you can only do that in straight lines now because your air control is nonexistent.
This game wasn't intended to have, and really does NOT deserve the name of Quake, this feels like a crumby shooter you'd see a large publisher shit out in response to a game as groundbreaking as Quake 1, just go play one of many great Quake mod packs instead of this insult to rocket jumping.
Part of that creativity is people like John Romero and John Carmack.
You take the Carmack away from Romero, you get a game with an idea, but a team that's too slow and uncreative, which is Daikatana.
You take the Romero away from Carmack, and you get a game that's just a scientifically calculated game-shaped grey slop, that's Quake 2.
Yeah, sure, having more standard hitscan weapons, having less frustrating major enemies, having a more grounded style, not having powerups be automatically consumed, having more realistic air control and having easier to find secrets sounds better for the average player... but you're left with a game that's just empty.
The roster of enemies is just dull, the weapon pool is generic, the AI has like 2 modes, either run directly towards you or run in your general direction then hit-scan, and it's just draining, sometimes they shoot a few shots directly in-front of them after dying for some reason?
No idea who thought making the pistol a slow annoying projectile was a good idea, makes the first impressions of the game egregious until you get the shotgun, and then you get to bask in how disgustingly ugly all the weapon models are, just a bunch of AI generated weapon blobs, at the very least they kept the weapons shooting straight.
Remember how Quake's rocket jumping was like, the best thing to ever happen to movement in FPS games? Yeah, you can only do that in straight lines now because your air control is nonexistent.
This game wasn't intended to have, and really does NOT deserve the name of Quake, this feels like a crumby shooter you'd see a large publisher shit out in response to a game as groundbreaking as Quake 1, just go play one of many great Quake mod packs instead of this insult to rocket jumping.
2005
don't even know how i found this mod when i played it but with my experience so far it's the second best hl2 mod i've ever played
it's some shitty outdated comedy mod from eons ago, but it beats out hearing the shitty dialogue from the entropy zero games
it's also buggy as fuck and a bit unclear on how to progress, but somehow still less so than the original entropy zero
also it has george bush getting killed in the main menu, what's not to love
it's some shitty outdated comedy mod from eons ago, but it beats out hearing the shitty dialogue from the entropy zero games
it's also buggy as fuck and a bit unclear on how to progress, but somehow still less so than the original entropy zero
also it has george bush getting killed in the main menu, what's not to love
2023
This review contains spoilers
A sequel 13 years in the making, or rather like, 8-10 years in wishing it could happen and 3-5 in the making, Alan Wake 2 is the long awaited sequel to Remedy's cult classic, Alan Wake.
I'm not going to go into the history of why the game couldn't happen, or the first game's struggles, but I will mention that it's beautiful to finally see this game come out, and be not only the best game Remedy has released ever, but probably my favorite game that released last year.
I was writing a synopsis that leads into the review, but it's a bit lengthy and wordy, and this is a spoiler tagged review anyhow, so I'll just jump into this, contextless spoilers may be ahead, and I'm going to be more negative than positive just because I can note the negative things a lot better.
I loved the story for the game, I loved all the twists, and how predictable they were if you paid attention to everything that goes on in all of their games.
Where Alan Wake 1 was a loveable B-movie horror experience, (even if I'm not sure they intended it to be) Alan Wake 2 is the real blockbuster deal, with writing and gameplay actually taking notes from horror media, with such creative ideas like, tension and setpieces, instead of walking through empty forests for 12 hours.
Starting off with Saga's campaign, from the get go she's an interesting perspective, and a good one to start with, it puts you in the shoes of someone unfamiliar with the town and lets you ease into the world of the game, and she makes a great partner with her buddy cop Max Pa-I mean, Alex Casey.
Writing wise she's interesting, a bit down to earth (surprising, for an FBI agent) and generally quite likeable, there's not really much to say about her as she's not much of a dynamic character in premise, the most interesting thing you can say about her is said to you directly by an NPC in one of the final chapters, that she's a statement for the difficulty of a work life balance or something like that.
I do have a fair few criticisms for how her character was handled though.
One, she's a fucking terrible detective, I get that the story acknowledges this at the end in a way, but it just makes parts of the story feel like a sluggish idiot plot as Saga refuses to entertain the thought of "hey maybe this isn't Wake out of the dark place and its just Scratch" or "if the cult failed a ritual on Nightingale, and he became a Taken anyways, maybe they want to stop the Taken and not create them, which would clear up all the confusing evidence"
Sure, the Scratch thing isn't true, but the story sets Saga up in a position to be doubtful, but the only reason she DOESN'T give Alan the clicker is because he gets possessed by Scratch and kicks up a fit right before she can hand it to him, all she said was "make sure logan is ok :)"
Two, the whole distressed mother thing started to get a bit grating, she's an FBI agent, and for fucks sake, she's clearly dealing with forces of unknown magnitude, and she's the most held up about her daughter maybe or maybe not being okay, I get it, a parent would be hurt and it's a strong story point, but they push too hard on it and it doesn't reflect the stakes properly.
Three, Why is she supposed to be this protagonist who doesn't know much about the area she's in, and has her story written around not knowing how the Taken work (the cultists powered by darkness raving about shit are Taken, not cultists, this is obvious to anyone who played AW1!) when the game in general not only expects you to have played AW1, but also to have played Control, she doesn't even have any questions when the FBC rolls up, nothing like "Who the fuck are you guys?" or "I thought the FBI were the higher authority?" She just rolls up like she's just a local town cop, and they're the FBI, it's as if the FBC to them was just used as an excuse to do a "FBI, we'll take it for here" on a FBI agent.
You could make the claim that "oh well in this world the FBC is a known thing" when even if that was true, it's never deeply explained WHAT they do, and instead is just left in the air, the only question she ever asks the FBC is "wtf is a parautilitarian?"
Four, For her major twist of the story, the Cult not being bad, it's done badly because unlike the other major twists, even though the game gives you plenty of resources to figure it out, it just enforces an idiot plot to make it unclear to the protagonist until it happens, with the most egregious example being right before Scratch attacks Saga for the first time, where you have the Koskela brothers in jail wasting their time saying "Grr fuck u police bitch" instead of "HEY WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS YOU MADE A MISTAKE DO NOT GIVE SCRATCH THE CLICKER"
Writing for Alan is a lot better, you're dealing with the twisted areas of the Dark Place, and you get to deal with Mr. Door, a mysterious fellow, Thomas Zane who while answering a bunch of things, still leaves you with more questions than answers (is he a filmmaker or a poet?) and generally indulges you heavily in Alan's place in the story, as well as referencing the first game a TON.
Gameplay in general is a blessing, Remedy has finally done it, for the first time since Max Payne 2, Remedy has made a game that is fun to play, there's still a few snags like guns being a little bit less precise than they should be, or the dodge not being as responsive when it comes to dodging projectiles or the very stabby Shadows/Taken, but the issues have gone from miserable to ignorable, If it wasn't for the fact that the puzzles were almost nonexistent or really easy, this would go toe to toe with some of the modern Resident Evil games.
For the one thing that's totally unique to the game compared to most other survival horror games though, the Flashlight, it's still not much better than it was in AW1, it's just a weird sidegrade, flashlight boosts are a weird system that just adds another resource to manage, while being a buggy system that's imprecise, requires you to use 1 whole charge at a time when an enemy only gets stunned if you use 100% of a charge, constantly making you waste a second, and for some reason you can cancel using a charge? This would be fixed heavily if aiming in with the flashlight did some small damage to shields overtime, kind of like in the first game.
That and the boss fights all suck, like they're really bad, I don't know why Remedy is so bad at making boss fights any fun at all, also shotguns, I don't know why the shotguns in this game are all bad, it shouldn't take 2 shots to the face to kill a guy when 3 revolver shots does the same thing.
Oh yeah, and the jump-scares are terrible, they don't add any tension they're just a sudden loud noise covering your screen and it's annoying as hell, it's good that you can turn them down but you should honestly be able to turn them off entirely, they add nothing of value even when they're just sudden -POP- transitions for things or characters appearing or disappearing.
Gameplay wise Saga is by far the worse out of the two, she has a terrible pistol, taking twice as many shots to the head to kill as Alan's revolver, but with a similar ammo economy and reload time, and also instead of having a flare gun, she has the shitty rocket flares, and she generally has more enemies, and more enemy types (particularly the annoying and/or tank-y ones)
Also she's the one that has ALL boss battles, so.
Mind palace is whatever, the case board kind of doesn't do anything useful outside of the final chapter, so the place is kind of just a cop-out stuffed with exposition so that Alan wasn't the only one with the impressive SSD utilizing swap feature.
Dark Ocean Summoning was neat, but not as cool as We Sing, it's more of a Anderson Farm type affair from AW1, where We Sing is more of an Ashtray Maze.
Alan's gameplay on the other hand, is pretty fun, and by fun I mean tense, you're constantly moving past Shadows that may or may not turn out to be real Shadows that will beat the fuck out of you, using his revolver and flare gun feel even better than they did in the first game, and while the plot swapping thing and light bulb thing is a bit of a shallow gimmick for linear progression, it is admittedly really cool seeing all the different areas and things just -POP-ing in and out of existence.
We Sing was fun as hell too, what a great one of a kind experience.
This game is a love-letter to both Alan Wake, the game that while being a bit of a cult classic, just wasn't meant to be for the longest time, and Remedy games in general, indulging heavily in Control, a bit of Quantum Break, Alan Wake 1, and even Max Payne (R.I.P James, the night opened to let you in.)
It's a blessing to survival horror, and a work of art for the video game medium, managing to be cinematic but not sacrificing gameplay, their use of FMVs and special effects to set these scenes and transitions and all the effects of the enemies and all of their incredibly beautiful sets are just master class, and I'm so excited to see what the future holds for the developers, I will 100% be pre-ordering Control 2, and I really hope this time around they can even figure out a way to make Control fun to play that time around.
Play this damn game, Play all of Remedy's games, experience the biggest boon for video game storytelling in the AAA space in years, their entire studio bleeds with passion from their developers, to their directors, to their actors.
I'm not going to go into the history of why the game couldn't happen, or the first game's struggles, but I will mention that it's beautiful to finally see this game come out, and be not only the best game Remedy has released ever, but probably my favorite game that released last year.
I was writing a synopsis that leads into the review, but it's a bit lengthy and wordy, and this is a spoiler tagged review anyhow, so I'll just jump into this, contextless spoilers may be ahead, and I'm going to be more negative than positive just because I can note the negative things a lot better.
I loved the story for the game, I loved all the twists, and how predictable they were if you paid attention to everything that goes on in all of their games.
Where Alan Wake 1 was a loveable B-movie horror experience, (even if I'm not sure they intended it to be) Alan Wake 2 is the real blockbuster deal, with writing and gameplay actually taking notes from horror media, with such creative ideas like, tension and setpieces, instead of walking through empty forests for 12 hours.
Starting off with Saga's campaign, from the get go she's an interesting perspective, and a good one to start with, it puts you in the shoes of someone unfamiliar with the town and lets you ease into the world of the game, and she makes a great partner with her buddy cop Max Pa-I mean, Alex Casey.
Writing wise she's interesting, a bit down to earth (surprising, for an FBI agent) and generally quite likeable, there's not really much to say about her as she's not much of a dynamic character in premise, the most interesting thing you can say about her is said to you directly by an NPC in one of the final chapters, that she's a statement for the difficulty of a work life balance or something like that.
I do have a fair few criticisms for how her character was handled though.
One, she's a fucking terrible detective, I get that the story acknowledges this at the end in a way, but it just makes parts of the story feel like a sluggish idiot plot as Saga refuses to entertain the thought of "hey maybe this isn't Wake out of the dark place and its just Scratch" or "if the cult failed a ritual on Nightingale, and he became a Taken anyways, maybe they want to stop the Taken and not create them, which would clear up all the confusing evidence"
Sure, the Scratch thing isn't true, but the story sets Saga up in a position to be doubtful, but the only reason she DOESN'T give Alan the clicker is because he gets possessed by Scratch and kicks up a fit right before she can hand it to him, all she said was "make sure logan is ok :)"
Two, the whole distressed mother thing started to get a bit grating, she's an FBI agent, and for fucks sake, she's clearly dealing with forces of unknown magnitude, and she's the most held up about her daughter maybe or maybe not being okay, I get it, a parent would be hurt and it's a strong story point, but they push too hard on it and it doesn't reflect the stakes properly.
Three, Why is she supposed to be this protagonist who doesn't know much about the area she's in, and has her story written around not knowing how the Taken work (the cultists powered by darkness raving about shit are Taken, not cultists, this is obvious to anyone who played AW1!) when the game in general not only expects you to have played AW1, but also to have played Control, she doesn't even have any questions when the FBC rolls up, nothing like "Who the fuck are you guys?" or "I thought the FBI were the higher authority?" She just rolls up like she's just a local town cop, and they're the FBI, it's as if the FBC to them was just used as an excuse to do a "FBI, we'll take it for here" on a FBI agent.
You could make the claim that "oh well in this world the FBC is a known thing" when even if that was true, it's never deeply explained WHAT they do, and instead is just left in the air, the only question she ever asks the FBC is "wtf is a parautilitarian?"
Four, For her major twist of the story, the Cult not being bad, it's done badly because unlike the other major twists, even though the game gives you plenty of resources to figure it out, it just enforces an idiot plot to make it unclear to the protagonist until it happens, with the most egregious example being right before Scratch attacks Saga for the first time, where you have the Koskela brothers in jail wasting their time saying "Grr fuck u police bitch" instead of "HEY WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS YOU MADE A MISTAKE DO NOT GIVE SCRATCH THE CLICKER"
Writing for Alan is a lot better, you're dealing with the twisted areas of the Dark Place, and you get to deal with Mr. Door, a mysterious fellow, Thomas Zane who while answering a bunch of things, still leaves you with more questions than answers (is he a filmmaker or a poet?) and generally indulges you heavily in Alan's place in the story, as well as referencing the first game a TON.
Gameplay in general is a blessing, Remedy has finally done it, for the first time since Max Payne 2, Remedy has made a game that is fun to play, there's still a few snags like guns being a little bit less precise than they should be, or the dodge not being as responsive when it comes to dodging projectiles or the very stabby Shadows/Taken, but the issues have gone from miserable to ignorable, If it wasn't for the fact that the puzzles were almost nonexistent or really easy, this would go toe to toe with some of the modern Resident Evil games.
For the one thing that's totally unique to the game compared to most other survival horror games though, the Flashlight, it's still not much better than it was in AW1, it's just a weird sidegrade, flashlight boosts are a weird system that just adds another resource to manage, while being a buggy system that's imprecise, requires you to use 1 whole charge at a time when an enemy only gets stunned if you use 100% of a charge, constantly making you waste a second, and for some reason you can cancel using a charge? This would be fixed heavily if aiming in with the flashlight did some small damage to shields overtime, kind of like in the first game.
That and the boss fights all suck, like they're really bad, I don't know why Remedy is so bad at making boss fights any fun at all, also shotguns, I don't know why the shotguns in this game are all bad, it shouldn't take 2 shots to the face to kill a guy when 3 revolver shots does the same thing.
Oh yeah, and the jump-scares are terrible, they don't add any tension they're just a sudden loud noise covering your screen and it's annoying as hell, it's good that you can turn them down but you should honestly be able to turn them off entirely, they add nothing of value even when they're just sudden -POP- transitions for things or characters appearing or disappearing.
Gameplay wise Saga is by far the worse out of the two, she has a terrible pistol, taking twice as many shots to the head to kill as Alan's revolver, but with a similar ammo economy and reload time, and also instead of having a flare gun, she has the shitty rocket flares, and she generally has more enemies, and more enemy types (particularly the annoying and/or tank-y ones)
Also she's the one that has ALL boss battles, so.
Mind palace is whatever, the case board kind of doesn't do anything useful outside of the final chapter, so the place is kind of just a cop-out stuffed with exposition so that Alan wasn't the only one with the impressive SSD utilizing swap feature.
Dark Ocean Summoning was neat, but not as cool as We Sing, it's more of a Anderson Farm type affair from AW1, where We Sing is more of an Ashtray Maze.
Alan's gameplay on the other hand, is pretty fun, and by fun I mean tense, you're constantly moving past Shadows that may or may not turn out to be real Shadows that will beat the fuck out of you, using his revolver and flare gun feel even better than they did in the first game, and while the plot swapping thing and light bulb thing is a bit of a shallow gimmick for linear progression, it is admittedly really cool seeing all the different areas and things just -POP-ing in and out of existence.
We Sing was fun as hell too, what a great one of a kind experience.
This game is a love-letter to both Alan Wake, the game that while being a bit of a cult classic, just wasn't meant to be for the longest time, and Remedy games in general, indulging heavily in Control, a bit of Quantum Break, Alan Wake 1, and even Max Payne (R.I.P James, the night opened to let you in.)
It's a blessing to survival horror, and a work of art for the video game medium, managing to be cinematic but not sacrificing gameplay, their use of FMVs and special effects to set these scenes and transitions and all the effects of the enemies and all of their incredibly beautiful sets are just master class, and I'm so excited to see what the future holds for the developers, I will 100% be pre-ordering Control 2, and I really hope this time around they can even figure out a way to make Control fun to play that time around.
Play this damn game, Play all of Remedy's games, experience the biggest boon for video game storytelling in the AAA space in years, their entire studio bleeds with passion from their developers, to their directors, to their actors.
All this game really does is have Cyborg "Raiden" chop up MGS2/4 Raiden into chunks and say "OH WE'RE DONE HERE" and then explode any character development he had, the only thing that could have made this game's shitty story okay is if it was a prequel to 4, which was the original plan.
Most of the hype behind this game is not very deep, it's just about the boss fights, you sink into the game and most of what it has going on sucks, the point-to-point gameplay is bad and repetitive, the sub weapons are terrible and none of the codecs are worth interacting with, a first for the series.
What you're getting here really is just the boss fights and the funny one-liners they say in those cutscenes, the story is a shallow mockery of what literally every other game in the series (maybe not 5) does elegantly, by just being way too short and not having any depth to it, you could water the story down to "Raiden kills War capitalists" and all you'd be forgetting is the "dude is killing OKAY" parts that totally disregard the gameplay, and get answered in the story with "well no but i like it anyway xP"
The boss fights aren't very interesting either, it's all style no substance, you're just mashing parries until you enter the "ooo im so tired" phase rinse and repeat, at best sometimes they introduce a gimmicky mechanic.
This is the only spin-off that is in any way canon, unless you count PW as a spin-off, which you shouldn't, and it is by far the WORST falling behind even a game as flawed as 5, it exemplifies how little it takes to have something catch on in the modern times, you just need something really cool that can be consumed in a vacuum, it doesn't matter if it's a bad overall product, everyone will just remember the one cool part.
The damage this does to actual polished up indie titles is catastrophic, you'll see people talking about indie games in development being kind of cool, you look to see what it is and it's a game where you can parry literally everything, that's the only reason why it's "cool", Fucking rubbish.
Play the actual MGS games, (1-PW) they're amazing games with the original trilogy being some of the best games ever made in their genre, if not some of the best games ever.
Most of the hype behind this game is not very deep, it's just about the boss fights, you sink into the game and most of what it has going on sucks, the point-to-point gameplay is bad and repetitive, the sub weapons are terrible and none of the codecs are worth interacting with, a first for the series.
What you're getting here really is just the boss fights and the funny one-liners they say in those cutscenes, the story is a shallow mockery of what literally every other game in the series (maybe not 5) does elegantly, by just being way too short and not having any depth to it, you could water the story down to "Raiden kills War capitalists" and all you'd be forgetting is the "dude is killing OKAY" parts that totally disregard the gameplay, and get answered in the story with "well no but i like it anyway xP"
The boss fights aren't very interesting either, it's all style no substance, you're just mashing parries until you enter the "ooo im so tired" phase rinse and repeat, at best sometimes they introduce a gimmicky mechanic.
This is the only spin-off that is in any way canon, unless you count PW as a spin-off, which you shouldn't, and it is by far the WORST falling behind even a game as flawed as 5, it exemplifies how little it takes to have something catch on in the modern times, you just need something really cool that can be consumed in a vacuum, it doesn't matter if it's a bad overall product, everyone will just remember the one cool part.
The damage this does to actual polished up indie titles is catastrophic, you'll see people talking about indie games in development being kind of cool, you look to see what it is and it's a game where you can parry literally everything, that's the only reason why it's "cool", Fucking rubbish.
Play the actual MGS games, (1-PW) they're amazing games with the original trilogy being some of the best games ever made in their genre, if not some of the best games ever.
Same problem as MW2019 but replace every scene that was pointlessly shocking with a scene and/or character that's pointlessly Hollywood-esque, also this game is drastically uglier.
The entire game means nothing anyways because the main bad guy you kill just comes back in a multiplayer season and says "nuh-uh" and everyone is okay with him now.
Multiplayer was tested by a group of white-collar workers to be as boring as possible, I was skipping like a little school-girl every day knowing that this game was dogshit and nobody liked it, and the sequel was received even worse, hope your studio burns down modern IW!
The entire game means nothing anyways because the main bad guy you kill just comes back in a multiplayer season and says "nuh-uh" and everyone is okay with him now.
Multiplayer was tested by a group of white-collar workers to be as boring as possible, I was skipping like a little school-girl every day knowing that this game was dogshit and nobody liked it, and the sequel was received even worse, hope your studio burns down modern IW!
"This game is so well written, a true return to form!" a passerby says, as I watch cartoonishly evil Russian #376 kill another civilian.
"FPS games at their finest" says a lobotomy patient as I play through a scene where you go through with kidnapping a wife and child and threatening to shoot them, and shooting right next to them, which is okay because they're the wife and child of a SUPER-TERRORIST!
"A truly deep story" says an actor from the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" commercial as I watch the game blame a real world incident where Americans were shooting civilians on the Russians.
"Makes you love the franchise all over again" says the voices in my head, as I play through the scene where you play as a little girl doing Dead By Daylight loops around a gigantic cartoonishly evil Russian man who just killed your father and is now coming to kill you.
"oh sick is this the one where it was like the old ones the multiplayer is awesome" says that one guy you played MW2 with back in 2009 who always camped in every room and spammed OMA Noob-tubes, as I finally beat the waterboarding mini-game and am given my reward.
This game is fucking soulless, the old Modern Warfare games had a bit of a unique charm that you'd only get out of old IW, and the newer CoD games at least tried to have something unique going on, but good job guys, you proved that you'll eat this grey awful mush as long as it reminds you of what you had like 15 years ago.
Also the multiplayer is doo-doo buttcheeks, even Vanguard is better because it had the decency to at least give you Ninja as a perk.
"FPS games at their finest" says a lobotomy patient as I play through a scene where you go through with kidnapping a wife and child and threatening to shoot them, and shooting right next to them, which is okay because they're the wife and child of a SUPER-TERRORIST!
"A truly deep story" says an actor from the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" commercial as I watch the game blame a real world incident where Americans were shooting civilians on the Russians.
"Makes you love the franchise all over again" says the voices in my head, as I play through the scene where you play as a little girl doing Dead By Daylight loops around a gigantic cartoonishly evil Russian man who just killed your father and is now coming to kill you.
"oh sick is this the one where it was like the old ones the multiplayer is awesome" says that one guy you played MW2 with back in 2009 who always camped in every room and spammed OMA Noob-tubes, as I finally beat the waterboarding mini-game and am given my reward.
This game is fucking soulless, the old Modern Warfare games had a bit of a unique charm that you'd only get out of old IW, and the newer CoD games at least tried to have something unique going on, but good job guys, you proved that you'll eat this grey awful mush as long as it reminds you of what you had like 15 years ago.
Also the multiplayer is doo-doo buttcheeks, even Vanguard is better because it had the decency to at least give you Ninja as a perk.
2010
Mediocrity in its rawest form, take the shit level design, easy difficulty and bad hollywood-esque storytelling from Halo 3, then strip out half of the weapons and vehicles, dress it all up in the ugliest form of pointless grit, and you've got Halo: Reach.
I won't deny it's one of the better looking games in the series, but that's purely because they pumped more out of the consoles and devoted more time to fleshing out armor customization, and as a by-product (AFAIK) comes the shitty motion blur in the original, nothing about the dirt and scratches on every single wall and armor and muted colors makes the game look better.
Anyways, the campaign is shit, the levels are garbage, which gets a double "fuck you" for being both shit in the campaign and multiplayer, presumably because they had to be re-used for both, the weapons handle far worse because apparently being old-school like the original games means having guns that are RNG machines the moment you shoot more than once a second, and I really want to know who thought the shit mechanic of fall damage and the useless one of health-packs were worth bringing back.
Multiplayer is extra shit, again, most if not all of the base maps are recycled from the campaign and play like shit, there's far more verticality that makes gunfights a REAL match of who saw who first, and they are DAMN ugly, the RNG bullet spread is way more noticeable now, and it was so bad 343 had to patch it out, the armor abilities range from useless (decoy) to insanely poorly designed (sprint, armor lock, roll, jetpack, active camo)
Armor Lock and Jetpack tie for both being some of the worst designs ever put into a multiplayer game, Armor Lock lets you say "time-out, time-out!" so you can wait for your teammate to arrive, or just explode a vehicle if it crashes into you, and Jetpack just breaks map design, which they thankfully designed around... wait... what's that? They added CE maps into Reach's matchmaking pool? Well that's a fucking stupid idea? Surely they'll disable jetpacks so players don't jetpack up to and grab power weapons balanced around being risky to grab..... and the enemy team just snagged the Battle Canyon Rocket Launcher, great.
Having to have all the maps be padded out in length due to sprint and combat roll (sometimes? in some playlists it goes super fast and if you jump carries you long distances, and others you go nowhere and it's useless) is obnoxious, because nobody uses sprint because it's BORING!
Forge for the second time was turned into an actual map-maker, but the developers at Bungie were too busy picking their asses to do a good job so the creation tools suck and all the assets are grey, have fun.
Remember when I said they removed a bunch of content that was in 3? It goes deeper, they also have SHIT new content, like the Focus Rifle, Plasma Repeater, Needle Rifle, Concussion Rifle, and the Plasma Launcher, if you noticed, most of these are covenant weapons!
For the good things the game does? For one thing there's Invasion, really really well designed mode, Spartans vs Elites, with different UIs, their sides weaponry, and it scales over time as more objectives get captured, unfortunately in MCC it was put in the ranked playlist, so it's perma-dead, also the spawning behavior of having one teammate who is marked as your spawning buddy is stupid, and some of the objectives are a little ridiculous.
Forge being opened up to a large map was a large plus even if it was wasted on ugly assets and the modern industry style of not having specially designed kill-barriers that can be brute-forced to get past anyways, but just having a shitty "TURN BACK DUMBASS DEATH IN 10S" timer.
There's also.. uhh... finishers? I guess? They're a cool system, animated really well and none of the animations take too long.
As a final note, the story is complete and total tire-fire garbage, not only being a long fat shit all over the book The Fall of Reach, but just being a story about 6 chucklefucks having a competition of who can have the most heroic death possible, but no girls are allowed, the only character with any personality was Jorge, the ending "Objective: Survive" thing was a cool gimmick but that's about it, other than that it was just kind of neat to see a better model of Keyes, and an actual model of Halsey.
Third worst Halo campaign, only ahead of 4 and 5 because they're criminally boring.
Second worst Halo multiplayer, only ahead of CE because everything about CE aged like shit, including the things they brought back in Reach.
I won't deny it's one of the better looking games in the series, but that's purely because they pumped more out of the consoles and devoted more time to fleshing out armor customization, and as a by-product (AFAIK) comes the shitty motion blur in the original, nothing about the dirt and scratches on every single wall and armor and muted colors makes the game look better.
Anyways, the campaign is shit, the levels are garbage, which gets a double "fuck you" for being both shit in the campaign and multiplayer, presumably because they had to be re-used for both, the weapons handle far worse because apparently being old-school like the original games means having guns that are RNG machines the moment you shoot more than once a second, and I really want to know who thought the shit mechanic of fall damage and the useless one of health-packs were worth bringing back.
Multiplayer is extra shit, again, most if not all of the base maps are recycled from the campaign and play like shit, there's far more verticality that makes gunfights a REAL match of who saw who first, and they are DAMN ugly, the RNG bullet spread is way more noticeable now, and it was so bad 343 had to patch it out, the armor abilities range from useless (decoy) to insanely poorly designed (sprint, armor lock, roll, jetpack, active camo)
Armor Lock and Jetpack tie for both being some of the worst designs ever put into a multiplayer game, Armor Lock lets you say "time-out, time-out!" so you can wait for your teammate to arrive, or just explode a vehicle if it crashes into you, and Jetpack just breaks map design, which they thankfully designed around... wait... what's that? They added CE maps into Reach's matchmaking pool? Well that's a fucking stupid idea? Surely they'll disable jetpacks so players don't jetpack up to and grab power weapons balanced around being risky to grab..... and the enemy team just snagged the Battle Canyon Rocket Launcher, great.
Having to have all the maps be padded out in length due to sprint and combat roll (sometimes? in some playlists it goes super fast and if you jump carries you long distances, and others you go nowhere and it's useless) is obnoxious, because nobody uses sprint because it's BORING!
Forge for the second time was turned into an actual map-maker, but the developers at Bungie were too busy picking their asses to do a good job so the creation tools suck and all the assets are grey, have fun.
Remember when I said they removed a bunch of content that was in 3? It goes deeper, they also have SHIT new content, like the Focus Rifle, Plasma Repeater, Needle Rifle, Concussion Rifle, and the Plasma Launcher, if you noticed, most of these are covenant weapons!
For the good things the game does? For one thing there's Invasion, really really well designed mode, Spartans vs Elites, with different UIs, their sides weaponry, and it scales over time as more objectives get captured, unfortunately in MCC it was put in the ranked playlist, so it's perma-dead, also the spawning behavior of having one teammate who is marked as your spawning buddy is stupid, and some of the objectives are a little ridiculous.
Forge being opened up to a large map was a large plus even if it was wasted on ugly assets and the modern industry style of not having specially designed kill-barriers that can be brute-forced to get past anyways, but just having a shitty "TURN BACK DUMBASS DEATH IN 10S" timer.
There's also.. uhh... finishers? I guess? They're a cool system, animated really well and none of the animations take too long.
As a final note, the story is complete and total tire-fire garbage, not only being a long fat shit all over the book The Fall of Reach, but just being a story about 6 chucklefucks having a competition of who can have the most heroic death possible, but no girls are allowed, the only character with any personality was Jorge, the ending "Objective: Survive" thing was a cool gimmick but that's about it, other than that it was just kind of neat to see a better model of Keyes, and an actual model of Halsey.
Third worst Halo campaign, only ahead of 4 and 5 because they're criminally boring.
Second worst Halo multiplayer, only ahead of CE because everything about CE aged like shit, including the things they brought back in Reach.
2017
A lot of what this game has to say is done before, and it's execution may be pretty shallow in practice, and the gameplay may be nonexistent outside of like a handful of core moments, with the only other ones being in hangouts that let you pick between kinda sad story and TV static story but you get to play minigames (why not let you do both??)
Maybe it does do a shit job at illustrating that the town is a bit shitty with their strongest examples being "a cool restaurant shut down" and "theres birds in an abandoned spot" and "people dont like it when you climb on things but you do it anyways"
Maybe the strong visual identity of the game has minimal value other than looking kind of cool, with the dream segments meaning absolutely nothing but being kinda cool.
Maybe the world-building for the town is a bunch of vapid bullshit that was made up on the spot, and there's little thought into what goes on past what's directly shown to you.
Maybe Mae is a generic failure dropout protagonist and her strongest characteristics include being a bit eccentric and clingy to her childhood.
Maybe the 2 major side characters are cardboard cutouts that have their entire characters summed up in a description of their personality with "The disowned gay guy who hates the system but is really fun" and "The girl who is poor and sad"
Maybe the ending is terrible and uproots the interesting things the game was about to tell with some shitty supernatural garbage.
But I like this game, I like the things it tries to tell even if it's pretty shallow and doesn't say anything major, It resonates with me a lot, especially now just due to personal connections and me being a sucker for the art-style and music the game has, I was happier to have thought of all that could be going on in the town and the characters lives and how they'll turn out, than how disappointed I was when nothing gets explained and nobody gets developed.
I'm never going to play this game again though, because I would probably actually start to hate it, I played it so long ago, back in early 2018.
With the indie scene getting larger and larger, and hopefully with more people being interested in playing stuff that isn't dangled in front of them (seriously, either dig through obscure indies on steam, or even check out stuff on Itch!) I don't recommend this game, you'll probably find a thousand games that hit the notes that this game does but better, just lacking the elaborate production value to make a whole "thing" like NITW is, not that it really matters in the end.
Maybe it does do a shit job at illustrating that the town is a bit shitty with their strongest examples being "a cool restaurant shut down" and "theres birds in an abandoned spot" and "people dont like it when you climb on things but you do it anyways"
Maybe the strong visual identity of the game has minimal value other than looking kind of cool, with the dream segments meaning absolutely nothing but being kinda cool.
Maybe the world-building for the town is a bunch of vapid bullshit that was made up on the spot, and there's little thought into what goes on past what's directly shown to you.
Maybe Mae is a generic failure dropout protagonist and her strongest characteristics include being a bit eccentric and clingy to her childhood.
Maybe the 2 major side characters are cardboard cutouts that have their entire characters summed up in a description of their personality with "The disowned gay guy who hates the system but is really fun" and "The girl who is poor and sad"
Maybe the ending is terrible and uproots the interesting things the game was about to tell with some shitty supernatural garbage.
But I like this game, I like the things it tries to tell even if it's pretty shallow and doesn't say anything major, It resonates with me a lot, especially now just due to personal connections and me being a sucker for the art-style and music the game has, I was happier to have thought of all that could be going on in the town and the characters lives and how they'll turn out, than how disappointed I was when nothing gets explained and nobody gets developed.
I'm never going to play this game again though, because I would probably actually start to hate it, I played it so long ago, back in early 2018.
With the indie scene getting larger and larger, and hopefully with more people being interested in playing stuff that isn't dangled in front of them (seriously, either dig through obscure indies on steam, or even check out stuff on Itch!) I don't recommend this game, you'll probably find a thousand games that hit the notes that this game does but better, just lacking the elaborate production value to make a whole "thing" like NITW is, not that it really matters in the end.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a very interesting game, the second major game by auteur developer Lucas Pope of Papers Please fame both falling into a genre that I can only really describe as "Puzzle write-em-ups"
You start off as an investigator with a randomly chosen gender climbing on-board to a ship that has docked with all it's passengers either absent or dead, and with the power of a watch that lets you see a moment frozen in time of the events of their death, and you need to solve not only how they died, but who they are and what happened to everyone in general, even the ones you can't find a body for.
The idea is you start with the simple people to identify and going through every memory, and then going through and narrowing down and picking through every placement, nationality, rank, social grouping, hammock number, etc. until you've figured out what happened to every single person
...There's only one major issue though, this means after you've gone through every memory this is really boring, as not only is 60 crew members a lot to worry about, at no point can you just fast travel to memories, you have to walk around and enter each one, and the book menu is slow and annoying to use meaning quickly checking faces, memories and the different chapters is a HUGE pain in the ass.
Going through memories can be a bit annoying too, because you have to wait for the game to tell you that you're done looking and can leave, or it'll tell you to leave as you're checking out a more detailed scene, but it forces you to be railroaded into the next 4 scenes anyways, making figuring out how to get back to that last scene annoying, I have no idea why fast travel and not being forced to stay in/leave a memory being absent was not caught in playtesting to be a major issue.
However, the game is really unique and is a very unique thoughtfully put together puzzle, I'm trying carefully not to compliment the game for it's mystery, as there is none. Once you see the first beast on like the fourth memory (cool reveal though) the game has completely blown it's load on what the mystery is, it's incredibly predictable, Cursed treasure, Evil monsters... and that's about it, unless the unbelievable stupidity of the entire crew is supposed to be a part of that mystery as well.
I played another game with a similar premise to this on Itch.Io called "Once Upon a Crime in the Wild West" a few years ago, and although its execution in terms of function, voice acting and general what-have-yous was not nearly as good, the concept they had going was much more interesting, you're playing out the scenes (with an option to do so on the fly!) and connecting a train on to figure out who murdered who until you've solved the whole case, I feel like Lucas Pope got a bit carried away with the almost bureaucratic elements and it turned the game into a bit of a chore.
The only real criticism about the shallow story that I really have is that the crew are ridiculously stupid, they're accident prone as all hell, have a tendency to fall on their heads or die instantly to the slightest bop to said head, have nasty tunnel-vision, terrible hearing, and worst of all....
[SPOILER for what happened in the final chapter, The End]
All 4 of those guys got killed for no reason, the 3 trying to mutiny did it for absolutely no reason, for some reason assuming the Captain still had the shells, which he obviously did not and had thrown out, and even admits to this, only for them all to attack him anyways, dropping dead one after another without hesitating for a second, with all of the attacks from the sea-monsters already having come to pass for quite some time now, and with the actual chronology of everything, it's something that most of the VERY DWINDLING population of the crew should know about, also the Captain just coldly instakills one of the members of the crew he was implied to be decently close with.
I guess the excuse is that one of the crew members that bargained with the mermaids was killed frankly fucking ridiculously, who just gets spiked when clearly trying to bargain, making sure he dies so he can't let everyone know that everything is chill now, but wow, all this bending over backwards for setting up a shitty set of 4 deaths that serves no value other than being the tutorial, which probably could have been done just as well by moving around the whole scuffle around the first mutiny.
Still, great game and it's worth playing even past the many flaws, give it a try if you like experimental stuff.
You start off as an investigator with a randomly chosen gender climbing on-board to a ship that has docked with all it's passengers either absent or dead, and with the power of a watch that lets you see a moment frozen in time of the events of their death, and you need to solve not only how they died, but who they are and what happened to everyone in general, even the ones you can't find a body for.
The idea is you start with the simple people to identify and going through every memory, and then going through and narrowing down and picking through every placement, nationality, rank, social grouping, hammock number, etc. until you've figured out what happened to every single person
...There's only one major issue though, this means after you've gone through every memory this is really boring, as not only is 60 crew members a lot to worry about, at no point can you just fast travel to memories, you have to walk around and enter each one, and the book menu is slow and annoying to use meaning quickly checking faces, memories and the different chapters is a HUGE pain in the ass.
Going through memories can be a bit annoying too, because you have to wait for the game to tell you that you're done looking and can leave, or it'll tell you to leave as you're checking out a more detailed scene, but it forces you to be railroaded into the next 4 scenes anyways, making figuring out how to get back to that last scene annoying, I have no idea why fast travel and not being forced to stay in/leave a memory being absent was not caught in playtesting to be a major issue.
However, the game is really unique and is a very unique thoughtfully put together puzzle, I'm trying carefully not to compliment the game for it's mystery, as there is none. Once you see the first beast on like the fourth memory (cool reveal though) the game has completely blown it's load on what the mystery is, it's incredibly predictable, Cursed treasure, Evil monsters... and that's about it, unless the unbelievable stupidity of the entire crew is supposed to be a part of that mystery as well.
I played another game with a similar premise to this on Itch.Io called "Once Upon a Crime in the Wild West" a few years ago, and although its execution in terms of function, voice acting and general what-have-yous was not nearly as good, the concept they had going was much more interesting, you're playing out the scenes (with an option to do so on the fly!) and connecting a train on to figure out who murdered who until you've solved the whole case, I feel like Lucas Pope got a bit carried away with the almost bureaucratic elements and it turned the game into a bit of a chore.
The only real criticism about the shallow story that I really have is that the crew are ridiculously stupid, they're accident prone as all hell, have a tendency to fall on their heads or die instantly to the slightest bop to said head, have nasty tunnel-vision, terrible hearing, and worst of all....
[SPOILER for what happened in the final chapter, The End]
All 4 of those guys got killed for no reason, the 3 trying to mutiny did it for absolutely no reason, for some reason assuming the Captain still had the shells, which he obviously did not and had thrown out, and even admits to this, only for them all to attack him anyways, dropping dead one after another without hesitating for a second, with all of the attacks from the sea-monsters already having come to pass for quite some time now, and with the actual chronology of everything, it's something that most of the VERY DWINDLING population of the crew should know about, also the Captain just coldly instakills one of the members of the crew he was implied to be decently close with.
I guess the excuse is that one of the crew members that bargained with the mermaids was killed frankly fucking ridiculously, who just gets spiked when clearly trying to bargain, making sure he dies so he can't let everyone know that everything is chill now, but wow, all this bending over backwards for setting up a shitty set of 4 deaths that serves no value other than being the tutorial, which probably could have been done just as well by moving around the whole scuffle around the first mutiny.
Still, great game and it's worth playing even past the many flaws, give it a try if you like experimental stuff.
1996
Played on the fan PC port using the Render96 retexture/remodel mod
I've never actually beaten Super Mario 64, I've played it on dozens of occasions, getting to every level, getting most of the stars, but they were all separate instances and half the time powered by cheats, I've been in a bit of a 3D platformer mood recently so I sat down and went through the entire thing start to finish, and long story short, while my opinions have hardly changed for the game, it's really a landmark title and a great game.
In terms of how I feel after finally replaying it, best case scenario I can say that I've grown more fond of the control scheme than I was before, and worst case scenario I've really figured out how bad the level design is in the game.
Fundamentals wise the game is tight as hell, it's the major reason why the game is so great, the controls are just really really good, and it's fun to do what effectively feels like cheating to do some tight jumps to get a star without going through the objective the game intended.
Level design kind of reeks though, it's not offensively bad just a bit boring and simple, there are a few particularly bad ones like the water level though, and the ones with giant falls for every missed jump aren't an amazing experience, and it kind of sucks how generic a lot of the visuals are, most levels sharing a set of like 4-5 songs doesn't help either, the joy is just out of how often the levels are oversized playgrounds and have been designed thoughtlessly enough for you to be able to just hit some jump and snag a star because of it.
Power-ups aren't really worth noting, 2/3 of them are just basic tools to solve a problem you'd have with a puzzle, and the other one is a gimmick that rarely gets used that while cool for it's time, isn't fun to control.
Bosses are super forgettable, there's 3 that'd I'd consider actual boss-fights, and 1 of those 3 you can totally miss, there's King Bob-omb who's more of a tutorial, the bowser fights which are cakewalks with the third one being a bit annoying if you don't know how to chain throws together, and there's the hand fight in the desert level, they're all nothing special.
It's really interesting to look back and see how much this game really influenced the industry due to how much of a hit it was, it's still got a chokehold on the design of current 3D Mario games, and plenty of indie games take massive inspiration from it, though you'll just as often see a major inspiration by another game I plan to play eventually, Banjo-Kazooie.
I can't really say this game is one-of-a-kind though, as not only did the industry and indie devs follow in suit for years, but that Nintendo themselves did the same with most 3D Mario games lifting major elements from this, but it's definitely worth playing if you've even somewhat enjoyed anything that takes inspiration from this.
I've never actually beaten Super Mario 64, I've played it on dozens of occasions, getting to every level, getting most of the stars, but they were all separate instances and half the time powered by cheats, I've been in a bit of a 3D platformer mood recently so I sat down and went through the entire thing start to finish, and long story short, while my opinions have hardly changed for the game, it's really a landmark title and a great game.
In terms of how I feel after finally replaying it, best case scenario I can say that I've grown more fond of the control scheme than I was before, and worst case scenario I've really figured out how bad the level design is in the game.
Fundamentals wise the game is tight as hell, it's the major reason why the game is so great, the controls are just really really good, and it's fun to do what effectively feels like cheating to do some tight jumps to get a star without going through the objective the game intended.
Level design kind of reeks though, it's not offensively bad just a bit boring and simple, there are a few particularly bad ones like the water level though, and the ones with giant falls for every missed jump aren't an amazing experience, and it kind of sucks how generic a lot of the visuals are, most levels sharing a set of like 4-5 songs doesn't help either, the joy is just out of how often the levels are oversized playgrounds and have been designed thoughtlessly enough for you to be able to just hit some jump and snag a star because of it.
Power-ups aren't really worth noting, 2/3 of them are just basic tools to solve a problem you'd have with a puzzle, and the other one is a gimmick that rarely gets used that while cool for it's time, isn't fun to control.
Bosses are super forgettable, there's 3 that'd I'd consider actual boss-fights, and 1 of those 3 you can totally miss, there's King Bob-omb who's more of a tutorial, the bowser fights which are cakewalks with the third one being a bit annoying if you don't know how to chain throws together, and there's the hand fight in the desert level, they're all nothing special.
It's really interesting to look back and see how much this game really influenced the industry due to how much of a hit it was, it's still got a chokehold on the design of current 3D Mario games, and plenty of indie games take massive inspiration from it, though you'll just as often see a major inspiration by another game I plan to play eventually, Banjo-Kazooie.
I can't really say this game is one-of-a-kind though, as not only did the industry and indie devs follow in suit for years, but that Nintendo themselves did the same with most 3D Mario games lifting major elements from this, but it's definitely worth playing if you've even somewhat enjoyed anything that takes inspiration from this.
2020
This is the game that really pushed me to my breaking point about Boomer Shooters where it's come to a point where I feel like I'd have more fun with Call of Duty 4, I just for the life of me can't really jive with this game, it's got some neat mechanics and tricks but I hate the core of it.
I hate the lack of real weapon variety outside of these shitty variants that don't change up the weapon enough, it's the exact same problem as Doom Eternal's weapon upgrades except Doom Eternal had a bunch of different weapons in general.
I hate dashes over just fast movement, one of these days I'm going to make a boomer shooter where you just play as the Scout from TF2 with a bunch of different weapons, it just feels a lot more elegant to dodge around with direct movement rather than the dedicated dodge button.
I HATE this parry system, I've only encountered one game where I felt like the parry system was a nice touch that added to the experience without hindering it, and that was fucking Pizza Tower, In Ultrakill it feels like the game expects you to master parry timings, because it turns otherwise difficult boss fights into total fucking cakewalks, it stops being cool after you realize that's what you were supposed to do and everyone else has probably done it at this point.
And man oh man, I don't think bosses belong in FPS games, these just kind of suck and are memory tests, if you have above average aim the accuracy is never an issue and it's just a memory game of dashing and parrying at the right moments, it's a snoozefest.
Regardless, the levels are well designed, there's a lot of fun secrets and it's a labor of love, it's not a bad game, I just don't like any of the major things that make it stand out, also Hakita is terminally unfunny.
I hate the lack of real weapon variety outside of these shitty variants that don't change up the weapon enough, it's the exact same problem as Doom Eternal's weapon upgrades except Doom Eternal had a bunch of different weapons in general.
I hate dashes over just fast movement, one of these days I'm going to make a boomer shooter where you just play as the Scout from TF2 with a bunch of different weapons, it just feels a lot more elegant to dodge around with direct movement rather than the dedicated dodge button.
I HATE this parry system, I've only encountered one game where I felt like the parry system was a nice touch that added to the experience without hindering it, and that was fucking Pizza Tower, In Ultrakill it feels like the game expects you to master parry timings, because it turns otherwise difficult boss fights into total fucking cakewalks, it stops being cool after you realize that's what you were supposed to do and everyone else has probably done it at this point.
And man oh man, I don't think bosses belong in FPS games, these just kind of suck and are memory tests, if you have above average aim the accuracy is never an issue and it's just a memory game of dashing and parrying at the right moments, it's a snoozefest.
Regardless, the levels are well designed, there's a lot of fun secrets and it's a labor of love, it's not a bad game, I just don't like any of the major things that make it stand out, also Hakita is terminally unfunny.
2018
Played through World of Assassination
Pretty much the same story gameplay wise as the first game, so I'll mainly just be talking about the experience with the different levels, the Sniper Assassin mode and potentially some personal thoughts as I played through more of the series.
Before that I want to iterate again, this always online shit is awful, and so are the elusive targets, whoever came up with this shit is a moron.
Anyways, the levels were just not it this time around, there's only 3 levels that are at the very least "good" because you're thrown so many levels which you can't dream of experimenting with until you've been railroaded through the "Mission Stories" and typically are overstuffed with NPCs because they're crowded third world areas or whatever, it's just a fucking disaster.
There was one out of those crappy bunch that had an interesting gimmick of an unknown target you have to discover... which went up in smoke when I was doing one of the "Mission Stories" and after fucking up disposing of a KOed disguise target and guard, a random NPC spotted me, so I just got frustrated and shot him before I reloaded my save, but right before I did that I was told "Great work 47, you found the target!" which really ruined any fun that could have been.
Anyways, halfway through you're dealt probably my favorite level in the reboot trilogy so far "Another Life" (not to be confused with A New Life from Blood Money) which is much more what you'd expect from the Hitman series, taking place in an American suburb with JUUUUST the right amount of NPCs, and there being plenty of things to explore, as well as having a lot of fun things around, and creative opportunities for kills, great time, didn't do any "Mission Stories" in it and managed to find a lot of interesting stuff regardless.
The other 2 levels I enjoyed were the 2 from the DLCs, one was the bank which was similarly good, but just not quite as good and a little hard to get around without following a "Mission Story" and the resort level which was just... Ok, I liked the fact that it was pretty open yet not too populated and filled with enough bushes that it basically invites you to just throw caution to the wind and try getting quick kills off by just popping them and immediately ducking into cover, in fact you can kill the first target within seconds of starting.
Story was a lot better this time, as in there's actually a story to follow, with things that happen and have weight in what happens in the actual levels, but it's nothing amazing, just some cheap b-movie spy thriller.
I tried to shift up my gameplay by forcing myself to experiment a little and not forcing myself to EXCLUSIVELY kill targets, to not feel as pressured, and I feel like I got a much better grip on the gameplay loop because of it this time around, but flaws with the AI are becoming more and more apparent, I hope the next time they do a set of Hitman games they lower the scope so they can tighten up things like AI.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to mention Sniper Assassin!
It's okay, not really my thing, that's all.
Pretty much the same story gameplay wise as the first game, so I'll mainly just be talking about the experience with the different levels, the Sniper Assassin mode and potentially some personal thoughts as I played through more of the series.
Before that I want to iterate again, this always online shit is awful, and so are the elusive targets, whoever came up with this shit is a moron.
Anyways, the levels were just not it this time around, there's only 3 levels that are at the very least "good" because you're thrown so many levels which you can't dream of experimenting with until you've been railroaded through the "Mission Stories" and typically are overstuffed with NPCs because they're crowded third world areas or whatever, it's just a fucking disaster.
There was one out of those crappy bunch that had an interesting gimmick of an unknown target you have to discover... which went up in smoke when I was doing one of the "Mission Stories" and after fucking up disposing of a KOed disguise target and guard, a random NPC spotted me, so I just got frustrated and shot him before I reloaded my save, but right before I did that I was told "Great work 47, you found the target!" which really ruined any fun that could have been.
Anyways, halfway through you're dealt probably my favorite level in the reboot trilogy so far "Another Life" (not to be confused with A New Life from Blood Money) which is much more what you'd expect from the Hitman series, taking place in an American suburb with JUUUUST the right amount of NPCs, and there being plenty of things to explore, as well as having a lot of fun things around, and creative opportunities for kills, great time, didn't do any "Mission Stories" in it and managed to find a lot of interesting stuff regardless.
The other 2 levels I enjoyed were the 2 from the DLCs, one was the bank which was similarly good, but just not quite as good and a little hard to get around without following a "Mission Story" and the resort level which was just... Ok, I liked the fact that it was pretty open yet not too populated and filled with enough bushes that it basically invites you to just throw caution to the wind and try getting quick kills off by just popping them and immediately ducking into cover, in fact you can kill the first target within seconds of starting.
Story was a lot better this time, as in there's actually a story to follow, with things that happen and have weight in what happens in the actual levels, but it's nothing amazing, just some cheap b-movie spy thriller.
I tried to shift up my gameplay by forcing myself to experiment a little and not forcing myself to EXCLUSIVELY kill targets, to not feel as pressured, and I feel like I got a much better grip on the gameplay loop because of it this time around, but flaws with the AI are becoming more and more apparent, I hope the next time they do a set of Hitman games they lower the scope so they can tighten up things like AI.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to mention Sniper Assassin!
It's okay, not really my thing, that's all.
2024
Fun little Lethal Company clone, personally I prefer a lot of the designs to this one as you don't die over the slightest encounter, and there's more of an emphasis with funny moments, especially with the camera, wish the areas weren't all coated in an ugly grey texture though, just makes it feel repetitive.