Some style, almost no substance. Attempts to capture the feel of classic samurai films with a monochromatic style but a short and dull story and combat that starts awkward and bland and gets worse makes it hard to recommend.

Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.

Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025

Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe

Horizontal shooter where you have a basic straight shot but the main feature is that your other attack fires a missile that can do damage and destroy certain enemy ships but for a select few they will change into an outline of themselves that you can fly into that then transforms you into that ship. The ships you can change into have their own main weapon and an alternate fire that might be a three use powerful attack or that allows you to reorient your weapons. Being destroyed in this form takes you back to your starting ship. It's a fun mechanic, the music is decent, and it has a nice opening scene. Problems come from the majority of ships you change into having a very large hit box, top of being difficult to dodge shot patterns the last two stages start creating obstacles that you can barely get through or can't get through with the ships available to you. If you lose those ships your main ship just isn't fun to play with its weak attacks and slow movement, and while you do get a few lives on each continue that respawn you on the spot this is rarely helpful in the boss or miniboss fights where you are likely to die because your small ship isn't a good match for those bosses, losing all your lives resets the stage on a continue. Stage design isn't very interesting. Some of the ship types shot make a fairly loud and annoying sound that is also playing over the music constantly.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1731540388111139149

DC Dual Force presents a fairly generic multiplayer focused card game with a few varied elements and single player comic episodes with scenes and storylines taken from comics to play through that have some effort to them but are never actually interesting to play.

The way the game works is that you choose two leaders from factions that include Might (characters including ones like Superman/Wonder Woman), Tactics (Batman/Cyborg), Energy (Zatana/Flash), Anarchy (Harley/Doomsday), and Tyranny (Poison Ivy/Black Adam) and are than able to make a 40 card deck with the cards you have that include the factions that your leaders belong to. The board has six spaces to deploy characters with your heroes starting on the the bottom left and right, characters played in front of others block the ones behind them from being attacked (certain abilities aside). You start with a bronze token, then get two, then one becomes silver, both silver, one gold, and last both gold with those tokens being used to play cards that either have a free, bronze, silver, or gold cost associated with them or possibly with their deploy abilities. Each character might have passive and active abilities and their own damage and health stats, you choose who or if they attack each turn hoping to defeat your opponents two leaders to win the game. Each leader starts with their own health value (typically somewhere between 18-24) and might have a passive ability as well as a skill you can activate after they gain enough charges, a charge is gained on each turn other than the first and possibly by certain cards or characters played and these skills might activate varied abilities and/or give your leader a temporary damage stat that allows them to attack like another character.

There are over 300 cards and around 4 leaders per faction and having those two leaders and their abilities is an interesting touch and the factions give you different kinds of tactics to focus a deck around but most everything else is just too generic and not a great use of DC characters. There are so many cards and character abilities that can just kill one, all, or move cards back to your hand and your limited card draws unless you build a deck focused on drawing more cards combined with the natural advantage the first player can have with possibly multiple characters being readied before yours can lead to frequent dull moments or ones where you know you've lost before the game even really started. Some leaders like Aquaman and Batman seem significantly better than others and having those times where you play Superman and Hal Jordan for a turn just to have your opponents turn be the I play my kill everything cards, and you two do that back and forth until someone starts drawing non character cards they don't have a use for at the time and lose because they can't do anything are frequent and boring.

It's pretty easy to unlock cards. I paid $10 just to have access to the other half of locked off comics available to subscribers and did most of the challenges available in about a months time and have access to every card except for some of the rarest and some leaders and have more than enough in game free atom currency that I could use to get access to whatever I wanted if I needed something for a deck type. The artwork on the cards is ok, nothing great like in something like the Lord of the Rings Fantasy Flight card game or some of the alternate art Marvel Snap cards but decent. You can unlock "shiny" versions of cards and while many of those are just kind of a sparkly effect it was nice to see that effect be different for some cards that it seems less appropriate for or added visual effects to certain cards like a Batman card having the smoke in his card become animated. There aren't too many unique in game effects but some cards have their own animations like playing Wonder Woman's lasso will show a lasso grab and move an opponent's card or playing Green Arrow who has an ability to fire arrows at enemy cards when he deploys will show an arrow shooting up from his card and landing on your target.

The comics would be an interesting element and they do add a bit extra to it where each comic might have their own events or choices that can give you different bonuses or access to different cards and leader options but your base decks in these modes is typically bad (and doesn't let you actually view what is in it) and the AI ranges from just being bad to being near suicidal.

At release there seemed to be more problems with the UI but that seems to have been worked out, it's still not all organized well but it seems to function correctly.

While the game continues to get patches and new content, I can't see it lasting that long due to the very limited player count.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1730584299781652491

A planning focused real time with pause tactical game that has you managing a SWAT team in what can feel like a top down Rainbow Six but with a much better tool to create and alter plans. You will draw out paths for each character, choose facing directions, when and how to use gadgets like flash grenades or tools to breach into rooms and those plans can be easily altered on the fly once the game begins or with you taking more direct control of one person at a time as you handle their movement and facing (though things like shooting will still be done based on that particular characters weapon, abilities, and different statistics. As you play you unlock more equipment and weapon options as well as class options that give your playstyle more variety. Despite the focus on planning and choosing character facing, your units do react well enough to obvious threats by themselves where they won't just ignore being shot or shot at because you didn't orient them another few degrees to the left or right. The only real negative I had back when I played it was an inability to que up commands when dealing with doors and that despite it being a PC game some design choices that gave it more of a look like it was meant for a phone.

There is already a wide variety of developer made maps to make the amount of content well worth a purchase but you can find player made content as well.

Control characters in real time as they explore derelict ships with a variety of potential threats, including your own systems needing to be adjusted to maintain your view of the situation.

Great and atmospheric concept but mostly poorly executed, and a somewhat similar idea has been done better now with this developer's future games and by the game Duskers. High RNG, lack of options for character control, poor character creation options and system, different enemy types that really just change what equipment you will want to use, poor cloning system, lack of interesting character interactions or environment information, needless amount of babying your characters in a way that seems to give you too much control and not enough. Too short and limited in options.

Can be worth a look as it even now is somewhat unique but there are better options even by its own developers.

Sequel that changes little from the previous rail shooter. A bit more variety in visuals and how you move around certain levels but has the same fairly dull enemy design. It feels like your weapon is a bit more effective and enemies take longer most of the time to start doing damage but that start to get ruined in the last 1/3 due to sheer numbers of enemies and different angles you are attacked from. After the final boss you get 30 seconds to stop self destruct and will almost certainly get an instant game over if you don't already know what is coming or didn't die on purpose to get your bomb weapon back.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1728578908503912525

A fairly short Operation Wolf style rail shooter. For 1990 some good destruction and scrolling effects and the brief story has some funny moments between stages. Your weapon fires full auto without a need to reload and you can launch a rocket that destroys everything on the screen and stops attacks at you but that will also hit civilians and lose you health if they are around. Good music. You probably won't have died that much by the end but it also isn't much of a fair challenge as the number of enemies on the screen combined with the amount of hits things take and the somewhat slow rate of fire your automatic weapon shoots at can make it extremely difficult to avoid damage, even more so during parts where multiple enemies appear at the same time and you would just need to know which shoots first to avoid taking hits.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1726072381524091261

A poor lightgun horror game with some brief entertaining bloody moments. At around 45 minutes it overstays its welcome, mostly by dragging every situation or area out longer than it has to. Some very cheap enemy design as well as placement of civilians that if you hit will lose you health. Mostly dull powerups as you already basically have a shotgun and the pickups tend to have you firing the same kind of shot but doing more damage or with some minor effect differences. A later stage has an instant game over state if you miss finding some items or don't use them in the correct order at a door leading to the final boss.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1725427764642422834

Front Mission 1st comes to modern platforms with a simple but good visual upgrade and the features of the two former remakes intact while maintaining the original odd mechanics that made the later games better.

This is the third remake of the original Front Mission that keeps the former remakes added gameplay elements while adding new game plus and more difficulty options while making changes to the visuals, camera control, and UI. The 2003 Playstation remake of the original SNES game added the second campaign that plays like one of the later Front Mission titles with each character that joins you having more characterization and more conversations between missions, more chances to talk with your squad members, more air and vehicle enemies to fight, gives more characterization to people you meet or fight in the main campaign, involves some characters from the then upcoming Front Mission 4, and is the stronger campaign in general despite being a bit shorter. The DS remake added some Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 5 cameos, equipable parts from later games in the series, and nine secret missions across both campaigns. The only thing I noticed missing here was that in the final after credit scene of the main scenario only the main story pilots show up at the end, with none of the side characters and one slightly main not appearing with a line or two like they do in the other versions of the game, odd thing to remove but not a big loss since they had almost no personality or scenes and never showed up in the next four games.

The gameplay is a fairly simple turn based mech game where each character pilots a Wanzer which has a has a body, left and right arm, and leg part with the arms able to equip both a handheld or built in weapon and a shoulder mounted missile launcher or shield that you can use to add to your defense when you are unable to attack or if you decide to defend instead of counterattacking. Pilots rank up their skills in short, long, melee, and dodge from 1-9,999 with them becoming more accurate (or better at avoiding) and doing more damage (never found anything that knew what exact calculations are) every time they are attacked or use a weapon type with them getting more experience when they destroy a body part. Destroying the body destroys the Wanzer, arms disable weapons equipped to it, and legs can reduce movement speed (and maybe reduce dodge, people didn't seem sure or how much). Every pilot has a certain weapon experience level where once they reach a certain point, that is different per character, they can learn a skill once they raise their main level (levels only add very small amounts of XP to every skill and unlock a skill if you reached the requisite).

Short ranged weapons give you duel where you are forced to use the skill every time and can choose a body part for all your shots or your one shot to aim at with a severe to no accuracy penalty depending on the skill level, switch allows you a chance to attack with your off hand weapon if they are both short ranged after your first attack and can chain multiple times while also allowing you to switch your duel target, and speed adds to the number of bullets you can fire. Melee gives you first that allows you to attack before an enemy when otherwise melee attackers go last, stun that can stun an enemy both stopping their attack if it goes off before they attack and stunning them on the map screen if other units attack them but with a chance they can wake up, and double which works like switch but with two melee weapons. Long range experience can unlock guide which works like the short range duel skill. These skills mean that short is significantly better than everything else just by the massive amounts of damage you can do, and means that typically the SMG style weapons are a much better choice than rifles or shotguns once you unlock speed (even more so since the weapons don't actually behave differently in Front Mission 1 even all having the same 1 tile range). Long is more of a weapon type just to have to weaken enemies and missile launchers run out of ammo. Close is good in the early game but massively falls of due to skills leading to a damage drop when compared to short weapons and the game just seemed to forget to add new melee weapons to the game for some time while all other weapons are getting multiple upgrades. You have no way of knowing but some pilots just can't unlock certain skills making some much worse choices than others. Once you get a skill raising its level from 1 to 3 is random and has a chance of happening when the skill is used. So when you first unlock duel and have a 50% accuracy drop you want that to level up quickly and that might rank up in one use or it might rank up after 100 uses. There is also some UI issues with the game where you just aren't always given information that you really want to know, like the damage status of units being attacked and enemy status when they are attacking you and what weapon is where on the before you switch to the combat screen after choosing your weapon or defense, this was still also a problem in Front Mission 2.

It's a system that all works well enough but gives more options in future games with a few of them somewhat showing up in the second campaign that has things like a few rifles that can be used at a distance.

Outside of combat you can make use of an arena to gain money or experience, talk to a few characters at a bar in each town, buy new parts for your units (with new parts coming at an annoyingly fast rate in the main campaign, even worse when you are upgrading more total units and constantly running out of money unless you use the arena). There is a variety of different looking styles and even legs parts that handle movement differently but so many of them are just statistically worse options and the leg parts don't make a huge difference with certain movements types not being seen much or not being given as many upgrades to make them that viable. The second campaign adds the ability to speak to your squad members while in towns or at bases and that give them all a bit more personality that would be found in the later games in the series. The stories set up elements of later events and some of the themes and atmosphere of later games but there is not a huge amount of plot yet, especially not in the primary campaign where moments that should have a bigger impact or often quickly gotten through.

The remake also adds a great looking tactical map view you can switch to that could be used as the main UI for an entire type of game, while also serving absolutely no real purpose in this game and not allowing you to move units on it even though everything about it seems to have been made for it.

Front Mission is decent game with a good soundtrack and unique art style that adds a lot of personality and that all lead to more interesting and better titles that expanded on what this game started in the future (even the SNES spin-off Front Mission Gun Hazard is one of the best games on the platform) and if you are going to get into the series you might as well start here.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1724717342188572844

Some likable characters and funny moments but a lack of choices that matter apart from getting people infected, lack of an ending that gives characters closure, and ends up not knowing what to do with most of the cast by the halfway point.

A group of camp counselor are stuck in the area for one extra night after everyone else goes home and sees them facing off against a strange family of hunters and werewolves with some nods to 80s horror films. For the most part has a likable cast where even characters that aren't often portrayed in the best light get a moment or two to humanize them a bit. There are some funny moments, and the whole things feels like it has a bigger budget and more effort than the studio's Dark Picture series.

On one hand you can get everyone infected by werewolves and that can cause changes based on when they get infected or if and how they might get cured and where a character might end up at certain points of the story, which is great, but in focusing on that there is a lack of choices and interactions that tend to matter and the survival or infection of character is typically just coming down to whether or not you hit or missed a QTE event as opposed to finding items, a build up of choices over time, or how the relationships between characters grow or change based on things you do or say. It does the Telltale style "this character respects this," "this character is disappointed," "this character is excited over this," etc and I'm pretty sure there is only one time where any of that ends up meaning anything and it pretty much amounts to did you upset the guy by shooting him or not which is a bit more obvious than the guy you will never see again being sad that you eavesdropped on his phone call.

Actually has a character you meet in between chapter that serves as a kind of narrator and confidant to the player that actually has a role in the story and tries to influence your decisions to the path she wants as opposed to the Robert Patrick looking curator of The Dark Pictures games who contributes nothing but wasted time as far as I can tell from the ones I've played. Lance Henriksen had no reason to be in the game, as his character says almost nothing and does even less. Jedediah could have been played by anyone or removed from the game entirely with no effect. The entire Hackett family, save for one member, all could have used more time in the game, more so for the ones you could have met in camp earlier on.

The ending sections of the game lack any real excitement or extended action for this type of story and it all ends too abruptly, ending the threat with no closure. Even the playable cast is half full of characters who just fall out of the story halfway through the game and contribute nothing. Even some of the more main characters end up not doing anything that really matters in the last two or three chapters. There's really a feel of, "oh you didn't fail the QTEs and get people killed or infected and written out of the game, well then I guess they just wait in the basement, sit in the woods for the last 1/3 of the game and do nothing, follow another character around and contribute nothing." For some reason the game has no wrap up ending. Based on some very specific choices or letting certain people die you might get a kind of ending for two sets of characters but most people won't as those achievements both seemed to have around a 1% and 3.5% unlock percentage. If characters had multiple sections or backstory worried about what they will do with their lives next, family problems, wanting to save their infected boyfriend, relationship issues or choices none of that is getting solved or mentioned again. It's like if Die Hard immediately cut to credits as Hans Gruber was falling and you never had the scene where you got to see Officer Carl Winslow get over his holdup over using a gun again after accidentally killing a child by shooting the last gunman, allowing him to move on and continue his life as proper cop away from deskwork with a new mentality that will allow him to kill more kids with toy guns in the future. Except in The Quarry, there are like 5-8 people who probably could have used a bit of an epilogue based on your choices who never get any kind of choice made or character growth from their backstory. That might work in a horror movie where the entire cast is dead except one, two, or a very rare three people by the end but when there isn't much reason for anyone to die and even getting someone turned into a werewolf might just save them by the end it doesn't work well.

The developers are clearly intentionally designing their games to have no respect for their players. The Dark Pictures series was bad enough in that you can't skip scenes or conversations that you have seen before but The Quarry does not give you a chapter select until you beat the game, autosaves immediately after everything you do, gives you one save file while not even allowing you to go back to a previous chapter after you beat the game on a new file like the Dark Pictures games do but instead erasing everything that comes after, and going back to previous chapters wipes out your collectibles to the extent that even the achievements don't keep track of what you found. Then there is the ridiculously slow movement speed of characters and camera issues. There is no excuse for this with this being the fifth game they had made exactly in this same style.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1716203607568351279

Some likable characters and funny moments but a lack of choices that matter apart from getting people infected, lack of an ending that gives characters closure, and ends up not knowing what to do with most of the cast by the halfway point.

A group of camp counselor are stuck in the area for one extra night after everyone else goes home and sees them facing off against a strange family of hunters and werewolves with some nods to 80s horror films. For the most part has a likable cast where even characters that aren't often portrayed in the best light get a moment or two to humanize them a bit. There are some funny moments, and the whole things feels like it has a bigger budget and more effort than the studio's Dark Picture series.

On one hand you can get everyone infected by werewolves and that can cause changes based on when they get infected or if and how they might get cured and where a character might end up at certain points of the story, which is great, but in focusing on that there is a lack of choices and interactions that tend to matter and the survival or infection of character is typically just coming down to whether or not you hit or missed a QTE event as opposed to finding items, a build up of choices over time, or how the relationships between characters grow or change based on things you do or say. It does the Telltale style "this character respects this," "this character is disappointed," "this character is excited over this," etc and I'm pretty sure there is only one time where any of that ends up meaning anything and it pretty much amounts to did you upset the guy by shooting him or not which is a bit more obvious than the guy you will never see again being sad that you eavesdropped on his phone call.

Actually has a character you meet in between chapter that serves as a kind of narrator and confidant to the player that actually has a role in the story and tries to influence your decisions to the path she wants as opposed to the Robert Patrick looking curator of The Dark Pictures games who contributes nothing but wasted time as far as I can tell from the ones I've played. Lance Henriksen had no reason to be in the game, as his character says almost nothing and does even less. Jedediah could have been played by anyone or removed from the game entirely with no effect. The entire Hackett family, save for one member, all could have used more time in the game, more so for the ones you could have met in camp earlier on.

The ending sections of the game lack any real excitement or extended action for this type of story and it all ends too abruptly, ending the threat with no closure. Even the playable cast is half full of characters who just fall out of the story halfway through the game and contribute nothing. Even some of the more main characters end up not doing anything that really matters in the last two or three chapters. There's really a feel of, "oh you didn't fail the QTEs and get people killed or infected and written out of the game, well then I guess they just wait in the basement, sit in the woods for the last 1/3 of the game and do nothing, follow another character around and contribute nothing." For some reason the game has no wrap up ending. Based on some very specific choices or letting certain people die you might get a kind of ending for two sets of characters but most people won't as those achievements both seemed to have around a 1% and 3.5% unlock percentage. If characters had multiple sections or backstory worried about what they will do with their lives next, family problems, wanting to save their infected boyfriend, relationship issues or choices none of that is getting solved or mentioned again. It's like if Die Hard immediately cut to credits as Hans Gruber was falling and you never had the scene where you got to see Officer Carl Winslow get over his holdup over using a gun again after accidentally killing a child by shooting the last gunman, allowing him to move on and continue his life as proper cop away from deskwork with a new mentality that will allow him to kill more kids with toy guns in the future. Except in The Quarry, there are like 5-8 people who probably could have used a bit of an epilogue based on your choices who never get any kind of choice made or character growth from their backstory. That might work in a horror movie where the entire cast is dead except one, two, or a very rare three people by the end but when there isn't much reason for anyone to die and even getting someone turned into a werewolf might just save them by the end it doesn't work well.

The developers are clearly intentionally designing their games to have no respect for their players. The Dark Pictures series was bad enough in that you can't skip scenes or conversations that you have seen before but The Quarry does not give you a chapter select until you beat the game, autosaves immediately after everything you do, gives you one save file while not even allowing you to go back to a previous chapter after you beat the game on a new file like the Dark Pictures games do but instead erasing everything that comes after, and going back to previous chapters wipes out your collectibles to the extent that even the achievements don't keep track of what you found. Then there is the ridiculously slow movement speed of characters and camera issues. There is no excuse for this with this being the fifth game they had made exactly in this same style.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1716203607568351279

One likable badass character can't save the rest of the game from a terrible cast with some awful acting, poorly shot action scenes, and needless point A to B walks for tedious collectible gathering.

House of Ashes sees a group of people trapped in underground ruins in Iraq during the 2003 US invasion attempting to escape vampire like demons that have been down there for thousands of years. The main characters include a CIA operative with a hideous character model that is for some reason in charge of a small group of the most incompetent Marines I've ever seen who have apparently been existing in a combat zone in an unready state while hoarding some war crime white phosphorus grenades, until her husband that she has been away from for a year shows up to take over. Her husband being an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose satellite project is being used to try to find hidden weapons of mass destruction and is what finds the old ruins. There are two marines main characters with one being the guy the CIA agent has started a relationship with while away from her husband, and another one who is a racist with a 9/11 hat. The last character is a member of the Iraq Republican Guard who is there to be the only competent, badass, friendlier person, who might just be able to make the racist marine not as racist anymore and if the entire game was just about him fighting the Americans and the demons it would have made for a better time. Unfortunately, he can't save the game all by himself.

The previous entry in the series, Little Hope, wasn't good but it at least had some ideas and moments that could have lead to it being good if not for the terrible overarching premise, this looks like it might take the series into something the developer can do a better job with by making a more action packed faster paced ridiculous ride but it manages to mess even that up. While Little Hope had some very strong acting in a mostly mediocre script, Ashes doesn't even have that with the best actors giving just passable performances with the exception of Ashley Tisdale as the CIA operative who is always terrible. The constant finding of items and collectibles to slowly examine take you away from the immediate story as much as before, but even more so here in what should be a more dangerous fast paced situation.

The action scenes end up being laughable incompetent with every shot seemingly being a tracer round that frequently show the bullets going nowhere near what anyone should be aiming at. The scenes where US and Iraq forces fight make Steven Seagal movies look well shot and better able to follow a logical event chain. The monsters don't even seem to react to being shot in the face multiple times in certain scenes but can apparently be stabbed and killed with old slightly pointy objects not designed to be used as weapons. The camera is completely unable to handle some of the confined or narrow areas you find yourself in. Characters mouths don't always move when they are speaking and there are frequent fast jump cuts in multiple scenes either like frames missing from action scenes or like it was possibly looking for a scene or line that might have happened if different choices were made then cut somewhere else when it couldn't find it. The characters apparently all have an infinite supply of ammunition (until near the end of the game when they finally start running out), though that doesn't end up being very useful to them. They find out UV light will set them on fire so when they start breaking through one of the doors they are defending they decide to shoot at the door instead of just shining the light on their hands or through the open cracks of the door (or shooting larger hold in the door that could then have the UV light shine through it). The dialogue is ridiculous, any soldier in the game tends to be written in the most stereotypes ridiculous way imaginable. A side character dies after seemingly being shot in the legs, making you think that the plot might understand that getting shot is actually bad, only for multiple characters to be shot later on only to have them completely ignore it and to go on with it never mentioned or considered a problem for them. Like all bad monster media the creatures are as fast or slow, strong or weak, and smart or stupid as the couple minutes needs them to be before deciding to do the opposite in the next scene.

Being that it stars characters that are CIA and marines invading a country outside of WWII I assumed I'd want them to die but these characters were nearly David Cage levels of unlikable and incompetent to the extent that I'd want them to die no matter who they are or what they were doing. It also makes it difficult to want to go back and see what changes different choices can lead to as it doesn't allow you to skip any of the scenes that you have already seen before.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1713804446118068427

A well made side campaign that keeps what makes the gameplay of the main game fun and allows for some atmospheric though more brief segments, while having the same expanded story elements when compared to the original PS2 mode.

For about $9, Separate Ways gets you seven chapters and about 3-4 hours of gameplay, Ada's path taker her mostly through the same areas as Leon but with a few differences, new enemy placement, and new boss fights. Her grappling hook has a fairly large role in the gameplay allowing her extra traversal options in each areas, fast ways onto a roof in some boss fights, the ability to launch or swing over obstacles. Ada has her own melee move set, one that can also make use of her grappling hook that she can use to pull herself to enemies or to pull away their shields, and she has access to a new sawed-off shotgun and crossbow that fires explosive arrows that can explode over a very large area once upgraded enough.

A lot of the new content are sections similar to things that were missing from the original Resident Evil 4. You get to see the laser wire trap room, the brief ride down a gondola as crossbow wielding enemies attack you, Pesanta who appear next to Verdugo when you meet Salazar then never appears again in the main game is a major antagonist multiple times through Separate Ways.

While you can get through it fairly quickly as the early sections can feel a bit devoid of enemies and are able to be more easily rushed through and the puzzle sections tend to be quickly and easily solvable in a way that makes most feel a bit pointless, most of the content is the same high quality as the main campaign while also expanding on its narrative and locations. We also get to spend a bit more time with Luis, which is never a bad thing.