Long before I decided to become a reviewer, I used to jot down brief thoughts on the games I was playing in order to capture my feelings at the moment of completion for personal archival purposes. Since then, I’ve of course evolved my craft into full-fledged write-ups, but I do think there’s enough merit to some of these earlier critiques to warrant their publication, especially for titles I do not intend on replaying (in the near future at least). I’ve thrown in some updates, but this is one of them.


STORY
-Honestly, not much has changed from the first CoD and United Offensive to the second. The story is basically the same, with you playing as different Allied nations during various stages of World War II. This time around the tutorial is much quicker, giving it more replay value.

-Game continues the boring documentary intros and diary entries for the beginnings of each mission, though at least the docos here seemed realistic compared to the lame briefings from the first CoD.


GRAPHICS
-Texturing is inconsistent with marble, tile, and bricks not looking as good as wood & stone.

-Was admittedly surprised by how good skin and clothing looked on soldiers, even if NPC models were reused. Overall things are consistent enough that you won't notice anything off.

-Love the display of muzzle flashes when you're shooting in a darkened environment. Very well done. Also love the gun metal texturing and sunlight sheen on the firearm barrel that shifts as you move it..

-A lot more particle effects render realistic looking snowfall around you (Soviet campaign only). Can't say the same for rain, which looks way too much like the PS1 era of window dressing.

-Love that grenades send enemy bodies, dead and alive, flying. The particle effects that accompany an impact (whether bullet or grenade) look nice, but are a rehashed model, regardless of if you’re in snow or dirt.

-Shooting at animal carcasses just creates dirt explosions.


SOUND
-Gun SFX is terrible. Bullets only have two impact noises- steel or ground, no matter what you shoot at (lanterns, windows, trees, etc...), the exception being prerendered glass bottles that you can shatter. Guns themselves sound pretty standard despite there technically being variety among the different types.

-That being said, there is a nice echo effect that occurs whenever you’re in a contained space like a pipe or lower floor.

-Russian voice acting is terrible, like Americans doing bad Slavic accents. The British and American VAs are better, though there are still times where the performers come across like they're trying too hard to be in a combat situation.

-Soundscape for the USSR campaign is well done. You get a sense that you really are in a war zone with people screaming, bullets flying everywhere, explosions nearby, and soldiers/vehicles moving about you.


GAMEPLAY
-The game designers did a good job giving city street combat in the Soviet Campaign that infamous urban feel which encompassed the majority of the Battle of Stalingrad. Having to go through individual houses, clear out soldiers, or destroy individual tanks rolling around on the streets was well done (particularly the former, where it could even get tense having to check rooms for remaining Nazis!).

-Unfortunately, the game gets very repetitive as the majority of the non-Soviet missions (British and American) consist of the same cityscape fighting wherein you trudge through an environment, clear it out, and then hold the base until reinforcements arrive. The exception being a couple of tank missions in the British campaign.

-Did enjoy smoke grenades as they actually help hurt enemy accuracy and provide good escape/movement cover. A welcome addition to the series that I'm sad were removed in the sequels (replaced with flashbangs).

-Ally AI is a mixed bag. They do a good job of fighting enemies by shooting them, throwing grenades, and meleeing them when in close quarters; however, they seem to have two modes -- either run out in the open, or hide completely behind cover & refuse to advance until YOU go out there and clear enough troops.


VERDICT
-Overall, I found myself not enjoying Call of Duty 2 due to the aforementioned repetition of the mission structure. Despite playing as the same character, you don't really bond with anyone the way UO at least somewhat succeeded at doing, while the campaigns are just war cliches (like a bad attempt at recreating the narratives of Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot without the strong characterization and set pieces those films had).

Game took me about 8-8.5 hours to beat, so at $20.00 it doesn't provide enough content to justify the price per my time : price ratio. But even if it did, I would still recommend getting it on sale because I just didn't find it all that fun to play compared to the first one + UO. Combined with the lack of major graphical/sound upgrades from its predecessors, as well as a rehashed story, and you have the first cashgrab in the CoD franchise.

Seeing as Metal Gear is one of my favourite series, I was determined to make an event out of the first time I played Ground Zeroes. I sat down with a plate of strawberries, joking to my friends that, knowing the series' infamously long cutscenes, I would probably have finished them before the first cutscene was over. As you can see, I make very funny and original jokes, which is why I have lots of friends and am DEFINITELY not lonely.

These were famous last words. Not only was the intro over before I had eaten my strawberries, but so was the fucking game. Ground Zeroes is incredibly short, and savvy readers already know the only story-related mission can be completed within an hour.

I'll give it this: from a technical point of view, Ground Zeroes is a marvel. The first time I played it was on a laptop that didn't even have a GPU, and it still ran like a dream. The graphics are phenomenal, bringing the nigh-photorealism we take for granted today. I remember the exact moment in the first cutscene that I realized that there hadn't been a single camera cut, and I was mindblown. This gritty, guerilla-cam directing style became a staple of Hideo Kojima games from this point onwards. The climax is one of my favourite cutscenes in any video game.

And the gameplay is superb. Ground Zeroes provides a stellar stealth action sandbox that, while not quite up to The Phantom Pain's level of 'if you can think it, you can do it,' was an excellent taster of what was to come. There are many ways to achieve your goals, and the developers thought of everything: cutscenes change to accommodate the smallest detail. Despite the low score, rest assured that this game plays very well.

That said, it's terrible value for the money. Ground Zeroes launched for the price of $40, and even today, is being sold for $20 - $10 if you buy it as a bundle with Phantom Pain. Every one of these prices is a scam. Make no mistake, this is a demo. The story can be cleared within 45 minutes, the side ops (all using the same base) lack proper stories, and score chases/collectibles aren't a suitable incentive for the casual player.

It would have made sense if Ground Zeroes had been released as a free demo, or included in The Phantom Pain as a prologue chapter. There are a few players who claim to have hundreds of hours in it, but the only explanation I can think of is that they left their PC on all night. Even if you sieve this game for every morsel of material, it adds up to a few hours at best. Unless you're a completionist, you won't get your money's worth buying this game at full price. And here's the thing: you don't have to impose these conditions while purchasing other games. It's usually bad form to judge a game's value by its length, but here it's justified.

The long and short of it is, Konami found a way to fuck it up once again. It's a shame that a game with such high production value was handled by a company whose unofficial motto is: "Where there's a will, there's a slot machine."

I've had this game on my backlog for quite a while and with it being removed from Gamepass this month I decided it would be best to play it now and save me paying for it later.

I had a lot of fun with this game, its a decent FPS shooter with some funny moments thrown in for good measure. The story is pretty decent and moves along quite quickly, I was actually quite surprised by how short the game was. The 4 guns that accompany you throughout the game are what pass for the games side characters, I didn't hate them nearly as much as a lot of people did. The boss fights are quite fun and all feel quite different, the final boss is a bit lackluster though.

I really like the movement mechanics with boosts, the jetpack and anti grav boots. Adds a lot to the traversal parts of the game which serve as good breaks from the action. I found each gun to be equally useful and swapped between all 4 very regularly. Shooting combat is good, nothing ground-breaking but fun none the less. The large gauntlets of enemies get annoying quite quickly as they throw ungodly amounts at you multiple waves at a time, also there isnt a lot of enemy variety so killing the same 5 enemies over and over again gets pretty repetitive.

I think the game relies a lot of its comedy as a selling point which is a pretty bold move as comedy is very subjective. The game feels like an episode of Rick and Morty which I think was the exact goal they were going for. I was a fan of the early seasons of Rick and Morty but kinda fell off watching it as its went on but in general I do find a lot of the dry humour funny so I had a good time with the dialogue. Obviously comedy, especially this kind is very subjective so if you don't find Rick and Morty funny, probably best to skip this as it will infuriate you quickly, there is an option in the settings to limit the chatter from the guns when outside of scripted dialogue sections but it seems like even that is too much for some people lol.

Visually I think it looks great, each area feels different and the aesthetic works really well. Soundtrack is pretty decent as well.

My biggest problem with this game is its repetitiveness, going from gauntlet of enemies to a parkour movement back to gauntlet of enemies and so on and so forth until you get to the boss. Some areas have other little things put in to break these parts up but they are to far and few between.

Overall its a fun FPS experience that I would normally recommend as long as you can put up 8 hours of Rick and Morty humour. I don't really get why this is as hated as it is, outside of its creep of a creator.

Tales of Arise was able to quickly captivate me as my first Tales game, and I quite thoroughly enjoyed it, but I do have some glaring issues (some are more like skill issues on my part but whatever). The game has such a strong opening, and the concepts it introduces us to are great.

The first three regions: Calaglia, Cyslodia, and Elde Menancia are honestly perfect in my opinion. You get to see how each lord treat the enslaved Dahnans, and their differing ideologies. I enjoyed the story for each of these regions and they really had me invested in this game. However, I need to state that I utterly despised Mahag Saar and Ganath Haros, it felt like the game was starting to drag out. Mahag Saar I didn't mind as much, I enjoyed exploring Niez and the surroundings but I just started to get sick and tired of the game. Ganath Haros was probably my breaking point because I gave up after defeating the final lord, and it resulted in me dropping the game for 9 months. I came back 9 months later to tackle my enormous catalog, getting games out of the way that I had started but not finished, like Radiant Dawn, and Tales of Arise. I was not impressed with the ending, it was very meh, and the final boss felt extremely underwhelming.

The dungeons are fine, there's really nothing positive or negative I can say about them, but I enjoyed the variety of different areas we could explore. The combat was very satisfying for me, especially coming from someone who doesn't really play games with action-combat. Though I will admit that I did get tired using Alfyn's combos for the entire game, only to realise that you could switch characters at the end of Mahag Saar (skill issue), but I couldn't be bothered to learn another characters combos and skills so i decided to persist on with Alfyn. As for the characters, they were quite enjoyable, and I enjoyed the dynamics that perpetuated between the Danhans in the party and the Renans. I also enjoyed the little duos that would form within the party, it just felt neat.

I really enjoyed the skits, but I did start to get tired of them at the end of the game. I couldn't be bothered doing quests, especially because of my immense burnout near the end of the game. But I must say, the opening song really got stuck in my head. Overall, I experienced more positives than negatives in this game, and my dislike for the game only started to be prevalent after the 'main-story' had concluded. The setting and the characters carried this game hard for me, as I found the combat to be average. Even though half of my review might be negative, theres a reason why I've rated it at 7/10, I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of the game. I do have Tales of Vesperia in my library because a friend got it for me, but I think it'll be a while before I'm ready to try another Tales game.

Katana Zero is a game I’ve been meaning to play ever since it got released, I just never got around to it until now. Two and a half playthroughs later, I have experienced almost everything the game offers in record time. Despite the short length, Katana Zero is a quality experience with plenty to talk about.

Katana Zero’s gameplay is simplistic, yet its demand for you to master it is what gives it rich depth and addictive replayability combined with its short length. You can kill enemies, toss objects, and reflect bullets, you also can slow down time for more precision, and dodge rolls with invincibility frames to avoid hazards, and roll through enemies. It might seem like a lot when I list it, but really all of it ties together nicely for a smooth learning experience I enjoyed. Katana Zero is about trial and error throughout a section, with plenty of checkpoints and open-ended design which allows players to tackle obstacles in their own ways, complementing its short length and strong replayability nicely. I found solving each room satisfying, and every mechanic I could utilize felt impactful and necessary due to how simple it all is in practice. Slowing down time helps alleviate tighter timings that require more skill like reflecting bullets, or more generous opportunities to dodge but is never required but a single time in the game, which I really liked. Reflecting bullets might be the most demanding mechanic right from the start, but slowing down time very much helps with learning the timing, audio cues are especially important and well implemented into this game which is another plus. I never found the game too demanding or too fast-paced for me to keep up with what it asked me to do, and the variety of gameplay mix-ups present is impressive and kept me engaged the entire time.

Katana Zero’s setting and history is also very fascinating. It’s very much a metropolis setting with the right amount of sci-fi, dark humor, and history behind it that makes it feel very realized and immersive to experience. Every locale struck all the right notes that embodied the setting without ever feeling out of place until the end, however that drastic shift in setting is justified by the story and how it plays out, so it never felt shoehorned in or out of place at all. Combined with the incredible synth-wave style of music Katana Zero presents, it creates this beautiful atmosphere that elevates the metropolis setting, but creates an impression of something being beyond the curtain you can only see at that given moment, giving both the music and the setting further depth that makes it imprint itself upon your mind that much more. It’s also just incredibly complementing to the slow strategic nature of the game, and/or the incredibly fast-paced decision making and vitriol on display, it’s truly universal in its effectiveness.

Narratively, Katana Zero does not disappoint either. It’s full of twists and turns, shocking revelations, impactful decision making, and enough variation for me to say the agency of the player’s choices feels important. While I can’t say with utmost certainty how impactful every dialogue option is, I don’t think it really matters since the writing of the characters you interact with, as well as the one you play as are incredible and consistent. While I do think the emphasis of cursing and everyone just being unhinged could turn a lot of people off, or just become grating, it all serves the tone the game is going for, so I never minded it or batted an eye at it really. What I will especially praise however is the psychological elements this game presents, they’re incredibly surreal and compelling, it was by far my favorite aspect of the game, and thought they did way more with it than I expected. There’s one specific instance that absolutely floored me, and for that reason alone, Katana Zero is very much worth experiencing.

While I have done nothing but praise Katana Zero so far, let’s get into the negatives, particularly the one negative I did have with the game, which is Hard Mode. Now since Hard Mode is entirely optional and doesn’t unlock anything but an achievement, it seems arbitrary to complain about, however if I were to neglect something in the game I thought was flawed, that would be negligent of me as a reviewer I think, so let’s go over it. Hard Mode as the name implies is a harder variation of the main story without cutscenes and much harder enemy placements. To me, a lot of Hard Mode boiled down to simply increasing the difficulty artificially by increasing the number of enemies in a given room to create a challenge. While I do believe many rooms have smart enemy placement that flows incredibly well and is beyond satisfying to figure out, most of the time it felt bloated and unfair to the point of pure frustration. Hard Mode has its perks, such as new enemy types that change how you approach rooms, and I’m sad to see these enemies not implemented in normal mode, since it would’ve helped the small pool of enemies you’re always fighting and made everything just a bit more dynamic. Instead, these new enemies are shoved in with tons of older enemies which dilutes their impact overall to me, even though mechanically they are unique and present specific restrictions I really liked. Overall, Hard Mode was a disappointment, though again, it being entirely optional does not taint my overall outlook on the game at all, it’s merely a blemish I wanted to talk about.

This is definitely on the shorter end of my reviews, but really I don’t have too much more to say. Katana Zero is short and simple but was a very fun and worthwhile experience I can’t wait to see more of in the future. Katana Zero has superb presentation with the pixel art, setting, and music accompanied by gameplay that you can play at your own pace, whether that be fast or slow for the most part. Amazing potential with the story, psychological aspects are done exceptionally well and really make the narrative that much better. Fantastic variation in gameplay, good humor, and is very consistent. My only issue with the game is Hard Mode, but it's optionality makes it easily excusable. Four stars may seem low for all my praise, but I will say I personally don’t feel I can rate it higher for the simple fact that I didn’t always find it so fun and high quality while playing, but it’s definitely there, and I recognize that. Excited to see where it goes from here all the same. Thank you all for reading my review, next up will be God Hand, thanks to a “secret Santa” event, but I’ll go more into that in the next review. Until next time!

If you like Hotline Miami, you'll love this one. Sometimes I even think I like it better than Hotline Miami, that's how much I love this sick game :D The music hits even harder, the gameplay is challenging but fair and creates an incredibly immersive flow that few games can match. What's more, in contrast to Hotline Miami, it actually has heartfelt story moments and is nowhere near as cynical, even if the plot is similarly dark. Honestly, parrying bullets with a katana is just cool, ok? :D and if it doesn't work, turn back time and try again. What a beautiful game.

Maybe the most mixed bag of all the entries in the entire Postal franchise thus far. And yes, I am very aware that is saying something. I mean, the other installments have been consistently either outright good or bad, while this one constantly fluctuates wildly between those two extremes across its runtime. It’s honestly pretty bold of Running with Scissors to bring back that long-running gag of encouraging the player to pee on copies of Postal III when their “true sequel” to the second outing it’s housed within this time is only marginally better than that universally derided third effort at points.

I went with the console release here. Not just because my standard, non-gaming PC can’t handle a title this recent, but also due to it simply being kind of amazing to me to finally see the property branching out and becoming available to more than solely the mouse and keyboard community. I must confess RWS did a fantastic job of bringing it over too. Everything from shooting to driving and all your other inputs feels so natural and smooth that you’d find it hard to believe this wasn’t originally designed with a controller first in mind. I sincerely hope the PlayStation ports perform well enough to receive any of the future updates and expansions that are on the horizon, such as the announced upcoming addition of co-op. They have certainly been getting the same patches to date. Outside of a few minor issues, one of which did require me to start an extra playthrough I hadn’t intended on because a couple of the collectibles either didn’t spawn or the game failed to register I picked them up for some reason, the PS5 version at least is mostly stable showing things have come a long way for No Regerts since launch despite not being totally free of bugs and moments of broken hostile AI yet. You’ll also find the secondary go-kart vehicle and bonus of getting to choose your own voice actor have been included as well. The latter being particularly appreciated because Jon St. John makes the Dude sound more like the Nerd.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of people declaring this is merely trying (and failing) to be Postal 2 again, and I personally don’t think that’s an accurate or fair statement. To me, P4 is clearly striving to expand upon that game in the manner you would expect from a good successor. I’m not just referring to the greatly increased size of its world in comparison either. New features like the ability to buy special permits so that you can run around with your weapons unholstered without interference from the police, backpacks that will upgrade the player’s inventory space to literally unlimited capacity, chain-scythes that allow you to grapple onto specific points in the environment, and a drop kick maneuver that will send victims ragdolling through the air for crazy distances add to the ridiculous absurdity of the action in ways wholly befitting of the brand, while the optional “rampages” challenges which offer direction and concrete rewards for the violent, destructive tendencies you’d probably engage in anyway make so much sense you’ll wonder why they don’t show up on the map.

Not every attempt at modernizing the property’s well-established formula hits the mark, however. For example, the inclusion of alternate outfits and Fortnite-style emotes come off as superfluous until the option to roam “Edensin” with friends eventually drops, as the local inhabitants seemingly haven’t been programmed to react to you doing push-ups in the middle of a department store while wearing Zack Ward’s threads from the movie adaptation. It’s the side-quests that seriously fall on their face though. For starters, I only ever stumbled onto two in my 33 hours with the game (why are these also not marked on the map?), and worse they were incredibly mundane. I dug holes to help a guy recover his missing drugs that he couldn’t remember where he buried and was tasked with cleaning another fella’s mansion of blood, cum, and fecal splatter ahead of his next BDSM fling. It’s worth mentioning I couldn’t bring myself to finish that second one, because on top of potentially being glitched due to some of those stains simply refusing to wash away the task kept going on for what felt like forever. I just ended up shooting the quest giver in the head, losing out on any on the goodies I would’ve otherwise received, and running off to do anything else. A shame since the deeper I went into the many rooms the more evident it became that the kinky sex stuff was part of a dark occult ritual that may have had a nice payoff by the conclusion. An interesting touch of creepy environmental storytelling.

Yet, although definitely an undeniable flaw, the inconsistent quality of its supporting content isn’t what brings the package down. No, Postal 4 has proven divisive and disappointing for even longtime fans due to its overall lackluster and flat vision. A big question I guess we all should have had in the back of ours minds beforehand was how the heck Running with Scissors was actually going to pull off delivering a worthy follow-up to arguably the most controversial products the gaming industry has ever spawned as of this writing in our highly sensitive modern age. Pushing the boundaries of good taste and spitting in the face of moral standards was super popular back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s when the series was at its peak. But today? Maaaan, do anything remotely offensive and the internet is coming after you with its full fury. Evidently aware of that fact, the eccentric Tucson devs opted for a bit of a rebrand of sorts. On the About section of their website and various social media platforms they describe themselves as a maker of “outrageous” experiences, implying their releases are more wacky and over-the-top than sources of genuine umbrage for people with certain sensibilities. The problem? There’s nothing that goofy or outlandish here.

It isn’t until Thursday with its motocross races on mobility scooters and dives into VR with Tron-esque visuals that you witness so much as a hint of the gonzo imagination that made Paradise Lost a delightful blast. If I had to guess I’d wager they wanted to replicate Postal 2’s hook of assigning us a daily to-do list of humdrum, everyday IRL objectives, but completely missed the part where we could turn them into exciting messes of bloody chaos and dark humor through our actions. Essentially bypassing the boring true to reality bits of waiting in line and such altogether. Can’t do that in Regerts. Choosing to gun down all of the homeless squatters when acting as a sewer worker doesn’t grant you a means of skipping the need to screw in those lightbulbs and unclog the pipes before moving on, unfortunately. It leads to the main missions being rather dull the majority of the time. The same is true of the comedy. In their desperate bid to upset as few as humanly possible, they’ve neutered the satirical element almost entirely in favor of very safe and half-hearted Trump, border wall, and Covid references that have zilch to say on the topics, mixed with (often literal) toilet humor. A single one-off segment poking fun at the whole 2022 election rigging debacle that truly had me laughing out loud stands as the sole reprieve from a constant stream of jokes that fail to leave an impression. Shoot, even the subtitle is a pun stolen from that movie We’re the Millers, only far less funny.

This restraining of Postal’s angsty soul has stripped it of personality right down to the world design too. Outside of a few notable locations, buildings carry the appearance of being compromised of a bunch of Unity asset store flips and NPCs are of the same caliber as any of the non-bangable ones in your average forever early access, Together BnB-style adult indie project on Steam.

To conclude I’ll admit, in spite of my paragraphs of complaining I did still derive enough enjoyment from the core of roaming NR’s giant playground urinating everywhere, barging into homes with a boot to the door, and behaving as an all-around menace to unlock that platinum trophy. Plus, I have heard the perspective of how it should be taken into consideration the number of years it took P2 to reach its current level of quality. Albeit I do believe the counterargument of that game having originally been built on significantly stronger groundwork blows that defense out of the water. Seriously, the sole instance one of the primary story stages in this adventure carries a comparable vibe to any of its predecessors is a brief off-map excursion where you’re captured by cannibalistic hillbillies. A sequence offering further proof of the potential the studio has to create a solid work of full horror if they’d garner the confidence to risk stepping away from their comfort zone. So I don’t hate this. I’m simply of the opinion that if this is the best RWS can do anymore then perhaps they should let others take the reins from now on. Reports are reception to Brain Damaged was warm…

7/10

I think this is another Portal 1 situation where I totally get why this game is so beloved and influential, but I came out of it thinking 'yeah, that was pretty good'

At a time where GTA was trying to have nerd shit like 'stories' with 'relatable characters' and 'thought provoking social commentary' Saints Row dared to ask "what if you were a menace to society trying to take over a city? As a guy with bright magenta hair and green womens booty shorts?"

And it's fun as hell. If you've ever played a GTA game, you know the score. Cause mayhem (like an agent dedicated to it, perhaps? IDK a game with that title has potential) drive vehicles, and shoot anything because you feel like it. The minigames also add to this, my favorites being 'mayhem' where the whole point is having unlimited ammo and dealing as much damage as possible, and the one where you have a small four wheeler and a path littered with explosives. And also the really funny COPS parody where you literally just maim people for TV footage (me watching police brutality at 5 years old because the theme was a bop) The games quite frankly amazing soundtrack adds to this, because it's cool to do the mentioned things, but randomly getting into a car only to now be doing it to Teenagers by MCR? That's a peak gaming experience right there.

And while the side content is superb, the main missions are...mostly decent. The story is pretty simple, just taking out rival gangs for control and ending with stopping a small conspiracy, with all rival characters being unique variations on the theme of 'utter bastard' and some serious scenes that do manage to hit hard (RIP that one guy you didn't deserve that) But the actual missions themselves are pretty repetitive. Mostly just going around a base and shooting a wave of dudes to progress, or chasing down a moving target trying to escape your wrath. And while fun, they do have an issue with (sometimes literally) throwing things at you when you think you're in the clear (the amount of times I think I'm done only for a car to swerve in and take 75% of my health only to get the rest shot off as I'm trying to stand I swear to god)

But the worst part is probably anything requiring partner AI. From the mission where Pierce drives opposite the helicopters you're supposed to shoot down, to some guy in your recruitable gang having an RPG they just really gotta show off in an enclosed space, leading to them blowing you up, it definitely shows off a lot of 360 era jank.

And the final issue, the godawful PC port. Why is my less than a year old 1k+ rig randomly dropping frames in a large building? Why are the objects characters are supposed to hold in cutscenes floating five feet away from them? Why does a game with a large focus on driving seem to have a 10% chance of crashing whenever I try to get into a car?

But at the end, it's a fun GTA-like, probably better than GTA 4 (IDK I haven't played it since I was eight and even that was just fucking with my uncle's completed save trying to find the funniest ways to kill myself) and I'm hoping this is like Portal 1 where I see the first (okay it's the first one people care about and can actually easily go back to) one as a good jumping off point, and then adore what came after it. So with that said, off to Steelport!

I ironically kinda enjoyed my time it's a inferior Tetris but it made me laugh.

let's start with the controls, it's mass produced cheap plastic in every way of the word here, buttons are sometimes hard to press down others aren't I'm willing to bet every single copy of the game is personalized because of this.

now let's talk about the part that made me laugh, when you finish the game the text "G O O D J O B ! ! 🤍" scrolls by at a snails pace it's amazing because I didn't do well at all so it feels like it's insulting me.

overall it's just Tetris but controls worse and I'm glad to have this in my collection.

With the recent release date confirmation for Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, I knew I had to increase the priority on a couple glaring blind spots in my Dragon Ball game history with one of them being Budokai Tenkaichi 2. My history with this specific series of Dragon Ball games spans most of my life however it's more like 90/10 Bt3 and Bt1. That's right I entirely skipped BT2 and only knew it existed because there was a 3. I had heard before how "this game is better than BT3 '' by what I initially labeled as contrarians back on forums, and while I still think they are as such I can at least see some angle they are coming from now.

First things first let's talk about the gameplay. If you are a Tenkaichi veteran than you know for the most part how this game plays, even with more time logged into its successor it did not take much time to readjust to its differences as BT3 itself removed specific mechanics from this game and certain aspects of BT3 that I thought were mainstays are actually non existent here. The basic combo routes are the same. Press the square-square-square-square with a triangle at different points, charge your squares and triangles for launchers, you know how it goes. Kick them in the air, smack them down, charge it up and hit them with a super. My god does it feel great to have button combinations for super attacks instead of some dumb use of a stick. Imagine a fighting game doing that, what a blunder! What really stood out to me was the lack of the instant behind the back dash, the presumed mainstay I was talking about above in bt3, is non-existent here. You are only getting behind the opponent by either doing so at the beginning of the round, getting them to lose lock on and jumping them, or vanishing behind them. The lock on itself is not only much easier to break as a knockdown from a launcher is enough to do the trick, but it is also more manual. You're only gonna get a frame one lock on if neither of the players move before the round starts. The hardest thing for me to learn is the blocking. Not only is it more directional but dash supers cannot be blocked normally, you must do the power guard using 2 buttons and your ki otherwise you are eating that damage. There was also no sonic sway, so just the basic counter is all you have for combo breakers/get off me moves. Android 17 is quite the menace due to this mechanic, delta attack will be haunting me for a couple more weeks and Kid Buu is just as menacing as always with his spamming of Mystic Combination. The characters who are unable to fly will also straight up drop out of the air after a certain amount of time regardless of what they are doing. Comboing or getting comboed? They're falling all the same. Some moves were also longer/more vicious in their animations than BT3. Bardock knees your kidneys several times vs the one in bt3, Vegeta comes careening down in your stomach and tosses your ass in spirit breaking cannon etc. I assume these mechanics are why some people say BT2 is better than 3.

The story mode, titled Dragon Adventure, is where most of my time was spent. This is your retelling of Z and the movies, and boy do they try to get the most out of every one of these. Just about every single encounter in said saga you will experience and that's not an exaggeration. Let's take Return of Cooler as an example, this is the Meta Cooler movie for the uninitiated. "The Big Getti Star allows me to cheat death!" is a quote from the man himself, and that means you will be fighting multiples of him each fight ad nauseam. Fight 3 with Roshi and Yajirobe, Fight 3 with Goku, Fight 3 with Goku and Vegeta, Fight 3 with Super Saiyan Goku and Vegeta, Fight 5 with Goku and Vegeta starting in base. I appreciate sticking to the source material but we gotta trim the fat at some point, my guy. As you are right to think, this is not the only saga that does this and my personal favorite movie "Wrath of the Dragon '' has this problem in spades. There is no good reason Hirudegarn needed to be fought 6 times in Wrath of the Dragon. What the story mode does well though is it has some actual in engine action scenes animated. There's the ones you expect such as the Father Son Kamehameha, Goku going SSj for the first time, the super spirit bomb vs buu (yes they did the thumbs up) etc and some surprising ones like a pre battle primer for Goku vs Vegeta in the Saiyan Saga and Goku getting his ass beat by Turles. Between each mission you can also fly around either an Earth or Namek map depending on where your saga takes place and each map has some extra things you can do depending on where you are in the saga. Sometimes it's just an npc giving a tutorial, sometimes it's a bonus fight with reward, a bonus character to use, and sometimes it's actually nothing but baba's z-item shop. In these areas you can sometimes find z-items, money or a dragon ball. Some of these bonus fights are wild, like Kid Gohan vs Great Ape Raditz and Nappa. This one stuck out to me because it took a few years off my life not due to its difficulty but due to how much it smacked up upside the head. So we know most do not keep their faculties and revert to wild beasts? Well I don't know about Raditz but when Great Ape Nappa tagged in and with his normal voice said "time to clean this up" and frame 1 chucked a giant rock at me I think I lost a couple years off my life. Fights like this and some story fight character roster bring me to my next point, the z-item system and how the game wants you to rely on it. This game also has 3 what if sagas that you unlock from beating 3 "unwinnable" fights. Fateful Brothers and Destined Rivals were fantastic however Beautiful Treachery had potential to be just as great but ultimately floundered. I highly recommend anyone interested but can't play BT2 to watch a playthrough of at the very least Fateful Brothers. That shit made me a Raditz fan.

So Z-items are equips that increase character stats and can give them bonus abilities. In BT2 here, characters have levels and these levels are increased by equipping the blue (stat) z-items which also gain exp as you fight and become stronger to give even more of a boost. The Ai opponents have levels to, and they almost always GREATLY surpass your own, especially early on. This means unused characters will be much lower leveled than the more common used ones. The Roshi and Yajirobe fight against the Meta coolers I mentioned? Yeah they were level 10 and the Coolers were over level 50 EACH. Fateful brothers? Level 8 Raditz vs a level 75 Piccolo. You're supposed to win these fights by the way. In terms of faithful brothers, being a what if and all, they clearly wanted you to come back with stronger gear but I still did it anyway. The Meta Cooler stuff though was required, as you have to do the sagas in order to unlock the next. Why don't I just move the leveled up z-items to these characters? Well dear reader, they reset their exp to zero when removed. So you either need to go into the ultimate battle mode (think of it like a mortal kombat style arcade mode with its varying lengths) and grind the character or just tough it out with whatever items you have/can buy or raw dog it. I am not grinding character levels up in a fighting game, I'm just not. I might love jrpgs but it's not because of their grindy nature. That being said, as you progress in the sagas the inventory of the shop increases and I found that as I was having items reach +5 levels then the shop would unlock them soon after so pacing wise it's balanced in that way. The character Ai's levels also don't really seem to match up to z-items. I got a level 53 Goku with +9 Health, Attack, Defense, and Blast 2 (supers) so he's got 5 and 1/2 hp bars, can easily to 10k (a full health bar) with standard combos and 13-15 k with supers but a 121 super buu only has 3 health bars and hits about that hard. The only fights that seemed to reflect and use special gear are the "unwinnable" ones that had the what if rewards. I noticed Gohan's which unlocked destined rivals obviously had the z-items that makes supers stronger and unblockable but leaves him open (a 2 bar stamina break state) after use. Regardless of level the AI was either gonna destroy you or be a punching bag.

The roster is a good size and most of the key players are here, and it's nice to see Z Goku just be one character (with angry kamehameha being a standard super as opposed to an ult) as opposed to being split up by arc. Vegeta on the other hand bloats the roster like you expect a Dragon Ball game to do. Animations and attacks are very much reused throughout, like the delta attack animation is also used for desperado rush, turtle school teachings and Justice combination and the standard filler moves such as high speed/power rush, high power energy wave/volley and super explosive wave return. Dragon Fist is here, there is zero excuse for any game featuring SSJ3 or 4 to not have it, so the game gets bonus points. Even classic DB gets its due here with Grandpa Gohan and Kid Goku, there is no reason in my opinion for a large roster Dragon Ball game to not include it. Put respect on the start of it all.

Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is still very much worth a play, just as much as 3, especially if you like to mess around with the customization features of these games. Though I missed some of the mechanics of its successor it's not right to punish this game for what came after. I do wish there were more what ifs than the 3 there were, especially in the GT part of the game but I also think the game's story could have trimmed out some of the fat when it came to repeat fights. As a whole I very much enjoyed playing this game over the Raging Blast duology, and kind of regret skipping it as a kid though it's no fault of my own. BT3 was what I saw in the store, this was the late 2000's after all. Now I can see what the disc fusion will give me for my copy of 3 after all this time, though I bet it's not really worth it. I still have some time before Sparking Zero to knock out the other two I'm missing and I think Infinite World will be the next one, after a break that is. My left analog stick is in need of replacing.

in the midst of some downsizing and have decided that i'm either going to sell or otherwise get rid of my ps4. only have one or two games that are still tied to the system and not available elsewhere so i'm going to prioritize trying (if not fully playing through) those and replaying a few others.

there was a time where i believed this was my favorite Uncharted game, for whatever that's worth seeing as i'm not really a fan in general. either i was on crack or i'm in for mess with 2 and 3 after this.

i'm just going to say it, i hate sticky ledge/gliding through the air platforming but i can understand its usage and even tolerate it though i think it replaces engaging mechanics with nothing. having said that, my toleration accounts for the platforming being mechanically sound and working on a moment to moment basis. for a game that does the movement for you mostly, it's in shambles. finicky behavior when jumping and shimmying on ledges (especially if there's multiple edges around), swinging and jumping from ropes or chains is a death wish, and so on.

which isn't to say anything about the combat either. i've never found the combat in this series particularly engaging (4 was onto something a bitsy because of the increased mobility but that's discourse for another day) but in its earliest forms it was such a slog? the absolute onslaught of one combat encounter after another, usually bad ones at that wears thin by the seventh or eighth chapter of the game but then you have more than half to go yet. i've never made a game so i don't talk about this from the standpoint of thinking i could've done better or anything but it genuinely feels like the combat scenarios were literally the last thing done in some of these cases in terms of how poorly thought out they felt.

it wasn't completely dire but the bright spots in things like Elena and Sully or the aesthetics holding up more than expected didn't do much to offset the lows. at the time of release i think i was missing Tomb Raider a lot and this scratched that itch but playing it now i think i've had my fill and don't need to come back. i kinda hated it. 😭