NovaNiles
2023
As a narrative adventure game, Mémoire 0079 is quite an interesting concept. Login in as a player into a fictional terminal to uncover reports about a distant future and exploring both sides of a war. A narrative focused in on two major players during this fictional sci-fi conflict: Vega Hawthorne of the United Earth and Raya Sokolova of the Ceresian Republic. Both held up by their respective governments as great heroic figures, through propaganda and personal ideologies. It's all a novel idea, pulling your sympathies in multiple directions on whose story you might read first. Well, but here can we get into the biggest issue with the game, the fact that it's infact nothing more than a surface level novelty.
There is no real game to speak of here, just walls of unwieldy text to click through and mountains of hyperlinks that pull your attention away from reading what seems like it could be an engaging story. Just to be stoped dead in your tracks while reading in order to look up words and events you really have no context for and there for might not even care about right away. I know that is the idea and the game's own web page describes itself as "a unique narrative adventure game about exploring a wiki-like interface", but I fell like if you want to fully engage the reader into your world, it helps to have a clearer structure to the events being told. You can still have all the gimmicks of personal logs, redacted sections in government documents and military propaganda. Maybe have some real time email traffic or chats you can respond to popping up on the side as you browse the wiki. Having you engage with the world in a tangible way, and perhaps even being able to make a choice for what side your sympathies align more. All in all, the most important aspect would be reducing the amounts of hyperlinks. Even just including a separate glossary on the side to pull up would help. In my opinion, it's better to make the broad strokes of your Universe as basic and understandable as possible and then you can bombard your audience with the more complex stuff later. The Universe is still interesting, mind you, there is potential here, but it's the dialogue between characters where the game ultimately shits the bed.
Throughout many of the personal logs and transcripts present here, these two warring factions feel less like opposing cultures and more like drunk discord mods. It's the clearest evidence of to the fact that if you want to make a distinct fictional universe, you need to put in some effort in to establishing a culture and a way of language. Especially if the main point of your story is to contrast the two factions against each other. I don't think Captain Picard encountering the Borg for the first time and trying to contact the Federation about the immediate danger would have had nearly the same impact as it did, if they're back and forth dialogue mainly consisted of “Naaaaah”, “lol”, “lmao” or “can we talk about the fact that they suck shit”. Not quite as impactful I would say.
If I had to pull up one last positive at the end, it probably be the presentation. It's all presented quit nicely through the UI of an old school computer terminal, with atmospheric background tracks. Although I would have liked to have more tracks overall, having some pages be completely silent while the next one suddenly ear blast you with a loud background track was an odd experience. Overall this was a neat project, that needed about 5 more rewrites and revisions. It's free to play in your browser anyway, so there is no harm in checking it out and having a laugh at it atleast. Maybe the next one will be better, always possible.
There is no real game to speak of here, just walls of unwieldy text to click through and mountains of hyperlinks that pull your attention away from reading what seems like it could be an engaging story. Just to be stoped dead in your tracks while reading in order to look up words and events you really have no context for and there for might not even care about right away. I know that is the idea and the game's own web page describes itself as "a unique narrative adventure game about exploring a wiki-like interface", but I fell like if you want to fully engage the reader into your world, it helps to have a clearer structure to the events being told. You can still have all the gimmicks of personal logs, redacted sections in government documents and military propaganda. Maybe have some real time email traffic or chats you can respond to popping up on the side as you browse the wiki. Having you engage with the world in a tangible way, and perhaps even being able to make a choice for what side your sympathies align more. All in all, the most important aspect would be reducing the amounts of hyperlinks. Even just including a separate glossary on the side to pull up would help. In my opinion, it's better to make the broad strokes of your Universe as basic and understandable as possible and then you can bombard your audience with the more complex stuff later. The Universe is still interesting, mind you, there is potential here, but it's the dialogue between characters where the game ultimately shits the bed.
Throughout many of the personal logs and transcripts present here, these two warring factions feel less like opposing cultures and more like drunk discord mods. It's the clearest evidence of to the fact that if you want to make a distinct fictional universe, you need to put in some effort in to establishing a culture and a way of language. Especially if the main point of your story is to contrast the two factions against each other. I don't think Captain Picard encountering the Borg for the first time and trying to contact the Federation about the immediate danger would have had nearly the same impact as it did, if they're back and forth dialogue mainly consisted of “Naaaaah”, “lol”, “lmao” or “can we talk about the fact that they suck shit”. Not quite as impactful I would say.
If I had to pull up one last positive at the end, it probably be the presentation. It's all presented quit nicely through the UI of an old school computer terminal, with atmospheric background tracks. Although I would have liked to have more tracks overall, having some pages be completely silent while the next one suddenly ear blast you with a loud background track was an odd experience. Overall this was a neat project, that needed about 5 more rewrites and revisions. It's free to play in your browser anyway, so there is no harm in checking it out and having a laugh at it atleast. Maybe the next one will be better, always possible.
Reaching the end of a trilogy is always exciting to me. Ideally, it's the conclusion of all the previous lessons learned and the moment everything gets tied together into one satisfying bundle. The PS1 is probably the console I think of the most when it comes to looking back at trilogies by single developers, simply because it had so many different ones during its life-span. Crash, Spyro, Resident Evil and even to some extent Final Fantasy. I think there is something special about seeing a game series in different stages of refinement, clearly being able to observe how a developer's ideas evolve over time. And yes, of course Tomb Raider went through that aswell. With the continued smash hit of TR2, Lara Croft was now without question video game royalty and Core Design was yet again given no breaks in pumping out another sequel for publisher Eidos Interactive. Setting aside the undoubtedly horrid working conditions at Core Design during the development process, I find it once again incredible how TR3 released only a year after its predecessor. And after my new-found love for this franchise was only reinforced by how much I enjoyed TR2, I was excited to jump into Lara's third adventure.
Sadly, as you can already guess from the rating, this turned out to be a massive disappointment. As the hours passed and the downward spiral of bad level design began, I became more and more miserable having to put up with everything Tomb Raider 3 was throwing at me. I was worn down and finally broken when I reached the end. I don't want this to be a rant about how much I hate this game. I still do, but there are so many fantastic qualities here that I can not even stoop so low as to call this a lazy sequel. Core Design really cared. It's just that all the visible care and love gets utterly crushed under the weight of unfair difficulty and a lack of polish, most likely due to razor tight deadlines along with an overworked staff. So let me go through the positives first before I start falling down the rabbit hole that has become my absolute hatred for this game.
Tomb Raider 3 has the best locations in the series so far. There is an incredible leap in art design at display here. Be it the opening trek through the jungles of India, the massive canyons in Nevada or looking out over the rooftops of Nighttime London. Levels feel lived in, in a way Tomb Raider 2 was still struggling with. The updated engine makes everything look so much less blocky, which the designers take full advantage off. I love the lighting, the colors and the great texture work. The atmosphere is so good, and I wish more games would take what Core Design accomplished here as an example. Really, in terms of atmosphere, TR3 doesn't miss even once. I love just standing in these maps and soaking it all in, ready to be pulled along into more adventures. It helps of course that the soundtrack is amazing aswell. There is a tone of ambiance to each location, of course classic series leitmotifs return and new tracks have been added that round everything out. It doesn't matter if it's discovering ancient ruins or if you find yourself face to face with horrifying creatures. It always fits, and I'm in love with the overall sound of TR3.
When it comes to the story, we find our favorite adventurer once again on the trail of a mysterious artifact. While on a treasure hunt deep in the jungles of India, she encounters a scientist named Dr Willard. He is looking for the missing pieces of a meteor that crashed down on earth millions of years ago, is responsible for having whipped out the Dinosaurs and starting the chain reaction of modern evolution. Supposedly these pieces also contain mysterious powers, once even being worshiped by Polynesian trips for their god like properties. And that's all we need to trot across the Globe. It's a dumb story even for the schlocky standards of classic Tomb Raider, but I still very much enjoyed it. The increased focus on cutscenes and Lara having more fun interactions with different characters helps the story flow much better than it did previously. This finally feels like a continues narrative and not just a semi connected sequence of video game stages. There is of course the obvious issue in how Lara has now been fully reduced to nothing more then what can only be described as a full on sociopath. More than ever before, she is an absolute bitch that cares about no one but herself and is willing to kill anybody that just so much as glances at her wrong. I'm still somewhat fine with her because the point was always to have an uncompromising action heroine, but previous games at least gave her some shred of humanity. The absolute girl boss attitude I fell in love is still present, but there is certainly a discussion to be had about crossing the line from girl boss to unlikeable cunt. This crosses that line way to often. TR2 is also guilty of this to a lesser extent, but toed the line in keeping her likeable much better in my opinion.
When it comes to combat, I'm happy to say that Core massively overhauled their approach to how you fight enemies. The fundamental controls are the same, but enemie encounters are spread out way smarter. Gone are the days of spawning goons right on top of the player. There are often spots you can jump to that give Lara a clear advantage, and even late game foes can be taken down with just a bit of effort and only the standard handguns. And that's basically all I wanted to see, and I'm glad they at least took the time to improve an aspect of the series that desperately needed a revision. Croft Manor now has been expanded with a shooting range as well. This version of Croft Manor is for sure the best one. Many secrets to find and all the tutorials you could ever need. Lara's home is practically its own giant level now. Once again I fully recommend you play around in the tutorial not only because it's a lot of fun but because it will also helps in familiarizing you with the expanded move set. Lara can now crawl, grab on to certain ceilings in order to use them as monkey bars, and is able to use a short dash that can be ended on a quick roll forward. These added options are mostly used to great effect, but I will admit that the dash stays fairly underutilized. There are only very few spots where it's actually needed, and even then I find those challenges more annoying than anything else.
And that's about all the positives I can think of. For all the love I can express for TR3, it just wouldn't be honest if I omitted all my frustrations and all the reasons why I ultimately came away with the conclusion that this is simply a very bad video game.
Starting off with the basic structure: You're now allowed to pick between locations in between the opening chapter and the finale. What sounds cool on paper, turns out to be a nightmare in reality. The three places you can pick from: Nevada, the South Pacific Islands and London vary so wildly in complexity and challenge that you're most likely going to fuck yourself over if you happen to choose wrong. Pro-tip: Always start with Nevada. I didn't, and it screwed me over hard by the final stretch. Nevada contains the easiest and most enjoyable set of levels, and most importantly: There is a similar bit to TR1 and 2 where all your items will be taken away from you, as Lara is once again captured by armed guards. Unlike previous games there is a high chance you will not get most of your inventory back, meaning that if you happen to pick Nevada last, you might lose hours of collected guns, ammo and med packs. At that point, you are just stuck desperately searching for scraps during the final 4 segments of Antarctica. It's a horrible design decision that I despise with a passion, and they should have either ditched the level select entirely or put actual effort in balancing each locations difficulty. And while the South Pacific Islands are a mostly tolerable set of levels, London is where the game fully backflips into of pit of rusty spicks.
London is a confusing labyrinth of dark hallways that loop around in the most unintuitive ways. I got lost so many times just backtracking, not knowing what my goal even was, and finding crucial progression items in spots that made me scream in agony. Of course, one of the keys needed to progress in on top of a mining drill you just escaped from in order to not get crushed to death. It's not like every sane human being would see the section now occupied by the giant death drill as blocked off for good. Add to that weird angled jumps that shouldn't work, but sometimes just do, and hard to make out wall texture that are supposse to signal climbable surfaces. Trust me, you will run past those surfaces for a couple of hours before looking up a guide and then promptly feeling the primal urge to buy a gun along with a time machine in order to pay Core Designs studio a friendly visit back in the late 90s. All that misery and I haven't even mentioned the vehicle sections yet. Oh, the fucking vehicles. TR2 had the exact same issue, but the meaningful difference is again that this was limited to only 2 sections. We had a boat, that controlled fine, and a snowmobile that controlled like shit. TR3 on the other hand has at least one vehicle for each location. There is an ATV, a kayak, a weird underwater robot, a Donkey Kong style minecart ride and another boat. I don't know which one is the worst for me, but it has to be a tie between the kayak and the minecart. Paddling the kayak through the rapids of the south pacific rain forest is pure luck, as you can't really control it and are at the mercy of the game's geometry in order for Lara to not straight up smash into a pile of rocks and drown. The minecart on the other hand will make you randomly fly off the tracks if you happen to pull the break at the wrong time, that is if you even know where to fucking go in the nightmare labyrinth known as the RX Tech Mines. Either way, the conclusion is always: try to get somewhere, die, reload, repeat that step about 50 times per stage until you get that one lucky try that lets you progress.
I hate Tomb Raider 3. I can't recommend it to anyone ever. The final boss was a giant spider mutant that makes you run around in a circle for 40 minutes so you can pick up some shinny rocks. Watch the game end with Lara shooting a totally innocent Helicopter pilot in the face and a shot of her ass while the credits play. Fuck this game, I need to game something good next.
Sadly, as you can already guess from the rating, this turned out to be a massive disappointment. As the hours passed and the downward spiral of bad level design began, I became more and more miserable having to put up with everything Tomb Raider 3 was throwing at me. I was worn down and finally broken when I reached the end. I don't want this to be a rant about how much I hate this game. I still do, but there are so many fantastic qualities here that I can not even stoop so low as to call this a lazy sequel. Core Design really cared. It's just that all the visible care and love gets utterly crushed under the weight of unfair difficulty and a lack of polish, most likely due to razor tight deadlines along with an overworked staff. So let me go through the positives first before I start falling down the rabbit hole that has become my absolute hatred for this game.
Tomb Raider 3 has the best locations in the series so far. There is an incredible leap in art design at display here. Be it the opening trek through the jungles of India, the massive canyons in Nevada or looking out over the rooftops of Nighttime London. Levels feel lived in, in a way Tomb Raider 2 was still struggling with. The updated engine makes everything look so much less blocky, which the designers take full advantage off. I love the lighting, the colors and the great texture work. The atmosphere is so good, and I wish more games would take what Core Design accomplished here as an example. Really, in terms of atmosphere, TR3 doesn't miss even once. I love just standing in these maps and soaking it all in, ready to be pulled along into more adventures. It helps of course that the soundtrack is amazing aswell. There is a tone of ambiance to each location, of course classic series leitmotifs return and new tracks have been added that round everything out. It doesn't matter if it's discovering ancient ruins or if you find yourself face to face with horrifying creatures. It always fits, and I'm in love with the overall sound of TR3.
When it comes to the story, we find our favorite adventurer once again on the trail of a mysterious artifact. While on a treasure hunt deep in the jungles of India, she encounters a scientist named Dr Willard. He is looking for the missing pieces of a meteor that crashed down on earth millions of years ago, is responsible for having whipped out the Dinosaurs and starting the chain reaction of modern evolution. Supposedly these pieces also contain mysterious powers, once even being worshiped by Polynesian trips for their god like properties. And that's all we need to trot across the Globe. It's a dumb story even for the schlocky standards of classic Tomb Raider, but I still very much enjoyed it. The increased focus on cutscenes and Lara having more fun interactions with different characters helps the story flow much better than it did previously. This finally feels like a continues narrative and not just a semi connected sequence of video game stages. There is of course the obvious issue in how Lara has now been fully reduced to nothing more then what can only be described as a full on sociopath. More than ever before, she is an absolute bitch that cares about no one but herself and is willing to kill anybody that just so much as glances at her wrong. I'm still somewhat fine with her because the point was always to have an uncompromising action heroine, but previous games at least gave her some shred of humanity. The absolute girl boss attitude I fell in love is still present, but there is certainly a discussion to be had about crossing the line from girl boss to unlikeable cunt. This crosses that line way to often. TR2 is also guilty of this to a lesser extent, but toed the line in keeping her likeable much better in my opinion.
When it comes to combat, I'm happy to say that Core massively overhauled their approach to how you fight enemies. The fundamental controls are the same, but enemie encounters are spread out way smarter. Gone are the days of spawning goons right on top of the player. There are often spots you can jump to that give Lara a clear advantage, and even late game foes can be taken down with just a bit of effort and only the standard handguns. And that's basically all I wanted to see, and I'm glad they at least took the time to improve an aspect of the series that desperately needed a revision. Croft Manor now has been expanded with a shooting range as well. This version of Croft Manor is for sure the best one. Many secrets to find and all the tutorials you could ever need. Lara's home is practically its own giant level now. Once again I fully recommend you play around in the tutorial not only because it's a lot of fun but because it will also helps in familiarizing you with the expanded move set. Lara can now crawl, grab on to certain ceilings in order to use them as monkey bars, and is able to use a short dash that can be ended on a quick roll forward. These added options are mostly used to great effect, but I will admit that the dash stays fairly underutilized. There are only very few spots where it's actually needed, and even then I find those challenges more annoying than anything else.
And that's about all the positives I can think of. For all the love I can express for TR3, it just wouldn't be honest if I omitted all my frustrations and all the reasons why I ultimately came away with the conclusion that this is simply a very bad video game.
Starting off with the basic structure: You're now allowed to pick between locations in between the opening chapter and the finale. What sounds cool on paper, turns out to be a nightmare in reality. The three places you can pick from: Nevada, the South Pacific Islands and London vary so wildly in complexity and challenge that you're most likely going to fuck yourself over if you happen to choose wrong. Pro-tip: Always start with Nevada. I didn't, and it screwed me over hard by the final stretch. Nevada contains the easiest and most enjoyable set of levels, and most importantly: There is a similar bit to TR1 and 2 where all your items will be taken away from you, as Lara is once again captured by armed guards. Unlike previous games there is a high chance you will not get most of your inventory back, meaning that if you happen to pick Nevada last, you might lose hours of collected guns, ammo and med packs. At that point, you are just stuck desperately searching for scraps during the final 4 segments of Antarctica. It's a horrible design decision that I despise with a passion, and they should have either ditched the level select entirely or put actual effort in balancing each locations difficulty. And while the South Pacific Islands are a mostly tolerable set of levels, London is where the game fully backflips into of pit of rusty spicks.
London is a confusing labyrinth of dark hallways that loop around in the most unintuitive ways. I got lost so many times just backtracking, not knowing what my goal even was, and finding crucial progression items in spots that made me scream in agony. Of course, one of the keys needed to progress in on top of a mining drill you just escaped from in order to not get crushed to death. It's not like every sane human being would see the section now occupied by the giant death drill as blocked off for good. Add to that weird angled jumps that shouldn't work, but sometimes just do, and hard to make out wall texture that are supposse to signal climbable surfaces. Trust me, you will run past those surfaces for a couple of hours before looking up a guide and then promptly feeling the primal urge to buy a gun along with a time machine in order to pay Core Designs studio a friendly visit back in the late 90s. All that misery and I haven't even mentioned the vehicle sections yet. Oh, the fucking vehicles. TR2 had the exact same issue, but the meaningful difference is again that this was limited to only 2 sections. We had a boat, that controlled fine, and a snowmobile that controlled like shit. TR3 on the other hand has at least one vehicle for each location. There is an ATV, a kayak, a weird underwater robot, a Donkey Kong style minecart ride and another boat. I don't know which one is the worst for me, but it has to be a tie between the kayak and the minecart. Paddling the kayak through the rapids of the south pacific rain forest is pure luck, as you can't really control it and are at the mercy of the game's geometry in order for Lara to not straight up smash into a pile of rocks and drown. The minecart on the other hand will make you randomly fly off the tracks if you happen to pull the break at the wrong time, that is if you even know where to fucking go in the nightmare labyrinth known as the RX Tech Mines. Either way, the conclusion is always: try to get somewhere, die, reload, repeat that step about 50 times per stage until you get that one lucky try that lets you progress.
I hate Tomb Raider 3. I can't recommend it to anyone ever. The final boss was a giant spider mutant that makes you run around in a circle for 40 minutes so you can pick up some shinny rocks. Watch the game end with Lara shooting a totally innocent Helicopter pilot in the face and a shot of her ass while the credits play. Fuck this game, I need to game something good next.
2023
In Video Games, the line between a knock off and an innovative continuation is often razor fine. The amount of great games labeled with the words Doom Clone or God of War rip off over the years are more than enough evidence for that. The very nature of the medium being interactive makes them benefit from clear structures and system after all. Structures and systems that can be easily applied across multiple titles, so it's no surprise you would borrow heavily from existing elements. Even with all that, there is an understandable negative reaction to seeing whole UI designs and set pieces shamelessly ripped off. And I have always struggled the question if I should just condemn that or look past it as embarrassing inspiration. Lies of P was the ultimate test for me, as someone who has spent hundreds of hours with FromSoftware's flagship series and knows a lot of its ins and outs by heart. I was rolling my eyes at similarity just for the sake of it, only for the game to turn around and smack me across the face with the answer: Yes, you can not only heavily ripoff your idols, you can use that as a springboard to transcend them.
As the first big budget title of Korean developer Neowiz, Lies of P takes from the literary work of Italian author Carlo Collodi's famous Pinocchio story. Although this is less of a 1:1 adaptation, and more a jumping off point to take the moral lessons of that story in order to explore deeper themes like ethics and transhumanism. And the further I descended into the city of Krat, the deeper the rabbit hole got, as I noticed the literary references and themes pile up to construct a cohesive world with immaculate world building. From I what I could find, this seems to be writer and director Choi Ji-Wons first big budget gig and I can only applaud his skill at weaving an absolutely inspired setting out of what is a patch work job of his big inspirations. There are clear references to the works of Oscar Wilde and the sci-fi stories of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Even classic anime like Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell find their way into the city of Krat. Of course, there are also countless parallels to FromSoftwares own catalog with themes of mortality, how some are willing to seemingly doom the entire world for their ability to cheat fate and if there can even be some kind of some kind of moral or ethical justification for those very decisions. It's masterfully crafted, and I'm far from done sifting through its dense lore, a feeling I honestly haven't experienced since first diving into the original Dark Souls trilogy.
Just as important as the lore in a game, is its soundtrack wich turned out to be a mixed bag. And I can clearly separate the music in two very distinct categories. There is of course the non-diegetic soundtrack, which consists of your typical biblical choirs that play during big boss fights. Their epic, their bombastic and honestly something I'm really tired of. I couldn't pick them out of line up even if you held a gun to my head. I miss the days when boss themes in this genre had interesting compositions, like the theme of Lord Gwyn or Seath the scaleless from Dark Souls 1. What is exceptional however is the diegetic music played throughout the game. There are vinyl records to collect that can be listened to in the hub while you do your typical busywork like level up or weapon upgrades. They can also be heard throughout various places in Krat. Fitting with the city's theme of being heavily inspired by french culture, they consist of classical melodies with french lyrics, actually sung by Korean Artists. Which gives them an additional lair of other worldliness while you traverse the ruined streets of Krat. It's a style that I would love to see composer Yeakun Yoo develop further if he hopefully sticks with composing another Video Game.
On the gameplay front, Lies of P is also the closest one can get to ever matching FromSoftware's Souls formula. It's a true grab bag of all the modern FromSoftware mechanics. From the basic 1 vs 1 combat against bigger foes, to the aggressive tug of war that was introduced in Bloodborn that encourages you to get health back by fighting aggressively. Mechanical Lies of P is more than excellent. It's finally a soul-like that puts heavy weight behind your build decisions. To the point where the game makes it incredibly easy to respec your character. You're incentivised to experiment with all the options given, while also immediately teaching you the benefits of learning how to get enemies to stagger and parry their attacks. From increasing the chance of giving enemies fatal hits, to being able to negate damage entirely and even breaking their weapons. Of course, your weapons can break as well, with you having to repair them mid-battle leading to tens moments. This creates a wonderul tug of war where you're on equal footing with most enemies. I enjoyed those moments immensely where you decide to stick with parrying a flurry of attacks, get them to stagger for a fatal blow and using his recovering time to repair your weapon before jumping back into the battle. The dodge roll does exist, and can even be upgraded further, but unlike its inspirations it tends to be entirely situational. There is a prosthetic arm as well, ripped straight from Sekiro, that opens additional combat options. Among other things, you get a hook shoot to pull enemies towards you, a flamethrower and an arm canon. This result in a variety list of combat options while still being able to design everything around a few core mechanics. And those mechanics are used in some of the best boss fights in my opinion, with them even outdoing a FromSoftware staple. Twice. A 4 vs 1 fight that doesn't suck and gives you the option to even the odds in multiple ways. If I had to pick, those fights might be my overall favorites in the game, both in how they are build up from the very beginning of the game and then when the game finally pulls the trigger. It's the pinnacle of what I think Lies of P can achieve when it moves beyond its slavish devotion to Miyazaki's work. With spectacular results.
The other side of that devotion is all the parts where the game's falters, often in the exact same ways as Fromsoft. I found most of its last third to be a bland slog. Locations that conceptually should be fantastic, but fall flat in execution. In a game based around the concept of living puppets and philosophical questions about what makes one human or what a conscience even is, a graveyard of discarded puppets should be amazing. But it turned out to be one of several uninspired locations that had me just run through them blindly, not regretting that decision for a second. And one of several poison swamps Lies of P throws you into aswell, bringing the game's stellar quality down for me. Myazaki really put the brainworm in developers heads with his poison swamp obsession for all eternity. Please, stop it, get some help.
And as overall polished as combat is, even Neowiz could not iron out all of the typical souls like issues. I'm willing to cut them some slag as it's their first big title, but in the last third these issues just piled up in a way I could not ignore anymore. The camera getting stuck in smaller areas, enemies that spam you with status effects and predictable ambushes that stopped being surprising 10 years ago. If it was just a single area, that be fine, but it's a consistend drop off in quality right until the very end of the game. It really is a case where the setting and gameplay systems carried me through to the “final boss”. I'm saying final boss in quotes because I didn't actually get to fight the true final boss. For some reason, Neowiz decided to grab one of the worst decisions Fromsoftware themselves made in Blooborn and copy it. Hiding the real final boss behind an arbitrary decision with no warning, that you can't go back on. Setting aside the fact that NG+ seems to add some more lore elements and gear, from what little I played at least, I think locking a main path story boss behind another full play through has never set right with me. I just think its bad design. And I really was going to lower the score based on that alone.... Then the post credit scene happened. Needless to say, I'm beyond excited for Neowizes next game. It's a stinger hinted throughout all the game, and then they just confirm it with “yep, we are doing THAT” during the post credit scene. I'm here, my wallet is ready.
As the first big budget title of Korean developer Neowiz, Lies of P takes from the literary work of Italian author Carlo Collodi's famous Pinocchio story. Although this is less of a 1:1 adaptation, and more a jumping off point to take the moral lessons of that story in order to explore deeper themes like ethics and transhumanism. And the further I descended into the city of Krat, the deeper the rabbit hole got, as I noticed the literary references and themes pile up to construct a cohesive world with immaculate world building. From I what I could find, this seems to be writer and director Choi Ji-Wons first big budget gig and I can only applaud his skill at weaving an absolutely inspired setting out of what is a patch work job of his big inspirations. There are clear references to the works of Oscar Wilde and the sci-fi stories of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Even classic anime like Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell find their way into the city of Krat. Of course, there are also countless parallels to FromSoftwares own catalog with themes of mortality, how some are willing to seemingly doom the entire world for their ability to cheat fate and if there can even be some kind of some kind of moral or ethical justification for those very decisions. It's masterfully crafted, and I'm far from done sifting through its dense lore, a feeling I honestly haven't experienced since first diving into the original Dark Souls trilogy.
Just as important as the lore in a game, is its soundtrack wich turned out to be a mixed bag. And I can clearly separate the music in two very distinct categories. There is of course the non-diegetic soundtrack, which consists of your typical biblical choirs that play during big boss fights. Their epic, their bombastic and honestly something I'm really tired of. I couldn't pick them out of line up even if you held a gun to my head. I miss the days when boss themes in this genre had interesting compositions, like the theme of Lord Gwyn or Seath the scaleless from Dark Souls 1. What is exceptional however is the diegetic music played throughout the game. There are vinyl records to collect that can be listened to in the hub while you do your typical busywork like level up or weapon upgrades. They can also be heard throughout various places in Krat. Fitting with the city's theme of being heavily inspired by french culture, they consist of classical melodies with french lyrics, actually sung by Korean Artists. Which gives them an additional lair of other worldliness while you traverse the ruined streets of Krat. It's a style that I would love to see composer Yeakun Yoo develop further if he hopefully sticks with composing another Video Game.
On the gameplay front, Lies of P is also the closest one can get to ever matching FromSoftware's Souls formula. It's a true grab bag of all the modern FromSoftware mechanics. From the basic 1 vs 1 combat against bigger foes, to the aggressive tug of war that was introduced in Bloodborn that encourages you to get health back by fighting aggressively. Mechanical Lies of P is more than excellent. It's finally a soul-like that puts heavy weight behind your build decisions. To the point where the game makes it incredibly easy to respec your character. You're incentivised to experiment with all the options given, while also immediately teaching you the benefits of learning how to get enemies to stagger and parry their attacks. From increasing the chance of giving enemies fatal hits, to being able to negate damage entirely and even breaking their weapons. Of course, your weapons can break as well, with you having to repair them mid-battle leading to tens moments. This creates a wonderul tug of war where you're on equal footing with most enemies. I enjoyed those moments immensely where you decide to stick with parrying a flurry of attacks, get them to stagger for a fatal blow and using his recovering time to repair your weapon before jumping back into the battle. The dodge roll does exist, and can even be upgraded further, but unlike its inspirations it tends to be entirely situational. There is a prosthetic arm as well, ripped straight from Sekiro, that opens additional combat options. Among other things, you get a hook shoot to pull enemies towards you, a flamethrower and an arm canon. This result in a variety list of combat options while still being able to design everything around a few core mechanics. And those mechanics are used in some of the best boss fights in my opinion, with them even outdoing a FromSoftware staple. Twice. A 4 vs 1 fight that doesn't suck and gives you the option to even the odds in multiple ways. If I had to pick, those fights might be my overall favorites in the game, both in how they are build up from the very beginning of the game and then when the game finally pulls the trigger. It's the pinnacle of what I think Lies of P can achieve when it moves beyond its slavish devotion to Miyazaki's work. With spectacular results.
The other side of that devotion is all the parts where the game's falters, often in the exact same ways as Fromsoft. I found most of its last third to be a bland slog. Locations that conceptually should be fantastic, but fall flat in execution. In a game based around the concept of living puppets and philosophical questions about what makes one human or what a conscience even is, a graveyard of discarded puppets should be amazing. But it turned out to be one of several uninspired locations that had me just run through them blindly, not regretting that decision for a second. And one of several poison swamps Lies of P throws you into aswell, bringing the game's stellar quality down for me. Myazaki really put the brainworm in developers heads with his poison swamp obsession for all eternity. Please, stop it, get some help.
And as overall polished as combat is, even Neowiz could not iron out all of the typical souls like issues. I'm willing to cut them some slag as it's their first big title, but in the last third these issues just piled up in a way I could not ignore anymore. The camera getting stuck in smaller areas, enemies that spam you with status effects and predictable ambushes that stopped being surprising 10 years ago. If it was just a single area, that be fine, but it's a consistend drop off in quality right until the very end of the game. It really is a case where the setting and gameplay systems carried me through to the “final boss”. I'm saying final boss in quotes because I didn't actually get to fight the true final boss. For some reason, Neowiz decided to grab one of the worst decisions Fromsoftware themselves made in Blooborn and copy it. Hiding the real final boss behind an arbitrary decision with no warning, that you can't go back on. Setting aside the fact that NG+ seems to add some more lore elements and gear, from what little I played at least, I think locking a main path story boss behind another full play through has never set right with me. I just think its bad design. And I really was going to lower the score based on that alone.... Then the post credit scene happened. Needless to say, I'm beyond excited for Neowizes next game. It's a stinger hinted throughout all the game, and then they just confirm it with “yep, we are doing THAT” during the post credit scene. I'm here, my wallet is ready.
2023
Being a fan of Nintendo can be tough sometimes. I'm sure I'm not the only one for whom Wario was as much a part of childhood as Mario. Be it when I was borrowing the first few games from my older cousins, playing the hell out of my own copy of Wario Land 4 on the GBA, or enjoying the many spinoffs he was front and center in. Wario was always there, until Nintendo decided he wasn't anymore. As the Mario games shifted more and more into a heavily protected mega franchise, Wario had to go. Mario's greedy, smelly rival was shuffled off to the eternal spin off mines. The way of almost all Nintendo IPs of course that aren't profitable enough, whatever the fuck that means in shareholder land. Luckily, Indies have given us many, sometimes even better substitutes to whatever Nintendo isn't willing to do anymore. And in 2023, a bit out of nowhere, we got another great one: Pizza Tower.
The devs at Tour de Pizza indeed created the ultimate answer to the question: Where did Wario Land go ? Apparently it turned into an awesome 2D platformer where a funny Italian man, with serious anxiety problems, fights an Evil Pizza Face trying to nuke his restaurant. Obviously.
And that is all presented through an absolute wild art style. An amazing art style. Many have compared it to old 90s cartoons drawn in MS Paint, but I can't really agree with that. For me, it seems a lot more like it's going for mid 2000s adult swim shows and Newgrounds cartoons. A bit like Super jail or Mr Pickles. The kinda off- model drawings that throw away smooth line work and continuity in its individual frames for a much faster, chaotic style that feels like you're watching a painting melt on acid before your eyes. And just like its inspirations, Pizza Tower still excels in actual animation quality. It's insane how many individual poses and expressions fill the screen at any moment, along with the movement in the gameplay. Peppino himself gets a giant TV on the top right that is shifting all the time to new hilarious expressions, all depending on what's happening to him at that moment. For sure just a giant, well earned flex by the devs.
The soundtrack accompanying his crazy pizza adventure is also one of the best I have ever heard. Its almost impossibly diverse with dark humming undertons flawellesly going into a driving beat in levels like Dont Make a Sound or entering Crust Cove and hitting you with music that wouldnt at all be out of place in Jet Set Radio. A lot of these songs stay in my head long after I closed the game.
And while this amazing soundtrack is playing you'll be air dashing with Peppino all over the place trying to reach the end of each Level. Just like Wario Land 4, when you hit the exit switch, this time not in the form of a weird frog statue but as the weirdly creepy looking John Pillar. Who's a Giant Pillar with a Human face that is holding the Pizza Tower together, of course. You're then promted to run back to the exit before the timer runs out or be chased to a game over by the games villain, Pizza Face. The first time in each level is always an anxiety inducing dash as you try to grab all the collectibles you missed while going faster than sonic could ever dream of. If your like me, you'll probably still get a bad letter grad like C or D even. But that's the other beautiful thing in Pizza Towers design: How complex its move set is and how good you become at it if you're willing to put in a bit of work. It's honestly a god like feeling when you eventually understand it and fly through the stages with the goal of reaching the top ranking. Dash through the metal block, up smash, get the secret, fall out the bottom, don't forget to get the Janitor.... It's so awesome. It must be how speedrunners or fighting games players feel when they reach their apex skill level. That said: I can't exactly claim I'm that good at it. As much as I wish I was, I will probably forever stay in the A to S tier ranking. The highest you can get is P, which requires a full run of the level, never losing your combo, then finished the second lap while the countdown is ticking down and beating each of the 3 hidden stages. Not to mention you're ranked again in total at the end of the game. It's a lot, and it already took me hours to just P Rank the first world. I think I'm good with leaving that to the professionals.
I'm just so glad Pizza Tower exists. An incredible game that just had even more content added to it via The Noise Update. An entire new character to play as with his own move set to learn and tons of new costume animations. Needlessly to say, my conclusion is that Pizza Tower is absolutly goated and makes me question if I even still need Nintendo. Seriously, just sell Wario to Tour de Pizza, they would do my favorite yellow garlic enjoyer justice for sure.
The devs at Tour de Pizza indeed created the ultimate answer to the question: Where did Wario Land go ? Apparently it turned into an awesome 2D platformer where a funny Italian man, with serious anxiety problems, fights an Evil Pizza Face trying to nuke his restaurant. Obviously.
And that is all presented through an absolute wild art style. An amazing art style. Many have compared it to old 90s cartoons drawn in MS Paint, but I can't really agree with that. For me, it seems a lot more like it's going for mid 2000s adult swim shows and Newgrounds cartoons. A bit like Super jail or Mr Pickles. The kinda off- model drawings that throw away smooth line work and continuity in its individual frames for a much faster, chaotic style that feels like you're watching a painting melt on acid before your eyes. And just like its inspirations, Pizza Tower still excels in actual animation quality. It's insane how many individual poses and expressions fill the screen at any moment, along with the movement in the gameplay. Peppino himself gets a giant TV on the top right that is shifting all the time to new hilarious expressions, all depending on what's happening to him at that moment. For sure just a giant, well earned flex by the devs.
The soundtrack accompanying his crazy pizza adventure is also one of the best I have ever heard. Its almost impossibly diverse with dark humming undertons flawellesly going into a driving beat in levels like Dont Make a Sound or entering Crust Cove and hitting you with music that wouldnt at all be out of place in Jet Set Radio. A lot of these songs stay in my head long after I closed the game.
And while this amazing soundtrack is playing you'll be air dashing with Peppino all over the place trying to reach the end of each Level. Just like Wario Land 4, when you hit the exit switch, this time not in the form of a weird frog statue but as the weirdly creepy looking John Pillar. Who's a Giant Pillar with a Human face that is holding the Pizza Tower together, of course. You're then promted to run back to the exit before the timer runs out or be chased to a game over by the games villain, Pizza Face. The first time in each level is always an anxiety inducing dash as you try to grab all the collectibles you missed while going faster than sonic could ever dream of. If your like me, you'll probably still get a bad letter grad like C or D even. But that's the other beautiful thing in Pizza Towers design: How complex its move set is and how good you become at it if you're willing to put in a bit of work. It's honestly a god like feeling when you eventually understand it and fly through the stages with the goal of reaching the top ranking. Dash through the metal block, up smash, get the secret, fall out the bottom, don't forget to get the Janitor.... It's so awesome. It must be how speedrunners or fighting games players feel when they reach their apex skill level. That said: I can't exactly claim I'm that good at it. As much as I wish I was, I will probably forever stay in the A to S tier ranking. The highest you can get is P, which requires a full run of the level, never losing your combo, then finished the second lap while the countdown is ticking down and beating each of the 3 hidden stages. Not to mention you're ranked again in total at the end of the game. It's a lot, and it already took me hours to just P Rank the first world. I think I'm good with leaving that to the professionals.
I'm just so glad Pizza Tower exists. An incredible game that just had even more content added to it via The Noise Update. An entire new character to play as with his own move set to learn and tons of new costume animations. Needlessly to say, my conclusion is that Pizza Tower is absolutly goated and makes me question if I even still need Nintendo. Seriously, just sell Wario to Tour de Pizza, they would do my favorite yellow garlic enjoyer justice for sure.
The moment I found out this is in fact a shitty auto runer I immediatly lost interest. Uninstalled forever. Why would you ever make this ?
1997
In many ways, Tomb Raider 2 represents a quantum leap forward for the series, and it's the title that cemented Lara Croft as an icon of pop culture. The first one build a foundation of glob trotting adventures, the sequel erected a monument. A quickly glued together monument as I soon found out. A monument that manages to amaze you but dont look too close or it will clearly show its many cracks due to a blazingly fast dev cycle. With design decisions that lead me to absolute controller snapping frustration at times. I was still determind to see it through to the end, be it do to my new found love for the first game or my general couristy for retro games. And as much as TR2 turned out to be a very cruel mistress, I wanted to see for myself why so many fans see this as the peak of the series.
Tomb Raider 2 starring Lara Croft has you follow the British adventurer to the Great Wall of China, where she hopes to uncover a mystical Chinese dagger. Upon finishing the first level, we are treated with a similar cutscene to the end of the first game's stage. Lara is ambushed by a henchman, and we get a brief exchange explaining what the goal of the rest of the game is going to be. Turns out theirs a Venetian cult after the Dagger as well, led by a man named MARCO BARTOLI! So the race is on to find the artifact before they do. The story is more fleshed out than before, but not by much in my opinion. There is more of a through line for the levels, but by the end Core Design have made it clear that this is only a vehicle to drive the exploration. You are here for the badass Girl on the cover and her no fucks given attitude. You bought the game to explore spectacular locations and shoot bad guys, and that's what your getting.
And spectacular locations they are indeed. Tomb Raider 2 tops the first game in big ways. From the Great Wall of China in the opening to giant underwater ship wrecks, the leap in quality is honestly incredible. The latter being my absolute favorite level in the game. Many people may pick Venice or the Temple of Xia as their number one but for me, it's the Maria Doria. Swim to the bottom of the ocean and enter an upside down wreck of a cruise liner ? Get out of here, that's too good. It represents the absolute gold standard Core Design can achieve with excellent level design. They really have managed to strike a great balance of linear levels and sprawling key hunts the player can just get lost in. Other highlights include the entire set of Venice stages, the Barkhang Monastery and the mad gauntlet when returning to the Temple of Xia. The atmosphere once again kills across all the levels. The finale in the Temple of Xia is especially strong, and it also represents the perfect segway to talk about the best and worst aspects of the gameplay.
There has been an overall increase in difficulty, and it expects much more from the player in terms of knowing Lara's improved move set. Croft Manor has therefore been greatly expanded. There are better opportunitys to test your skills in high stress situations with additions like the new assault course, and the manors many new secrets. I highly recommend you not skip this tutorial stage, not only because it will help teach you the controls, but also because it's a tone of fun. Don't forget to lock the butler in the freezer. Going into the actual levels though, as much as I applaud the new movement options, midair roll and all, the level design often seems to utterly hate you. There are many, many instances of traps you can't possibly see coming unless you died to them at least once. A specific slide in Offshore Rig comes to mind. Where Lara will slide straight into a spike trap unless the player knows to slide down the exact right way the designers intended and grab the ledge. Your ability to tolerate the many similar situations in almost every level is what will make or break the game for a lot of people in my opinion. I can also extend that olive branch of shit to the less than stellar vehicle segments. The boat in Venice was a neat idea, but I have to give a big shout-out to the fkn snowmobile in Tibetan Foothills. A seemingly weightless snowmobile made out of paper and fueled with dynamite that loves to send you speeding off cliffs when you just want Lara to go in a straight line. Hope you saved a lot. Tibetan Foothills is by far the worst stage in the game, and it even manages to be the shining lowpoint for another bad aspect of TR2: The combat. Combat needed serious improvements, Combat has in fact seen no improvements. Pretty much all it comes down to is that they increased to amount of enemies present in each stage aswell as how much ammo they tank. You do have more weapons now, like the M16 and Grenade Launcher, but that doesn't help when litteral armies of angry Italian men, various wildlife and ancient Chinese warriors have it out for you. You will see many familiar scenes of Lara being pushed into corners, riddled with bullets and getting speared to death followed by reloading. Hope you saved a lot.
Even all that controller snapping frustration, I still came away loving the game more than the original by the time I reached the surprisingly cheeky ending. Maybe I contracted a sever case of stockholm syndrome but I think it once again speaks volumes about Core Designs masterful ability to make absolutely engrossing levels, a compelling main character and a journey that clearly showed me why Lara's fan base has stayed so loyal to her. Tomb Raider 2 kept me deeply hooked like no other game and while I'm still going to take a break from the series for a bit, I can not wait to return and see what Tomb Raider 3 has in store for me.
Tomb Raider 2 starring Lara Croft has you follow the British adventurer to the Great Wall of China, where she hopes to uncover a mystical Chinese dagger. Upon finishing the first level, we are treated with a similar cutscene to the end of the first game's stage. Lara is ambushed by a henchman, and we get a brief exchange explaining what the goal of the rest of the game is going to be. Turns out theirs a Venetian cult after the Dagger as well, led by a man named MARCO BARTOLI! So the race is on to find the artifact before they do. The story is more fleshed out than before, but not by much in my opinion. There is more of a through line for the levels, but by the end Core Design have made it clear that this is only a vehicle to drive the exploration. You are here for the badass Girl on the cover and her no fucks given attitude. You bought the game to explore spectacular locations and shoot bad guys, and that's what your getting.
And spectacular locations they are indeed. Tomb Raider 2 tops the first game in big ways. From the Great Wall of China in the opening to giant underwater ship wrecks, the leap in quality is honestly incredible. The latter being my absolute favorite level in the game. Many people may pick Venice or the Temple of Xia as their number one but for me, it's the Maria Doria. Swim to the bottom of the ocean and enter an upside down wreck of a cruise liner ? Get out of here, that's too good. It represents the absolute gold standard Core Design can achieve with excellent level design. They really have managed to strike a great balance of linear levels and sprawling key hunts the player can just get lost in. Other highlights include the entire set of Venice stages, the Barkhang Monastery and the mad gauntlet when returning to the Temple of Xia. The atmosphere once again kills across all the levels. The finale in the Temple of Xia is especially strong, and it also represents the perfect segway to talk about the best and worst aspects of the gameplay.
There has been an overall increase in difficulty, and it expects much more from the player in terms of knowing Lara's improved move set. Croft Manor has therefore been greatly expanded. There are better opportunitys to test your skills in high stress situations with additions like the new assault course, and the manors many new secrets. I highly recommend you not skip this tutorial stage, not only because it will help teach you the controls, but also because it's a tone of fun. Don't forget to lock the butler in the freezer. Going into the actual levels though, as much as I applaud the new movement options, midair roll and all, the level design often seems to utterly hate you. There are many, many instances of traps you can't possibly see coming unless you died to them at least once. A specific slide in Offshore Rig comes to mind. Where Lara will slide straight into a spike trap unless the player knows to slide down the exact right way the designers intended and grab the ledge. Your ability to tolerate the many similar situations in almost every level is what will make or break the game for a lot of people in my opinion. I can also extend that olive branch of shit to the less than stellar vehicle segments. The boat in Venice was a neat idea, but I have to give a big shout-out to the fkn snowmobile in Tibetan Foothills. A seemingly weightless snowmobile made out of paper and fueled with dynamite that loves to send you speeding off cliffs when you just want Lara to go in a straight line. Hope you saved a lot. Tibetan Foothills is by far the worst stage in the game, and it even manages to be the shining lowpoint for another bad aspect of TR2: The combat. Combat needed serious improvements, Combat has in fact seen no improvements. Pretty much all it comes down to is that they increased to amount of enemies present in each stage aswell as how much ammo they tank. You do have more weapons now, like the M16 and Grenade Launcher, but that doesn't help when litteral armies of angry Italian men, various wildlife and ancient Chinese warriors have it out for you. You will see many familiar scenes of Lara being pushed into corners, riddled with bullets and getting speared to death followed by reloading. Hope you saved a lot.
Even all that controller snapping frustration, I still came away loving the game more than the original by the time I reached the surprisingly cheeky ending. Maybe I contracted a sever case of stockholm syndrome but I think it once again speaks volumes about Core Designs masterful ability to make absolutely engrossing levels, a compelling main character and a journey that clearly showed me why Lara's fan base has stayed so loyal to her. Tomb Raider 2 kept me deeply hooked like no other game and while I'm still going to take a break from the series for a bit, I can not wait to return and see what Tomb Raider 3 has in store for me.
Wtf even is reality ? Was this always this shit ? Back when I had a PS4 but no money to buy new games, I loved Old Blood. I played it all the time, found every secret and beat every difficulty. Maybe it really was the fact that I only had like 4 games for the console. Or maybe my standards of what I think is good have improved significantly. Either way revisting Old Blood was a bad idea. I found it offensivly bad in how it feels to play and the levels design is trash. Im giving 1 point to the game because the writting and art direction is still really good. Man, now im worried for that Indiana Jones game.
1996
Cultural osmosis is a funny thing. I, like many, only know about Lara Croft and her adventures through the media surrounding her, even though we never really played much if any of the games. I myself always had the firm impression that it was some kind of trashy Indiana Jones knock off with a sexy female lead or something of that nature. Probably a bit outdated, coasting on nostalgia for the original PlayStation titles. I had only ever dabbled in some of the PS2 games, seen the first movie, and got roped into playing the 2013 reboot. Admittedly, of my experiences with the franchise, Anniversary, the remake of this first game, was a game I really fell in love with. It's the starting point where my perception of Tomb Raider started to shift into something I became more and more interested in. Critical in the second phase of that process was discovering Youtube channels like the wonderful Steve Of Warr, seriously underrated creator, check him out. He gave me a good old case of talking so passionately about a topic he cares about, that it started to infect me with the energy to become a fan myself. I now really wanted to know what Tomb Raider was all about and why it left such a deep mark on gaming. Lucky for me, I had previously purchased the entire classic series on GOG for like 5 bucks. So I installed the automated PC fix and started Lara's very first adventure.
And just like I wrote in my first impression, I'm really impressed how much I dig this game. I might even go as far as to say that I love it. There is an absorbing atmosphere to the original Tomb Raider I havent felt in any game before. Exploring these locations feels like you're setting foot in places that hasnt been touched by humans in centuries. Both in a beautiful and unnerving way, when the silence is suddenly puncture by the sound of an enemies roar. I can now feel why so many people have childhood nightmare stories of sitting in front of their PS1 only to turn their TV off in horror as a vicious T-Rex suddenly stomps around the corner in Lost Valley. It even got me, despite the fact I knew it was coming. That really extends to all locations, and I can't say that there was a miss across the entire game atmosphere vise. Be it the structures of St. Francis' Folly or the final home stretch in The Great Pyramid, it was all excellent.
You control Lara through these Levels via tank controls. In 2024, a horrifying discovery for some for sure, but quit genius if you look back on what hardware Tomb Raider originally came out on. The PS1 had yet to introduce dual analog sticks and PC was restricted to keyboard and mouse, so you could easily design controls that work for both. In combination with Core Design's decision to structure levels on a strict grid, the game allows for extreme precision platforming while remaining immensely fair. You know at almost all times where Lara will land or how many steps she will take upon pressing the D-pad. The result is a game that delivers everything promised in the opening cutscene, with more freedom of movement than most games today. Combat sadly doesnt met that high water mark, with the limited camera not being able to keep up with enemies that love to poke Lara to death while she's stuck in a corner somewhere. It's by far the worst aspect of Tomb Raider, and by the time I reached Atlantis I was ready to strangle somebody. Atlantis was also the point where I felt a worrying trend come up, of the devs simply hating my guts. The final stretch is an absurd difficulty spike in my opinion, and not for the right reason. Unfair deathtrap after unfair deathtrap, bad enemie spawns, the lava pits.... the lava pits sucked so fucking bad. I still loved the whole design of Atlantis, the gross flesh covered horror Pyramid making me quite uncomfortable. Atlantis in TR1 is unlike any interpretation I have ever seen. Looks amazing, but I sure went back to Lara's Mansion a couple of times, just to decompress after the 100 times I miss timed a jump trying to dodge a flying demon, face plating Lara straight into the next best lava pit. I miss tutorial levels, Lara's mansion is the shit, bring back tutorial levels you cowards!
Finally, of all the things I loved and hated about TR1, there is one thing I still haven't mentioned yet. The actual story of the game. The story really isn't anything. Aside from giving Lara a very well defined character, it's your typical treasure hunt. Lara gets hired by a mysterious millionaire to recover a lost treasure, millionaire turns out to be evil, you beat the evil millionaire and explode her Island. The End. Probably an unfortunate result of inexperience and a short dev cycle. I don't really blame them too much, but I think it says a lot about how they really didn't know what the story was when your Villains' henchman consist of a Lumberjack, an Evil French Man, a Cowboy and a Kid on a Skateboard ? To be fair: Kid with skateboard sliding around the corner, with his Uzis akimbo drawn like he was on his way to assassinate Tupac and Biggie himself, was hilarious. If anything I hope the next game has more kids on skateboards, I would 100% support it. Anyway on to Tomb Raider 2, really looking forward to that game.
And just like I wrote in my first impression, I'm really impressed how much I dig this game. I might even go as far as to say that I love it. There is an absorbing atmosphere to the original Tomb Raider I havent felt in any game before. Exploring these locations feels like you're setting foot in places that hasnt been touched by humans in centuries. Both in a beautiful and unnerving way, when the silence is suddenly puncture by the sound of an enemies roar. I can now feel why so many people have childhood nightmare stories of sitting in front of their PS1 only to turn their TV off in horror as a vicious T-Rex suddenly stomps around the corner in Lost Valley. It even got me, despite the fact I knew it was coming. That really extends to all locations, and I can't say that there was a miss across the entire game atmosphere vise. Be it the structures of St. Francis' Folly or the final home stretch in The Great Pyramid, it was all excellent.
You control Lara through these Levels via tank controls. In 2024, a horrifying discovery for some for sure, but quit genius if you look back on what hardware Tomb Raider originally came out on. The PS1 had yet to introduce dual analog sticks and PC was restricted to keyboard and mouse, so you could easily design controls that work for both. In combination with Core Design's decision to structure levels on a strict grid, the game allows for extreme precision platforming while remaining immensely fair. You know at almost all times where Lara will land or how many steps she will take upon pressing the D-pad. The result is a game that delivers everything promised in the opening cutscene, with more freedom of movement than most games today. Combat sadly doesnt met that high water mark, with the limited camera not being able to keep up with enemies that love to poke Lara to death while she's stuck in a corner somewhere. It's by far the worst aspect of Tomb Raider, and by the time I reached Atlantis I was ready to strangle somebody. Atlantis was also the point where I felt a worrying trend come up, of the devs simply hating my guts. The final stretch is an absurd difficulty spike in my opinion, and not for the right reason. Unfair deathtrap after unfair deathtrap, bad enemie spawns, the lava pits.... the lava pits sucked so fucking bad. I still loved the whole design of Atlantis, the gross flesh covered horror Pyramid making me quite uncomfortable. Atlantis in TR1 is unlike any interpretation I have ever seen. Looks amazing, but I sure went back to Lara's Mansion a couple of times, just to decompress after the 100 times I miss timed a jump trying to dodge a flying demon, face plating Lara straight into the next best lava pit. I miss tutorial levels, Lara's mansion is the shit, bring back tutorial levels you cowards!
Finally, of all the things I loved and hated about TR1, there is one thing I still haven't mentioned yet. The actual story of the game. The story really isn't anything. Aside from giving Lara a very well defined character, it's your typical treasure hunt. Lara gets hired by a mysterious millionaire to recover a lost treasure, millionaire turns out to be evil, you beat the evil millionaire and explode her Island. The End. Probably an unfortunate result of inexperience and a short dev cycle. I don't really blame them too much, but I think it says a lot about how they really didn't know what the story was when your Villains' henchman consist of a Lumberjack, an Evil French Man, a Cowboy and a Kid on a Skateboard ? To be fair: Kid with skateboard sliding around the corner, with his Uzis akimbo drawn like he was on his way to assassinate Tupac and Biggie himself, was hilarious. If anything I hope the next game has more kids on skateboards, I would 100% support it. Anyway on to Tomb Raider 2, really looking forward to that game.
2016
So the original BioShock seems to be a divisse title nowadays. I still remember its release being full of floored reactions, holding it as a masterpiece of interactive storytelling. I suppose a decade plus of essays holding it up as the greatest piece of video game art ever was inevitably going to lead to a whiplash effect in the other direction. People have indeed come out in greater and greater numbers to decry Bioshock as highly overrated in both its gameplay and writing. And now, after my obligatory playthrough I seem to do every 1 – 2 years, I can still firmly plant my feet in the ground and say: I think BioShock is still a masterpiece.
The first 10 minutes embody everything BioShock is about. You're presented with this impossible city, a facade of endless freedom and possibility. Andrew Ryan's words really do sound like the ultimate utopia. A City where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And much like I can imagine the new citizens of Rapture felt when they first stepped out of the bathysphere, the reality of the situation quickly sets in. Rapture is no utopia, it's a rotten monument to one man's petty ego. Your journey takes you through what Ryan calls his Great Chain of Industry. Simply taking you through a tour of the lowest class places like Fountain Fisheries up to the high society luxury of Olympus Heights makes Rapture feel like such a believable setting. Every level fells like a vignette that explains the greater inner workings of its place on the great chain, as well as its inevitable downfall. I will say, as believable as Rapture manages to present itself, it does often suffer from beeing less a city and more a carnival ride. Giant neon signs point to important places, and levels have the occasional tendency to loop around into spots that make no sense at all. That issue isn't helped by the fact that BioShock has a really obnoxious guide arrow turned on by default. The Guide arrow completely kills any exploration, and I never understood why it's even in the game. Trust me, turn it off, it will do so much for BioShock's immersive qualities and Rapture isn't exactly an impossible maze to navigate.
On the gameplay front, BioShock is as prototypical a immersive sim as it gets. You get a standard arsenal of upgradable FPS weapons in addition to the now famous plasmids, basically Raptures version of magic. They are the genetic substances that lead to Raptures great downfall and what gives combat its edge. If guns are the slightly chewy bread of combat, plasmids are the butter that gives it flavor. There's a huge variety of Plasmids from throwable Lightning bolts to shooting straight up Bees, that mix well with a large enough pool of enemies, that all have dominant strategies to take them down faster. Combined with the frankly ludicrous amount of tonics, the game's version of body modifications, I would do the game a huge disservice by claiming there is no variety in its gameplay. I frankly reject the much heard criticism that Bioshock lacks variety since all you do is kill enemies and not much else. I don't see how that applies here, since Raptures 100% presents itself as hostile. It's a corpse at the bottom of the ocean, and basically everyone except for one person is out for your blood. And given how the plot eventually just flips everything on its head, I think it would be quite unfitting to break the very isolated and hostile atmosphere. The only real gameplay fault I can find is, once again, like the unnecessary guide arrow, the vitae chambers. Infinite checkpoints that revive you without punishment, that both break the believability of the setting and the general gameplay loop. Turn them off and set your own quick saves. At least on normal, Bioshock posses not much of a challenge anyway and by the end you'll be an immortal combat wizard anyway, with enemies not even getting close enough to touch you before you snap your fingers to set them on fire.
Lastly, since I choose to play the much hated remaster, I might as well say some words on the topic. Basically, I didn't have any real issues this time. There was the occasional looping audio and at one point in the research labs the sound just stopped working for some reason, forcing me to close and open the game again. Other than that, I had no crashes or anything of similar ilk, totally smooth sailing tbh. I do know about many of the really bad issues and have experienced them as well in the past. I can of course only speculate as to why nothing happened this time, but maybe it's an issue similar to what the original PC version of Dark Souls or Resident Evil 6 suffered from. Where piss poor optimization lead to weaker hardware basically breaking the game, so do look out for that if you're planing on playing BioShock with hardware that isn't state of the art. And play it you absolutely should, since it's still a deeply fascinating FPS deserving of all the praise thrown its way. Settle in, get cozzy with a blanket, step inside the bathysphere so you get to experience an evening with Sander Cohen.
The first 10 minutes embody everything BioShock is about. You're presented with this impossible city, a facade of endless freedom and possibility. Andrew Ryan's words really do sound like the ultimate utopia. A City where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And much like I can imagine the new citizens of Rapture felt when they first stepped out of the bathysphere, the reality of the situation quickly sets in. Rapture is no utopia, it's a rotten monument to one man's petty ego. Your journey takes you through what Ryan calls his Great Chain of Industry. Simply taking you through a tour of the lowest class places like Fountain Fisheries up to the high society luxury of Olympus Heights makes Rapture feel like such a believable setting. Every level fells like a vignette that explains the greater inner workings of its place on the great chain, as well as its inevitable downfall. I will say, as believable as Rapture manages to present itself, it does often suffer from beeing less a city and more a carnival ride. Giant neon signs point to important places, and levels have the occasional tendency to loop around into spots that make no sense at all. That issue isn't helped by the fact that BioShock has a really obnoxious guide arrow turned on by default. The Guide arrow completely kills any exploration, and I never understood why it's even in the game. Trust me, turn it off, it will do so much for BioShock's immersive qualities and Rapture isn't exactly an impossible maze to navigate.
On the gameplay front, BioShock is as prototypical a immersive sim as it gets. You get a standard arsenal of upgradable FPS weapons in addition to the now famous plasmids, basically Raptures version of magic. They are the genetic substances that lead to Raptures great downfall and what gives combat its edge. If guns are the slightly chewy bread of combat, plasmids are the butter that gives it flavor. There's a huge variety of Plasmids from throwable Lightning bolts to shooting straight up Bees, that mix well with a large enough pool of enemies, that all have dominant strategies to take them down faster. Combined with the frankly ludicrous amount of tonics, the game's version of body modifications, I would do the game a huge disservice by claiming there is no variety in its gameplay. I frankly reject the much heard criticism that Bioshock lacks variety since all you do is kill enemies and not much else. I don't see how that applies here, since Raptures 100% presents itself as hostile. It's a corpse at the bottom of the ocean, and basically everyone except for one person is out for your blood. And given how the plot eventually just flips everything on its head, I think it would be quite unfitting to break the very isolated and hostile atmosphere. The only real gameplay fault I can find is, once again, like the unnecessary guide arrow, the vitae chambers. Infinite checkpoints that revive you without punishment, that both break the believability of the setting and the general gameplay loop. Turn them off and set your own quick saves. At least on normal, Bioshock posses not much of a challenge anyway and by the end you'll be an immortal combat wizard anyway, with enemies not even getting close enough to touch you before you snap your fingers to set them on fire.
Lastly, since I choose to play the much hated remaster, I might as well say some words on the topic. Basically, I didn't have any real issues this time. There was the occasional looping audio and at one point in the research labs the sound just stopped working for some reason, forcing me to close and open the game again. Other than that, I had no crashes or anything of similar ilk, totally smooth sailing tbh. I do know about many of the really bad issues and have experienced them as well in the past. I can of course only speculate as to why nothing happened this time, but maybe it's an issue similar to what the original PC version of Dark Souls or Resident Evil 6 suffered from. Where piss poor optimization lead to weaker hardware basically breaking the game, so do look out for that if you're planing on playing BioShock with hardware that isn't state of the art. And play it you absolutely should, since it's still a deeply fascinating FPS deserving of all the praise thrown its way. Settle in, get cozzy with a blanket, step inside the bathysphere so you get to experience an evening with Sander Cohen.
1996
Finally played this for the first time on PC with Automated Fix. Not gona lie, I really dig it. The atmosphere kills and I adore the soundtrack. I can't even say I agree this has aged horribly, it's damn well-designed. Basically a cinematic platformer like Prince of Persia or Another World but flipped into the third dimension. And just as unforgiving as its 2D sibllings aswell. I will finish this game eventually, but Sanctuary of the Scion has me kinda stuck right now, so might as well take a break, maybe try some of the other games.
Link to my full review of Tomb Raider: https://www.backloggd.com/u/NovaNiles/review/1411026/
Link to my full review of Tomb Raider: https://www.backloggd.com/u/NovaNiles/review/1411026/
American Mcgee's Alice may be my favorite adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. In terms of writing and atmosphere, it's certainly the cream of the crop. What Rouge Entertainment accomplished on the Quake 3 engine, of all things, is nothing short of incredible. I genuinely think when it comes to translating an Art style with the tech they had, they couldn't have done better. The dark, twisted atmosphere is killer and the soundtrack unmatched. The voice acting is also one of the best I have ever heard, with Sussie Bran as Alice and Roger Jackson as the cheshire cat beeing pitch perfect. I could honestly listen to them banter for ages. Its all wonderful, except for the gameplay. That is an entirely different can of worms.
Alice suffers what I like to call "second half dropoff syndrome". An unfortunate decease many, many games up until fairly recently have suffered from. Basically the first half is excellent, falls right into what its gameplay limitation are capable of, but then you hit the midway point. From then on it becomes awful, with bullshit enemies, instant death pits and levels that stretch on for way too long. For Alice, that point is about when you reach the level Mirror Image, the mad hatters' domain. The platforming turns to shit and most of the weapons become useless. The ice wand is already crazy overpowered, but introducing the jabberwocky's eye staff makes even that redounded. It kills all the challenge, and now the only threats are instant death pits. Unlucky then that Alice has tons of enemies who's single job it is to push you off narrow pathways. Great. I don't exactly think we needed that in a game where jumping isn't great to begin with. I probably shouldn't be surprised about those issues, considering American Mcgee used to work at Id software and many of Alice's exact issues can be found in Id's early catalog. The storm on the red queen's castle was a slog, combining all those issues. The atmosphere still fucks, but it's the point where I wouldn't blame anyone for just watching a Let's play instead.
I still recommend you check out Alice in any way you see fit because I think it's one of the defining pieces of Video Game art from the early 2000s, that sadly never got the spotlight it deserved. On the bright side, EA pretty much stopped giving a shit about the series and now just sells its sequel completely DRM free. So it's super easy to mod the original into the sequel, since it was originally sold as a bonus DLC remaster for Alice: Madness Returns. You can then just access it through the main menu of Madness Returns. So fuck EA and pirate the fuck out of their games. Rise up, Goth Gamer Nation.
Alice suffers what I like to call "second half dropoff syndrome". An unfortunate decease many, many games up until fairly recently have suffered from. Basically the first half is excellent, falls right into what its gameplay limitation are capable of, but then you hit the midway point. From then on it becomes awful, with bullshit enemies, instant death pits and levels that stretch on for way too long. For Alice, that point is about when you reach the level Mirror Image, the mad hatters' domain. The platforming turns to shit and most of the weapons become useless. The ice wand is already crazy overpowered, but introducing the jabberwocky's eye staff makes even that redounded. It kills all the challenge, and now the only threats are instant death pits. Unlucky then that Alice has tons of enemies who's single job it is to push you off narrow pathways. Great. I don't exactly think we needed that in a game where jumping isn't great to begin with. I probably shouldn't be surprised about those issues, considering American Mcgee used to work at Id software and many of Alice's exact issues can be found in Id's early catalog. The storm on the red queen's castle was a slog, combining all those issues. The atmosphere still fucks, but it's the point where I wouldn't blame anyone for just watching a Let's play instead.
I still recommend you check out Alice in any way you see fit because I think it's one of the defining pieces of Video Game art from the early 2000s, that sadly never got the spotlight it deserved. On the bright side, EA pretty much stopped giving a shit about the series and now just sells its sequel completely DRM free. So it's super easy to mod the original into the sequel, since it was originally sold as a bonus DLC remaster for Alice: Madness Returns. You can then just access it through the main menu of Madness Returns. So fuck EA and pirate the fuck out of their games. Rise up, Goth Gamer Nation.
2024
Im not gona lie and say this a good game. What I am gona say is that I spend way too much with this. Half of it because its a legit fun, janky parcour game for free. Other half is just the amount of joy I got from shooting the shit with strangers in the ingame text chat. Be it just roasting eachother or just legit talking. For real gave me old internet vibes before people went insane and starting treating the internet like it was their fucking living room. Old COD lobbys and Space Station 13 come to mind. Just a solid vibe, we should get more games like this.
So I don't own a PS5, but I'm very much a fan of Silent Hill. Lucky for me, a good friend of mine does own a PS5, and we decided to get a few beers, sitting down for this short little horror game. I wasn't expecting much after what I heard about it. Wow, this was so bad it kinda became hilarious. It's one of the worst walking simulators I have ever played, and the writing was beyond trash. And I know this will not mean anything to English speakers, but as someone who's second language is German, the attempt to set this in Germany was hilariously incompetent. Not only does it not look anything like Germany at all, but every piece of writing in the game was littered with spelling mistakes I would have bullied people in pre school for. PS1 games from the 90s would be ashamed of how bad they fucked up, not even joking. I love drawing in my Skizzezzen Buch and being part of the Neuzugäng.
We probably took way longer than most people to reach the end because we had to pause every 5 minutes to just riff on what we were seeing. When it finally hit me that they called one of the central characters Maya Hindenburg, I actually got up and left the room. My brain couldn't handle it. That's like setting your game in the US and naming someone John Guantánamo, or calling a Japanese character Miyamoto Nagasaki. This must have been created by AI, no way this was approved by a real person in the year 2024. Anyway, if you're not convinced Silent Hill is dead, here's more evidence of its beaten and bloody corpse with Konami squeezing every last penny out with a fucking vice. Man, Silent Hill 2 Remake is going to be hilarious.
We probably took way longer than most people to reach the end because we had to pause every 5 minutes to just riff on what we were seeing. When it finally hit me that they called one of the central characters Maya Hindenburg, I actually got up and left the room. My brain couldn't handle it. That's like setting your game in the US and naming someone John Guantánamo, or calling a Japanese character Miyamoto Nagasaki. This must have been created by AI, no way this was approved by a real person in the year 2024. Anyway, if you're not convinced Silent Hill is dead, here's more evidence of its beaten and bloody corpse with Konami squeezing every last penny out with a fucking vice. Man, Silent Hill 2 Remake is going to be hilarious.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a flawed game. I was often frustrated with its combat and story pacing. It all too often confirmed my fears about the new direction RGG Studios wanted to take this series in. I can't exactly blame them for trying something so drastically different, as this was at the time the 8th main line Yakuza game. After all the trials and struggles of Kazuma Kiryu, it was definitly time to move on. And despite all the issues I had with Like a Dragon, they actually did the impossible once again and rose up to the challenge to deliver one of the best games I have ever played.
And it's all build on the shoulders of its new main character: Ichiban Kasuga. He is in many ways similar to the series main boy Kiryu. An orphan raised on the rough streets of Tokyo, getting taken in by an enigmatic father figure with deep ties to the Japanese underworld. And while they are so similar in upbringing and the morals they stand for, along with the color of their suits literary being inverted, RGG immediately shows you the difference between them all in their introduction. In the PS2 original and Kiwami, Kyrui's intro is quiet. We follow him as he makes understated treats for a money collection job, confident, professional. Ichiban is also introduced during a job collection Money for the Yakuza. Unlike Kyrui, he is not threatening, nor is he a professional as we see him desperately chase some low life through the streets of Kamurocho before throwing himself off a balcony screaming and flattening his target with a body slam. This is Ichiban Kasuga. He's loud, he's easily excitable and above all else: Fully dedicated to whatever job he's doing for the people he considers family. Ichiban won me over hard. Throughout all the stories funniest and also the darkest moments, and this story gets fucking dark, Ichiban is here to push you along with his borderline retarded optimism. The story came together incredibly satisfying, gave me chills on multiple occasions, and the ending almost broke me. Is the pacing all over the place ? Yes, sometimes I was tearing my hair out when it decided to move along at the pace of a melting Iceberg, but just like many games in this very series, the payoff is 100% worth it. Ichibans speech at the end especially was incredible and Kazuhiro Nakaya, his Japanese voice actor, deserves all the awards in the world for what I think is one of the best performances I have seen in basically anything. I absolutely don't want to spoil anything in case you haven't played it yet, so I'm just going to move on to the gameplay and fully recommend Yakuza Like a Dragon on the strengths of the story alone.
The gameplay was a mixed bag. I don't think they flawlessly managed to transition from action combat into a turn-based rpg. I would best describe it as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle because despite the many options you have with the new job system, it mostly comes down to choosing between three basics options. Either targeting single enemies, doing large AOI attacks or keeping on top of your parties health. Enemies only ever become a problem whenever they heavily out level you, and even that was only an issue during one particular boss fight where the game basically kicks your ass and tells you to fuck off. Go grind, you scrub. It was certainly appropriate considering who I was fighting, but it didn't make it any less annoying that the story basically was put on pause in order for me to grind in the game's boring as fuck dungeons. And that might be my biggest personal issue with Like a Dragon. The side content seems to have been a major priority during the development. Admittedly, it's the best and most fun side content, Yakuza has ever had. Every side story and mini-game you could think of his here. From an entire management sim, a full on Mario Kart clone and even the entire arcade version of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. It's all great and all, but be aware that you will basically be forced to do some of those side quests at some point in the story. As one of the many people who like to play Yakuza by mainlining the story and then slowly enjoying the side content in Premium Adventure, that certainly was a roadblock I had to overcome in order to have a fun.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon still was an incredible game for me, and I'm now fully onboard with whatever insanity Infinity Wealth looks to be. RGG Studios continues to be the GOAT in an industrie that decided to increasingly suck ass, and I can not recommend enough that you get into this incredible series. RGG I love you all but also fuck you for teaching me what a coin locker baby is. That scene will probably not leave me for a while, as well as the eyeball scene. That was just fucking gross, man.
And it's all build on the shoulders of its new main character: Ichiban Kasuga. He is in many ways similar to the series main boy Kiryu. An orphan raised on the rough streets of Tokyo, getting taken in by an enigmatic father figure with deep ties to the Japanese underworld. And while they are so similar in upbringing and the morals they stand for, along with the color of their suits literary being inverted, RGG immediately shows you the difference between them all in their introduction. In the PS2 original and Kiwami, Kyrui's intro is quiet. We follow him as he makes understated treats for a money collection job, confident, professional. Ichiban is also introduced during a job collection Money for the Yakuza. Unlike Kyrui, he is not threatening, nor is he a professional as we see him desperately chase some low life through the streets of Kamurocho before throwing himself off a balcony screaming and flattening his target with a body slam. This is Ichiban Kasuga. He's loud, he's easily excitable and above all else: Fully dedicated to whatever job he's doing for the people he considers family. Ichiban won me over hard. Throughout all the stories funniest and also the darkest moments, and this story gets fucking dark, Ichiban is here to push you along with his borderline retarded optimism. The story came together incredibly satisfying, gave me chills on multiple occasions, and the ending almost broke me. Is the pacing all over the place ? Yes, sometimes I was tearing my hair out when it decided to move along at the pace of a melting Iceberg, but just like many games in this very series, the payoff is 100% worth it. Ichibans speech at the end especially was incredible and Kazuhiro Nakaya, his Japanese voice actor, deserves all the awards in the world for what I think is one of the best performances I have seen in basically anything. I absolutely don't want to spoil anything in case you haven't played it yet, so I'm just going to move on to the gameplay and fully recommend Yakuza Like a Dragon on the strengths of the story alone.
The gameplay was a mixed bag. I don't think they flawlessly managed to transition from action combat into a turn-based rpg. I would best describe it as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle because despite the many options you have with the new job system, it mostly comes down to choosing between three basics options. Either targeting single enemies, doing large AOI attacks or keeping on top of your parties health. Enemies only ever become a problem whenever they heavily out level you, and even that was only an issue during one particular boss fight where the game basically kicks your ass and tells you to fuck off. Go grind, you scrub. It was certainly appropriate considering who I was fighting, but it didn't make it any less annoying that the story basically was put on pause in order for me to grind in the game's boring as fuck dungeons. And that might be my biggest personal issue with Like a Dragon. The side content seems to have been a major priority during the development. Admittedly, it's the best and most fun side content, Yakuza has ever had. Every side story and mini-game you could think of his here. From an entire management sim, a full on Mario Kart clone and even the entire arcade version of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. It's all great and all, but be aware that you will basically be forced to do some of those side quests at some point in the story. As one of the many people who like to play Yakuza by mainlining the story and then slowly enjoying the side content in Premium Adventure, that certainly was a roadblock I had to overcome in order to have a fun.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon still was an incredible game for me, and I'm now fully onboard with whatever insanity Infinity Wealth looks to be. RGG Studios continues to be the GOAT in an industrie that decided to increasingly suck ass, and I can not recommend enough that you get into this incredible series. RGG I love you all but also fuck you for teaching me what a coin locker baby is. That scene will probably not leave me for a while, as well as the eyeball scene. That was just fucking gross, man.
Yeah Yakuza Like a Dragon kinda started kicking my ass around the late game, so I felt like needed a little break. Lucky for me Siactro just released a free Bonus DLC to Super Kiwi 64. An awseome little DLC to an awseome little Game. Seriously, thank you Mr Siactro. This is exacly what I needed.