Quality superhero films may be the norm these days, but in hindsight it’s strange how little we’ve gotten in the way of narratively-equivalent video games. Sure, there’s the occasionally great movie tie-in(+), but outside of the Arkham and Spider-Man series, you could count on one hand the number of solid story-driven titles out there.

It’s a shame, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy reportedly underperformed as it’s the kind of game I felt the industry really needed with regards to the comic book genre, and what makes it particularly amazing is how it manages to craft its own path whilst still staying true to the characterizations of the eponymous film. See, compared to Batman and Spider-Man, where their numerous iterations have made audiences open to new versions, Guardians is different in that most people are liable to only knowing the characters from James Gunn’s flick, and so the writers at Eidos-Montréal had a tough task before them: how do we create our own version of the team that concurrently pays homage to the comics without alienating any cinephiles?

Well, I’m not sure what their thought process entailed, but the end result was taking the core personalities personified in the movie and combining it with an original backstory, namely one in which every Guardian was a veteran of a conflict known as the Galactic War. Each member played a different role during the war, and the way such information is divulged over the course of the game goes a long way towards distinguishing its cast from their cinematic interactions. Yes, Quill is still comedic, Drax a literalist, Rocket a loudmouth, etc…etc…, but their experiences have led to them developing varied demeanors towards society as a whole. Gamora, for example, seeks some form of redemption for her support of Thanos; Rocket & Groot are purely about surviving, and Drax hunts for honor over his inability to protect his clan.

Found familyhood was cited as a major inspiration behind the tale, and I can safely say the writers successfully accomplished this task via the sheer amount of dialogue they crafted for the game. Seriously, fans of the Mass Effect or Red Dead series may find themselves in awe at the innumerable conversations typed-up for every chapter; convos that go a long way towards establishing relationships, lore, scenarios, and general camaraderie. Hearing Drax repeatedly call Gamora an assassin, seeing everyone snicker at Quill’s attempts at self-aggrandizement, or catching Rocket’s reactions to Groot’s various statements truly render the Guardians as three-dimensional people who’ve had a lot of laughs & cries along the way. No matter their disagreements, there’s a basic-level of respect amongst each peer, and while you occasionally have the option to interject with a unique response, both choices ultimately contribute to that looming amity.

I’m not exaggerating when I say GOTG has a ton of impromptu chatter -- your main hub of a ship spouts the lion’s share of these, with characters either speaking to each other out of their own volition, or engaging in ones triggered by unique items found during missions. Both moulds give-off a big Mass Effect vibe, and I was constantly amazed whenever I discerned some new interaction, whether it be petty, dramatic, or (in most cases) downright amusing.

None of this is even taking into consideration the outside convos in which characters often shout unique battle cries or make special observations should you be standing in a specific place. One of the best things GOTG does is resolve TLOU Problem I’ve had with certain narrative-driven games wherein your hero is meant to progress forward in stark contrast to the gameplay encouraging dicking around; it breaks the game’s immersion to see your next objective or companion kindly wait on you as you do whatever it is you feel like doing. By having the other Guardians actually remark on Quill’s strays off the beaten path, it goes a long way towards maintaining GOTG’s atmosphere.

In some ways, all the dialogue can get a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who suffer from FOMO: there’s a solid chance you’ll unintentionally cut-off or outright miss at least 15 percent of the optional scripting here, and that’s just something you’ll have to contend with should you wish to play the game.

Of course, no one would’ve cared about these palavers had the voice acting not been good, and that’s thankfully not the case here. Guardians of the Galaxy is interesting in that it opted for an entirely unknown cast -- I consider myself pretty well-versed in the voice acting industry, and I honestly only recognized a single name here (Andreas Apergis, and even then that was mainly because of his recurrent roles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise). That said, their unknownness doesn’t impede the project in any way as they are all terrific, embodying their characters fully as they wander amidst a full spectrum of emotions. Like I noted with the script, there was a difficult balancing act required in terms of making sure these takes on the Guardians were both similar and dissimilar from their movie counterparts, and all the actors proficiently did-so whilst rendering their characters their own. All cards on the table, I actually preferred most of these takes over the celebrityhood of James Gunn’s enterprise: Jason Cavalier grants Drax far more tragic introspective depth than Bautista ever did; Alex Weiner removes that atrocious Gilbert Gottfried inflection Cooper gave his Rocket (RIP Gottfried, but I was not a fan); and even Robert Montcalm manages to provide Groot a more-variegated personality than the one Diesel was limited to.

Given the strong vocal bounce between the characters (Rocket & Groot standing out as the best), GOTG deserves further acclamation for its robust ADR direction. See, there’s a good chance the actors did not record their lines together, and so their ability to resound like they had good chemistry owes a lot of fealty to the narrative directors for providing the appropriate context for each delivery.

There were only two voices I had issues with, the first being Jon McLaren’s Star-Lord. This may come as a surprise given that Quill is the lead protagonist and only playable character, but I did not like the inherent stoner-esque gravel McLaren provided him. Don’t get me wrong, the performance is otherwise solid; however, more often than not, I found myself thinking of a Seth Green character over a Marvel superhero.

The second is Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez’s Mantis, though I don’t hold this against her as it’s evident the writers were going for this crazed NPC wrought with constant knowledge: the problem is, rather than do a Dr. Manhattan-type performance, they opted to portray her like Omi in that episode of Xiaolin Showdown where he gets infused with factoids from the Fountain of Hui (and yes, for the uninitiated, that’s a bad thing when done in spades).

Regardless, everyone’s performance was successfully transposed into the game via top-quality facial capture, rendering their squints and frowns through phenomenal animations. When you visibly see pain and happiness on your characters’ faces, it does a lot for the execution of the overarching story.

On that note, the narrative has its pros and cons. As I harped on earlier, the scribes do a phenomenal job developing the relationships between the Guardians: while this version of the team is already well-acquainted, it still takes place in the early part of their formation, meaning this is where you see them go from world-weary associates to the makeshift family we all know-and-love. In terms of the grand adventure you’re set out on (i.e., the campaign those interactions fall under), your mileage is going to vary. The entire game is full of heart, and there are some emotional moments that genuinely touched me to my core, but getting to those moments means engaging in standard superhero schlock wherein you’re charged with saving the universe from despair. Yes, other comic book games like Arkham Asylum and Shattered Dimensions indulged in similar premises, but I’d argue the difference is those titles were carried by their villains and a sense of mystery towards uncovering said villain’s plot. GOTG’s problem is that it’s upfront about its secrets from the get-go and, more importantly, lacks memorable antagonists: the main one, in particular, being a generic evil shroud akin to such classics as the Rising Darkness from Constantine, Galactus from Tim Story’s Fantastic 4, and Smallville’s version of Darkseid (yes, this is sarcasm). A couple of the secondary adversaries like Lady Hellbender fare a bit better, but, as they’re not a constant presence, this is a game you’ll largely be playing for the protagonists.

For the record, I had a good time with the story -- it’s well-told, has minimal pacing issues (save the end++), and would’ve worked well as an officially-published graphic novel. It’s just, post-completion, you won’t recall the majority of the chapters (the interactions within, yes, but not the events).

Thanks to James Gunn, the GOTG franchise is also permanently associated with comedy, and on that front the game works quite well. Whereas Gunn’s films were more about gags and one-liners, Eidos goes for a more situational style-of-humor wherein you’re witnessing how a coterie of charismatic individuals with sharp comportments would behave when placed in an enclosed dwelling. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud, but more-so chuckle humor: you’ll smile and giggle like a schoolgirl, yet rarely twist your stomach out from hooting, and I think the tactic works great. There are times when the game tries to mimic the Gunn route; however, those scenes fall very flat and are thankfully few-and-far between(+++).

Of course, Arkham and Spider-Man didn’t get popular solely from their narratives or witticism: they had phenomenal gameplay systems to back everything up, and on that note, Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty dang good. It’s interesting that I made the comparison to Mass Effect earlier as the similarities between the two even extend to combat: you control Quill while his comrades are AI-guided, each of whom can be called upon to use a special attack against a foe or foes. Quill himself is equipped with his fists, dual blasters (primed with elemental shots obtained during set story beats), and a batch of special moves ranging from electro mines to the iconic jet boots. Much like the original Mass Effect, ammo for every tool has been replaced with a cooldown period, and there is no cover: if you’re not on the run, you’re likely to get swamped quickly (similar to Control).

With the exception of the final slot (garnered through story progression), every Guardian’s super attack has to be unlocked by way of good old-fashioned experience points gathered from combat scenarios, lending the game a bit of a lite-RPG schematic. Supplementing this are a heap of 15 additional perks players can add to Quill’s stockpile via select work benches scattered throughout most chapters, the only catch being that you have to scavenge the requisite components in the world (akin to TLOU).

Overall, fighting is fun if a bit repetitive - not every Guardian attack is practical, and their icons (save the final one) weren’t distinguished enough to avoid confusion between the useful and the useless. It also suffers from being too easy for its own good due to a number of mechanisms present even on the hardest difficulty: the option to do a one-hit KO team combo(++++) once an enemy’s health has been whittled down enough; the Huddle -- a unique feature wherein Quill can pause the skirmish, call over his team, and give everyone (including himself) an attack boost/HP recovery; and a third one I’m going to avoid stating for fear of spoilers(+++++).

Besides brawling, you’ll be conducting basic exploration involving simple puzzles that solely come down to figuring out which Guardian to employ against which obstacle. It’s a shame more wasn’t (or wasn’t able to be) done as the novel abilities specific to each alien could’ve led to some really cool environmental enigmas. In fact, part of me wonders if that was the original plan as there’s an immersive sim aspect here in the form of Quill being able to leap around and ascend most structures, only for it to not lead anywhere.

That said, the minimal scavenging didn’t bother me too much in light of how gorgeous everything is. This is one of those titles where you can tell no expense was spared, and that probably had to do with Square and Eidos’s well-intentioned belief that the GOTG IP was fertile enough for mass profit.

Well, we’ll talk about the reasons why the game faltered later, but for now, let’s at least appreciate the sheer production value on display. Guardians is interesting in that it occupies that same Jim Lee aesthetic Arkham Asylum imbibed apropos to toeing the line between photorealism and comic book poppiness (i.e., the game is liable to aging better than some of its eighth gen brethren). When it comes to the graphics, their beauty originates from three major areas: clothing, character modeling, and texture streaming.

With the first, GOTG arguably has the greatest textile work I have ever seen in a video game -- courtesy of the camera mode, I was able to zoom-in on various suits, and not a single one was shortchanged as far as detail or composition. From the individual stitches on Star-Lord’s jacket to the wear-and-tear knee creases of security guard latex to the overlapping of plate metal & linen on Gamora’s byrnie, there were so many wonderful subtleties in the wardrobe department that to list them all would drag this review out by several pages.

That same effort was continued over into the modeling, where humans and aliens alike boast pores, wrinkles, and follicles upon closer inspection. Ironically, though, it’s Groot and Rocket who deserve the most acclaim if only for the virtuosity of their respective hides: being able to glean splintered bark and singular bristles of fur on each member’s skin respectively was absolutely mind-blowing when you consider just how much easier it would’ve been to draw a single layer (what TellTale did back in 2017).

Environments maintain this quality by matching the diversity with appropriate texturization. Eidos leaned heavily on the comics and their imagination when devising the areas to throw players into, and while some of them are admittedly a bit standard (the red deserts of Lamentis; the frostbitten scape of Maklua IV), the majority do take you to some pretty sweet locales ripe with filled-in gubbins and walling. The golden-lacquered Sacrosanct and magenta-strewn matter of the Quarantine Zone are predisposed to being fan favorites, but for my own tea I personally adored the cyberpunk vibes of Knowhere where sleaze, soft lighting, neon signs, and lite-smog blended together into an evocative site.

My last major bastion of praise goes towards the personalization facets, and not in the usual sense of the term. In the past, I’ve praised devs for crafting unique spaces you could tell were tenanted by a standalone persona -- what GOTG has done is take that template and extrapolate it for the mainline species here. Heading into a Kree ship, for instance, gifts you a shelf of books with Kree rune titles, clean pipes with the Nova Corp insignia, and a general sense of orderliness. Compare this to Lady Hellbender’s gladiatorial planet, chockful of broken glass, spilled beer, and cobbled food. As you explore alien terrain, you really get a sense of prior lives and civilizations that mysteriously vanished over the course of evolution, leaving behind such remnants as hulking monoliths, structures, and carvings. It’s all superbly done.

Other miscellaneous graphical feats include unique lunge animations for each Guardian when jumping gaps, cold air breaths in subzero climates, natural finger movements when rotating examinable objects, Quill putting his hands up when approaching fiery pits, reflective surfaces from puddles, gold tiling, and tiny mirrors; the pose algorithm during 1-on-1 counsels being very organic (compared to Valhalla’s constant arm-crossing), character subtitle names boasting different colors, how Quill turns his head towards the current speaker, and, most vivid of all, the entirety of Kosmo -- this is a psychic dog you’ll infrequently run into during the course of the game, and I have to imagine someone at Eidos either grew up with golden retrievers or put mo-cap dots around a real one as, as any dog owner will tell you, everything about his canine behavior was pitch perfect: the constantly darting stare, twirling of his tale, twitching of his eyebrows, the effervescent panting -- for all his ESP, he may ironically go down as the most accurate dog in video game history.

I did have some complaints, but they concerned relatively minor stuff like the lack of footprints on powdery exteriors, Groots root bridges clipping the ground, and Quill occasionally acting jittery during dialogues.

SFX, unfortunately, was the sole area undercompensated by the devs in that it’s inconsistent to a trained ear. For starters, not much went in the way of footstep differentiation, with ice & metallic platforms, and beds & tile floors bearing the same din as their paired twin. There were times where I’d hear the crunch of snow pellets on surfaces they were minimally scattered on, while the bulk of each Guardian’s abilities (save Quill’s) were sonorously indistinguishable. Effort did go into individuating every team member’s movements, and jumps did come programmed with that distinctiveness I sought; however, it was otherwise rather basic for a game of this caliber. Don’t get me wrong, nothing’s distracting, you just won’t be immersed in any planet’s auralscape.

Finally, the OST by Richard Jacques (which, by the way, was much harder to find than it should have been courtesy of Eidos opting to promote the licensed mixtape instead) is solid, if a little derivative. Let me explain so I don’t come off as pretentious or condescending: ever since Alan Silvestri pioneered that massive symphonic sound in The Avengers, a lot of Marvel-based composers have incorporated aspects of that into their scores. It’s certainly a wise decision with regards to maintaining a familiarity to audiences, but it does come at the cost of that uniqueness we used to get in superhero music pre-Avengers. As a result, you’ll hear a lot of recognizable motifs despite the soundtrack being its own set of arrangements -- I’m talking electric guitar riffs, Greek-inspired choral harmonies, pounding brass, and crescendos galore. Thankfully, Jacques does give us one of the best comic book themes to come out in a while; however, in respect to the rest of his compositions, they’re good at the expense of not rising to that same level of memorability.

Per my earlier remark, Eidos spent a lot of money licensing popular 80s hits that you can either manually play on the ship or randomly hear during those aforestated Huddles. I know there have been, and will be, a lot of people who enjoy the substance, but part of me wonders whether or not it was a good idea. As I keep harping on, GOTG was clearly an expensive game to make, and considering how little you’ll hear the music (being off-ship/infrequently using Huddles), it begs the question of how much money could’ve been saved instead by hiring a band to create 80s-inspired tunes.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have helped much considering most critics blame the poor reception of the Avengers game for GOTG’s financial disappointment. It’s a tragically valid connection, and combined with the game not releasing adjacent to any of the mainline movies, it sadly wasn’t able to stand on its own. Zack Snyder got a lot of sh!t for his flavor of the week comment years ago, but the fact of the matter is he was right to an extent: certain characters only achieved profitability because they were specific versions crafted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of that ecosystem, it was always going to be a struggle for any hero not named Batman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine to succeed.

It’s been almost three years since GOTG released, and with no signs of a sequel, we have to accept the game for the unique specimen it was. It’s rare we get superhero games of this quality, and will be even rarer as the MCU goes through a post-Bubble period, but let it be known that, for all my complaints, this was an exquisite product well-worth your money.



NOTES
-Before addressing anything else, I should mention that there is a choice system in the game, but it’s more akin to the first Witcher or Deus Ex wherein it impacts the flow of events rather than causing multiple endings. When it involved hard gameplay, I was fine with it; however, there was an instance in one of the story climaxes where it ruined the moment (you’ll know it when you see it).

+Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, and, heck, I actually liked the Iron Man one.

++Without spoiling, basically it indulges in the cliche fake-out tactic that’s been overdone by this point. You don’t even get a proper end boss, though not that it would’ve mattered as the boss fights here are mediocre: not Arkham Asylum bad, but arguably lower than Insomniac’s first Spider-Man.

+++The worst involves a scene where Quill has to do improvised karaoke (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it).

++++The finishers themselves aren’t that exciting, being a series of hard cuts of each Guardian doing an attack on the target. A little strange considering standard melee combos often result in your Alien brethren actually conducting a coordinated strike alongside Quill.

+++++All I’ll say is it involves Groot’s final unlockable power, its essence simultaneously diminishing a certain “emotional” story beat.

-Similar to Metroid Prime, Quill’s visor enables him to examine enemies and environs for pieces of supplemental data, but the game unfortunately doesn’t pause background conversations for the latter, meaning you’re forced to read them quickly lest you get interrupted.

-The writers created their own profanity for the characters to gleefully indulge in.

-Why does Mantis have Hela’s garb?

-Tell me Gamora’s VA doesn’t sound like Leela from Futurama?

-There’s a glowing red digital billboard in Knowhere that displays ads for a McDonald’s rip-off. I bring this up because I actually saw a similar hoarding in Shinjuku albeit for a Wendy’s, making me wonder if it was inspired by that?

Should I even write a review? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk will take you, at best 20 minutes to complete, meaning anything I say will inherently emit spoilers.

As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.

The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.

There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.

No spoilers discussed from a narrative perspective; however, I do speak extensively on the gameplay and dungeons, which may be seen as spoilerish for people who wish to go into things completely carte blanche. As such, for those of you who do, avoid reading: the tl;dr is I don’t recommend playing ALTTP without a guide

Beaten on the SNES Classic

I did not want to give this game a mixed review. In fact, when I first booted up A Link to the Past, it genuinely enthralled me, the pixel art and 4:3 display bringing back memories of a childhood long forgotten; where the stresses of adulthood were as far away as the skies of Hyrule and fields of Arcadia. There’s always been something about the Super Nintendo that’s rung a deep chord within me, and I was consequently eager to re-indulge in nostalgia for the next 15 hours or so.

Alas, that was not to be. ALTTP starts off on a great note, yet a severe flaw of the era rears its ugly head again-and-again, degrading the experience no matter how often you try and address it: deliberate vagueness for the sake of artificial elongation. Picture this -- you’ve tolled extensively through a dungeon, dodging hazardous obstacles, slaying countless enemies, even dying a few times, but all that doesn’t matter as you’ve finally made it to the end boss, only….something’s off. Your attacks aren’t working, and you’re confident you’re employing every trick in the book….

Or, let’s not even go that far- say you’ve spent almost an hour meandering towards one of the new dungeons on your map, stressing about finding the right entrance, the right pathway, all whilst evading your usual hodgepodge of critters and traps, only….you can’t get in. Or you can get in, and you can’t progress past the first room for reasons you’re unsure of.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call obsolete game design: when a game expects you to have meandered aimlessly in its world for the sake of finding that ONE hint or ONE item placed elsewhere that can circumvent a major hindrance of a dungeon down-the-line. While Fourth Generation titles were significantly better in this department than their forebears, you still had a number of releases, particularly in the RPG genre, that indulged in such hapless tactics for the sake of offsetting early-return losses.

Of course, ALTTP is not a pure RPG; however, it borrows enough here to the point where it shares those same criticisms as a Lufia I or a Castlevania 2: where you NEED to talk to a number of random villagers or scour the far reaches of the map(s) for the sake of progression. Fail to do that, and you’ll stumble into the same pitfalls I encountered above.

And look, I get it. Games back in the day, particularly Nintendo titles, were built on in-person cooperation and guide book procurement: heck, Nintendo Power explicitly published hints in its monthly catalog as a way of enticing more young’uns to subscribe. But in this day-and-age, such capitalistic feedback loops are nonexistent, and games are expected to be solvable without extensive manuals, a minimum standard ALTTP simply fails to live up to. And what makes this particularly irksome is that it literally doesn’t start off like this. For the first section, you can cruise along and complete the trifecta of introductory strongholds at your own pace in whatever order you want without worrying if you missed X trinket at Y location. Then the Dark World springs up and you’re granted access to 8 additional dungeons that can seemingly be completed in any order; a revolutionary feat for the time that probably inspired similar “open door” moments in later games.

EXCEPT, it’s a partial lie. The final four dungeons (Ice Palace, Misery Mire, Turtle Rock, Ganon’s Tower) all require you to have acquired a certain tool beforehand lest you get stuck either at the entryway or, worse case scenario, boss fight following an extended period of drudging.

You may be thinking, well Red, given that the dungeons are numbered on-screen sequentially, wouldn’t it make sense for the closing four’s secrets to be locked behind keys gleaned anteriorly? To which I would say yes if said keys were provided to you in a linear fashion. The problem is, all but one of those items (ranging from medallions to weapons), are not dungeon drops- they’re literally random loot hidden in specialized locations you have to go out of your way to find, and the only way you’re going to find them is through either talking to every random joe you see for a clue, shelling out rupees to the town fortune teller, or good old-fashioned hapless exploring. And hey listen, I definitely understand how all of this forced reconnaissance could’ve been enjoyable to a young person growing up in the 90s without similar console titles for comparison; but nowadays, it feels restrictive and tedious to have to meander elsewhere when you just want to complete the next fortress.

The pseudo-free roam nature of ALTTP also bothered me in a couple of respects. One, much like the Tomb Raider reboot and Metro 2033, it gets under my skin whenever a game lies about being wanderable: launching the Dark World map for the first time, you’re left with the impression that you can tackle any of these objectives in whatever order you wish, yet that’s immediately unveiled as a lie blatantly intended to waste your time running to locales you’re unable to enter. And two, there were so many small ways the developers could’ve alleviated said time-wasting: make the fast-travel bird system mandatorily accessible from the get-go; have an option to purchase charts or info to mark out secrets on the map (or prerender them entirely ala Metroid Prime); allow Link to transport between worlds without having to recharge the Magic Mirror; or incorporate better interconnection from area to area (seriously, it angers me how your sole option for traversal are these narrow roadways tucked inside each dimension -- I get they maybe wanted to limit how far players could travel initially, but considering they either way softlock places, it felt annoyingly redundant).

It’s a shame you run into these qualms because the vast majority of the dungeons are superb and really fun; the only ones I would say I was not a big fan of were Skull Woods, Gargoyle's Domain, and Ice Palace due to either an influx of unbeatable enemies/obstacles (more on that later) or extensive backtracking. This same praise extends to the bosses as well -- yes, like most SNES games, their brawls come down to a Phase 1 and slightly stronger Phase 2, but the bulk of them necessitate some level of strategy and, above all else, they’re grotesquely fascinating to stare at. If there’s one thing we can all agree on about ALTTP, it’s that its graphical design is top notch.

I know there’s been some controversy regarding Link’s pink hair, but putting that aside, the mute boy and his world have never looked better in 2D. As I mentioned before, the SNES capitalized on pixel art craftsmanship, and ALTTP is certainly one of the best depictions of this visual philosophy. Unique NPC figures have been developed for the two worlds, and thanks to some extraordinarily-talented artisans, they never feel like reskins of the other. Whereas the Light World is a plane dominated by humans, in the Dark World you get a sense it’s the opposite, with humans explicitly a minority amongst the roaming monstrosities everywhere: cyclopean bomb throwers, carnivorous vegetation, chimeric bodyguards, clawed wraiths etc… Yeah you get some uninspired variants like discolored turtles, mummies, and literal globs, but they don’t take away from their more-fascinating compatriots (a noteworthy trait given the SNES’s aptitude for creature feature extravaganza). I was also intrigued by the use of 3D geometry (the Princess capsules and TriForce assemblage), which never felt at odds with the in-game engine. The only critique I have is the lack of vivid differentials between the two realms: swapping from one to the other feels less like a dimensional rift and more like a seasonal change, the Dark World cloaked in muddied tints.

SFX was never elaborate in the SNES days, but ALTTP is pretty bare bones even by those standards. Compared to Donkey Kong Country, for example, there are only two wound cries (if you can call them that) for EVERY breed of enemy, with bosses somehow having it even worse. This lack of diversity extends to the OST, which inexcusably features 45 minutes(+) worth of music for the 10+ hours you’ll be playing. Because of this, you’ll be hearing A LOT of repetition, and while I like the Zelda theme as much as anybody, it, in particular, becomes GRATING to listen to given its usage as the Light World motif (as soon as those trumpets started to restate Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal-style, I wanted to shut off the TV). The Dark World’s version fares a lot better on the ears, but even still most locales simply don’t have anything unique: towns are nonexistent, there are only two dungeon tracks in the entire record, bosses (save Ganon) share a single leitmotif, and even the unique tunes tend to be a single chorus looped twice/thrice. Nintendo and Koji Kondo really dropped the ball here.

That said, there is some unique sound editing in the game that deserves to be highlighted. For starters, whenever you enter interiors, the overworld medley goes soft; secondly, inside of cave-like locations, Link’s dins gain an echoey effect; and thirdly, each of Link’s tools are granted a nice distinct rattle (a wise decision considering the amount of times you’ll be utilizing them during your journey).

There isn’t too much to say about the gameplay other than that there’s a ton of sword swiping and puzzle-solving, the latter usually simple and never falling into nonsense territory. Combat, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired, namely because of two big reasons: one, this game desperately needed a joystick as turning to reorient Link for a new slash can get vexing, due to the absence of diagonal movement and the jumpiness of later thugs; and two, I felt there were issues with the hit detection, particularly when an enemy was getting out of the recovery phase of an initial strike -- it’s not Secret of Mana-level bad, but it does prop up every now and then.

Worse, still, are the sheer number of unbeatable enemies Nintendo programmed for the sake of concocting barriers, a game design aspect that’s never made sense to me from a lore perspective: if bosses are meant to be the strongest foes, why can they be hurt whilst their underlings remain scratchless? But, putting that aside, ALTTP has one too many of these entities, and they become particularly irritating when placed alongside stationary threats like spiked columns or rebounding shields. I’m talking: bouncing diamondheads, firestreams, rotating laser eye projectors, wall-mounted laser eye projectors, little charmander things, water bubbles, etc….I could go on. While I understand they were just trying to craft unique challenges, it got to a point where it became ridiculous to encounter all these entities that not only served the same purpose, but were somehow stronger than Ganon.

In the end, ALTTP lives and dies by its dungeons, which would’ve been perfectly fine had they not been affected by the game’s other flaws. It does a lot right, and I’m happy it made a large impression on so many people back in the day, but by contemporary standards it’s frustrating- I didn’t even go into the difficulty and poor save spots, which send you back to the very beginning of a Dungeon (thank the Lord for the SNES Classic’s Suspend Points).

If you do play it, I implore you to utilize a guide; otherwise, you’ll be wasting a lot of time (like I did).


NOTES
+The 45 minute total is being generous as a chunk of those tracks, like the main menu and fairy pools themes, have the same copy/pasted harmony. Not to mention the official release comes with an ugly unused ting that was luckily removed in the final product.

-There is a story with a surprising amount of text dedicated to it, but it essentially comes down to the standard good/evil plot of yesteryear (in fact, there are times where it gets silly, like the beginning with Link’s Uncle - you’ll know it when you see it).

-Didn't even get around to talking about the respawning enemies, which get annoying, and the inane control scheme (I will never understand why Nintendo made the select button your weapon menu instead of the map- it's something I never got used to).

-Turtle Rock is full of homages to the Super Mario games: you’ve got lava pits, warp pipe-esque tubes, discount Pokeys, and even two freakin chain chomps!

-Don’t know why it’s called A Link to the Past when you’re traveling between alternate realities. A better title would’ve been A Link Between Worlds….

Played as part of the God of War Collection on PS3

ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.

Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations

Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.

As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.

Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.

Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.

Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.

There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).

Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.

By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.

Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.

If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.

Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.

The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.

Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.

SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.

For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).

Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).


NOTES

-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).

-No subtitles

-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).

-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.

+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.

++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.

+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.

++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.

Note - this review is largely based off recollections from years back over a fresh playthrough, and while some footage was rewatched on YouTube, ultimately take the rating with a grain of salt


Her Story is a game I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, largely cause of two big reasons. One, it was the first Steam game I ever completed, meaning it intrinsically holds a special place in my heart; and two, to this day, it remains one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had in gaming: a pristine example of how to combine past and present models into an invigorating forte.

See, much like Papers, Please, Her Story is built around a basic gameplay loop that slowly engrosses you the longer you stay with it. You star as an unnamed tabula rasa tasked with uncovering the reason why some random lady murdered her husband, your method for doing so being a sultry of chopped-up interviews assembled on a terminal called the Logic Database. The Logic Database operates very simply- type in keywords to spawn a set of videos that extensively used or featured said keyword. The catch? The clips are out-of-order, meaning you’re going to have to personally parse, arrange, and deduce each one’s placement in order to solve the mystery.

Her Story was built by Sam Barlow, who reportedly developed it out of frustration towards standard detective games like LA Noire and Ace Attorney. Barlow’s criticisms were that, in those titles, players were often relegated to going through the motions over conducting actual sleuthwork, an analysis I am pretty sympathetic to given the replicatory blueprint seen in such ventures as the Arkham series or Assassin’s Creed: you know, those missions where you just walk around an enclosed area trying to find that one conveniently-highlighted clue for the main character to pin together.

In Her Story, there’s no such monologuing - your protagonist is completely silent, leaving it up to you to determine what transpired + the motivations behind said transpirations. And for the majority of players (including myself), that’ll entail putting pen-to-paper in order to actively write out your thoughts, theories, and observations. By the end of my journey I recalled having around two pages worth of notes, and though that quantity is bound to vary depending on each person, it does exemplify the kind of investigatory framework Her Story is going for.

Don’t worry, it’s not all manual labor as the Logic Database does provide some tools to aid you in your sleuthing: personalized tags can be added to videos for later recovery, specific quotes can be outright searched, and, best of all, individual reels can be arranged at the bottom to construct a proxy-timeline. These additions may seem small, but when you’re sifting through hours-upon-hours of content, they go a long way towards making the experience palatable: like you’re actually assembling one of those spiderweb billboards oft seen on crime TV.

Outside of the Windows 2000-esque interface, there isn’t much to say about the graphics. Occasionally a sodium bulb will flicker in the back, revealing the feminine visage of your MC, but otherwise this is a title heavily reliant on its full-motion videos. And on that note, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Her Story would never have worked were it not for Viva Seifert’s performance as the interviewee. Going by Hannah Smith, this is a woman who’s clearly been through some trauma, yet has opted to funnel said trauma into a persona of lies: rarely can you tell if she’s stating the complete truth; however, at the same time, you can’t help but believe many aspects of her tale. Throughout the ordeal, she’ll make you laugh, piss you off, and even shed some waterworks, all while compelling you with an increasingly-deep story about human tragedy. It’s a wonderfully-complex performance, on par with the best of guest stars from police procedurals, and the fact that Seifert didn’t come from an extensive acting background speaks highly of her talent.

There’s no other extensive audio: music is relegated to a single track played on repeat when you’re not watching footage, while SFX is your standard Dotcom Bubble dins. Perhaps hearing the police officer’s questions might’ve made for a worthwhile change, but as a whole, I can’t deny the minimalist set-up does a sufficient job immersing you in Hannah’s world, an aspect you’ll want to embrace should you wish to partake in Her Story’s journey.

And yes, regardless of your thoughts on the FMV genre, I firmly endorse playing this game. You’ll no doubt hear some j#ckasses online claim it’s not a “true” video game, but for the majority of you out there who are more open-minded, I promise you’ll find the experience invigorating.

For my reviews of Control’s two DLC, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311823/ and https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311826/

Control may be the closest we’ll ever get to a Superman game, and I promise I’m not kidding. Set in an SCP-esque universe, you control Jesse Faden, a young lady gifted with powers akin to the Man of Steel. She’s looking for her brother Dylan who, years ago, was forcibly taken by the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) to a facility called the Oldest House; and now that she’s arrived there, it’s ready to enact its plans for her. What are they and what secrets does Jesse discover? That’s for you to find out should you play the game, a recommendation I gladly give though with some major reservations, the largest being the story.

See, I made the comparison to SCP for a couple of reasons: one, Remedy themselves outright stated it was an influence; and two, this is a game similarly-reliant on optional material. For those unaware, the SCP Foundation’s mythology is built upon thousands upon thousands of articles detailing paranormal instances across the globe, and while Control doesn’t have anywhere near as much lore, you genuinely will not understand the scope of Jesse’s brave new world unless you read/watch/listen to the numerous pieces of media about you. Explanations about locations, enemies, backstories, the FBC’s hierarchy; why Jesse was chosen as the new Director, how she got her powers, the uniqueness of her gun, etc….Sure, playing the base game will net you a thin enough web of understanding, but unless you’re engaging in those extended convos with your colleagues or tracking down extra database entries, you’re going to be missing out on a significant portion of the narrative, and I just don’t know if this was a good storytelling method. People play video games for the sake of, you know, playing video games, not to read/listen to a book/audiobook, and though Control has great gameplay (more on that later), it’s ultimately a story-driven game. To handicap that aspect for players who didn’t feel like digesting every article they found is a sign of either shortsighted direction or accidentally-obtuse design.

Regardless, speaking as someone who DID engage with 90% of the supplements they spotted, I can tell you their quality is hit-or-miss. The SCP-type articles, for example, are superbly written, featuring the kind of handcrafted mysteries which genuinely expand upon Control’s mythos in an organic manner. The Hotline calls to Jesse’s predecessor, the late Director Trench, on the other hand, are absolutely lazy, chock-full of rehashed B-roll and monologues that drag on for up to two minutes on end (and whose only intent seems to have been to give James McCaffrey (RIP) a SAG-protected paycheck).

Mixed are these live action clips starring Matthew Porretta with the most punchable face in a Remedy game since Max Payne’s original visage. They do their job as far as divulging vital info, but the whole Bill Nye-parody wore out its welcome very quickly.

There are several other sources you’ll come across in your journey, from interview tapes to office notes to even puppet shows with atrocious voice-acting, and while Remedy certainly deserves credit for diversifying their output ala Between the Lions, they all still come down to the core problem of being exposition dumps for the sake of exposition dumps. If Half-Life was an example of a title being too reliant on environmental storytelling, Control is the opposite, and that’s just going to rub some people the wrong way.

That aside, even having ingested the majority of the backbone, I can’t say Control has a particularly strong tale, largely because of two big problems: one, Jesse’s character occupies an inconsistent niche; and two, the game, as a whole, feels very anticlimactic.

Regarding the former, Jesse enters the FBC in a weird capacity -- she knows something is off courtesy of events from her past, yet simultaneously doesn’t know the extent of this hidden society, placing her in a strange position wherein she’s both aware and unaware of such goings-ons. This was clearly done to differentiate her from the fish-out-of-water archetype Alan Wake occupied in his respective game, but the problem is the developers didn’t know how to frame her attitudes against that of the player. What I mean is, when you’re controlling a veteran, their reactions expand upon the world; when you’re controlling a newbie, their reactions mimic your own. With Jesse, though, Remedy opted for this bizarre in-between wherein she’ll internally note how things are beyond the realm of normality, yet maintain this attitude of complicity. It’s admittedly hard to describe, and you’re better off experiencing the game yourself to understand what I’m saying, but the end result is it turns her into a slightly-unsettling individual. Now, some of you may be thinking well Red, what about the numerous science fantasy worlds out there whose heroes likewise don’t express any surprise at their surroundings? The difference is those titles deliver most of their mythology to you in spades, an aspect that, as stated before, Control relegates to digitized stationary.

This polymorphization of heavy optional lore and semi-oblivious protagonist culminates in a world that just doesn’t feel lived-in. The Oldest House and its shifting corridors may be a technical enigma, but not once did I ever feel immersed in its shaky abode, and a good chunk of that is owed to Jesse’s complacency as a person -- after all, if the main character doesn’t care for all the Men in Black-style reveals, why should I? Because of this, Jesse’s arc of embracing her role as Director of the FBC comes across as very half-baked, her lack of explicit consideration for the directorship’s pros-and-cons being the perfect example why her arc is underwhelming. If that weren’t enough, the primary plot of fixing the Oldest House and rescuing Jesse’s brother is incredibly mundane: there’s no real build-up to the climax, the final set-piece is lame, and the truth behind events-past is gleaned very easily (ruining any surprises beforehand).

It brings me no joy to criticize these things because Control is a game that clearly had so much love and effort put into its world; however, the reality is all that love was for naught as the worldbuilding is just not executed in a natural-enough manner. Combined with the bathetic main story, and the end result leaves a lot to be desired.

Still, I assume the lion’s share of buyers out there will be seeking out Control for its gameplay, a facet I can’t quite talk about yet without first addressing the graphics. You see, Control is a unique enterprise, its fidelity resting on a destructible environmental schema fans of The Force Unleashed may find nostalgia from. Remedy’s artisans have done a phenomenal job crafting a system wherein the majority of obstacles & objects within are rendered collapsable, either from adjacent shooting or Jesse’s psychic energy, and while the transitory animations weren’t quite at the smoothness level they needed to be, it’s a feat I never thought we’d see in an open world game given the dedication and sheer engineering required for such a craft.

Yet it’s been done here, and not only has it been done here, it’s been done very well here: glass walls, plywood paneling, computer terminals, clock faces, water coolers, paper piles, stone columns, TP rolls, chair fibers; the crack of the ground as you land with G-Force; the shattering of frames as you bolt through an enclosed window -- all exhibit the kind of response you’d expect from such objects getting hit with a strong enough pulse (shards, splinters, sparks, fragments, floods, confetti, pebbles, scraps, plastic strips). Minus the paper piles looking like polygons out of FEAR (and miraculously evaporating in thin air), it’s an incredible accomplishment, and one that makes Control stand above its generational compatriots.

The rest of the game holds up just as well, with Remedy programming those small details I’ve come to love in AAA/indie gaming alike -- I’m talking reflections off of glossy saran wrap, film projectors continuing to play their picture across surfaces even as you telekinetically manipulate their orientation, light reflections within eyeballs during convos, etc…etc….

In terms of the character modeling, things are a little bit more mixed. To clarify, everyone looks great, but I couldn’t help feeling some detail was deliberately shedded whenever the camera exited close-ups as, in the midst of said close-ups, you could literally make out skin pores and eyebrow strands on Jesse and co.’s faces. When the camera pulls back, however, such tissue is rendered much more translucent, a strange occurrence considering Photo Mode reveals no detail to have been technically lost.

However, my bigger issues lay with some macro aesthetic principles Remedy evidently followed. For starters, Control can get excessively dim at times, predominantly in the cavernous areas, to the point where I had to manually upscale the brightness to find the correct paths (which is saying something considering Alan Wake had no such issues despite taking place almost entirely at night). Secondly, as much as I liked the consistency of the Oldest House (every wing, no matter how radically-varied, visually resembles its architectural-brethren), there was a severe lack of personalization in the minute details. A lot of the office spaces, for example, are mimicked floor-after-floor, exhibiting the same plaques, memos, and paraphernalia. No, this doesn’t apply to the dedicated NPC chambers (like the Director’s quarters), and yes I get that this could’ve been a commentary on the monotony of corporate culture; but still, to not even throw in a bobblehead or family photo out there felt like a missed opportunity.

But these are slim pickings in the long run, and the reality is the majority of players won’t focus on them amidst the urbicidal carnage of the gameplay…which brings me to the gameplay. See, Control is a third-person shooter with psychokinetic elements, meaning Jesse isn’t just trading fire, but utilizing her various abilities to dispatch scores of enemies sent her way; and as you can probably surmise from everything I said before, it’s no secret which part of the combat led to the Superman comparisons. I won’t list all of Jesse’s abilities to preserve some of the surprises for you guys, but know that, as long as you’re keeping yourself upgraded, it’s pretty rare to enter a scenario wherein you don’t feel as powerful as the Big Blue Boyscout.

That’s not to say the gunslinging is mediocre- far from it, what you’ve got is a frenzied shoot ‘em up bolstered by slick auto-aim and an armament reminiscent of the Lawgiver from Dredd (for the uninitiated, it’s capable of swapping into multiple models contingent on your personal preference). Tearing a boulder out of the ground and following up its collision with a hailstorm of bullets never gets old, and I was impressed by the realistic damage calculation done by the Northlight Engine (i.e., the mass of the flung item + the wind-up time + any impeding barriers = output).

To counterbalance Jesse’s onslaught, you’ll often be against tens of wraiths at a time, sets of them divided into special classes ripe with their own unique offensive/defensive schemes you’ll need to adapt to in the midst of battles. It’s a genuinely fun time, namely due to the smooth integration of the abilities synchronizing well with Remedy’s attempts at discouraging cover shooting (unless you’re actively trying to cheese the game, you’ll find most cover crumbles and a surge of explosive munitions thrown your way). No matter the diminishments in difficulty, I always had a blast getting into random skirmishes throughout the Oldest House.

There are only four major drawbacks to the whole enterprise: first, the omnipresent qualm of respawning enemies, which concurrently hamper exploration whilst giving players easy caches for farming exp; second, boss fights, the preponderance of which were less specialized encounters and more bulletsponge rehashings of existing enemy archetypes; thirdly, the game relies on respawn points, some of which can get very frustrating courtesy of them not being near where your objective/death resides/occurs. And fourthly, the fact that new abilities are tied to completing side missions over learning them during the main campaign.

In terms of whether that side content is good, your mileage will definitely vary -- a few standout, involving Jesse investigating malicious items the FBC was studying under lock-up, but a large number embody repetitive extermination tasks (some of the aforementioned Altered Items also not living up to their potential as far as in-depth scenarios).

You’ve probably heard about Control indulging in the Metroidvania genre, and on that front it doesn’t do anything particularly exciting. If anything, the game is more reminiscent of Alien: Isolation or Arkham Asylum wherein returning to prior areas with new skills is less about digging up new secrets and more about progressing forward in the story. Yes, there are discretionary rooms you can access later, but the thing is they often only contain generic upgrade components over specialized goodies, handicapping their enticement as far as being worth pursuing. And it’s kind of a shame because Jesse’s various skills, placed in conjunction with these bland quarters, could’ve been directed towards some unique environmental puzzle-solving under the Metroidvania format, yet the most you’ll get are shoving giant batteries into slots ala Dead Space-style.

SFX, on the other hand, is pretty solid, rarely doing anything exceptional but always underpinning your actions in a veritable manner (one zoom-whoosh din, in particular, became a classic melody for me whenever I battered enemies with telekinetic projectiles!). Unfortunately, it’s slightly counterbalanced by a major defect in the sound editing, that defect entailing the foleying for metallic simulacra. I’m not sure what kind of material they use in Finland, but I’m not lying when I tell you guys every single steel-based accessory and trinket in Control literally sounded like glass bottles falling off a shelf. Again, perhaps the manufacturing is just different in Finland, but with my American background, hearing alloyed rods or drawers clatter like stemware from a high-class bar was a bit immersive-breaking.

Voice acting is more uniform than past Remedy games, with Courtney Hope doing a phenomenal job as our Leading Lady. I’m not sure if Control’s tight shots were filmed under a mocap lens or conceived via algorithms influenced by the actor’s performance, but I like to believe it was the former given the numerous tics Jesse does that perfectly encapsulate what someone ailing from anxiety/trauma/OCD would exhibit: the shifting eye contact, twitching jawline, and forced confidence pitches underscoring a terrifically-accurate visage. If Hope’s fellow castmates had stumbled in their parts, her stagecraft would’ve been more than enough to carry the game.

Luckily, that didn’t need to happen. For all my complaints about his mug, Poretta does a better job here with the multifaceted Casper Darling than he ever did as Wake, depicting that shift from idealistic bliss to hopeless turmoil pretty well.

Martti Suosalo won the inaugural Supporting Performer BAFTA for his role as Ahti the Janitor, and you’ll be scratching your head as to why after beating the game. It’s not that he’s bad, but more-so that he’s barely in it, his limited screen time (even with all the side content) failing to leave a lasting impression.

Antonia Bernath, Ronan Summers, Helen Marshall, Charlotte Randall, and Derek Hagen round out the remaining major players of the story, and though minimally-present, all successfully convey their characters’ personalities in a likable-enough manner.

You may have noticed Dylan’s marionettist, Sean Durrie, absent from the above accolades, and that was for a reason: he’s the only bad one. Whatever direction Durrie was given by Remedy was misguided as he ends up going for this annoyingly manchildish voice, presumably in an attempt to convey Dylan’s concurrent turmoil/dual mindset, that just comes off as fingernails on a chalkboard. Unlike the others, his short airtime quickly emerges as a blessing.

The score, sadly, is the biggest lowpoint of Control, its essence a case of misguided intentions. The talent was certainly not lacking - Martin Stig Andersen did a solid job with Limbo & Inside, and of course Petri Alanko crafted the cinematically-tuned OST for Alan Wake. But the issue here is the two overindulged in bleary synths as a way of conveying the Oldest House’s eerie atmosphere, causing the OST to sound like one of those B-movie scores from the early-2010s that overused distortion effects in lieu of authentic ambience. The result is an ugly-sounding assemblage of motifs that are simply more obnoxious than pleasant to listen to (the quieter tracks somehow being the worst of the bunch). Two bonus songs are thrown onto the soundtrack, one inspired by Finnish heavy metal, the other foreign tangos, and if you’re a fan of either genre you’ll probably enjoy them, though they admittedly didn’t do anything for me.

Despite ending on a bad note (no pun intended), I meant what I said in the introduction: Control is a good game. It’s without-a-doubt the most fun I’ve had with a Remedy release, its base constructed out of d@mn good craftsmanship that mostly overcomes its aforestated flaws. After years of playing games that soft-blocked movement with conveniently placed desks or walls, I can’t tell you guys just how thrilling it is to be able to burst through an aperture or table to get to the other side.

Small things like that go a long way, and you’ll definitely enjoy your time with Control.


NOTES
-The biggest hurdle to 100% completion are these challenge areas called Jukebox Expeditions in which you’re tasked with traveling over a wide expanse and completing an assortment of random errands within a set time limit. It’s perfectly doable; however the extraneous enemy numbers placed in conjunction with the time limit prevent it from being as engaging as I’m sure Remedy intended.

-One thing that bothered me a lot was how Jesse only jumps with one leg. Could they really not have programmed a leap in both appendages?

-Another thing that really bothered me were the hapless redactions and references to other reports within the collectible documents. The blackouts often made no sense (listing a state, yet hiding the city; telling one symptom, but not another; providing one useless detail whilst excluding another), and I couldn’t fathom why they’d even do it if the records were meant to be disseminated to other FBC agents (worse were the ones ordered by Jesse- why TF would she not be entitled to uncensored copies of her own requests?!). The references speak for themselves considering you can’t even access whatever they’re citing. In summation, both methods came across as attempts at making the write-ups seem deeper than they actually were.

This is a standard review of the vanilla Valhalla game. For a comprehensive breakdown of the title as a whole, please see:
https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368458/

For the first DLC, Wrath of the Druids, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368450/

For the second DLC, The Siege of Paris, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368452/

For the third DLC, Dawn of Ragnarök, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368455/

For the final story DLC, The Last Chapter, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368457/

In a lot of ways, it’s hard not to see Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as the video game equivalent of The Rise of Skywalker. Both were the final entries in a sequel trilogy attempting to conclude said trilogy’s story whilst redressing complaints fans had had towards their immediate predecessor. With Skywalker, that was of course The Last Jedi, while here it’s AC Odyssey and so, to give some brief thoughts on that game to indicate my originating mindset, I overall enjoyed it and believe it to be a worthy entry of the franchise. While I’ve been with this series since ACII, I do not hold a purist attitude towards the RPG or Ancient (both misnomers FYI+) or whatever you want to call it trio that sprung from the ashes of Unity and Syndicate’s fiscal failures.

That said, there were decisions I definitely did not agree with, but, even if I shared all the views of those pre-Origins detractors, the reality is Ubisoft would not have had to listen to us. Both Origins and Odyssey were, by all reported measures, huge successes, especially in comparison to Rogue, Unity, and Syndicate, and that lucrativeness tends to result in minority criticisms getting ignored, no matter how valid they are.

Yet, to my delight. Ubisoft did the opposite.

I know it’s become popular in casual discourse to trash Ubisoft, however, in this particular area at least, they deserve immense praise for willingly listening to EVERY part of their fanbase WITHOUT needing an external incentive to do so. What do I mean by this? When you look at other properties that have adapted criticism from a sect of their audience, it’s always been due to a financial dip: WWII and Modern Warfare came about because of diminished sales from Infinite Warfare; the aforementioned Rise of Skywalker from Last Jedi making ~$700 million less than Force Awakens; Breath of the Wild from Skyward Sword selling half as many units as Twilight Princess, etc…etc…

In AC’s case, those critiques largely concerned the removal and/or diminishment of social stealth, one-hit KO assassinations, the modern-day, parkour, and Assassins, as well as the inclusion of level-gating, extraneous loot, and repetitive side activities. And guys, it honestly warms my heart to say that Valhalla literally addresses 90% of these. If you were following the development of the game from the get-go this may not have come as a surprise: like I stated earlier, Valhalla was marketed as the end of an era, and to commemorate the occasion, Ubisoft brought back key personnel who had had prior involvement with some of the most popular releases of the OG era, including Creative Director Ashraif Ismail (Black Flag), writer Darby McDevitt (Revelations, Black Flag), composer Jesper Kyd (the Ezio Collection), and many others I’m sure played a large role behind-the-scenes. During the marketing phase, McDevitt asserted the game would act as a “capper” for events of yore, and while Ismail was canned for an adultery scandal, the hype nonetheless soared as demos showcased classic AC gameplay.

Of course, Valhalla couldn’t be a complete return-to-form. The large successes of Origins and Odyssey proved the profitableness of the RPG formula (plus the introduction of numerous new fans), and so the question that remains is how well does the game balance the two systems? Well, if you’ve been on any forums, you’ve no doubt heard a medley of opinions ranging from good to bad, but, as I’m with the former camp, I hope my review does a solid job elucidating why you should agree as well.

Odyssey’s present-day left things on an unstable note. Layla had been granted more screen time and characterization at the expense of her morality: in her quest to understand the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, she killed a fellow cell member whilst sparing the life of recent antagonist Otso Berg (whose fate is not ascertained). It’s no secret Layla was never really investable as a protagonist- her inclusion in Origins felt misplaced and intrusive, and having her meddle with Isu Artifacts in Odyssey like an idiot didn’t do much to mend that. As such, there was a lot of pressure on Darby to succeed on several fronts where previous writers had failed: resolve Layla’s qualms, wrap-up her storyline, and, most importantly, make her likable. To do this, McDevitt and his team implemented two initiatives that are honestly quite genius in retrospect. The first is a minor retcon wherein it turns out Layla was being cognitively-influenced by the Caduceus to act out aggressively -- not only did this harken back to Desmond’s stabbing of Lucy in Brotherhood, but it also gave Layla a bit of a Greek tragedy overlay wherein she was being manipulated by the Gods to do their bidding. Victimhood is often a surefire method of garnering immediate sympathy, and I can definitely say I actually felt for Layla whenever she reflected on what transpired before.

The second is bringing back Shaun & Rebecca, two characters I’ve always referred to as the C-3PO and R2-D2 of the franchise due to their buddy relationship and longstanding presence in the games. Layla’s colleagues from Origins and Odyssey weren’t bad by any means, however there’s no denying they lacked the chemistry, humor, and three-dimensionality that Desmond’s group had, which was always going to be detrimental given the short amount of time the MD had to make an impression. That McDevitt naturally inserts Layla into this pre-established duo without breaking up their camaraderie is admirable on its own merits, however, it’s the throwback feel he manages to evoke from assembling them together that deserves real praise. It’s hard to describe, but I honestly couldn’t help feeling nostalgic seeing Layla interact with the two; it brought to mind those times from ACII and Brotherhood wherein you were pulled out of the Animus and had a chance to catch-up with the rest of the gang, usually hearing some hilarious dialogue in the process.

McDevitt further fixes the MD by bringing back its grandiose scope via the inclusion of a new planetary threat. To give some background information for you newbies, after haphazardly wrapping up the original storyline with ACIII, Ubisoft had no idea what to do next in the 21st century: they saw the appeal of the series was in its historical escapades, yet knew the framing device of the MD/Animus was too integral to remove. I fleshed out my thoughts on the decision surrounding Desmond’s fate in my ACIII retrospective, but that notwithstanding, the fallout from it was degrading the modern Brotherhood to essentially glorified treasure hunters over the time-traveling rebels Desmond and co. occupied. In Valhalla, the world-ending stakes are back, and while having yet another Earth-threatening plot device seems lazy ala Force Awakens rehashing the Death Star, there’s more to it than meets the eye (as you’ll see later when you play the game).

The diminishment of the Brotherhood in Origins and Odyssey was, as stated earlier, a major point of contention with fans (understandable - a series called Assassin’s Creed should focus on the Assassins). Luckily I absolutely loved what McDevitt and co. did with them in Valhalla. My favorite AC opening behind Origins’ has always been Black Flag’s due to it showcasing the Assassins as they would appear to an outsider: brooding, stoic, and containing an aura of mystery, and you get that tenfold here with Basim and his acolyte Hytham- he joined Sigurd on his worldly journeys for reasons that don’t seem convincing. From closely advising Sigurd to gifting Eivor the Hidden Blade (amidst protests from Hytham), it’s blatantly clear that Basim is using the Vikings for some greater purpose, and these ulterior motives underlying his actions highlight a secondary facet worth noting - the respect for lore past.

By all accounts, ever since Corey May and Patrice Desilets left Ubisoft, there has not been a real loremaster at the company, leading to artifact inconsistencies (i.e., the Precursor Boxes), mass proliferation of Pieces of Eden, and the admonishment of Assassin morale. While the first two can at least be explained away under some retcon, it’s the latter that has always affected me because a nicety from ACI through Brotherhood was the Assassins retaining a degree of ethical clarity. Yes, they were effectively terrorists, and yes the Templars had a greyness around their own actions, but there was never any doubt that the Assassins were the preferred solution.

Starting with Revelations, things started to tiptoe into an ends justify the means subset that seemed unstable in comparison to before: you had Assassins committing mass murder (Revelations), Assassins working with pirates (Black Flag), Assassins doing favors for imperialists and pedophiles (Unity), and Assassins launching gang wars in the open streets (Syndicate). I do like a good many of those games, however there’s no denying that, by becoming entrenched in sequelitis, Ubisoft missed the mark on the core tenets of the brotherhood.

At the outset, Valhalla had a chance of falling into this same trap. After all, this is a game about bloodthirsty vikings who burn monasteries and want to subjugate England, and having a sect dedicated to the preservation of free will allying themselves with such sordid peoples would’ve come across as odd at best. Thankfully, while Hytham (based on later convos) genuinely believes Eivor’s Clan to be honorable compared to the Order of the Ancients, Basim holding alternative plans gives a valid reason for the Hidden Ones putting aside their moral compass in aiding the Drengr.

Tutorials are interwoven organically into Valhalla’s intro as well (an impressive feat considering these games are meant to appeal to newcomers), which brings us to the gameplay. Assassin’s Creed has always been built on three pillars: combat, stealth, and parkour. Since Unity, there have been multiple attempts at revamping the combat mechanics of the series, and when it came time for the RPG trilogy, an even greater shift was made from paired animations to hitbox- no longer were you worrying about constant counters from enemies, it was now about evading strikes and knocking their health bar down. In Origins, this worked out like standard fencing: the goal was to keep your distance and jab when your opponent left himself open. In Odyssey, courtesy of the (dumb) removal of shields and increased emphasis on abilities, a more hack-and-slash schematic was implemented wherein the goal was to now pummel-and-dodge until your adrenaline meter built-up, allowing a massive attack.

In Valhalla, it’s about overpowering your adversaries through strategic maneuvers, from breaking defenses via heavy blows to shattering exposed weak points with arrows. However, to prevent players from spamming heavy strikes (or endlessly dodge-rolling like before), a stamina meter has been implemented that depletes the more you do either move. The only way to rejuvenate it is to either take a breather or successfully gore a thug with a light attack, meaning you now have an incentive to use lighter strikes over heavier ones besides their superior speed. Abilities are back (much more-grounded this time around), and similar to Odyssey, there is an encouragement on growing your stamina to utilize them in a hairy situation; however, they’re never necessary for succeeding, turning them into a tool more than anything (and yes, that’s a good thing).

Of the three games’ combat systems, I probably had the most fun with Valhalla’s- not only do you have a good balance between light/heavy/parrying/dodge, but the bosses, in particular, come from the Dark Souls school of requiring smarts over simple lacerations. That said, there are two big flaws: one, regular enemies (which make up most encounters) become quite easy to chop down once your power level is sufficiently high (to be fair, I suppose that’s a standard for most RPGs), and two, there isn’t a cap on archery -- it’s so easy to simply gain some distance and spam arrows/longe range abilities in the middle of a fight, meaning tougher archetypes like the Goliaths, Zealots and majority of minibosses are rendered less effective. Having bowing deplete stamina instead of rejuvenating it would’ve resolved this easily.

When it comes to stealth, it should be noted that, upon release, Valhalla had a broken apparatus apparently akin to ACIII’s. In the months following, two patches were sent-out that, based on my experience, have alleviated those qualms, though from what I understand, the patches were either never released to PC ports or were ultimately ineffective. So Master Race adherents, please keep that in mind.

For fellow console peasants, stealth is pretty fun. In the wild, you’ve got heaps of grass patches to skulk around in, whistle, and snipe from afar. One change I appreciated is hitting an enemy amongst a group doesn’t immediately highlight your presence like it did in Origins, so long as you get back into cover. The largest drawback to the stealth is that, going off what I stated earlier, tools have been completely replaced with abilities- if you want to poison someone, set something ablaze, distract with your raven, or place a far-off explosive, you’re going to have to waste stamina doing it, which takes away from the Assassin portion for sure.

As noted in the introduction, Valhalla made waves for two things: bringing back the one-hit KO Hidden Blade (accomplished via a minigame or menu change if you’re a scrub), as well as social stealth. This might be controversial to say, however I genuinely think this version of social stealth is the third best in the franchise behind Brotherhood and Syndicate, even being utilized better than the entirety of the Kenway Saga. You’ll frequently enter cities and communities dubbed “mistrust zones” which Eivor will cloak himself in, but that cloak doesn’t make you invisible unless you happen to find some monks. It’s a lot like ACI in that, one, you can’t blend in with everyone, and two, that guards have detection meters that set-off depending on how close you are to them/if you’re acting out-of-line: walk like a normal human being (helped by the garment deliberately slowing your speed) and they won’t pay you much attention; dart or climb about and you’ll get some stares. Blending activities are strewn throughout these scapes to allow in-plain-sight hiding as soldiers walk by you, and plenty of drunks somber about to manipulate as distractions. The one thing that would’ve really improved Valhalla is if they added more assassination takedowns. Maybe I’m spoiled by ACIII and Unity, which had these in abundance, but it gets kind of tiring seeing Eivor perform the same 2-3 knifings every murder. Considering all the distinct hiding spots, it would’ve been cool to be able to do a unique takedown in place of a standard stab.

Parkour is, sadly, pretty garbage. It’s no secret Ubisoft moved to an inferior system in Origins out of a desire to emphasize open world exploration over traversable cities, but with Valhalla, it’s bizarre because they’ve actually reverted to the old design style, yet complimented it with what is arguably the worst parkour in the history of the franchise. See, places like Lunden, Jorvik, and Wincestre are built like classic AC metropolises, with interconnected buildings and direct pathways for Eivor to dash about on, and when it’s working right the traceuring (horizontal-wise at least) is smooth. But they’ve made this weird push-button assignment that both feels needlessly complicated and prevents you from mastering progressment the way you could in past AC games -- you click the joystick to run, push the joystick to freerun, hold A to parkour/climb/auto-leap short distances, and double tap A to jump. Perhaps they were attempting to emulate the Ezio versions, which had dedicated digital prompts for jumping, running, and parkour (compared to the Kenway Saga, wherein things were simplified to two buttons), however, there were only three there compared to the four here, and it was also more ergonomic (clicking the joystick in Valhalla just isn’t as functional as pressing a tab).

Still, I would’ve been able to tolerate this had the parkour algorithm been consistent with what it recognizes as pure freerun vs. ascension, but you’ll often find yourself accidentally clambering-up columns or other installations that you would’ve thought traversable with the standard A button.

Vertical movement is worse. Once Eivor has begun his shimmying he turns into glue, unable to detach, drop down, or manually climb-leap to the top (an inconsistent one technically exists, but you’ll see why it’s inconsistent when you play). Your sole recourse is to either finish your trek or auto-descent netherward until you’re within range for a drop-off. Valhalla, to its credit, does retain the side lunge from Unity, as well as a standard back eject (the latter only if you have another structure in range), and I did appreciate them giving Eivor’s model weight akin to Arno, but these are ultimately small potatoes against an inherently-downgraded system.

Besides the pillars, a semi-staple of the series sees its resuscitation in Valhalla: the settlement. To elucidate the history for you newbies, settlements have been a recurrent aspect of AC, albeit one not as stringent as hardcore fans would lead you to believe. Yes, every AC game save Origins featured a home base of some type, but the vast majority were never used for anything substantive: Alamut Castle was a simple set with nothing inside; the Villa Auditore a glorified armory; Tiber Island a place only for Assassin ceremonies; Black Flag’s Great Inagua and Rogue’s Fort Arsenal utterly meaningless; Revelations’s bureaus, Unity’s Cafe Theater, Syndicate’s Train a spawn point for missions; and the Adrestia just a ship.

You’ll notice I omitted one entry, and that was of course the Davenport Homestead from ACIII. It was the first time an Assassin HQ actually felt like a real, lived-in place: you had tons of NPCs, plenty of missions/optional dialogue based around their presence, in-game challenges, and an economic boon via trade convoys. It formulated a template I’m saddened none of its sequels expanded upon.

Well, on the plus side Ravensthorpe is a valiant attempt at crafting a meaningful estate, even if it never reaches its greatest potential. It combines the renovation system from Brotherhood, civilian presence of ACIII, and mission generating of the Cafe Theater into a single hacienda. You start and finish all your story missions here, construct/upgrade new buildings to unlock sidequests, and can even activate a feast buff to temporarily boost your attributes. Despite these facets, I can’t say I got particularly attached to Ravensthorpe, and that has to do with a couple of reasons: one, because it’s more of a springboard for your adventures, you don’t spend much time in the actual area; and two, it ails from Unity problem of repetitive AI. What I mean is, every time you enter the place, you’ll see the exact same animations play-out: the same kids running up to you, the same crew members marching from the docks, the same animals lolling about, etc….and that’s ultimately immersion-killing. As much as people hate the Almanac of the Common Man from ACIII, it at least underlined an amazing feat from that game, which was the radiant-esque AI of the homesteaders, and I wish a similar coding had been programmed here.

Anyway, it’s high time we spoke on the story. Valhalla’s main campaign may be confusing to some because it adopts a method of storytelling new to the AC franchise (and mainstream titles as a whole): arcs. Prior games operated on a modus I refer to as “Acts” which, to quote my ACII review, are similar to Arcs in that they’re set around a new threat, but differ in terms of not being standalone. That’s not to say that Valhalla’s arcs are completely unrelated to the other (in fact, several continue/reference events from prior ones); however, they definitively have a beginning, middle, and end, allowing you to complete them without feeling like you’re ending on a cliffhanger. The process generally follows as depicted: Eivor will consult Sigurd’s wife Randvi about a territory, learn of its predicaments/politics, pledge to obtain their allegiance, resolve whatever qualms exist, and then return and confirm with Randvi that the deed is done. Rinse and repeat.

Now, this format has led to accusations that Valhalla is full of filler, and it’s one of those things I both agree and disagree with, though even my agreements are laced with provisos. If we were to condense the arcs under themes, Valhalla has four overarching storylines: Kingmaker, Order of the Ancients, Asgard, and Sigurd. Kingmaker has you running all over England forging those aforestated alliances, Order eliminating members of the proto-Templars, Asgard reliving memories of the Norse Gods (more on that later), and Sigurd’s a combination of all three, albeit one which trails continuously throughout Valhalla’s runtime.

In fictional storytelling, especially AAA releases, audiences are used to conventional chronicling wherein event A goes to B to C to D ad nauseam. Because of this mindset, it’s my theory that conventional gamers appropriated the Sigurd thread as Valhalla’s primary campaign, and I don’t blame them: Sigurd was a major figure in the intro and the whole reason Eivor departed to England in the first place. Eivor’s purpose is to serve his adopted sibling, and given the recurring nature of the man in the story, at first glance it would appear Ubisoft agreed.

However, upon closer inspection, I do think Valhalla is more experimental than that given that progressment, even in Sigurd’s sections, is primarily reliant on the formation of those dutiful liaisons since Eivor utilizes them to aid his sibling (more on that later). The reason I consider this approach experimental is because, in mainstream releases, you usually get the opposite. Think about it: in other games, the A plot is a singular strand which lasts uninterrupted whilst side content occupies shorter bursts of self-contained tales; in Valhalla, though, the self-contained tales pull double-duty as autonomous contes AND building blocks for the development of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship.

But that begs the earlier inquiry of is this filler? If the player has to do these elongated set pieces to advance the A plot, did Valhalla’s writers fall prey to the scourge of shōnen anime? Again, not to dodge the question, but the answer is somewhere in the middle. For me, if I’m going to label something as filler, it needs to contain two components: one, have no importance to the macro, and two, not be referenced in postliminary scenarios. I theorize the reason critics have championed this accusation is because Valhalla’s non-Sigurd arcs are largely deficient in the latter, which is what most people look for when gauging continuity. However, it is not zero sum, and, more importantly, contains the former in spades. We’ve already established that Sigurd’s storyline, itself, is not completely independent due to it being tied to the Raven Clan’s confederacies/the brothers’ connections to the Old Gods. As such, by having dedicated individualized chapters to both those threads, you avoid falling into filler territory by my definition.

Still, I am sympathetic to the quibbles, and definitely agree that more connecting tissue should’ve been implemented to guide players from arc-to-arc, and I honestly feel these problems derive from Valhalla’s wish to be open-ended. This is a game that wants you to do certain beats in a certain order whilst concurrently providing a freedomic approach towards said objectives a la A Link to the Past. Unfortunately, in a story-driven enterprise with recurrent characters, you can’t exactly have that because it interrupts the flow, which is the dilemma gamers no doubt faced here. Thus, to alleviate this for future players, my suggestion is to do what I did, which is, well, role-play. Imagine why Eivor would want to embark on Y next as opposed to Z. Trust me when I say it’ll go a long way towards making your experience a lot more enjoyable. Valhalla is a ROLE-PLAYING game, so technically such a tactic isn’t out of the left field. However, I understand this isn’t a legitimate answer to the qualm of the arcs not being strongly-tied together, which is why I said the answer is ultimately muddled.

Tl;dr, I don’t think the absence of narratorial links make the non-Sigurd arcs filler, but it definitely hurts the pacing unless you do some imagineatory gymnastics on your part.

With regards to the quality of the story itself, I did enjoy the majority of arcs, but I can’t deny Valhalla falls very hard in terms of concocting satisfying finales for the bulk of its aforementioned story threads: of them, only the MD and Order of the Ancients get fulfilling conclusions, while the Sigurd, Kingmaker, and Asgard slices are left wholly anticlimactic, and it’s a shame, because if they had nailed those sections, this might have gone down as my favorite AC: the breaks between arcs allow you to pace yourself at will, the world gorgeous (more on that later), and the side activities enjoyable.

I’d actually like to speak on the Order of the Ancients subplot, both because it relates to the overarching Assassin/Templar conflict of the series, and because it’s something you should complete after beating the other threads (lest you risk incurring a bug). Valhalla semi-models this questline after the Cult of Kosmos from Odyssey wherein you have to hunt down members across England. Odyssey had 42 individuals: here you’ve got 45, divided into 15 zealots, 29 adherents, and 1 Grand Maegester. In Odyssey, I found the cult system to be rather basic, consisting of you doing very arbitrary tasks that somehow added up to uncovering a persona’s identity, and unfortunately that same framework has been carried over to Valhalla (a shame considering a mini-sleuth subplot involving actual detective work could be intriguing if Ubisoft ever dedicated more time to fleshing out the parameters).

Alas, we have to deal with the reality in our stead, and the system here has, at least, been slightly improved upon. For starters, 13 of the members are encountered during the various arcs, and no clues are required to deduce the Zealots, meaning only 16 have to be tracked down separately. Secondly, there are three checkboxes per member, compared to Odyssey where it was around 5 (IIRC), making it much easier to finish (England being smaller than Europe doesn’t hurt either). Finally, and this is admittedly more of an aesthetic change than anything, but every single Order individual (including the Zealots) has a Confession scene, which, at least for me, gave an extra incentive to hunt them down. Confessions have of course been a tradition of the series (save Unity and Odyssey), and while the non-story members don’t have the same production value as their narratorial counterparts, it was still nice being able to witness an inner dialogue between them and Eivor.

Years after the base game came out, Ubisoft finally sent everyone The Last Chapter, a free DLC meant to provide proper closure to Eivor’s storyline (that was personally overseen by Darby compared to the other expansions). Obviously see my link at the top of this review to hear my comprehensive thoughts, but in short I’ll say it’s fine for what it was -- a free low-budget expansion cobbled together by Ubisoft to officially cap Valhalla’s years of post-launch support (more on that later). It addresses several problems I had with the finales, but also leaves a lot to be desired.

As you have all of England at your fingertips, so too are you provided hours-upon-hours of excursions to partake in. First up is your conventional treasure hunting that has accompanied AC games since the flags of yesteryear: Valhalla has notably done away with the looter shooter schematic of Origins and Odyssey in favor of unique outfits and weapons. Upgrading these requires resources, from precious metals to your standard materials, and all three caches are located in chests peppered across the map. One of the more unique things Valhalla does is hide these crates behind obstacles, requiring you to solve a mini-puzzle of sorts to acquire them. Now, I’ve heard a lot of complaints regarding this system, stating that it adds unnecessary redundancy to the scavenging, and I generally disagree. For starters, it makes sense that goodies would actually be hidden (and beats the post-ACII system of simply placing guards everywhere). Secondly, while some of them are needlessly elongated in the sense that the solution is to simply dart around the side of the building ala TLOU2, the majority are actually pretty dang clever and require proper reconnaissance. They do get repetitive in the sense that the same barrier schemes are redone ad nauseam (i.e., the same bars, same explodable walls, etc…), but because it isn’t necessary to constantly upgrade armor the way it was in the prior RPG games (more on that later), you never have to force yourself to find them anyway.

Artifacts are the second type of collectible and they’re generally unconcealed compared to treasure, though a number of pieces do lie behind similar barricades. There are five variants: hoard maps, which display chests in the vicinity; Roman masks, which can be traded in for settlement cosmetics; flying tattoo papers, which, like the Almanac Pages and shanties from prior entries, need to be chased down a parkour course; Rigsogur Fragments, or generic lore entries, and finally Cursed Sites, the most disappointing substance in the game. At first glance they seem cool- you enter an area, hear some rumblings, and finally your screen gets all shadowy like the Black Suit shimmering in Spider-Man 3. You’re told the place is haunted and asked to end the curse; sounds thrilling right? Well, you’ll quickly realize that nothing bad happens while you’re on this hallowed ground, the sensorial stimuli being surface-level effects and the grand solution merely to destroy a single relic. A letdown for sure.

Overall, the artifacts are fine. Minus the R Fragments and Cursed Sites, I appreciated how each of them actually provided some tangible benefit to the player (a significant upgrade from previous games’ odds-and-ends that relied more-so on intrinsic motivation). Nonetheless, it’s the “Mysteries” you’ll be spending most of your time finishing, and I do have to commend Ubisoft here for trying to variegate these activities. Not since ACIII has an Assassin’s Creed title cooked-up such a batch of diverse side content, and given the sheer amount of time you’ll be spending in the game, they clearly planned things out well. That said, the quality is up for debate, with a number of these excursions privy to debate amongst the AC fan base (World Events and Cairns being the most notorious), so plot your expectations accordingly.

Helping with the pacing of side activities is the fact that Valhalla does away with the conventional confetti system that’s blotted Ubisoft minimaps since the days of Brotherhood, replacing them with light orbs: blue for mysteries, gold for loot, and white for artifacts. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like such a change would matter since the undertakings are unveiled upon entering their vicinity anyway, but you’d be surprised how much of a difference it makes to not be distracted by a minimap. This is the first AC game I played without one, and I found the experience to be so beneficial I hope future entries never revert to the old style.

Besides the above, Valhalla has a plethora of extra stuff to partake in, beginning with Raids. Raids are basically the epitome of the Viking fantasy, involving you reliving the infamous Lindisfarne Tragedy on repeat as you and your crew attack coastal monasteries for resources. Given that few settlement constructions are required for story progression, you’re basically allowed to conduct these at your own volition, which goes a ways away towards making them fun since they’re never needed for grinding purposes. What I really appreciated was how they don’t fully whitewash what you’re doing- yeah, you can’t kill civilians (which I liken to Achilles sparing the Trojan Priests in Troy) and there’s certainly no carrying back citizens to the longship for enslavement; however, you are explicitly a menace. People run around screaming, huts are set ablaze, all wealth is sacked -- when all’s said and done, it’s clear this place has been ruined for the foreseeable future. Gameplay-wise, I wish the developers had implemented some form of strategy as, while entertaining, they’re pretty blatantly easy due to your crew being unable to die (when struck down, you merely have to hold down a button to “revive” them, allowing infinite hounding of stronger guards). A system wherein you could allocate who attacks where and force a retreat if too many of your guys were wounded would’ve done wonders.

Orlog, a dice minigame, gained a notable amount of traction following Valhalla’s release (to the point of inspiring a real-life tie-in), and though it has innumerable enthusiasts, unfortunately I don’t count myself among them. I’m generally a big fan of dice games in titles (Liar’s Dice in RDR, Dice Poker in The Witcher 1), but my problem with Orlog is that it’s unchallenging. You’re given arguably the best Totem from the get-go ala Thor’s Strike, and the only legitimate tactic forward is to build-up tokens to unleash your God Favor. Sure, the occasional wrench is thrown at you, but 9 times out of 10, you’ll have the advantage over your opponent courtesy of Thor’s Strike being OP. If they had introduced variations like being able to call God Favors without sacrificing pawns (that had consequences), then things may have gotten spiced up, but as it stands, the game gets repetitive due to every competitor’s strategy being indifferent from the other.

That said, I’ll take Orlog any day of the week over drinking contests wherein you literally press one prompt on repeat with the intermittent joystick toggle to prevent stumbling. Utterly banal (it’s telling that Watch_Dogs of all releases had a better drinking game) and thankfully unmarked for completionists to avoid. And on the topic of banality, we’ve got a continuation of the lame hunting system this series had literally failed to innovate on since ACIII. If anything, it’s been made grindier here since you cannot purchase animal parts from stores anymore, nor swing your sword from horseback (Eivor instead kicks and punches), the latter preventing you from mass killing prey during chasedowns.

Accompanying this is fishing, which is a barren hodgepodge of boring mechanics: you throw your bait out, wait for a nibble, and then mash A to reel it in. You’re technically given the option to use a bow-and-arrow, but it’s evident the developers wanted you to wield the rod due to a number of reasons: Synin doesn’t recover your arrows, Odin’s Sight marks fish for a measly five seconds, and discharging a bolt scares away the other water critters. Outside of size, there’s no way of telling what kind of fish you’re getting either, meaning the endeavor isn’t even a reliable source of income.

Contrary to popular belief, there are side missions, and while the bulk were added post-release, they're still a welcome addition (I further anticipate readers of this review will be engaging with the Complete Edition of Valhalla that includes all extra content). Most of the quests are initiated from Ravensthorpe and involve either members of your Clan or outsiders requesting Eivor’s aide. They’re a lot like Odyssey’s in that YMMV, but they do exist and offer their own elongated narratives; plus, I can personally vouch that two of the more popular ones, Beowulf and the crossover with Odyssey, are excellent.

Regarding post-launch content, Valhalla was Ubisoft’s first attempt at turning Assassin’s Creed into a live service game. Numerous free updates were thrown in to keep players engaged in the hopes of coaxing them into purchasing MTXs. Unfortunately, the non-permanent ones have long been removed, meaning I cannot speak on such activities as the holiday festivals. The additions that have remained, though, I will gladly describe, commencing with Tombs of the Fallen. These are five vaults to excavate at your discretion, and while we’ve had tombs in the franchise before, this marks the first time they’re puzzle oriented. I haven’t found all of them at the time of this review’s publication, but the ones I did were definitely fun - nothing too challenging, but miles above the versions we got in the Tomb Raider reboot.

Next-up are River Raids. As the name suggests, they’re basically a mode built around the monastery blitzes from the base game, featuring multiple rivers full of goodies to reap: villages have rations to heal your crew, military posts supplies, and forts/monasteries unique loot. Some changes were implemented to no doubt address criticisms of the vanilla version and make the ordeal a bit more tactical. For example, your crew members (called Jomsvikings), can go down permanently if you don’t revive them with rations, and continuously attacking the same area increases local defenses. River Raids are fine enough, but the problem is not enough was done to diversify things- you’re ultimately conducting the same types of assaults ad nauseam, with the same configuration of posts. And once you scavenge the special drops, there’s no real reason to continue forward with the process unless you’re one of those completionists who wants all the new items in the new store (which, lo and behold, require a special currency you can ONLY earn from River Raiding!). If that weren’t enough, be warned that there is a grindy aspect courtesy of the developers requiring you to upgrade your Longship’s hold to increase its capacity. Several other pet peeves of mine include the broken stealth, emptying of your ration pouch each time you launch a raid, and the inability to uncover a location’s identity unless you leave your ship to walk within its radius (sailing by the harbor should’ve been more than enough!).

Last is The Forgotten Saga, a roguelite mode set in the past wherein you control Havi attempting to rescue his son Baldr from the Goddess Hel. Again, I haven’t done much of it at the time of this review, but what I did play was actually pretty enjoyable. The realms are beautifully-designed, each run is different courtesy of the RNG items, and you do feel like you’re getting stronger. The option to stealth your way through certain parts with the one-hit KO assassination significantly aids in the completion of areas, and combined with there being an actual Isu story, I’d say it’s worth attempting. Just keep in mind that it’s still fundamentally the same gameplay loop as the River Raids in that you’re either fighting or killing.

It’s time to address the technical facets of Valhalla. The first thing I texted my brother when I booted up this game was how it might be the best-looking title I’ve ever played, and I proudly stand by that claim over 60 hours later. The new Ubisoft Anvil engine has completely done away with texture streaming, giving you fully-furnished environments from the get-go no matter where you travel, and trust me when I say that that’s a noteworthy facet considering the diversity and seamlessness of the world. This is the first AC game to indulge in the biome schematic, and while I’ve never considered such biogeographical units necessary for free roam variation, I can’t deny it prevents a sense of déjà vu during your many excursions across England. The frigid mountains of Northumbria, seasonal spice of Mercia, mistiness of East Anglia, and springtime tide of Wessex all converge into a community worth touring. This is probably my favorite map in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and considering the prior beauties, I don’t say that lightly. From the desolate Roman ruins and mythical structures to the sights of warfare and working-class hobbles, there’s a real feeling of a past life wherever you amble, and such vibes go a long way towards maintaining an immersive bubble- you’re just another part in a long history overlaying this land.

For those who don’t know, Odyssey and Valhalla employed an algorithm to render body and countenance expressions so that Ubisoft didn’t have to spend money on motion capture for every cutscene. That’s perfectly fine, and I don’t condemn them for it- it’s an expensive procedure, other companies have employed similar tactics, and if it works out it works out. And contrary to public opinion, I actually do think it’s worked out for the most part- minus Eivor feeling the constant need to cross his arms every minute, his movements never feel unnatural (Valhalla’s regression to “talking heads”, on the other hand, is a point of contention, but more on that later).

Character models are a bit of a step down from Odyssey- I didn’t detect as much detail in Valhalla’s physiognomies as I did in its predecessor’s, though thankfully that’s made up for by the lack of stilty-ness that rendered Odyssey’s figures uncanny at times. Cheekbones and eyebrows, in particular, move a lot more naturally, even as you slather them with body paint. It’s the textiles, however, that deserve the most praise as the precision that has gone into their assemblage is a sight to behold. Leather, cloth, fur, it matters not -- all look intricately stitched as they fold around Eivor’s chassis. I was especially impressed anytime light refracted off metallic pieces, providing an authentic sheen that shifts with your movements accordingly.

The lighting overlay, in general, is fantastic, being another rendition of the dynamic system Origins pioneered. I’ve always been a sucker for the sight of streaming sunshine through forested enclaves, and as you can imagine, Valhalla has that in abundance. Combined with the day/night positioning of the sun and varied environmental hues, and you get a motley of aesthetics that ayont the worlds. Unfortunately, there are some downsides to this refulgence, specifically the game’s indulgence in filters. These were clearly done in a bid to either amplify the lambency or diminish overcasting, but the end result can’t help but make certain areas appear artificially lit. In snowy scapes, for example, you get a white cover; foggy ones blue; fiery ones red; and underwater light blue. I feel the game would’ve been better off utilizing a more natural source for the majority of its lighting during these parts, though YMMV.

Besides that, there were a number of defects I encountered playing on my Xbox Series X: clipping between sheathed weapons and clothing (predominantly on horseback), draw distance generation issues for foliage and flora; occasional framerate drops; bird wings lagging while synchronizing, Eivor getting stuck during parkour animations; and your classic AC pathfinding quandaries with NPCs. Nothing is game-breaking, but it’s evident this was a title held back by its dual-gen release, and should be approached accordingly.

Other miscellaneous graphical plights include the lack of footprints when trudging in frost, shoddy animations for animal finishers (good concept, but should’ve been axed since they weren’t ready), comically-exaggerated splash effects, rainfall being surface-level impact points over a genuine environmental component, and fire looking incredibly dated (your torch is fine enough, but set a blaze or bushfire and you’ll witness combustion that wouldn’t look out-of-place in the original Gothic).

Performance aside, I think my biggest problem with Valhalla’s presentation is its reversion to the “talking heads” dilemma that plagued Unity through Origins. Talking heads, to elucidate, is a term my boy GManLives coined in his Skyrim review, referring to a lack of cinematicity during dialogue. You know, those instances wherein your character and another are technically having a conversation, but don’t appear to be engaged with the other due to the placement of the camera. Yeah, they’re standing opposite the other, however, you inherently lose interest since they’re not framed in a way that conveys they’re the centerpiece of attention. It solely happens in non-mocapped scenes in which the developers simply had the actors record the lines and processed their bustle through an animation algorithm, which, to reiterate, would’ve been fine had they preserved some sense of dynamism in the convos. But no, you often have to move the camera yourself to better enunciate things. If Valhalla had come out after Origins, it wouldn’t have been all bad given the precedent; unfortunately, Odyssey actually alleviated this by adopting a Mass Effect-framing, and while you do get that in the story, the vast majority of your side content is hampered by talking heads.

Further infringing the side stuff is the voice acting. I don’t know what it is about the English accent, but everytime Ubisoft has utilized it for generic civilians, it always sounds mediocre, as though they hired low-effort thespians to save money, and that continues to be the case here. To avoid an absolute, of course not everyone sounds bad, but it’s saying something when Oblivion and its cast of three had better portrayals than the more eclectic assembly here (you even get this recurring mismatch wherein an older-sounding lady voices younger lasses).

Thankfully, the main line is great, with Magnus Bruun and Carlo Rota, in particular, giving standout performances as Eivor and Basim respectively. I was really impressed with Bruun’s ability to distinguish between Eivor and Odin, lacing them with a masterfully concurrent similarity and dissimilarity. With regards to his female counterpart, Cecilie Stenspil, the parts I’ve heard on YouTube indicate her to be terrific as well, and anyone who claims she’s significantly inferior to Magnus is lying- your choice should come down purely to gender preference. That said, there was one person I wasn’t a big fan of, and that was Gudmundr Thorvaldsson as Sigurd. His acting itself is top-notch, but all too often his timbre came across as garbled.

The SFX has its pros and cons. On the plus side, this is the first time I was able to distinguish individualized beats for right & left footsteps in an AC Game, and considering the sheer amount of traveling you’ll be doing, it’s quite splendid to hear (expressly for horses!). Valhalla is also the first AC title to exhibit dismemberment and decapitation, and discerning such grisly cleavings via standard combat executions never gets old. The splintering of castle doors, clinking of loose metal on garments, bending of air around Sýnin and more are all signs of polished handiwork from Ubisoft’s artisans.

Sadly, these are partly counterbalanced by deficiencies, beginning with the sheer amount of rehashed dins from the prior RPG games: shattering pots, dragging barricades, crunching snow, whistling, stock animal growls, sail unmasting, fire burning, and others I’m sure I’m missing were blatantly transposed from Origins and Odyssey. And look, I know there’s only so much differentiation you can do with certain noises, but my point is that no initiative was made to even change them-up. Then again, maybe that was for the better as some of the fresh inclusions were not that good. For example, looting massive chests and completing raids produces this hooting that literally sounds like the chorus from Who Let the Dogs Out on steroids. Opening those coffers, in general, never feels invigorating courtesy of the lid removal having a generic sliding sound that’s not even properly-synchronized. Over and above that, atmospheric conditions are significantly diminished by ear: minus scripted sequences, elements like wind, snowfall, conflagrations, and rain come off as unnaturally-muted, which does hurt their visceralness. Like most AAA releases, Valhalla doesn’t feature any aural blemishes that’ll take you out of the game, but it definitely wasn’t as fortitive as it should have been.

I wish I could say the music atones for things, yet this was another area of disappointment for me. As you guys know, Valhalla marks Jesper Kyd’s grand return to the franchise after nine years, and there’s a reason that news generated a ton of hype: the Ezio scores are regarded as a high water mark for the series and his magnum opus as a whole. But it wasn’t just Jesper’s homecoming that was noteworthy: Sarah Schachner, who weaved the wonderful Origins OST, was announced as a co-composer, meaning nothing short of a masterpiece was expected from the duo.

Unfortunately, while you’ll no doubt find many fans who enjoyed their collaboration on Valhalla, I couldn’t help but feel letdown. The issue is Dark Age settings are inherently associated with symphonic orchestras: we’ve all listened to medieval tracks tinged with flute harmonies, brass fanfare, and of course string solos, and the fact of the matter is that none of those matched up with either musician’s prior arrangements (Jesper’s specialty being synths, Schachner’s electric instruments). Now of course, these are artists with longstanding resumes, and it’s very possible they’ve written music reminiscent of the Middle Age period that I’m simply not aware of but, regardless, their work in Valhalla felt very unnatural and subsequently non-enticing, often engaging in these heavy vocal and French Horn melodies, the former of which should’ve been up Jesper’s alley given his previous experience with choral music, but that ends up faltering due to it not resembling either monophonic chants or his famous carols. Nothing builds up to anything, instead occupying background harmonies that momentarily add a new leitmotif before returning to the shadows (the worst offender of this being the Raid strain, which sounds more like the accompaniment for a group of friars going horse cart racing than the bloody scene of their land being pillaged). Viewpoint tunes are a significant drop from Odyssey; the main theme is so forgettable, I literally had to look it up prior to typing this sentence (an absolute crime for an AC game); and, worst of all, Jesper’s revised version Ezio’s Family (aided by Einar Selvik) is relegated to the freakin’ credits, which, for the record, are a menu option and not mandatory). It’s really sad that Unity incorporated it better than its own maestro.

Obviously, not everything is dispiriting- some of the ambient tracks auxiliary to exploration are top notch, the Ravensthorpe theme is fantastic, and the shanties from your crewmen are the best the franchise has seen (though I suspect these were more Selvik’s creation). But considering everybody’s past body of work, Valhalla truly is a damp squib in this department. Reportedly, gamers were experiencing sound bugs that outright suppressed the music, and it pains me to say that those folks didn’t miss out on much.

On the note (no pun intended) of shanties, I’ll briefly go over the naval component of Valhalla as, unlike Black Flag, Rogue, and Odyssey, it’s not about maritime combat; theoretically, the purpose of the longboat is to merely transport you and your horde from place-to-place. However, the fact of the matter is you have mounts that do the exact same thing (aided by them being able to swim), making this apparent reasoning all but naught.

No, the sole intention behind the longboat was clearly to allow players to relive the Viking fantasy of coastal assaults, and the reality is that’s very shallow as, once you’re done plundering the abbeys, there is no other grounds for its existence. Sure, you can call your crew against the occasional camp scattered along the seaboard, but 9 times out of 10 it’s usually quicker to just solo it yourself. And listen, I would have no problem with this being a simple option for players, but the reason I’m complaining is because all those waterways they sculpted into the map make ground-based traversal between regions unnecessarily hamperful. While it’s not extraneous by any means, having to waste time paddling across tributaries whilst tracking down an orb gets tiring -- it reminded me too much of Venice from ACII, which suffered from similar qualms. I get that these rivers are probably historically accurate, but adding more bridges would’ve gone a long way towards making the amphibious transition more palatable. And speaking of bridges, I absolutely hate this instance during sailing wherein, everytime your boat approaches an overpass, your crew has to waste time slowing down and collapsing the mast (often causing it to clip with your tailpiece)- why not avoid the whole shebang and just make the structures taller? They already took a ton of creative liberty with the art assets anyway (as AskHistorians astutely assessed). And for those few of you who insist on traveling by sea, be prepared to get stuck on shorelines frequently (especially during turns) as your crew of @ssholes berate you.

The last major gameplay element is, of course, the skill tree, and it’s pretty bog standard insofar as RPGs go. Instead of levelling-up, you’re granted two points you can invest into one of three branching nodes representing combat, stealth, and archery, and thanks to the level cap not increasing between levels the way it typically does in other RPGs, you’re actually able to gather points at a reasonable pace without having to grind. In addition, Valhalla does away with Odyssey’s convoluted damage system in favor of consolidating everything into a singular “power level” that increases by two every time you invest in a slot, making it an enjoyable framework.

Now, I understand, there are some downsides to this more simplistic approach, mainly that gear boosts and builds don’t matter, but given that AC was never a hardcore role-playing series to begin with, I honestly didn’t mind the “return to roots” format, and it’s not like you’re less-incentivized to go loot scouring (avatar customization is an aesthetics-first enterprise after all).

Look, despite my intermittent rants, Valhalla actually ranks in my top 5 AC games of all time. It does a lot right for the franchise in terms of pioneering a better open world format, implementing balanced RPG mechanics, and (it goes without saying) fixing the modern-day after six entries of scattershot mediocrity. Eivor is another great protagonist, and given the sheer amount of hours of time you’ll be spending with him/her, it’s reassuring to know Ubisoft succeeded on this front. Yes there are a few botherations in the gameplay and narrative design you’ll have to contend with should you decide to embark on a long journey with the Vikingr, but as long as you know what you’re getting into, you’ll ultimately enjoy the ride. After 191 hours, I was saddened to be leaving Eivor and company behind, and you don’t experience that if the endeavor wasn’t worthwhile.


Notes
+The RPG elements began with Unity’s character customization/skillpoint acquisition and was further evolved in Syndicate outright having a leveling system. And both Egypt and England were not in their “ancient” status by historical standards.

-You’ve probably heard that Valhalla doesn’t have cloth physics, and the answer is both yes and no: there are animations for when you’re moving, but absolutely none for the elements (wind, in particular).

NOTE - there are two versions of Gothic that come with the Gold Edition -- the vanilla release as well as Night of the Raven, the latter being a lite-remaster that adds a new chapter/area called Jharenkar whilst concurrently upping the difficulty. If you get the Gold Edition, please understand that you can only play one version of the game over the other as they are treated as separate titles without carryover files. Obviously, based on my rating, you can tell I don’t recommend either, but NOTR even less due to it making an already challenging game pointlessly difficult


Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.

Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.

I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.

In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.

Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).

Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.

Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.

On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.

The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t as framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.

As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).

It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).

Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).

Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.

In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.

If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.

Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and the vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra versus individually-composited objects (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.

Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repetitive interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statutes with glaring red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.

SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy resounds like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: expect to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a french horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.

When you’re in towns, the soundscape fares better despite its volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.

Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.

Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could have been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy a memorable protagonist of early-2000s gaming. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.

Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get grating, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).

So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance that those games are better worth your time than this one.

Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.



NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.

++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.

-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).

-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.

-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?

-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.

-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.

-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.

-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.

Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review.

Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics


Fez was one of three titles popularized by Indie Game: The Movie, and arguably ended-up the most famous of the bunch. Why was that? Well, I’m so glad you asked as it had to do with its co-creator and media representative Phil Fish. Now, Fish’s rise-and-fall among the gaming community is its own rabbit hole worth looking into (though please stave away from the laughably apologetic This Is Phil Fish video that went viral years ago+); however, I bring him up because, even as his popularity fell, there remained a strong advocacy on behalf of his baby - that, no matter how much you hated the guy, his art merited consideration purely out of innate quality.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but the truth is Fez ain’t all that great. It features an absolutely fascinating concept, and is certainly far better than anything I could ever create; yet it can’t help escaping from the fact that it’s just boring. As a neo-platformer, the gimmick here revolves around the ability to turn your screen on its horizontal axis four different ways, theoretically yielding 4 different variations of each level: and yeah, that seamless perspective shifting is definitely amazing, but the issue is it’s rarely used towards anything beyond basic navigation quandaries. Oh, is that ledge out of reach? Well, flip clockwise and bam, now you’ve got grassy hooks to climb on. Are those twirling boards leading out to the middle of nowhere? Well, just change directions and you’ll see they actually ascend upwards!

That’s literally the extent of Fez’s imagination -- it takes your conventional side-scrolling formula, reels it vertically, and swaps obstacle solutions between dimensions and doors (more on that later). Sure, the ploy is fun at first, but once the novelty wears off you’re left with a very flat experience that drags and drags to the point of being unfun. The most diversity I ever saw involved matching external objects to some background effigy, and triggering explosives at specially-marked areas, but their solutions, again, entailed no creativity - just whirl-and-haul until things set in place. The problem isn’t even that it’s easy, but moreso that it’s repetitive -- imagine if twisting resulted in kinetic changes in the world? Or were tied to triggering power-ups? I know I’m spitballing here, however, that’s the kind of advice I wish had been imparted on Fish and company during development.

Unlike most platformers, the goal of Fez is to collect yellow cubes located amidst a myriad of interconnected stages, and while darting between areas is pretty cool, it ultimately harms the game by spacing things out too much - what should’ve been singular realms are broken-up into multiple skotas you can only access via specific doors, and as finding said doors fills the bulk of Fez’s gametime, the endeavor gets tepid very fast. I’m not lying when I say you’ll be spending 90% of your time locating hidden enclaves, with these enclaves, in turn, being nothing more than barren islands or, worse case scenario, empty rooms. There’s no discovering new mechanics or happening upon some hidden lore, just chamber upon isle of prolonged blandness.

The continual need for fresh cubes means you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking as well, and the lack of a quick travel option to individual lands consequently adds insult to injury - if you want to return to a previously-absconded area, be prepared to go piece-by-piece-by-piece as you waste time re-netting your way there (the devs not even bothering to mark each door++).

To Fez’s credit, it has a fine map system equipped with dynamic motion, but rather than waste time programming it, I feel the Polytron Corporation would’ve been better off sticking with closed-off levels that players would have had to complete in-full before moving on to the next place. As it stands, there’s just nothing special about Fez beyond the initial 5 minutes of bliss your average gamer will get from experiencing its new mechanics. Even the side content, involving the use of cryptic pictorial riddles to solve puzzles, is hampered by the sheer distance between said clues and their accompanying location.

Graphically, Fez got a lot of praise for its presentation, and I’ll definitely agree that it’s the best aspect of the game, combining pleasant colors and calming aesthetics into a pixelated masterpiece - the kind of title I could see someone running around in purely to replicate 5th century Buddhist meditation techniques. Most of the backdrops and environs take clear inspiration from Mayan-based architecture, combining stoney ruins with colored blocks, grassy covered exteriors, looming trees, and an abundance of overflowing water; however, there are a fair amount of locations where Fish and his team dip into transcendent territory, whether it’s the World 1-2 inspired sewers, a storm-ridden manor, or the blood-flooded eeriness of the hub plane.

That same effort was carried over to the interior chambers, which could be really bizarre depending on the abode. In my abridged playthrough, for example, I caught sight of map carvings, robot idols, bathroom pumps, dorm room bedding, and even a witch’s pot. Perhaps there was some thematic message Fish intended, but if there was I was too dumb to discern it.

One of the stranger decisions Polytron makes is the incorporation of wildlife, other NPCs, and a dynamic day/night cycle. I say strange because, outside of two puzzles(+++), they don’t serve any purpose in the game and accordingly feel like a waste of money. You could at least make an argument for the presence of humans out of explaining the protagonist’s existence, but given the sheer amount of unique animations programmed for each animal (worms, rats, birds, frogs, butterflies, etc…), I was expecting them to occupy a role in-game besides standard window dressing. Don’t get me wrong, the artisans absolutely deserve credit for their modeling and aptitude, it’s just a case of Chekhov's Gun being violated.

Fauna aren’t the only entities who got specially-coded movements - your anonymous hero may look like a 2D Sackboy, but he’s actually quite versatile in terms of his scripted actions: idle away too long from the keyboard and he’ll fall asleep; hop in water and he’ll paddle like a fish; stand near the edge of a ledge and he’ll teeter over ala DKC.

Unfortunately, the sound editing stumbles too much to be worth a listen, particularly with regards to the music cues. Your basic SFX is all well-and-good, if a bit soft-mixed; however, I found almost every jingle to be obnoxiously loud: opening treasure chests sprouts a Zelda-esque ripoff, jumping into portals triggers a booming vibration, and fully-assembling cubes yields you a disparaging synth-beat.

That obsession with synth carries over to the score, composed by a guy appropriately called Disasterpeace. Peace indulges in a subgenre of the matter known as chiptune, which, as the name suggests, renders every other melody in the OST like something between the NES and SNES generation. It’s a theoretically-solid concept (Kirby’s Adventure did something similar after all), but the problem is Peace’s compositions end-up sounding more akin to early-2000s electronica than synthetic instruments, resulting in a lot of extended flat notes filtered through an e-piano. It’s outdated, it’s misophonic, and most importantly contrasts with the placid visuals.

There’s really nothing else to say about Fez. While I’m always happy for indie games that break through the zeitgeist barrier, Fez ultimately doesn’t live-up to any of the notoriety surrounding it or its creator.


NOTES
+Since that video is (sadly) popular, I’ll flesh out my opinion of it in the event of potential fan backlash -- Danskin does raise good points about the nature of the Internet and the tendency for users to project general sentiments onto a singular persona for the sake of a homogenized rebuttal/attack; however, his brushing-off of Fish’s behavior under the argument of Internet celebrities not needing to be held to higher standards is preposterous to say the least. Yes, some of Fish’s quotes did get blown out of proportion by the media, but Fish himself did no favors as far as adapting to criticism or changing his public image. And no Mr. Danskin, it doesn’t matter if he was always this way - when you’re put into a position of power and influence, you’re obligated to be professional lest you contribute to the normalization of toxic behavior par for the course for such authority figures.

++Standing in front of a previously-entered door will bring-up a projection of the next place, but given that you have to match this with the corresponding map image, it’s fundamentally a two-pronged process that would’ve been better off with conventional naming.

+++The first is nighttime revealing a hidden door; the second is a giant owl statue puzzle, though from what I understand both are completely optional anyway.

-There’s a mining section with a bunch of Mjolnir-looking hammers.

-There’s a track here that I swear was all but recreated in Evan’s Remains.

Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review

Played on the Wii U Virtual Console


Farm simulators may be a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 90s they were actually pretty risky: as Toy Story, of all things, duly-showed, agrarian aesthetics were dying in the public eye -- the Internet was growing, Space Camp rising, and even Clint Eastwood had finished his cowboy tenure with Unforgiven.

Yet in 1996, a little company called Amccus burst onto the scene, debuting the first entry in what would eventually be called the Story of Seasons franchise. Dubbed Harvest Moon (or Farm Story in Japan), the premise was somewhat similar to popular JRPGs at the time in that you played as a blank slate tasked with restoring a piece of the world, that piece, here, being your family’s dilapidated ranch.

Unfortunately, despite not featuring an experience system, Harvest Moon feels too adjacent to those aforementioned role-playing games, its contents regurgitating their grindy schematic into a unique, though ultimately elongated, reskin. See, instead of levels, you’ve got monetary thresholds; instead of fighting, you’ve got ploughing; and instead of journeying across a foreign land, you’ve got backtracking galore along the same routes.

Anyone who’s played the myriad of spiritual successors out there knows how things go: you start off with a big plot, till the soil, plant seeds, water them till ripe, sell ‘em, use the profits to either buy more seeds or animals, and rinse & repeat. The problem is, whereas those aforementioned sequels built upon the formula and added diversity, you get no such changes here - progression is built on repetition, meaning you’ll end-up going through the same motions as though you’re grinding for exp ala Final Fantasy/Pokemon/insert_JRPG_of_your_choice. And I know it isn’t fair to criticize a game for lacking something its sequels have, but in determining whether or not a classic holds-up, such comparisons are necessary for deducing if those subsequent additions were common sense supplements or outright genuine innovation (the former, of course, being derogatory in nature towards the progeniting classic in question).

But even on its own merits, Harvest Moon stumbles due to its deliberately-lethargic scheme: you’re all but made to start out with crops because they’re the cheapest commodity available (chicks are $1000; cows $5000!), and after planting them you’re forced to hydrate them square by square by square -> after they maturate, you got to pluck them square by square by square and drop them into the shipping crate piece by piece by piece -> once you get animals that yield produce, you’ll need to pick each egg up yolk by yolk by yolk, or milk every cow, udder by udder….by udder.

Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, this is tedious work. On the plus side, I suppose Amccus successfully recreated 19th century rural farm-life; on the negative side, though, it doesn’t make for a fun time. Harvest Moon has frequently been described as relaxing, but I often found myself more bored than serendipic throughout my 10+ hour runtime, and what’s particularly grating is how the game goes out of its way to make things worse than they should be: you can’t navigate through plants because apparently stems are as thick as stone; you can’t water your middle crop (harvests are grown in a 9x9 grid) until the rest have been reaped, you have limited stamina that can only be replenished through protracted trips to a hot spring ayonder, there’s no rucksack for storing more than one-good at a time, dropping something insta-destroys it, you can’t put stuff for shipping overnight lest it auto-rots, and, perhaps worst of all, you can’t upgrade most of your tools manually. With the exception of the watering can, you’ll have to wait for pre-scripted events in order to acquire your next gear, and arriving at those points requires trudging through hours-and-hours of content: content that I’m not sure many people will willingly stick with.

None of this is even getting into the shortness of the days, which is egregious even by abridged standards: it’s not 5 or 4 or even 3, but 2.75 measly minutes. That’s right, in the time it takes you to microwave a burrito, you’ve got to complete all your daily chores, which yes becomes problematic the larger your grange grows. True, you’re not going to be handling crops every day, but treating(+) your animals, selling their staples, running to town to purchase/peddle additional goods, and successfully serenading your date (more on that later) all take time that the game simply doesn’t give you enough of.

Now, to be fair, some alleviants have been thrown-in to help make things more palatable: you’re able to purchase a horse that acts as a mobile shipping box, grass (in non-winter seasons) constantly regrows/doesn’t need water, chicken eggs can be used to conceive an unlimited supply of hens without needing to procure new ones, chicks don’t have to be fed, wood (for upgrading your house) is auto-stored, you don’t collapse from exhaustion, and, best of all, you’re not penalized for nighttime labor: so long as you irrigate your land and put feed in the stables before heading to bed, the game will count it as having been conducted for that day. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re basically strong-armed into working consecutive nights is doubly indicative of the excessively-swift pacing of the days.

There’s more I could harp on, like how slight movement resets the breakage counter on a boulder/log, how you only have two spaces on your tool belt, or how chickens are automatically killed by wolves if you leave them outside (defeating the whole purpose of setting-up a pen), but to go into all that detail would drag out this review pointlessly. I get that some of Harvest Moon’s prolixity was purposely implemented for the sake of realism, but when taken in conjunction with everything else, it ultimately brings down the product as a whole.

As stated earlier, Harvest Moon incorporated a bit of a dating sim into its framework via the ability to charm a girl and get married (sorry hetero-women, no choices for you), and, in fairness to the writing team, they actually crafted a decent amount of dialogue (granted, a lot of it has to be unraveled over the course of the game, but it is there). Sadly, this aspect is even more simplified than Mass Effect’s due to it purely coming down to you talking to them and giving them gifts tied to their personality. Such a quid pro quo system would be tolerable on its own merits, but the problem, once again, comes down to that everlooming hourglass: with less than three minutes, it becomes a pain in the @ss to balance your duties whilst concurrently running down to the village, talking to them, and/or bringing them a present, a task you have to repeat near-everyday should you wish to (eventually) have a spouse.

Graphically, things are pretty outstanding. Being a SNES release, Harvest Moon naturally boasts sharp pixel art, with NPCs textiles, in particular, doing a phenomenal job conveying their respective characters’ personality (your MC’s farmerwear, Ann’s tomboyish attire, Nina’s more-modest churchgoing garb, etc…). Seasons, as I said before, exist in the game, and effort was thankfully put into their visualization beyond a standard repaint ala Super Mario Bros: footprints in the snow, dead leaves in Autumn, brighter fields in summer, etc….etc….

The real standout, however, has to be the animations programmed for each action: from tools to golden tools to even dancing, you’ll discover a series of special movements coded exclusively for your character.

My only complaints had to do with three foibles: one, your main character’s eyes look permanently dead and depressed (no seriously, at first I thought he was just tired, but that’s his default visage); two, rainfall and extraneous cows in the barn (I believe more than 4) result in a noticeable framerate drop; and three, there’s this ugly yellow/brown filter they put over the camera lens. I get that family-owned farming is often associated with the past, but this discount sepia aesthetic felt unnecessary and honestly diminished the inherent vividness Harvest Moon’s canvas otherwise possessed.

Sound falls along the same wavelength as those aforementioned animations due to the engineers at Amccus synchronizing each with an appropriate din. 2D-based games never invested heavily in sound, but what you get here is a solid auralscape even by those standards. That said, there is a defect in the form of a screechy robot beep donned for the text bubbles (I have no idea what Amccus was thinking with this annoyance, but you’ll be glad to speed through it).

Music is where the game truly drops the ball as, much like A Link to the Past, there’s an insufficient amount of it. You’ve got a single tune for each season, in addition to the town, mountains, and festivals. There are some miscellaneous ones crafted for certain areas (like the chapel), but given that you’ll barely spend any time in those places, you’re liable to primarily hearing the other songs again and again and again. Having a single track/season, in particular, was boneheaded because the game allocates 30 days/quadrant, meaning you’ll hear the same music on repeat for an extended period of time. Composer Tsuyoshi Tanaka is a talented musician as, with the exception of Spring, I liked every leitmotif he crafted here (especially the town’s), making me wonder what led to him shortchanging the score as a whole.

Ultimately, I gave-up on completion due to the grind for cash being too much. I fully concede I may have been playing the game wrong as Harvest Moon is often cited as a relaxing enterprise by most fans; that said, its formula has, objectively-speaking, been improved upon by succeeding ventures (most notably Stardew Valley), meaning you won’t get anything here that you can’t garner from other ventures.


NOTES
+Treating = feeding, selling their bodily products, and (in the case of cows) brushing them.

-It’s pretty interesting to see how little information there is about Amccus online: not only do they lack a Wikipedia page, but they didn’t even go on to develop any of the other Story of Seasons entries, making me wonder if they were absorbed by publisher Natsume or simply fell apart like (tragically) so many other indie devs.

-This game allows you to go skinny-dipping with a girl….I promise I’m not kidding.

-Cutting grass and hoeing acres has the chance of sprouting a frog or mole respectively -- pretty cool additions.

-Sometimes your character will pause to observe a flock of birds ascend from his front yard upon opening the door in the morning.

-You get a dog at the beginning of the game, but he honestly appears to serve no discernible purpose besides generic companionship (was more originally intended for Fido that had to be dropped during development)?

Played on the Wii U Virtual Console

Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion


These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.

If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.

ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.

To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.

The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.

Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.

On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.

Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.

You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).

Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).

I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).

Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!

ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).

Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.

Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.

The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).

Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.



NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.

++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.

+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.

++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.

Note - game received for free as part of a review code

Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.


As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.

Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.

The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.

Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.

This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.

Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.

Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.

Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.

Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.


NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.