Spoilers only at the very end

Video games have been used as a medium to tackle existential topics for a while now: questions like what it means to be human, good vs. evil, and the existence of an afterlife are just some of the many. From its title, you’d think What Comes After would embrace that latter subject, but that isn’t the case. Developed by dual developers Pikselnesia and Rolling Glory Jam, WCA is instead about the present and why life is worth living. It centers around a young woman named Vivi who finds herself on a train bound for the Hereafter. As she awaits course correction, she gets to chatting with the other occupants, who in turn cause her to reflect on her own existence back home.

It’s a fascinating premise, using the age-old Ghost Train trope to spin a relevant tale about overcoming depression when the whole world feels against you. Yet at less than an hour, and with poorly-conceived ideas about its characterizations, WCA can’t help but fall very short, no matter its good intentions. A game like this needed to be successful on at least one of its two ventures: the hero’s journey of acceptance and the individual anecdotes from the supporting cast.

Let’s dive into both so I can better explain why WCA falters, starting with the first. Vivi’s arc is pretty clear-cut: she enters the story melancholic about her continuance and leaves with a newfound appreciation, like she just survived one of Jigsaw’s traps. The problem is we are never given a definitive answer as to what brought about this despondency: she briefly laments about being a burden to her family, yet immediately admits that none of her relatives actually believe or say this. Outside of that, she is barebones- we don’t know anything about her career trajectory, social interactions, schoolwork, nothing. No hints at all that would subtly indicate at least one of them to be the source of her qualms.

No, in place of such direct explanations, I have to believe she is suffering from clinical depression, and it is here that the writers drop the ball. See, the amazing resolution they conceive for her ailment is to just be grateful for this chance at vitality because it doesn’t matter whether you have biochemical deficiencies in your brain that literally make it impossible to do so: if you see the positives in living, it’ll literally overcome any cognitive cancer eating away at your mind. WCA indulges in outdated postulations about dysthymia, and in doing so presents simplistic solutions that would be detrimental to afflicted individuals if the game wasn’t wrapped up in such innocent motives.

Some may retort and say I’m reading too much into things, that the creators definitively intended the narrative to be about the typical blues periods everyone goes through when placed in prolonged circumstances of negativity and NOT about mental illness. To this I would present several counterpoints: one, as stated before, you aren’t given any other grounds to ascribe Vivi’s low state-of-mind to outside of self-perceived encumberment to her household, and considering that is blatantly not true from the perspective of her kinsfolk, it stands to reason that the only kind of person who would believe this is someone with MDD; two, at the start of her odyssey, Vivi, reckoning herself to be dead due to the status of her fellow passengers, remarks that that isn’t such a bad thing (if you don’t believe that you are worth living, you aren’t just gloomy, you are suicidal); and three, during her encounter with a sentient tree, the Tree claims that Vivi didn’t arrive on this special metro by accident, but because her thoughts placed her close to the edge. Of course, nothing specific is stated, but using common sense gleans that she was almost certainly considering taking her own life.

So yeah, the devs wanted to go this route and ended up folding to the sophistry that is optimism (aka escaping the black hole of mental disorders by way of simply focusing on the good around you). If things were that simple, Freud and Jung would’ve gone bankrupt.

On the second front, you are going to spend the majority of your playthrough chatting with the spectral passengers on this phantom express, and their personalized stories just aren’t up-to-par with the lofty expectations I assume Pikselnesia and Rolling Glory Jam had in mind. While there is some heterogeneity in terms of attitudes, the vast majority of the people are either morbidly happy-go-lucky about their predicament or at peace with what transpired and subsequently looking forward to their final destination. The purpose behind this was obviously to provide foils for Vivi, but it comes with the consequence of making the travelers bland- it’s hard to get excited for the next major beat when you know it’s essentially going to be a retread of prior material, no matter the variations on the teller. It’s a shame, too, because you get hints at larger sociopolitical motifs that would have been great to explore by way of the perspective of a deceased person reflecting on the overly-complicated, partly-nonsensical inner workings of modern societies.+

I had two other issues with the story that involve spoilers, so I’ll tag them down below.++

The writers also make the oddball decision to mute the cause of death for most of the commuters. It’s not that they keep it hidden from you, but more that it’s generally not dwelled on or fleshed out beyond a quick sentence. I get that the devs wanted to inspire happiness and hope in players instead of putting them in a flurry of misery, but when it comes at the cost of sanitizing your subject matter, I feel it goes too far in the other direction. “Only in the darkness can you see the Stars” to quote Dr. King- throwing players into a pool of shadow would have made the light above them that much more bright and sanguine.

It’s not just the writing that diminishes the impact of these conversations, but the lack of voice acting. If any game would’ve benefited significantly from a cast of performers, it would have been WCA as a talented actor could very well have laced the idealism in the dialogue with a litany of emotional subtexts: maybe tongue-in-cheek sardonicism or inferred sadness or infectious cheeriness. Instead, you get dull text bubbles that have an annoying “babble” sound accompanying them as you scroll through list-after-list, the only voice acting being Skyward Sword-esque shouts uttered by the voyagers when you greet them (though even that noise lacks variety, with maybe four variations for the dozens of individuals).

There’s no real SFX besides your footsteps. If you stop walking, I guess it’s kind of cool being able to hear the rumbling of the train (despite it blatantly being on a loop), but nothing else.

The music is too quiet for its own good. When you hear it, particularly during the climax, it is beautiful and inspiring, but barring those moments, the tunes are pretty indiscernible. I was also not a fan of the main menu theme as I felt it didn’t occupy the ethereal nature that embodied the concept and story.

Graphically, WCA is sorely lacking. Despite being constructed in the Unity Engine, it comes across like an old Flash Animation project from back-in-the-day, with the same simplistic model and facial animations reused for 99% of the human NPCs. It technically serves its purpose of providing avatars to speak to-and-from, but when you see the same clothing on the same-looking people, old or young, happy or lowly, you can’t help but view the endeavor as shortchanged.

Luckily, one of the places that WCA excels at is in its art design. When you first start out, you get a mundane working-class wagon, chock-full of achromous greys and tints of desaturation. When the plot shifts to the supernatural, gorgeous purples, violets, and blues overtake the interiors, overcasting the game with a phantasmagorical tone. And finally, when you enter the arboretum at the end, you're gifted a verdant liveliness via green everywhere that elicits the themes of resprouting and thriving in life. I also appreciated how the train riders themselves were all transparent, speaking to their spiritual composition.

As there is no real gameplay aside from using the arrow keys and spacebar, I can come to my final verdict, which is sadly a no. Not only is the pricing relative to gametime ridiculous, but the myriad of problematic hindrances in the story prevent me from recommending What Comes After to gamers, particularly those who suffer from some psychological illness.

Notes
-The presence of face masks is kind of amusing, grounding the game in the height of the COVID-era where the absence of vaccines warranted such coverings. In doing so, though, WCA loses its evergreen appeal for future generations of potential players. I also have to wonder if the writers were taking a slight jab at the required dressing by tying it into the isolation Vivi feels at this point in her life. If so, well, I’m going to keep my mouth shut lest I say something I come to regret.

-Is Vivi a play on the third person conjugation of the Spanish verb for “to live”?

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+One Soul criticizes the draining nature of toiling away for a boss, a small jab at Capitalism that is sadly just a touch.

++There are animals and plants on the train, indicating that non-human entities get the same treatment as humans in this mythology. Except, there are references to eating meat or meals with meat in them, so how exactly does that work? The game wants to have its meat pie and eat it too. The self-aware vegetation also leads to some haphazardly thrown-in environmental themes that don’t land well.

Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom


One part visual novel, one part platformer, Even the Ocean is another example of this trend I’ve been observing in modern game design wherein two different genres are blended together to craft a new product. Whether it’s for the sake of creativity or because the developers genuinely love the parent categories, I can’t say, but the end results have generally been positive for me. Unfortunately, Even the Ocean was a bit of a mixed bag- some parts worked, others didn’t, and I’ll explain what I mean shortly.

Before going on further, I should preface by saying that I don’t believe VNs are my thing. It’s quite possible I haven’t met the right one yet, but every time I have played a game influenced by their roots, it has ALWAYS dragged down the experience: VA-11 Hall-A, Hyperdimension Neptunia, parts of Golden Sun, etc….

As you can probably surmise from this tangent, my primary issues with Even the Ocean come from its VN half: while the platforming isn’t perfect, it didn’t take away from the game the way the former did, and that diminishment is largely because of two reasons. The first is budgetary-related. See, Even the Ocean is indie to its core- it's clear Analgesic Productions wasn’t working with as much cash as would have been ideal, and so the bulk of their resources were (rightfully) invested in the sections with actual gameplay. The problem is, the developers wanted to have their cake and eat it too: they wanted the story to have cinematic moments, but didn’t have the money to bring them to life. The results are discounted scenes wherein high-stakes action or emotional beats are depicted via the old VN tactic of semi-stop motion, or singular frames played one after the other to show the before and after, but not the during, of an event. Anytime a major incident occurred, I was partly taken out because of the lack of animation standing in stark contrast to everything else.

Second is the administration of drawn-out conversations. This is where the meat of the story exists, and without voice acting, you’re forced to read paragraph upon paragraph of dialogue to get the gist of things. If this is fine with you, then it won’t be an issue, but for me it’s always felt like an outdated feature in modern times- either keep the convos short or give me some performance to lace the dialogue with a Shakespearan tinge.

In terms of the quality of the story, I actually don’t know how I feel. I’ve always said that, after experiencing a piece of art, one goes through three phases: the immediate reaction, post-immediate reaction (2-3 days), and the analytical reaction (1+ months), yet I couldn’t quite tell you what my immediate and post-immediate responses are. There are things I liked a lot, specifically the instances of subversion without irritation (unlike Ryan Johnson, Even the Ocean’s writers know how to build-up and and subvert expectations). The reason Analgesic succeeds is because they abstain from doing the exact opposite- they opt for a greyness that doesn’t make the shifts in behavior or beats seem random or silly.+

I also mostly enjoyed those long conversations- yes, they do drag, and can get preachy (particularly at the end), but you always get a sense of humanity, like the writers were at least trying to ground the characters. Aliph herself made for a pleasant protagonist - her naivety justified from being a fish out of water and, regardless, offset by her determination and deference.

Sadly, the dialogue is where I have to begin my onslaught of narratorial criticisms, beginning with the vast majority of NPCs. Even the Ocean’s story involves Aliph traveling to different facilities, areas, and towns in order to restore the Whiteforge City power plants that loom there, and Analgesic made the decision to fill those locales with some of the kookiest personas you will ever meet in gaming. This doesn’t apply to all, but one too many of them are absolutely annoying- they act offbeat for no reason whatsoever and are completely at odds with the aforementioned realistic denizens who reside in Whiteforge. So jarring was this contrast that I was genuinely expecting some grand twist down-the-line explaining that these people were being cognitively influenced by an alien entity or poisonous gas in the air. The situation would be amusing if the script wasn’t so bad and lackluster for them; they’re loony for the sake of being loony.

Besides that, Even the Ocean just isn’t long enough to give enough depth to the characters, making their emotional surges and logic jumps somewhat abrupt at times. YMMV, but that was the case for me. Overall, the story was engaging enough for me to pursue the objectives; however, it falls far from achieving the goals its conceptors clearly envisioned.

Graphically, you got three different art galleries on display- first for the main game, second for the VN cutscenes, and third for the text speeches.

The first one is great for the most part. Analgesic was, without a doubt, striving to pay homage to SNES JRPGs, and they succeeded, though maybe were too successful. While environments are beautifully colored and contain minute details reminiscent of their pastiched counterparts, the character models look outdated: bodies are condensed, eyes unduly big, and legs literally just stubs that wiggle in a vain attempt at mimicking walking. And though they never seem aesthetically out-of-place from the backdrops, their kinetic movements betray them, giving off the sensation of floating more than ambling.

Still, I can’t get over how beautiful the individualized locations were- you’ll be going to a lot of vistas, from factories to creepy forests to even the inside of a giant starfish, and the art design and pseudo-lighting layer them all with rich, colorful flavor.

The second is good enough. Analgesic’s artisan team took a storybook approach, with such scenes rendered in a warm, post-romanticism style. There’s not many of them, but they are pleasant on the eyes nonetheless.

The third is where things run downhill. You’re only looking at the heads in these rectangles, but almost every single NPC turns ugly in them. I have a feeling that Analgesic wanted to convey verismo in the countenances, but their solution was to throw in a profuse amount of wrinkles and stress lines, leaving everyone appearing much older and uncomelier than they actually are.

Sound is the next bag, and there’s not much to speak about due to deficiencies in two of the three brackets. There’s no voice acting which, as I stated above, was a detriment to the game given its VN roots (and the fact that there are two singing portions centered around the title). Instead what you get are personalized noises for each NPC when they speak, which range from tolerable to irate mumbling.

Not much in the way of sound design either. Jumps are muted, steps differentiated by terrain but otherwise derivative, and everything else pretty stockish.

Luckily, the score is exceptionally good, thanks to strong dedication from composer Melos Han-Tani. He lives and breathes that old-school SNES flair, adorning each area with a unique tune that befits it. I’m not saying they’re all memorable, and I wasn’t a fan of the overmap theme due to it ineffectively balancing excitement and melancholy, but the majority do elicit the sweet music that came from the fourth generation’s sound chip without any of the screechiness that some nostalgic hacks input into their OSTs.

Finally, we come to the gameplay. To reiterate, Even the Ocean is one-half platformer, and so you’re going to be doing a lot of that throughout your playthrough.

To be blunt, the levels themselves are short and easy: I only had trouble with one, the ice-capped Oscar Basin, and even then I’m 90% sure the difficulty came from me trying to breeze through it rather than being patient. No, anyone with a decent grasp of platform games will be able to handle the tasks thrown your way, and it’s largely because there aren’t any unique mechanics here. The crux of Even the Ocean’s sections rests on balancing your energy: too much purple or green and you’ll zap into nonexistence. The thing is, this doesn’t affect gameplay as much as it should have- while overcharging near the breaking point technically increases your speed or jumping (depending on which you do), you’ll rarely have to do it: I can only recall three instances where I was required to. The vast majority of your time is otherwise spent doing standard platforming activities like strategically leaping, wall bouncing, launching between propellants, blocking lasers, evading ghosts, riding airstreams, and so forth. The innovativeness doesn’t even come close to what was on display during the 80s and 90s, much less today, and you can see the blatant borrowing from titles like Super Mario Bros. 2, Donkey Kong Country, and Yoshi’s Island.

And yet, for all these qualms, I’ll be danged if I didn’t have a ton of fun. Maybe it’s because I grew up with the aforementioned titles, or maybe it’s because the input/output scheme here is solid, but no matter the source I had a blast going through and completing each dungeon. Yeah, they weren’t challenging, however not every game needs to be difficult. Even the Ocean is definitely a title where you can sit down, relax, and delight in the fresh systems thrown your way, each factory centered on a specific gimmick that differentiates from its counterparts.

Unfortunately, I can’t end on a praiseworthy note as there are a number of small, yet persistently annoying problems present that all relate to quality-of-life. Even the Ocean makes some of the most dumbfounded mistakes I have ever witnessed in a contemporary video game. For starters, if you’re utilizing an Xbox 360 controller (as I was), the A button is used to bring up the menu while the bumpers or X/B are used to affirm….why? How did this make any sense in concept? It’s awkward, unnatural to literally any other game in existence, and I guarantee you you’ll never fully acclimate to the scheme (nor are you given the option to bind your own keys).

Next is the implementation of an overworld- it is wholly pointless. Those who think AAA releases are the only games with meaningless open worlds need only look at Even the Ocean to see the indie market bite the bullet. The map is full of empty space, few divergent stops that aren’t worth dropping by, and an abundance of artificial walls and obstacles that make traversal a chore. A Super Mario Galaxy 2-type interface allowing you to access other “worlds” from a single nexus in Whiteforge would’ve worked so much better.

On the topic of Whiteforge, it goes in the point-and-click adventure direction by having most of its localities and fronts available via entering one of two train stations, but that too has QOL ailments: one, the same dang observation message plays each time you enter the screen, as though the developers thought you would forget what the function of a freakin’ train was the second you left the terminal; two, the fact that there are two metros instead of one, making you have to waste time peregrinating from one to the next (I get that Analgesic wanted to showcase the socioeconomic strata in Whiteforge, but you barely spend time in the metropolis anyway, and they could’ve easily had a guard or someone on place to prevent poor people from getting off on higher-end destinations), and three, there’s NOTHING to do in the dang city. Seriously, if you go anywhere, like the library or museum, the only option you have is to talk to the custodian there or read some pamphlet. A junkyard exists for tutorial reasons, but it’s unnecessary to visit to due to how untroublesome the levels are. Seriously, almost everything about Whiteforge was stupid from the get-go: it would’ve made things much more ergonomic to simply reduce the settlement to a hub in the vein of the LEGO games.

I’m not done ranting about QOL- when you complete a factory, the game doesn’t auto-teleport you to the Mayor’s Office, meaning you gotta travel all the way back. Okay, that wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the fact that you CANNOT DO ANYTHING ELSE until you get debriefed by the guy and start-up the next day’s events. No really, you aren’t allowed to go to another stronghold, you can’t explore the (sparse) extra dwellings on the landscape, nothing, so why not just instantly send you back?

When you talk to people, full sentences are not constructed in the speech bubble, meaning you have to finish reading part of a sentence, then click to finish out the remaining half: why couldn’t they have just enlarged the squares to display the full thought? When you are finished speaking and reignite a chat, they will literally just REPEAT the exact same message, instead of doing what most sane developers incorporate which is a short-changement with a smaller response: and for those who are inquisitive like me and like to repeat banters with NPCs in the hopes of seeing some new comment, you are not given the option to skip or backout, forcing you to relive the exchanges you JUST parsed through.

These are all little things, but their summation combined with easy-fixes culminates in an unpleasant experience.

In the end, can I recommend Even the Ocean? Look, there is a mode from the start menu that allows you to just play the levels, but I imagine doing that would result in you missing out on most of the story, which is honestly good enough to warrant experiencing in spite of its VN tropes. So, you really gotta make the decision for yourselves, guys, based on what I stated, especially with the pricing being on-point relative to playtime. There are drawbacks, but if you like platformers anchored around a narrative, you’ll probably enjoy your time with Even the Ocean.


Post-script: beating the game unlocks a final world that is actually a beta version of the game from the development stage. I wish more companies would do this as it would be cool to interact with and witness how things were before they became finalized, glitches/deficiencies and all. I personally didn’t complete it, but I’m sure others will see it as another challenge.





























SPOILERS
+For example, the Mayor comes off as your typical political sleazebag, but he slowly shows that he has a heart and has taken a liking to Aliph. Even when he turns on you at the end, it’s not for some mustache-twirling, Machivalllian reason, but because he truly cares for the preservation of Whiteforge…at least half of it anyway.


++Is anyone else surprised that Aliph doesn’t care or even think about her mom at all during the end? I mean, you have the option to visit her whenever you want in the countryside wherein Aliph will tell her she loves her, but apparently not enough to warrant even a parting thought?
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Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom

Perseus Mandate is the second and final story expansion for the original FEAR, focusing on a different set of characters and their actions during the last act of the original game (my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/428982/). As a result of this, spoilers will be discussed about that release, so you have been warned.

Because the same engine was reused, and because there are only so many ways to reiterate the same thing in a new tone, I’m not going to go into detail about the technical aspects of Perseus- the link above provides an introspective look into those facets should you be interested. In terms of any distinct graphical variances, I honestly thought that Perseus appeared slightly worse with regards to NPC models - the faces came off as more clay-ey than the solid countenances of the vanilla FEAR, possibly due to the mocap process being more rushed this time around. The game also overindulges in the blood-soaked room trope- it was already old by the end of the first FEAR, but here it can’t help but come off as edgy art design. Other than those two things, though, Perseus Mandate is darkly resplendent, and unlike Extraction Point, runs without any bugs (slippery dirt grounds being the exception).

In the sound department, I thought ambient noise was handled better- environments come across a lot more sonorous than before. Nothing spellbinding, but cool nonetheless.

Gameplay-wise, again, controls are handled similarly. In addition to all the fresh gear from Extraction Point, you have two new guns: a more powerful assault rifle with tracer rounds and a lighting laser that’s essentially a rehash of the particle beam from the OG. So not much in the way of creativity, though they are fun to use.

Really, where Perseus visibly shakes things up is in its newly-conceived enemy types. You got a different merc group armed with higher-caliber weaponry; giant soldiers wielding equally giant shields; demented beings who abruptly sprout out of pools of shadow ala the Wallmasters from Ocarina of Time; and, most intriguing, goggle-wearing supersoldiers dubbed Nightcrawlers who are not only partly immune to reflex time, but capable of crawling and leaping everywhere like spiders. While Nightcrawlers are more akin to minibosses, they make for some tense fights whenever you encounter them.

Besides bringing back previous archetypes from Extraction Point, Perseus further continues the trend of shifting the series in a pure action direction. There are no drawn-out horror intervals, just occasional moments of fright that quickly dissipate to leave room for more fighting. I personally had no problem with this since neither of the prequels were particularly scary, although ardent fans will certainly find flaws here.

Perseus also feels like it employs open areas at a greater frequency than was done before, which made it a little funner to play since closed-in environs are inherently more straining on the eyes than wider ones. That being said, while I did claim in my critique of FEAR that the enemy AI would have benefitted from being able to function in broader places, maybe I spoke too soon as the antagonists came off as dumber here. With the exception of the Nightcrawlers, everyone else tends to just stand-in-place and trade suppressing fire with you until you get the better of them. I don’t know if this was an issue on TimeGate’s coding or me being ignorant in my recollection of FEAR and Extraction Point, but I’ll leave it here for the sake of a record.

A decent amount of missions give you your own allied partners, and unlike the mercs, the programming for them is actually pretty good- they won’t be chucking grenades or anything complicated, but they will actually kill opposing forces.

Now, it’s the story that gamers will be most interested in as that is the real differentiator for Perseus. Well, you’ll be happy to know that I ended up liking Mandate’s narrative about as much as the vanilla FEAR, largely because it essentially copy/pastes it! As noted in the introduction, Perseus is a sidequel centered on a second FEAR team who are deployed to another Armachan building to obtain data on some project called, you guessed it, Perseus. And it’s nearly a beat-for-beat retread of the OG Fear, with your three-man team getting separated at points, you uncovering Armachan’s secrets about Alma, an even an endgame set in the vault.

There are narrative issues at play here. For one, the Perseus Project isn’t as fleshed out as Project Origin was, and it didn’t make sense to me why the two Recon Teams weren’t sharing information with each other as they uncovered related data. Secondly, while materializing less than before, Alma still continues to be a frustrating plot device, and the post-credits doesn’t line-up with immediate prior events.+ I also heavily disliked TimeGate reemploying the silent protagonist trope- your unnamed “Sergeant” has no business being anonymous or quiet when his teammates don’t have either trait. Combined with him possessing reflex vision and experiencing intimate hallucinations, he is, for all intents and purposes, The-Point-Man-in-Everything-but-Name, rendering him an extremely lazy ripoff.

Despite these downsides, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t kind of thrilling tracking down and opening another one of Armachan’s skeleton-filled closets whilst simultaneously dealing with supernatural machinations. For all the negative sentiment Perseus Mandate gets, I definitely enjoyed it more than Extraction Point and would recommend it, flaws and all, to those who appreciated the story of the first FEAR. At the very least, in contrast to its predecessors, it has a pretty satisfactory conclusion.

Notes
-After completion, Perseus includes three bonus missions that are pure shooters involving you running around clearing waves of gunners as you try to progress to the end of a level. I personally didn’t finish them after dying during the first, but more content for you if you like the gameplay.

-I’m surprised to hear popular complaints about the length -- to me, Perseus kind of overstayed its welcome, but even if it hadn’t it took me 30+ minutes more to beat than Extraction Point.

-Steven Blum voices one of your teammates! I don’t know if I can say his voice fit the Army Captain role, but it was sweet recognizing him.

-This is the first time I’ve seen explicit product placement in a video game, with DELL and Alienware Computers being used by Armachan personnel (though I guess it’s all Dell since Alien is a subsidiary).
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+Like a sensation of déjà vu, Alma is back and inconsistent in her magnitude. She’s clearly against the soldiers of fortune trying to acquire Fettel’s DNA, as exhibited by her murdering some of them, yet that’s just it….why is she allowing so many of them to continue forward on their mission whilst vaporizing a select few? No explanation is given whatsoever.


++The post-credits shows a corrupt US Senator being handed Fettel’s DNA ala the ending of Dead Man’s Chest with Norrington giving Beckett Davy Jones’s Heart. My question is how? You blatantly kill the head assassin holding it and take it back to FEAR HQ, so where did this rando get it from? At least show some switch happening between henchmen if you’re going to pull a fast one.

NOTE- Spoilers only at the very end:



Extraction Point begins immediately after the events of the first game, so be warned that this review will be discussing spoilers from it.

Because every asset is reused, I won’t go into heavy detail about the graphics since they are literally the same as the vanilla FEAR. You can read my review of it here (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/428982/), but essentially the game looks good if you can accept it as a late-PS2 title over a full-blown PS3 one. While the physics engine is superb, the luminescence is too caliginous, forcing you to employ your handheld beacon even in areas that I’m sure the developers intended to be decently lit.

Unfortunately, Extraction Point contains supplementary hitches that indicate either a rushed production or debugging process. I experienced several game-breaking glitches that required workarounds discovered by ardent Steam users, so note that you will be forced to look them up when you inevitably experience them.

Sound is also the same, the pros and cons of which I spoke about in my critique of FEAR. The score was a little more consistent this time around, but still not as indelible as it could have been.

Gameplay-wise, again, nothing has fundamentally changed. Two new weapons have been added to your arsenal should you come across them: a wall-mounting deployable turret, laser carbine, and a minigun, all of which are a blast to use. A couple of extra enemy types have also been thrown in, but they’re not radically different from anything you have or will come across.

The biggest compliment I can give Extraction Point is that, with the exception of the last section, it has embraced being a full-blown action game with some tense moments over the half-and-half genre bending the OG tried. There’s now a good balance of open and enclosed environs, giving enemies a chance to be more tactical in the former and fodder for bloodbath-fueled fights in the latter. Compunctuating this are Robocop-influences, with large mechs making up some of the new enemies I noted above that you face.

But of course, it is the story that will determine the quality of this expansion. As stated in the intro, you’re picking up right where you left off, with Alma causing the chopper to crash, splitting up the trifecta and forcing the Point Man to work his way through a new part of the deserted Fairport city. His goal is to not only reunite with his comrades, but make it to a new evac spot, his efforts impeded by hostile apparitions and the revitalization of the replicas in spite of Fettel’s death.

I’ll be upfront- the story just isn’t good. Two of my pet peeves with direct sequels are those that either unwind what the previous entry did or don’t resolve unanswered questions, and Extraction Point effectuates both. It’s never explained what’s going on with Fettel, how Alma survived the explosion, what’s reviving the carbon copies, nor is there further development of the Point Man’s relationship with his mother. I genuinely didn’t know what TimeGate’s intentions were with Alma- it’s as though they couldn’t decide whether to continue her antagonistic streak or make her a straight-up ally, something I’ll flesh out below*. You also get more inconsistent power nonsense from the phantasms, wherein they’ll do some crazy thing but be quickly dissipated with a couple of bullets.

The Point Man’s silence is also more harmful to his characterization here than in the first game. There are moments in the story where his partners will openly wonder on the comms whether they’re going to die or be rescued, and he doesn’t say ANYTHING to reassure them. Vice-versa, you’ll get individuals asking how he’s doing, and he doesn’t bother responding. Dead Space 2 made the smart decision to drop its silency with Isaac- Extraction Point should’ve done the same.

The ending is also a rehash of the first game’s, not providing any satisfactory conclusion or juicy cliffhanger worth pondering over.

There are a lot of people who hold Extraction Point as a great DLC, but I thought there were too many problems with it to be worth recommending. It’s true, there is a greater diversity of environments this time around, from parking garages to derelict buildings, and the hospital sequence at the end is quite riveting. However, it's ultimately just pointless shooting without any of the mystery thrills of the first. And considering it was retconned (or rendered an alternate reality) by Monolith’s own FEAR 2, you’re not missing out on an integral piece of the canon.





























+There appear to be two different Almas, the kid and the adult: the child tries to help you by guiding you at times, while the adult is hit-or-miss, obliterating enemy battalions with her psychic romps whilst also being the murderer of your friends and tormenter of your nightmares. The former trait made no sense to me- these clones were cognitively hijacked by Fettel to free Alma from her captivity in the Armachan facility, so why is she killing them? And how are there two of them? Like I said, there is no attempt by the writers to even ATTEMPT to explain these beats- they just throw them in ad nauseam and expect you to either ignore it or explain it away yourself because “lol horror”. Just ridiculous.

I remember when F.E.A.R. came out- it was being touted as revolutionary in the horror field, putting players in a psychologically tormentive world where a little girl was causing all kinds of havoc. Think along the lines of Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil, or Eternal Darkness and you’ll get an idea about the reputation that preceded it.

Years later, that notoriety has not faltered- in fact, it’s been expanded, with many claiming F.E.A.R. to be one of the greatest horror FPS’s of all time. Aspects like its enemy AI, particle effects, and combat have been praised to no end, and that adoration has set a high bar…a bar that this reviewer finds to be placed too aloft, at least by contemporary standards. I hope that my subsequent writing will successfully flesh out my thoughts in a manner that both explains where I’m coming from and fosters new discussions on a title considered to be a perennial classic.

I’ve always been a story guy, so we’ll start there- the First Encounter Assault Recon (FEAR) Team has been deployed to a facility owned by defense giant Armachan: reports have come out that a psychic employee of theirs named Paxton Fettel has gone rogue, commanding an army of super soldier clones causing mayhem. Headed by the aptly named Point Man, FEAR slowly discovers there’s more to Fettel’s rebellion than meets the eye, with Armachan having secrets it will do anything to keep hidden.

Originality is something that is very hard, if not outright impossible, to pull off these days. Established storylines and tropes have become so ingrained in the public consciousness that your best bet as a creative mind is to simply imbibe everything with pure imagination. In a lighter-hearted story, that can mean being outlandish; in a serious one, that can mean scribing a deep lore. As FEAR falls into the latter category, it does just that, crafting a mythos akin to the Hellboy franchise wherein paranormal activity coexists alongside the natural world, its knowledge held by a select few. I had no issue with the premise since we just needed something to get the ball rolling; however, it should be pointed out that everything here is very surface level- there is no information about the F.E.A.R. organization, the extent of phantasmic phenomena (or their origins), how the government has gone about covering up such accostments, nothing, not even through optional logs.

Again, the sparse detail isn’t particularly downgrading for the action-packed story Monolith wants to tell, but those hoping for something a bit more in-depth will definitely find FEAR lacking, especially as it pertains to plot questions like how Armachan even discovered ESP if the federal government had been keeping things under wraps, why no one else on the Recon Team has a reaction to the Point Man having superhuman abilities, or how the Point Man even joined FEAR.

That being said, there still are narrative issues here that are privy to scrutiny based on their flawed premises or execution. First up is the aforestated main character; not only is he not given a name like EVERY SINGLE OTHER NPC, but Monolith made the odd decision to render him mute. Silent protagonists only work in two cases: one, they are acting as a conduit or human reaction to the events transpiring- these events should be abnormal by the standards of the setting (think Isaac in Dead Space 1); or two, the character is doing the constant bidding of some other entity (think Link in most Zelda entries or Jack in BioShock). In either situation, an identity/personality isn’t warranted because they are essentially a stand-in for the player and thus have no impact on the storyline by way of their designation. And that latter reason is exactly what director Craig Hubbard claimed was the rationalization for Monolith going the nameless route: to make it easier for gamers to blend their identity with that of the Point Man’s.

The problem is straightforward- the Point Man HAS a characterization that is directly tied to what is transpiring, thereby giving him a connection that presupposes any anonymous factorization that would have been granted from him remaining quiet. This backstory isn’t restricted to database files either. During your journey you are forced to listen to Fettel blabber about your upbringing, as well as relive constant flashbacks showcasing what happened during the Point Man’s childhood, culminating in a grand revelation that would have been cool if the twist wasn’t so blatantly obvious from the get-go.

This taciturnity also leads to some other minor frustrations that add up in the long haul- when the Point Man sees something worth reporting, like encountering Fettel early on or undergoing those nightmare trips, he doesn’t say anything to senior leadership; when he witnesses a teammate get injured, he doesn’t ask if they are doing okay; when an NPC needs to be talked to, he lets his overseer do all the chatting. When this much autonomy is removed from your character, it unintentionally makes them seem like a sociopathic dunce without force majeure.

The indulgence in clichés, particularly as they relate to the horror genre, make up the second biggest gripe I had with FEAR. Armachan is as generic as you can get when it comes to evil corporations- a company run by psychos who will do almost anything to gain market power in a capitalistic society. Its use in horror media is essentially just a modernization of the Mad Scientist stock character; an entity so corrupted by the idea of concocting something groundbreaking that it overrides their moral reasoning. I know I said that there’s only so much novelty you can do in this day-and-age, but the absence of creativity rears its head whenever the writing ventures into this territory. That is, more could have been done to make Armachan out to be this conglomerate using its monetary vigor to reap its way upwards (as represented by figureheads): maybe have bribed politicians be the reason it found out about the occult; incompetent state foster systems the way it was able to acquire test subjects; weapons manufacturing providing financing for its other ventures; information warfare being waged towards competitors in order to acquire more value in emerging theurgical fields, I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here. I fully concede that Deus Ex spoiled me as, in that game, you had many political machinations that were going on behind-the-scenes of JC’s odyssey, compared to FEAR, where the best you get are phone messages disclosing “concerns” different executives were having immediately prior to things going haywire.

The pure horror aspects are where the game really drops the ball. I’ll be upfront and say that FEAR is not frightening, at least not in a contemporary sphere. There are a few brilliantly-executed jump scares, but it really is more of an action game with some moments of suspense. I get the sense that the developers intended for the terror to derive primarily from the atmosphere and surroundings you stumble around: corpses, blood puddles, and fulgurating bulbs overlay every other room. And with the occasional apparition thrown in to spice things up, this would seem like a good formula for success.

The problem is, that imagery gets old very fast- not only will you be desensitized to cadavers if you’ve played any shooter since Wolfenstein 3D, but the graphical output of the game takes away from the potential of their impact (more on that below). In addition, the few spirits you do encounter are inconsistent in their transcendent nature, which makes them frustrating as antagonists. Let me sum it up it this way- these ghosts are capable of such feats as ethereal teleportation, instant volatilization, and manipulation of the physical environment, yet they conveniently forget their abilities when it comes to stopping you. Oh, not to mention they are somehow susceptible to bullets. When you don’t have consistency to the fantasy aspects of your world, it takes away from the threat and leads to plot holes very fast.

As you can probably tell from the marketing, the primary ghostly figure assailing you is a female psychic named Alma. Depending on the circumstances, her appearance alternates between that of a young girl and grown adult, and while her screen time is sporadic at best, it’s obvious that the developers wanted you to feel her presence throughout the game: whether it’s via her whispers or celluloid-esque flashes. Even when FEAR was released in 2005, the whole “evil little girl” trope had been overdone in horror fiction (The Exorcist, The Shining, The Ring, a part of Freddy vs. Jason, etc...), and Monolith, once again, does the bare minimum when it comes to putting their own spin on it. While she is given decent depth via computer files you can download, she isn’t anywhere near as terrifying as her legacy would have you believe. And that last statement really applies for the game in general. If you go in expecting the occasional shock, you’ll be better off appreciating FEAR.

But if it wanes in the depth department, does the baseline narrative at least provide popcorn entertainment? Well, partly. A lot has been made about the gunplay, which I’ll speak about in the gameplay section, but I felt that was offset by the story objectives- these often feel less thrillerish and more errandish, like you’re following marching cues rather than uncovering a corporate conspiracy. FEAR is divided into chapters called “intervals,” and 95% of them are based around a goal of apprenhending someone, usually Fettel, and it gets a bit cartoonish when the subject you’re after manages to evade you every single time. It’s not that there aren’t justifications in place explaining how they have escaped, but even with these I couldn't help but feel like I was Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner ad nauseam. By the fifth interval I genuinely stopped caring about detaining Fettel because I knew he would conveniently allude me until the endgame.

There were two other issues I had with FEAR’s story that I’ll reserve with spoiler tags for the end++, but needless to say, this isn’t a game that you’ll be playing for the plot. There are some interesting concepts and fervently dark moments scattered throughout; however, it doesn’t amount to anything I found particularly memorable.

When it comes to the graphics, I gotta be honest with you guys- I thought this was a PS2 release that had gotten ported to PC. Lo and behold my surprise to find out it was actually from the seventh generation. Granted, it was technically a PC publication that was immediately sent over to the mainline consoles when they became available the following year, but it still bears comparisons given its brethren.

The PS2 comment is not meant to be an insult- it’s a reference to FEAR being visually reminiscent of other first-person titles that came out in that era like Deus Ex and Half-Life 1, albeit with significant touch-ups. Courtesy of the LithTech Jupiter EX engine, there is a crispness to the environments that avoids the constant blurriness that plagued a lot of the texturing from that gen, which is important given the amount of Artex interiors you’ll be spending the majority of your time traipsing through.

Unfortunately, that’s the only part of FEAR’s GFX that I can praise without any drawbacks. All other facets have pros and cons: character models have realistic-looking faces offset by awful hair and janky running movements; your flashlight works wonders illuminating corridors till you realize you’ll need it on for almost your entire playthrough courtesy of an overly-dim lighting system; NPCs can be blown apart while alive, but once deceased an invisible shield prevents further mutilation of their bodies; particle effects, which I alluded to in the intro, are abundant, ranging from shredded papers to electric sparks, however, it’s the same rehashed animation for every damage.

I know some of these come off as petty, and, besides the low flashlight battery, they definitely aren’t going to impede your enjoyment. I only bring them up because of the pedestal that FEAR is generally put on by retro reviewers for setting standards that have seemingly not been topped. Not only are those standards not consistent in quality, but they have definitely been surpassed in video game development:play any modern shooter and you’ll find breakable objects, bullet holes, and blood splatter. With FEAR, it’s less that it has superior versions of these and more that there is a greater amount of it- there’s more shattery windows around you, more pulverulent stationary in the office spaces you battle your way through, more gorey compositions to the NPC models you blow apart (courtesy of less-complex polygon counts).

It’s impressive, don’t get me wrong, and it can be a genuine treat to see matter spritzing everywhere during firefights. Nice details like ricocheting bullets from the guns of thugs popped in the act of discharging their weapons never get old to behold. Just keep in mind that technological limits kept things from being as grand as they were intended to be.

The soundscape is excellent when it comes to noise. Unique SFX upon unique SFX was programmed to account for: surfaces struck by melee strikes, terrain/items walked on, the velocity of jumps on said objects, the power of firearms (shotgun ftw), and others I’m sure I’m failing to bring to mind. FEAR is a prime example of what happens when a developer puts effort into acoustics.

Sadly, I can’t say that same effort was put into the other two auditory facets. The score isn’t memorable, trying to service its two genres with either generic action music or Holy leitmotifs ala a lyre-esque instrument. Because fighting is constant you never really pay attention to the former, and the horror is (as stated earlier) so minimalistic that the latter feels like something you gotta bide through rather than an evocative experience that phonically elevates you to another realm. While hallway walks can get eerie courtesy of surefire atmospheric spookiness, you’ll never find yourself dreading turning a corner or opening a door from otic penetrations.

And then there’s the voice acting, which is so hit-or-miss. Peter Lurie does a fine job as Fettel, sounding like a cool-headed Mark Hamill, and I absolutely loved the man who voiced your radio commander- the way he read off intel reports from terminals that detail Armachan’s dark backstory was particularly superb. Unfortunately, they’re the only good ones: your partners sound like they’re reading lines off a page without cues, and no one else stands out. All the enemies you face also share the exact same performer, and while some may claim that this is justified due to them being clones, you later encounter security guards for Armachan who are NOT biological replicas yet have the same accent, indicating to me that this was probably not a story-based casting choice.

Finally, we come to the much-esteemed gameplay. As an FPS, FEAR works well, avoiding falling into cover shooter territory courtesy of a slow-down mechanic that allows you to Matrix your way through gunfights. Despite the presence of a meter, it does admittedly make things easy, allowing you to escape scrapes or ambushes at the literal press of a button.

FEAR tries to counter this via two stabilizers: one, making bullets do significant damage, and two, having tougher enemy varieties. The first initiative actually works wonders- it was nice finally playing a game that not only distinguishes between body armor and HP, but also treats projectiles like the lethal hazards they are: combined with the placement of troops in a space, it really does prevent you from going in guns-ablazing. The second initiative, though, falters simply because there aren’t that many of them, and they ultimately amount to bullet sponges that can be dispersed relatively quickly.

Much has been made about the artificial intelligence Monolith crafted for their hordes of goons, and I gotta be honest with you guys, it really is overstated. Yes, during your scuffles, you will witness assailants attempt some form of strategy, whether its drawing you out of a camping spot with grenades or attempting a flank, but that solely applies to a few members of the squad: 8 times out of 10, the rest of them act like standard antagonistic NPCs in other games wherein they stand out in the open and trade fire. Honestly though, I felt the biggest thing impeding the tactical coding was the small spaces. FEAR is a very claustrophobic game, open environs being few and far between; as such, most of your playtime is spent in tight passageways and enclosed chambers, places that work for horror but falter for the calculated operational planning of a militaristic squadron trying to take down one man. I concede Deus Ex and even Gothic spoiled me in this regard, but playing those games truly showcased how enemy AI could take advantage of bigger arenas, particularly if they had ranged tools at their disposal.

On that note, there isn’t too much variety with armaments, though quantity is evidently substituted with quality as each weapon is a beast to behold. There’s a reason FEAR had a popular multiplayer back-in-the-day, and it has to do with the gunplay- it’s so smooth, I never even had to zoom in when setting-off a bullet, rocket, or laser. The fact that it works well with the slo-mo is a testament to the craftsmanship by Monolith, giving players the opportunity to be creative in their approach to hostile situations.

There are issues I had with the gameplay. For starters, I noticed a small delay in the auto-looting of extra ammunition: a couple of seconds, which may not seem like much, but adds up in a fast-paced game. Secondly, I wasn’t a big fan of enemies going flying whenever they were sprayed with a bunch of bullets- the game acts like you’re hitting them with .75 caliber rounds when that’s far from the case. Thirdly, I hated how phone messages forced you to sit through the whole operator-speak of “you have 2 new messages, first one from….” instead of just getting to the point. Fourthly, despite the presence of a crouch prompt, enemy flashlight reaction, and one-hit KO buttstroke, there are no stealth options, which you’ll realize is bizarre when you play the game. Soldiers often aren’t aware of your presence when you enter their vicinity, and given the caps on ammo and equipment, providing players the opportunity to disperse them stealthily would’ve been cool. And on the topic of buttstrokes, the hand-to-hand-combat is trash. You barely have a chance to use it given the volumes of insta-fire that impede you from getting-in close, but even when you do you’re dealing with awkward animations with awkward spacing: you’re better off just striking someone with your gun than trying a flying kick Hidden Dragon-style.

Overall though, I’d be lying if I said that shootouts weren’t a blast. You really do feel like an action hero at times with the time dilation, accurate fire, and kinetic frenzy around you. Where FEAR falters in the horror-sphere it more than makes up for as an action game.

And that’s the main reason I would recommend playing it. While I don’t believe it’s worth the full $55.00 asking price (side note- anyone else surprised that a title as old as FEAR hasn’t gone down in cost compared to contemporary AAA games?), if you can get it on a discount you’ll find an enjoyable diversion. While others have criticized the level structure for being repetitive, I think the overall gameplay and mood makes up for these flaws. Just make sure you change the default keyboard binding as it is really un-ergonomic. My personal recommendation? Shift to slow-mo, ctrl to crouch, C for medkits, F for interact, G for grenade, and right-click for flashlight (admittedly used a second right button on my mouse and right for melee, but if you don’t have that remember that melee is pretty useless outside of breaking down the occasional barrier).
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+First is this obnoxious NPC you have to deal with called Norton Mapes. He literally single-handedly ruins the agitating atmosphere by way of his music cues, obese appearance, and annoying personality. To make matters worse, he frequently impedes your progress through activating turrets, and the game doesn't even have the gall to give you a chance to off him for his transgressions.



++I didn't like that vital info regarding Alma and the whole background of the game was restricted to optional computer files. I mean yeah, the game doesn't hide them, but neither are you particularly encouraged to seek them out. Maybe this minimalist approach will be appreciated by others, but for me, when you're dealing with something as dark as child abuse, it should be put front and center for the gamer to experience and shudder in horror.

Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom

Ah, what a disappointment this was. The original Darksiders was one of my biggest surprises as a gamer. I went in thinking it would be a God of War-clone, only to discover a Zelda/hack-and-slash hybrid with a unique mythos and grand scope. And while I would’ve loved to have seen a direct follow-up to the cliffhanger it ended on, the decision to go the sidequel direction with II at least presented the writing team with an opportunity to expand on their existing lore.

Unfortunately, while there is some worldbuilding, Darksiders II is ultimately a significant step-down from its predecessor. As a story guy, I’ll jump right into the narrative flaws- Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, has learned of his brother, War’s, crimes from the first game, and goes on a quest to undo the damage. It sounds great, the start of another realm-spanning odyssey, but from the get-go we’re introduced to a recurring problem that will plague this title, and that is its overabundance and overreliance on made-up characters. Unlike most fictional media, which generally take inspiration from religions that aren’t as widely-practiced anymore (i.e., polytheistic paganistic systems like Greek Hellenism or Old Norse), Darksiders was daring in that it drew inspiration from the Abrahamic Faiths. This was exemplified by the decision to incorporate actual figures from the Holy Texts, such as: Abaddon, Azrael, Uriel, Samael, the aforementioned Horsemen, as well as direct aspects like the Garden of Eden and Seven Seals. In an era where creators are afraid of angering certain demographics who actively believe in these originating doctrines (see the controversy over Far Cry 5), it was a treat to see developer Vigil Games move forward with such an idea. That’s not to say there weren’t fictitious beings conceived explicitly, but those tended to be primarily reserved as boss fights rather than individuals who moved story beats forward (Ulthane being the largest exception).

Here, though, 90% of the NPCs that guide Death around don’t have any Judeo-Islamic heritage, and the worst part is how generic and lame they are on their own merits. Amongst such a cast you have the Crowfather, a half-demented/half-wise older man who simultaneously rambles and weaves advice, donning shackles so large it’s a miracle they don’t fall off his wrists; Eideard, a magic sage who boasts about being powerful but falters consistently; a cruel skeletal ruler named the Lord of Bones (oooh); the Archon, a big angel, and Osteogoth, a freakin goat-headed tradesman (to quote the great Stan Lee, ‘nuff said) amongst others. It’s not that they’re not memorable, it’s that they come off as lackluster in comparison to the inherent magnetism that their Semitic counterparts held. The only new additions are Lilith (hinted at in the first game), who certainly makes her mark, and Absalom, who is nothing like his Biblical counterpart. Overall, these beings end up causing Darksiders 2 to feel more like another dime-a-dozen fantasy yarn over the theological epic that the first one evoked.

Not helping things on this front is the decision by the ADA team to use voices in the upper register for the vast majority of the characters. You have some returning actors like Troy Baker and Keith Szarabajka, but new or old performers alike, they generally talk in a lighter tone that further robs from the grand feeling. I know I said that the deep accents of the first game could be problematic in terms of differentiating between individuals, but credit where credit is due- it made you feel like you were experiencing an Apocalyptic trip!

But even if there were compelling personalities, the biggest issue plaguing DS2’s narrative is that it is, for all intents and purposes, just fetch quest after annoying fetch quest. Seriously, the story beats generally follow the same structure: Death will go to an area, find the guy or gal in charge, and be tasked to get something for them in exchange for progression; this thing, 9 times out of 10, being a MacGuffin in a dungeon. Rinse and repeat. It gets boring, kills the pacing, and, to add salt to the wounds, often indulges in the video game cliche of “collect three keys”. The lack of a compelling impetus, either narratively or even specifically around the item you have to retrieve, removes any bastion of motivation.

With regards to the protagonist, Death just isn’t as invigorating to follow as War, namely because he’s far too serious. War was hardboiled, but his sardonic humor came out infrequently enough to make him as funny as he was badass. Death has moments of dry wit, however he tends to approach interactions with a “get me to the end” perspective that robs them of the flavor that could have come from sharp banter (the exception to this being his talks with the Chancellor). Now to be clear, I wouldn’t have had a problem with a more-brooding character (I am a fan of Zack Snyder’s Superman after all), but that would’ve required giving Death more agency in the story over the constant order-following that instead preoccupies his time.

That’s not to say that the writers didn’t have greater aspirations than pure solemness- there was this clear idea around giving Death regret over certain actions he committed in the past, a character arc that would culminate in his endgame decision. Unfortunately, you don’t get many notions around it; there aren’t any philosophical or ethical discussions regarding why Death did what he did. Every time it’s brought up, he simply looks away and grasps the scar on his chest, putting a stop to any potential monologue/dialogue. Whether the writers didn’t intend to say more or didn’t know/didn’t want to say anything I can’t be sure, but the result is Death being bland and his actions not having much emotional weight.

The final issue I had was with the antagonist, but it involves spoilers, so I’ll leave it at the end of my review.+

Graphically, this remaster is superb. As a late-seventh generation release, the vanilla version of Darksiders II already looked solid, but the upgrades for the Deathinitive Edition are welcome regardless. While rock-based surfaces are inconsistent in terms of the firmness of their textures, nothing ever stands out poorly and every other exterior is superb, which is saying something given the agglomerate of vistas you’ll be rummaging through: from the war-torn urbicide of Earth to a Limbo-like everlost, elements endemic to these places are consistent in their craftsmanship (ex. a broken down automobile appears as solidly built as a golem in a dwarven plane; lava simmers as well as snow permeates an icy landscape).

Two aspects, in particular, that impressed me the most were 1) the lack of 2Dification of minor objects and 2) the lucency of hues. With the former, we’ve all played AAA games that cut corners on some minor part, whether it was hair on an NPC or grass out in the field, and this is often rendered by way of making things flat since it takes a lot of effort to give something a third dimension (or rather, the illusion of a third dimension since we’re all viewing games through screens). In DS2, I didn’t catch any of that. Even with lesser traits like wisps of smoke or collectible tokens, you can glean that extra planar height.

Of the two, though, hues are arguably the most impressive design feat. While the primary lighting is static, DS2 throws a lot of objects at you that glower with their own luminance, and I LOVED seeing the colors bounce off of adjacent areas like walls or Death’s model. It’s not just a generic luster either- there’s mini, yet discernible, kinetic movement reflective of the type of incandescence in proximity. From the purple flames of an avatar clone to the beady little lights of tens of skull eyes on a castle portal, you’ll see what I’m talking about when you play.

Unlike DS1, cutscenes are rendered in-game, allowing character models to maintain your customization choices (more on that below), and they still look impressive to this day. That being said, the limitations of the Phoenix Engine do mean that the cinematic scope is downgraded noticeably compared to if they had been pre-rendered: moments that were evidently shot to be “epic” lack the smoothness that pure animation would have conveyed. But, nonetheless, it’s still admirable. And the draw distance is an absolute delight, rivaling an Elder Scrolls game.

Overall, my only major criticism in the graphical department is the prevalence of bugs. You got a famous game breaking one that naturally comes up during your progression and requires you to do mandatory side content since it was never patched out. I also experienced multiple crashes, which is always irate and inexcusable.

In the sound field, I alluded to my qualms with the vocal direction beforehand, but make no mistake- the performances themselves are excellent. While a deeper elocution might’ve helped the actors overcome the impotency brought about by the non-grandiose atmosphere of the narrative, I can’t accuse the actors of phoning it in. Also, there was this strange “juttiness” that came with lip movements- the dialogue is sync, but it’s like there’s a framerate drop whenever NPCs speak.

The SFX is immaculate in certain areas. Some of you may have inferred this from reading my reviews, but one of my personal delights are different reverberations from footsteps colliding with different layers, and it is done SO WELL here. The crunch of sleet, the clank of metal, the thump of stone, the splash of water, the softness of dirt- not only will you be able to distinguish what Death is walking on based solely off of the aurality, but you’ll also perceive variations contingent on his speed.

Unfortunately, I did use the term “immaculate” for a reason- shortcuts were taken with the weaponry and enemies. You can hack-and-slice all you want: Death’s armaments will resound with the same din (though interestingly, gunshots have a programmed distinction for steel, probably because who doesn’t love the classic din of a bullet ricocheting off a ferrous casting?). Creatures of the under and above worlds have limited multiplicities to their growls and scratching, and even minibosses tend to give off a sense of auditory deja-vu. Not unexpected since the first Darksiders had the same shortcomings.

Music, I got to be honest with you guys, was disappointing, mainly because of who the composer was. Fans of the Assassin’s Creed series will no doubt recognize him to be none other than Jesper Kyd, who wrote up the magnificent scores for the Ezio Trilogy and Valhalla, with his extensive synth work heavily influencing the direction of the franchises music style in general (the sole exception being AC Syndicate, as intentionally done by Austin Wintory).

The thing was, outside of some tunes in the Heaven Outpost section, nothing ever roused me in the way the tracks of ACII and AC Brotherhood did. I do think the weak narrative direction impaired what Jesper was tasked with doing, but even that aside, there’s no questioning that, for a game focused on the Divine, I didn’t get any celestial elicitations. There was also this one recurring dungeon leitmotif that I could not stand, and indicated the existence of reused music over unique themes.

On that note, we can transition to the gameplay. Darksiders II leans a lot more into RPG mechanics than its predecessor did: while your choice of weapons is pretty limited, you can customize armor pieces as well as attribute boosters called talismans; there’s a leveling system tied to a skill tree; enemies have health bars, and there’s a bit of inventory management involved with all the looting you’ll be doing.

None of this is fleshed out enough to be considered a good foundation, though at the same it isn’t mediocre enough to detract from the game. While hammers, boots, and talismans provide stats that technically differentiate them from the other (like elemental powers, magic regeneration, increased money spawn), the only sets that genuinely impact the gameplay are strength and defense. And because you’re always getting stronger weapons as you move further in the game (whether it’s from fort chests or merchants of death), you’re not really incentivized to hold onto anything. DS2 tries to offset this by providing a special class of melee tools called “possessed weapons” that you can consistently modify with individualized upgrades, but they are few and far between, and you honestly don’t need them unless you want to blitz through the game's battle arena, dubbed "The Crucible".

Your skill tree gives some cool abilities, but it’s only divided into two halves: one focused on attacking, the other on necromancy/defense. And while I’d be lying if I said the abilities weren’t cool/useful, the limited points you get (and Darksiders II being a child of the hack-and-slash genre) encourages you to prioritize the attack hemisphere.

Fighting remains fun, though even with new combos it can admittedly get repetitive. By throwing in hotkeys, DS2 fixes the prompt issue I had with the first where you had to awkwardly press different buttons on the controller to trigger some of your newly-acquired powers during combat. Unfortunately, it comes with its own prompt problem, this one being the dodge synced to the RB bumper (on the 360)- I have no idea who thought this would be a good idea, but it feels awkward to use despite you adapting to it over the course of hours. Why they couldn’t just give it to the B button like most games is beyond me, especially since B isn’t even used for ANYTHING else minus opening things (which is proximity-based anyway).

On that note, let’s talk about the world. DS2 boasts a semi-open world divided into five major areas. I say “semi” because, while you are able to free roam, the vast majority of the game is actually Death entering fortresses and completing them- it’s more or less a dungeon crawler with lots of empty space between the oubliettes. You’d think this would at least make for some creative junctures, but sadly, the gameplay is pretty rote- Death will solve a puzzle to gain access to a new chamber, which will then trigger a mandatory locked-off battle, rinse-and-repeat until you get to the boss. This would be fine if everything was entertaining, but, with the exception of Lostlight, I found almost all of the puzzles painfully simplistic. Look, I’m not going to act like the first Darksiders was a masterpiece in this department, but there was creativity involved in resolving quandaries thrown your way- here, you’ll literally be moving a ball into an oval hole or stepping on a platform 80% of the time to advance. And brawling only goes so far, even in an action game.

The dungeons themselves aren’t copy/pasted; however, their interiors definitely aren’t as unique as they could have been. You’ll see the same stacks of bricks, iron railings, twisting stairwells and other facets more times than you’d like. This criticism kind of extends to the four planes of existence as well: while Earth, Heaven, Forge Lands, Demon’s Realm and the Underworld are all gorgeous to look at, I do feel more could’ve been done gameplay-wise instead of simply altering the color palette: (it’s one of the reasons I liked Lostlight the most since new pathways via surging water were conceived). All that said, the one consistently salient art piece you’ll see in citadel after citadel are the statues- appearing as though they were chiseled by a master craftsman, I gotta say I always enjoyed looking at each new one I came across in my travels, they symbolizing the general atmosphere present in the abode.

One thing DS2 does objectively better than the first is not make tools useless after their area of debut. You’ll frequently find yourself having to reuse past equipment and competencies to maneuver through areas, making the intricate coding seem like a worthwhile pursuit. There’s also no large backtracking mission the way there was during the endgame of DS1.

DSII boasts its fair share of side missions, but these are either just more fetch quests or beating some optional miniboss/boss. The dialogue is generally well-scribed as far as giving you a decent yarn behind your mission, but Death still feels like a lackey rather than this mythical Horseman. Darksiders II also indulges in collectathon nonsense with MULTIPLE curios that rival the flags from Assassin’s Creed I not only in their abundance but in the lack of a unlockable map to find them outside of an unofficial mod. DS2 also gives you WAY too much money- I ended up with over 100k by the end of my playthrough, and this is before NG+. The loot you gain from treasure troves and unlockables is so excessive and useless that you’re better off selling it to retailers who have unlimited gold on hand- even Vulgrim works better as a fence due to his shop being dialed back in the bartering of specialities.

A lot of my other pet peeves had to do with the movement systems. For starters, Darksiders 2 gives Death his stead, Despair, from the get-go, but the game is very limited in when you are allowed to summon him. Obviously indoors is fair game, however there are a number of long stretches that you have to just bolt through on foot because “this is no place for a horse,” (on a side note, could the writers seriously have not given Death more than two lines to say to indicate this to players? His mask made lip syncing a non-issue) and Death isn’t the fastest protagonist in gaming. You can’t even do constant flips/jumps to cheese acceleration the way you can with Zelda titles due to Death stopping after the third jump Super Mario 64-style.

The parkour is the biggest letdown here- you’re restricted in where you can climb (specific ballasts and poles), and even there you don’t have any agency as a player: you’re setting off a pre-programmed animation that locks you out from doing anything until the animation has completed. This is obviously fine if you’re successful in your inputs- unfortunately, because you need to angle the joystick strongly in the direction you’re going, any slight dip will result in Death just darting straight-up, at best forcing you to wait until he returns to his original starting point or, worse, cause you to fall off the place you were hanging and have to re-route back there.

Wall-running is a little better since you can actually jump side-to-side in motion (which you’ll have to do for certain tunnels), but I didn’t like the weird angle you had to push the joystick towards, and it’s certainly nowhere near as polished as Sands of Times’s (which came out almost 10 years prior).

In the end, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I didn’t have much fun with Darksiders II. It obviously does some things better than its predecessor, but in most departments it’s a step-down: story, puzzles, atmosphere, voice direction, etc…Death’s arc to simultaneously redeem himself and his brother could have been decent, but the execution was too misguided to make it work.

Please note that the DLCs are story-in-name only, providing some treasure-seeking incentive to finish a newly-arisen dungeon.















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+After being slain by Death during the purge of the Nephilim, Absalom transformed into a being called Corruption. His transformation is the magical cliche of hate breeding into a detrimental threat to life, but that’s not the issue- my question is, how in the world has he become so powerful? I’d understand successfully conquering one realm by way of a surprise attack, but to takeover multiple areas with deity figures was just ridiculous.

I also didn't understand where his power came from, and the game doesn’t bother to fill in the blanks. Sure, Absalom was chock-full of malevolence, but how does that manifest into a substance literally capable of corroding and brainwashing anyone it touches at such a fast speed? He had venom, but surely they didn’t mean that literally! It just felt like they couldn’t come up with a smarter obstacle and so went this lame route- a huge step down from the Destroyer, that’s for sure.
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Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom


You couldn’t tell from the lack of recorded activity on my Backloggd account, but Assassin’s Creed is arguably my favorite video game franchise of all time. It took that title from the Donkey Kong Country series, which was no small feat given the latter’s presence in my childhood, but took it, it did. Every kid with too much time on their hands has that one piece of media that they’ve become heavily immersed in the mythology of, from Lord of the Rings to Mass Effect to Star Wars to Game of Thrones, etc.... And AC is that for me. I know the lore and history of this series like the back of my hand, and that has made me look forward to digesting every entry, mainline or side.

That being said, I’ve staved away from writing reviews on them for a number of reasons. First, I tend to only scribe extravagant write-ups for indie/lesser-known releases, and AC being the flagship AAA moneymaker for Ubisoft has ensured that it receives sufficient coverage from mainstream and independent critics alike. And secondly is the fact that part of the reason I write reviews is to create a reference point for me to refresh myself of a title’s individual components should I inevitably forget about them over the years; yet, because of my intimate knowledge of AC, I can near-perfectly recall the gameplay and narrative aspects of every entry regardless of the time gap from when I last played them.

So why write a critique of one now? Well, for one, no matter your familiarity with a subject, it’s always a good habit to collect your thoughts to better articulate yourself. Two, I intend on writing on every entry eventually as my thoughts will carry some unique POV in the conversation, no matter how narrow (it’s why I always encourage every gamer I speak with to write on things- they could bring something to the table that no one would’ve considered before) and this is as good a place to start as any. And three, the Chronicles games flew pretty under-the-radar by AC-spotlight standards, so there’s more to be stated here.

On that front, let’s talk about what exactly the Chronicles games are. They were a standalone trilogy released for consoles, PC, and eventually Vita (strange that it was the last platform to get them given that they seem built for it), focusing on three different eras in the Assassin Brotherhood’s history. Unlike the main series, these weren’t open world games, instead 2.5D platformers with levels that prioritized stealth.

China is the first one, centering around a, you guessed it, Chinese Assassin named Shao Jun. If you’re a long-time fan of this series, chances are you’ll recognize her as the acolyte Ezio trained in the animated movie Embers that simultaneously served as a conclusion to his story and introduction to her’s. While it isn’t necessary to watch Embers before playing ACCC given that all her biographical/background information there is conveyed through dialogue and collectible scrolls here, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t help you appreciate the character more.

That being said, the story is unfortunately disappointing. It’s clear that developer Climax Studios was more interested in prioritizing gameplay over story, but it’s particularly saddening here given the unique time period. ACCC is set during the height of the Ming Dynasty, and is surprisingly accurate in terms of the figures and actions it chooses to highlight, from the making of the current Jiajing Emperor’s regime to the conflicts with the Mongols. There’s a ton of interesting backstory here, yet it’s all cast to the side in favor of a generic “good vs. evil” trope that’s been seen a dime a dozen (on a side note, it just came to my attention that I have ironically used that expression a dime a dozen times!). There was an opportunity here to do what many AC games before and after have done, which is interweave historical events with the personal tale of the protagonist; however a lot of the more interesting machinations are not only used purely for backstory purposes, but also not expanded upon beyond a black-and-white veil. Prior to the events of the game, for example, the Templars (represented by the Eight Tigers group) successfully took control of the Emperor’s throne and purged the Brotherhood from China, representative of the real-life event wherein the Eight Tigers slowly slipped into an influential position over Zhu Houcong’s Administration.

And yet, all that is a pretense for your atypical “there has been a corrupt takeover of a peaceful government.” By all accounts, the working-class citizenry were not that much better off beforehand, so why is the Templar control objectively bad? What are the goals of the Eight Tigers? How are they treating their subjects? Did them being castrated influence their choices at all? There was one decision at the end that particularly baffled me(+), but the fact is if you go in expecting any nuance, then be prepared for disappointment because the answer to everything is muwahahahaha evil/insertarchetypalvillainy. These guys are depicted as iron-fisted and sadistic, engaging in acts of corruption while committing horrible crimes against their constituents in the name of eliminating opposition and cementing their power (exs. tormenting slaves/concubines; razing the the port city of Macau [despite their being no record supporting this action]).

Look, obviously the Ming Dynasty was a cruel period in human history (the prevalence of foot binding, conduction of family exterminations, mass kidnapping/rape of young girls to be concubines, the popularization of the “death by a thousand cuts”, and more), and I wouldn’t want AC to sanitize any of it by any means. But things are always more complicated than they appear, and those kinds of gradations are what separate a good work from a great one. Every single Templar here is cartoonish in scope, and while that might have been more tolerable if ACCC had been released immediately after Revelations, the fact is it came out post-ACIII, which went back to the greyish morality of ACI. Even if you go into this game not familiar with many of the other entries, I guarantee you that you’ll find ACCC lacking in narrative depth.

But okay look, even if it falters in properly representing the era, surely the personal account makes up for it right? Jun is after the Tigers for what they did to her former comrades, and we all know from playing Origins that a glorified revenge tale can be a powerful experience regardless of lack of macro aspirations. Yeah, except that THAT isn’t well-done either. See, despite the writers committing to portraying the Eight Tigers as this degenerate group, they made the boneheaded decision to craft a “revenge is wrong” arc for Shao Jun.

Ohhhh man. I ranted about this trope enough in my TLOU II review (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/348721/), but needless to say, I hate it. It simplifies an emotionally-evocative subject under the pretense of a “holier than thou” attitude that comes off as pretentious. Here it makes even less sense given that Jun had to eliminate the Templars anyway as part of her duties as an Assassin, and every action she takes isn’t impulsive- it’s agreed upon beforehand with her Master. And while killing each Tiger does generally result in a negative consequence, the game doesn’t focus on THAT as a problem, but the OVERALL act of going after them. It’s hypocritical, underdeveloped, and generally makes no sense when you put even a little thought into it (AC Syndicate, released later that year, would do a much better job of demonstrating this).

It’s a shame given that ACCC bears a striking resemblance to ACI in terms of its structure- you have real-life targets without much real-world information who are dispensed exactly when they died/disappeared in real life. And yet the “confession” scenes don’t take advantage of this to give you anything more than just “you may have stopped me now, but the war rages on!”. There’s also something to be said about the missed opportunity to incorporate/contrast popular religiophilosophies that were roaming the Ming Dynasty at the time (Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism, Legalism) against the Assassin and Templar beliefs.

If I can say one semi-positive thing about the writing, it’s that the database entries are terrific. Like the ones in the Ezio Trilogy (really all ACs), they manage to condense major trivia/info about the society into bite-size paragraphs that taught me a lot. This level of compact data conveyance extends to Shao Jun herself, whose ENTIRE upbringing is disclosed through collectible scrolls). While I would’ve preferred a more cinematic rendering over hard-read, I can’t deny that it’s well-done, though keep in mind that I did notice some minor typos in them.

Graphically, ACCC is stunning. Despite being made for the bigger consoles, it’s clear Climax Studios was given a budget to work with, and yet they did wonders. For all my complaints about how Ming society was depicted narratively, artistically it is a masterclass to behold. From popular locations like the Forbidden City and Great Wall to general-environs like the industrialized Nan'an, 16th Century China looks exactly like I imagine it looked at the time (granted, it seems to be eternally Fall, but that’s a small quibble). There’s a water-coloury feel to the landscapes that stylizes them whilst simultaneously managing to keep the aesthetic soft on the eyes. It’s not that you don’t get any bright or primary hues, but more that they’re utilized in a way that is more reminiscent of a pictorial vista- a natural part of the terrain (minus the splashes of red meant to indicate the presence of a parkourable avenue). Plus water surfaces depict reflections of Jun!

The most impressive part has to be the subtle blend of shades and colors on objects like columns and textiles and surfaces: it reminded me a lot of Half Past Fate (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/279145/) in the sense that this aesthetic blend accurately reflects the way color works in real-life. None of this is even taking into account the actual backdrops, which tend to include a gorgeously-rendered panorama of an environmental feature like mountains or trees, with clouds and billows of mist slowly swirling about.

One of my personal favorites is the way cutscenes are exhibited- taking inspiration from Ancient Chinese tapestries and paintings (as well as contemporary motion comics), you have schemas that look like smeary ink drawings, their subjects darkened figures of mystery against a lightened, subtly-cross-stitched papyrus. Combined with the kinetic flair, this gives them a dynamic feel that provides yet another great example of how a limited budget can be utilized to match the videographic feel of full motion techniques seen in higher-end productions.

Not everything is rainbows though. Shao Jun moves, attacks, and responds well, but animations can’t help but come off as a bit janky. Character models in general have that stick-figurey quality reminiscent of AA titles ported to handheld consoles- stiff limbs and singular animations for every action. It’s not distracting, but it bears recognition for the sake of crafting a whole picture. I also experienced a couple instances of the framerate dropping. If I can end on a positive note, though, it’s that there is a great amount of heterogeneity in the stealth kill animations- while Shao Jun putting her Hidden Blade in her shoe prevents it from being used much in them, the others more than make-up for it, being semi-dependent on your movement/approach, with blood streams reminiscent of 300’s in terms of them resembling paint streaks/splashes that disperse as quickly as they materialize.

Soundwise, I can’t be as positive as I was with the graphics. First off, the audio mixing was poorly done as everything is too quiet- I had to turn the volume up all the way just to make things hearable. Secondly, none of the three subfacets are particularly distinct, starting with the voice acting. It should be noted that the major characters are given British accents, which is actually consistent with the Abstergo Animus filtering out non-western intonations for protagonists, but may be off-putting to those not familiar with the series’ tradition, especially since Chinese actors were utilized for the NPCs (who speak in diatribes repeated ad nauseam, indicating laziness on the part of the writers).

But regardless of their choice of timbre, the actors are too limited by the writing to do a good job. As I said, the Tigers are caricatures, and not only are they caricatures, but their villainy is rendered in Shakespearean-esque conversations that feel more out-of-place in the Eastern settings than the accents. I also was just not a fan of Annabelle Galea’s performance as Jun- I get that the script didn’t do her any favors, but she still opted to give Jun this “I’m superior to you and I know it” flair that didn’t fit someone who had a tragic past and spent years training elsewhere under Ezio.

Oh, and on that note, wtf were the casting directors’ thinking? In ACCC, Ezio is not voiced by Roger Craig Smith, instead given to an unnamed artist who sounds like he’s doing an Italian impression of Mr. Miyagi. Yeah, despite Ezio’s limited appearances, it’s as disconcerting as it sounds. And no, this was not a case of Smith being unavailable, as he claimed he was never asked- luckily, though, he collaborated with the YouTuber Loomer to re-record all the dialogue (free-of-charge!), and I’m hoping someone somewhere will eventually patch it into the game. Until then, you can listen to it here if you wish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAoEWB547KU

The sound effects are generally too muted for me to make a proper assessment. Tools and environmental dins like firecrackers, barking dogs, sword clangs, and wind chimes are loud enough to give off a bang, but footsteps and grips are subdued. Things are satisfactory when you can hear it, but it’s inconsistent what was programmed with an aural tick.

The score isn’t as great as it could have been. When the big action moments occur, it stands out, but for the more atmospheric times where you’re just walking or stealthing around (which, being honest, is 90% of the game), it fails to make itself known. Granted, stealth music has never been a strong suit of the series, but again, Chronicles has it worse given that it’s entirely focused on the concept.

And that’s a great transition point to the gameplay. As I mentioned before, ACCC drops the open world format in favor of a 2.5D platformer. Your goal is to make your way through specially-crafted levels that have one of two endgoals in mind: assassinate a target or run from a propulsive threat, these latter ones appearing after a main assassination.

The 2.5D scheme is honestly utilized very well. In most places, Shao Jun will have multiple methods of approach, with the ability to climb above, descend below, hang off rafters, or shimmy along sides all giving the illusion of 3D platforming perfectly. Not everything has this level of open-mindedness: there were a number of times where the game blatantly set forward a specific path for you to take (such as using the shadow rush ability to move between hiding places, as marked by an appropriately-placed helix crystal), and choosing to diverge from it would mean wasting a large number of tools or outright heavily-risking detection. But for the most part, it’s the exception, not the norm.

I was admittedly surprised by how well the parkour translated to the 2D interface. Shao Jun moves very fluidly, grabbing onto objects both automatically and manually as necessitated (though sometimes the manual would falter if going from a side to back environ, but then again, it wouldn’t be AC if you didn’t have sporadic moments of the parkour failing you). That being said, ACCC was too reminiscent of Unity (its direct predecessor) in the sense that jumps come off as too floaty- it made me surprised to learn that this game was made in Unreal 3.0 as opposed to the AnvilNext 2.0 as, like Arno, Shao Jun leaps/ascends at ridiculous distances.

This is, by and large, the most stealth-focused AC game ever made. Not only do you have a small health bar that can be knocked apart in a few hits, but you have all the conventions of an old-school stealth title: limited gear for distracting over dispatching; a crouch button; noise as a factor; and assassinations/subterfuge being tangibly rewarded more than combat. That is to say, completing a section with a higher degree of covertness will net you more points (Bronze, Silver, Gold rating) than going in guns-ablazing, which in turn unlock greater rewards like new combat maneuvers and increased ammo capacity.

That’s not to say that combat isn’t feasible, it’s just discouraged. What I mean by this is you have decent variety in terms of being able to weak hit, strong hit, block, kick, and flip-over enemies, as well as even deflect projectiles; and there’s also a SURPRISINGLY constant supply of new enemy types that have their own strengths/weaknesses to your combat prowesses. However, because of your small hit-box, it really isn’t worth engaging them mano-y-mano. Memorizing movement patterns, avoiding vision cones, moving from hiding place-to-hiding place, and strategically utilizing your gadgets will make things far easier for you. This has its cons though: one, obviously it is distinct from past-AC games where, if we’re being truthful, stealth was more of an intrinsically-motivated avenue that encouraged allowed players to be quicker/more impulsive in their approach given the lack of consequences for failing; trying to do that here will almost certainly get you detected/killed (score one for local respawn points though!). Two, sometimes there were inconsistencies in terms of enemy awareness, particularly when you do this one overpowered move that allows you to run-slide-kill an enemy or try to assassinate multiple guards after stunning them with firecrackers. And three, there is NO diversity for stealth goons the way there was with combat. Outside of one guy down the line who has a stronger field of perception, every single opponent class is the exact same.

And I hate to say it, but this latter point is the main reason that I ended up not enjoying ACCC. It may seem minor, but you guys have to understand that, without a strong story, the gameplay had to make-up for the lack of impetus. And when you’re cruising through level-after-level having to do the EXACT SAME TASK each and every time, it makes things grindy, no matter how beautifully-constructed the settings are. It’s kind of appropriate that I drew a comparison to ACI earlier as this was the first Assassin’s Creed since that one that I felt like I had to force myself to see through to the end, primarily because of this facet.

The Temple Run-esque levels try to add some spice, and I’d be lying if I said they weren’t fun (side note- was anyone else reminded of the Hot Air Balloon Mission from Unity?), but at the end of the day, they are purely linear, and the near-rails gameplay occasionally leads to frustrations when you don’t hit the mandatory jump prompt in time, forcing you to reset from your last checkpoint and killing the immersion these locomotive-type levels are meant to induce. They also all over-rely on the same “escape the blaze” trope.

Again, I want to stress that a lot of thought was put into the craftsmanship behind the areas you navigate through, and I loved how useful and resourceful you had to be with tools (particularly firecrackers and noise darts). It’s just that the objectives, even with the presence of full-sync optional ones and collectibles, are too repetitious for a 6 hour+ game. Combined with the story flaws and I can’t say I enjoyed it as an AC fan.
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SPOILERS
+The Head Eunuch decides to let the Mongols invade China. What? Why would you do that knowing that they would dismantle your entire empire? He claims that they will be crueler to the Chinese people if they show resistance, which isn’t wrong, but regardless their success culminates in the same result of you losing power and being subjugated. And no, in case anyone is wondering, the Mongols were not Templars in Assassin’s Creed lore, so there is no authentic collaboration between members of the same faction.
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Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom


When it first came out, Dear Esther gained fame for pioneering what would eventually be labeled the walking simulator. Having played a couple of these in my time as a gamer, I can definitely see the appeal in them: after all, the idea of purely exploring a beautifully-rendered environment as you slowly unravel its narrative is the heart of mystery novels. And with video games offering visual treats to accompany the story, such a combination can be an emotional experience.

Unfortunately, Dear Esther has been significantly outclassed by later entries in the genre it inspired, not because they did anything particularly innovative with the concept so much as they avoided the basic pitfalls that render Dear Esther an example of what not to do.

I don’t want to be too harsh since The Chinese Room put a lot of thought into their project, so I’ll begin on some positive notes- graphically, Dear Esther is solid. I played the Landmark Edition, which reportedly rebuilt the game in the Unity Engine, and while I’m unable to pinpoint any specific differences from the original, the end result is splendid. The isle is essentially restricted to muted verdant coverings, tall cliff-faces, and streaming water, the three looking as though they were taken from a pictorialized Hemingway novel. What I mean is the art style isn’t pure realism, instead dialing back to a more storybook-esque format that provides aesthetic elements simultaneously minimalist and enriching in appearance. Overlooking the oceanic horizon with the wind bellowing about you as waves crash below evokes a peace of mind; seeing derelict houses or abandoned trawlers in the distance imbues melancholy. At times, it really does feel like you’ve stepped into an old fisherman’s recollection of events from yore.

Rocks, in particular, are incredibly well done from a texturing and variety perspective. Usually these are the facets that get skimped over by developers since, well, let’s be honest, who truly cares about stone? Well, here The Chinese Room evidently did, and you get a lot of diversity, from the granite bluffs above sea to the ore boulders laden with gold veins to even the slightly-damp speleothems adorning the subterranean depths. There are enlarged pebbles on the coastlines, cairn-like monuments on the mainland, quartz crystals on cavern walls, and more I’m sure I’m missing. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in the art department was a geologist because they really took their time to throw in more motifs than your typical sedimentary limestone.

Unfortunately, that same thought wasn’t put into the grass, which is literally the same weed clusters copy/pasted ad nauseam. This wouldn’t be inherently ugly were it not for them being noticeably spaced apart from each other and having this 2D visage that stands at odds with the overall 3D landscape. I also wasn’t a big fan of how dust, as kicked up by the breeze, was rendered, with such clouds looking more like yellow brown will-o-the-wisps than particles of dirt. In addition, the vast majority of consumerist paraphernalia you find strewn about have significantly-less work done on them than anything else (the sole exception being paint cans), with papyrus-based items like magazines, books, and pages being particularly blurry. Any lettering, in general, was hard to read, even those illustrated with bright white pigments, to the point where I stopped making an effort to decipher such messages towards the end of my playthrough.

I’ll end this section on a positive note: the use of colored lighting. This takes place primarily in the final two chapters during your descent into the grottos, though you can see it beforehand in the sky where clouds float past the sun, emitting pink/gray shades. Tons of static hues are thrown at you, from reds to blues to greens, and it varnishes nicely on the craggy and watery surfaces, creating a mesmerizing climate.

Soundwise, Dear Esther isn’t quite where it needs to be. You only have a single voice actor for the protagonist, a man named Nigel Carrington (not to be confused with the knight lawyer of the same name), but he was clearly directed to just be a stereotypical, monotone narrator. With the exception of his last two entries, he recounts his story with unwavering intonations and inflections, no matter the subject matter or emotional context. Then again, maybe this was for the better, given that his attempts at infusing passion in those aforestated final entries falter as mediocre.

Music comes up at specific cues, primarily whenever the Narrator speaks, and it generally occupies a dismal tone played through classical instruments like pianos and fiddles. Towards the endgame, it switches to a slightly-more upbeat melody that’s less about happiness and more about acceptance. Overall, the score by Jessica Curry is befitting to the story beats, its sole drawback being its constant reinsertion into the game whenever you trigger a voice over prompt that feels more abrupt than natural. Gone Home had a similar issue, but because the diary entries were linear, it actually felt cinematic compared to Dear Esther, where it tends to be akin to a jumpscare in terms of its suddenness.

The SFX is adequate, yet limited in scope. You technically have all the noises you would associate with an uninhabited island: birds cawing, gales booming, riverheads trickling, and water descending (either partially or wholly), but they’re not synchronized well with their associated strata. You’ll hear the sonar of a brewing gust, but it happens at intervals rather than operating on a constant (which would make sense given that you’re in a constant air pressure zone). Approaching a shoreline yields the appropriate gurgle of a stream; however, it seems more like a stock din given that there isn’t strong flow. Drips fall from holes above onto the ground below, but a quick glance will show almost none of them resonate concurrently with their aural counterpart.

To put it bluntly, all of this is me saying that the sound feels like it was implemented secondhand, which doesn’t help the ambience that a walking sim is meant to generate (and what the devs of all people should have known given that their intention was to strip a game down to its bare components).

On that note, we can move onto the gameplay and story, which shall be talked about simultaneously since there isn’t much gameplay. Dear Esther is built around ambling along an unnamed holm, setting off monologues from the aforementioned speaker as you enter designated catalyst points. Theoretically, those pieces of dialogue are meant to unveil the truth behind what is going on and build-up to a major (and hopefully satisfying) finale. Sadly, though, the story takes on one of those non-linear, unreliable narrator motifs wherein you’re given pieces from different points of the Narrator’s life and essentially forced to draw your own conclusions. What makes things slightly more complicated is the presence of two other characters that the Narrator is chronicling about: an author that he was following who had previously led an expedition to the island, and the Narrator’s wife Esther.

Look, it’s not like you’re dealing with a Memento-type fragmentation here: things can be put together, and an overall picture assembled. But regardless of how you interpret things, the end result is honestly not very entertaining and, at worse, exploitative of serious subject matter. You don’t end up caring about the Narrator, his past, or his present situation because not enough time is spent fleshing out who he is as an individual. In terms of exploitation, see my footnote at the end because it deals with spoilers.

A further thing that might make the narrative unappealing to prospective gamers is the syntax. William S. Burroughs was reportedly an influence on the script, with the writing taking on a poetic feel that integrates feelings and memories with powerful, flowery prose. As an English Major, I actually really enjoyed this, but I fully contend this use of language will not be appealing to a decent sect of the gaming populace that just wants to hear a tale unfold.

As I said before, there isn’t much gameplay- the developers wanted to cut a video game down to its core essence (though if you were really digging deep, wouldn’t you just go back to old-fashioned text-based adventures?), but what’s baffling is how basic features weren’t inputted. You can’t run, you can’t pick up objects to examine them further, you can’t climb over ledges, nothing. All you have is a zoom-in option (literally keyed to every button), which does help with reading some of the murky lettering, but is otherwise pointless. Really, though, the absence of a run function is just pitiful. Maybe the developers were worried it would result in players speeding through the world, resulting in conversations being cut-short. However, there was a simple solution to this: put a brake on the jog until the dialogue completes, in which case the original velocity resumes (consider the fact that Dear Esther LITERALLY does this in the last part).

What’s worse is how the game impedes exploration. Despite being set on a modest, beautiful island, you are very limited in terms of where you can go: fence posts, unclimbable bluff sides, and deepwater pools all prevent you from going wherever your heart may desire, and none of it is for story reasons since the transitions between the four portions is handled through definitive moments of falling to a lower plane.

There was no reason for this- tons of gorgeous sights are missed out on because you are literally unable to get there. What’s worse is when the game throws in objects or environs that look like they should be searchable, only for you to waste time getting as close as possible and realizing that you can’t touch them. Exploration is the one aspect of walking sims that should be unadulterated, yet Dear Esther decided even that needed to be hampered. And even when you can go somewhere, the developers don’t reward you for it. You might unlock a secret oration (though I can attest there are only three off the beaten path), and the game reportedly has four urns you can collect (though I never found them despite [trying] to navigate everywhere), but as you can tell from my parentheticals, those are sparse, meaning 9 times out of 10, you’ll literally hit a wall or another one of those natural barriers, making the excursion feel annoying and downright misleading (if you weren’t going to give anything here, not even a secret message, why even have it present as a space for investigating? Why not just close-it off entirely?).

Then again, considering the explorable parts of the game (abandoned huts, shipwrecks) literally don’t have anything of value in them (lacking sufficient belongings and detail outside of the occasional novel), maybe this was to be expected.

So yeah, Dear Esther fundamentally fails at even its sole mission of telling a story while a player roams around freely. You are restricted in what you can do and where you can go, and the story being told isn’t particularly intriguing enough to offset these flaws. And while the game stands out visually, eliciting a calming atmosphere brought about by a windy cliff in the middle of the sea, it lacks robust audio to truly capitalize on this evocative foundation. While I can look back at other genre pioneers like Super Mario Bros. and GoldenEye and still find enjoyment in them despite their mechanics being elaborated on by their followers, I can’t say the same for Dear Esther. Combined with a $10.00 price tag for not even two hours of content and you’re better off playing any one of its many successors over it.











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*One thing that is consistent is that the main character is dying. I don’t know how I feel about the game taking on this notion of a guy deciding to isolate himself away from society so that he can wither away- it strikes me as engaging too much in a romanticized vision of death that glorifies the quiet vanishing motif that you see in other fictional works like Star Wars, albeit here it is more disturbing given the realist tone of everything. We should always work to prevent the elderly from being viewed as burdens that need to just disappear.

The worst part is that it literally ends with the Narrator committing (or implied to be committing) suicide (on a side note, is it just me, or did The Witness rip-off the ending to this game with the whole floating around the island?).

Spoilers discussed at the very bottom

Not since the ending of Mass Effect 3 has a video game divided audiences as much as The Last of Us Part II. Based on reviews and audience reactions, I got the sense it was a lot like Zack Snyder's Watchmen in that it was very polarizing: you either loved it or hated it, and I was hoping to find myself somewhere in that binary. This is because I've always been an advocate for art that challenges over art that conforms- I would rather an artist or writer try to do something that is emotionally-evocative, even if they falter (and I end up disliking it) than to put out mediocre schlock that no one will care about come next year.

Well, unfortunately, after all the hype and negativity, I can only say that the end result is a mixed bag that clearly has higher aspirations, but ultimately falters in achieving them. It's not average by any means, and it does have moments of artistic daringness, but these are mostly held back by game design issues and faulty narrative premises.

Like its predecessor (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/331510/), TLOUII that has been extensively reviewed by mainstream and indie critics alike, and so I won't waste time going into detail about every technical facet, mainly because there are more-informed individuals out there who can articulate those aspects better (see ACG for example). Instead, I want to use this review space to do what I did with TLOU1- talk about underappreciated feats and underspoken problems.

I'll start with a brief overview of the graphics. Like Black Flag did with seventh generation consoles and Crysis did with PCs back in the day, TLOU2 has pushed the limits of the PS4's hardware, and the results speak for themselves. By no means do I endorse crunch-time (in fact, as a matter of principle, I refuse to buy games from companies that engage in extensive crunch-time like Naughty Dog and RockStar until they go on sale), but that sweat, blood, and tears culminated in a world that is mesmerizing with detail. Textures, manmade/natural, are consistent everywhere; little animations are programmed (ex. hair swaying with kinetic glee), and you even get some surprising moments of physics like destructible glass, movable objects, and realistically disproportioning body parts. Death respawn rates are quick, there's no draw distance issues like with the first, and the baked lighting exceeds AC Unity in terms of diversity and quality (not just morning/night, light/dark, inside/outside, but outright different colors). I KNOW I'm missing plenty of stuff, but hopefully this gives an idea of the effort that was put into conceiving this setting.

There are some downsides, however they are thankfully minor. For one, during the wintry opening, I noticed knocking snow clumps off trees resulted in them dissipating into thin air over collecting on the ground, and two, your horse's hoof impressions are more pre-rendered than naturally-conceived. I also experienced two crashes, but a solid autosave prevented them from causing significant setback.

Sound-wise, we have another huge improvement from the first. One of my biggest issues that was addressed was the Doppler Effect range being sudden whenever you entered a contained sonar space: you can hear a smooth transition this time around, which is saying something considering most of the game is engulfed in precipitation that beats on the surfaces around you.

Once again, though, we don't get any diversity in Infected noises. You can make a strong case that the more mutated variants have too many fungal growths around their esophagus to allow distinct accents and intonations to disperse, but the Runners are inexcusable given that they still resemble their original host.

That being said, TLOU2 makes up for this with the sheer variety of dialogue in the human enemy speech. Specifically, I am referring to them giving every NPC (both human and canine) a unique name that is explicitly stated whenever you off one- it's a small thing that goes a long way towards personalizing them and consequently making the enemies more than just generic baddies. You can tell from the delivery alone these guys had a history together, and that you have officially made things personal through your violent actions (which was no doubt intentional given the thematic threads, but more on that below). Of course, you still have your atypical lines like "I'm going to find you!" and "anyone have eyes?" and "report!" amongst others, but that's always going to be a constant in video games.

The performances are fantastic as usual, and standouts like Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson have been praised to no end. Johnson, in particular, really impressed me with her ability to organically convey Ellie's vocal chord maturation from past to present. The sole voice I couldn't get over was the Asian character, Jessie, having a thick Southern accent. He reminded me a lot of Christopher Gist from AC Rogue in terms of being out-of-place, though the actor Stephen Chang does a good job.

Now, the point of a sequel is to rectify/improve upon the flaws of the original. Granted, flaws absent outright bugs/glitches, can be subjective complaints privy to variation depending on who you ask, but as this is my review, I will address whether or not II fixed my perceived issues with the first game's systems, beginning with the combat. In the first, you only had one attack button and no other options minus an occasional grapple prompt. This became problematic whenever you were engaged in scuffles with hordes of minions who could flank you, the camera and lack of responsive movement preventing you from doing much other than bolting in the opposite direction.

That has only been slightly changed here as the sole addition is a dodge button (quick tap makes you strafe a short beat, holding a longer distance). However, you'd be surprised by how much of a difference this makes in encounters. With the camera still shifting over-your-shoulder, the ability to evade turns 1v1 brawls into more dynamic skirmishes, and combined with your signature brutal takedowns, you will have fun. That being said, in all honesty, the real betterment here is the removal of most mandatory fight scenes. Bar bosses, I can only think of three instances where you were forced to engage openly with hordes, and lo and behold, they ended up being the most frustrating parts of the game for me (the first was alleviated by the presence of allies).+

So, if you're not fighting goons that means you're stealthing them. The first TLOU had a solid stealth system, my only reservations being the lack corner-grabbing, single takedown animation, and having a bow as your sole silent ranged weapon. Thankfully, corner-grabbing has been added in TLOU2, allowing Ellie/Abby to disperse any enemy (minus advanced Infected) who makes the fatal mistake of walking past a nook they are crouched behind! In addition, when an enemy detects you, throwing a brick at them and charging within their vicinity provides a grapple prompt allowing you to quietly disperse them (should there be no adjacent gremlins), thus maintaining your stealth quota.

There are new animations in the sense that Ellie, via her switchblade, kills each enemy with a varied stabbing, though it's still singular per the archetype. Likewise, there are no ways to quickly slice someone with the drawback of noise like in the Arkham series. In terms of silent weapons, your bow is still your best bet, though it is improved by the ability to craft arrows instead of purely collecting them. You can build a silencer for your pistol with limited shots, and Ellie is given trip-mines that, while obviously loud, allow you to booby-trap areas as you depart to a safe distance.

Stealth, as a whole, feels much more riveting courtesy of new avenues provided by the developer. First is the ability to go prone (and its accompanying environmental help, tall grass)- fans of clandestine franchises will find this to be a welcome addition since it allows you to move amidst enemy ranks while they wander menacingly about. Second, two new adversaries have been thrown in to things up: dogs for humans and stalkers for Infected (okay, technically not new since they were in the first, but they were pretty indistinguishable from Runners IMO). Dogs can catch your scent and consequently follow you, leading their owner to your location in real-time lest you throw them off in some way (if you’re playing with listening mode, you can even see your trail!). Stalkers, on the other hand, are immune to listening mode, forcing you to pay attention to visual and auditory cues in order to catch them red-handed before they strike you. The two contribute a lot and, unlike the first game, I didn’t detect any inconsistencies from your allied AI in terms of enemy detection.

Looting/scavenging is relatively unchanged. You still can’t move bodies, though at least those with a firearm tend to have ammunition on them. You gather resources in the world to build tools/items and upgrade weapons, the former able to be done anywhere, the latter restricted to tool benches scattered about (toolboxes have thankfully been removed at least). I will say, while this made no sense in the first game, benches are a lot more palatable here courtesy of Naughty Dog programming animations whenever you build a new mechanism or add-on for your weapon(s). Some are reused, but for the most part you have a lot of unique ones, and seeing Ellie utilize the tools on the table to craft these mechanisms went a long way towards signifying their significance as gameplay elements.

Skill trees are back, tied to training manuals strewn throughout the locales, and all cards on the table, I honestly found this system to be rather dumb- locking off an entire skillpath behind a collectible. It prevents you from strategizing which abilities you want to invest in until you reach the section of the story where that part of the world with the manual opens up. I’d buy this model if the new paths were tied to specific weapons you acquire around the same time Zelda-style, but no, these skills are mostly generic and appeal to the overall capabilities of your character (an aspect made all the worse by you having to find separate manuals for Abby when the game switches to her perspective). And since new upgrades are limited to pills, you already have a cap on which skills can be chosen.

I believe I’ve covered all the gameplay aspects save exploration. In the first TLOU, one recurring problem I had was that there were one-too-many instances of the narrative moving faster than the game allowedfor exploration- you'd get to an area prime for looting, only for an NPC to be simultaneously talking to you, making your constant "detours" immersion-breaking.

Ironically, I'd say TLOU 2 has the opposite issue here, where the exploration is much more abundant at the cost of the narrative's pacing, at least in Ellie's sections. You are provided a lot of buildings and settlements to explore and scavenge throughout your playthrough, and given the revenge thriller impetus driving the story, this often leads to a slow-down of urgency. I can't take the narrative's exigency seriously when Ellie is going to stop caring about the objective to go into a random place. Yes, technically most of these are "optional," but I use that term loosely because, as TLOU2 indulges in survival horror systems (more-so than its predecessor), and stows upgrade manuals/new weapons in these locales, they aren't really optional. In TLOU1, 9/10 buildings you went through were necessary to the story: here, I'd wager it's more like 5/10 for Ellie (I emphasize Ellie because Abby's sections thankfully don't have this problem, and that in many ways make her storyline more engaging, but more on that later).

Naughty Dog's penchant for environmental storytelling through interior decorations remains top notch, though some of the "wow" factor of the world's history has certainly been lost with the sequel. The bigger downgrade, IMO, were the personal tales divulged via stationary and recordings. I found these to be a lot less interesting than the first one's, mainly because they primarily concern an overarching conflict between three groups: the WLF insurgents, U.S. Military, and Seraphite cult. That kind of tale of a city being split apart by war and internal loyalties has already been done extensively (and continues to be a prevalent part of current events), thus making it lose the edge that smaller-scale, post-apocalyptic anecdotes carry. I'm not saying that there aren't any gems, just that they are less prevalent than in TLOU1 (on the upside, I did like how Ellie/Abby would instantly read them upon collection, compared to Joel immediately putting it away).

Now, I'll finally speak on the story, of which there is a ton to say. There is honestly no feasible way for me to do so without spoiling the game, so for those who want to stop reading, I'll just say I disagreed with Druckmann and co.'s take on stock themes and genuinely felt that they didn't have the guts to commit to an ending that would've made the most sense based on the pieces laid out (from my perspective anyways).

Notes:
+All involve Abby: first is the warehouse section, and the second/third involve her initial meeting with Lev and Yara, the second being the forest section with the stalkers and the third being trapped in the abandoned house structure.
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Now, spoilers galore:

TLOU2 primarily deals with the concept of retribution and vengeance. I noted earlier that this is a revenge game, and it is for those very reasons. To my delight, it deals with the aftermath of the first title wherein Joel went berserk and killed a bunch of Fireflies to prevent them from terminating Ellie during her surgery. The head surgeon's daughter is Abby, who dedicates the next four years of her life to tracking down and killing Joel. Through coincidental events, she happens to encounter the man, setting off the first of several controversial story decisions in which she tortures and murders him in front of Ellie.

I personally had no issue with this at all. I get a lot of people liked Joel, and I did as well (he would be an awful protagonist to play as if he wasn't likeable), but let's be clear- he's not a good person. Even if we ignore things he did in the past, the decision to massacre the Fireflies and execute Marlene, while subjectively understandable, is objectively a cruel and despicable move. There were going to be consequences from that, and Abby embodies that aftermath. People have brought up that Joel doesn't exercise caution when amidst all these new strangers (Abby and her friends) in comparison to the first game, and while I can see that, to me it made sense that living in Jackson for four years under a relatively safe roof tempered his survivalist instincts, especially after this group saved him from a horde of Infected.

But look, if you had an issue with Joel's death, by no means am I going to tell you to get over it. Different players bond with different characters, and the polarizing-negative response to Joel's death indicates it was unfavorable from a good sect of TLOU fanbase. What I hope such disagreeants (yes I made up that word) would at least assent to is that the death was well-executed. Listen, it was spoiled for me long before I played the game (not any details, just the event itself), yet, even knowing what was going to happen, my heart started racing. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I sat through the entirety of the ordeal. When a game can elicit that kind of physiological reaction, you know it's done a good job on the execution front (compare this to a certain someone's death in The Force Awakens, which was also spoiled beforehand, and I had no such biological response when it transpired on-screen).

Now, there were other issues SURROUNDING this event that bear greater scrutiny. First and foremost is the introduction as a whole- this might be the cringiest intro to a AAA game I have ever had the misfortune to experience. Ellie's whole part literally consists of such YA cliches as "you kissed my girl after we just broke up?", "this guy is a bigot and serving us bigot sandwiches," "what did you think of our kiss?," and the discovery of a literal weed farm (was Druckmann high when he came up with that nonsense?). Seriously, it felt like a bad episode of Degrassi (or Arrow for that matter) and genuinely made me wonder if I was playing a post-apocalyptic title, let alone a sequel to The Last of Us (which, by contrast, had one of the greatest openings in the history of video games). This cringefest literally takes hours to get through, the occasional lapses to Abby actually being a relief. Why would people who could die any day on a patrol be caught up in this high school idiocy?

The second major issue has to do with Abby and co. opting to SPARE Tommy and Ellie after the death of Joel. What? Yes, the writers go out of their way to try and explain such a stupid decision, but their justifications are as lame as you can get. Three spring up: "we only came for him [Joel]," "we're better than [Joel]," and "we gave you a second chance [Ellie & Tommy]".

None of these hold-up under basic scrutiny. Even if you only came for Joel, you know these are allies of his with full-fledged killer capabilities who now have the motivation to TRACK YOU DOWN. Maybe Abby and co. thought that the two weren't aware of what Joel did, but if that was the case, they don't bother stating things to Tommy and Ellie. Even something as basic as "if you knew what he did, you would understand" or outright telling it would have gone a long way towards making this line of thought feasible.

Regarding whether they're better than him, the answer is no, they're not and they know that. It is widely implied throughout the game that the Fireflies and WLF committed war crimes during their respective conflicts, and Abby most definitely engaged in some such act (supported by her implied guilt down-the-line). You could counter and say that those were (or were perceived to be) enemy combatants, and that executing Tommy and Ellie would be akin to killing unarmed civilians. You could maybe make this case for Tommy, but Ellie literally comes into the room guns-ablazing and slices up one of the WLF crewmen. Also, how is restraining Joel and slowly killing him there any different from a principled standpoint?

And finally, if Abby really wanted them to comprehend this act of mercy as an opportunity to start afresh, she should've SAID something. How is knocking Ellie out as she's screaming "I'm going to f*cking kill you" leaving her to think on things? Especially when she now knows your name and logo?

It was an all-around moronic decision - the cliché "villain conveniently spares the hero" trope.

So overall, not a good opener to this game. But hey, slow starts have been experienced in other titles like Skyward Sword, and the subsequent odyssey can make-up for lost time. Only....that doesn't happen. See, rather than do the smart thing and have Ellie either go solo or team-up with Tommy to hunt down the WLF rogues, Druckmann decides to have Ellie team-up with Dina, the girl whom she had a romantic encounter with earlier, because of course what a revenge story needed was a dumb romantic subplot.

Look, I'm all for diversity and representation, but a romance of ANY KIND was going to be a distraction, especially with a character we barely spent time with and, who, more importantly, barely spent time with Ellie. Seriously, Dina has NO logical reason to tag along on this life-threatening excursion other than being horny for Ellie as she did not extensively interact with her prior to the events of the game. No one does that shit, especially when they have their loved ones back home (and ESPECIALLY when she finds out she's pregnant).

Also, on a side note, anyone else find it interesting how gay romances that feature some kind of sexual scene tend to almost always be depicted via lesbians? It's almost as if such writers have an odd predilection towards the female gender when it comes to "presenting" same-sex intercourse, but I can't for the love of me tell why....

I could've tolerated Dina had she at least presented something interesting to the plot, and you sometimes get that by way of her conversations with Ellie during their time riding together (the Synagogue scene, in particular, stands out). However, for the most part, it's your silly flirtatious convos that are at odds with the serious, foreboding tone of the plot. Perhaps Druckmann intended this as "levity," but it's so amateurish I would've preferred silence.

To make matters worse, the official beginning of Joel's avengement is thrown into a free roam world that sees the couple having to, get this, open locked gates! Yup, you literally and figuratively hit a stonewall in terms of the pacing, with Naughty Dog thinking it a smart idea to abandon their signature linear-driven craftsmanship in favor a semi-open world that is boring. Look, downtrodden Seattle is a stunning dystopia to gaze at, but it gets old fast. The amount of empty space between buildings, the lack of interesting things to do at said edifices, and subtle mandatoriness courtesy of new weapons being out there grinds the pacing to a slow throttle. And as I said before, the convos between Dina and Ellie just aren't engaging enough to fill-in the quiet moments, particularly when compared to the first game's. Even some of the action beats feel like rehashes of events we underwent back then (getting saved last minute by the secondary hero, escaping into the spore-filled sewers). The only praise I can give this chapter (Seattle Day 1) is that it has a map that's actually useful.

The story significantly starts to pick up during the second chapter due to the following changes: Dina is taken out of the picture, causing Ellie to go solo; the open-world is removed in favor of handcrafted linear environments again; and new enemy variants are introduced to spice things up. You still have too many instances of boring side buildings to explore, but at least it's a far cry from the amount in the first section.

One decision that has received mixed reviews from audiences is the incorporation of flashbacks, which start during Seattle Day 2. Critics have said that they hurt the delivery of the narrative; however, considering I thought that was ruined long before, I didn't think they made it better or worse. No, I instead liked them for the most part. They're set between the two main games and give more memories of Joel and Ellie for fans to digest on.

Unfortunately, one of the storytelling decisions I fundamentally didn't agree with is introduced during one of these, and it's the revelation that Joel confessed to Ellie, in turn causing her to become distant from him. Not only did this make Ellie kind of unlikable (and Tommy flat-out despisable) for choosing to pursue bloodthirsty vengeance despite having an understanding of where these people were coming from, but I also think the story could have gone in more fascinating directions had the writers opted to play with when Ellie finds out the truth and what her reaction (and consequent reflection on all the horrible things she's done in the name of a guy she thought was good) is. But look, at the end of the day, you can't criticize what you wanted, only what you got, so it is what it is.

The decision to make Abby a playable character was another big controversial commitment by Naughty Dog, and yet again I find myself on the side of the company. While I do understand people wanting to purely experience Ellie (and absolutely sympathize with those who didn't want to play as the killer of Joel), as stated before, I've always been an advocate for stories that push boundaries, especially in video games which, unlike movies, have an interactivity factor that makes them more potent avenues for morality tales. In my opinion, this was a great decision, and made TLOU2 more than just your typical revenge plot.

Abby is a great character, brought to life by the great Laura Bailey. She's three-dimensional, visually unique (how often do we see a woman rocking guns?), likeable, and relatable. Everything about her, from her motivations to her shifting character arc, is very well-executed, and it's a shame so many people went into her section without keeping an open mind. As I said before, Abby embodies the notion of actions having consequences- even if you had removed her connection with the surgeon and just made her an ex-Firefly out for blood, she still would've been gripping to follow.

What really helps her is her supporting cast and the game design surrounding her sections. In most vengeance narratives, the antagonists aren't given much characterization: they're either blanket evil or bland evil, and this has the effect of dehumanizing them, resulting in players completely empathizing with the wronged party. But, as we all know in real life, people have a tendency to be more complex than that, and Druckmann and company opted to follow that philosophy in conceiving Abby's crew. I'm not going to go into detail about all of them, but know that they end up feeling like realistic folks you could conceivably meet at a point in your life. Some of the hardest-hitting moments in the TLOUII come from realizing the horrific actions you committed as Ellie were done to actual people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

Regarding the game design, which I alluded to earlier in critiquing Ellie's comportments, Abby's story progresses at a sound gait, much more resembling the first TLOU in terms of limited exploration and story-driven linearity. It really does make a difference knowing that everything you're doing, every step you're taking, is moving the narrative forward.

Unfortunately, not all is sunshine and roses for Abby. The switch to her takes place after a major cliffhanger for Ellie, which will frustrate you. Part of me wonders how the game would've played out had it been edited differently- that is, have Abby's parts strewn throughout, taking place immediately after its associated Ellie parallel. But I understand this would've had more drawbacks than positives. You will also have to re-upgrade Abby, who is given a different arsenal from Ellie, but one that needs refurbishing regardless. Scouring for gears is already old at that point- doing it again will no doubt rub some people as an exercise in tedium.

Storywise, the two biggest downsides to Abby's yarn are the inclusion of a love triangle (It's as dumb and underdeveloped as you can imagine a side character's subplot being), and the game's attempt at trying to make her seem like this bad person; a bad person whom one of her compatriots outright declares a "piece of sh!t." Like I said, there is implied guilt behind Bailey's performance, but outside of that we're not given anything to deduce where these accusations are coming from. Was it making her friends help her murder Joel? No, because they explicitly state during flashbacks that they wanted to come of their own accord. Was it some atrocity she perpetrated during the war with the Seraphites? Nothing is stated to indicate such. I just didn't buy this line of argument, which in turn made her arc weak from a starting point.

Lastly, I absolutely hated how the game made you spend an inordinate amount of time getting the surgical instruments to save Yara's life, only to then kill her off. It's a pet peeve of mine whenever video games do this: have the player invest a lot of time into completing an activity only for that action to be undone later in the storyline. I hated it in Modern Warfare 3, I hated it in Fallout 3, I hated it in Life is Strange, and I hate it here.

There were more fundamental disagreements I had with the game, primarily with regards to its themes. Like too many postmodernist takes on revenge, it advocates that vengeance is wrong by way of creating a cycle of violence that hurts everyone, and I've always found this to be a simplistic view more interested in taking a holier-than-thou visage than genuinely exploring what revenge does to a society, let alone a person. Now, I understand that The Last of Us 2 was partly inspired by Druckmann's experiences growing up during the West Bank conflict between Israel and Palestine, and I don't mean to downplay the violence and trauma he no doubt witnessed. However, here he doesn't do a good job of dissecting things. TLOU2's biggest issue is that Ellie isn't acting on any semblance of reason, just pure emotion. She doesn't try to understand where these killers are coming from or why they would've been willing to travel across the country just to murder one man. The only thing we see is rage.

You might be thinking, well doesn't that fit right in with revenge being everlasting suffering? After all, since the involved parties are acting on passions instead of logic, they fail to realize how they're destroying themselves in the process of destroying the other. The thing is, the only way that story works is if both sides are sympathetic or both sides are unlikeable- you make one morally elevated above the other, and it creates an uneven playing field that throws a wrench in the mutual tragedy, which is exactly what happens here. Abby's side is inherently more pitiable because she was responding to a wrong Joel did; meanwhile, Ellie is not sympathizable because the developers make the boneheaded decision to have her aware of Joel's actions. If she was coming from a place of ignorance, then at least I would be able to understand her side- she lost a father figure who genuinely cared for her and wants payback for the seemingly senseless violence that befell him. But no, she knows, and despite that knowledge, there's no ethical dilemma on her part, no balancing of reasoning, not even an attempt at discussing things- the closest we get is when Nora asks Ellie in the hospital if she's aware of what he [Joel] did, to which Ellie responds by torturing her for information. Yeah, not likable in the slightest, making Abby's dedication all the more affirmable.

On the other hand, if you agreed with Joel's actions, then no amount of plaintive scenes from Abby's side will sway you, making the anti-vengeance theme even less impactful: you WANT to see Abby and her compatriots die at the hands of Ellie.

Now, what about Abby- she definitely loses all her friends as a result of getting revenge on Joel and setting off Ellie and Tommy (without stupidly killing them). Well, unfortunately, most of her pals get killed of their own accord- Nora, Mel, and Owen only die when they opt to attack Ellie instead of giving her the information she is seeking (Abby's location). In fact, not to go off on a tangent, but that speaks to another small issue I had with the game, which was its unwillingness to commit to Ellie's apparent moral degradation- if most of the WLF members she's assassinating are done in self-defense, how can this be seen as an infliction on her (you might say that this was deliberately done because Ellie recognizes Joel was in the wrong and only wants Abby dead; unfortunately, this is counteracted by the whole encounter with Nora, indicating that Ellie is willing to go far if she doesn't get what she wants).

In terms of the other negatives that befall Abby, they don't have anything to do with Ellie. Getting hung by the Seraphites? Occurs because she went out looking for Owen. Getting exiled from the WLF? Conducted because she decided to aid Yara and Lev. Getting captured by the Rattlers? Done because she was looking for the Fireflies. So basically revenge has nothing with most of the tragedies that befall her. And of the events that it did have an impact on (Nora, Mel, Owen, Manny, Alice's deaths), get this, Abby doesn't give a sh!t! She mourns them for a second before moving on, not reflecting or caring.

One may argue that Ellie does end up losing everything on her end: she's detached from her community, Dina has left her, and she's dehumanized. Except, the truth is none of this is permanent or even implied to be permanent- she can return to Jackson at any point and be welcomed with open arms (her leaving the farm at the end indicates just that); maybe Dina wouldn't take her back, but given how horny she was to risk her life on the trip in the first place, I doubt she'd hold a permanent grudge; and I don't see Ellie being anymore dehumanized than any other individual suffering from PTSD after all that's transpired in her life. If anything, her not having nightmares of Joel anymore is an indication she's getting better.

The truth is the game wants to have its cake and eat it too. You can't say traveling on this path won't lead to anything good if the consequences aren't that bad or the consequences have nothing to do with the act of revenge; and if the consequences aren't that bad or disassociated with the initiator, doesn't that make revenge worth pursuing in the end?

No, it seems the only decent interpretation you can make is Druckmann is saying you shouldn't have embarked on this excursion at all. This isn't supported by Abby's segments (since she almost dies despite sparing Ellie), but it IS supported by Ellie settling down into relative peace after returning to Jackson: she's got a farm, a family, and a future of happiness. It's only when she reneges on her abstinence that she suffers the aforestated aftereffects. And my problem with this take is what I alluded to above, which is that really comes off as a 'superior' person looking down on an 'inferior' person. Like, "oh, you should've known better than to give in to your feelings". What exactly was the alternative? To just suffer from nightmares? To silently forgive Abby? To move on as though nothing transpired? And what about from Abby's perspective- was she supposed to get over her dad having his guts blown out? Her mentor being executed? Her surrogate family and their lifelong mission destroyed in the span of an hour?

You'll notice that these kinds of stories NEVER provide the alternative answer to revenge because they don't know what it is- all they figure is that doing it is bad, which is so smug and simplistic. Tell someone who had a loved one who was murdered or beaten or assaulted in a world without proper law enforcement that they need to just sit on their ass and move on.

No, I'll be completely honest with you all- I have a conspiracy theory that the game had a very different ending initially, one that was much darker and much more controversial, yet that ended things much more succinctly than what we got. And that is that Abby kills Ellie.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time supporting this since it's circumstantial, but keep in mind this was one of the plot details in the pre-release leaks that plagued the title, and considering the vast majority of those other leaks turned out to be truthful, it maybe indicates it was contemplated at one point. Consider this: the showdown with Ellie is presented as a stealth fight akin to the one with David in TLOU1. And consider, more importantly, how tacked on and awful that whole final act is with the slave traders. Seriously, I haven't felt a game that padded in so long- it was convoluted (Ellie not bleeding out from that wound whilst strung upside down?), full of contrivances (Abby and Lev getting crucified THE EXACT DAY Ellie finds them?), and anticlimactic as an endgame compared to the theater scene.

Killing Ellie would've made complete sense. You have Abby rightfully motivated by the death of her friends; you have the element of surprise in the sense that she gets the drop on them; and you have a culmination of that whole anti-revenge spiel wherein you witness Ellie suffer the ultimate consequence for going after Abby.

It makes zero, let me repeat, ZERO sense for Abby to spare Ellie after everything the latter did to her. Zero. As Abby didn't learn from her mistake, so too do fictional writers not learn that the sparing the hero cliche is archetypal fatuity for a reason. Instead, we get a whole "don't ever let me see you again." Yeah, here's some advice- if you want to guarantee her not seeing you again, how about you kill her!

Look, I get that Naughty Dog was probably afraid of someone torching their headquarters to the ground if they had gone through with such a decision (considering the death threats they and Bailey received just for axing Joel, this isn't even out of the realm of possibility), but then they shouldn't have written the narrative to lead up to this moment. It was dumb planning from the get-go (and it begs the question of how tf Ellie got a wounded pregnant Dina and a gunshot-to-the-head Tommy all the way back to Seattle with a broken arm - now there's an idea for a Left Behind-type DLC!).

So yeah, those are all my reasons for eventually finding TLOU2 to be on the lower side of the quality spectrum. It has a lot of great artistic, technical, and even storytelling feats, and I absolutely recommend a playthrough on those merits alone but these are countered by cons in the narrative department. That being said, don't listen to the mainstream critiques that have occupied the discourse from disgruntled fans; there are legitimate flaws with this game that critics conveniently overlooked, but they're more complicated than you would believe.
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