I wrote a Tribes 1 review that mainly featured shitting on Tribes 2 and how it must have a chorus of positive reviews, only to discover this ghost town. I guess for Tribes as a whole (especially in the face of the Weekend At Bernie's act it had after this game) you just had to be there to understand. This is not a great sign for the future of games preservation or critical analysis of multiplayer-focused games even on websites explicitly meant to catalog opinions for games all through the history and spectrum of the medium.

that said, tribes 1 still better

For all that people have lambasted Skyrim for its fundamental flaws, myself included, it is a game that thrives in its smallest moments. After reading Proudlittleseal's lovely review, I decided to give Skyrim a long delayed replay and try to appreciate it on its own terms. I ignored the Skyrim that has aged least well; the series of overly scripted questlines in which the same five voice actors blandly talk over each other about how the Player is the only one that can save the world from Alduin /Eye of Magus/ Stephen Russell. And instead I played the Skyrim that has more in common with the scuffed fantasy paperbacks from charity shops that I used to love for their sincere and uncomplicated adventures. Helping a witch turn on her coven. Having a drinking contest in Ivarstead only to wake to the disapproving glare of a Priestess in Markarth. Investigating a conspiracy only to escape the city with a bounty over a 1000 septims. Assisting a Priest of Mara in leaving his past behind so he can travel by my side. The old hermit who led me to a cavern the size of a small nation. Skyrim thrives in this picaresque framing where every character, dungeon or encounter organically weave into a journey that becomes more than the sum of its parts. In a genre I've come to associate with bloat and busywork, its just refreshing to play a game that cuts all that out and lets me embrace the wanderlust that got me playing rpgs in the first place. Its far from perfect but I see its value now.

3D shooters are a genre long and particularly afflicted with 'just so' game design; Half-Life popularized a reload mechanic where you tap a button and wait to have your gun refilled from a pool, and this became a defacto standard for no particular reason over not having reloading, or reloading that actually has gun magazine management, or dozens of other one off systems meant to represent a games ethos. Halo introduced a two-weapon system that, along side a nuanced weapon selection forced you to always accept a trade off, games without nuanced weapon selections copied it wholesale, usually resulting in defacto one weapon system because you really need to carry the M16 at all times to get anything done. Halo Infinite in turn has a sprint button with so little effect that you need a stopwatch to tell if it makes you faster- because Halo doesn't benefit from a sprint mechanic but Shooters Have Sprint. Helldivers is perhaps the only studio published 3D shooter in half a decade if not more where there is no 'just so' game design, from meat and potato mechanics like your gun's recoil being semi-deterministic to help you avoid the regular concern of friendly fire, and your gun being loaded from a small pool of disposable magazines, to fun details like running out of spawns but completing the mission objective still constituting a victory.

In one of its previews, Hideaki Itsuno was deliberately evasive when asked about why Dragon’s Dogma II’s title screen initially lacks the II, saying only “nothing in this game is unintentional.” You can draw whatever conclusion you like from that, but I think I’ve a different interpretation from most – it’s less a signal that this is a reimagining or a remake or whatever else in disguise than a display of confidence in how well he and his team understand what makes it tick.

As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.

Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?

On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.

I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.

For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?

I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.

third time giving this a shot. was not the charm. for all the comparisons people made to quake when hyping it up, it fails to do ANYTHING that made quake good. movement is Amiga level bad, weapons are lame (so much hitscan...), music is filler, levels are Alright at best, except for the part where every single one of them has a rape joke hidden in it so you can unlock a rape joke steam achievement. had this actually come out in the 90s it would be relegated to the same bins as SiN and Gunman Chronicles; the idea anyone likes it more than Doom is, genuinely, driving me to drink as i type.

there's a reason the multiplayer is deader than Daikatana's.

almost a good game, held back by memes and insecurity

doom (1993) is a game entirely focused on level design. you are 'exploring the level' at all times. combat encounters are part of the exploration. weapon pickups are part of the exploration. secret hunting is part of the exploration. every single action you take, sans the minutiae of combat (projectile dodging, bfg trickery, etc), is you engaging with the design of the level. you can beat every map in the game launched directly, with just the starting pistol and health. this is not an accident. levels are not scenes in a movie, or episodes in a show, but songs in an album. in this sense it (and doom 2, and quake) is much like an early mario, or sonic, or dungeon crawler. that hint of dungeon crawl is extremely important to doom; many spaces are designed to mess with you. you need to master the spaces to even finish the level. they're called "maps" for a reason!

doom 2016 is a game about systems. encounter design, weapon pickups, and secret hunting are all constrained based on how they want you to engage with the combat and progression systems. levels get cleaved into two modes: "looking around for stuff to unlock" and "boxed off combat." let me explain.

this game is structured around upgrades. in order to fully kit out doomslayer, you need to find all of the:
-weapons
-points to unlock weapon mods (hot-swappable altfire modes, two per weapon)
-points to upgrade weapon mods (2-3 per weapon mod)
-"mastery" upgrades for fully upgraded weapon mods
-points to upgrade the praetor suit
-second type of points for second type of praetor suit upgrade
-runes (think CoD perk system, or old LoL runepages), unlocked for doing specific instanced challenges
-slots for runes, unlocked for doing an amount of instanced challenges
-"mastery" upgrades for runes

that's nine different types of unlock. nine. for reference, the only one of these systems in the original games is "finding the weapons."

these upgrades aren't tiny, either. there's no Path of Exile "+1.3% Shock damage to Undead type enemies (Melee only)" here. instead you're unlocking things like "weapon switch speed." "immunity to explosive barrels." "bullet penetration." "reload speed for your altfire." "maximum health." these aren't minor things, they are the fundamentals of the actual combat system, the sort of thing you argue about in a competitive game. and because the game is entirely focused on its combat system, this means you only get to start playing The Actual Game - juggling weapons with the actual swap speed, using the various types of weapon mod, being able to double-jump with proper air control, or do glory kills from full range - once you find the right number of these upgrades. it's maddening.

note i am saying "find." not "get," but "find." because, yes, the obsession with upgrade systems infected the secrets too. the upgrades , or the challenges you have to do to get the upgrades, are scattered around the levels in random dead ends, or vents, at the end of "platforming" segments, or occasionally in actually optional chunks of level. you are often given three paths, two which lead to objectives (sometimes the same objective) and one slightly hidden one which leads you to the body of an Elite Guard with a Praetor Token, or an Argent Cell, or a portal to a Rune Trial, or one of 48 collectible Funko Pops, or some other nonsense. i think this is done to make secrets "Feel Rewarding," compared to the original Doom, where you'd usually just be given full health and armor, or maybe a temporary powerup. but really, it does the opposite. you have to find secrets, or else you are going to be behind on upgrades, and the secrets can't be too secret or else people won't be able to find them. the automap marks them on the map screen before you even find them, because they know you are going to need them. so, you are not engaging with the design of the level. there is no feeling of solving a puzzle, or "getting the joke," or just finding something interesting. you are just checking things off a list in the corner of the map screen.

i can imagine some rebuttals to this. "you can just not get the upgrade points," etc. sure. they can also "just" not make me unlock half of the mechanics in the game. this is one of the oldest complaints about Devil May Cry (a game these designers are clearly enamored with), or God of War, or any other Action-First Action Game w/ this sort of system - "the game doesn't start until you unlock a bunch of moves," "why can't you just start with Enemy Step," etc. I am not really fond of DMC in the first place, but it does eventually become a very good game once you get over that hump. i do not understand why idsoft decided to triple down on this, instead. and either way, these "you control the buttons you press" type responses ignore the actual incentives set by the progression systems, which the designers were clearly quite excited about having come up with, what with it dictating every part of the game. nobody would make a complaint like this if they hadn't built the game in this way!

anyways, while you're scrounging for upgrade points, you will eventually find yourself in a Combat Zone. these are (either functionally or actually) boxed off areas where enemies spawn, repeatedly, for a certain amount of time, much like DMC, or Serious Sam, or Painkiller, or other games I don't really enjoy specifically because of this "boxes connected by hallways" format. but at least the actual combat you do in here is pretty good. ultraviolence difficulty forces you to do a lot of weapon swapping, a la Quake 3 rocket/clan arena mode, with the positioning dances of Quake 1 or a Halo. the glory kill system is cool and gives fights a nice ebb and flow. it's pretty fun! at least, once you unlock the fun version of the game, where you're able to do the weapon swapping and do glory kills from full range and take more than 150 damage before dying and and and...

actually, no, let's talk about the combat. it's the only thing this game has going for it, so i have to give it more than two sentences. i want to compare it, again, to doom 93, because its the only way to explain the differences between the two.

the combat in the original doom is extremely similar to arcade scrolling shooters - gradius, xevious, eXceed 3rd Jade Penetrate Black Package, etc etc. you can strafe, you can fire hitscan weapons, you can fire projectile weapons, you can fire slower projectile weapons that explode on impact. some enemies shoot hitscan, others shoot projectiles, others do melee stuff. the game mostly boils down to dodging projectiles, circle strafing, and occasional cover peeking. this is not a problem. it's simple, it's fun to handle, and given good level and encounter design, it can be incredibly fun and interesting. your ammo economy decisions happen across the entire level: "i won't use this weapon in this fight because i want to have ammo for it in the next fight, which has these enemies," etc. this is, again, a strategic decision that can be fun, or interesting, or stressful, or whathaveyou, in the hands of the right designer. in this way, Doom is closer to an older dungeon crawler than a modern first-person shooter. remember that the original inspiration for the id FPS games was Carmack seeing a demo of Ultima Underworld at a trade show, and going "I could do that, but faster!" Ultima Underworld is a very slow, simulationist game about having to survive in a locked dungeon. It was a direct response to Dungeon Master, which itself was a real-time, semi-simulationist take on the Wizardry/Bard's Tale/Might&Magic style of first-person party-based grid-movement dungeon crawler (if you've played Legend of Grimrock, you've basically played Dungeon Master). With this info, we can start to understand these early id games as a type of dungeon crawler. The first of the "real" FPS games they made, Catacomb 3D (Hovertank is a tech demo shut up), lifted heavily from Gauntlet, an early arcade Action RPG. Wolf3D is faster, more refined Catacomb. Doom is faster, more refined Wolf3D. Quake is... etc. This is why the level design is like that. This is why the item economy is like that, why Wolf3D had "meaningless" rooms where you pick up treasure, why you were meant to get lost. Even the "bumping into walls trying to find the last secret in the map" bullshit is lifted directly from Wizardry.

unfortunately, while making their weird arcade-action dungeon crawler, they also decided to give it a gory, hypermasculine speed metal aesthetic to complement its Blazing Fast Graphics. this opened them up to controversy, reinterpretation, and controversy-fueled reinterpretation. Doom, a game where you stumble your way through weird pitch black corridors filled with nonsense monsters, became something you played to prove you were a Real, Hardened Man of a 17 year old. (yes, it always had the chainsaw, the rampage powerup, the gore sprites - i've played it dozens of times, I know). this feedback loop brings us to the doom comic.

in 1996, which I want to remind you was four years after doom came out, Marvel released a one-off Doom promotional comic. it cold opens with Doomguy punching a bunch of demons while dropping bad one-liners. "I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness!" "Knock knock, who's there? ME!" etc. on page 3, Methguy finds himself a cyberdemon. he exclaims, "You are huge! That means you have huge guts! Rip and tear! Rip and tear your guts!" And then he, well, who cares. Nobody cared at the time, at least. Only a few more people cared after Lowtax (eugh) dug it up for a Planetquake article 5 years later. But eventually, through the power of memetics, the phrase "Rip And Tear Your Guts," a dumb one-liner from a comic nobody had ever read, became the soul of Doom, to a certain kind of person. When the mod "Brutal Doom" came out in 2010, and added fancier gore, headshot mechanics, Mortal Kombat fatalities, and a bunch of other superfluous dumb shit, that impression of Doom went well beyond the Doomworld shitposters and landed straight in people's Youtube recommendations. That, I'm fairly sure, is how Doom 2016 ended up more inspired by a line from an ad than the actual game it's actually meant to "reboot."

The opening cutscene of 2016 ends with the line "rip and tear until it is done." The glory kill, the game's Clever Mechanic, is a "rip and tear" button. That's not to say it's not fun. Being able to turn enemies into health is cool, and keeps the game from feeling as bland as other "boxes in a row" shooters. But it serves that meme revisionism just as much as it serves the game design. This game is not in conversation with Doom. It is not building on what id was doing with Doom. It does not "bring Doom forward to a new generation." It is an adaptation of one single panel from a shitty advertisement comic book the creators had no hand in, by way of mechanics from "Character Action" games and the worst Eurotrash shooters of the mid 2000s. This frustrated me in 2016, and it frustrates me now, years after the initial disappointment wore off.

so. the level design sucks. the cutscenes suck. (have i mentioned this game has unskippable cutscenes? they're bad!). the sections where you have to stand around and listen to someone tell you that someone is trying to access someone's secret files through the Vega terminus in the ruins of the Archon reprocessor core or whatever before you can start playing the level, suck. they even do that Whedon thing where the protagonist, in world, gets mad that someone would have the gall to make him sit through an exposition dump in a Doom game, in the first five minutes of the game, and then they keep fucking doing it! the platforming, something they stuck in here even having eighteen years to take a semicritical look at Half-Life, also kinda sucks, until halfway thru the game when you find the challenge to unlock tier 1 of the perk that gives you vaguely Quake air-control instead of Halo floatiness. really, every part of the game, outside the boxes where you're doing combat, is either bland, or annoying, or Actively Bad. and the combat's only good once you've spent a few hours dealing with the upgrade system, which also sucks. the most fun I've had is cranking the difficulty in arcade mode, which lets you skip most of that fluff. not all, just most. i dunno, man!

I am sure the people who were peeing their pants over this game in 2016 were doing so sincerely. but i find myself wondering how many of them had played the original game, or how long it had been since they'd done so, and what they would say they liked about it if asked, because absolutely none of what's kept that game fun, interesting good for thirty years is present here. just download some mods for that instead.

i dunno, let's keep this quick. to say it's a bit clumsy is an understatement - and there are certainly aspects of the overall narrative i struggle with - but the depths of its sincerity won me over. i have no particular attachment to yakuza 7 either, and in fact i find much of that game to be very awkward, stilted, and grating so ultimately no one's more stunned than myself here.

when it's not luxuriating in this chilled-out ocean's twelve vibe which i loved, infinite wealth is written with far more intentionality and consideration than most entries in the series; while one might accuse of it of verging on threadbare or cloying for its strict emphasis on theme, i think the game trusts its audience to take some of the emotional leaps necessary to make the storytelling work. character writing for the leads and the party members has seen a dramatic improvement across the board. ichiban as usual brings a lot of levity to the table - thankfully none of it quite as irritating in the zany sense as 7 liked to employ - but kiryu's portions of the game are comparatively sobering. collecting memoirs has a weird psychological effect at times but the series has earned the right to do this by this point given how much of the kiryu saga can feel siloed or compartmentalized - in the same vein as gaiden, the game almost damns him for this, for never taking a chance to stop and reflect, for the consequences of his interminable martyr complex

that tendency to bury the past is only contrasted further by infinite wealth being maybe the most direct sequel the series has seen yet - the events of that game are still fresh in everyone's mind and sets the stage for the overarching conflict and everyone's investment in said conflict. it's a surprisingly natural extension of a lot of 7's themes, and i found it worked better for me this time. 7 often felt more gestural than anything else - to me it balanced far too much as this metaphorical (and literal) tearing down of the old ways, handling the introduction of a new protagonist, paying lipservice to series veterans and setting up parallels to the original ryu ga gotoku. infinite wealth to me feels more fully-formed, more confident; i think the team was able to use this title's unique hook and premise to really bring the most out of 7s promise of something new, and it could only have achieved it by taking the time to reflect on the past.

to this end: they made the game a JRPG this time, that counts for something. and not just a JRPG but one that feels as close to traditional RGG action as possible. some excellent systems this time with a lot of fascinating interplay and the level curve is fantastic. not necessary to sum up all the changes, you've seen them, but they really promote a lot of dynamic decision-making with respect to positioning and once you figure out how status effects can correlate with them you feel like your third eye's opening. very fond memories here of navigating around a crowd of enemies - some of whom have been put to sleep - and figuring out how best to maximize damage without waking anyone drowsy up. lots more strategy and enjoyment to be had here than pretty much anywhere in 7.

that said, i know RGG prides themselves on the statistics relating to players completing their titles, but they could really afford to take a few more risks with enemy waves in the main campaign. i felt like my most interesting encounters were usually street bosses or main story bosses, but the main campaign's filled with trash mobs. and i'm not saying every fight has to be some tactician's exercise - in fact i think that's the opposite of what people actually would enjoy - but i really wish the game took the time to play around even more with positioning. there are some exciting scenarios in the game that are too few and far in-between. stages that split up the party, encounters with unique mechanics...would really liked to have seen more in that vein.

some extra notes - would like to dig a bit deeper into the strengths of the narrative as well as some additional hangups but i can't be assed to write more
- honolulu's great, it gets probably a little too big for its own good but it's a real breath of fresh air for most of the game
- yamai is the best new character they've introduced in years
- dondoko island feels like a classic yakuza minigame in the best possible way, might even represent the apex of this kind of design. not obscenely grindy but just something casual and comfortable with enough layers to dig into without being overwheming and enough versatility to express yourself. shame you can't really say the same for sujimon!
- kiryu's party is disarmingly charming and they have some insanely good banter
- despite what some have said, i think this is a good follow-up to gaiden. it's not explicit about it but this is still very much a reckoning with kiryu's character and his mentality; it is every bit as concerned and preoccupied with the series mythos, the core ideas and conflicts driving a lot of installments
- honestly found the pacing to be on-par for the average RGG title if not better. i can concede that the dondoko island introduction was a bit too long but that is the most ground i can afford. if we can accept y5 into our hearts we can accept infinite wealth; IW makes y5 look deranged for its intrusiveness despite both titles occupying a similar length. if any of it registers as an actual problem, i think people would benefit from revisiting yakuza 7 to find it is almost exactly the same structurally if not worse
- IW is home to maybe the best needle drop in the medium
- played in japanese, like i usually do, so no real interest in commenting on the english dub since it's not real to me but i will say that what i listened to seemed like a bit of a step back from the dub quality in previous RGG games. yongyea isn't a convincing kiryu either and while i could be a bit more of a hater here all i will say is there is a STAGGERING whiplash involved in casting a guy like that as the lead in a game with themes like this. in a grouchier mood, i think it would genuinely be a bit difficult to look past this and it does leave me feeling sour, but ultimately the dub doesn't reflect my chosen means of engaging with the title and it never will
- what is difficult to look past is the game's DLC rollout, which arbitrarily gates higher difficulties, new game +, and a postgame dungeon. i acquired these through dubious means (which i highly recommend you also do) so i feel confident in saying they're really not at all worth the money unless you had a desire to spend more time in this world, but what a colossal and egregious failure to price it in this fashion. new game + specifically has tons of bizarre issues that make me believe a revision of some kind was necessary.
- you will not regret downloading this mod that removes the doors in dungeons


long story short, ryu ga gotoku's journey began in 2005 with a simple motif: to live is to not run away. so much of infinite wealth is about taking that notion to its furthest extent. it couldn't have possibly hit at a better time for me. at times it might be a classic case of this series biting off a bit more than it can chew for a sequel, but i don't think there's anything you can reliably point to that would make me think this is one step forwards, two steps back.

also awesome to have a game that posits that hawaii is filled with the fire monks from elden ring and then you have to travel to the resident evil 4 island to beat them up

This game should not exist.

It does not feel like there was ever a time before Resident Evil 4, yet it certainly feels like we are all living in its aftermath. To say that this game is "confident" with its design might be the biggest understatement I've ever written. It doesn't feel confident, it feels like concrete rules of game design being rebuilt right in front of you. It takes as many cues from the series' roots with its core gameplay philosophies as it does rail shooters a la House of the Dead with its perpetual forward motion and linear map design; "every room feeling like something new." I've seen this game described as a new age of Resident Evil, a reinvention of the series, ushering in the "action era" of the series, but I think that's selling it short.

Auteur theory is something that I am personally at ends with, as I do think there are creative visionaries who leave a thumbprint on all of their works, but it still feels like I'm drastically reducing the tens, hundreds of people involved in game development to merely support for the big name. That being said, one must be impressed by Shinji Mikami. I can not comprehend practically inventing the survival horror genre with the original Resident Evil, help heighten action games to a new level with Devil May Cry, returning to a classic to iron out the few flaws and give it a good spit shine with REmake, and finally flip the gaming world on its head with Resident Evil 4. With that out of the way, there are some design choices from both REs 1 and 4 that I'd like to highlight: your inventory, and decision making.

When I think of RE1, I'm instantly reminded of the dread it induces with its strangling inventory and how key it is to trim all fat possible and keep only the bare necessities, lest you end up with an essential item left behind due to no free space. In every sense, RE4 manages to keep its iconic inventory management aspect, but only after completely overhauling it into something that has never, and probably will never be outdone. At an entry level, it's simple: rearrange items to fit the space; a Tetris-esque minigame in your downtime. But the more you play, the more your inventory feels like more than just a bag of options, it's a flash reminder of your entire arsenal. As much as I love the 2023 remake's decision to map certain weapons to the D-pad (a very comfortable feature), I find that it takes away from a certain improvisational aspect the game's combat has. You go into a room, you're surrounded by enemies, and after you shoot a few rounds to get the baddies swarming you off, you open your inventory; clarity. You think about how many enemies are in the room, how many shots you've put into them, when your last Merchant visit was, your ammo for all weapons, your grenade count, upcoming sections (if you're a returning player), and so much more, with one button press. And the only reason you have that moment of lucidity is because the game reminds you of your entire catalog, decorated in whatever order you prefer the most. Not only does it allow you to have satisfying click moments of everything fitting into place, but it lets you test your own speed, swapping between grenades, pistols, shotguns within seconds to sweep away enemies. Then, once that room is cleared, you collect all the ammo you've got and run another stocktake, mentally preparing yourself for the next encounter, just one small gear in what makes this game play like clockwork.

Adding onto that, I'd like to cross-reference this excellent review by SimonDedalus, wherein the game asks of you "how do you adapt to it putting you in a cage with Wolverine." It may sound silly on the surface, but the tensest encounters (a great example is the cabin in 2-2) in this game are, in my opinion, its shining moments. Sure, it's fun to pop the heads of enemies from a mile away with your rifle, but being trapped in a room not much bigger than you are and having enemies strapped with maces, cattle prods, crossbows, claw hands, or rocket launchers with nothing but the weapons you have and an ever-evolving game plan in your mind is what separates this game from the Resident Evil entries that would follow it. There's no expression of skill in mindlessly mowing down zombies, which is why this game never offers you that. The infected are tough, and you're doing yourself a disservice by just plugging away at them. Switching your styles and adapting to what the game throws at you will not only keep you well-stocked with ammo, as the "AI director" likes to throw a variety of ammo types at you to balance using guns you like while also keeping your gameplay fresh, but also reward you with a richer, deeper understanding of the game's combat and possibility for what could only be described as "combos" in the RE world.

There's more to talk about, of course, but I really think those two factors hone in what makes this game an immortal entrant into the pantheon of video games. Sure, I could talk about its effortless stylistic switch-ups, or its wonderfully cheesy B-movie charm, or its superbly satisfying and iconic sound design, but those are all just the church built on the proverbial "rock" of masterclass game design.

This is the best game ever made, in fact, I'd like to raise it up a peg: I consider RE4 to be an artistic achievement in humanity's name, and we are lucky to coexist alongside it in time. If you are a game designer, this game should light your head aflame with creativity, and if it doesn't, keep playing until it does. Even if you're not a game designer, the sheer strength and confidence in every aspect this game has should be enough to instill anyone with the faith in themselves they need to create something special of their own. If Shinji Mikami can do it, if Leon S. Kennedy can do it, if Capcom can do it, if Resident Evil can do it, so can you.

TL;DR- A fascinating and freaky Noah's Ark "psycho thriller and hunting" JRPG on Sega Saturn which never made its way Westward, Linda Cube Kanzenban's wonderful art design, unique and challenging gameplay systems, top of class world-building, unforgettable characters, and dramatic, parallel-world storylines have made it a cult classic in Japan for good reason, and it's well worth playing if you get the chance.

Linda Cube is a Noah's Ark JRPG, or as its creator Shoji Masuda referred to it, a "psycho thriller and hunting RPG." Both are appropriate, valid descriptions. Linda Cube is not like other JRPGs—it has many unique systems and a unique setting which are not seen in other games of the genre. At the same time at its heart it is very much a JRPG with top notch JRPG essential elements. Despite my 5 star score I do not think Linda Cube is a perfect game—there is no such thing—however, it perfectly executes what it sets out to do.

Linda Cube takes place on Neo-Kenya, a planet doomed to death by a giant meteor in 8 years time at the start of the game. One day, a huge ark falls out of the sky, with a message from a mysterious god calling himself Anubis. It's a call for one human male and female to capture one male and female of every species of animal on the planet and upload them to the astro ark and launch it into the sky toward an unidentified target location before the meteor hits.

That call is answered by teenage protagonist Ken Challenger and his slightly crazy, blue-green haired tomboy girlfriend Linda. Having made a careless early childhood promise to get married one day, the two are already in a relationship when the game starts. Linda is brought to life by a stand out performance from Minami Takayama, the voice of Detective Conan, among many others. The relationship between the two of them forms the basis for the dramatic story elements of the different scenarios.

A defining feature of the game, Linda Cube is composed of three closely adjoined parallel worlds referred to as Scenarios A, B, and C. Different Scenarios are selected from the title screen, and a game save can only exist in that Scenario. This is the first of many unique systems the game uses to differentiate itself. Scenarios take place in different Regions of Neo-Kenya—each Region is essentially its own unique mini-world map. All Scenarios take place in the Eastern Region, with Scenario A also taking place in the icy Western Region of Neo Kenya, Scenario B also taking place in the blazing Southern Region, and Scenario C taking place in all of those Regions and one more. Each Scenario has its own unique story and main characters, as well as a unique number of animals required to be uploaded to the ark in order for Ken and Linda to launch it into space. The Scenario length and number of animals required to launch the ark increases from A to B to C.

One of the best uses of this Scenario System is how characters change between them. Characters who are villains in one Scenario may be allies in the next, and relationships between characters are usually similar but slightly different. A harmless comment or throwaway joke by a character in one Scenario will take on a sinister meaning when it appears in another. Other small details like Linda's last name will change between Scenarios. It's also impossible to catch all of the animals in the world in the first two Scenarios, which are more like tutorial Scenarios for Scenario C, where the player must upload at least 100 different species into the ark.

Capturing animals is the meat of the game. Animal sprites can be seen wandering region maps or in dungeons and bumping into them initiates combat. Some animals will run away from the player, some will run at the player. Animal behavior also changes depending on the season in game. Animals tend to run in large packs during summer and are found hungry and solo and closer to towns during the winter. Females may become more aggressive during egg laying season, and males more aggressive during the rut. Different animals will appear in different areas depending on the season, if they attacked the party while they were sleeping, if it is snowing, or if other more esoteric requirements are met.

Ken moves at a decent clip already, but the player can hold a button to make him run. Running takes a toll on Ken and requires a small amount of HP to maintain outside of towns, so running in bursts while hunting is more advantageous than just holding the run button down. This adds a nice element of strategy to hunting, and if the player attacks from the side or behind, it gives them an advantage in combat. Other elements like forcing an aquatic animal to fight on land will also give the player an advantage.

At first glance combat is your standard first person turn-based Dragon Quest or Phantasy Star style affair, but it has a unique twist. Animals can come at the party from one of four different cardinal directions. Each direction has its own mini-battlefield, and the player can freely change directions between these battlefields on their character's turn. Animals attacking from behind the party will inflict more damage, so it's good to keep an eye on where the animals are and have a party member face them during combat. Some animals will bounce between battlefields, and some of the player's moves will hit every animal in a battlefield, which helps make the combat interesting.

Another interesting combat element is hunting dog party members. Dogs can be purchased at Dog Centers or captured in the wild and tamed. Linda learns to tame dogs as her hunting skills improve, with that ability eventually allowing her to tame a few other animals into "hunting dogs." Up to two dogs can be in the party at a time. Dogs act and level independently in combat depending on their natural disposition and how strong their bond is with Ken. If the enemy is too strong or the dog has fallen in combat many times in the past, it's more likely to run away, taking damage from enemies and returning to the party only after combat is over. If a dog runs out of HP it must be taken to a Dog Center to be healed, where the vet will give the player a ridiculous list of symptoms and a bill. As Ken's hunting skills improve, he is able to give general orders to the hunting dogs and freely switch them out during combat with dogs in reserve. This is extremely valuable when trying to capture weaker enemies, as lower level dogs can be swapped in to fight weaker enemies without splatting them.

Animals are automatically captured by Ken's Trans Cargo System after their HP is reduced to 0 or a small range above or below 0. But, if an animal is hit too hard and their HP goes well below 0, they splat into tiny pieces. Splatted animals are not captured and give no XP. This adds an element of physicality and skill to hunting, as the player is encouraged to explore and engage with animals around their level, while dodging higher and lower level animal species. Animals visible onscreen can be examined for more info including what level they are as well as various data about them from the in-game hunter's manual. The natural volatility of these animals is also why modern firearms are not allowed in Neo-Kenya, as well as why the player uses simple weapons crafted from various parts of these animals to fight. A splatted animal is worthless.

But a captured animal is very valuable. Utilizing ancient technology discovered in the mysterious ruins of the planet, Ken's Trans Cargo System digitizes weakened animals which can then be uploaded from the system into the ark. Animals uploaded to the ark become a part of not only the astro ark, but a part of Ken and Linda. Depending on the sex of the animal uploaded the correspondingly sexed party member will receive permanent stat boosts, as well as unlock special skills and beast transformations which can be used in combat. Knowing which animals correspond to which special skills and transformations gives the player various options for pathing during repeat playthroughs.

Captured animals can also be turned into weapons, armor, and various treated meats. It takes 10 males of a species to make one weapon, 10 females to make a full set of armor, and 1 animal to make a treated piece of meat. Each of these items is unique depending on the animal used, and knowing which animals make great weapons, armor, and meats, is essential to becoming a full-fledged hunter. Treated meats are the main healing tool in the game, with Ken commenting on the unique flavor each time he consumes one, I.E "Tastes like earlobes," "Tastes like rust." Meats also have a danger value, which is a chance of giving the player a negative status effect. Meats can also be thrown on the overworld, in dungeons, and in battle itself, to lure animals or give them a negative status effect.

But the most defining systems in the game are the time-related ones. Spend enough time hunting and the seasons pass. Like Earth, Neo-Kenya has four seasons. And as the seasons pass, perishable items in your inventory go to rot, and different animals appear at different rates in various areas of Neo-Kenya. Different NPCs may appear or have different things to say in Neo-Kenya's towns and caves. Weather patterns change, with some regions becoming easier or more difficult to traverse. And when enough seasons pass, the years pass. And every year brings the player closer to an unstoppable meteorite in the summer of 1999. As the years pass, the cities begin to thin out. The Interstellar Federation has a planetary evacuation program in place, but they can only carry so many people at a time on their budget repurposed evacuation shuttles. Take the time to speak to every NPC you see, because they might not be there next time.

NPCs are always worth talking to, and a real highlight of the game. The NPC conversations are always entertaining, often humorous, and help build the world and deepen the feeling that Neo-Kenya is a real place full of real people. Many story elements are not explicitly explained, but clues as to what's really going on can be picked up from NPC conversations as you go along, sometimes even in different scenarios entirely.

The story itself is extremely dramatic and entertaining. The main theme is love. More specifically, it's an exploration of how strong the emotion is, and how long-term and wide-reaching its consequences can be. Story elements are naturally activated by uploading certain numbers of animals to the ark or progressing to certain seasons in certain years. This is reminiscent of the story trigger system in Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, and is an excellent way of implementing story elements in a free-roaming JRPG of this style. It keeps the player involved in the fascinating world of Neo-Kenya.

Neo-Kenya is prized not only for its unique animals not found anywhere else in the galaxy, but also for its native people, the Beastians. These often blue-green anime hair colored natives who proudly claim to be descended from beasts were already there when the shocked Earthlings first landed on the planet. A hardy people known for their sometimes backwards ways and traditions, they also have an incredibly high birth rate, something Earthlings in the game are severely lacking in. Breeding with the natives is seen as the hope for humanity, and Beastians have their own self-governed sanctuary towns with extravagant churches which are seen as tourist attractions.

But there are many mysteries surrounding them. How are Beastians able to find and control the fierce pteranodon-like creatures which make up the world's mass aviation transport system, Birdline? Why do they seem so prone to disastrous events, like the mass slaying of a Beastian village around a decade ago? Why do their legends speak of giant arks which fall from the sky just like the recent one sent by Anubis? Are their genes really so dominant that Linda's black-skinned legendary human hunter father Hume could have a white-skinned blue-green haired daughter like Linda? Is the Federation taking the Beastians into account with their evacuation program, or will some of the natives be left to face meteor-induced destruction? And why are so many Beastian corpses mysteriously disappearing in the middle of the night from the basement mortuary of the hospital corporation town of Hospico?

Hospico is one of several major towns and cities the player can freely visit if they are available in their Scenario. A few other towns include the spaceport town of Ozport, the Eastern region's transportation hub which has a teleportation pad to the Oz-sat satellite from which the planet's evacuation shuttle is boarded. (Of which the operators insist there hasn't been an incident of dumping a traveler directly into deep space in at least a year, making it much safer than Birdline.) There's the half-built and abandoned town of Parasido, which has become a den for outlaw poachers who finish building the town as they please. There's the town of Eterna, run by a massive pharmaceutical company which makes wondercures out of the unique local animals and where every day feels like a holiday. There's the last Beastian sanctuary town of Minago, where Linda and her mother live. And there's the town of Hardia, where the planet's Ranger Corps is headquartered, and where, despite living in the shadow of the Ranger Corps headquarters, Ken is late to work as a junior hunter in the Ranger Corps every day.

While not explicitly a silent protagonist, Ken is breathed to life by the player themselves. Ken has some voice acting and personality, but it's pretty mellow overall. This helps bring out the bombastic nature of the other characters introduced in the game, with main character conversations fully voiced. In addition to Minami Takayama's outstanding performance as Linda, Takeshi Aono gives an incredible Dr. Emory, the colorful doctor who is eerily reminiscent of a certain famous failed Austrian artist, and a main player in Scenario B. There's also a performance given during a certain bossfight of Scenario A which will the give the player chills, and possibly nightmares. The performances and stories work well to bring the characters to life.

One other extraordinary element bringing Linda Cube to life is the art design. The character design is from famous Japanese artist Cannabis, and is top-notch, with some of the best concept art of the generation. In addition to this is the acid-laced nightmare fuel animals of Neo-Kenya, which share names with Earth creatures but only vaguely resemble them. Every new animal is a new nightmare, and it makes capturing them more fun. There's also a few short anime cutscenes designed by Cannabis during pivotal scenes which are gorgeous and entertaining.

And that art is the last element that makes Linda Cube come together. The game's surface is the gorgeous character and animal designs which stand out despite the game's relatively simplistic graphical prowess. The game's skeleton is the very fun, challenging gameplay loop of catching animals and uploading them into the ark or turning them into resources while exploring overworlds, towns and dungeons. Layered on top of this fast-paced, still strategic JRPG gameplay is the dramatic storyline which is naturally triggered by phone messages the player can listen to as their capturing progresses. Its glue is the number of interesting and immersive systems as well as the solid world-building which keeps the player engaged. And at its heart is the love shared between Ken and Linda, which is constantly tested but stays true and real despite everything thrown at it. (It's also perfectly described in the lyrical version of Linda's Theme song unlocked later in the game.)

The game's music itself is excellent—what there is of it. Although great, some of the loops are quite short and there are not very many tracks in total. The most interesting use of the music is how the overworld theme changes depending on the season you're in. It's always the same core theme, but sounds more peaceful in spring, and downright sinister in winter. It's a great use of the medium.

As a final note it should be noted that the version I'm reviewing, Linda Cube Kanzenban, is actually the third version of the game released. The original was the PC Engine CD title, which was remade for the PlayStation soon after the initial release as Linda Cube Again. The Saturn version, Kanzenban, is a slightly touched up version of Again with a few extra unlockables, and is widely considered the definitive version of the game. In truth, all the games are amazing, and it's a crying shame none of them made it to the West on release.

Hopefully, by the time you're reading this, some version of the game has an official or unofficial Western translation and there are no barriers keeping anyone from having the opportunity to play Linda Cube. I do have some concerns about how well a translated release will keep the spirit of the original dialogue intact, but I have high hopes regardless. A cult classic in Japan since its initial release, I firmly believe the same will happen upon its Western release. Hopefully one day soon everyone will have the opportunity to experience its unique world-building, gameplay systems, and dramatic storyline. There's really nothing else like Linda Cube.

the greatest Doom wad of all-time - more than a Doom wad, really. one of the great games of the 2010's in general. a confoundingly multi-faceted piece of art, with some questionable bits that only enhance the mystery. a poetic statement about the nature of memory and death presented in the context of a Doom fan wad. more fun than you think it's going to be from what i just said in the previous sentence. weirdly coherent for a set with so many different authors. has more creativity in a lone fingernail than many commercial games have in their entire body. i know games don't have bodies, i'm just speaking metaphorically here.

i wrote TWO articles about this wad, so you know i have a healthy relationship with it. see my article in Vice from several years ago about it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/paq5bz/alt-doom-mod-stalker
and my older post on Unwinnable about it: https://unwinnable.com/2013/10/24/lost-worlds-a-l-t/