How in the HELL did this release in the state it did when we have perfectly functional ports already available on PC? You are essentially paying $30 for a "fresher" online community and Xbox DLC you could have modded in, yourself.

Netcode is terrible, hits do not register as they should. PTP servers do not work. Aspyr's servers crash all the time. No online support for split-screen modes and lacking crossplay when these games and community really needed it. Utter trash and I would have this refunded in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact this was a birthday gift from a friend and he has to authorize the refund.

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear seriously outdated suits.

It's been a long road getting to this point for both myself and Yakuza's main star Kiryu Kazama. Like many people I got into this series with Yakuza 0 through word of mouth in 2017 and wondered what I had missed all that time. There simply isn't another game series like it. It's a Frankenstein's monster whose separate parts on paper don't feel like they should work but amalgamated together they create something magical. They are serious crime dramas, only they are off beat comedies. They are beat 'em ups yet also adventure games, RPGs and dating simulators. It's all of these things and yet none of them. Not all it's ideas work, when they throw so much at the wall some things don't always stick but without fail for me they are always emotional, hilarious and entertaining.

The series' big selling point to me though is actually it's world design. This series along with Deus Ex made me realise I don't dislike open worlds, I dislike vast areas for the sake of being vast with empty meaningless content, sometimes less is more. Yakuza games are open worlds done right, not gigantic bloated icon maps usually used for those descriptions but smaller denser hubs. Locations have meaning, they have personality, the cities feel like characters in the game as much as the cast. If the game tells me to go to a shop or street I normally know where it is without having to bring up a map. They are full of life, small compact and focused.

Yakuza 6's story follows this same thought, whether it was because this was the first game on the Dragon Engine at the time meaning they cut back I don't know but I appreciated the sharper focus on Kiryu rather than the overly large games before that were getting a bit too big for themselves. Kiryu was really the heart of this game, it's his personal story about his own values and dedication to family. Hard to discuss without spoilers but whilst the overall story wasn't quite my cup of tea generally resulting in some pacing issues it still has some fantastic characters, moments and voice acting. This is partially because Yakuza's cinematography for it's cutscenes are a step above most games to me. The camera angles, facial details and expressions have always been extremely impressive but I truly noticed it here.

Like every Yakuza game the side content is often as important as the linear main story. Yakuza 6 scales back on this too but there is still a wealth of content here I spent a lot of my 70 hours playing through on. Spear fishing in an underwater on rails shooter, building up a clan for street fights in a mini strategy game, helping a small baseball team beat their countryside rivals (I'm not into baseball but this is making me consider some other games for it) as well as the usual suspects like cabaret clubs, video chat dating, mahjong and arcade games. It even has the full arcade game of Virtua Fighter 5 as optional content which is pretty crazy as far as a throw away mini game is concerned.

Honestly except some story beats I just don't have anything negative to say about this game. The combat is a little simpler than some other titles though that doesn't concern me much as the moment to moment narrative beats and atmosphere are the core to the series to me. I started it because I needed to play it to play Gaiden as I skipped from 5 to 7 initially but then had a feeling of regret I hadn't played it sooner as the Yakuza magic took hold of me. I love the world, the characters, the side content, exploring and taking in the sights of the locations. Yakuza as I discussed is a lot of things but to someone who grew up as a Sega fan it really shows to me that they still have that spark that made me a fan of theirs in the first place and may it long continue.

+ Hiroshima is a great new location.
+ Cinematography and voice acting are superb.
+ Baseball, spear fishing and clan fighting are pretty fun side content.
+ It's Yakuza.

- Storyline is a little up and down.

Two men approach a ledge. They are underground in an incredibly hostile environment that neither could foresee arriving in when they woke up that morning. They are tired, mentally frayed and have an uneasy trust in each other based entirely on circumstances. The first man reaches the ledge, after an awkwardly long second staring he finally drops down the 3ft drop to continue along the dimly lit path. The second man approaches the ledge but rather than drop down he freezes, staring at it whilst his comrade looks at him perplexed. The man walks away from the ledge before coming back to it freezing again. He refused to jump down to continue their trek. Was it fear preventing him? Had the ordeal and horrors he'd witnessed finally pushed his mind to far?

No, it's just that playing House of Ashes in online co-op was a miserable buggy experience.

You see I played this with a friend, we play together nearly every evening and are always looking for a new Playstation co-op experience. We had enjoyed Man of Medan despite some issues and heard this game was supposedly all around the better of the two. We ran into constant technical problems though. Characters getting stuck, locking up for no reason. The game taking forever to actually perform an action, even picking up an item to look at was a complete chore of waiting 10 seconds to see if they would actually move. We had to quit out and restart half a dozen times to get past various sections and by the end we were frustrated by it all. The thing is it wasn't just the technical problems but a variety of issues built up leaving a bitter taste in our mouths. We beat the game, kind of hated it and moved onto Wild Hearts. The thing is, I decided to go back to it to see if the game was better playing it on my own and my second experience has left me softer towards it overall though certain flaws continue regardless of player occupancy.

For those unaware The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of horror games by developer Supermassive Games that are more like quick time event interactive movies. Your inputs decide the outcome and the wrong move at the wrong time can see characters permanently die and adjust the story outcome slightly. Our first issue with this game is the button prompts for these events. They are based on the PS5 controller with white buttons with the Cross, Triangle, Square and Circle symbols overlayed in grey. They aren't clear without colour to tell them apart and when you only have a second to work it out...well the design is awful. I went into the accessibility options to change them all to cross because it was implemented so badly when playing on my own. I will at least give them credit for those features.

A lot of the rest of the game has it's ups and downs as well. I really liked the setting going with a Mesopotamian historical influence which isn't something seen in games all too much. The modern plot setting there of the 2003 invasion of Iraq looking for chemical weapons however certainly is...a choice. It did allow a good relationship build up between two characters of Jason a lieutenant in the US marines and Salim a sergeant in the Iraqi army. Their characters and relationship are the two best parts of the whole game with some well written dialog and voice acting that bring them to life as being both professional and empathetic. If only the rest of the writing was as good or even competent because most of the other characters are just unrelatable buffoons. I didn't care for the forced interpersonal drama between 3 of them and was quite happy for them to die. They are needlessly confrontational, rude and in a lot of cases completely inconsistent. In one scene as an example:

Character 1: "What's there to think about? We go and save him"
Character 2: thinks about it for a second
Character 1: "He isn't one of us lets leave him"

It's like they are different people from line to line at times completely breaking immersion when they 180, never mind in the same conversation. Frankly except Jason and Salim they are all extremely unlikeable. I understand the developers want to build a varied cast that will leave difficult decisions for the player with conflict but they went overboard leaving a negative experience in a lot of scenes because I just didn't care about what happened to any of them.

The story also kind of lacks suspense and scares which I was surprised by. It has an interesting setting and atmosphere but it never really uses them to build up any tension or fear of the unknown. Except for a few scenes early on the game is more just a military shooter than a horror title. The magic is gone when the monster is revealed and the curtain gets drawn back. In this case it just happens all too early.

I will say my second playthrough was far more enjoyable overall regardless of the issues above. The only bugs playing solo was a trophy not unlocking (I had to disconnect from the internet and restart my PS5 replaying the scene to unlock it as a work around found by the community). I really like the visuals and general ideas presented here, they just needed more polish and to iron out the cast to a better degree. Still I am glad I went back to it as it has convinced me to play the second game in the series Little Hope which I had initially written off after my first playthrough of House of ashes, I just won't play it online...

+ Jason and Salim are great characters with an excellent comradery.
+ Visuals are gorgeous.
+ Mesopotamian setting is a nice choice.

- The other characters could all rot for all I care.
- Playstation quick time buttons are unclear.
- Online is a constant buggy mess and a semi bugged trophy.
- Not scary, no tension or build up.
- War setting is...a choice.

This is the second 32X game I've played as the system had such a limited library in it's short life span. I may decide to try some of the many ports on it to see the difference at some point but otherwise there isn't really much else to try. It's a shame really because though pretty rough in a lot of areas Metal Head does show glimmers of promise for what the 32X could do.

Released in February 1995 this game is at the time of writing 29 years old. I played this on original hardware with a third party 6 button controller. The controller is kind of needed for the variety of options this has to my surprise in controlling your mech (You can play it on a 3 button as well). The mech you pilot is referred to as a 'Metal Head' though the role you play is part of the World Federation Police taking down terrorists. There is more of a plot but it's utterly drab in how it comes across. There is an intro sequence with the background story and in between missions you have a digitised head of your commander talking to you about your objectives to push the plot along. The audio quality for the dialog is just awful, like they have the microphone in their mouth when speaking but the worst aspect of this is the digitised head animations. Look at this (0.41 seconds in). It's like trying to make a real life Terrance & Phillip from South Park. I'll be honest I found it hilarious but for a game that mostly takes it's terrorist, war, military police themes so seriously it's kind of laughable.

More positively though the visuals are actually pretty solid. Very early 3D and feels almost like it could be a launch PS1 game. You move your Metal Head through city environments and sometimes industrial warehouse / underground bases. You fight a variety of drones, tanks and mechs on these 3D battlefields. The buildings are all 3D models with a flat image in the horizon to hide the draw distance but with the slightly muddy rough visual style it all blends together surprisingly well. Much like the digitised talking heads though when the mechs are destroyed falling into their base polygons onto the floor shatters the illusion and the frame rate does tend to chug along a bit at times. These small caveats asides though I was pretty impressed overall with it's visuals.

Gameplay wise as mentioned above it's recommended for the 6 button controller. It uses a couple of buttons to look 90 degrees left or right, change weapons, strafe, fire, run as well as change perspective. It's got a pretty robust set of options for the time and a variety of views including two first person variations and two third person variations. Actually firing weapons at anything though just feels awful. Weapons lack punch regardless of which one you use from chain guns to rocket launchers. They may as well be spud guns. Aiming is equally poor due to the juddering frame rate and sometimes it's uncertain if you are even hitting the enemies in question lacking impact or having pitiful explosions. For each mission you beat you earn points that you can use in between to either upgrade or buy new weapons however this resets each time and isn't permanent. You can tell this is a grift as the merchant calls you a 'chump' each time. He can see us coming a mile away apparently.

So did I have fun playing this? In small bursts kinda? Would I recommend this? No, unless you want to experience a retro piece of gaming history on a failed console experiment. The 32X had a ton of potential that people are still showing to this day and Metal Head does show this but realistically, it's not a very good game.

Also standard for me, I need to comment that I love the cover art. I wish the game looked like that actually playing it.

+ Visuals show the 32X's potential.
+ Robust control and views.
+ Digitised heads are hilarious...

- ...but also the spoken audio and digitised heads are awful.
- Story is boring.
- Missions are stale.
- Weapons lack impact or punch.

As a gaming new years resolution I set myself three goals this year; to try and beat over 100 games, buy less than I beat and to try and play at least one game from every system I have access to. So, here is the Super Nintendo Entertainment System entry for the year, Final Fight 2!

I chose this as I beat the original Final Fight on both arcade and Sega CD last year for the first time. To be honest I didn't actually like it that much which was kind of a surprise as both a beat 'em up and Capcom fan. It was a pretty early game in the genre though coming out in 1989 and helped pioneer a lot of later games so I could forgive it a bit for it's rough edges. Final Fight 2 a little less so though overall I do actually like it more.

So firstly the game feels a lot less swarm heavy, perhaps because it's a SNES exclusive (I still haven't played the Final Fight SNES port). Enemies come in smaller groups and don't feel quite as insanely aggressive though they will still try and circle around you which I like. There are three playable characters. Hagar returning from Final Fight, he's a wrestler (you can see him drop kicking a goon flexing his huge muscles on the cover art here), his South American friend Carlos who fights with a sword, (and by that I mean he has it on his back but uses it for 1 move), and Maki, who dresses a bit like a Kunoichi, a student of ninjitsu. They are after Maki's sister and father who have been kidnapped by the sudden re-emergence of the Mad Gear Gang from the first game who have suddenly gained a worldwide presence. This is evidently an excuse for visiting more locations than anything truly plot related.

The characters all play pretty much the same regardless of who you choose. A basic attack combo, a jump and a special move used for crowd control. They can grab enemies in holds when close enough and do throws is about it, it's pretty basic for a beat 'em up. My only real input on the characters is I appreciate them adding a female playable character instead of the three men from the original. My issues really stem that this game feels pretty run of the mill generally. Similar to Final Fight 1 you have seen the few enemy types by the start of the second stage and just beat the same 4 enemies over and over from there onwards with no surprises. Andore is the only memorable enemy and that's mostly because he was in the original Final Fight, is clearly andre the Giant, has a large health bar, and is everywhere. Nothing new appears over the course of the game to make it feel fresh from level to level. The level design itself feels pretty similar in that you go to multiple world locations but the set pieces are all pretty uninteresting and you fight the same 4 guys in each part of the world.

Compounding that is the bosses which all feel like a non event. They feel almost like regular enemies just with slightly higher health bars. a lot of them have really dodgy grab animations and range where you teleport into their hands a few feet away and the worst of these is Rolent, a boss from Final Fight brought back with the same grenades and running around. He can outmanoeuvre and outreach your limited move set and is just awful to fight. He's the only boss I really remember, mostly because he is frustrating. Weirdly the music doesn't change during a boss fight either to the point it's just tracks like this which is ok for a stage but not a boss. The first boss I fought I didn't even realise was the end level boss due to this uneventful feel.

Speaking of music, it's fine but I don't think a single track stood out from the whole game and I guess that sums up Final Fight 2. Nothing about it really excels and when it's been 4 years since the first game and it feels exactly the same is a bit disappointing. All that said though I had fun playing through it and don't want to sound too negative as I don't think it's a bad game, it plays well, sounds decent and looks nice, it's just forgettable.

Also, I always thought Maki was an SNK character when playing Capcom vs SNK 2 back in the day. Gaming knowledge increase. (+1exp!)

+ Maki as a playable female character.
+ It's fun enough and well made.

- Feels uninspired. Seen all enemies by the start of level 2.
- Bosses feel like a non event with huge hit pools.
- Some questionable grab detection.

Retro gaming is an interesting topic for a lot of reasons. Original hardware? Ports? Remasters? CRT? There are so many ways for people to play them and everyone has a different preference. In this instance I played this with a friend using the PS3 Sega Megadrive Collection as one of the extra games. What really matters to me though isn't how you choose to play, but how the game holds up. Considering this game came out in 1987 (and is nearly as old as I am) I was actually impressed by a lot of it but after discussing with the friend I played this with after beating it we decided your enjoyment of Phantasy Star is probably going to boil down to an entirely binary decision.

With, or without a walkthrough?

You see this game is very much a product of it's time, and I mean no insult by that. It plays akin to an adventure game as much as an RPG meaning you have to find a lot of strange items in dungeons from very cryptic clues from villagers you talk to. Going through the wrong dungeons in the wrong order without the right items or knowing how and when to use them can mean you hit frustrating dead ends. Magic spells and items don't have descriptions and the localisation feels almost machine translated it's so wooden and clunky. Wrong pronouns and spelling errors abound!

Unless you want the original experience of mapping out dungeons on graph paper and trying to work it out on your own, I'd advise using a guide personally to get the most enjoyment out of it. Playing with a friend was like rally car driving with one person in control whilst the other gave directions. The dungeons themselves were impressive in some ways regardless, despite their repetition. Phantasy Star has this cool effect where the traditional top down view of the world map changes to a first person dungeon crawler. The view change for a Master System we found really impressive with the dungeons wireframe programming and perspective being something feeling more like a Megadrive game, (I also love the catchy dungeon theme).

The game does some other really neat things too, the character and enemy designs are really neat. Having a female protagonist is still rare in JRPGs now never mind in 1987. though the story is incredibly threadbare of Alis avenging her murdered brother by going to kill the evil king, she doesn't come across as some weak damsel in the few animated cutscenes either, she just gets the job done. Other party members follow you on screen as you move around and I loved Myau the space cat's animation as he runs behind you. A lot of the enemy designs and sprites are really unique too with Phantasy Star's heavy Star Wars influence at the forefront with robots, sandworms and Jawa looking enemies. Some of these have surprisingly fancy and varied attack animations that kind of show what the Master System was really capable of for an 8 bit system.

Honestly I was surprised just how much I really liked this. Yes engaging with it as you would have in 1987 on it's own terms in 2024 is a somewhat painful experience, but playing it with a guide to experience this sci-fi and fantasy mix is kind of a delight. The music is surprisingly great, the art design is good and overall it still holds up well still. All that said I wouldn't play it again, at least this version. I do want to try the Sega Ages 2500 remake at some point, just to see an updated space cat if nothing else.

+ Great art design and enemy sprites.
+ The first person dungeon crawling is a neat effect.
+ Surprisingly catchy music (if limited on tracks)

- Dungeons do all look identical.
- Extremely difficult to know where to go or what to do without following a guide, a product of it's time.

This is my second attempt to play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I originally bought it when it launched in 2010 having been hyped by the launch trailer with Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle narrating. Its been 14 years since then and all I remember is not enjoying it much and eventually trading it in but nothing specific about it. A friend of mine bought it so we decided to play through it together as Castlevania fans, what could go wrong?

Everything about this game feels bad to play.

Let's start with the protagonist Gabriel Belmont, he has all the personality and emotional range of a slab of granite. Literally anything that happens gives him no reaction at all like the developers forgot to animate his face. A magic horse teleporting in next to him? No problem. Giant titan smashing out of the lake? Sure. Dead wife appearing in front of him? It's Tuesday. Not a flicker of acknowledgement of surprising events like an animated corpse. His voice actor Robert Carlyle is normally a great performer but it doesn't seem like he was given much direction here. Perhaps it's because voice acting is a very different skill? but it really sounds like he is just reading off a script. Perhaps I'm underselling him here and he is acting to the characters visually displayed emotions, which is absolutely nothing, so in fact an A+ performance.

I could overlook this if the game was fun to play and control Granite Belmont but that's actually the worst part, by a country mile. It's a 3D action game but has a fixed camera with a soft lock following the action. Because the game lacks personality as much as Mr. Granite it's essentially a God of War clone but it fails to understand the level design to make that enjoyable leaving large dead zones of the camera view constantly. The combat just feels terrible, It's slow but not deliberate. Attacks lack weight and impact yet everything is unresponsive at the same time. The controls are somewhat baffling in their design to compound this further. Roll is on L2 with the left analog stick, the right analog stick doesn't seem to be used at all as you can't control the camera. There is no manual lock on to attack enemies, just a soft lock that's easy to lose. It's feels so cumbersome, even after a few hours it still felt like we were learning the controls.

A second friend came by when we were playing and gave it a go and their only impression was "This doesn't feel good does it?"

You can buy more combos for your whip using experience gained through combat but none of them feel easy to pull off or actually useful in any way when you do. The whip completely lacks impact. Enemies will just interrupt you mid attack so most the time hit and run is the most effective strategy. It's Castlevania yet you get access to one sub weapon of a throwing knife and two magic spells of light and shadow. Light heals you, shadow increases your attack. It's...coloured auras in which you collect orbs from enemies with L3 or R3 depending which pool you want to refill. Getting access to this IP and only giving that as options feels so...derivative.

This complete lack of imagination extends to the level and enemy designs equally. Enemies are bland fantasy archetypes of werewolves, trolls, goblins, and spiders. We completed 14 levels in two chapters with several hours of play and barely saw anything else. This is a series known for animated armour, floating medusa heads, dancing ghosts, chimeras etc. How do you take the past games and boil them down to such uninteresting foes? The first main level after the tutorial fight was a swamp you slowly trudge through with some goblins. It's so painfully generic but it's not even done well or designed interestingly to make it fresh. It utterly lacks the panache and style of the series it's based on.

It feels like it's aged terribly going back to it, it has all the worst aspects of the PS3 era. Quick time events for finishing enemies or traversing with a circle going into another circle. Balancing to cross a beam and having to hold R2 if you are about to fall. The game also constantly takes control away from you like it's mansplaining everything feeling incredibly patronising. Constant tutorials, pop ups, camera sweeps. Just let me play the game! I know I can pick up items with R2, I've been playing for over 2 hours! It treats you like your memory is wiped every 15 minutes.

The game tries to be a large epic with high production values with epic music and voice acting yet there are large chunks of levels with no music at all but it's not atmospheric, just empty. What music there is is forgettable like a generic orchestral theme for a summer block buster but no punch or stand out beats. Like trailer music.

After several hours my friend and I just called it quits. Maybe it gets better further on? I am aware of the twist but after learning there were still 34 more levels we just didn't actually want to play anymore. We moved onto Space Marine after this as my friend hadn't played it and the quality difference on the same system was night and day. Full camera movement, easy fluid to use controls, and interestingly a better frame rate and clearer image quality. It really just emphasized all of this game's flaws.

The thing is, I'm sad about this. We wanted to like this, we wanted to beat it and play Lords of Shadow 2 to fill in some gaps in our Castlevania history and see Granite Belmont's story unfold. There isn't an original idea to be had here though and everything just feels so banal with it. Playing this feels like a PS3 game with all the negatives that sentence implies. It takes the worst aspects of gaming in that generation and merges them together but above all it's just forgettable.

Even Patrick Stewart can't save this.

+ I like Granite Slab's outfit.

- Awful camera, controls and combat.
- Bland level, skills and enemy designs.
- Gabriel has the personality of a plank of wood used in a button measuring contest.
- Everything feels so safe and by the numbers like designed by committee.

The name "Monster Attack" reminds me of when I was in my late teens staying up late on a Saturday night so I could record anime on the sci-fi channel using VHS. It wasn't so prevalent at the time. Whilst waiting I would watch whatever bad horror or sci-fi movies were being shown on the run up, it became such an ingrained memory as an adult I would later host bad movie night with friends where we would watch Sharknado, wolf cop, Killer Clowns from Outer space and other dubious films.

I guess it really helped solidify not only my love of B movies, but also due to the PS2 of just mid budget game equivalents as it seemed there were so many of these at the time before everything started being swallowed up in consolidations now days. Back on the PS2 this was such a line of thinking that a simple series) of extremely mid budget cheaper games was launched. A bizarre mix of titles some of which make Dead or Alive Volleyball look tame. A big selection of these got Western releases in the West and a couple even became successful enough to spin off their own series. Some of these are still going to this day such as Onechanbara and Monster Attack, you see Monster Attack is actually the first in the Earth Defence Force series.

The Simple Series 2000 was apparently named this because the games would cost 2000 yen which today is just over £10 and considering this fact, Monster Attack is really quite good. All the staples of the series are still here. There are giant ants, UFOs, walking robots and giant dinosaurs. You can get in tanks and helicopters and there is even a nifty hover bike. Buildings collapse in chunky explosions as your stray rocket accidently slams into it with smoke from the collapse. In some ways despite the progress made in a lot of areas in later games there is actually something extremely pleasant about the simplicity of the game here.

I feel the scale a lot more in Monster Attack. My character is small compared with the surroundings, it's slightly more claustrophobic in some ways. The music and designs have a lot more of a retro inspiration with purple spinning top robots and UFOS with purple bulging discs to the sound of music like it was played on a Theremin. Things collapse and explode with surprising impact through my headphones with beefy explosions and the game doesn't out stay it's welcome. An issue I have despite my love of the later games but at 25 missions it is easily played in a couple of evenings. You only have a generic trooper and as you kill enemies they will occasionally drop weapons and armour boxes to expand your overall health and give you combat options. The growth rate is such that at the moment playing through easy, normal and hard I haven't had to grind at all as it curves out nicely.

Where the game does fail for me though is on two fronts, original design and localisation short cutting. On the original design front it's incredibly easy to bounce off of this game from it's base controller setting, it's pretty evident even here on backloggd because the initial set up is truly abhorrent. This mode doesn't allow you to manually aim vertically or use the right analog stick. It's basically unplayable and it's utterly baffling how this was thought to be a good idea as the standard set up. There is a control option that allows you to move with the left stick and aim with the right like a traditional third person shooter in the settings that makes this infinitely more fun though you can't remap the other buttons which I would have preferred but that's the lesser of two evils here. Equally it has a cinematic cam that makes you watch the UFOs as they burn and descend into epic explosions when you destroy them. It gives a great field of view blurring you out and looks pretty awesome. What isn't so wonderful about this though is that enemies continue their relentless assault upon you with a fixed angle and no reticule. Just terrible idea, you need to turn that off in the settings to then the game plays pretty well.

The second issue is the localisation. It removed all the voice acting from the game. I get it might not have been worth dubbing it financially but it also didn't add subtitles to the point it even removed the tutorial messages at the start of the game for the controls. Such an odd decision and it makes the levels feel so silent without them. I had to watch a playthrough with the voices and subtitles to see what was actually missing. It's kind of night and day.

Those two pretty glaring flaws aside though I can see why this super cheap budget game got a franchise because 21 years later it is still extremely fun to play and the idea of giant insects, robots and monsters attacking cities will probably never get old. Whilst I would still recommend the later games over this, it's still not a bad place to start the series.

+ Basic idea is just fun to blast monsters and robots.
+ Has pretty good pacing and levelling curve compared with later games.
+ Holds up really well...

-...after changing the settings. The starting controls are bafflingly bad.
- Localisation removed all voice acting and even the tutorial boxes. Really impactful on the overall experience.

I decided to go play Haven on Game Pass after how much fun I had with Furi. Unfortunately, it looks like The Game Bakers completely forgot how to make a fun game and did practically everything that was the opposite of their previous work.

The controls are kind of bad. The main characters walk at basically a crawl, but when you accelerate/dash, you actually go so fast that it's super hard to turn and at times control your distance. This leads to a classic case of "I want to travel to this place in my immediate vicinity, but if I dash, then I'll probably overshoot, and if I walk, it'll take an eternity and a half". They do have drifting (and make sure to really shove it in your face in case you try and play the game like old school Superman 64) but even the drifting felt imprecise at times to me, and this did lead to quite a few cases of falling off cliffs or off of strings that I needed to trace to get to higher locations. And speaking of which, did I mention it's super easy to fall out cliffs and strings, and if you do, you have to backtrack all the way back up to the location of the strings to get back up those higher ledges that are only accessible via strings because they decided not to include a simple jump function for smaller ledges?

Now the part that actually ruined Haven for me was the combat. For first half of the game, the combat was inoffensive. Nothing special, but it wasn't so blatantly bad as to aggravate me. Around the end stretch of the game however, the combat's flaws start really exposing themselves. Firstly, you can't manually target enemies; it's all auto-aim. During the early game, this isn't an issue since the enemies will melt quickly enough, but near the end, when you have to deal with multiple enemies that can block certain types of attacks (or are only vulnerable after their attacks, requiring timing), autoaim will invalidate so many of your attacks. Also, near the end of the game, there are quite a few enemies that focus on healing themselves/others or summoning infinite other enemies for you to deal with. Sure would be nice to single those enemies out so I don't have to deal with their effects but nope, auto-aim makes sure I deal with the cronies first.

Combat essentially devolves into a battle of attrition; you have to kill the enemy before it kills you. This happens because:

1. There is no way to prevent damage altogether via dodging and most fights (even many fights where you start with an advantage) will last long enough to where you have to take damage regardless. You can only mitigate damage, and mitigation of damage usually takes away from offense that could be used to finish the fight faster.

2. You can't manually aim as mentioned above, so enemies that infinitely spawn other enemies or heal turn fights into absolute slogs.

Now, this actually wouldn't have been such a big deal if healing were easier. But the best healing items (food and dedicated medicine) can't be used in the field or in battle. Nope, you can only use heal capsules that heal 80 HP in the field and in battle. So as a result, since almost every successful battle will require you to take some form of damage, you will need to heal. A lot. And since the most efficient way of healing is via campsites and going back to the nest, you will be backtracking and/or using up tons of food (for fast travel) to make this happen. A lot. Or you could just try and use the 80 HP capsules, but those have a max held cap of 5 and also require rust that could be used for repairs and offensive capsules, not to mention you can only build those at the Nest, so you will be wasting resources and backtracking anyways. A lot. Oh, and did I mention that every section in the overworld has its own loading zone? You'll often have to go back several zones just to get to a camping site or a fast travel site, so get used to seeing that loading screen. A lot.

Other things I want to nitpick that really annoyed me:

1. You can easily exploit the XP/leveling/relationship system for boosts by eating something, going to sleep, and then eating something as soon as you wake up at the Nest to level up really quickly. So in my case, I was maxed out 2/3rds of the way into the game. Eating food and viewing events gives way, way, more XP than any amount of combat in the same span of time. And once you cap out your level, you obviously don't gain any more XP, so there's even less incentive to engage in combat; the only incentives you get are Rust (which are very easy to obtain in the overworld) and making sure the aggressive enemy isn't present on the overworld. Except...

2. You're often encouraged to use your field burst to knock down enemies in range, and this stops them from aggroing on you and engaging you in combat. The only problem is, this stops them from engaging you in combat altogether; you can't walk up to the knocked up enemy and start the battle with an advantage, like how every other RPG does it. So you either have to move on and deal with the enemy again when traversing that part of the overworld, or you have to wait for the enemy to get up and then approach it from behind to gain an advantage state just so you can wipe it from the map. How did the game developers mess this up?

3. Oh yeah, did I mention you can't run away from battles? So not only is there very little incentive to engage in combat (since it uses up precious resources that require backtracking to replenish, you gain little XP anyways and even that is invalidated once you hit max level, and you only gain Rust for most general fights), you can't even run away from fights if you accidentally get involved. You might be here for a while.

4. Some of the fights include fighting against robots that can bind one of your guys so they can't do anything, and then you have to spend your time with your other guy unbinding your friend and taking more damage. This is especially annoying because the robots can only be permanently disabled when you have a duo overload... which can get suddenly interrupted by asshole AI that choose to bind one of your guys, and then the robot gets up and proceeds to heal. Oh, and during one of the fights, the robots have attacks that can knock one of your guys out of the screen, so you have to waste time waiting for your guy to return to the screen while your combo attack/disable was interrupted. Yeah, it's not a good time.

5. This could have just been a bug with the specific version I played, but there were a ton of instances where after my action was fully loaded from holding down the button, the action would fail to materialize. So not only did I fail the action, I wasted time trying to materialize the action. It speaks volumes that somehow the bug wasn't even the part that annoyed me the most.

A lot of people have written about how the dialogue was extremely stilted and strange, but honestly, I thought most of it was fine. Not incredible, moving dialogue like I've encountered in other games, but for the most part, it held up just fine. I especially resonated with some of the daily life interactions and events I got at the Nest as part of the experience and bonding gain. Don't get me wrong, I can see why people could be turned off by the dialogue since a ton of the dialogue focuses on their love for one another and tends to touch upon very little else found in relationships, but the dialogue was definitely not the weakest part of the game. The narrative was just okay though, I didn't experience much of an emotional reaction from the ending or from most of the characters' struggles.

At least the game is aesthetically pleasing and has a pleasant soundtrack from Danger. The main characters are fine too, I didn't really mind them much. Unfortunately, everything else is so much worse than Furi, especially the combat. I really hope The Game Bakers take the feedback from Haven seriously, because I could definitely see the potential from the game's ideas. But the execution was extremely sloppy and in fact very anti-fun, and at times I felt that there was a significant lack of focus from what they were trying to create. All in all, one of the most disappointing experiences I've had after one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences I've had.