Why is it that the itty bitty sprite-based Fallouts let me blow up a locked door or pry it open with a crowbar, but this shiny, hundred million dollar PS4 game doesn’t?

I’m implying that Fallout 4’s more primitive than a game almost two decades its senior, but that isn’t being completely fair. In some ways, it’s the most complex one yet. Armour & weapon customisation is the most fleshed out it’s ever been, letting you not only personalise each of your character’s individual limbs or every component of a gun, but also the stat bonuses they offer. Power armour now requires some resource management just to wear it, while also being so heavy that you have to slowly walk underwater rather than swim, causing you to think more carefully about traversal than in prior entries. Settlement building lets you create custom-built homes nearly anywhere you want and set up trade routes between them via procedurally generated NPCs, not only helping the world feel more alive but also allowing you to contribute to its liveliness. So on and so forth.

This is all great; one might even say that it just works. But nearly all of the fresh ideas Fallout 4 introduces either come at the expense of something else or don’t fully capitalise on their potential. The deeper armour customisation would be more impactful if the RPG elements weren’t almost totally gutted, while weapon customisation is enormously lopsided in favour of guns. Power armour excludes you from using fist weapons, which is somewhat accommodated for by having arm pieces that boost your unarmed damage, but still feels oddly limiting and detracts from the power fantasy that it’s trying to sell. Creating settlements adds some much needed dynamism to the game world, but it’s at odds with the story’s urgency and environments are barely interactive otherwise, with invisible walls still regularly cordoning off the slightest of inclines – this one feels especially egregious considering Bethesda themselves already came up with the solution to this in 1996, i.e. Daggerfall’s climbing system.

Thanks to all of this, it’s tempting to think of Fallout 4 as a game which takes a step back for every step forward. A more unambiguous step back, though, is its use of a voiced protagonist. I’d carefully modelled my character after Waingro from Michael Mann’s Heat in the hopes of getting it on (read: being a murderous nonce), but my motivation to carry this out was killed pretty much off the bat. The Sole Survivor isn’t some malleable blank slate no-name from a nondescript Vault, or tribe, or post office – he or she’s very much their own set-in-stone character, a pre-war ex-military family man or woman with a tone of voice so affable it puts your local Tesco staff to shame and a love for their son so integral to their identity that it’s the catalyst of the story. There’s not much room for imagination. You have to set up a bunch of mental barriers before you can really treat Fallout 4 as an RPG, whether it be handwaving the fact that much of what you plan to do throughout the game is going to be grossly out of character or trying to ignore the inherent disconnect between you and the Sole Survivor if you happen to not particularly care about Shaun.

To this end, Fallout 4’s dialogue system’s gotten a lot of flack, but I don’t really mind it; if nothing else, it offers more variety on average than Skyrim’s did. Part of where it really falters, I think, is the contextualisation of skipping through dialogue. Interrupting people with bored “uh huh”s as they suggest where you might find your kidnapped son is kind of hilarious, but as far as immersion goes, it’s something the game would’ve been better without. The dynamic camera angles during conversations also could’ve used some work – my introduction to the mayor of Diamond City was an extreme close-up of a blurry turquoise girder, and the camera haphazardly cuts between first & third person often enough that it sometimes feels like watching Don’t Look Up with fewer random shots of Jennifer Lawrence’s boots. What doesn’t help things is that conversations themselves just generally aren’t up to scratch with the pedigree of this series; it’d be easy to look past all of this if Fallout 4 had any Lieutenants, or Masters, or Frank Horrigans, or Joshua Grahams, but it doesn’t really. At its peak, the dialogue and voice acting only ever feel vaguely acceptable, which is a bit of a shame considering it claims descent from the game that popularised the concept of talking the final boss to death.

I generally prefer to avoid being a negative Nancy unless I can use it as an opportunity to draw attention to things I love, which is why I keep bringing up Fallout 4's predecessors. I can't help but feel that Fallout used to be more than this. Fallout 1 was so laser focused on delivering an open ended role-playing experience that it’s (deservedly) credited with revitalising the genre; there are a lot of things Fallout 4 does well enough, but I don’t know if you can really say where its focus lies. It’s competent as a looter shooter to turn your brain off to, but it’d be a better one if it wasn’t also trying to be an RPG, and it’d be a better RPG if it had gone with just about any premise or protag other than the ones it has. Despite having so much more money behind it, it feels so cobbled together in comparison.

Looting plastic forks from decrepit buildings while fending off mutants and ghouls is fun, but if that’s the kind of experience you’re after, I’d recommend just walking around Belfast at night instead.

My experience with the demo couldn't even get past the menu screen.

Babylon's Fall won't play without a Square Enix account. My old account I haven't used in years doesn't seem to be available anymore and setting up a new account it claims my email address is 'invalid'. I guess my paid for account isn't good enough?

I'm just trying to try a demo Square. Not open a bank account.

Parasite Eve is a survival horror cinematic RPG based from a book by Hideaki Sena of the same name. Genre lines have been getting blurrier as the game industry has grown, and Parasite Eve certainly is an early culprit as it is easier to associate it with Capcom's popular franchise Resident Evil then with the Final Fantasy styled titles that Squaresoft were more known for at the time.

The story is a simple premise, yet unique. The protagonist Aya Brea is a rookie cop for the NYPD who unwittingly gets involved in a battle of evolution between humanity and a separate organism in everybody's cells known as mitochondria. Humans have been living in symbiosis with them for all this time, but Mitochondrion Eve has declared war, breaking this necessary truce.

No war would be concluded without epic battles to be waged, while perhaps there is nothing quite of that scale, the fights in Parasite Eve are at least engaging and tactical if lacking somewhat in the drama department. All the battles during the game are in real time and always in the same location on the map you are running through, unfortunately predictable while exploring. During battle Aya becomes confined to the location on the screen to duke it out, and sometimes these areas are very small leading to some frustration in dodging enemy attacks as there is literally no where to run.

To attack Aya uses guns of which she will get a large variety of as the game moves on, starting with a handgun but soon gaining access to machine guns, rifles and even grenade launchers, all of which can be customized at the NYPD's gun shop or later in the field using tools to swap stats from weapon to weapon or even her body armor. Before she can fire a bullet however, Aya has to wait for her ATB (active time bar) to fill up; when this is full she can perform an action.

Sci-fi horror is however nearly always too predictable and Parasite Eve falls right in line with that by giving Aya powers of the surreal sort. Like in the battle for real life, evolution of a species does not always go one way; those best suited to their environment merely survive the harsh challenge of the world. Eve is not the only Mitochondria to have evolved; Aya's have also upgraded themselves with the passing of time helping to give her powers by a burst of generated energy. These surreal abilities range from healing to attack and stat boost, acting essentially as magic spells that once again depend on the inevitable arrival of a full atb bar. Overall it is a fun system.

The lack of a map on certain later points in the game left nothing but puzzlement and frustration at needlessly running around looking for the objective area, the museum being the unfortunate level design I am referring to. The final boss sequence has a point of no return and is surprisingly hard in comparison with the rest of the game which almost resulted in an impassable wall through my experience. Yet the most devastating blow to the game however spawns right at the end of the title with an unnecessary and highly cheap chase scene in which Aya gets the chance to meet her maker if the creature so much as brushes against her, forcing the player to fight all of the last boss forms again, and possibly again with so much as a wrong turn.

Parasite Eve does one thing especially well and that is ooze style. The graphics, music and designs are excellent but the fmv's are what really show the theme of the cinematic RPG. Also, shout out to The amazing OST in this game. It uses a mixture of synth and classical instruments to create a creepy horror vibe but also fast paced and exciting when needed.

Overall the bar Square set for themselves was high and this is obvious in production values and an excellent material source, and while succeeding on many levels in creating a unique and thought provoking experience some minor game and level design flaws unfortunately get in the way of making this a run away experience, however what they did make was a very good game that any RPG or horror enthusiast should at least try.

+ Fantastic atmosphere.
+ Great story idea.
+ Fantastic OST.
+ Combat is fun.

- Final section can be frustrating.

This game has been in my steam library for god knows how long, and i have no idea how it got there, but i decided to give it a try, and man am I glad it was there.

Just a real solid game all around. Is it perfect? God no, but it is most certainly worth a play through.

Gameplay
The game play is pretty decent and standard for a third person cover shooter, and melee attacks feel super meaty and satisfying to finish off enemies with.

Story:
A bit of an exposition dump during the first hour or so of the game, though the story is far more naturally integrated later down the line. The story is nothing super special, though near the end especially is real engaging. The addition of multiple endings is kinda stupid though.

The characters however are phenomenal. Big Bo is easily my favorite. I liked how much characterization the main character had. One gripe with characters though is that one of them (Rachael) just kinda doesn't do anything? Other than that, you can really see the growth in character relations as the story progresses, and their personalities bounce off of each other real well.

Other:
Controls are not great on PC. Before i started playing, i saw something that said a controller would be far better, however if you plug in a controller, non of the button prompts change to reflect that, so figuring out what did what took up a solid chunk of my first hour of play time. I did try switching to mouse and keyboard, though something about it just feels awkward.

There's also 2 gimmicks that the game has, that being the voice commands, and trust meter. The voice commands are awful, turn them off the second you get the game. It's bad at recognizing what you say, and its also not clear what you can say. The recognition is also constantly on, so say if you're playing the game while in a discord call, it will pick up whatever you say and possibly make your team mates do something.

The second gimmick is the trust meter which i really just don't see the point in. It determines which ending you get, but only the true ending feels complete? I really liked the ending i got (it wasn't the true ending), but one of the main characters just wasn't in the story because i didn't have his trust level high enough.

Buy the game. It's nothing incredibly mind blowing, but it's just a great time all around, and feels like something special. At points it's annoying, but the story and characters will keep you going (though i wouldn't recommend playing it all in one sitting).

FNaF 1 is probably my favorite horror game of all time, with 2 following suit.

3 and 4 are a tad lacking, but I very much so enjoy how Sister Location experiments, even if it does fall flat in some parts.

This collection, however is really lacking. No special menus, no nothing, it just plops each game individually onto the console's dashboard. I feel they really could've added say, a collection of all the teasers, development screenshots, etc.

The exclusions of Pizzeria Sim and Ultimate custom night is a real bummer as well. Yeah i know they haven't released on consoles yet, but could they really not have waited to get all 7?

Not normally a fan of Rogue-likes (lites?) but this has been in my backlog a while and finally playing it I enjoyed it

The game focuses on the Bergson family traveling through dungeons to defeat the corruption slowly plaguing the land. The game starts with 2 characters and slowly expands to 7 as other family members unlock over the course of the game. Each family member has different abilities and weapons (2 ranged, 5 melee) with some abilities that effect all the other characters so the more you play them, the stronger everyone gets encouraging you to try the other characters.

Every time you die in Children of Morta or complete a dungeon steady stream of story content about the characters and situation unlock. Before starting the game I read this article that discusses this point rather well.

Combat is a little mixed. The base combat is solid but I found the ranged characters, especially early on just outclass the melee characters who get swarmed and damaged far too easily. The enemies also somewhat lack variety, especially at the end still seeing the same corrupted enemies was a bit meh. I did really enjoy the variety of grace and relic items you find in dungeons. They are a two edge sword though meaning you can become super powerful or just meh depending on the RNG.

Presentation wise Children of Morta's visuals are really nice. It's 2D pixel art and very detailed with a huge amount of animations. Each time you finish a dungeon and return to the house the character have all moved around doing different things from playing violins, eating, training etc. and the art style is wonderful. I do have one complaint though that the text is tiny. I sit only a few feet from my 42" tv and had to lean forward to read some of it which is ridiculous.

Overall I had a really good time with this game and wasn't sure what to expect. I played it maybe about 25 hours or so for the platinum unlocking everything on multiple runs and certainly don't regret my time with it.

+ Like the character variety.
+ Steady stream of story tidbits and lore.
+ Gorgeous visuals.

- Enemy variety and combat balance could be better.
- Why is the game text so insanely small?

So when Shiba says “got some red-hot news for ya” it’s cool, but when I write that in my emails at work, it’s unprofessional?

This betrayal of expectations notwithstanding, I loved NEO: The World Ends With You to the point where much of it made me wonder why more games don’t handle things the way it does. It was always a safe bet that it’d have good music, but it deserves just as much credit for how its music is used. My favourite example is how boss themes become standard overworld themes as you progress, which complements the story’s escalation of stakes as well as Rindo’s character development – encounters that were previously difficult for him become routine as his confidence grows. Soundsurfing is another really cool idea, giving you both a movement boost and a head start in your next fight if you can time button presses to the beat of whichever song is playing. Then there’s the Groove system which makes battles feel straight-up rhythmic, rewarding you for stringing your party’s attacks together with the right timing not unlike a band playing together in harmony. The soundtrack would still be amazing even if not for all this stuff, but it’s how it feeds into both the story progression and the gameplay itself that really takes it to another level.

Controlling multiple characters at once has been a trend in action games for some time now, but NEO TWEWY is probably my favourite take on this style of combat so far. The way the Groove mechanic encourages you to sync up your characters’ attacks one after the other rhythmically is enthralling and the little freeze frame that happens when you do it successfully never gets old. Positioning’s refreshingly important since your only movement option’s a dodge, but this isn’t to say that your options are limited overall; there’s great variety between all the pins you can equip. You can build your party to focus on melee, projectiles, healing, parries, specific hit reactions (e.g. splatting enemies against walls), applying status effects or a mix of all of these, and even those which get outclassed damage-wise tend to retain their niche of having less cooldown, so there’s no shortage of team compositions to try out. All the characters have unique dialogue with each other mid-combat too, which is a lovely touch and really drives home the idea that they’re all equally important to the team. It’s a really interesting spin on party-based RPG combat.

I don’t want to give away too much with regard to NEO TWEWY’s plot, but I will say it’s engaging enough that story segments felt more like a reward than exposition dumps. This game’s got one of the most charismatic, expressive casts of characters out there and they feel believable in ways that a lot of games don’t – they talk over each other, leave a lot of their feelings unsaid and make mistakes often enough that turning back time to undo them is a plot device. It probably relies on the latter a bit too often, and its implementation often feels like just sifting through a menu rather than an actually using an otherworldly superpower, but neither of those things were enough to stop me from wanting to see what happened next regardless.

My only other gripe is that I would’ve liked a couple of mechanics to have been introduced a little bit earlier into the game – you’ll probably become well accustomed to the combat long before orange beat drops arrive to spice it up, for example – but that’s pretty minor. All in all, NEO TWEWY’s easily become one of my favourite ARPGs. Everything about it, from the visuals to the combat to the music to even the difficulty design, had me wishing there were more games like it. It's an absolute, unbridled joy.

And with that, I bid you adieu.

As some reviews have already mentioned, Contra Hard Corps has a lot in common with Gunstar Heroes (another Genesis classic): a relatively brief game with fantastically imaginative set-pieces and boss fights, which somehow manages to convey what you need to be doing despite ten different flavors of chaos happening onscreen at once. But while Gunstar Heroes' vast array of different weapons and forgiving difficulty seem to invite you to experiment and have fun, Contra Hard Corps is brutal and unforgiving, especially in the US version with its one-hit deaths and no continues.

Your moveset (you can switch weapons, shoot, jump, slide, and switch between 'move while firing' and 'stand still while firing' modes) seems bare-bones at first, but turns out to be perfectly suited to the challenges you will face. The controls are tight and responsive and are a big reason why the brutal difficulty still feels fair; being able to switch between movement modes at will ended up being an essential skill, as it gave me a lot of control over my movement and positioning in boss fights. The game throws variety of set-pieces at you - a mini-boss rush while balancing on the wings of a plane, a sequence where you gallop along on a bipedal robot, and even one where the camera's perspective shifts 90 degrees and focuses on you from the front as you dodge attacks from a robot chasing you from behind! It's testament to the amazing game feel that these sequences feel just as tight and easy to control as the side scrolling sections, and never feel gimmicky.

The super satisfying gameplay, combined with multiple endings and an excellent soundtrack, make this one of the biggest highlights in the Genesis library. I recommend this to anyone and everyone - if the high difficulty is a turn-off, try the Japanese version (which gives you a life bar and continues)!

Got this game awhile ago and decided to play it on my laptop during breaks or travel. Was very surprised with the level of complexity and depth that this game has in it. Papers, Please is a bit of a border simulator, but also a deeply political game that is all about choice.

Choice is everything in Papers, Please. Sure, you're given instructions every day and given general rules to follow. But you can choose to align yourself with those who wish to overthrow the oppressive government, simply look out for yourself, make alliances with other employees of the border control, and so much more. All of these choices affect the ending given, of which theres 20. I have gotten a couple of endings thus far, and look forward to seeing more.

The gameplay looks a bit boring when watching it. Yet, when you play, you can't help but become addicted to the gameplay loop. This is because the game is always introducing new things to watch out for. Just as you're getting bored or too good at inspecting the people and papers you're given, BOOM, a new mechanic or type of paper that completely changes the way you look at things. It keeps things interesting enough to carry you through the entire story.

That being said, the game definitely plays best in short bursts. I wouldn't recommend playing this game in a marathon session, as you will most likely get bored of it very quickly.

Despite this though, Papers, Please is a very unique and well made game. The short bursts I played of this game have all been very fun and compelling. The writing is simple but very effective. Its look is minimalistic and very unique, as is its concept. While it can definitely drag towards the latter half, I can't help but enjoy most everything about this game. If you haven't given this game a shot, I highly recommend it. It's the perfect game for those looking for something to play on work breaks or if they have limited gaming time.