Vaudevillain
2015
When Fallout 3 was originally released in 2008, it did not let you continue playing after you finished the game. This notably ruffled a few feathers, so Bethesda, known best for their substantive DLC, released a DLC pack less than a year after its release which rectified the issue. Seven years and some change later, Fallout 4 did not repeat this "mistake." Upon finishing Fallout 4, you're met with a cutscene that's three minutes shorter than what was in Fallout 3, after which the game hastily throws you back into its world. No credits, no real acknowledgment of any of the choices you might have made outside of the main quest. What this ultimately betrays, though, is not what the player spent the last thirty-to-forty to god knows how long doing in the Commonwealth. This single, one-minute cutscene—one of two in the entire game—comes to represent Fallout 4's main points of failure.
A change from F3 and New Vegas that's immediately apparent is that F4 drops the Mad Max style of narration, where the player character has been made into this legend of sorts whose adventures likely get misappropriated and lost in translation by the locals as time wears on. F4's opening and ending cutscenes are in the first person, feature stark, high-contrast imagery, and have heavy, emotional music playing over them. The concept, on paper, is likely that Fallout 4 was meant to be a more investing, personal tale than that of the Courier, who let Fisto have their way with them because it was funny. The voice talent for the player character in F4, god bless both of their hearts, put their souls into reading lines about how their fictional son was missing, and in a vacuum, their efforts pay off. But after the game gives you a tank to walk around in and a minigun to kill a Deathclaw with in its first hour, and then lets you keep both of them, it's hard to tell whether or not the game is taking itself seriously. I would say that the culprit of this is that any power armor set you wear makes the cinematic, Mass Effect-style conversation camera angles feel laughable. It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of a desperate parent when that parent is behind a hundred layers of steel and isn't emoting; The Mandalorian this is not. But ultimately, the conclusion I have to come to is that it's context that neuters the experience of its grain.
Fallout has never had a strong emotional core. I've come to the realization that the reason I see both Fallout and STALKER paired with each other, despite being continents apart in tone, intent, inspiration, lore, and nationality, is that both favor the minutiae of being in their worlds as opposed to the grander scheme of what they're meant to represent on a narrative level. These games are sandboxes, and sandboxes shouldn't be limited by such finicky, human matters. Do you see that bandit camp over there? Clear it for no other reason than it feels good to shoot at mannequins and then loot their remains, and then go back again to do the exact same thing halfway across the map. Therein lies the overarching problem with Fallout 4's narrative structure: it wants to be convinced that it can have those bandit camps, gameplay loops so refined and repetitive you'd think Bethesda was run by Kairosoft with a budget, and something to tug at your heartstrings with. As it so happens, it also desperately wants the Faction system of New Vegas, so that has to fit somewhere into the narrative, too. The end result is too crowded for any one angle to feel sharp. Every possible corner feels rounded and flat so any of the hundred ideas it's running with don't conflict with the rest.
Series purists will decry this as a black sheep of sorts and claim to resent it, even though they've never played it. Lest we forget, New Vegas is an untouchable masterpiece, even if it's as emotionally dry and ineffectual, save for Obsidian's sterling ability to make you laugh. "Have you played New Vegas?"
Having spent an ungodly amount of time in New Vegas, what I will say about F4 isn't that it's the former's RPG mechanics that the latter loses. New Vegas had restraint. Thirteen years ago, when it was praised for its scale, it might not have seemed so. But in hindsight, Obsidian never let its ambitions outweigh its talent. Almost every piece of New Vegas feels deliberate in its inclusion because Obsidian gave themselves the space they needed to maintain that sense of intention. In Fallout 4, the overworld is so large that it almost makes sense that the solution to a locked door is almost always lockpicking/hacking or finding the key in a nearby desk with no in-between.
However, in spite of it all... I kinda loved my time with Fallout 4? Until the end, at least. I'm going to go off of a branch and say that this is the most fun I've ever had with a Bethesda game. Skyrim and Starfield are too sterile to resonate with me, and as much as I love New Vegas, even with a chunky modlist, it still feels like one of those mods the Bethesda community has been fixated on for nearly ten years that builds a new game on top of another existing one through mod tools. Despite it sharing the same janky, archaic properties that even the aforementioned modlists can't scrub from New Vegas, almost all of Fallout 4's systems feel refined in some way. Weapon modding is no longer a menu interaction that adds invisible buffs and debuffs; it's an involved process that lets you see the changes for yourself. Although I never got into it, settlement building could easily be ripped out of this to become its own game. Progression is a bit barebones, but what's there still allows for modular playstyles that alter the game. Like I always try to do with these games, I mained a stealth build that eventually got so overpowered that I was one-shotting super mutants with a silenced automatic pistol by the time endgame rolled around. Tying this all together is that, for the first time in this series' three-dimensional existence, Fallout 4 has really fun combat. It still borders on janky in a few areas but in general, shooting and whacking stuff felt appropriately flashy in appearance and sound, and I was delighted!
I cannot deny that I had a ton of fun with this game, but by the time I reached one of its four-ish endings, it had worn out its welcome. I would argue that that is the single flaw that holds all of Bethesda's modern output down. Until they can find ways to better pace their experiences, and allow them to be more meaningful than dumb fun, their contemporaries will keep outshining them.
...
(THE ANECDOTE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS):
I did have two really funny stories from my time playing this that I'd like to share.
So, when you reach the institute and talk to Father, the game doesn't stop you from capping him in the head. And if you do it sneakily, the game doesn't stop you from capping almost everyone you see! So, for shits and giggles, I went around and did that until it caught up to me. I noticed there was an absolute shit-ton of enemies, but I didn't see them, so I figured I would be able to walk out of the institute with my pride intact. Wrong. As it turns out, the enemies I was seeing on my compass and listening to were below me, and because Fallout 4 is terrible with directional audio, I didn't know this until I took the elevator down. What I eventually discovered was an optimal strategy for dealing with the 60+ synths (not exaggeration!) trapped beneath me was to take the elevator down, fire off a mini-nuke, go upstairs, and wait for my status to reset from "Caution" to "Hidden", go downstairs, do that again until I was out of mini-nukes, start using my rockets, and then finish them off with a machine gun and some psycho. The pile of dead bodies not even halfway through this process was so absurd in its size that it momentarily tanked my game's framerate. Quite clearly, these developers either never considered this a possibility, or they didn't put up enough guardrails to prevent you from doing so, as I was not considered an enemy of the institute after my massacre. I guess if no one's alive to see you reach the exit, they can't put you on a hitlist.
But this pales in comparison to the stupidest moment in my entire playthrough. So, picture this: I'm on my way to confront the mayor of diamond city. He's a synth, he has a hostage, and it's up to me to settle his fate once and for all. My instinct, as a gun-for-hire that everybody is too pretentious and morally righteous to call a mercenary, is to lockpick the door and shoot him in the head. I notice my silenced pistol doesn't do stealth damage, so it takes two shots to the head to take him out. Not optimal. I reload my save and pull out my .50 caliber sniper rifle to do the job in one fell swoop. Before I can pat myself on the back, his hostage then gets up and starts shooting at everyone in the room, even though the bullet never hit her. If I shot her at all, everyone in the room would start shooting at me, but if I left her alone, they would finish her off. Reloading my save at least ten times because I couldn't believe my eyes, this was consistent. I may not give Fallout 4 as many marks as my playtime would suggest, but for giving me one of the funniest bugs/oversights I've ever seen in a game like this, it at least deserves some credit.
A change from F3 and New Vegas that's immediately apparent is that F4 drops the Mad Max style of narration, where the player character has been made into this legend of sorts whose adventures likely get misappropriated and lost in translation by the locals as time wears on. F4's opening and ending cutscenes are in the first person, feature stark, high-contrast imagery, and have heavy, emotional music playing over them. The concept, on paper, is likely that Fallout 4 was meant to be a more investing, personal tale than that of the Courier, who let Fisto have their way with them because it was funny. The voice talent for the player character in F4, god bless both of their hearts, put their souls into reading lines about how their fictional son was missing, and in a vacuum, their efforts pay off. But after the game gives you a tank to walk around in and a minigun to kill a Deathclaw with in its first hour, and then lets you keep both of them, it's hard to tell whether or not the game is taking itself seriously. I would say that the culprit of this is that any power armor set you wear makes the cinematic, Mass Effect-style conversation camera angles feel laughable. It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of a desperate parent when that parent is behind a hundred layers of steel and isn't emoting; The Mandalorian this is not. But ultimately, the conclusion I have to come to is that it's context that neuters the experience of its grain.
Fallout has never had a strong emotional core. I've come to the realization that the reason I see both Fallout and STALKER paired with each other, despite being continents apart in tone, intent, inspiration, lore, and nationality, is that both favor the minutiae of being in their worlds as opposed to the grander scheme of what they're meant to represent on a narrative level. These games are sandboxes, and sandboxes shouldn't be limited by such finicky, human matters. Do you see that bandit camp over there? Clear it for no other reason than it feels good to shoot at mannequins and then loot their remains, and then go back again to do the exact same thing halfway across the map. Therein lies the overarching problem with Fallout 4's narrative structure: it wants to be convinced that it can have those bandit camps, gameplay loops so refined and repetitive you'd think Bethesda was run by Kairosoft with a budget, and something to tug at your heartstrings with. As it so happens, it also desperately wants the Faction system of New Vegas, so that has to fit somewhere into the narrative, too. The end result is too crowded for any one angle to feel sharp. Every possible corner feels rounded and flat so any of the hundred ideas it's running with don't conflict with the rest.
Series purists will decry this as a black sheep of sorts and claim to resent it, even though they've never played it. Lest we forget, New Vegas is an untouchable masterpiece, even if it's as emotionally dry and ineffectual, save for Obsidian's sterling ability to make you laugh. "Have you played New Vegas?"
Having spent an ungodly amount of time in New Vegas, what I will say about F4 isn't that it's the former's RPG mechanics that the latter loses. New Vegas had restraint. Thirteen years ago, when it was praised for its scale, it might not have seemed so. But in hindsight, Obsidian never let its ambitions outweigh its talent. Almost every piece of New Vegas feels deliberate in its inclusion because Obsidian gave themselves the space they needed to maintain that sense of intention. In Fallout 4, the overworld is so large that it almost makes sense that the solution to a locked door is almost always lockpicking/hacking or finding the key in a nearby desk with no in-between.
However, in spite of it all... I kinda loved my time with Fallout 4? Until the end, at least. I'm going to go off of a branch and say that this is the most fun I've ever had with a Bethesda game. Skyrim and Starfield are too sterile to resonate with me, and as much as I love New Vegas, even with a chunky modlist, it still feels like one of those mods the Bethesda community has been fixated on for nearly ten years that builds a new game on top of another existing one through mod tools. Despite it sharing the same janky, archaic properties that even the aforementioned modlists can't scrub from New Vegas, almost all of Fallout 4's systems feel refined in some way. Weapon modding is no longer a menu interaction that adds invisible buffs and debuffs; it's an involved process that lets you see the changes for yourself. Although I never got into it, settlement building could easily be ripped out of this to become its own game. Progression is a bit barebones, but what's there still allows for modular playstyles that alter the game. Like I always try to do with these games, I mained a stealth build that eventually got so overpowered that I was one-shotting super mutants with a silenced automatic pistol by the time endgame rolled around. Tying this all together is that, for the first time in this series' three-dimensional existence, Fallout 4 has really fun combat. It still borders on janky in a few areas but in general, shooting and whacking stuff felt appropriately flashy in appearance and sound, and I was delighted!
I cannot deny that I had a ton of fun with this game, but by the time I reached one of its four-ish endings, it had worn out its welcome. I would argue that that is the single flaw that holds all of Bethesda's modern output down. Until they can find ways to better pace their experiences, and allow them to be more meaningful than dumb fun, their contemporaries will keep outshining them.
...
(THE ANECDOTE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS):
I did have two really funny stories from my time playing this that I'd like to share.
So, when you reach the institute and talk to Father, the game doesn't stop you from capping him in the head. And if you do it sneakily, the game doesn't stop you from capping almost everyone you see! So, for shits and giggles, I went around and did that until it caught up to me. I noticed there was an absolute shit-ton of enemies, but I didn't see them, so I figured I would be able to walk out of the institute with my pride intact. Wrong. As it turns out, the enemies I was seeing on my compass and listening to were below me, and because Fallout 4 is terrible with directional audio, I didn't know this until I took the elevator down. What I eventually discovered was an optimal strategy for dealing with the 60+ synths (not exaggeration!) trapped beneath me was to take the elevator down, fire off a mini-nuke, go upstairs, and wait for my status to reset from "Caution" to "Hidden", go downstairs, do that again until I was out of mini-nukes, start using my rockets, and then finish them off with a machine gun and some psycho. The pile of dead bodies not even halfway through this process was so absurd in its size that it momentarily tanked my game's framerate. Quite clearly, these developers either never considered this a possibility, or they didn't put up enough guardrails to prevent you from doing so, as I was not considered an enemy of the institute after my massacre. I guess if no one's alive to see you reach the exit, they can't put you on a hitlist.
But this pales in comparison to the stupidest moment in my entire playthrough. So, picture this: I'm on my way to confront the mayor of diamond city. He's a synth, he has a hostage, and it's up to me to settle his fate once and for all. My instinct, as a gun-for-hire that everybody is too pretentious and morally righteous to call a mercenary, is to lockpick the door and shoot him in the head. I notice my silenced pistol doesn't do stealth damage, so it takes two shots to the head to take him out. Not optimal. I reload my save and pull out my .50 caliber sniper rifle to do the job in one fell swoop. Before I can pat myself on the back, his hostage then gets up and starts shooting at everyone in the room, even though the bullet never hit her. If I shot her at all, everyone in the room would start shooting at me, but if I left her alone, they would finish her off. Reloading my save at least ten times because I couldn't believe my eyes, this was consistent. I may not give Fallout 4 as many marks as my playtime would suggest, but for giving me one of the funniest bugs/oversights I've ever seen in a game like this, it at least deserves some credit.
2015
Fun game! I just need to talk to whoever thought it was a great idea to lock saving behind the sleeping mechanic on Survival difficulty.
To put into perspective why this is an abhorrent design decision made by absolute fucking dumbasses who couldn't tie their shoes, even under the threat of gunpoint, you have to consider:
- This is a Bethesda game. Halfway through the tutorial on this most recent playthrough, my game crashed. Imagine being halfway across the map and you haven't saved in a while. While this sort of thing is true for any game that withholds saving like this, it simply isn't acceptable when the scope of your game is so large that these sort of technical hiccups are more inevitable than anything else.
- The combat mechanics and scenarios were evidently not built around this. To give a lesser example, the warehouse you have to clear to get to Diamond City requires a significant amount of cheesing if you want to see it through, and this is only expedited and compounded when you step outside and have to deal with multiple snipers. To give the most textbook example of this, one of the very first quests in Fallout 4 has you dealing with a Deathclaw. This Deathclaw only gets spongier with each progressive difficulty option, and by the time you've turned Survival on, can easily one-shot you. Given that you have to fight a litany of raiders before this encounter begins, you already start the fight with reduced resources. Unless you chose to pick off the remaining raiders with the laser musket the game hands you before you decide to pick up the minigun, good luck running around the second you have to reload that minigun. The only way this fight is even remotely fair is if you cheese it by going back inside the building you came out of, running back up to its roof, and "stealth killing" it from the roof while it runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find you. The big issue with this approach is that it drains you of your ammo for the minigun, seeing as there's no real chance that you're getting a clean shot on that thing while it's moving around. Seeing as you'll probably need that minigun if you want to have a fair fight in places like the aforementioned warehouse, this is less than optimal. Once again, this is one of the first quests in the game. It would hardly surprise me if they didn't test this thing, that's how poorly thought out this is.
- One of the enemy types in this is a mole rat that will suicide bomb you. If you're lucky and have enough distance from one, this isn't a problem. But if even a single one of those things surprises you, you better start hoping your last save was recent.
- If you're playing on PC, none of this is an issue! Just install a mod that allows you to customize the rules to whatever you're comfortable with. If you're playing on a console, in particular anything PlayStation-related, you're shit out of luck.
What I love about Survival difficulties in games like these is that they force you to engage with the minutiae of the game's world. Having to actually scout for empty bottles so you can pour water into them is far more compelling than using what would be that water for boring, barely noticeable stat bonuses on regular difficulties. In this regard, Fallout 4's survival mode adds a nice layer to an already pretty fun game. But good lord, unless you're in a situation where you can circumvent the baffling decision to restrict saving in this way, I can't recommend it. Unless you're already halfway through the game, it makes the game nearly unplayable, and I'm not mincing my words here. It's genuinely that bad.
To put into perspective why this is an abhorrent design decision made by absolute fucking dumbasses who couldn't tie their shoes, even under the threat of gunpoint, you have to consider:
- This is a Bethesda game. Halfway through the tutorial on this most recent playthrough, my game crashed. Imagine being halfway across the map and you haven't saved in a while. While this sort of thing is true for any game that withholds saving like this, it simply isn't acceptable when the scope of your game is so large that these sort of technical hiccups are more inevitable than anything else.
- The combat mechanics and scenarios were evidently not built around this. To give a lesser example, the warehouse you have to clear to get to Diamond City requires a significant amount of cheesing if you want to see it through, and this is only expedited and compounded when you step outside and have to deal with multiple snipers. To give the most textbook example of this, one of the very first quests in Fallout 4 has you dealing with a Deathclaw. This Deathclaw only gets spongier with each progressive difficulty option, and by the time you've turned Survival on, can easily one-shot you. Given that you have to fight a litany of raiders before this encounter begins, you already start the fight with reduced resources. Unless you chose to pick off the remaining raiders with the laser musket the game hands you before you decide to pick up the minigun, good luck running around the second you have to reload that minigun. The only way this fight is even remotely fair is if you cheese it by going back inside the building you came out of, running back up to its roof, and "stealth killing" it from the roof while it runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find you. The big issue with this approach is that it drains you of your ammo for the minigun, seeing as there's no real chance that you're getting a clean shot on that thing while it's moving around. Seeing as you'll probably need that minigun if you want to have a fair fight in places like the aforementioned warehouse, this is less than optimal. Once again, this is one of the first quests in the game. It would hardly surprise me if they didn't test this thing, that's how poorly thought out this is.
- One of the enemy types in this is a mole rat that will suicide bomb you. If you're lucky and have enough distance from one, this isn't a problem. But if even a single one of those things surprises you, you better start hoping your last save was recent.
- If you're playing on PC, none of this is an issue! Just install a mod that allows you to customize the rules to whatever you're comfortable with. If you're playing on a console, in particular anything PlayStation-related, you're shit out of luck.
What I love about Survival difficulties in games like these is that they force you to engage with the minutiae of the game's world. Having to actually scout for empty bottles so you can pour water into them is far more compelling than using what would be that water for boring, barely noticeable stat bonuses on regular difficulties. In this regard, Fallout 4's survival mode adds a nice layer to an already pretty fun game. But good lord, unless you're in a situation where you can circumvent the baffling decision to restrict saving in this way, I can't recommend it. Unless you're already halfway through the game, it makes the game nearly unplayable, and I'm not mincing my words here. It's genuinely that bad.
2015
I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Phantom Forces.
What they absolutely nailed here is the gamefeel. It's incredibly fun to superdive around each of its maps with shotguns, which, even with the nerfs done over time, still absolutely shred. I'm not joking when I say that this Roblox shooter made for babies has some of the best gunplay you'll ever see in a free-to-play game, and the automatic shotguns in this game are among some of the best I've ever seen in any shooter, flat-out. The staggering amount of variety in weapon types is also absolutely bonkers to the point where it's overwhelming. Customization may not have the depth of more recent tacti-cool efforts, but again, for a Roblox game, what's there has to be lauded. You can turn shotguns into snipers and vice versa; it's ridiculous, and I love it. The amount of playstyles you can find in this game, down to suicide bombing the enemy team with grenades that explode on impact for shits and giggles, is crazy.
In an ideal world, this game would absolutely be in my top-ten of all time. To say that of a Roblox game is madness, surely. But simply throwing this under the same lampshade as the other games on that platform is doing it a disservice.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Roblox's target audience, and here is where I simply can't praise this game. There are a ton of children playing Phantom Forces. I've met a handful of adults who happen to play it, one of which would go onto games with their spouse in toe, but the general consensus is that there's a shit-ton of kids on Phantom Forces at any time of day.
...with that in mind, Phantom Forces has loot-boxes.
It has for many years at this point, actually, and with the inclusion of melee weapons that can only be earned through these boxes, it's only gotten more flagrant. Pair that with a progression system that borders on so slow and sluggish that, past a certain threshold, your only viable options to progress are to buy currency or gamble what you have on skins to sell, and I'm sorry, I have to deduct points. In any free-to-play game, that's bullshit. But you might argue that it's the only way the model is sustainable, and because Roblox hardly pays its developers for their work, it's inevitable that a micro-live-service like this has to make ends meet somehow. I would skeptically nod my head if children weren't involved, but knowing that they are and in big numbers, I can't give this a higher rating than three stars. It simply isn't moral to.
I'm sorry Phantom Forces, I love you, but getting kids hooked on gambling in your micro-casino is gross.
Also some of the maps kinda blow, and Capture the Flag really isn't suited for this game's mechanics and map layouts, but that's beside the point.
What they absolutely nailed here is the gamefeel. It's incredibly fun to superdive around each of its maps with shotguns, which, even with the nerfs done over time, still absolutely shred. I'm not joking when I say that this Roblox shooter made for babies has some of the best gunplay you'll ever see in a free-to-play game, and the automatic shotguns in this game are among some of the best I've ever seen in any shooter, flat-out. The staggering amount of variety in weapon types is also absolutely bonkers to the point where it's overwhelming. Customization may not have the depth of more recent tacti-cool efforts, but again, for a Roblox game, what's there has to be lauded. You can turn shotguns into snipers and vice versa; it's ridiculous, and I love it. The amount of playstyles you can find in this game, down to suicide bombing the enemy team with grenades that explode on impact for shits and giggles, is crazy.
In an ideal world, this game would absolutely be in my top-ten of all time. To say that of a Roblox game is madness, surely. But simply throwing this under the same lampshade as the other games on that platform is doing it a disservice.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Roblox's target audience, and here is where I simply can't praise this game. There are a ton of children playing Phantom Forces. I've met a handful of adults who happen to play it, one of which would go onto games with their spouse in toe, but the general consensus is that there's a shit-ton of kids on Phantom Forces at any time of day.
...with that in mind, Phantom Forces has loot-boxes.
It has for many years at this point, actually, and with the inclusion of melee weapons that can only be earned through these boxes, it's only gotten more flagrant. Pair that with a progression system that borders on so slow and sluggish that, past a certain threshold, your only viable options to progress are to buy currency or gamble what you have on skins to sell, and I'm sorry, I have to deduct points. In any free-to-play game, that's bullshit. But you might argue that it's the only way the model is sustainable, and because Roblox hardly pays its developers for their work, it's inevitable that a micro-live-service like this has to make ends meet somehow. I would skeptically nod my head if children weren't involved, but knowing that they are and in big numbers, I can't give this a higher rating than three stars. It simply isn't moral to.
I'm sorry Phantom Forces, I love you, but getting kids hooked on gambling in your micro-casino is gross.
Also some of the maps kinda blow, and Capture the Flag really isn't suited for this game's mechanics and map layouts, but that's beside the point.
2014
Many, many blue moons ago, I went down the rabbit hole of getting free games on Steam. What the process of getting these games involved was typically going through giveaways that would force you to subscribe to YouTubers, join Steam groups, and the like. And the end result was that you almost always got bottom-of-the-barrel shovelware. Very rarely, you'd get a gem like Distraint, but nine-point-five times out of ten, you'd get something like The Slaughtering Grounds, Galactic Hitman, or The God's Chain. If James Stephanie Sterling covered it in their series of videos about crappy Steam releases or Steam Greenlight games, you name it, there's a solid chance I paid nothing to own it.
Why So Evil isn't exactly remarkable in these regards, insomuch as it's so transparent in its lacking quality that no one in good faith could hope to have fun with it after thirty seconds of playtime. There's no menu to speak of, the game just kind of starts. All of the UI is done in the horrendous stock-Bubble type that every low-effort, half-assed Unity project made between the years 2011-2018 used to death, so even if you refuse to play the thing, you know. All of this being charitable, however; the screenshots alone were enough to warn off potential buyers, they did not try to hide this at all. Essentially, this wouldn't have been out of place on the CD my brother's friend gave him full of games they'd made when we were kids. Except this had a pricetag on it. I pity anybody who bit that bullet long before Steam refunds became a thing.
The funniest thing about this is that, for a game that touts bullshit difficulty, it becomes almost laughably easy on a controller. When it's not easy, it's just not that fun, and a big part of that is that there's no real meat on its bones. This is, for all intents and purposes, a tutorial project that someone expanded on but refused to build off of.
The only noteworthy thing about this game in 2024 is that you can't buy it anymore. No, not because they tried to sue Steam users, that was someone else. Because they released almost two hundred games on Steam over the course of less than two years and under different pseudonyms. Whoops!
Why So Evil isn't exactly remarkable in these regards, insomuch as it's so transparent in its lacking quality that no one in good faith could hope to have fun with it after thirty seconds of playtime. There's no menu to speak of, the game just kind of starts. All of the UI is done in the horrendous stock-Bubble type that every low-effort, half-assed Unity project made between the years 2011-2018 used to death, so even if you refuse to play the thing, you know. All of this being charitable, however; the screenshots alone were enough to warn off potential buyers, they did not try to hide this at all. Essentially, this wouldn't have been out of place on the CD my brother's friend gave him full of games they'd made when we were kids. Except this had a pricetag on it. I pity anybody who bit that bullet long before Steam refunds became a thing.
The funniest thing about this is that, for a game that touts bullshit difficulty, it becomes almost laughably easy on a controller. When it's not easy, it's just not that fun, and a big part of that is that there's no real meat on its bones. This is, for all intents and purposes, a tutorial project that someone expanded on but refused to build off of.
The only noteworthy thing about this game in 2024 is that you can't buy it anymore. No, not because they tried to sue Steam users, that was someone else. Because they released almost two hundred games on Steam over the course of less than two years and under different pseudonyms. Whoops!
Let me tell you about a fly I once nicknamed Buzz. Two flies, as a matter of fact, because I couldn't tell them apart. Here I am, lying down on the couch of a moving RV. The thing's definitely a bit of an old spirit: the seatbelts tucked beneath, which I've chosen to neglect, are what you find on school buses across America. Old-fashioned, down to the way the logo on the buckle has been scratched off and spat on time over time. Now, if you lie down above the drivers, you get a glimpse of the world as it passes you by: gravestones in the middle of who knows, rocky nowheres, and once the West Coast has flown past you, great American dustbowls punctuated only by the wind passing through the small screen in front of you and the car radio down below. But, of course, you don't get that on the couch. For the price of comfort, I would argue, you get the ceiling. Only if you lean forward in a way you're really not supposed to does the world reveal itself in broader strokes. The problem with the ceiling is that it can't compete with your phone, and the problem with your phone is that there's only a finite amount of social media you can scroll through and music you can listen to before all of your senses go numb. In come two flies, almost innocuous in their immediate presence, willed into existence somewhere in a parking lot we stopped at, never at ease with themselves. I struggle to come up with ways you could keep a house fly as a pet since it'd always find holes in the cage you put it in. But more damning than that, you can't have more than one of them. You can have two black cats but never two flies. At which point does the second fly steal the name of the first? At any point in time you decide to notice them.
I left that trip short of the two flies I had acquainted myself with while staring at the ceiling. Not pets, not nuisances, just things that were there and made me feel... I don't know, relieved?
I don't see how the average experience of going to feed the ducks in your local park is all too different. There are more of them, they're larger, much slower, and less malicious in intent. But the reality is that you always leave the park having acknowledged the adorable creatures beneath you as little more than a temporary relief from day-to-day ennui and stress.
Plastic ducks don't fare the same way. They're a good middleground between flies and ducks: they're small and, in many cases, indistinct enough for you to impose your imagination on something that is decidedly real, and yet they float. They're slow and graceful, and best of all, they stick around. Down to the aggressively yellow color they sport, there's an undeniably charming sense of artifice to them that, expressions be damned, brings a smile to my face.
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator sits at ease in that artificial middleground as a piece of digital artwork, calm with the fact that you cannot feed its ducks more than your own politics and personality if you so choose. What going digital with this experience means is that the well-worn rules of what is both natural and artificial are discarded entirely. Through the use of save games, your ducks are as they were, rather than a natural byproduct of the environment they're in. No longer do two or three Buzzs' pass you by in the span of an afternoon.
But then, what do you achieve when you can no longer let go? What is the value of holding dearly onto something so obviously impersonal? What do you gain from it?
Quack.
I left that trip short of the two flies I had acquainted myself with while staring at the ceiling. Not pets, not nuisances, just things that were there and made me feel... I don't know, relieved?
I don't see how the average experience of going to feed the ducks in your local park is all too different. There are more of them, they're larger, much slower, and less malicious in intent. But the reality is that you always leave the park having acknowledged the adorable creatures beneath you as little more than a temporary relief from day-to-day ennui and stress.
Plastic ducks don't fare the same way. They're a good middleground between flies and ducks: they're small and, in many cases, indistinct enough for you to impose your imagination on something that is decidedly real, and yet they float. They're slow and graceful, and best of all, they stick around. Down to the aggressively yellow color they sport, there's an undeniably charming sense of artifice to them that, expressions be damned, brings a smile to my face.
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator sits at ease in that artificial middleground as a piece of digital artwork, calm with the fact that you cannot feed its ducks more than your own politics and personality if you so choose. What going digital with this experience means is that the well-worn rules of what is both natural and artificial are discarded entirely. Through the use of save games, your ducks are as they were, rather than a natural byproduct of the environment they're in. No longer do two or three Buzzs' pass you by in the span of an afternoon.
But then, what do you achieve when you can no longer let go? What is the value of holding dearly onto something so obviously impersonal? What do you gain from it?
Quack.
2016
While Half-Life 2: Overcharged is just a version of Half-Life 2 that sincerely embraces the Spartan Kick memes of yore, it's good fun. As a fan of kicking shit around in video games, it's no Dark Messiah, but for what's there, it's good fun.
The problem with Overcharged is that, at most, the developer's attempt to build off of that was adding slow motion. Everything else is a mess. None of the new weapons added feel as silly or absurd as they should. The closest it gets to that camp is giving you the ability to rip turrets off their hooks a la Just Cause 2, but there's not much novelty in that. All of the other weapons added are Beta(TM) concepts, assets ripped directly from Counter-Strike, and other minor additions like the wrench from Opposing Forces. Some of them are fun to play around with, like the Dual Wielding pistols, which can be set to automatic, but many of them are functionally identical and serve little purpose in a game where you don't have to worry about limitations on what weapons you can carry. Easily the weakest aspect of this mod is its attempt to bring some of the beta concepts and aliens from the original Half-Life back into the fold. Disregarding the fact that many of these are just assets lifted directly from the original Half-Life that haven't been touched up to fit Half-Life 2's art style, the placement of many of these enemies is fundamentally borked. Small areas used to break up the pacing and give you a pause if you're low on health are now littered with houndeyes and the like. The Beta enemies, which have no basis in familiarity, are thrown into levels with no thought as to how an introduction would work.
When it's not playing out like a slapdash effort to pack in as many gimmicks into the base game as possible, and when it's not crashing or hilariously broken, Overcharged can be decent fun. The biggest problem with this mod is that you could easily reproduce it with more polish and quality in Garry's Mod, so the only real use in giving this a download is if you're that morbidly curious.
The problem with Overcharged is that, at most, the developer's attempt to build off of that was adding slow motion. Everything else is a mess. None of the new weapons added feel as silly or absurd as they should. The closest it gets to that camp is giving you the ability to rip turrets off their hooks a la Just Cause 2, but there's not much novelty in that. All of the other weapons added are Beta(TM) concepts, assets ripped directly from Counter-Strike, and other minor additions like the wrench from Opposing Forces. Some of them are fun to play around with, like the Dual Wielding pistols, which can be set to automatic, but many of them are functionally identical and serve little purpose in a game where you don't have to worry about limitations on what weapons you can carry. Easily the weakest aspect of this mod is its attempt to bring some of the beta concepts and aliens from the original Half-Life back into the fold. Disregarding the fact that many of these are just assets lifted directly from the original Half-Life that haven't been touched up to fit Half-Life 2's art style, the placement of many of these enemies is fundamentally borked. Small areas used to break up the pacing and give you a pause if you're low on health are now littered with houndeyes and the like. The Beta enemies, which have no basis in familiarity, are thrown into levels with no thought as to how an introduction would work.
When it's not playing out like a slapdash effort to pack in as many gimmicks into the base game as possible, and when it's not crashing or hilariously broken, Overcharged can be decent fun. The biggest problem with this mod is that you could easily reproduce it with more polish and quality in Garry's Mod, so the only real use in giving this a download is if you're that morbidly curious.
2014
So, funny story: when I was around eleven, maybe twelve, I was at my cousin's house playing Garry's Mod on his computer. He wanted me to get off but in a very subtle way. So he challenged me. The ultimate challenge, he called it: enough Combine Elites to slow his computer down to the point where a hard reset was the only way to close the game.
Mystery Comabt Man 3 emulates this experience with a stable framerate. I kind of wish it didn't.
I mean this in the most insulting way possible: this is a time capsule. Like The Impossible Quiz, but with all of its charm and character stripped in favor of kitchen-sink design that's so "lol so goofy xDDDD" that the developer couldn't have been fucked to add level exits. Not that it would matter, anyway. Strip away everything added to be annoying and at times bizarrely charming, and you have a series of maps that somehow manage to rival that time I made a map in TimeSplitters that locked the entire red team in their base because my brother always picked red, and I didn't know that keys only spawned in Story mode. Except worse, because at least the worst maps we made in TimeSplitters (See: single cubes that caused rounds of Virus to last less than thirty seconds) didn't require God mode to be playable. Good lord.
I'm starting to remember why we post-millennial Zoomers like to make self-deprecating quips about the montage parody era of internet culture, and I wholeheartedly agree with them. This is below the lowest rungs of trash-tier modding. And depending on who you ask, it's the exact kind of thing that makes the scene so awesome. I can't disagree with that notion, I've done it before.
Mystery Comabt Man 3 emulates this experience with a stable framerate. I kind of wish it didn't.
I mean this in the most insulting way possible: this is a time capsule. Like The Impossible Quiz, but with all of its charm and character stripped in favor of kitchen-sink design that's so "lol so goofy xDDDD" that the developer couldn't have been fucked to add level exits. Not that it would matter, anyway. Strip away everything added to be annoying and at times bizarrely charming, and you have a series of maps that somehow manage to rival that time I made a map in TimeSplitters that locked the entire red team in their base because my brother always picked red, and I didn't know that keys only spawned in Story mode. Except worse, because at least the worst maps we made in TimeSplitters (See: single cubes that caused rounds of Virus to last less than thirty seconds) didn't require God mode to be playable. Good lord.
I'm starting to remember why we post-millennial Zoomers like to make self-deprecating quips about the montage parody era of internet culture, and I wholeheartedly agree with them. This is below the lowest rungs of trash-tier modding. And depending on who you ask, it's the exact kind of thing that makes the scene so awesome. I can't disagree with that notion, I've done it before.
Shadow of Chernobyl is a game that is frequently at odds with itself. If it's not impressive on the basis of its ambitions alone, then it's outright apparent that it's the result of two conflicting visions: that of a game studio eschewing its trappings to push boundaries others weren't willing to, even if the developers weren't getting paid very well, and that of a game publisher that was tired of waiting. The dichotomy between these camps sullies the experience the more you play Shadow of Chernobyl. So much of it feels so haplessly thrown together that it becomes hard to know what was kept in to make the experience feel as hopeless as it ultimately is and what just so happened to have that effect. The Ranking system, for example, is a unique concept that ties into the game's early fascination with NPC interactions. I looked at it once at the start of my playthrough, one more time out of curiosity after playing the game for ten hours, and never again. But if you scratch past these layers and try to see what the developers were trying to make behind the scenes... it still feels confused. The unfortunate reality is that, by trying to be as fresh as possible, there’s a significant chance your first attempt will end up clumsy.
The biggest problem Shadow of Chernobyl faces is that its mixture of non-linear exploration and linear set-pieces rarely coalesce. Instead, the game often feels like it’s trying to be three things at once. In one hand, it’s a game about stats and MMO-lite questing/looting for the best equipment you can get with your limited inventory space. In the other, it’s a linear shooter with a high level of difficulty that occasionally goes full-corridor and will have you quicksaving every five seconds. By the feet, it’s a sci-fi-flavored mystery that tries to pull you in on the basis of its landscapes alone. The resulting mixture is a game that expects you to explore and do side-questing to understand several of its key mechanics in its opening moments while a giant arrow in the top-left corner of the screen is telling you to do anything else. Paired with how limited exploration can be, and it quickly becomes an experience that feels more distracted than it should be.
Thankfully, there are still aspects of it that hold up. Although it’s occasionally held back by grating, repetitive sound effects, and voice lines, it’s the intoxicating atmosphere and art direction that keeps the experience from falling apart. There is a damn good reason that this is what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has become synonymous with. From the moody, blocky grays of the bar area to the ways in which the metal roofs of a couple of warehouses split apart, everything about The Zone feels authentically oppressive. Vast and typically quiet stretches of land are hardly the oases they would be in another game, as they’re often doused in hardly bright hues. Other creative decisions, such as non-diegetic music in the bar area, cause each space to feel lived in. Pair that with the convincing behavior of AI opponents, such as roaming dogs, and it’s almost never a question of if you’re safe in an area. Despite being a game full of bombastic action, its best moments are usually its quietest and most unnerving. While these short moments last, Shadow of Chernobyl remains an engrossing experience.
While they last...
It could be said that the mystery underpinning Shadow of Chernobyl’s main narrative is undermined by its nearly interminable lack of quiet time, which causes the game to outstay its welcome should you find yourself forced to grind in order to progress to more difficult areas (as I did!). And while this is true to an extent, there are far more pressing issues holding it back. One, the quest structure (both main and secondary) rarely evolves throughout. Even at its most interesting, Shadow of Chernobyl is content to have the player kill or loot, and that’s pretty much it. But most damning of all, its characterization is borderline one-dimensional, if it's there at all. I revisited Clear Sky pretty soon after I finished my playthrough of this, and immediately, it struck me as a game with more character and confidence. There are a handful of memorable faces in Shadow of Chernobyl, but it should say a lot that the one I (and many others, apparently) associate the most with this game never leaves the first room you’re in. In twenty hours of playtime, I saw one backstory, and it was only a paragraph in length. While the grand reveals are interesting and do leave some room for interpretation, by the time I reached them, I was no longer interested in finding those answers. Unfortunately, the solid atmosphere that permeates the experience can’t stop its confused and occasionally amateurish structure from wearing you down as it progresses. If you can beat Shadow of Chernobyl in under twelve hours, it’s probably worthy of four stars. But take my advice: don’t revisit it too often.
Having finally finished Shadow of Chernobyl, I can absolutely see where the insane modding scene for this series comes from. Shadow of Chernobyl feels like the coolest roughdraft ever while it’s in your hands. No other game has had me dragging bodies full of half-functioning guns so I could afford new armor. Despite the compromises and slipshod focus that went into its creation, it has all of the markings of an all-timer. I desperately want to love it again, and I kinda do? But even at its most compelling, it’s a hard sell.
I'm just hoping the new one isn't a Shadow of its former self. (had to do it)
The biggest problem Shadow of Chernobyl faces is that its mixture of non-linear exploration and linear set-pieces rarely coalesce. Instead, the game often feels like it’s trying to be three things at once. In one hand, it’s a game about stats and MMO-lite questing/looting for the best equipment you can get with your limited inventory space. In the other, it’s a linear shooter with a high level of difficulty that occasionally goes full-corridor and will have you quicksaving every five seconds. By the feet, it’s a sci-fi-flavored mystery that tries to pull you in on the basis of its landscapes alone. The resulting mixture is a game that expects you to explore and do side-questing to understand several of its key mechanics in its opening moments while a giant arrow in the top-left corner of the screen is telling you to do anything else. Paired with how limited exploration can be, and it quickly becomes an experience that feels more distracted than it should be.
Thankfully, there are still aspects of it that hold up. Although it’s occasionally held back by grating, repetitive sound effects, and voice lines, it’s the intoxicating atmosphere and art direction that keeps the experience from falling apart. There is a damn good reason that this is what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has become synonymous with. From the moody, blocky grays of the bar area to the ways in which the metal roofs of a couple of warehouses split apart, everything about The Zone feels authentically oppressive. Vast and typically quiet stretches of land are hardly the oases they would be in another game, as they’re often doused in hardly bright hues. Other creative decisions, such as non-diegetic music in the bar area, cause each space to feel lived in. Pair that with the convincing behavior of AI opponents, such as roaming dogs, and it’s almost never a question of if you’re safe in an area. Despite being a game full of bombastic action, its best moments are usually its quietest and most unnerving. While these short moments last, Shadow of Chernobyl remains an engrossing experience.
While they last...
It could be said that the mystery underpinning Shadow of Chernobyl’s main narrative is undermined by its nearly interminable lack of quiet time, which causes the game to outstay its welcome should you find yourself forced to grind in order to progress to more difficult areas (as I did!). And while this is true to an extent, there are far more pressing issues holding it back. One, the quest structure (both main and secondary) rarely evolves throughout. Even at its most interesting, Shadow of Chernobyl is content to have the player kill or loot, and that’s pretty much it. But most damning of all, its characterization is borderline one-dimensional, if it's there at all. I revisited Clear Sky pretty soon after I finished my playthrough of this, and immediately, it struck me as a game with more character and confidence. There are a handful of memorable faces in Shadow of Chernobyl, but it should say a lot that the one I (and many others, apparently) associate the most with this game never leaves the first room you’re in. In twenty hours of playtime, I saw one backstory, and it was only a paragraph in length. While the grand reveals are interesting and do leave some room for interpretation, by the time I reached them, I was no longer interested in finding those answers. Unfortunately, the solid atmosphere that permeates the experience can’t stop its confused and occasionally amateurish structure from wearing you down as it progresses. If you can beat Shadow of Chernobyl in under twelve hours, it’s probably worthy of four stars. But take my advice: don’t revisit it too often.
Having finally finished Shadow of Chernobyl, I can absolutely see where the insane modding scene for this series comes from. Shadow of Chernobyl feels like the coolest roughdraft ever while it’s in your hands. No other game has had me dragging bodies full of half-functioning guns so I could afford new armor. Despite the compromises and slipshod focus that went into its creation, it has all of the markings of an all-timer. I desperately want to love it again, and I kinda do? But even at its most compelling, it’s a hard sell.
I'm just hoping the new one isn't a Shadow of its former self. (had to do it)
2023
Beton Brtual is so fucking tedious that even the method of save scumming I used to make it a palatable experience was dull. When I first started playing it, its blend of precision platforming, tightly designed landscapes, and brutalist architecture-inspired art style wowed me. And then I hit a brick wall. And I kept hitting it. And suddenly, the game lost its zing. It became monotonous, a chore to sit through even at the peak of its vertigo-inducing, pants-shitting intensity. I felt I had an obligation to complete it, though; after all, I gave it four stars! In the immortal words of Kent Mansely himself, "This sort of thing is why it's so important to chew your food."
Fundamentally, my biggest issue with Beton Brutal is that it's convinced, no, insistent that forgiving the player for their mistakes is the wrong thing to do. In smaller spaces where the tension in each jump comes organically and doesn't feel contrived in the slightest, it's right. Those four stars I gave it came before I was faced with the wall spike section or the ice area. Even if its challenge remained organic throughout, though, I doubt it would have remained compelling. Without the inch that a proper saving system might give you, the emotional agony of taking a plunge no longer hits as powerful and just becomes dulling. The rewarding sense of discovery I mentioned in that old review only registers as long as the game manages to feel fresh rather than forcing you into the most rote, mechanical playstyle imaginable in the name of being "hardcore." I'm sorry, that's not "hardcore." I do, however, have a more apt phrase in my vocabulary for that: "self-indulgent and boring."
By the time I managed to complete Beton Brutal, it failed to convince me that games can be made without checkpoints. In fact, it persuaded me of the complete opposite. Checkpoints are not inherently a bad thing, and if you're looking to make your game feel intense and nerve-wracking, you can still integrate them into your game and give your players the same effect. Have them be a reward, or randomized, or hidden. What you do by removing any semblance of a saving system is, ironically, make all forms of progression feel stilted and unremarkable. Given that Beton Brutal has no narrative to rely on or any evident lore, that sense of mundanity feels as though it couldn't have been more than a side-effect. Embrace the gimmicky nature of it all, embrace save scumming! As Backloggd user Momoka eloquently puts in their review for the GameCube remake of Resident Evil, you can have a game that isn't traditionally fun and let the people playing your game save. If you force me to save my game every time I need to take a break, or every time I force the game closed in a particular way, that just feels like the pettiest form of punishment. With nothing to really justify it other than the developer insisting on it, I feel forced to reduce my evaluation of Beton Brutal to a scale that this developer is keenly aware of: spiteful minimalism.
I want to like Beton Brutal, but throughout the ten hours I put into it, it rarely let me. If uninviting games are your bread and butter, I suppose you'll chalk up all of the issues I have with it as me just being bad at the game. I can't say you're wrong. But I can't say you're right, either. You shouldn't need to be "good" at a game to enjoy it. If failing at games is part of their charm, then the least you can do with an interactive medium is make that failure engaging, insightful, or meditative. I seldom had that experience with Beton Brutal, so I can't, in good conscience, pretend that my lack of proficiency has much to do with it.
Fundamentally, my biggest issue with Beton Brutal is that it's convinced, no, insistent that forgiving the player for their mistakes is the wrong thing to do. In smaller spaces where the tension in each jump comes organically and doesn't feel contrived in the slightest, it's right. Those four stars I gave it came before I was faced with the wall spike section or the ice area. Even if its challenge remained organic throughout, though, I doubt it would have remained compelling. Without the inch that a proper saving system might give you, the emotional agony of taking a plunge no longer hits as powerful and just becomes dulling. The rewarding sense of discovery I mentioned in that old review only registers as long as the game manages to feel fresh rather than forcing you into the most rote, mechanical playstyle imaginable in the name of being "hardcore." I'm sorry, that's not "hardcore." I do, however, have a more apt phrase in my vocabulary for that: "self-indulgent and boring."
By the time I managed to complete Beton Brutal, it failed to convince me that games can be made without checkpoints. In fact, it persuaded me of the complete opposite. Checkpoints are not inherently a bad thing, and if you're looking to make your game feel intense and nerve-wracking, you can still integrate them into your game and give your players the same effect. Have them be a reward, or randomized, or hidden. What you do by removing any semblance of a saving system is, ironically, make all forms of progression feel stilted and unremarkable. Given that Beton Brutal has no narrative to rely on or any evident lore, that sense of mundanity feels as though it couldn't have been more than a side-effect. Embrace the gimmicky nature of it all, embrace save scumming! As Backloggd user Momoka eloquently puts in their review for the GameCube remake of Resident Evil, you can have a game that isn't traditionally fun and let the people playing your game save. If you force me to save my game every time I need to take a break, or every time I force the game closed in a particular way, that just feels like the pettiest form of punishment. With nothing to really justify it other than the developer insisting on it, I feel forced to reduce my evaluation of Beton Brutal to a scale that this developer is keenly aware of: spiteful minimalism.
I want to like Beton Brutal, but throughout the ten hours I put into it, it rarely let me. If uninviting games are your bread and butter, I suppose you'll chalk up all of the issues I have with it as me just being bad at the game. I can't say you're wrong. But I can't say you're right, either. You shouldn't need to be "good" at a game to enjoy it. If failing at games is part of their charm, then the least you can do with an interactive medium is make that failure engaging, insightful, or meditative. I seldom had that experience with Beton Brutal, so I can't, in good conscience, pretend that my lack of proficiency has much to do with it.
I think it's pretty easy to take for granted how much official controller support can add to a game. I'll give you an example: Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 on the Steam Deck is an unmitigated nightmare that, at best, is barely playable unless you have a mouse and keyboard plugged in. But the version for the Nintendo Switch works surprisingly well. Further case and point: anyone who has ever tried rebinding the buttons on a controller so they could play any of the three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games developed and released between 2007-2009 probably came to the same realization that the developers of System Shock 2's canceled Dreamcast port did: there just aren't enough buttons on any controller for this shit, man. Unless you want to sacrifice your ability to lean around corners, turn on your flashlight, change the firing mode of your weapon, or have quick access to healing items, trying to play the PC versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with a controller is inadvisable until further notice.
Like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3's Switch port, what drew me to the Legends of the Zone Trilogy bundle currently on sale for the Xbox and (surprisingly) PlayStation isn't that I had never touched these games before, but I was genuinely curious to see how a franchise that has never had official controller support before would handle the task of running on console hardware. And surprisingly, it works. It works about as well as you would expect it to, anyway. It is still a little finicky in some regards: sensitivity between aiming regularly and aiming down sights differs to a distracting degree, the weapon wheel doesn't pause or slow the game while you're using it, and navigating the inventory without a cursor slows things down, which isn't aided by the fact that using the inventory, too, does not slow or pause the game for you. Some of that clunkiness aside, though, these control fine and are perfectly adequate ways to experience the vanilla versions of these games if you've either never played them before or simply want a reason to play them again. They've added achievements to all three games, as well, which is always a nice touch. Multiplayer modes aren't present, but it should be common knowledge by now that multiplayer doesn't tend to carry over when an older game gets re-released unless it was a notable part of the package (and here, it was not).
This is sort of reminiscent of that time they ported Half-Life 2, FEAR, Far Cry, and Doom 3 to seventh-gen systems to accommodate for the fact that neither the PS2 nor original Xbox could manage stable/struggled to manage stable ports of either, except they've done it two console generations later. I don't really mind that though; I find this sort of re-release nostalgic. On the subject of this being released on last-gen hardware rather than current-gen systems, perhaps they didn't have the resources for that? That distinction does make this feel a bit lazier than it should to prying eyes, but on a PlayStation 5, it emulates just fine, looks great in 4K, and feels fine enough with a DualSense. I am a bit bummed that they didn't consider porting this to the Switch, but I can see where technical barriers and monetary incentives would have prevented such a port from happening. Oh well, maybe next time.
There are a couple of interesting differences I've noticed so far:
- The Energy Drinks you'll find in-game now have the branding/product placement that they apparently did in the original European releases.
- They've done their due diligence, and the Chernobyl in Shadow of Chernobyl is now spelled in Ukrainian fashion, with an O instead of an E. They've also gone ahead and done this for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, so it's not too surprising, but what is is that they've gone ahead and edited the original menu images to accommodate for this change.
- As has been common with these re-releases since Whoopi Goldberg introduced the Looney Tunes (probably), there's a disclaimer in here about these games being historical artifacts (no pun intended). While you could point to something like the use of the R slur in these games for that disclaimer, the most likely explanation for what they're referring to is that these games have never had a particularly positive outlook on the Ukranian military. Preeeeetty bad timing for that, I'd say.
ETA: Easily the roughest bit of transition from PC to Consoles is that I don't think any of these ports allow you to quicksave. Given that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has always been firmly in the camp of "quicksave every five minutes in case you die instantly", this means that your manual saves will fill up quickly. There's also the fact that these being straightforward ports means that there are no quickslots for any game that isn't Call of Pripyat. Prepare to be sorting through that inventory a lot just to use one energy drink! That being said, I stand by my assessment thus far: these are accessible ports that mostly work out of the box. If that's what you're looking for, it's forty bucks well spent.
ETA2: Lowering my score for this by a star. Everything I said is true, but the faithfulness of these ports also extends to their notable technical shortcomings, including crashes, bugs that have never officially been patched, and inconsistent spawning/despawning. These games are still playable and fine, evidenced by the fact that I just spent 22 hours in Shadow of Chernobyl with very few issues. But if you're coming in expecting these ports to have been polished for consoles beyond their controls and presentation, they're somewhat disappointing, although the likely explanation is that there might not have been much to work with.
Like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3's Switch port, what drew me to the Legends of the Zone Trilogy bundle currently on sale for the Xbox and (surprisingly) PlayStation isn't that I had never touched these games before, but I was genuinely curious to see how a franchise that has never had official controller support before would handle the task of running on console hardware. And surprisingly, it works. It works about as well as you would expect it to, anyway. It is still a little finicky in some regards: sensitivity between aiming regularly and aiming down sights differs to a distracting degree, the weapon wheel doesn't pause or slow the game while you're using it, and navigating the inventory without a cursor slows things down, which isn't aided by the fact that using the inventory, too, does not slow or pause the game for you. Some of that clunkiness aside, though, these control fine and are perfectly adequate ways to experience the vanilla versions of these games if you've either never played them before or simply want a reason to play them again. They've added achievements to all three games, as well, which is always a nice touch. Multiplayer modes aren't present, but it should be common knowledge by now that multiplayer doesn't tend to carry over when an older game gets re-released unless it was a notable part of the package (and here, it was not).
This is sort of reminiscent of that time they ported Half-Life 2, FEAR, Far Cry, and Doom 3 to seventh-gen systems to accommodate for the fact that neither the PS2 nor original Xbox could manage stable/struggled to manage stable ports of either, except they've done it two console generations later. I don't really mind that though; I find this sort of re-release nostalgic. On the subject of this being released on last-gen hardware rather than current-gen systems, perhaps they didn't have the resources for that? That distinction does make this feel a bit lazier than it should to prying eyes, but on a PlayStation 5, it emulates just fine, looks great in 4K, and feels fine enough with a DualSense. I am a bit bummed that they didn't consider porting this to the Switch, but I can see where technical barriers and monetary incentives would have prevented such a port from happening. Oh well, maybe next time.
There are a couple of interesting differences I've noticed so far:
- The Energy Drinks you'll find in-game now have the branding/product placement that they apparently did in the original European releases.
- They've done their due diligence, and the Chernobyl in Shadow of Chernobyl is now spelled in Ukrainian fashion, with an O instead of an E. They've also gone ahead and done this for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, so it's not too surprising, but what is is that they've gone ahead and edited the original menu images to accommodate for this change.
- As has been common with these re-releases since Whoopi Goldberg introduced the Looney Tunes (probably), there's a disclaimer in here about these games being historical artifacts (no pun intended). While you could point to something like the use of the R slur in these games for that disclaimer, the most likely explanation for what they're referring to is that these games have never had a particularly positive outlook on the Ukranian military. Preeeeetty bad timing for that, I'd say.
ETA: Easily the roughest bit of transition from PC to Consoles is that I don't think any of these ports allow you to quicksave. Given that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has always been firmly in the camp of "quicksave every five minutes in case you die instantly", this means that your manual saves will fill up quickly. There's also the fact that these being straightforward ports means that there are no quickslots for any game that isn't Call of Pripyat. Prepare to be sorting through that inventory a lot just to use one energy drink! That being said, I stand by my assessment thus far: these are accessible ports that mostly work out of the box. If that's what you're looking for, it's forty bucks well spent.
ETA2: Lowering my score for this by a star. Everything I said is true, but the faithfulness of these ports also extends to their notable technical shortcomings, including crashes, bugs that have never officially been patched, and inconsistent spawning/despawning. These games are still playable and fine, evidenced by the fact that I just spent 22 hours in Shadow of Chernobyl with very few issues. But if you're coming in expecting these ports to have been polished for consoles beyond their controls and presentation, they're somewhat disappointing, although the likely explanation is that there might not have been much to work with.
The following is an excerpt from my list Errant Thoughts on Games I've Never Played Before/Haven't Played Too Much
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is perhaps the most fascinating game to have ever used motion controls, and it's also probably the most frustrating. I genuinely wish this were good. If you want a good portrait of how much the original Steel Battalion's core conceit bottlenecked it, its Backloggd page has it on at least seventy lists, but only six people have ever written reviews for it (at the time of writing). This might have to do with the fact that its current price range is currently sitting just above three hundred dollars USD. As Backloggd user Lapbunny helpfully points out, its lack of accessibility and uniqueness has made it practically a mainstay of many expos and conventions, so it's likely that there is an audience for it that just has never been able to own a copy of the game and its controller, themselves.
All this is to say that Heavy Armor was too early for the party. For all intents and purposes, this is a VR game that was made for technology great at emulating mobile games but was mixed with just about anything else. And I have to say, VR is the way to go for a game like this. The peripheral era of gaming is over, long dead, there are piss stains on its tombstone, and game companies are wise to that fact. The best thing that can be done now is to emulate what those peripherals could do without wasting space, and I don't think there's any other format more suited to that than VR.
About the saddest thing to be gleaned from the failure of a game like Heavy Armor is that, regardless of whether or not it can feasibly done now, there must not be any motivation for anyone with a budget to try it again. Steel Battalion isn't a franchise, and it probably wouldn't sell like one, either. If your main goal is to move units so you can keep making games, it's not something you would take another shot at. But somewhere inside me, I have hope. The indie scene is where a game like Steel Battalion will flourish again, as it has done for Guitar Hero quite recently. Godspeed, indie developers, godspeed.
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is perhaps the most fascinating game to have ever used motion controls, and it's also probably the most frustrating. I genuinely wish this were good. If you want a good portrait of how much the original Steel Battalion's core conceit bottlenecked it, its Backloggd page has it on at least seventy lists, but only six people have ever written reviews for it (at the time of writing). This might have to do with the fact that its current price range is currently sitting just above three hundred dollars USD. As Backloggd user Lapbunny helpfully points out, its lack of accessibility and uniqueness has made it practically a mainstay of many expos and conventions, so it's likely that there is an audience for it that just has never been able to own a copy of the game and its controller, themselves.
All this is to say that Heavy Armor was too early for the party. For all intents and purposes, this is a VR game that was made for technology great at emulating mobile games but was mixed with just about anything else. And I have to say, VR is the way to go for a game like this. The peripheral era of gaming is over, long dead, there are piss stains on its tombstone, and game companies are wise to that fact. The best thing that can be done now is to emulate what those peripherals could do without wasting space, and I don't think there's any other format more suited to that than VR.
About the saddest thing to be gleaned from the failure of a game like Heavy Armor is that, regardless of whether or not it can feasibly done now, there must not be any motivation for anyone with a budget to try it again. Steel Battalion isn't a franchise, and it probably wouldn't sell like one, either. If your main goal is to move units so you can keep making games, it's not something you would take another shot at. But somewhere inside me, I have hope. The indie scene is where a game like Steel Battalion will flourish again, as it has done for Guitar Hero quite recently. Godspeed, indie developers, godspeed.
TBD
"As a French studio addressing a global audience, the game does not engage in any foreign policy and is not inspired by any real-life events."
Oh no.
What's the point, then? If you're going to be telling a story through the perspective of a bodycam, should the medium not be the message?
I'm willing to give these developers the benefit of the doubt, maybe there will be more to this than that. But as it stands, that kind of statement attached to a game with a premise like this is only slightly less on the nose than EA or Ubisoft making a game adaptation of Bumfights with hyper-realistic graphics where you play as both the cameraman and aggressor and then claiming that the only bit of reality mirrored in it is that the homeless exist.
Oh no.
What's the point, then? If you're going to be telling a story through the perspective of a bodycam, should the medium not be the message?
I'm willing to give these developers the benefit of the doubt, maybe there will be more to this than that. But as it stands, that kind of statement attached to a game with a premise like this is only slightly less on the nose than EA or Ubisoft making a game adaptation of Bumfights with hyper-realistic graphics where you play as both the cameraman and aggressor and then claiming that the only bit of reality mirrored in it is that the homeless exist.
2023
Town of Salem 2 is a remarkable improvement over its predecessor in terms of presentation and mechanical depth. Everything I like about the first game is here, and better.
But anyone who is giving this four stars is not contemplating what the New User Experience is like. There are no tutorials, and the last time I played, all I was really given was a series of YouTube videos that a) were questionably outsourced to a streamer, and b) did not adequately explain any of the question marks I had. There's an exhaustive list of all of the roles you can play and what their mechanics are, and I'm really stressing the exhaust part of that word there. If you want to sit and read it all, you can, but it's hardly an intuitive solution. If you ask for help in any of the lobbies you play, people just ignore you. It's like the first time you play a new board game with your family if the rulebook was written in the style of a foreword by an adolescent individual who expects you to already be familiar with the game, and everyone at the table knows what the game is but you and they deliberately ignore any questions you have about the game itself. Fuck it, it's just Mao at that point. I think that's how it's spelled? You know, Mao. That card game where the one rule is that you're not allowed to tell other people the rules, the one that assholes practically hold dominion over. I'm sure you can learn to play Mao, and for some, that's rewarding. But, from my perspective, I prefer games that are welcoming. I want to both be challenged, and have fun. Fucking crazy, right? Nobody has ever thought of that before!
But anyone who is giving this four stars is not contemplating what the New User Experience is like. There are no tutorials, and the last time I played, all I was really given was a series of YouTube videos that a) were questionably outsourced to a streamer, and b) did not adequately explain any of the question marks I had. There's an exhaustive list of all of the roles you can play and what their mechanics are, and I'm really stressing the exhaust part of that word there. If you want to sit and read it all, you can, but it's hardly an intuitive solution. If you ask for help in any of the lobbies you play, people just ignore you. It's like the first time you play a new board game with your family if the rulebook was written in the style of a foreword by an adolescent individual who expects you to already be familiar with the game, and everyone at the table knows what the game is but you and they deliberately ignore any questions you have about the game itself. Fuck it, it's just Mao at that point. I think that's how it's spelled? You know, Mao. That card game where the one rule is that you're not allowed to tell other people the rules, the one that assholes practically hold dominion over. I'm sure you can learn to play Mao, and for some, that's rewarding. But, from my perspective, I prefer games that are welcoming. I want to both be challenged, and have fun. Fucking crazy, right? Nobody has ever thought of that before!
I have put maybe an hour or two into Silent Hill 2, and I know it's a game that I need to finish at some point. I know the great twist, I've had that spoiled for me god knows how many times. I honestly put it into the same camp that I have movies like Alien in: even if there's something in there that surprises me, having the big moments ripped off like a band-aid purely through pop culture osmosis dampers my curiosity somewhat. All of this is to say, while you may not personally be excited for new Silent Hill games, I'm just curious to see something new. Since I was only really around for P.T. once that was spoiled for me, too, I'm not counting it—which leaves me with the newly released The Short Message.
I did not get the hate that this got over its leaks, and having finally played it, I still don't. Having seen those leaks, I actually have more of an appreciation for this; I know now that this was pretty cohesive in its themes and intention when it needed it to be and never deviated from that. I don't mind a lack of subtlety, as long as the bluntness of what you're working on is there for a good reason, and I found the reasoning for it here to be acceptable. It's laser-focused on what it wants and needs to say from beginning to end, and this focus is echoed throughout the spaces you explore. Although I can see someone being a little irritated that this is linear to the point where doors don't unlock unless you read certain notes, most of those notes serve the story and not the lore. There are notes that serve the lore, but they all feed you the right amount of information while giving you space to think. What impressed me on an immediate level were the cinematics. I genuinely can't tell if they were live-action or rendered, although I know that they were likely rendered. It's uncanny as hell, but it's equally impressive. What impressed me throughout, however, is how well this serves as a mood piece. Each and every location, whether it was important or minor, made me feel something. This is more of a vibes game than something substantive or scary, and while that might be disappointing if you're going in expecting serious scares, it kept me hooked. One concern I do have, if this is the playable teaser many are making it out to be, is that the only area where I noticed evident performance issues was when I was near fog. If the new Silent Hill games are all going to lack the fog or run like shit because of it, we might be in for a doozy. But regardless of that one scene, the rest of this was pretty solid! ...for the most part.
Yeah, those chase scenes, man. I'm a little biased because I already don't like chase scenes, but something about them here felt either like filler or downright infuriating to deal with. If it weren't for the last chase sequence, my rating for this would absolutely be three-and-a-half stars because the vibes were just that immaculate for me. But no, god, no. I don't know if I ever want to go through that again. Put it this way: the game doesn't make a big deal about which rooms you go into because of its linear trajectory until the final chase sequence, where it expects you to remember the layout of the map like the back of your hand while elements of it feel completely different. It expects you to find five photographs in this mess without giving you a map or checkpoints. At a certain point, the stress I was intended to feel gave way to frustration. The only reason I didn't stop playing there was because I wanted to see the ending. That was it. The ending was nice, and there was a cute little tune that played over the credits (way more people worked on this than any other free game I've ever played), but I don't think that forgives it. It was that bad. At least the creature design was cool, though—although I found it to be scarier in the leaked concept art than I did in the final product. Consequences of having that kind of stuff leak, I guess. Whoops! Feel bad for the developers on that front, because I'm probably not alone in that.
What I liked about this, I really liked. If a new Silent Hill game is made from this mold, I wouldn't mind, actually. The Silent Hill 2 remake being a horror game that needs to have a trailer dedicated to its combat should say something about how skeptical I am of that, but I might also check it out when it's on sale. If this and that trailer is Konami's way of getting people back on the Silent Hill hype train... I mean, I wouldn't call this embarrassing. This was cool. But, 7/10.
I did not get the hate that this got over its leaks, and having finally played it, I still don't. Having seen those leaks, I actually have more of an appreciation for this; I know now that this was pretty cohesive in its themes and intention when it needed it to be and never deviated from that. I don't mind a lack of subtlety, as long as the bluntness of what you're working on is there for a good reason, and I found the reasoning for it here to be acceptable. It's laser-focused on what it wants and needs to say from beginning to end, and this focus is echoed throughout the spaces you explore. Although I can see someone being a little irritated that this is linear to the point where doors don't unlock unless you read certain notes, most of those notes serve the story and not the lore. There are notes that serve the lore, but they all feed you the right amount of information while giving you space to think. What impressed me on an immediate level were the cinematics. I genuinely can't tell if they were live-action or rendered, although I know that they were likely rendered. It's uncanny as hell, but it's equally impressive. What impressed me throughout, however, is how well this serves as a mood piece. Each and every location, whether it was important or minor, made me feel something. This is more of a vibes game than something substantive or scary, and while that might be disappointing if you're going in expecting serious scares, it kept me hooked. One concern I do have, if this is the playable teaser many are making it out to be, is that the only area where I noticed evident performance issues was when I was near fog. If the new Silent Hill games are all going to lack the fog or run like shit because of it, we might be in for a doozy. But regardless of that one scene, the rest of this was pretty solid! ...for the most part.
Yeah, those chase scenes, man. I'm a little biased because I already don't like chase scenes, but something about them here felt either like filler or downright infuriating to deal with. If it weren't for the last chase sequence, my rating for this would absolutely be three-and-a-half stars because the vibes were just that immaculate for me. But no, god, no. I don't know if I ever want to go through that again. Put it this way: the game doesn't make a big deal about which rooms you go into because of its linear trajectory until the final chase sequence, where it expects you to remember the layout of the map like the back of your hand while elements of it feel completely different. It expects you to find five photographs in this mess without giving you a map or checkpoints. At a certain point, the stress I was intended to feel gave way to frustration. The only reason I didn't stop playing there was because I wanted to see the ending. That was it. The ending was nice, and there was a cute little tune that played over the credits (way more people worked on this than any other free game I've ever played), but I don't think that forgives it. It was that bad. At least the creature design was cool, though—although I found it to be scarier in the leaked concept art than I did in the final product. Consequences of having that kind of stuff leak, I guess. Whoops! Feel bad for the developers on that front, because I'm probably not alone in that.
What I liked about this, I really liked. If a new Silent Hill game is made from this mold, I wouldn't mind, actually. The Silent Hill 2 remake being a horror game that needs to have a trailer dedicated to its combat should say something about how skeptical I am of that, but I might also check it out when it's on sale. If this and that trailer is Konami's way of getting people back on the Silent Hill hype train... I mean, I wouldn't call this embarrassing. This was cool. But, 7/10.