[11/27/2023]

The end of the Bungie era of Halo. Where to go for the next main entry of the series than back? Where the original trilogy told a tale of hope admist a war where the odds are stacked against you with the Master Chief, Halo: Reach tells one of what happens when that uphill battle can't be beaten.

As a prequel, this game brings back some design choices from the first game. Health and fall damage return, although health is a bit easier to work with as it'll regenerate up to a certain point depending on how much you have. Some of the weapons you find in the game are also unique to it, which is a shame since I like some of them. The Needle Rifle supercombines in 3 shots... and that's it, really. The DMR's okay, the Concussion and Focus Rifles can go. The vehicles could also stay in the past. The Falcon is a budget Hornet which was replaced by the Wasp anyway, and the Revenant is just a mini Wraith. The obsolescence of these things just adds to the fact that this is a prequel, so them never coming back makes sense. This game's soundtrack has an undertone of desperation, but also has those moments of where you feel like you're making a difference fighting back. Key word: feel.
 
This game's greatest assets are the tone and characters. This is a losing battle, and if you've paid attention to the dialogue in Halo 1 and 2, you'd have known that by now. Even then, the fun of a prequel isn't in what happens. It's in how it happens. Returning to areas you've been to earlier in the campaign, burning and devoid of life, makes you wonder what or who else might fall to the Covenant next. The characters surrounding you serve to add to it, too. Noble Team is made of Spartans not individually as strong as Master Chief himself, but they make up for it with their coordination and numbers. With their own roles, personalities, and faces that we actually get to see, we witness them getting picked off one by one to emphasize just how strong the Covenant is, and how hopeless the war feels. Ultimately, you indirectly lead to the entire main Halo trilogy, and thus save all of humanity, at the cost of your own life.

After 4 games of being a hero and saving the day, the Halo franchise gets a major shift in tone, so this one is a standout as both a game and an entry in the series. Bungie ending their time with Halo with a far more bleak tone and only having a glimmer of hope at the end as the hero of our tale might be a reflection of them and the Halo series at that point in time (we know how that went). Bungie may have been able to seee what happens from outside, but Noble Six won't get to see the end of their own story. They don't know if their sacrifice actually meant anything. They have nothing but blind hope.

Ain't that a bitch?

[10/30/2023]

My first Forza Horizon game, and my first Forza game in a hot minute. Racing comes first and foremost, but the open world and its activities is perfect if I just want to boot up the game and relax by driving whatever car I feel like at any given moment.

The game also looks beautiful. This is the only way I've seen areas of Mexico that aren't Baja. That being said, though, the depiction of the country's regions and cities is like the one thing this game got right about Mexico. It's a game set in Mexico, made by a British studio. The progtagonist is confirmed to be the same one from Forza Horizon 4, so they're British. That's kinda annoying. Even more annoying is the almost stereotypical portrayal of Mexican people. We've got a woman who won't shut up about her grandfather and his history with cars, the Vocho is apparently the only car Mexicans are a fan of, and they mix Spanish in the occasional English sentence. I guess that last one's on me for setting the game audio to English, but they should have at least gone for the occasional full sentence in Spanish or none at all before making everyone sound like they only remember what they learned in their high school Spanish class. The radio's also got like zero Mexican songs. The Drum & Bass station is cool, though.

Shoutout to this game for carrying me through my first two years of college. Now it's Motorsport's turn to carry me through the next two.

[1/10/24]

HOLY SHIT.

After almost 3 months, I've made it. 8 games beaten, and just one more to go before Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth releases on the 26th. This was The Big One for me. It's an RPG, so it's naturally gonna be. A soft reboot that's not only the beginning of a new story with new characters in a new location, but also changing the genre of this well-established franchise, all while having the subtitle serve as another major transition for the series (at least in the west)? It's insane how they stuck the landing with all of this. 50 hours and I didn't feel bored at any point. God, I cannot wait for Infinite Wealth. It's gonna be so awesome and so tragic.

This game made me realize that I have a thing for RPGs set in the modern day. This section of Yokohama is massive and is a dream come true after sticking around significantly smaller areas in the previous games. Sure, this game tones the wackiness that people know this series for way the fuck up, but it's all based on real-world concepts. It helps that new kid Ichiban Kasuga is implied to percieve the world as an RPG due to growing up on Dragon Quest. I love the hybrid combat they've created where positioning (uncontrollable, my only gripe with it) is a key factor and Ichiban can pick shit up like the other games. The job system, a subgenre of RPG that I've never looked into until this, is a perfect fit for the setting.

Whereas Kiryu is stoic and operates alone, Ichiban is the goofiest motherfucker around who knows when to get serious and has a crew that he'll do anything for. I love this cast so much. Adults all forced to deal with shitty circumstances, united by the one with probably the shittiest. The camaderie makes this entry the most wholesome one to me. The last member is my personal favorite even if they underperformed gameplay-wise in my run. Needing to build Ichiban and his party up to get people to love them after almost 15 years of Kiryu wasn't gonna be easy, but they nailed it.

Since Yakuza 0 in 2015, I feel like RGG Studio managed to hit a stride with their stories where they have some greater weight to them as to feel more than just a charmingly cheesy flick with the same structure of mystery-filled first half and an action-packed second half with some equally cheesy twists. The essence is still there, but everything else surrounding it is so much more genuine. This style of storytelling with the aforementioned party makes this my second favorite story in the series. I think the sheer stupidity of Yaluza 4 gives it a so-bad-it's-good quality, but if we're talking about genuine quality, this one is up top. Also, this game is funny as fuck and I don't recall stifling a laugh this often in recent memory.

This might have become my new favorite RPG. With the improvements coming to Infinite Wealth, that might be a short-lived title, but it's worthy of it nonetheless.

[5/12/24]

Happy 25th, 3rd Strike.

It only took 5 years since the last Street Fighter II revision for there to finally be a worthy successor to the name. The first version of Street Fighter III, New Generation, was incredibly jank and felt off at all times. The second version, Second Impact, had some changes, but the game still failed to live up to the name. The two versions are incredibly underdocumented, and it's because this one here blows them out of the water. For one, we get returning veteran Chun-Li (who happens to be one of the best characters in the game) alongside four other new characters: Makoto, Remy, Twelve and Q. SFIII's definitely got the most unique roster to this day and it's so sad that most of these guys haven't seen the light of day since '99.

In terms of balance changes, the parry sees itself finally being useful! In New Generation and Second Impact, the parry was designed as another defensive option, which makes it SUCK because you tap forward instead of back to block. A little bit of frame data adjustments in 3rd Strike and it's now a tool used for offense with the ability to whip out an attack much faster than if you were to block it. The rest is history.

Aesthetically, it's the other side of the 90s coin that Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the previous two versions of Street Fighter III showed off. The "street" in Street Fighter is at its most apparent here, even after Street Fighter 6 thanks to the drum & bass soundtrack and grittier stages (we can thank memory limitations for the latter).

I love this game. It's a sign of devs trying their best to salvage a terrible game, shunned at first because it was a follow-up to that, and then it took the most iconic moment in competitive gaming history for people to look at it and go "wait, this is actually fire." It's cemented itself as one of the all-time greats and it deserves every bit of that title.

[12/21/2023]

This game has... a lot.

Yakuza 4 had the benefit of primarily taking place in Kamurocho so that the casts each character has deepens the world contained entirely within it. This benefit gets even cooler when each of their stories eventually intersect. So naturally, we gotta follow up the fourth game having 4 characters with the fifth one having 5, but in order to not retread old ground we force them into different cities. As for the characters in question, Kiryu (obviously), Akiyama (the GOAT), and Saejima return. The two new characters are Shinada, the definition of washed, and Haruka. Shinada's fighting style is focused on weapons and his tackle making him the most unique fighter, and Haruka is a teenager and cannot fight. Instead, we play rhythm minigames so she can pursue her dreams of becoming an idol. Lots of rhythm minigames here.

Honestly, playing Kiwami to 5 made me realize that there had been so many layers added at this point in the series that Yakuza 0's story being more streamlined felt very necessary. I'm not going to assume that this game did poorly outside of Japan when it released, but there had to be something that this game lacked that 0 had. It's probably just the fact that 0 was a new starting point, and that this is the fifth fucking game.

Also, enemies are everywhere holy SHIT

Time loops are such an interesting concept to me, and I feel like video games are the only medium capable of fully realizing the concept. Majora's Mask comes to mind first. Twelve Minutes unfortunately comes second.

The gunplay is passable, the aesthetic the game is going for rocks, and the concept of the Visionaries (the people you have to kill to break the loop) having superhuman powers is pretty interesting.

The game goes for the "go loud or go quiet, the choice is yours" thing a lot of other games have, but like all those it's another example of just going for stealth if you don't wanna suffer through very same-y combat. It also doesn't help that it feels even more monotonous because you go through the same areas at the same times of day so often because time progresses on a per-level basis, meaning you do four levels before the day begins anew.

I'm not a fan of the way the game handles using the loop to my advantage, though. You get intel in one loop, and then apply that intel in another that results in you learning that oh, this thing happens at this time, instead of doing something that creates an entirely new scenario altogether (with the exception of like two of the Visionaries).

Essentially, the story is the most interesting part of the game. How is this island stuck in a loop? Why are Colt and Julianna capable of remembering between loops when everybody else isn't? Why are there different versions of Colt? I've only played through the main story as Colt, and I plan to play as Julianna. I don't expect an entirely different experience, though.

Surprisingly more fun than Smash, in my eyes. The physics feel a bit off, though, and I'm not that big of a fan of the perk system.

The biggest crime this game commits is being an always-online fighting game.

UPDATE (Feb. 25, 2023): What happened?

[11/1/2023]

Scrolling through the list of games on Xbox Game Pass always ended with me facing the lineup of 8, soon to be 9, mainline entries in the Yakuza series at the bottom of that list. The more times I scrolled through out of boredom, the more they showed up, and the more interested I was in trying the series out. The out of context moments and the fact that one of my favorite streamers is a fan of the franchise helped too. So, I eventually took the plunge on the 17th of October of this year.

The game's a prequel, but that doesn't mean that the whole game exists only to set up the future games or be filled with name drops that would confuse somebody whose first game is the prequel (looking at you, Resident Evil 0, or something like that I never played it). Thank god for that. This is the first game in a while to actually grip me in its story. I originally planned to do one chapter a day, but eventually it ended up becoming two chapters a day, and even three on a good day.

The gameplay's fun if you enjoy walloping people in a variety of ways and also hitting people over the head with a variety of objects. The combat's at its most thoughtful in one-on-one fights, to be honest. It kinda felt like a fighting game the moment I realized I could whiff punish and be whiff punished. Slugger Majima rules.

Depending on how much I like the next couple of games, I honestly might blaze through the series in the span of a few months before Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth drops. If my time with Yakuza 0 means anything, this is a good sign.

This isn't a review; I think "eulogy" is the more appropriate word here.

It's the 1st of October, 2022, and Overwatch is 2 days away from being shut down for good as it gets replaced by Overwatch 2. Overwatch 2 definitely won't be as huge, especially with the various controversies Blizzard's gotten in in the past year or two.

God, I remember the era of when Overwatch was a core pillar of the cultural zeitgeist back in 2016 and 2017. I think it really started to fade away as soon as Brigette was either revealed or released. After that, it all went downhill.

I've been with this game since the end of the first anniversary event, I think just after the patch that nerfed the hell out of Roadhog, so I'm not a day one player. I am, however, aware of all of the ups and downs the game has had. There is a lot of downs post-Brigette. But I kept playing, because it was the one game that my friends and I play. It was fun! But, that was 2017. It's gotten to a point that I haven't genuinely enjoyed playing Overwatch in the past 3 years. None of the magic is there anymore, and it doesn't look like it's coming back any time soon.

Overwatch 2 has a very slim chance of being fun to me. But I hope, for my friends' sakes, that it is. I can't do this anymore, man.

TLDR; I miss old Overwatch. I miss the early days of a game in general.