Its a lot longer than i expected, but damn i didn't expect for this to hit so hard as it did. I played it back in January when it shadow dropped out of nowhere (only to wind up having my game pass expire go figure), and finally got the chance to wrap it up once i've renewed it.

The one word i can describe this game is.. unique. Sure, its a hack n slasher action game but its a hybrid of that plus rhythm gameplay you'd see out of guitar hero, meshed with a Saturday morning cartoon artstyle. On top of some corporate satire which kinda reminds me of ratchet and clank but with less cynicism. Also another word to describe this game is genuine, There's not some irony poisoned energy where, y'know, people taking the piss out of very bizarre and wacky situations. I mean this game stars a dude named chai who wants to become a rockstar that can summon a guitar out of scrap metal with a robotic hand he got from an assembly line who accidentally crushed his ipod into his chest. Best thing to do is just RUN with that premise and they did with flying colors. There's actual genuine convos between chai and the rest of his gang that actually did get a chuckle out of me. Even with the added touch of CNMN, your robo pal, having to constantly draw emotions on his face with a sharpie, that you can also see with the subtitles, will always get a kick out of me. That and The endless robots with either incompetent on doing work, suffering in a predicament or just fucking around.

Once i got a hold of the gameplay, that's when things really shine. Like ive said previously, its a hack n slash combat system with a rhythm beat behind it, Just like how games like metal hellsinger or BPM winds up being FPS games with rhythm behind it. You can summon your pals with very useful one off attacks with a cooldown via a tech cat named 808 (Tango really has a thing with cats, with evil within and this and ghostwire). On top of all that, everything is synonymous with the beat. And i do mean EVERYTHING. The environments, the guitar strings when you hit an enemy, the platforms you have to jump on, even the little miscellaneous things you gotta do to go through obstacles, EVERYTHING. I haven't seen anything like this since Def Jam Icon in 2008, where the environment reacts to the rapper you beat up synonymous with the beat. and that was 15 years ago. Really props to the musicians, designers and programmers because this definitely would be a pain in the ass to pull off properly but id say they'd did good. With a game with 0 expectations that they've developed in secret might i add.

Now, This game does have options for those who are rhythmically challenged (i sure was after not playing guitar hero since 2008), but i really did not wanna enable that and actually wanting to provide myself a challenge. Though i rarely scored an A on "Just timing" which much more skilled players wont have a problem with.

The bosses are actually kind of fun and unique. Have their own different quirks and ways to beat em and I always had fun and looked forward to the next one. Except the final one which is definitely bullshit and is responsible for the most deaths i've ever had in this game, and i just wind up button mash my way through and tossed everything and the kitchen sink at him.

And i gotta say, this game definitely feels like it could've dropped in the 2000s with the music choices here, like NIN to their own OSTs. Even surprised the shit out of me by playing the prodigy at one point, whom i haven't heard in ages ever since tv ads stopped using em. That's a definite deep cut right there. That mixed with some of the action mixed with the beats, got me impressed. On top of chai imagining a crowd of people chant his name like its a concert is the cherry on top.

Then there's the artstyle, Which i can best describe as Saturday morning anime/cartoon. It does stick out and its an almost reverse on what happened with Overstrike/Fuse whereas Insomniac went from a quirky tone to UBER serious military sci-fi shlock to be forgotten, with this seeing some concepts, I was baffled on how they went from basic scifi to THIS, which is far more suitable. I cant imagine what this game would've been like if they stuck with the original concept art. Because this game wears it on its sleeve, literally jumping from gameplay to cutscene is almost smooth, because it goes from an animated segment, usually chai breaking a window INTO gameplay. Its little touches like that, that makes this one big playable cartoon (in a good way). In game, it almost like they took Ratchet and Clanks industrial/futuristic dystopia design and mix it with jet set radio. I gotta say it is aesthetically pleasing to look at and even runs well since it isn't "photorealistic".

If you haven't heard me mention the story by now, its because there's not much to talk about there, if you played a game about a ragtag team going against a corporation, You've know where the stories gonna go. Including the plot reveals which, yeah, explains a lot. Only 1 plot twist actually surprised me but i wont spoil but it also impacts the gameplay a bit. But really the characters and the interaction between them is what elevates it for me.

Overall, Id say this is one of my favorite games in this generation because on how much fun i had with it. I HIGHLY recommend checking it out, especially if you have game pass, you aint got much to lose. After beating the campaign you can also do a lot of side objectives, a "BPM rush" mode where its a turbo mode to crank the beat higher and higher, or the tower mode where your abilities are gone and you have to rework your way to the top. Or the hardest difficulty being rhythm master which, screw that, this game already filtered me by the end lol

But seriously, i cant praise this game enough. Go play it.

The game went from a smooth solid parkour combat trial and error experience, slicing up enemies and having to deflect bullets, some enemies having a charge attack (that you gotta be quick to parry), some being big robots shooting a big fuck off laser thats the size of a brick wall, some being exploding spiders, some having the ability to play "guess whos the real one" by multiplying via mitosis, and being able to manipulate, explode/push back these bastards, slice through em like butter, traverse via slow down, dashing and even riding drones downward, slinging yourself to edges or in the air, running on walls, etc., all while trying NOT to die in one shot, alongside a good OST by daniel deluxe that'll set the scene and get you into the mood..

To the very last mission being the most rage inducing bullshit and a huge test of my patience, not the boss fight which was serviceable, rather the wallrunning sequence in the "Cyber space" where you usually get your upgrades which aren't that bad until the finale. Where you have to dodge red balls coming straight for your ass, you CANNOT slice 'em and there's a fuckton coming at you while trying to hop on platforms.

That, having to take down shield balls in order to kill enemies and maybe the upgrade system of pick and choosing which chips go in via a tetris minigame, while cool, winds up holding the game back. I'd just go for the ones that made me go a bit more agile and deflect bullets so i could go through the game smoothly.

Story wasnt much to write home about, kinda knew where it was going given i played other games where you play as a killing machine commanded by an unknown almost untrustworthy entity who betrays you in the end, only i could name another game with that premise, that's also set in a cyberpunk dystopia and that was Ruiner.

When the last cutscene happen i was like "Oh yea there was also a rebellion going on, i had forgotten all about it". Especially when the more interesting tale was rather the intrigue on the ghostrunner "Jack" as you play as him and game explaining what was your purpose, who created you and those who are trying to stop you.

That being said, It is satisfying when you play it, and while its more of a fast runner/parkour type of game and not reliant on hefty weight like Mirrors edge or dying light, I'd say this is one of my favorite parkour games that i had slept on for too long. Despite that horrible final level that almost made me thought i had a skill issue and not the fact that the level is just plain bullshit and tedious to get through more than its worth.

Played during the free weekend on Steam and uh, its fine... not for goddamn $60 or $40 on sale or even worse, the infamous "double expensive fuck you give us $100+ for battle passes and skins and extra shit" edition that every game 2K has nowadays.

For a lil background: I was looking forward into playing this because Lego was a part of my childhood, especially the games, specifically Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman and that Lego RC Racer Flash game back in the day. While I sorta grew out of it, only having to watch the Lego movie, so i had missed out on the modern lego games like city undercover or Marvels superheroes/Avengers or DC super villains or the updated Lego Star Wars saga, I was willing to give this a shot since its akin to The Crew 2 but with Legos, being able to switch from Regular on road car to an off road to a boat in a flash. But knowing 2Ks practices and greedy ass nature, I passed on it for a while until i waited for a sale. So when it had a free weekend i was looking forward to it, albeit I played it pretty last minute on the final day so i only had 4 hrs of playtime but i think that's enough.

First thing I see when i boot up the game is that i need a 2K account, So i had to dig up an old ass 2K account i havent used in forever, because you need that for the following:
-Unkie monkey's Shop which can net you better vehicles
-The community made cars to download into your garage and drive in game
-Multiplayer
and so on

So you have to get an account to experience 50% of the game, which is bullshit right from the jump, then the game begins..

Game starts out with you being the new racer on the block being trained by Clutch Racington to defeat the big bad Shadow Z, With S.T.U.D assisting you and acting as a guide to the world. Speaking of which, the tutorials is so bombarding that i just skip most of it because i wanted to get to the open world and the races. the former being the highlight and the latter being ok but with one HUGE problem that ill get to in a second.

The races play like your average kart racer but the tracks are fun with that feature of transforming your vehicle on the fly, like ive said before, On road its your supercar, sports car, electric car, etc., off road its your atvs, trucks and even a drivable saucer, and in the sea its jetskis and boats, and when i say on the fly, i mean INSTANT. Seamless. and the driving feels better than expected. You can even drift! which is a miracle after playing NFS Unbound which you cant properly drift for shit. But for that HUGE problem, I cant recommend playing this game for the racing since its frame rate dips HARD during races. Even if you downgrade the resolution scale or graphics settings. (I'm willing to bet its that damned denuvo DRM shitting the frame rate alongside the constant unreal engine 4 stutters) Which is funny because in the open world sandbox it actually runs well despite having to render a larger map (well 4 different open zones) on the fly.

Speaking of which, the sandbox mode is a highlight and reminds me of shit like burnout paradise with the open world, only with a LOT more destruction physics like you can destroy other cars, destroy environment (except houses this aint Bad Company) and run over lego civvies, obviously they're not dead its a kids game but its funny knocking them on their asses. And the open world does reward such exploration and you smashing vehicles acting as collectibles rewards you with money to buy cars and different racers and XP to level up to race. Even have powerups such as jetpacks later on in the game which lets you not necessarily fly, but hover.

The progression isn't as smooth as id like it to be tbh, while You level up after finishing races but then the game starts to halt your progress and pad it out with minigames including destroying robots from destroying generators, getting car parts to repair someone's car and saving civvies from zombies, while the novelty is fun the first time around, it gets old pretty fast.

So in my 4hrs of playing, I'd say wait for a deep, DEEP sale and for 2K remove fuckin Denuvo or patch the frame rate which probably is unlikely given they're shitting out NBA and WWE games annually.

Favorite Warcrime simulator.

WW2 CoD Campaigns really peaked with this and haven't been topped since, the brutality of the campaign is unmatched, NPCs will legit get killed off unceremoniously in front of you and you just have to keep going, whether its the japs BANZAI-ing you for the upteenth time or Fighting through the heart of the reich, This is one of the most hellish feeling war games out there. Doesnt help that i played on hardened (because fuck playing this on veteran with the constant grenade spam) and even that was tough, when an enemy snipes you, you're dead, no regen health, just GONE. This is one of the few cods that i actually hugged the cover for life while popping heads using the lean feature on PC. And i definitely abused the flamethrower for most of the American campaign, that was a lifesaver against all the damn japanese BANZAI-ing you and hiding in the trees. In fact, they do ambush the hell out of you plenty of times, they will NOT let you breathe for a single second. and i wouldn't have it any other way. Even the turrent level where you control the gunners of the black cat, a flying plane, managed to be one of the best turrent missions in any game because of how frantic it is having to take down merchant ships and kamikaze planes, all while rescuing sailors swimming towards you. And you cant save them all, it doesn't go into a game over screen, you're just have to face the fact that you cant save em all.

Even the american campaign ending felt more bittersweet than patriotic, you're just glad nobody else you're even half acquainted with is picked off by the end. The russian campaign definitely shows its strength and can tell this kickstarted the eerie, gritty vibes later treyarch games would inherent. This game is still special due to the fact that unlike Black ops games which favors the more bombastic hollywood action, this games atmosphere manages to feel more horrific than badass. Its still badass hearing some kickass beats (all while burning down japs with the flamethrower mind ya) but some orchestral tracks just really hammer the home the horrors of the war. including the main menu.

The gore/gibs physics also does wonders in this that unfortunately havent been replicated, Whilst the Black ops games are gory (closest one to this is BO3), the gib system by having chunks of gore flying out after hitting a head or body shot just works to the games favor. and its much more immersive than a mere hitmarker like in MP. Not just in campaign, Nazi Zombies too.

Speaking of which, This is definitely the most eeriest zombies by far. It truly fits like a glove in this game with the fact that you barely have shit to work with from the jump, no perks no nothing in Nacht der untoten, making you feel helpless compared to the later games (and maps like Shi no Numa/Der Riese) that you can breeze at least to round 50 easily. Even Verruckt you had to worry about super sprinters thanks to the speed and animations on the zombies coming at you at lightning speed, so on top of having to deal with being in an asylum with the creepiest atmosphere, you're also have to deal with that as well. Luckily perks are there to help you (well, juggernog giving you more health, Double tap having your gun fire 2x faster and Speed cola giving you speed reload, Not quick revive on solo, that shit aint gonna help you one bit.) You can play the other CoD zombies games or Shi no Numa/Der Riese casually, the first 2 nazi zombies maps on the other hand? Nope.

Multiplayer i haven't played too much compared to Cod4, MW2, BO1, etc. but it does have its rightful place here as well, taking what worked about Cod4's create-a-class and killstreaks system and putting its own WW2 spin on it. This does trump Cod4 in terms of overall multiplayer atmosphere and design, WAW is a lot bigger in scale in terms of maps, for what I've played, not to an exhausting extent like later cods like Ghosts but not super tight either, it gives you room to breathe and shoot from long range distances.

Overall, World at War is a classic that needs to be played on all 3 modes through & through (MP not too sure due to it being tainted by hackers and the only ways to play that is either fan clients or steam custom servers), and unlike the newer WW2 titles that just have this weird dissonance behind them where it just feels so damn wacky with its cosmetics, making you feel like a one man army at points or it really not capturing that feel of true WAR, only making this iteration all the more unique and age like fine wine as a result. it makes no qualms on what it is, complete and total brutality.

A good ass open world zombie survival horror that's one of its only faults is the story where i could care less about the characters.

Everything else including the parkour is great (tho you cant wallrun and most of the moves are locked behind a skill tree), i felt the climbing sections could be a pain in the ass and techland definitely knows you gonna try to cheese through em with the grappling hook, so in certain sections your guys "too exhausted" to use it.

if you played dead island the combat should definitely feel familiar to ya, except these weapons arent invincible and can easily break on you and you gotta repair them, except certain weapons like the guns or the dlc weapons like the chainsaw.

but by the time you repair em, you can easily get enough money/resources to buy a new weapon or craft one, especially with the added dlc. Which can definitely make the game piss easy by the end thanks to all the rifles and other weapons you can make with the permanent dlc blueprints you have in your inventory.

That aside, this is still a great ass experience, only hampered by story, and fucking connection issues that caused me to disconnect my friends session in coop. and the mouse cursor in the menu is fucked but you can make it better via mouse sensitivity.

Massive Improvement over the original game by a wide margin. The gameplay is a lil different than i would've expected from a Ghostrunner dlc and for good reason. Instead of playing as Jack in the main game, You play as Hel, an experimental modification of the Ghostrunners semi-replacing freeflowing agility with sheer ruthlessness and super jumps.

Now if she sounds familiar, that's because she was a boss fight in the main game and you had to fight her, and parry her attacks, jumping from one platform to the next, and often shoot her "surges", as its called in this dlc, at you.

They did a really good job at, not only replicating her style into gameplay but also made it intertwine with the main games gameplay mechanics without it feeling forced or jarring. Even adding a new mechanic called "Rage" which you can fill up by killing enemies, or stand in individual powerups for a refill. And this allows you to shoot "surges" at enemies similar to Jack's. Only this time, its really necessary given its your only tool and you don't have the other abilities he had. Despite that, it worked in the dlc's favor because of the satisfying combat actually getting an additional incentive to play aggressively. In fact, I wind up playing far more aggressive overtime in this than i did in the main game because of it. If the main game is more focused on freeflow movement and strategy, then this DLC is like Katana Zero but in first person. Focusing on SLAUGHTERING those in your way.

Even the upgrades focus on aggressiveness. While it shares traits like multiple dashes, outline enemies, deflect bullets, etc. It also has its own unique upgrades like giving you a temporary shield when your rage meter fills up that can block plenty of attacks, giving you a split-second chance. or being able to change your surge into an X, just like the hel fight in the main game. Even the tetris upgrade minigame has more of an incentive giving you additional Rage abilities like Very short invincibility after shield is down and X-ray being able to see enemies through walls or Overdrive which you kill enemies by air dashing into em. Even without these upgrades, you still feel like an unstoppable force to be reckon with.

Which does suit well with the story, which i definitely prefer in terms of execution than the main game despite it being a direct prequel. While Hel is obviously a puppet just like Jack, the story of her going from Maras puppet to capture the commander after refusing her orders to straight up becoming more and more ruthless and losing it overtime makes it more memorable. No biological brain and even starting to gain willpower and becomes rebellious against Mara. The whole tone of the DLC is a lot more mean spirited with dark humor throughout which suits it nicely of the premise of playing as an unhinged killing machine. Between Hel's banter with mara being straight up being a smartass with her in a matter-of-fact way, to even a cutscene confrontation where she confronts 3 climbers, only to kill one and the other panicks and shoots himself realizing its futile to go against her, and the last one getting choked while interrogated only to get his neck snapped. Even the rebel plotline is a lot more fleshed out with the spearheader "Connor" being flippant towards his pal Diego's concerns about Us going after them, and even Zoe argues with him basically going from giving a huge speech to the masses over the comms only for him to not really risk his ass on the frontlines AND having to leave Jack behind. Its brief but its WAY more effective than the main story which treats it as an afterthought.

In terms of enemy variety? There's only 2 main bosses in the expansion and 1 new enemy type. The new enemy is a rocket propelled soldier shooting sticky bombs while flying in the air, forcing you to traverse and not stay in one singular spot. they can easily be taken down like the drones in the main game. Just jump on em and its an instant kill. and the 2 bosses, one being the aforementioned commander which acts as both a hybrid of the new enemy type and a callback (or call forward, I guess?) to the constant parrying Hel's fight. and the other, without spoiling much, is a mech whose lasers and orbs you have to dodge whilst simultaneously avoiding the shocking platforms. Yes you've read that correctly. There's a shit ton of em and while i've gotten used to their patterns, it does feel cheap as hell sometimes during combat or certain sections of platforming.

I'd still take the final boss any day of the week over that frustrating final parkour section of the main game. And if that's all i had to complain about, then the DLC over exceeds at doing what it needed to do and even overshadows the main game in terms of gameplay, story and even Music which is a tall task given the main game already has a great OST. Its short but sweet, and its a great stepping stone for what to do with Ghostrunner going forward.

The game is at least worth one shot if you're a fan of spider-man.

There's a good chunk of variety in suits, including suits from most of the spider-man movies, from 2010's "Amazing spider-man" duology to Kino like Raimi's Spider-man trilogy to of course the MCU costumes from 2016-recently updated No way home suits in the PC version. and other additions like the Toku-inspired Spidey suit, Spider-punk, Negative Spider-Suit, cel-shaded comic book-esque spidey, etc. Including being able to add in mods on the PC version, there's going to be an endless amount of variety to choose from, and you can choose your own "Suit ability" which ranges from increased damage, bulletproof, reflecting bullets, being able to regenerate your combat meter which can be used for health by pressing down on the D pad or whatever key you've binded to, or can use it to use instant takedowns.

The Swinging does feel great albeit far more simple than expected, i thought it would be a shit ton of combinations to swing around New york but, it just seems right trigger to run and swing, Dualshock's X or A depending on the controller to shoot little webs to move yourself forward or dust yourself off and boost yourself upwards when you fumble to the ground, and maybe RT and LT to leap into edges of buildings, or miscellaneous things on rooftops like water tanks. and you can do cools spins and rolls by holding onto Square or Xbox's X button after you level up a little bit. and the charge jump is back (though you need to unlock it) so you can easily to swing back into action. Im satisfied of what they come up with, especially animations but there's a lot more room for improvement in terms of button placement, especially when it comes to parkour or what movements you can pull off by swinging.

Leveling up is a breeze, almost too generous even with one of the suit mods granting you extra XP before even doing the final mission, to the point of having 4 left over skill points after maxing out all of the skill trees. Only thing to worry about if ever is the other miscellaneous things like research points, challenge tokens, base tokens, Backpack tokens, crime tokens and landmark tokens to buy new suits (except the movie ones and other additional ones come with this version) and gadgets to help along the way. and Even that's easy to do via roaming around the city and pick off bases here and there in wave arena styled fights against enemies, doing side missions, taking photos of landmarks, etc.

Just wish that tedious ass things weren't there, tedious shit that you likely have heard of (the eternal MJ and Miles "stealth" sections) or things like Sable's soldiers at the later half just wind up being so damn annoying, particularly those with the jetpacks and those who just deplete your health in nanoseconds with guns or laser rifles. Had gotten me to use the damn bulletproof suit ability because of how annoying it is, like i never died during any of the major boss fights yet i fucking die constantly to those. or those enemies with whiplashes where they can catch you mid air and slam your ass into the ground while everyone else is shooting you, leaving no chance to dodge and ruining your combat flow more than the jetpack sable mercenary goons.

The other usual shit that's usually in modern open worlds like collectibles or "ubisoft towers" (just like the name implies, towers that are required to uncover the map fully, infamous on being mediocre ubisoft open worlds) dont feel as boring or mind-numbingly dull as i would've initially thought thanks to the swinging mechanics but i can definitely live without them.

The story starts strong but then it does take a while to start up again but damn when it hits by the 2nd half, it goes full speed ahead. You'd know what's gonna happen if you've seen a spider-man story before, be it movies or comics so there's no surprises here but the execution is genuinely good, Puts the first 2 MCU spider-man solo films to shame just on the fact that they take shit seriously and not taking the piss. Particularly when it comes to peter's identity, where here its treated more emotionally vs with those films its just played up for laughs and makes peter look so fucken incompetent.

Its emotional, well acted enough to where it didn't make me go "wtf that's cheesy" (well main story anyways, i know about the screwball broad and i really didn't like her like many reviewers) and its intense, especially when (without spoiling it) the city goes to shit and its total chaos and you have to stop it. You go from maybe stopping a few criminals in car chases and robberies and drug deals to full blown riots and snipers everywhere NONSTOP. and when i say nonstop, i mean getting this close to another campaign mission marker then hearing another NYPD dispatch and going "Aw fuck, not again".

The boss fights were actually piss easy like I've said before, didn't die once during a boss fight and i almost did with the shocker and that's mainly due to me figuring out how to dodge properly, but after that, it was almost embarrassingly easy.

Same with the combat for the most part (except those damn laser beaming/whip lashing bastards that deplete your health before you can even blink) I found myself getting 100x combos with a generous window even with the usual goons, goons with guns and big grunts compared to the arkham series where the momentum and the combo meter is just gone in the second you slow down. and just like the swinging i thought you can be able to pull off more moves other than the usual punching, webbing enemies up, swing em around, etc., makes me miss some web of shadows type shit where you can just straight up surf on a dude, Maybe when Spider-Man 2 (Insomniac) comes with peter getting the inevitable Venom/symbiote suit, there's gonna be some gnarly combos. but its serviceable here.

Overall, There's nothing completely egregious about this game, its good but it can be better. Helps that i play it on PC, running buttery smooth on my rig for the most part at 60fps, making the combat helluva lot more responsive. Would've said this is serviceable and gave it a 3 and a half stars but The story, the animations, the lived in world where there's more NPCs here than there are in certain open worlds nowadays and Graphics bump it up to a 4. One of the better "modern" Sony (PS4/PS5 era) exclusives atm.

This game being the finale of the Max Payne trilogy holds no punches and straight up cranks everything to the max, the gunplay is the best coming out of Rockstar which is a damn shame that GTAVs gunplay (which came out a year after this game) is absolute dogwater by comparison. the way you shoot, especially with mouse and keyboard is so smooth theres a reason why many call this a "point and click" adventure game. it even surpasses MP2 on how great it is. the shoot dodge feels a lot weightier than previous installments but i felt like i had used it 500x more despite that on how fun it is. and you can duel wield any 2 one handed weapons, so say, a deagle and a glock, a sawed off shotgun and a m1911, a revolver and an m9, and this is amazing since im a sucker for akimbo weapons in games, all while having only 1 assault weapon that you can carry, which sucks because you're limited in your arsenal compared to before but it makes switching weapons on the fly easier with max having his guns always up on the ready. Only other gripes about the combat is that you get into "last standing mode" when you're about to die and it takes one of your painkillers to execute, and its a royal pain in the ass since sometimes you'll die at a specific spot and you cant hit shit, and you cant restart checkpoint and have to see the death animation when you just wanna get back into the action. its a crutch that id get in easy mode but it is a hinderance in many cases. And the other crutch is that you no longer throw grenades but you can shoot them out the air and some chapters give you a grenade launcher, which are cool but damn do I miss going into bullet time and throw a grenade and pick off the rest. An underrated feature is the gore, I've rarely felt combat that had gnarly headshots like this one where the entrance/exit wounds make you suck your teeth in. one of the cutscenes showed me the corpses up close with one eye shot out and the others red and bloodied up and i was like "FUCK, i did that?", that plus the euphoria physics engine actually made this a good ass successor to MP2s combat when it comes to that front. Ragdolls would fly, body shots would have the enemy completely tremble, desperate to get up, and the slow motion cam when you kill the last one only adds to the weight of the bullets you're shooting. its peak gunplay and i wanting to have more and more of it, wind up feeling weird whenever i have to take cover to heal/reload. (i had gone through this playthrough on hard and its no pushover)

Enough gushing about the gameplay, the story is also great despite not being from remedy, it winds up having its own style of noir with constant visual noise representing max's state after the previous games and the tragedy of his wife and kid, his former friend turned traitor, his lover mona and everyone else around him. and this game runs with that, and winds up doing a character study on him rather than following up any conspiracies on the inner circle or deep state government shit. Though, now he's a part of another rabbit hole throughout the story in a "fish out of water" scenario and how brazil straight up makes the shit he discovered in new york look quaint by comparison. in fact many of shit max encounters in this game just seems to out place that he's pretty shook and disgusted about it. But the biggest thing about the story that makes it stand out from its own trilogy is that its a redemption story for max, no longer does he have to wallow in self-pity as the game progresses and drink himself to almost death, he winds up wanting to redeem himself. and max seeing the parallels of passo, his new partner that dragged him into this mess, and him starting a family with his wife, gives him the motivation to finally let go of his grief and guilt. Rockstar could've easily went with the betrayal route as the shocking twist as they do with many of their other titles but its refreshing to see them to not do that and rather do something a bit different and have it be the foundation of the story. and its also satisfying to see people in max's life not killed off unceremoniously after so many people died in his past. its like the inverse of not just past games stories of being overall completely dark noir with some moments of tongue-in-cheek, but also despite the usual rockstar's signature cynicism that can be traced to their other series like GTA, its a very bittersweet, raw, redemption story that needs to be played at least once. while Sam Lakes storytelling in the first 2 were peak, Dan Houser and his writing team is no slouch and this actually earns its place in this series despite it being tonally disconnected from the remedy MP titles.

Only thing that's preventing me from giving it a full blown 5 out of 5 stars is the PC port is riddled with bugs and crashes with DirectX11/DX10.1/DX10, bullet dodged myself into walls in DX9 mode and it screwed up so bad that it had everything including max and the enemies froze, and restarting check points only made it worse, forcing you to restart the game. and the infamous not being able to skip the cutscenes which would be annoying on repeat playthoughs.

That is the only thing preventing me from giving this a perfect rating, the pc ports fucked with crashes and bugs but the game itself is a 5 and probably one of my favorite third person shooters of all time, and One of my favorite Rockstar games, wanting me to go back for more.

This game was great. The story and the way it was executed was great, there were twists where i saw coming and i passed it off, only to look back on the little moment to moment set ups and had a "eureka" moment, including small little interactions felt like almost every moment had its purpose. Even the little tv shows which i thought would be just lil extra silly shit, was paralleling/metaphors of the actual story itself, making me WANT to watch them instead of just passing by 'em like it was nothing. Sure the story doesn't delve deep that "conspiracy" type of shit like MP1 did but it does make up for it with a pretty well rounded tragic romance story with Mona Sax that you know is not gonna end well with Max. It isn't afraid to take the piss out of itself either with tongue in cheek moments interspliced between Max's psychological episodes and the grander rabbit hole of a story, some even reference the first game without it coming across as a self-fellating comical parody in on itself. While writing this, I'm still thinking about a lot of payoffs and the parallels between max and those around him, its just that damn good.

The gunplay was a lot smoother with mouse & keyboard and high frame rate especially, the physics manage to give combat a lot more "oomph" to the combat, can easily toss out grenades during combat too unlike the first where you had to physically get the grenades out and throw em and switch back, makes for an even gung-ho combat experience. Even the dives/bullet times a lot more useful, the latter being relying on you having to get multiple combos in order for shit to slow down and the former being a lot more evasive and smoother than make combat into a screeching halt and puts ya at a disadvantage like the first.

it really took what made Max Payne 1 so good and made it even better.

Only problem i got with both of remedy's max payne titles is the janky as hell platforming that can be a total pain in the ass (less so in the 2nd but still exists) and this game you have to abuse the hell out of the "F5" key because this game will not give you checkpoints no matter what. But other than that, not much too complain about. The gunplay and the overall experience more than makes up for those frustrating moments.

Here is my review for the main game

And here's my review for the initiation DLC

Welp, this is the final major dlc for Arkham origins and WB Montreal definitely saved the best for last. Continuing the pattern of the Arkham series being heavily influenced by Batman the animated series (including having most of the voices from TAS return to reprise their roles and Paul Dini Co-writing the 1st few arkham games) while being far more mature take on the batman characters and universe, this is a literal adaptation of the heart of ice episode which was Batman's first encounter of Mr freeze.

Only stretched out to an mini campaign dlc expansion only taking place in only the "new gotham" area closing off the "old gotham" and the bridge and burnley were cut off thanks to mr freeze closing everything off to make the map small and tightly constrained to just the one upper area of the main games map. Only thing to do in these is to help out the GCPD who were frozen and stop anarky's henchmen rioting in the streets.

But really you mainly traverse through the main gothcorp building to rescue ferris boyle after getting your new years party crashed by mr freeze, even getting to kick ass as bruce wayne in the beginning before donning the batsuit. Not initiation bruce but more like bruce from arkham city's intro. but you can obviously tell how the stories gonna go, but it does provide some backstory as to the relationship between batman and freeze goes and how they end up the way they are in the later games.

But the building itself is frozen from top to bottom and you gotta go through such negative degrees to the point of even trickling down your health if you stay for too long. Which is where the XE Heat Batsuit come into play. You have this big hulking armored suit which can go through very low temperature eras no problem and has the ability of "heat gloves" which are reskinned shock gloves but for a reskin, its definitely a lot more fun than i initially expected because, not only you can save frozen cops by thawing them out of ice, but also get through some frozen areas by punching through them. This coupled with the "thermal batarang" upgrade makes for a nice lil change up in origins solid gameplay.

You've also have another variant in the armored thugs category, "freeze ray" types where they have a freeze ray like mr freeze and you have to dodge that and have to target them first during combat, otherwise you'd be frozen and have to thaw yourself out via tapping A (or X for PS controllers), They're a nice challenge once you've gotten used to em. Took me a min to know how to properly deal with those and not get annoyed.

Then there's the big bad, Mr Freeze. Whom I must say, has a fight on par with city's with having to figure out different ways to stun and throw a few blows on him. Like using said thermal batarang to knock down icicles on his head, corner take downs, having to do a line takedown, etc. Its definitely a fight that i've had the most challenge with overall with the game, notice how i didnt say bullshit artificial difficulty like my initiation review. because this was actually designed well and not haphazardly throw you in without any care in the world. On top of that, you'd got all your gadgets unlocked from the jump so you can go through this dlc with little to no problems.

Its definitely the best this games got to offer, its more optimized than the base game, more focused in terms of design and its short but its sweet. Sure, the plots predictable even if you didn't watch the TAS series but its definitely worth playing after to see an additional adventure after beating the main game.

Dead Space had the hallmarks of a horror classic. The atmosphere is one of the best I've seen, even having a unique HUD to where it never distracts what's in front of you, the enemies and their designs are gnarly as hell, the audio design is so eerie to where when you play with surround sound or speakers, it had me looking over my shoulder. Guess this game was ahead of its time with its creepy ass whispers like its an ASMR reading. All of this to invoke the biggest sense of dread and have this urgent need to GTFO of there.

Even the story comes into the play with you playing the, now famous, engineer issac clarke and his crew consisting of hammond and kendra, to find out what happened to issacs wife on the ishimura, a huge "planet cracking" ship that can take a piece of a planet to be studied on board. and they severely fucked up by bringing in an artifact known as "the marker" on board which causes hallucinations and can reanimate people into such nasty contorted creatures aka necromorphs. and the only way those can be killed, is via limb shooting.

Speaking of which, the necromorphs, all varied, manage to have some very gruesome designs, sure you got the boomer who spews out little fuckin minions when you shoot its belly, or the annoying as hell sprinters that give you no time to breathe. but there are those which throw a curve ball at ya like the little fuckers with tendrils coming out of their shell throwing shit at you or the regenerative one which can GROW BACK its limbs and head you shot off or the armored brutes where you have to shoot its glowing weak spots to have it lie down and attempt to shoot them off surgically precise. all of these make for some unique encounters that you can appreciate... for the most part. We'll get to why i say that in the negatives.

I'm sure many know the story of this game, given how many prequels, sequels, movies, spinoffs and even a remake has now spawned from this single game. But disconnecting from all of that, it is a great executed story on its own merits. Like i've said before with the HUD, it is non-intrusive on how it executes its story. That means 0 skippable cutscenes, all in game. Most popular example of this would be Half-life/Portal titles where characters talk in front of you while you walk around or mess around with the environment. I'd be turned off by the notion of unskippable cutscenes but Not once have i felt like the controller been taken away from me and i WANTED to see what's happening on screen, or in a mini screen on issac's visor. Be it audio logs, briefings, certain story plot points, etc. The voices are well performed, especially for 2008, Your crew members sound panicked but at least assured of themselves that they were gonna escape. or those who you find on the ship like the devout unitologist (Cult worshipping the marker and its creations) or the regretful Dr. Kyne, or various members audio logs capturing their final moments before death. To say this game is pretty bleak is an understatement. And they did a damn fine job with it. Even if Issacs a mute in this, and not the sequels and remake, i still felt bad for him and you can hear some frustration and anger whenever he stomps on a necromorph and so on.

Now since you're playing as an errand boy engineer, you are limited on your arsenal, but its unique in terms of variation. Starting with the well known plasma cutter, a weapon that can vertically or horizontally shoot off limbs easily. To the line cutter, same function but on a much bigger scale and has an alt fire that acts as a trip mine. To a flamethrower that can also shoot flame balls. To an auto rifle that can alternatively scattershot multiple rounds all over the place. To the force gun which can blow enemies back or its alt being a grenade launcher. To the saw ripper that can either activates buzzsaws in the air, slicing off enemies when held or alternatively can be shot normally. or the Beam which can be charged up to fire one powerful laser shot or can be used as a AOE explosive attack, damaging or killing those around you. These are perfectly fitted and you can see issac wielding them as an engineer or used by military personnel and none of em feel out of place. And given one of my first review on here was on Bulletstorm and how im a sucker for Guns that have alt fires, I love it. On top of these, You have a stasis module which can slow enemies down and a Kenesis module which you can guess by the title, Allows you to pick up anything in the environment and pull it towards you or forcefully push it. These work well hand in hand with the weapons to provide a unique combat experience given other horror games have you either aim for the head to kill (or in RE4s case stagger 'em for a bit for a roundhouse kick) but in this, you HAVE to go for limbs. and the physics engine, given that this is a game from the 2000s and that was the hot new thing at the time, is fun to mess around with. Having to see bodies react when you stomp on em or walk past them, including limbs and gore that much more gnarly and visceral. Which is impressive given the fact that this is the same engine that powered shit like Tiger woods PGA tour and this is all Visceral (At the time EA Redwood) had to work with, with no carte blanche and having to prove themselves.

Now why do i give this a 4 instead of a 5? Few problems here and there, One, the zero G sections are very janky as hell and can cause motion sickness for the less fortunate. Which the sequel has greatly improve on. 2nd, the bullshit enemies pull, like the sprinters completely bum rushing you and leaving you no time to breathe winds up invoking not fear or being scared shitless but rather being pissed off and had me yelling "Fuck off" during the last few levels of the game, and by that point they have worn out their welcome. and finally 3rd, CONSTANT CRASHES ON PC, MY FAVORITE. Its so much worse during the final few levels than it is previously, It runs smooth at 4k144fps on my rig no problem, but it got me frustrated having to restart a section, right as i finished but before i got to save. Even the physics weren't that fucky as i feared when typically games in this era, tie their physics to frame rate.

Other than those, I can recommend this, even with the remake out there, as it shouldn't be glossed over or worse, disrespected for its "game-yness" which is far better to embrace that mixed with cinematic storytelling than to strip all of that just to seem that much more "realistic" as i seen online when comparing this to the remake. Just prepare for crashes, play with a controller (mouse and keyboard is completely FUBAR) and brace yourself with some bullshit moments of sprinters near the end.

Arkham Asylum is the definition of simple yet very effective.

I know its almost cliché to praise this game as the 2nd coming of christ but It kinda was for superhero games much less licensed titles, with this and the surprisingly underrated X-Men origins wolverine game adaptation by raven in 09 really told the world how comic book games SHOULD be done after a sludge of just licensed shovelware with some hidden gems here and there. Showing that this genre isnt a laughing stock and that these relatively unknown (non mainstream anyway) devs at rocksteady, who just came off 3 years after making urban chaos, being a janky console fps of playing a cop having to take down thugs lethally or nonlethally, weren't anything to scoff at.

Just to set the stage: I was a fan of batman to the point of watching a lot of cartoons featuring him on Cartoon network including BTAS or Brave and the bold, getting off the high of the dark knight the last year, even owning those special DVDs where the case was the mask of the hero (same with iron man) and owning a batman costume as a kid for halloween that very year. So to see this games reveal trailer on old youtube got me so intrigued to the point of begging my parents to get it that summer when it first dropped, and they did, having to drive all the way down to target, drive back to home to get enough money to pay for it, go BACK to target then go back home. and even got this very GOTY version off ebay one year later on PS3 coming with 3D glasses and extra maps like the endless combat scarecrow nightmare/totally insane, crime alley and nocturnal hunter predator challenge maps, only fueling more hours into it.

All of that to say this game and eventually franchise means a whole lot to me and i'll admit to my bias there, however i had to come back to this game after not only beating it multiple times, nearly platinuming it on PS3 with regular AND GOTY, but also getting that remaster on PS4 and finally got the platinum trophy on there, to see if it still holds up. And seeing my rating you can tell, it does. (for the most part but we'll get to that titan filled elephant in the room)

The setup is very simple: Batman captures Joker who seemingly gave up very easily and takes him to Arkham Asylum, medical facility set to "treat" the criminally insane, however he seemingly escapes and takes over the asylum and releases not only his thugs from Blackgate who got transferred to here, not only actual insane lunatics in straightjackets but also come to find out, his main rogues gallery including: Bane who's been fucked up and addicted to titan after origins, Scarecrow, Killer Croc who's gotten more animalistic than half hybrid in origins, Poison Ivy, Victor Zsasz, all with the help of his girl Harley Quinn who also got in and helped him with this plan to stop batman from thwarting his REAL plan to release an army of roided up behemoth monsters with a Titan formula (that's been since retconned from Bane's TN-1 Formula that gave him strength but fucked him up mentally) into Gotham City. Even hearing instances on the radio of little diversions he placed within Gotham to distract the GCPD from focusing on the clusterfuck going on at the asylum.

Its the way the journey plays out that really makes it special, its like wack-a-mole, as soon at bats put down one villain, another pops up running amok, activating "detective vision" (X-ray mode where batman's eyes go white like in the comics or cartoon) and investigate the crime scene, scan the key problem and trace down certain DNA throughout the island to get to the next objective, running around the island in this castlevania ass design backtracking back & forth, all while joker just talkin shit on the mic throughout the game. This really feels like an long ass animated series episode with how all these villains hamming it up or even the sequences at play here with the scarecrow nightmares. Which is funny seeing all of them like this compared to the rest of the series where they take a darker, almost more grounded turn from city onwards.

It helps with the fact that they got not only paul dini who wrote for TAS but also Kevin conroy, Mark hamill, arleen sorkin, etc. to reprise their roles from TAS, like rocksteady could've easily gotten any one else but it definitely was on purpose by them & WB to have an less family friendly, more mature, more dark oriented vision of batman using influence with the animated series. Like not just with cussing or dead bodies everywhere, its also be having conversations with the thugs implying to do some devious shit like the infamous "Joker told me to kill my sister" dialogue.

You can tell rocksteady are also huge fans because they did their research and be having riddles or references to very obscure ass villains (by comparison) like prometheus, tweedledee and dum or the great white shark, like jesus this games character bios is the first time i've seen these characters and they give you a brief run down on them. and even give "patient recordings" to the villains and even an brief sequence of Dr harleen quinzels encounter with the joker before escaping with him and turning into Harley. On top of that, they got characters in the comic this games named after like aaron cash, whom went onto become a recurring character in the series and new characters made specifically for this game like quincy sharp or penelope young whose also a major player in the plot as to why joker got himself into the asylum in the first place.

They didnt have to go so hard on the detail on making this a more unique batman story but they did. Even getting the same narrative director from urban chaos, rocksteady even implemented a few workers, security guards, etc. just in minor 2 second roles on people batman have to save and check up on. It really makes this feel a lot more lived in despite it being mostly barren. I say barren, not empty because this is a map that gets more dynamic throughout the story, going from thugs who've just broken out, to snipers who've taken guns from the armory, to the insane patients who are weak with 1 punch or counter but will latch on and drain your health to ivys pods that you need to quickly dispatch or face 3 little ball spores that'll also kill ya.

The atmosphere has peaked to the point where it hasn't been matched for its sequels or prequels. The gothic nature and the art direction of the asylum really pops out, including the designs from Harleys nurse fit, to ivys fit with wearing nothing but the arkham shirt and vine based panties and vine veins, to scarecrow having discount Freddy Krueger claws (or needles in this case), venom-roided up bane, to killer crocs massive size to even batman and joker themselves being realized with such detail, joker having a dying flower on his suit or bats having to be all scratched up with his suit throughout the game.

All with the faces looking like they're straight out graphic novel and the mo-cap featured in cutscenes also really gives it that GRIMEY feeling that's been lacking as the series went on ironically with bigger budgets and better mocap.

Speaking of animations, id be amiss to not mention those throughout the game, the little animations even the thugs or lunatics be doing, it really gives them a lot of character, from the thugs taunting batman to kiss their ass or lunatics be walking around smacked outta their mind with loose straightjackets or running at ya like toddlers. And on PC is the definitive version because on console they don't have PhysX, but if you have an Nvidia card, you can enable PhysX which makes paper, debris, shotgun shells, etc. on the floor move all over the place, even being able to break some porcelain tile floors during combat, or the debris flying during scarecrow sequences just adding to the experience. Its such a small thing but it really makes a difference.

The combat with the freeflow system punching one thug to leaping to the next, countering their attacks, doing attack takedowns and throwing them, all in a rhythm like pattern that you have to keep going otherwise it'll drop and you have to start over. To think rocksteady went from an actual rhythm combat to this more simplified less taxing version, actually makes it all the better and it was so influential, other devs just straight up copied it without realizing why it was special in the first place. Having to stun enemies with knifes who block straight punches, having to counter lunatics jumping on you to jump over others who'd cattle prod you. Its easy to learn but hard to master FULLY but when you do, you'd see some smooth as hell moves that make you feel like batman. and on top of that i do miss the actual physics the enemies have to where you can hit 2 of em at once, or how they're almost Rockstar's euphoria levels of reaction of beating their asses with the titan or throwing them at each other. Shame that isn't really there from what i remember within Arkham City, Origins or Knight when they've tightened up the combat.

Sounds definitely help, i usually don't mention sounds but when i do, its either bad or succint, this is the case of the latter, from punch sounds, specifically the 1-2-3 punch, to the bones crack in takedowns to the batarangs to the batclaw to the grappling hook to the line launcher, zipping you across the area to the explosive gel to the batglide to the sonic batarang to the cryptography sequencer, these sounds are so damn iconic and live rent free in my head for so long. Same with the music, playing nothing but that trombone notes during exploration and when the shit escalates it'll start to get more intense.

The stealth is also very simple but when you master it, you'd feel like a badass. With you typically come into a room with a handful of armed thugs covering the room, picking them off one by one and the ai having to scramble to find you. While they aren't too complex with their tactics, they make up for it by being aimbots as soon as they see you they'll shoot you. So you CANNOT be seen. there's no get out of jail free card with the smoke bomb either, you gotta be smart and get rid of em one by one quickly especially when they got "suicide collars" (heartbeat monitors) that'll go off when an enemy is unconscious. So you gotta use all the aforementioned gadgets to clear the room including getting onto gargoyles and do inverted takedowns by stringing them up on a gargoyle with a rope or sometimes to a ledge takedown which is the same thing but on most ledges. All of this to make a well designed stealth system that you can play semi-aggressively and pull off some cool shit. And its so simple to where most can clear a room without much problem but the challenge is to do it so fast within a blink of an eye.

Though it isn't all sunshines and rainbows, the unfortunate boss fights range from "alright i actually like this" to "fuck it lets reskin the titan boss", Arkham origins this is not. There's standouts like Ivys big plant battle dodging her spores (whom i hated as a kid but can easily wipe just based on timing), having to sneak in Killer crocs lair, scarecrow nightmares where you have to sneak around his vision, even peeping your head out will get you dead but then the most of the time, its the one type of fight that'll be throughout the game and that are titans, basically humans turned into roided up monsters that'll charge at you or throw bodies at you. and you just stun them with a batarang, move the hell out of the way, let them hit a wall and go in for the 1-2 punch then dodge their incoming attack and repeat until they get down and you can strangle and ride them to punch all those around you. Its fun but then you realize, 90% of the damn fights were based on titan including 2 major ones: Bane & Joker. Bane makes sense given the backstory but Joker on the other hand, you literally avoid his attacks get his boys to come in, beat them up and batclaw him onto the platform while he's distracted by jack ryders news choppers, They aren't frustrating, its just a bit repetitive of having to face again and again. And while i do miss the sillyness of the titan bosses from Asylum, I'm glad rocksteady evolved the boss fights in city. (not knight unfortunately but we'll talk about that when we get there)

Then after you beat the story you'll get to play challenge maps that'll put combat and stealth up front and challenge yourself into mastering them. Combat you'd have to use all your gadgets and moves and even a bonus on not being hit ONCE, and Stealth you get the chance to do creative shit that'll earn you a medal. Both of these have 3 medals for a certain high score on combat or all these lil mini challenges in stealth. Infinitely replayable especially the actual bonus infinite ones that has no metals but to see how long you can survive. Then there's the bonus on the PS3 and PC (You have to mod in the files tho) where you can play as the joker himself, where you can play all the maps in the original game as the joker taking down the guards, his combat and movement is different, a lot more jovial, just wacky as hell, and instead of batarangs and batclaws, he got 1 bullet in his revolver, explosive rattling teeth, and goofy x ray glasses instead of detective vision. Which is funny as hell seeing the compare and contrast between the 2.

Then there's the riddler trophies/riddles that you have to do via detective mode, which is easier than i remember, its like a combination of having to look around in the environment with some clever shit to scan like things that were out of place or stuck out like a sore thumb and also using your gadgets like the sequencer, line launcher or the batclaw/ultra batclaw to solve the riddle/collect the trophy. Ironically i did most of 'em subconsciously without any guides, only for the damn joker teeth that you have to destroy with batarangs to be hidden under my nose. On top of having to do scanning the chronicles of armadeus arkham in the island and his backstory. I'd probably take back the riddler trophies being the easiest in origins, because asylum is even easier and to think i just pass by them when i was playing this as a kid when they were so simple.

Overall, This game is a classic and while its successors did a lot of improvements, this was remembered for being the quintessential batman game for a reason.

It was boring as fuck at the start shooting the cog robots, a miserable slog during the underground sections and having to have horde modes with the fabricator in the campaign

but when the mech suits and certain old characters show up i actually had fun, that and the windflares which they show up a lot but there's a lot of intensity there. i don't mind the new characters but they're just.. there, and in comparison to OG gears they're written like its a saturday morning cartoon where i could give less of a shit about any of em. and i gave em a fair shot but nah, just aint doing it for me. and the fucking enemies, including the grenade fuckers are tedious as hell to fight. and guess what, we get another brumak boss fight but this time its worse because you got these discount glowing locusts on your ass while trying to shoot the glowing bits.

the only reason why i aint giving this a 2/5 in spite of being miserable is that its a functioning TPS that runs well on my pc, especially for a game thats exclusive to the microsoft store where i feared the worst. otherwise its a forgettable experience until the end sections where i was actually having fun with the (albiet easy) boss fight.

Certified Hood Classic.

This is the game that treyarch really solidified their craft. on all 3 modes.

Campaign has take you into the shoes of resident schizophernic and SOG operative Alex Mason and being interrogated about the numbers and what do they mean after being brainwashed by Former Red Army Soviets Dragovich and Kravchenko and Former Nazi Scientist Steiner, and how do they tie in with the soviets activating sleeper agents into releasing a deadly chemical weapon on the US during the cold war. You go through the hell of 'Nam flashbacks chasing Dragovich as mason on one side and do some CIA ops with Mason's Handler, Jason Hudson chasing bread crumbs on what the hell is with Nova 6 deadly gas and the Numbers broadcast on the other. Going back and forth between flashbacks of vietnam and the present cold war makes for a unique mash between political and psychological thriller with interspliced with a lot of dark moments. Now, its not complete war horror like WAWs campaign, but its still present in doses thanks to the vietnam flashback missions reminding you of the darker side of the war. (Specifically the level, "The Defector" where you're just hearing vietcongs cries after shooting them with a "dragons breath" incendiary loaded Spas-12.), and it has a lot more vehicle sequences, a LOT more. including riding a bike out of a prison break, T2 style. Flying helicopters and shooting down VCs. guiding a team while in a blackbird, pilot a boat with an MG and your squad firing rockets, Treyarch was really proud to show off their vehicle missions in this one, albeit they were far more "on-railed" compared to the tank mission in world at war.

This campaign goes for a more badass blockbuster approach like Infinity Ward did with MW2 (2009) around the same timespan of late 00's/early 10's than the more somber tone of World at War. In terms of Action, Gameplay (even adding a dive to prone "Dolphin dive" feature), Story scenarios and even the soundtrack going for a more "badass" approach, hamming up the rock from the last game but also bringing in shit like 'nam era music like "fortunate son" or "sympathy for the devil". Even hiring celebrities, like Ed Harris, Ice Cube, Sam Worthington (at the same time period where he just got off of James Camerons Avatar) and Gary Oldman comes back from WAW as Viktor Reznov. But this campaign still kept the "Treyarch" feel of having a relatively Darker tone despite all of that. Even in the Main Menu.

Treyarch CoDs always pull you into the tone the moment you boot up the game, WAW did this with its memorable menu theme despite the layout being the same as Cod4's, but this time? They've peaked with the main menu of their own damn game. Instead of the game having a standard menu, it boots up to you strapped to a chair, having your head look around not even registering on what the fucks going on, while the interrogator pestering you with questions you don't know the answers to because you haven't even boot up the campaign yet. You're hooked up with an IV pump and slow breathing. Having the tradition of showing historical war footage of 'nam, JFK, a speech to communist party of the soviet union by Leonid Brezhnev, nuke and missile tests, etc. on the TV's. and you can get up and look around the room and see a computer and can range from intel, to playing a virtual text based game called "Zork" and can unlock the "five" and dead ops arcade zombies maps. If all of that wasn't enough, you click on "zombies" and said interrogator is turned into a zombie and is banging on the glass, trying to get into that room and kill you, all while said footage switches to zombies and real footage of weird ass experiments, interspliced with campaign footage of scientists for their lives and Nova 6 gas rolling in. and unlike the normal menu, you CANT get up. you're stuck and the situation is FUBAR. And unfortunately they haven't gone anywhere near this level of detail in their next few main menus. nor has any game gone to this insane degree, closest i can think of in recent memory is the metro games but even thats more of a dynamic static menu rather than immediately inside the game from the jump.

The fact that i can go into autistic detail about the MENU shows how special this game is. and i havent even gone about the zombies or MP yet.

Multiplayer is substantially improved from world at war and is a trend setter on many things like customization, as in you can customize your soldier fully without having to rely on $30 bundles on the CoD store like newer cods, just play the game, earn cod points (no not MTX, just in game currency they made up at the time) and buy whatever you want. facepaints, reticles, camos (including the gold camo returning from Cod4 and better than ever) attachments, full blown weapons, grenades, tacticals and it even has unique gadgets like a camera, a portable radar, the signal jammer, shit that barely featured in most cods up until the rebooted MW, MWII, Vanguard and the now direct sequel to this, Black Ops Cold War, with field upgrades. Plenty of killstreaks around including a chopper gunner, a RCXD (which is exactly what you'd expect, an RC car with explosives), a blackbird (advanced UAV), guided missiles, a gunship with is a fully controllable helicopter, care packages that include the grim reaper (a launcher that can hold 4 rockets at once) and a minigun, attack dogs return, its legit a bombardment of batshit killstreaks that only gets more hectic throughout the series. The maps while not having the openness of WAW most of the time, does have the 3 lane structure that has made most of the maps here well designed. and there's a reason why they keep on recycling and milking summit, nuketown and firing range in all the sequels after this. Hate to say it now since they're in like 5 games at this rate, but they're easily recognizable and well designed (even though nuketowns literally a shitpost map that was originated as a reference to indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull)

Then there's Zombies. This is where the mode officially solidified itself as its own mode and has been switched back and forth in the cod series alongside special ops/survival. Though a bit easier compared to its WAW counterpart thanks to it now expanding its play area to open spaces to train zombies (except Call of the dead, try getting to round 100 on that shit), its still got tricks up its sleeves, the introduction of alternate boss types/zombies. Now instead of dealing with hellhounds and regular zombies, you also have to deal with nova crawlers which when killed with weapons that shoot regular bullets, they explode blinding your ass for a split second, (explosives luckily dont have the same effect), the pentagon thief who steals your currently held weapon and runs away like a cunt (hence the title), Monkeys in ascension and shangri-la serving different pain in the ass obstacles, ones in ascension steals your perks if you dont kill them off quick enough and the ones in shang steals your power ups and even switches them, again, if you dont kill them quick enough, George A Romero in Call of the dead, a near invincible presence with a stagelight, whose a royal pain in the ass when you shoot him and cant cool him off in the puddles of freezing water, screeching zombies & napalm zombies that'll blind you and explode when you're near them respectively, also in shang, and to top it off, a damn cosmonaut that'll headbutt your ass and steals one of your perks on Moon.

Just from listing the bosses you have to kill, just shows how this mode grew from just being a mini tower defense game of killing nazi zombies. You have a total of 11 maps, 4 of those being remasters/ports of WAW maps, one of which being the aforementioned top down shooting minigame dead ops arcade which is even more bonkers than the actual mode, and 7 of them being maps featuring your old ragtag zombies gang from WAW's Shi no numa/Der reise (Dempsey, Nikolai, Richtofen and Takeo) Including a classic known as Kino der toten (nazi theater which originally was intended for WAW but couldnt make it due to time constraints), Ascension (a russian rocket test facility), Shangri-La (a mysterious temple in the Himalayas) and the Moon (Im not shitting you, you spawn at Area 51 then go teleport to a Nazi base on the moon.) but also Horror/Action based celebrities in a movie shoot gone wrong in Call of the dead (starring Michael rooker, Danny trejo, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Robert englund and the Aforementioned George Romero being the boss) and in "Five" you get to play as Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro and John F Kennedy fighting zombies in the PENTAGON. and to see that shit after beating the campaign is a huge whiplash nobody saw coming when this first dropped.

I haven't even mentioned the wonder weapons that have been expanded from just the ray gun and wunderwaffe to a thundergun that blows zombies away, a tactical grenade called "gersh device" that sucks zombies in a black hole in ascension/moon, a "Q.E.D." tactical grenade thats basically a swiss army grenade on doing a shit-ton of things on moon including getting free perks, a device that turns zombies into humans that distracts them (which sounds cool but kinda sucks when you get into higher rounds), an explosive sniper called the "scavenger", a gun that turns zombies into lil mini zombies that you can run at and kick and a gun called the "wave gun" that transforms between akimbo mini blasters that electrocute zombies into a big gun that can literally COOK zombies and make them pop mid air. We aint gotta talk about the winters howl from "five"/remastered verruckt though. It slows and freezes zombies, its a cool concept but just not good in execution.

That's not even mentioning the perks of Mule kick allowing you to carry 3 weapons, PHD flopper that'll make an explosion after you dolphin dive in a huge height and explosive resistance, Deadshot Daquiri which uh, helps with hipfire spread and on console helps with headshots and Stamin-up which increases your sprint drastically.

i can go on all day about BO1 zombies but you get the point. the mode has drastically went off on all directions and haven't been topped in terms of scale, ambition and content until Black Ops 3.

Overall, this game alongside World at War as Treyarch's finest work. They didn't have to go as hard as they did. but they went for it. and succeeded in flying colors.

This is my first game i wanted to play when i got a trial on game pass on pc, and its definitely a good ass game to start on, albeit some levels are genuinely bullshit (without spoiling, its basically those who ONE HIT YOU and it kinda fucks with the flow of the rest of the game)

Stories simple enough, you done get rescued by a drone in order to prevent a hostile criminal takeover by your former crew, but while i can predict one plot point, the ending and some levels were so bizarre and out of left field, i just ran with it. plenty of different enemies, references and scenarios like a b action movie you'd see on a shelf on blockbuster (or these days scrolling through netflix)

but yeah the combat for a beat em up is slick as hell and easy to pull off but hard to master seeing as how you slowly fill up the skill tree, pull off some john wick shit with not only hand to hand but also gun fu executions, be doing body slams, smash bastards heads into walls, suplexes, some martial arts shit and later on you'll get a revolver with different types of ammo and a rope to straight up pull em towards you. when you pull off this shit it makes you feel like a badass. only issue is, those one hit kill fuckers will interrupt your flow into a screeching halt. but yea other than that, the combat is so satisfying and the dev knew it because you can save the "highlight" of the level (basically hitting a combo or execution) as a gif on your PC to share online.

Overall, don't miss this game, especially on game pass, only 4gbs and mainly made by one dude whose a polish father, basically wind up making a more memorable experience than AAA titles as of late.