Final Fantasy XVI: Once More Into the Peak

When words came around that Square Enix had intended to release a sixteenth main title in what is probably the most acclaimed and storied JRPG franchise of all time, the gaming world was put on notice. Outside of FFXIV the series had been in creative freefall for the better part of two decades, with the last unanimously "good" title (FFXII) coming out in 2006. Mishap after mishap, poor writing decisions combined with development issues meant that the legendary series was spiraling towards creative mediocrity. What began in the late 1980's as a dream to keep a fledgling gaming company alive had morphed into a worldwide phenomenon quicker than one could anticipate. Some of the greatest moments, songs, and stories were born by Squaresoft in the 90's and early 2000's. Final Fantasy VI through XII are universally individually respected as some of the greatest titles of all time across any genre. With XVI there were questions, how would the series evolve past XV? XV has its fanbase and their opinions are to be respected, but largely it was panned and unappreciated as it fell victim to a nightmare development cycle and DLC was required to fulfill the true ambitions of the story.

Here comes Final Fantasy XVI, I remember hearing the initial rumors revolving around it and I almost couldn't believe it. I don't remember the exact verbage as some serious time has passed, but the word on the street was that its production was to be helmed by none other than Naoki Yoshida of Square Enix' Creative Business Unit III, and combat was to be done by the man in charge of Devil May Cry 5's action, the most silky smooth the character action genre had ever seen. As a longtime fan and subscriber of the MMO Final Fantasy XIV I was almost in shock, how would Yoshi-P have time to develop an acclaimed and incredible adventure in XIV and then have the time and energy to resurrect the mainline series from its effective grave? I purchased a Playstation 5 in anticipation of this, after the initial trailer rollout and website were released for the game, because I knew of all people that I could trust Yoshida in making a lasting memory out of the FF series. He is a man, with the rest of CBU3 (Koji-Fox and Soken included,) who I trusted more than anything to create a well rounded Final Fantasy experience.

Now for the game itself... though I had initial reservations about playing the demo because I wanted to avoid spoilers, I loaded in and embarked on the two or so hour adventure that serves as the beginning of the game. Initially weary about audio issues and performance on the PS5, my concerns were very quickly waned as I met Clive, Joshua, and Lord Rosfeld. The Game of Thrones influence clear very early on in FFXVI, not only just in the aesthetics and world that Valisthea exists in, but in the approach to quality of realizing a believable and livable low fantasy setting. WIth the demo completed, and my mind absolutely melted at the way it ended, I laid in anticipation of the full game arriving just a few days later... and arrived it did.

What I got in Final Fantasy XVI was genuienly the greatest meld of action, storytelling, music, environmental presentation, and character writing that I could have ever asked for. Beginning with the world, Valisthea is a masterfully constructed dual-continent with its histories carefully created to give each and every nation-state and their peoples their own culture and approach to political and social goings-ons. Reading the FFXVI website before the game actually had come out was a tremendous help to the rich lore within the title, as it lays out the political makeup of Rosaria, Waloed, The Republic of Dhalmekia, the Crystalline Dominion, and most importantly the Holy Republic. Each of these powers are wildly different in the way that they are run administratively, some as a Duchy, others as a loosely allied Republic, and another as a Holy Empire. While these countries are also vastly different in size and makeup, they are privy to a state of Mutually Assured Destruction as a result of beings called Dominants. These Dominants are individuals in the royal families who posses the ability to call upon Eikons, mythical figures of immense size and power who can effectively end conflict in a fell swoop. This is also the fire that begins the conflict of the game as our protagonist Clive Rosfeld does not possess the Dominant of Fire, the Phoenix as the eldest sibling in Rosaria is meant to do. Each of these Dominants are powerful in different ways that bring nuance to their interactions with other nations and combat maneuvers. Surely Titan is the largest and strongest eikon in the Twin Realms... but he is not mobile and deploying him requires a large amount of care. Surely Bahamut is immensely powerful, but can his destructive magicks match the agility of Ifrit? It's with these questions and interactions between the nations of Final Fantasy XVI that such an interesting world is created. These powers differ in how large they are, in how strong their ground millitaries are, but they are at a stand still in their perpetual conflicts because of the power at the fingertips of their royal families. This is what felt so Game of Thrones to me, each country so unique (and a lot of these mirror those in GoT,) but so fragile in the manner of which they combat and invade... I could go on and on about how good of a job CBU3 did in setting this world up, but its already so late and I have more to write about!

The world itself that Clive finds himself is a grim one, and it's here that I would call upon another title that gave me the stark depressing feeling that FFXVI did in its traversal: The Witcher. Now, much of what Clive is doing is trying to restore a hope to a people that are oppressed (more to come on that later,) but the impetus of much of the conflict of the game between the nation states is that a remarkable blight is moving upon their continents, killing their crops and the destroying the homes of those within the affected areas. Like the world that Geralt calls home, much of FFXVI is dark tonally, the medieval setting is already grim as slavery is abundant and there is a remarkably large amount of displaced peoples and families affected by the violence of the heads of state. You are a man who is not respected by much of the world you are interacting with, many of the ruling classes look upon Clive as an outlaw beneath the common man. As he grows and matures, he embarks on a quest with Cidolfus to free the bottom class from their chains of malice that have been placed upon them by the ruling classes. In the world of FFXVI, the oppressed lower class that you spend much of the game assisting and freeing are called bearers, as they naturally have the ability to cast magicks without using crystals for assistance. Its with this prejudice that they are abused, mistreated, tortured, and killed, as the bearers are viewed as freaks and not worthy of being considered as human. Clive, a bearer himself leads a ragtag group of ambitious rebels, along with his ally Cid, to create a world in with the bearers can live as people amongst those not blessed with magic. Thus the conflict within Final Fantasy XVI's story is born, Clive now abandoned from his former state and people by his wretched mother, must unite the world of the Twins under a common banner, as humans. His quest is simple, to remove all from the shackles of class and culture that bind them to hatred. A world in which the bearer is not subhuman.

The writing in FFXVI is careful and deliberate. I've already touched upon the way the world is set up, but the avenue that the story goes through it's extensive runtime is constructed such a way that few games of recent can hold a candle to. I don't like to divulge spoilers are per usual, but I everyday that I wrapped up playing the game I would message my friends who were of similar progress about the twists and turns that the narrative had left us with. This game will make you angry at its villains, tear up with its heroes, and feel general angst at the suffocating world at large. Game of Thrones did a superb job in creating despicable characters from the get go who were easy to hate, and FFXVI picks up on that to the T. You have a general disgust for Anabella, for Hugo, for Barnabas, their motives laid bare for the player to pick apart and challenge. Clive is an impressive protagonist, and a refreshing one in the realm of Final Fantasy as he's finally an adult character. Sure you spend the initial sequence as an adolescent, and it's hard to truly drive home, but it was SO refreshing to have a character this mature in a JRPG that is willling to express love and hate to such a degree. He's a grizzled himbo, a true boy-toy, but he's not willing to depart from nuanced discussions with his foes and turn them into bouts of true malice. There is an eloquence in writing protagonists to be more diplomatic in their dialogue with the antagonists (Cloud in FFVII for example,) but it was marvelous to hear Clive conscious of his guilt, of his actions of violence. In a world as dark as the one in Valisthea, it's not possible to take the road that appeases all. Clive is aware of the blood that was required to be spilled to realize his dream of uniting the land under a common social norm. It is here that my comparisons with the Witcher continue, in true Geraltian fashion Clive doesn't shy away from the tough decisions he has to make, there is no "happy ending" and he is aware of that. There are moments in which he bursts into a fit of rage (one early on in the demo for example,) and you as the player cannot help but empathize with the amount of anger you would likely have in that situation as well. This is unique in my now storied history with Final Fantasy as a franchise, this was the first time I could see a protagonist truly come to terms with the tragedies of the dark reality their world was now engrossed in. Clive does what he can to help those in need, but he's not afraid to combat those who are actively bringing the world down. He is compassionate and respected amongst his peers and friends like Jill, Gav, Cid, and Charon, but a nightmare in waiting to his enemies.

The cast outside of Clive were crafted into a resounding success, beginning with the Archduke of Rosaria, Elwin Rosfeld himself who is one of the first characters you meet, all the way to the minor characters you meet and leave right before the game ends. There are a plethora of NPC's both in the villages you pass through (Martha and Lu'bor for example) that will stick with you and interact with Clive multiple times throughout the story, as well as his own group of outlaws that journey with him and share the same hideout. These characters like Tarja, Midadol, Otto, Charon, Gav, Jill, and Harpocrates to name a few will stick with you throughout a treacherous and longform journey. These aren't just people that stick around you and interact with you for their various gimmicks (Charon is the shoplady, Harpocrates the loremaster etc,) but occasional party members and frequent requestors of Clive's aid. They don't all just have one sidequest either, often multiple through the long journey which helps make them feel a real member of the family. Much like Mass Effect and its loyalty mission in ME2, FFXVI has a questline for seemingly every NPC Ally that Clive has, which can seem like it simply just inflates the runtime, but rather produces a believable relationship between player character and his constituents. I felt an actual connection to everybody that calls the hub home and helps Clive along on his mission, and for a game this long and in the weeds, that is a huge +1 to its overall composition. Without going into it too much, it's revitalizing to have a character like Jill in a Final Fantasy game. Their "romance" is written so well, and in true Final Fantasy fashion she is FAR from a damsel in distress. She quickly became one of my favorite female characters in a video game that I've played, and the emotional maturity and power in her story had me clutching my tear strings at a few points.

Now that I've covered the story, world, and characters, I would like to get into the fun parts! Oh my GOSH is this game beautiful. Unfortunately brought down a peg by its jail sentence on the PS5 30 FPS, this game in its entirety is eye candy... from the characters to the fights to the environment itself. Now with the investment that this game probably gets from Sony and Square Enix, a budget to make all this possible isn't too surprising, but this game contains a vast amount of cutscene time done in the legendary Square visual fidelity fashion. Characters are downright beautiful, portrayed in a way (much like FF7R) that they feel and look real. Anytiime I got a closeup of Jill, Clive, or Cid I held my hand on the screenshot button waiting to take a visual imprint of their beautiful faces. I don't know if this habit will ever die, but I'm still shocked by games nowadays and how far they've come in their portrayal of characters. Not only did they look good from a clarity standpoint, but the design choices in making each character stand out from one another was a resounding success. I loved Dr. Castlevania Clive, and the azure clothing that Jill wears. Cid dons a regal outfit befit of a Chad, Gav a orange/grey shirt that works great for a mysterious rogue, Dion a beautifully piece of armor and long robe to match his suave and regality. Outside of the characters, the fights were a thing of beauty. Multiple times during the eikon battles and Clive 1 on 1s I had to pause and let out an audible "Holy S***" at what I was looking at. Games have come so far, but Square realized this to the best extent in FFXVI. The world, grim as it may be, was visually striking as well. In the cities and the hub world, I found myself just simply strolling along with no end quite a few times to the world and beautiful Masayoshi Soken soundtrack. Be it Uematsu, Hamauzu, Shimomura, or Soken, this series has been blessed to have such a rich group of talented composers. Again as a fan of FFXIV, I knew Soken would do a good job scoring XVI, but I was blown out of the water by his soundtrack at multiple times... all the way to the end credits. This title is a home run and a half for so many reasons.

The day has finally come, from the evolutions begun in FFXII, into making Final Fantasy a series with a pure action game. From 2006's beloved entry on, Square has toyed and shifted more and more into making Final Fantasy no longer a turn based ATB action series, but one where the fighting got faster and faster with each title. FFXIII was a vast mis-step, effectively able to be played by only pressing the space bar, FFXV another step toward action with some unfortunate funk to it, and FF7R even more action intensive with a cool pause menu to select spells and items. All this considered, the series had never completely made the leap until it tapped DMCV combat director Ryota Suzuki to be in charge of crafting a captivating combat system for the sixteenth game in the Final Fantasy franchise... and lo and behold he did it to an absolute success. This game plays a lot like a DMC or Bayonetta, but with even more tools at your disposal that fit that of the FF Intellectual property. You need to make use of parries, perfect dodges, and quick attack windows to stagger your opponents and rack the damage up when you can. Clive not only has his sword and trusty pup Torgal in every encounter, but is able to utilize the power of the eikons he claims along his journey. Beginning with that of the Phoenix, Clive can use fire spells as part of his combos. This never gets old, even after playing north of seventy hours of the game. I loved mixind and matching the eikons I used, the spells that come with said eikons, and the combos you can craft by simply feeling out the game. I would love to go into greater detail about which eikons make for the best combat experience, but that would include spoiling the story content. I will say, in most titles that have them I don't find myself going outside of my general wheelhouse to fight super bosses or optionial hunt targets, however I managed to clear every single one in FFXVI. I didn't care if I was twelve levels down, I was having such a fun time with the combat system of this game that I wanted to play with it as much as I could. I would scream in joy after defeating the S Rank hunts with how far removed from the recommended level I was. This game just feels so smooth and the tough battles are beyond rewarding when you are done with them. Combat was so DMC down to the Devil Trigger button, that I could simply not give it up.

As a fan of Devil May Cry, as a Game of Thrones, as a fan of the Witcher, as a fan of Final Fantasy XIV, as a fan of Final Fantasy, and lastly as a fan of good video games... Final Fantasy XVI is one of the greatest video games I've ever played. A frontrunner for GOTY of 2023 quite easily for me, and an instant inclusion into my personal Top 10, I am still in disbelief that it is over. For anyone with a PS5, and anyone with a PC when it inevitably launches there, I strongly recommend Final Fantasy XVI.

PS: I apologize at the likely high amount of syntax and diction errors in writing this review. I almost always do my writeups immediately after completing the game and this one was long and it's very late at night here! This is probably one of my weaker writing jobs from a skill standpoint, but I have so much to talk about and so little patience to wait to do it!

Wow. We have officially reached peak character action, and I'm not sure if it will ever be matched.

I'd been waiting for Bayonetta 3, like zillions of others for years upon years, starving for anything more than the short teaser trailer they showed what felt like eons ago. When we finally got the Project GG fakeout trailer, I jumped for joy, screamed, did a jig, and kept waiting. To say that there had been expectations for the Umbral Witch's third entry would be an excessive understatement, as the first two beloved entries delivered something so right to gaming that was foreign to the medium. Bayonetta is an unapologetically raunchy and sexy character with a sense of humor derived straight from her Devil May Cry DNA, with an arsenal of moves that would put a Joestar to shame.

Now to the game itself. I expected to have a good time, playing through a campaign and getting on to the next game, hopefully satiated with my favorite femme fatale. What I didn't expect was to have an experience where I'd smile from ear to ear the entire time, laugh out loud to the point where it hurt, and tear up upon the games conclusion. Bayonetta to me was always a "fun" series in games 1 and 2, and even the anime, but it dawned on me with 3 that it was more than a game, but a memory to hold and take with me. What Platinum never fails to do with their character action games (MG: Revengance, Nier: Automata, Astral Chain) is keep the gameplay loop fresh, evolving from entry to entry with something new yet familiar so fans of the companies attention to making action fun feel rewarded and continiously interested in what is yet to come. In Bayonetta 1 you become familiar with Witch Time and ultra tight dodging and 1 on 1 combat with humanoids and massive angels alike. Bayonetta 2 begins to think bigger with its addition of the demonic elements into your routine arsenal. Bayonetta 3 takes the series' formula and supersizes it, giving the titular witch an entire arsenal of Kaiju-demons and weapons to bring with her in battle. I LOVED this, as it gives FULL agency to the player in making Bayonetta the game THEY want while keeping the game in its base alive. I played with Bayonetta's legendary pistol as my main weapon and toyed around with secondaries. Going from the G-Pillar (which is an awesome name) associated with Gomorrah, and the massive trainsaw associated with totally not DoomTrain from FFVIII. Being able to summon Doom Train, Gomorrah, and Madame Butterfly in combat whenever my meter was high made fights feel epic and grandiose, as they should with the series. Having the ability to jump between my fast combo and a heavy hitting G-Pillar or Trainsaw (I forgot the actually name but its a chainsaw made out of a train so I'm running with it) felt great because I could weave in and out of combat and do big damage when I wanted. With each area you visit, you gain a new demon to summon and weapon to use, meaning that your experience will vary from location to location and you'll have the time and availability to try out each set. Platinum's been phenomenal with player agency ever since Kamiya began his journey on the DMC series, bringing with him total player control at each step of his character action expertise (and even outside of it, like with Wonderful 101.) In all, Bayonetta 3's combat feels like a player sandbox, throwing enemies at you and letting the player decide on the best route to take to remedy opposition. This made the entire experience a delight, as I didn't feel hamfisted into playing a certain way.

Many games have experimented with adding new playable characters to series with a beloved protagonist to varying success. Metal Gear Solid 2 had the infamous Big Shell fakeout where players discover they're going to play the majority of the game as the freshly minted Raiden instead of the heroic Solid Snake. Yakuza 4 which I recently played has the player split between four characters, the last of which you play being the Dragon of Dojima. Devil May Cry 4 drops the hot headed and bragadocious Nero on the player, a cringe, young, unfamiliar blonde with an attitude and a whole lot to say. Speaking of cringe, young, blonde, and hot headed... Bayonetta 3 introduces a new playable character: Viola. Viola is cringe, there's no way to go around that, but remember Luka in Bayonetta 1? In 2? He's as cringe as they come, but with Bayonetta's self aware satire and humour, it fits like a glove. She's annoying... but it's alright in the scope of the game at hand. Tasked with saving the multiverse, she is mostly inexperienced and unready for the objective at large, which is perfectly contrasted with the aged Bayonetta in her third attempt at righting the ship. I didn't love her playstyle at first, but the totally not Nero stand-in, grew on me as I played and eventually graced into the game's last chapter. She uses a katana, with one of her special combo's being practically Vergil's judgement cut, coupled with the familiar (if you've played Bayonetta 1&2) Cheshire summon who can aid her in combat. With no built in witch time mechanic it was very tough to understand how to play her at first, as you're more or less implored to take a Metal Gear Rising approach to fighting. Making use of perfect parry's allows for witch time with Viola, which admittably was rather tough to master because her block button is the same (when double tapped) as her gap closer, meaning that players must use dilligent timing and patience to master the art of not taking damage. While I ultimately enjoyed Bayonetta's gameplay WAY more than I did Viola's, I applaud Platinum for the risk they took in making a bold and brash character like Viola with a completely different moveset.

Difficulty is an interesting concept with Bayonetta and Platinum at large. The concept of an action game being hard is largely subjective, as reflexes and attention span vary from person to person. I found Bloodborne for example to be, generally speaking, quite easy, which is the opposite of what many others will say. Now, I'm not alone in that quip but it is just a sign of how the opinion of a reviewer in stating a game's difficulty should always be called into question in regards to the reader's own experience. What is easy for me, may be hard for you. Now I've played many Platinum Games' games at this point... starting with Bayonetta (and going even further into all the DMC games if you take in Kamiya's repertoire) into Rising, Automata, Astral Chain, Bayonetta 2, into Bayonetta 3 so I'm quite familiar with the way these games are meant to be played and the requirements for dodge timings and damage windows. I found Bayonetta 3 to be quite easy, not necessarily because of the difficulty of combat in and of itself, but the tools Platinum gives players to just up and complete the game. Gone is the increasing cost of restorative items that grew out of DMC and in is the ability to purchase healing/power items ad nauseum. I LOVED how I had a safety net of healing and damage items in case I ran into difficult enemies. Did it make the game easier? Sure, but did it make it "less fun" because I didn't have to spend as much time grinding in enemy encounters so I understood each and every witch time moment? No.

The story is light, but who really cares? It's serviceable enough in the nearly 14 hours it took me to complete and gives moments of comedy and sorrow to each of the series' mainstays. Enzo, Rodin, Jeanne, Luka, and Bayonetta all return with a new look but retain their unique brands of exposition. Jeanne is beautiful once again, Bayonetta is even beautifulist (that is a word I will only use in regards to Bayonetta,) and Viola was quite astonishing as well. You'll travel from location to location and meet some very intricate characters that all will repeat familiar stories and moments, with their tragic downfalls becoming a trend to the game's climax. I don't want to spoil anything but damn, if I didn't say that the Chinese location had one of the most eye-candy characters in gaming history I would be lying. Also, riding a train on the Great Wall of totally not China will shooting cannons at a Kaiju before summoning a massive Demon to have a bubblebath fight is an absolutely unforgettable and unbeatable moment in gaming history.

Music has only improved in each Bayonetta entry with 3 being the complete peak of the series thus far. Bayonetta's theme is incredible, and Viola's totally not Paramore combat theme is going to be a popular listen for me in the weeks to come. The motifs/themes in each level and at familiar moments of the games are excellently laid as is usual with Platinum, adding even more to the basically flawless game at large.

I know there was a lot of controversy about it, and I did really love Hellena Taylor as Bayonetta but man... Jennifer Hale is gonna do what Jennifer Hale is gonna do. She does a PHENOMENAL job voicing Bayonetta, even as an Canadian-American. She crushed it, and I'm really happy she's who Platinum was able to get.

I knew this game would make me happy, but I didn't know how much. I didn't know this game would make me cry at the ending. I didn't know how much Bayonetta as a franchise meant to me. I didn't know this would make me reflect on my experience with Platinum and Kamiya to this degree. Bayonetta 3 knocked every single expectation I had for the Umbral Witch out of the park to never be seen again. Bayonetta 3 is peak, peak gaming, peak action, peak Bayonetta. This is a MUST play to fans of the franchise, and of character action games. Platinum went all that and then some to make this feel like the ultimate experience.

Little Silly, Cute Kitty

I'm a cat owner and have been for the last sixteen or so years of my life. My first cat was an all black football cat named Lurkey. This was a name given by my father because our large lad spent the first year of his life with us after moving in from the frigid outdoors living in the shoe room only emerging from his cave to eat and use the litter. Lurkey passed and my parents obtained a new cat via the cat distribution system while I was away in college, her name was Esme and she was also a black cat with a shame reminiscent of a pigskin. I write this all to say that I have a long love for black cats, and Little Kitty Big City is playing right into its target demographic here... a gamer with a cat who grew up with black cats.

My ferocious feline, named Albert Whisker (yes RE fans that's for you,) began to maul at my screen as SOON as I started Little Kitty, Big City. Maybe upset he isn't getting the same adventure in my humble apartment as our purring protagonist gets in a bustling (presumably) Japanese city, but that's neither here nor there. LKBC gives you one simple objective as the procatonist: get home after a tragic fall leaves you... not home! What gives the game a runtime as long as you want is the world filled with a plethora of collectibles, objectives, and animals to meet and converse with around town. The humor is endearing, a continuous hide and seek match with a chameleon comes to mind here, and the charm of interaction with your surroundings is endless. The environment is easy to make your way around and becomes immediately familiar to the player after a few rounds. I commend the dev team for knowing how to stack things inside such a small area to make it fun and traversal not feel like you're spinning in circles through the same area.

Ultimately this is a short game without too many bones to stand on, but it was fun for the couple hours I ran through the "main story" and putzed around side objectives. I had a few bugs that I couldn't really call frustrating because well... look at the game, but they were a bit annoying when trying to time or prepare jumps that faltered right away. I only had to reload a save once after being stuck in a stool but again, I only lost about a minute or two of progress. Game Pass was the right price for LKBC, otherwise I probably wouldn't have bought it. I'd recommend to anyone with a subscription or people who just really like cats, it's a fun one.

Senua's Slugfest: Hellbruh II

Man, this was such a let down for me that it's almost hard to put into words. Senua's Sacrifice back in 2017 was one of the neater gaming experiences I've had in recent years, a fantastic dive into the Celtic mythos coupled with a passionate tale of the general scorn and abandonment that those who suffer from mental illness have suffered for a heartbreaking amount of time. Even though it was largely basic in terms of gameplay, I felt like there was enough agency in movement and originality in the story to keep me going. Overall I gave it a four out of five stars, because the scant gameplay couldn't bog down what the message of the game set out to offer.

Senua's Saga however took the concept of the first game and somehow turned it into a numbing tech demo with a runtime almost insulting for the price its offered at. I played this on Game Pass, but saw it was lifted as $50 on retail websites, and even then it's not worth it. It feels like 75% of the gameplay loop of Hellblade II is walking through fantastically designed, yet unfortunately monotonous environments, at snail speed as voices speak into your character's ears. Trot, trot, trot you do with very little in the way of worldbuilding or interesting conversation with your party members. A story is there but its told in such a jolted and lazy fashion that I couldn't be bothered to piece things together. The other quarter of the game is boiled down to brainless puzzles that revolve around pushing the trigger buttons to open up pathways, and then combat that is so incredibly one note and boring that you could very realistically fall asleep while playing. Dodge, attack, dodge attack... ooh an npc runs into the enemy you're fighting and stabs them, but is killed by a NEW enemy... no way? Rinse and repeat that a million times until completion. Everything is boiled down to the same recycled one on one fight, sometimes the enemy has a different appearance, but every single one plays the exact same. I like to believe this was better in the 2017 title but man, I don't have the heart to know.

Hellblade II is a lazy glorified tech demo. It's beautiful and the cutscenes are something special, but you are missing absolutely nothing by skipping this game. For a game that was paraded as a flagship title for Xbox in the current generation, Senua's Saga is quite telling of Microsoft's gaming offering. Starfield, Senua's Saga, Halo Infinite... all have been so impressively garbage that they're being lapped by everyone else when it comes to putting out compelling video games. I'm not sad, I'm just incredibly disappointed. If you want good games in the creepy linear walking sim genre, just play the Plague Tale titles, at least those have something going for them.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Runtime

Forever an infinitely difficult series to review without turning it into a minefield of spoilers, I'll tread carefully in my Infinite Wealth review and provide a fairly short writeup for a game that is as cavernously deep as the eigth-ish-ninth-ish (main) entry in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was a game that despite being a tremendous fan of the series' heart wrenching moments, delicately web narratives, and impeccable lived in worlds, I was timid about actually playing. The gargantuan length of its immediate predecessor and slower grind-heavy gameplay took a lot out of me, even if I was a pretty big fan of the story being told. From what I'd heard through media outlets and friends alike, Infinite Wealth had made the game even larger and more grandiose, and after playing it myself I can verify that to be true.

LAD 8 is the first title within the series to take place significantly outside of Japan, this time having the bulk of its gameplay (mostly through Ichiban) taking place in the fiftieth American State: Hawaii. Previously I thought this would be a significant boon to my enjoyment of the title because I thought the series could use a fresh start outside of its typical close quarters Japanese city streets where you're shoulder to shoulder with pedestrians and throwing down in alleyways. It turns out that I actually wasn't a fan of the transition in the slightest. Never having been to Hawaii myself I can't verify this to the actual existence of the city, but much of Infinite Wealth's streets felt almost too large and full of empty expanse. With the series prior, I'd grown use to the almost claustrophobic feeling of having too much to see and too much to do around you. However many of the games taking place in Kamurocho be damned, I took to a significant liking of the familiar sites and sounds. As the series grew and expanded to Okinawa, Osaka, and Hiroshima, I felt like Sega and RGG did a pretty good job at introducing the player to new locales that played into the DNA of what players knew. Hawaii felt big and... interestingly empty for a Yakuza/LAD title. I didn't feel connected to the valley-like wide roads and emptiness between buildings... the beach and the town didn't really feel inviting to me, for whatever reason nothing took. In addition to this, the enemy placement for such an expansive entry was abnormally dense. It felt like I couldn't run my party more than a few feet without turning myself into an engagement. I understand this is probably beneficial to levelling up characters and jobs, but man does it make for a disrupted and un-rhythmic experience. I was dodging streets and pulling detours to a far greater level than I ever was in the beat-em'-up titles that came out prior.

On the topic of not being able to buy into the new world put forth by RGG in Infinite Wealth, the voice acting and languages used came off as a bit... strange. I understand that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a Japanese game that takes place in America, and in an American state that has a significant Japanese population, but I didn't understand the rhyme or reason behind how many characters spoke and understood English or Japanese. It seemed like the language spoken altered based on narrative convenience rather than a logical sequence, which made some characters that spoke in a broken English like the American born Bryce interesting. This doesn't really matter to anything in the long run but it made buy-in to the locale a little more difficult for me.

Now outside of the map being not my fancy, what actually rubbed me the wrong way? Mandatory fungames! I didn't buy Animal Crossing, please don't subject me to three days of woo hoo tee hee ha ha silly Animal Crossing on an abandoned Island in an otherwise (mostly) serious game. I didn't enjoy going from chasing disappearances and trying to dissolve Hawaii's gang violence to talking to the Western Kentucky mascot Big Red and cleaning trash so I could raise tourism to a location I did not want to be at. When I found out I couldn't leave at my own will, I looked up at the sky like that one gif of Willem Dafoe from At Eternity's Gate. Adding this on to the two forced moments in which you have to participate in a Roguelike a Dragon and I was (sarcastically) livid with several moments of the game. I get why you include these things, and in the long run its good for people trying to get the most dollar per hour value out of the game, but my plead with RGG going forward is that they strip this out of what the player has to do and leave it up to what the player could do. Rebirth made this same mistake and I'm wondering why this trend is proliferating in the modern JRPG space.

This review comes off as overtly negative, and for honesty's sake it kind of is... but there is a lot of Yakuza charm once again present in this title. There are the silly moments from Ichiban and company that have you (metaphorically) rolling on the floor in laughter, and the gut wrenching moments minutes later that the series is known to inflict. I was a fan of... about one half of this game and those were the sections devoted mainly to series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu. It's not necessarily because he's the old guy who we've grown accustomed to over the last few decades, but because his story felt more focused and mature. I do really enjoy Ichiban and think he's a perfect protagonist for the series henceforth, but the segments focused on him felt a little all over the place narratively and didn't hit me as hard as what we see the Dragon of Dojima go through. Familiar faces hit hard, and the cast in Infinite Wealth can go toe to toe with just about any game out there, I just wish they were employed in a more uniform and focused plot.

I usually wrap up my reviews with a plead to either play or not play the title based upon its expectations from the player base and my enjoyment of the title overall, but I feel like people looking to play Infinite Wealth and continue the story of Kiryu, Ichiban, and company will do it regardless. I didn't enjoy this title nearly as much as I did LAD7, but I'm glad we got to ride out with the crew one more time.

Unstellar Blade

A game so milquetoast that it literally crashed my PC in switching inputs from my PS5 to my main display so I could write this review, and thus I lost all of my notes I had carefully constructed over the past three days of playtime. What I pulled together is that this was an attempt at making Nier: Automata without actually making it fun and without Yoko Taro.

I remember Stellar Blade's Official Reveal as Project Eve, named after the game's main character, jumping out of an otherwise uneventful and boring Sony State of Play with its flashy combat, beautiful environments, and overwhelmingly attractive protagonist. Hot character bait aside, I was interested in this game because of the influences it was clearly wearing on its sleeve in the aforementioned Platinum Games magnum opus. Many have tried and few have succeeded in nailing hack and slash as well as Platinum or their cousins in Capcom have done with the plethora of impressive titles between the two. Did I think Stellar Blade was going to go one on one with Nier, DMCV, or Metal Gear Rising? Absolutely not, but I did think it was worth a try, to see if there was a company out there who could go to bat with the best of them and put an effort forward that would be worth paying attention to in the years to come. I was excited for Stellar Blade as the release date neared, because it meant that I could one quell the discourse over the design of Eve by providing actual input on how the game plays, and secondly because the need for a fast paced hack and slash was weighing heavily on me after playing slower burn titles like FF7R2 and P3R fairly recently. Within a day of playing my interest waned but I remained hopeful, however on the third complete day of playing and the day I ultimately completed the game... I came away fairly perturbed.

The good, lets start with that why don't we? This game is downright beautiful. I played it on my PS5 on my 4K display with HDR enabled and woah nelly, it looked great. One of the greatest aspects of this title was how great both characters and the world looked from a graphical standpoint. As you transition from dilapidated buildings and streets into destroyed railways and misgiving deserts, your eyes will feast at the eye candy abound in the backgrounds of the world. I found myself navigating the camera up and down constantly at the world I was interacting with as it was tremendously rich in flavour and care from a design standpoint. I felt like the developers put a great deal of effort into creating a visually striking game, which unfortunately seems to have accompanied a trade off in other aspects of the title. More to come on that shortly, as I do want to praise the team for putting some of the best facial and body design in gaming forward. As I've already experienced, much of the conversation about Stellar Blade has been lost in the perceived attractiveness of Eve, but every character you interact with truly looks incredible. Though their proportions and mannerisms may not be totally... human, they are indubitably crafted with an intricacy and care to look astonishing. Stellar Blade if nothing else is a journey of eye candy, but that's kind of... it.

While not exactly fast enough to be a Nier-like, and not fun punishing and explore heavy enough to be a Souls-like, Stellar Blade attempted to forge a path forward that played out like a middle ground between Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor games. Eve's combat relies on using a plethora of learned abilities and tech to parry and dodge her way through a litany of grotesque alien foes who have claimed Earth to be their own. Where this goes wrong is in quite a few places, but the most apparent and earliest was in the poor "janky" feel and lack of reliability in both parry and dodge timings. This can be sort-of remedied by investing in Eve's skill trees and upgrading Eve's exo-spine but never really feels... good. Even if I was a dissenter of Sekiro over all, I felt like it mostly gave the right kind of feedback and snap to the parry/dodge timings required to master such a difficult title. For a game as infuriatingly hard as Stellar Blade gets in its late game, I felt like I was at the whimsy of luck in my dodges not directly feeding into a followup attack by a boss and my perfect parries not being read by the game because of poor latency or buffer timing. Time after time I'd land a perfect dodge only to be hit by the boss moving faster than Eve could recover right after. Cheap is the way I'd put that and it proliferated throughout the entire runtime of the title.

Difficulty is something I've spoken about ad nauseum in action-rpg titles and I'll continue to do so as I have an affinity for these kinds of games. After grinding my teeth in the (generally) slower paced Fromsoft classics and the speedy Platinum/Capcom games of the last decade and change, I feel like I'm fairly qualified. Stellar Blade early on feels hard, but not in a way that cannot be conquered. If I was getting my tail kicked by a group of world enemies or a boss, I found that I could readjust my stratagems to craft a better gameplan, coming back smarter and using my abilities at optimized times to come out victorious. I found my confidence growing, something that did not happen this early in Sekiro, and I continued on to the later stages of the game. I opened up my Playstation menu to check my progress, a feature of the console that tracks how far you've made it through the main story, and saw I had notched at 89%. I labored on to the area boss on one of the last major quests of the game. It was here I through my face into a wall, stressing with every ability and item I had to make it through the three phases and effective six health bars that the boss had. I double this up because of the way shields work. See in Stellar Blade, simply doing damage and having fun taking down your enemy's health bar is simply not allowed, you must first deplete their shields before you can do any "meaningful" damage to their hitpoints. Meaningful in quotations because even then on a fully upgraded weapon, after laboriously taking away the superfluous shield bar, you are granted the ability to do slightly more damage to the bosses health per hit. I've played Dark Souls underleveled and with un-upgraded weapons enough to know torment when it comes to weapons doing very little damage to bosses... and even that does not compare to how insulting Stellar Blade's damage counter feels.

It wasn't even until a few bosses later that I truly came to terms with my disdain for the needlessly draconian difficulty that exists within Stellar Blade's late game boss fights. I threw everything together that I could into defeating the (name kept out of review due to spoiler) boss. I thought I could craft a winning effort of combining my ultimate abilities with my tertiary skills and burst maneuvers, but nothing was taking. I couldn't perfect dodge and parry any longer against the multi-faceted and multi-phase boss fight at hand. Visual clarity was completely nuked from orbit as I could barely tell what moves were hitting me, where certain objects were, or where my Eve's reactions would take me next. A greater qualm I have with games at large now, I wrote about these most notably in my FFXVI DLC reviews, is a complete lack of being able to actually see what's going on in boss fights because of the "ooh how cool" quality that moves need to have. Keeping this in mind, the bosses began to teleport away CONSTANTLY from Eve so as to reposition their efforts while tarnishing any offensive effort I had put forth. This was rhythm breaking and tore any motivation I had towards chasing the enemy down, I felt discouraged and unmotivated to capitalize on optimized windows because I knew the boss would simply teleport away at any given moment. After being unable to keep up with this, the visuals going on, and the randomly included DPS checks, I put the game on "story mode" (reminder this is in the last hour or so of a medium length title) and kept chugging. I'm not actually sure this did anything to make the game easier. What it does in theory is give you windows to dodge and parry, popping up with on screen prompts of what button to press to not be hit by the enemies maneuvers. Does this work? Absolutely not. Most of the time these move to fast to even parse what move you're supposed to use, and half the bosses moves don't even populate your screen with a prompt at all. Through the next couple bosses and into the final boss I became increasingly confused if this was actually a difficulty slider at all or simply an effort to make you "feel" better by putting a semblance of choice of difficulty in front of you.

A best in class soundtrack (potentially one of the best of the year) and impressive visuals couldn't prop Stellar Blade up enough to go against its resoundingly poor English VA (I eventually played in Korean,) drab narrative heavily borrowed from Nier: Automata, and impressively frustrating and unrewarding combat. This is absolutely not a title worthy of purchasing at a $70 price tag, maybe half of that at best. I commend Sony and SHIFT UP for putting together a brand new IP and throwing some serious marketing at making this game stick out, but it felt like a great value Sekiro meets Nier at best. I would not recommend Stellar Blade to anyone with a PS5.

This is the Dark Souls of video games.

A grander take could probably be made than what I will do, but what has been said in the discourse of Dark Souls and the Fromsoft Formula over the last twelve plus years that hasn't already been mentioned? This game is difficult, but not for the reasons I like games being difficult. In Bloodborne and Sekiro, for better or for worse respectively, I felt like I was being challenged upon the contents of me versus boss, or me versus world enemy. Previously, my encounters with the toughest elements of those games, Elden Ring included, boiled down to my skill against a meticulously crafted combat experience. I like that to an extent. You don't necessarily feel cheated if you lose, rather pursuant of a methodology to improve. In Bloodborne when I found myself fail-rolling against gravestones when fighting Father Gascoigne, I told myself "Git gud" and was able to overcome the fight after a few more tries. In Sekiro, I bit my lip, yelled an obscenity, and buckled down my parry timings to win the duels. In Dark Souls? I threw my hands in the air like a confused ape wondering what jape had wandered upon my nape.

I named my character Chunky Thomas... there is no real etymology here, but after playing thirty-three (afk time included) some hours of Dark Souls I think Clunky Thomas would be a better moniker. I came to the conclusion after defeating the lava-spider boss (leaving name out as a spoiler) that Dark Souls did not feel more difficult because of its bosses than other Fromsoft games, but rather that the game was more difficult overall. This is due to a plethora of reasons that can be mostly boiled down to archaic overworld design and resoundingly poor hitbox tech. Now when I speak on the overworld design I don't mean the environments, because for 2011 they are phenomenally detailed and deep, but rather the corpse runs, enemy placement, and contrived sequencing of "objectives" to name a few. Legendary Youtuber VideoGameDunkey's "Thank You Dark Souls" quip isn't just a silly gag, it's a great dig at the cheap tricks this game pulls on the player when simply trying to enjoy going from A to B. Blight Town should be called Indict town because of how much of a sour mark it jumps the game off with. Nothing says "fun" or "weehee" or "yahoo" like jumping from the top of a cliff down to the bottom while fighting through enemies that you can't see, corners that abruptly end, easy places to trip and fall and have to restart progress, and status effects galore. Blight Town is simply the easiest place to point a finger at, but this happens in multiple places in the game, most annoying when you are trying to take on Dark Souls' large collection of bosses. Corpse Runs are no stranger in FromSoft games, as Demon Souls had you do it from the BEGINNING OF EACH LEVEL, but with Dark Souls they are incredibly sinister. It sucks to die in any game sure, but you kinda know it comes with the Fromsoft territory. Though it's unfair to judge games after their successors made positive changes, I really missed Elden Ring's statues of Marika and respawning you right near boss rooms. There was a boss (named after four enemies,) that I'd die to and have to make a two to three minute trek each time across some seriously dangerous ground to even make it back to the boss arena. Now I coulda "gotten gud" and beaten the boss much earlier sure, but having to retrace my steps to that extent soured my experience greatly. This happened time and time again, where even if I wasn't dying to the boss a lot, the amount of times I did coupled with the journey back made the experience excessively tiredsome.

I remember playing Dark Souls as it released in 2011, I didn't quite understand it but I had a blast playing through and observing my buddies back then on their PS3 take on this mysterious world for the first time. Ever since watching them play, I tried it myself a few times and it never took because of its aimless exploration and lack of upfront story. I was the Fallout and Elder Scrolls kid that liked having a game that said "story here" and "objective roughly in this area" and I haven't really ever gotten over that. It's the way my brain works and has since, I operate very well in a space that offers me a general sense of direction in lieu of a formless endeavour. Do I like games and media without a said "goal?" Absolutely. Minecraft is one of the greatest games of all time in my opinion. Even in another Fromsoft title like Elden Ring, which is one of my favorite titles ever, I enjoyed it despite not having a clear "go here" mantra. But what Elden Ring did do that Dark Souls didn't was give you even a modicum of a hint. I get that the sequences of Dark Souls could be formulated on one's own after a good amount of careful deliberation, but I simply don't have that time anymore and my brain sure dislikes the conflict of trial and error in such an unfair world. In Elden Ring I could explore an area and not no where to go, but it would be okay because the general placement of enemies was less opressive and I could traverse the world with ease. In Dark Souls, getting from place to place is a hastle and a non-guarentee in the manner of having your souls/humanities survive. I loved looking at the world but had a strong disdain for moving through it. Another dislike I had in this regard was not having each bonfire be a warp spot, the decision making is clearly to make the game feel less "safe" but to me felt more like a headache as a result. Not having any kind of map or reasonable connection between realms of interest is inexcusable and dejecting toward a players time and wherewithal.

Combat felt jank, full stop. This is absolutely a product of the time but woah nelly did I have a rough time understanding the ways I was perishing to enemy combatants. I ran a full oonga boonga strength build, as I often do in games of this nature (or most action/RPG's) and attempted to operate under my knowledge of enemy moves and roll timings. I quickly learned after a few bosses that this wasn't going to work the whole way through, as each boss seemed to have their own hitboxes that were made up and impact upon my hp that didn't matter. It felt like I was always in 2-3 shot range, and that was frequently tested because the bosses would have an AoE that got me in the hitbox despite nothing indicating that I was actually hit by the bosses move physically. Many a time did I think (and this happened especially in the DLC) that I had succesfully timed a roll out of a move just to look up at my health bar and see a declining yellow bar make an appearance. Like I mentioned above, this is definitely due to the age of the game and hitbox technology not being near what it is today and in Fromsoft's magnum opus Elden Ring, but it feels awful to go back and experience. My takeaway was that I felt more cheated by encounters than I felt that I was playing the game poorly, I didn't get good feedback on many fights as to what I could do better, moreso just what I could survive.

I know this title is intentionally cryptic, and I also Know that my favorite Fromsoft releases are guilty of this too, but the lack of any cohesive story element left a sore spot for me. With the intro cutscenes big lore dump and some self searching on the good ol' interwebs, I was able to put together what the story means and why I was doing certain things towards the end of its narrative, but it could have been told in a much better and easier to parse way than what it did. Fromsoft seems to have learned this with time; as Bloodborne drips the narrative in front of the player a little more with Gehrmann, Sekiro is completely narrative driven, and Elden Ring has SIR GIDEON OFFNIR, THE ALL KNOWING giving out his lore dumps and information on the Elden Lords. Not having any of that in Dark Souls made it unfortunately difficult to know the "why's and what's" of my actions as the main character.

Dark Souls wasn't all bad, but it felt bad for me to play. I thoroughly enjoyed the aesthetics and tropes that would make their way through Fromsoft's games to follow. Locations like Anor Londo and the Royal Woods were really neat. Everything felt like it was meticulously designed to craft a once lived in fantasy realm. Bosses, while they didn't play so cool, looked real cool and had that charm to them that makes the series and company as special as it is. The music for these fights, and especially for the final (which was hilariously easy) boss was a good touch to make them feel memorable.

Dark Souls is clearly one of the more influential games of this milennia (Blade of Miqullla?) but it feels dated. I can't recommend this game to anyone because of its dated map design, hitbox tech, and lack of narrative cohesion, but I do understand why it exists and why people have such an affinity to it.

P.S: I began this review at around 4AM, thinking I'd offer a few sentences and then depart to bed, but it's nearly 5AM and I think I overstepped my intentions.

Working titles for my review included:

1) "God of Snore" - Reason not used: Taken
2) "God of More" - Reason not used: Could imply the more was positive/good
3) "Teen Angst Simulator" - Reason not used: Everyone was angsty, not just Atreus.

Used Title: "A Series of Unfortunate MacGuffin's"

I bought this game almost entierly out of curiousity, one of my more controversial gaming opinions and reviews is that of the renewed God of War (2018,) which I played because I wanted to get a gauge on the game that defeated Red Dead Redemption 2 come year's end at the Game Awards. In my experience I found GoW to be a mostly bland, monotonous, and unadventerous experience. I didn't get the same buzz or energy others did from the axe-wielding combat, I didn't enjoy the consistent babbling from Mimir and crew, and I certainly did not have a positive takeaway on the MacGuffin nature of the plot. I'd hoped, in playing Ragnarok, that the extremely high acclaim given to the game by critics when review embargo ceased meant that Sony had remdied the issues I had with the previous title. Now, I know that The Game Award should and have zero bearing on my enjoyment of a game, but it's clear that the two frontrunners for the big daddy of them all "Game of the Year Award" will be Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok. Curiosity killled the cat, and maybe it killed me too. What I found almost immediately in Ragnarok was that I'd be getting the exact same takeaways and experiences that I had in the 2018 game.

Starting it off with combat, which is admittably a little less... boring as it was in 2018 but comes with its own grievances. Gone is going 75% of the game with the same weapon, as you start the game with Kratos' famous Blades of Chaos and pick up a third weapon down the line (redacted for spoilers.) This is nice because it gives you a little variation in terms of visual flavor for the majority of the game but this fell completely flat for me as the enemies, from start to finish are pretty much all just "bullet" sponges for lack of a better term. There's a certian flare to the combo weaving of different weapons and taking advantages of status effects, but at the end of the day you'll have to pump so much time and effort into enemies to kill them, that I abandoned trying to make it look snazzy. Basic enemies aren't too bad but once you get into the special/mini-boss fights it gets real samey, real quick. Monotonous combat was a compaint I had in the 2018 release that really took up a lot of my opinion on the game, and unfortunately it's back in Ragnarok. Not only does Kratos' arsenal not feel very different overall, not enough for me rather, but again the enemy variation and recycled encounters greatly holds this game back just as it did in the predecessor. I recently played Bayonetta 3 which had the enemy arsenal/variety to make this work, but in God of War every gameplay sequence in a realm can be boiled down into such: Shimmy through a tight loading screen corridor -> solved light puzzle that requires throwing axe and using some kind of time magic -> fight same three to five enemies that are dropped into area -> shimmy loading screen -> repeat. These enemies change per location but the cyclical nature of fighting them, their spongey health bars, and responding to their same mechanics got reallllly old real quick.

You switch between Atreus and Kratos in Ragnarok for level sequences and unfortunately the combat doesn't feel very fresh in either when you change between. Atreus' gameplay loop is even more restricted than Kratos in the first game and his equivalent of Spartan Rage, while stronger, is just a swap-in move which doesn't even do the Nero-Dante dynamic that every character action game should do in making playable protagonists FEEL fundamentally different so controlling them comes off as fresh. My ultimate qualm with the combat, which is also backlines my qualm with the game itself, is that it doesn't feel fresh enough. The combat feels the same, the Hollywood-board-room-type dialogue feels the exact same, the light unecessary puzzle solving feels the same, the missions/levels feel the exact same. What's new with God of War that's supposed to push this series from Great to Fantastic? I don't know, I can't answer that question because I surely didn't find it. The narrative that is meant to wrap up Kratos' Nordic saga felt bland and broken at times, leaving me to constantly wonder the where's and why's of my actions. I get there is an over-arching narrative at play leading to Ragnarok itself, given the actions of the previous title, but I think the game could have done a much better job sequencing its filler-story content. Missions just felt like they were happening to give characters exposition, rather than move the narrative forward and do so. Final Fantasy X does a great job at this, giving each character their own arc while actually advancing the stakes and story at hand. Wakka, Kimahri, Auron, Tidus, and Yuna all have their character examined and challenged while keeping the focus on stopping Sin. Ragnarok had me wondering why I was taking Freya, Atreus, Sindi, Brok all on their own respective adventures that didn't really add to the sequencing of the game in a manner that made sense. With each of these characters you'll find either Kratos or Atreus running the same combat-puzzle-loading screen gambit in an attempt to achieve something or retrieve an item that is to help them in their final huzzah. Doing this over and over and over just felt... bland. God of War Ragnarok for much of its runtime didn't feel like an epic adventure across one of the cooler pantheons to exist within dated mythos, but like a buddy cop comedy where the entire exposition was to retrieve MacGufffin's.

This game honestly just reminded me of the MCU, specifically speaking the Avengers film franchise. Avengers is a media phenomenon that took the world by storm, utilizing a carefully crafted pattern to set up a plethora of Marvel heroes/villains to have them culminate in an epic cinematic experience sure to take the world by storm, and it did. Marvel/Disney spent the time and monetary effort setting up this big "Huzzah" that had never been seen before in the world of film. Almost everyone I knew that was a casual movie watcher, thus excluding those who I would call "Movie hipsters" like myself, were jumping at the seams to speak on the magnitude of the avengers and its fiscal achievements. People were completely enamored in what was a fairly basic story. How do you react when so many around you are speaking in praise of something that you view so mediocre? Surely the right thing to do is not speak ill on something in the world of media that others hold high, because a film series like the Avengers is entierly subjective when it comes to taste, but it's reasonable to have the discourse with those that investigate your dissent with the series further. Thus is my issue with God of War 2018 and Ragnarok. Almost everyone I know that has played the game(s) has loved them, critics have been raving over Ragnarok as soon as reviews were allowed to come out. I've had to step back from most discourse because I don't want to be "that guy" but this is a review space and this is my review, so I feel alright stating how I feel. God of War is that Avengers to me, it's something that can only be made possible by having a lot of money to make and afford the resources needed to make it "work." They both are spectatcles, never shying away from thrusting intense CG and big moments at the consumer. They both utilize top tier composition, sound design, and voice acting to create a complete experience, free of any hitch. God of War was a completely polished game, I had only one minor bug, and it ran phenomenally on my computer... but can that alone with a mediocre story and samey combat make the game "good" for me? The answer I found, to be no it cannot.

There are some things God of War Ragnarok does well, but in the theme of things being the "same" to me as 2018, they were the same things that the game before it did. Christopher Judge is a great Kratos, matter of fact the entire cast does an amazing job acting out and making their characters mostly believable (shoutout SungWon Cho,) but it's almost... too AAA. The game itself is beautiful, I played performance mode on my PS5 and it truly was a crisp experience, taking full advantage of the graphical prowess of the console and my 4k monitor. The game was eye candy, but to that point I felt myself let down with these amazing vistas because of the soulless gameplay loop I knew I was about to embark upon. Animation was great, again I had that "wow I remember gaming twenty years ago moment" whenever they panned to Kratos' face and you could see his emotion vividly. I also love how they took full advantage of the Norse pantheon, including smaller characters like the Norns, Sigurn, Angrboða, and many more to the bigwigs like Freya, Fenrir, Tyr, and Surtr. I loved seeing/hearing a character speak and opening up their wikipedia page to remind myself about their lore. I used to love doing that in my youth, and God of War Ragnarok was a great reminder of doing that.

Lesser issues I had with the game include one, the assumption that you as the player did all the sidequesting and optional content from the previous game. It was a little confusing when Kratos/Atreus were referencing things they did like "Hey remember when we did this" or explaining to another character of their actions and I'm sitting there completely confused because no... I never did that and I had no clue what they were talking about. Secondly, the camera was just downright poor in most combat and even in cutscenes. There was quite a lot of forced panning that takes away player agency from experiencing what they want in a game. Maybe this is part of appealing to the most common consumer, but it was more offputting to me because I am overall not a fan of being told how to interpret or take away scenes from a narrative experience. I would be trying to walk through a scene or turn to see the entire environment at large to only be met by a slow moving camera and a locked screen.

Ragnarok largely missed the mark for me, really feeling like a DLC/Expansion of the 2018 game without enough variety/change to rectify the previous mistakes for me. There were new vistas and characters, but it felt like the fundamental same experience for me, and I'm glad I didn't wait four years between these two releases. Odds are, fans of the 2018 game will absolutely love Ragnarok, and dissenters will not. I cannot recommend God of War Ragnarok, especially for $70, unless you're set on the experience and getting the most out of its sidequesting and characters.

Armored Core VI: Possible Game of the Year

I've written a few times about my introduction to From Software and how despite playing Dark Souls way back in 2011, the company's trademark difficulty and cryptic narratives didn't grasp me until Elden Ring in 2022. I, like a lot of people in the zeitgeist know Fromsoft as the "Souls" guys, but therein lies a deeper origin, one that involves Armored Core.

I never was a Playstation kid, we had a way to play PS1 games on our Emac growing up, but it wasn't until Final Fantasy 7 Remake that I used my hard earned adult money to buy my first Playstation, a PS4. As a result I missed out on a lot of pivotal games and moments in the history of 3D gaming. One of these titles was the seminal cult classic mech franchise: Armored Core. Coincidentally outside of being really into Zoids as a wee lad and taking part in the Transformers media wave in the late 00's, I wasn't really into Mechs or Mech related media until I got into Code Geass in 2019. I knew that Japanese gaming, anime, and film loved the mecha genre but wasn't cognizant about the when's, where's, and why's. There were two names that stuck out through time and the aforementioned Armored Core was one of them, the other Zone of the Enders. Through conversation with my friends over time I learned about the importance of these two and how they diferred. Kojima's ZoE was balls to the wall action that utilized speed to create immersion, whereas Armored Core was the nerdy stat reliant customization game for those who were into the minutiae of mech creation. I decided that with the announcement of Armored Core VI, off the heels of From's insane post Dark Souls 2 run, that I should embark into the legendary mecha franchises. Earlier this year I sat down and hooked up my Xbox 360 to finally play ZoE and it was... alright, so I then set my eyes on Armored Core VI.

I watched quite literally one gameplay trailer before the game dropped and decided it would be something I was into, it was the one featuring the smelter demon, wait wrong game. It was the one featuring the Cleaner Robot with the furnace on top of it, acting like a Blowhole. The richly detailed factory landscape coupled with crisply quick movement was an immediate sell for me, and thus I anxiously waited for the release of Fires of Rubicon. What I got on release was the exact kind of game I'd wanted, Fromsoft's punishing combat with a richly customizable path through completion. I had a grand time comparing my progress with friends and family and how we approached each fight. While some of my buddies went with the grounded tank approach, others went with a speedy in and out build. I waxed poetic about the glory of the double Songbird (mounted Howitzer-esque cannons) and its ability to stagger bosses with ease. This approach to gameplay, where everybody has their own build that works for them is awesome and I heavily commend From for making a game that is so uniquely accessible in its player agency, because I'm all about player agency. The fights are hard, and the bosses are extremely punishing in places, but there are so many avenues for you the player to bypass them.

I struggled with one of the games first real bosses for anywhere from five to six hours (Balteus for the experienced,) because I wasn't respecting the multiple avenues of approach to defeat him. I was getting greedy, thinking I could brute force my way through the encounter like it was Dark Souls, but no I had to strip apart my oonga boonga playstyle and approach it with a Bloodborne attitude, dancing with the boss to learn and react to its every move. Once I got the patterns down on Balteus, I felt like I understood the game much better. You can create a build that allows you to take more hits, but ultimately you'll have to respect what the encounters do to you, and the limitations that ammunition and only having three repair kits has in store. With my double songbird, double gatling gun build with a heavier mech body, I created a mech that hit like a bruiser. I dealt heavy stagger damage with the cannons, and could melt damage during said stagger state with the barrage of gatling rounds. Creating a strategy that worked without the assistance of looking online through my own determination was greatly rewarding. I more or less used this with some slight variations all the way to the end game and again would like to shout out the devs for allowing this to work.

Fights in Armored Core VI were unique in the fact that they were so wildly different in terms of mechanics but generally the same degree of difficulty that prevented anything from being a cakewalk. From the first main boss to the ultimate encounter, I felt greatly engaged to study boss patterns and timings in my immediate introduction to each fight. Whether it was AC on AC action in which you were in a duel with an enemy that could heal and mimic your own actions like expansion and shoulder firing, set piece bosses in which you had to utilize a specific item to succeed, or just a good old fashion Fromsoft rumble in the jungle against a larger menacing foe, nothing came easy and battles could only be won through hard work. Outside of the one I mentioned above, I don't want to give anything away as to remain spoiler-free, but the boss at the end of chapter four was really dang cool and reminiscient of some of the fun I had in Dark Souls 3. Fittingly enough, the last boss of the game also felt like a callback to some of From's most glorious moments. Outside of bosses, the world fights were the exact right amount of difficulty. You are plopped into a world with a finite amount of ammo and often tasked to take out jobbers and tougher enemies alike, but rarely did I feel like it was unfair. Armored Core VI is checkpointed well enough that should you be stressing your limits on resource, you'll be reimbursed for your efforts upon completion of an area. There were occasionally moments where I felt like the standard zone enemies werew winning against me simply because of a war of attrition, particularly in a "protect the objective" battle near the end of the game, but everything felt manageable as I reassessed my strategies and approached with a new state of mind.

The real unsung hero of this game was the environmental design and oh man was it absolutely incredible. From the moment you step foot on Rubicon, Fromsoft wasted no time in demonstrating the innate talent of their art teams and their ability to craft unforgettable and jawdropping vistas every chance they could. Numerous moments throughout my playthrough did I exclaim "this is really f* cool" to the friends I was streaming it to, stopping to stare at the great expanse of the delapidated world at large. Fromsoft have been the kings of ambience for quite some time now, with each title that I've enjoyed since DS1 in 2011 having that "Fromsoft Moment" where the landscape appears after entering an area and speaks volumes about the world and story at large without saying a single word. As chapter four wraps up and chapter five is introduced, there is a moment in which this happens that had my jaw near the floor, a significant factor in my remembrance of this game. Science Fiction often lives and dies upon the world it exists in, where effectively translating the nuances of the diverse locations is imperative to helping the titles stick out amongst the plethora of others within the genre. You remember the diverse locations of Star Wars, of Mass Effect, of Cowboy Bebop because of the way they are communicated to the audience. Armored Core VI with its Fromsoft DNA follows suit in offering enriching and memorable moments throughout the entire twenty hour runtime via optimal enemy placement, gorgeous vistas, and intricate cityscapes.

While Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is surely not for everybody, it checked the fast paced and difficult action game box for me in the absolute best way possible. Engaging fights, a rewarding customization system, and incredible environmental design all are elements that make this one of the best new games I've played in recent memory, and a hallmark of the mecha genre. I strongly recommend Armored Core VI to anyone who is a fan of Fromsoft, science fiction, and/or action games that require intense focus from the player.

Super Mario Bros. Wonderful

I've played a lot of games this year, Backloggd says sixty five to be exact, ranging in terms of emotional scale from the ever-so-jubilant We Love Katamari all the way to the anxious and heart wrenching Final Fantasy XVI. Throughout all that I'd played, I felt like I had hit every nook and cranny of gaming that I'd set out to touch since I started the year with Crisis Core all the way back in January. There are a few titles I was looking forward to wrap up the year, but I was satiated with my enjoyment of the year thus far. On a whimsy before the release of Like a Dragon: Gaiden, I ordered a copy of Super Mario Bros Wonder. This was a game I had told at least five people who asked me if I would play it that I hadn't planned on it because the 2D Mario's weren't necessarily my cup of tea.

Like seemingly everyone in the gaming world I grew up around Mario. I sat on the ground watching my brother play through SM64 and Sunshine on our CRTV, constantly laughing and smiling in joy at the fun little Italian man doing his fun little thing with all his triple bing bing wahoos and all. We had all the Smash Bros., all the Mario Karts, the Mario Parties... we weren't unique in that aspect but the point is that Mario effectively was present throughout my entire childhood. When the 3D Allstar collection released during the COVID times, I sat alone in my apartment in North Dakota and smiled from ear to ear reliving my childhood in the first two 3D titles and then playing Galaxy for the first time. To add, Odyssey is one of my all time favorite titles. This all written to drive the point home, Mario to me is like a warm glass of happiness. Each time I load up anything Mario related, be it a party game, a 3D title, or a 2D sidescroller, I find myself simply happy to be alive.

With my new copy of Wonder and some time to kill, I booted it up and reconfigured my Switch audio to work through my PC, jumping into the 2D world not really sure what to expect. I saw the Direct where Mario turned into an elephant, I guess that was all I knew... and I can't say that was the most exciting aspect to me. Immediately though, I felt the Mario Magic. What I got in Wonder's short runtime was a game that set what it needed to do perfectly. To start, I've had a bone to pick with the processing power on the Switch in several games I've played recently, most critically was Master Detectives Archives: Rain Code in which the frame dropping and aliasing nearly drove me to a fervent rage. In Wonder there is none of that, rather an engrossing colour palette rich in every single detail you could want out of a Mario game. The bright hues of the greens and yellows speak volumes of jubilee and warmth into a game that is intended to exude such a feeling. The darker levels bloom with intriguing blacks, nefarious greens, and harrowing fires that dimly guide you along your journey. This game is beautiful full stop, and it runs perfectly. I don't like that this is something I have to worry about with a console in the current year, but it is, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder passes with flying colours. The six worlds you pass through are all resoundingly different in their thematic presentation, a showcase at the environmental design expertise that Nintendo retains in house.

Another element of Wonder's full suite that I fell in love with was the audio design. Though Martinet has sung his swan song as the red capped runner, the new talent feels just the same. Outside of our main protagonist, the sounds of each level across the varied worlds was appropriately done to make them feel unique from one another, and also fun within the moment. There lies a level early on in which you run along musical blocks as a cacophony of flowers sing you a song, I cracked a smile and trotted through like I was the king of the castle. This is just a short example of what is in store in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, there's a plethora of moments that remind you why we all cherish the franchise so much. This game and Mario in general is simply life-affirming in the its presentation, especially in the aural landscape. Whether in the Desert, in the Petal Isles, or stopping by the Fungi Mines, you are accompanied by a musical counterpart perfect for your journey.

All this being said, the real success of a 2D Mario title is how it handles simple 2D platforming, a genre it helped pioneer and innovate way back in the eighties when the famed plumber first hit the (small) big screen. It's safe to say that Mario still does the running, jumping, crouching, and scurrying he has always done, but in Wonder you have a few different avenues to take to complete your journey. Enter badges, a unique ability system that gives the player some agency into completing levels and obtaining the Wonder Seeds necessary to advance and beat the game. These badges range in relevancy/necessity from things like having a vine that attaches to walls when you hit the trigger button, to being able to jump hire with an additional float at the top to having a magnet that snatches normal and flower coins alike. I used the aforementioned jumping coin for most of the runtime, outside of levels where a specific badge was required, because it augmented the 2D scape in the way I felt most driving. I appreciated this quite a bit, as I feel like 2D games often can fall into a realm of monotony or awkwardness in the way that they force the player to navigate. This is Nintendo and Mario though, so I should have known better, as they manage to innovate both in 2D and 3D realms with every new Mario titles in ways that reinvent the genre.

Level variety and design both were clearly handled with legitimate thought and care throughout the entirety of Wonder. Though levels often felt familiar, no two truly felt the same. Of course you're utilizing the same platforming mechanics to survive hazards, but there was a significant degree of brainstorming put into making things feel different. Many types of levels exist: Racing Challenges, Enemy Elimination Challenges, Jumping to the Beat, Boss fights, Simple Platforming, and they're all spaced out with effective perfection. At no point did I hit a rut of levels within a world that felt too much like another. Whether I was tasked to run, swim, or fly, I was fighting a new enemy or using a new power to succeed. Mario as a franchise has always been about creating the new out of the familiar, and making sure that no two moments are specifically the same, and that nail is hit with tremendous precision once more in Wonder.

I absolutely recommend Super Mario Bros. Wonder to anyone with a Nintendo Switch, an affinity for Mario, or a liking for 2D Platformers. This was a title that managed to make me smile through every moment I spent, and to me that gives a title an invaluable level of credential.

I literally don't know what to say... Sonic is... Sonic... Sonic is... good?

The clock reads 4:25 AM and I have just completed Sonic Frontiers, I'm listening to the end credits theme for the second time in a row, I'm oddly emotional, it's Thanksgiving and I plan on spending it fully alone, listening to a lo-fi R&B song about Dr. Eggman. This is the state of things and I find myself oddly sentimental about Sonic of all things. This is like the one player on your favorite sportsball team who was on the team for all of its bad years, and finally got his big break and won it all after a decade plus of mediocrity. Sonic Frontiers is like that one musician that put out years and years of passable music at best, but finally got it together for that classic album. Sonic Frontiers is the Sonic that everybody has been asking for... since the dawn of the series.

Like a lot of people I've dipped and dabbled in Sonic as a franchise, with the bulk of my playtime coming in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube (Recently completed on PC this past year) and while I loved that game, it was for a lot of the wrong reasons. Outside of the stellar OST, the game didn't play all that well... but it was at least fun. It had it's moments from the initial Escape from the City to the Knuckles rap songs to the "WE ALL DID IT TOGETHER" from Miles "Tails" Prower, but it was rough, writing was below acceptable, and the Chao stuff is not as fun as you thought it was, but like I said... it was fun. Does Sonic Frontiers fix all of that? The answer is no, but it does remedy enough. Sonic as a series strikes a weird chord because it's undoubtedly meant for Children in a way that other juvenile franchises like Mario and Kirby aren't, it found itself nestled within "cringe" as a draw. Mario and Kirby aren't cringe, they're funny and wholesome (respectively,) and bring about different swaggers in their branding and presentation that have led them down their path through superstardom. Sonic has taken an even more youth-friendly approach to its games and media, which might be at the risk of how quality its forray into gaming actually is. You can't make Sonic a serious character, and they don't really try. He cracks jokes that are unironically not funny at all, but somehow... the cringe makes them work? The entire crew of Frontiers is pretty dry... but I found myself smiling sometimes? The Silly Dr. Eggman-Sonic dynamic is the same as it was way back in my childhood, Knuckles is still as stupid cool as I remember him, and Tails is uh... Tails!

Some issues include the pop-in of various courses and world elements (SkillUp did a pretty good video on this) which is in my opinion, inexcusable, but didn't impact my overall gameplay in the end. It was just kinda funny to be running along the countryside and see random loops and jump pads come into view randomly.

I don't want to bog down on the negatives too much before going into the positive but it should be spoken about. There is a narrative in Frontiers and I have to hand it to them, it was the most invested I've been in a Sonic story since, ever, and actually was pretty appropriate for the series. Given the nature of Sonic, blowing out a full story that measures like other games isn't really possible, because that's not what people play the series for. They want to go fast and do things, not sit down and watch cutscenes where the characters go and do what heroes in an epic story do, there's seperate media for that. Frontiers gives exposition to the struggles of a pre-existing civilization that has seemingly been wiped from the planet inhabit, and what the Sonic team must do to prevent that from happening again. I didn't feel bad per se for the previous society, but I did collect that they were a victim of a tragedy that I was motivated to prevent.

The vibes of Sonic Frontiers are immaculate. The first trailer I saw of this game didn't necessarily sell that idea too well, as it felt like they were really trying to "BotW" the Sonic franchise, and while that isn't really untrue, they did it in a way that works for Sonic. Gone is the mostly linear level design of previous Sonic games in favour of large open world missions that are filled with incredible vistas and a plethora of things to do and accomplish, enemies to fight, and allies to converse with. I never, ever, thought I'd have that "Witcher 3" moment that I had in Skellige in Sonic where I would stop running around like a buffoon and just take in the sights. They nailed the post apocalyptic meets Sonic that they set out to tackle so well. While the worlds aren't really teeming with life, they have a suave to them that makes them feel great to just run and run and run around in. Sonic Team accomplishes the sense of scale of these worlds, encouraging the player to trot in Sonic's trademark red shoes around this world with sky-high structures and well designed flora.

Mechanics of Sonic Frontiers aren't too different in the end from other Sonic games, as you're running along the same speed boost squares and jumping off jump pads, but that's honestly alright, the game does enough things differently that it doesn't matter in the end. While you spend a majority of this game in the open world segments, the Cyberspace areas that you use to get resources to advance the main story were pretty neat and a nice ode to Sonic of years past. These are completely linear levels that see you run and jump in isolated levels like the famed Green Hill Zone and Chemical Power Plant (among others.) They don't occupy much time, and beating the time/ring challenges was quite easy, but were a nice change of pace from the open world courses and challenges.

Music man, this might be the biggest surprise for me out of the entire game. I remember Sonic Adventure 2's soundtrack quite fondly, as I still to this day play it quite frequently, but I didn't know if Sonic Team had preserved that commitment to making the sound of their games as good as it was in Adventure 2. I can't even put into words how happy I am to report that the soundtracking of this game across the board is nothing short of phenomenal. From the ambient/light orchestral sounds of running along the countryside, to the drum and bass/dubstep cyberspace courses, to the metalcore of the boss fights, I was head bopping and messaging everybody I knew about how great the music was. I'm going to be listening to these songs for a loooooooooooooong time. I'm kind of against writing about music for the most part because it's so subjective, so I won't do that here other than to tell the reader to listen to the soundtrack if they can (on the condition that they don't intend to play the game, otherwise they should experience it there.) This has easily catapulted into one of my favorite OST's of any game... ever. Recency bias be damned.

It's not perfect but damnit Sonic really nailed this one, my 4/5 stars signify a hope that Sonic will continue to take risks and go down this path of intricacy and trying to do something new for once. The writing wasn't great, and Sonic doesn't change enough in its core gameplay loop (like a Mario does,) to make this game a must play piece of history, but I had a lot more fun than I ever could have imagined.

This review is probably riddled with typos, but sometimes that's what happens when you defend Sonic from decades of your own criticism at 4:50 AM on Thanksgiving. On behalf of Sonic Haters Anonymous, I am sorry.

I strongly recommend anybody who is willing to step out of their wheelhouse to play Sonic Frontiers. The fresh soundtrack, beautiful atmosphere, and enjoyable gameplay loop (heh) makes this Sonic's best entry, and hopefully a sign of things to come for the Blue Hedgehog.

This was... really not good.

A short form review for a short form experience, with a runtime of maybe four or five hours at best, Final Fantasy XVI's final DLC is a complete departure from what made the main title so good. Ultimately (heh) the issue with Rising Tide is that it's both not interesting and infuriating. The new locale Clive and the gang find themselves in is isolated much like the Echoes of the Fallen DLC. There's not much to do in the realm of exploring, and what you can poke around and interact with wasn't worth the price tag. The village and its populous are kinda just there with no real varied culture or intrigue to make me wish to interact with them further, and the setting chugs the Playstation 5 somehow to Bloodborne levels of framerate. The unfortunate thing for XVI here is that it is not Bloodborne and won't get a pass. I don't know, if I'm engaging with a civilization and its dominant unbeknownst to the greater world and largely lost to time, I'd like them to stand out just a little bit past their appearance?

The combat in Rising Tide frustrated me at similar levels as EotF did just before it, in that you're playing through a dungeon with raised difficulty levels (Which is okay!) however you're throttled by an inability to return to Outer Heaven and restock at any point. Now when you game over you can refresh potions... but this felt like a pretty annoying workaround. Bosses, namely the ultimate one, are genuine sponges taking a frustrating amount of time to defeat even if you're well equipped and geared for the task at hand. This was an issue I had with Rebirth and it rears its ugly head again here in the last bit of XVI we'll get. If I'm doing stagger damage of over two million... you'd hope to get a sense of vindication in healthbar removal moreso than you'll get in Rising Tide. Poorly tuned DPS checks, overwhelming mechanics that lack visual clarity, an enemy that is constantly flying away from you all in addition to the aforementioned sponge issue make for a resoundingly aggrivating experience.

For someone who was a massive fan of the main game in FFXVI and even had it as their Game of the Year for 2023, Rising Tide unfortunately tarnishes the legacy of an otherwise stellar title. It doesn't add much to the excellently crafted personas of Clive, Joshua, or Jill, as you get little in the way of conversation or captivating quotables, instead thrusting the player into a lukewarm time. I do not recommend Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide.

The good, the bad, and the... Starfield.

I was a believer, I really was. I didn't dislike Fallout 4 as much as most of my constituents and peers, and decided to waste none of my time on Fallout 76. Despite going on a somewhat downward trajectory since the release of Oblivion, I had faith that with the Microsoft purchase and subsequent fiscal investment that Todd "It Just Works" Howard was going to be able to Houdini an amazing game out of effectively thin air with Starfield. I, like many others waited with bated breath as the marketing wave for Bethesda's newest IP in decades pushed into the gamingsphere. WIth every announcement, every showcase, I became more and more invested in the world I would soon embark in. Science Fiction when done right is an exploration of limitless possibilities, of worlds and galaxies foreign to the audience waiting to be freshly explored. This is what my dream for Starfield was, and did I get it? The answer is simply: not really.

Fallout and the Elder Scrolls succeeded in the moments in between, starting with the trademark cold opens (as seen in Oblivion, Skyrim, and the Fallouts) and continuing on to your first moments of freedom. Remember in Skyrim as you escape the executioner's block in the first thirty minutes of runtime, how the entirety of the land the Nords call home is open to you? You have a loosely defined main quest to embark on, but there is an entire world and path to craft between you and your destination. Nothing is forced. Once you began to creep into the stories of each respective game, it felt like there was a limitless possibility of what you could find on your way from Point A to Point B. In Fallout, walking through a simple cliff face could see you crossing path with an entire colony of people with the name "Gary" all yelling their name as they attacked you without rhyme or reason. In Oblivion on your way walking through the countryside could find the player interacting with a formidable prince of an otherworldy deity.

Starfield however, it never had that... magical spunk that the aforementioned titles did. In Starfield you spend the majority of your time doing two things: chasing down quest markers and flying to said quest markers. In theory this isn't a terrible idea, effectively the other titles are all about the same thing, but the issue in translating that mantra to Bethesda's big 2023 title is that there is no in between. Now much against my chagrin this is my biggest gripe with the game, the inability to have a reason to explore and the lack of reward of doing so. As I mentioned previously, in the "good" Bethesda titles I found myself overjoyed at taking the long way because it meant that I was likely to find myself distracted and taken on a path to a babbling brook of curiosities. In Starfield, this doesn't exist as it takes the form of grav jumping from system to system (as your ship's capabilities allow) with complete lack of middle ground. You fly from your starting point to your destination, there is no random occurrence, there is no vista to pause at along the way, there is no mysterious force that will stop you in your tracks to explore. Not having anything to look forward to in my active journey in a Bethesda game just felt... wrong. They'd always been the antithesis of the open world epidemic as sprung by Ubisoft, which had towers to climb and random outposts to capture. Bethesda titles championed the random and gave you a reason, completely unprodded to explore. That wasn't present here. It's hard to stress how strange it felt getting an objective for a faction that was taking you to a world a plethora of lightyears away only for it to require the same sequence of system jumps that the twenty quests before it did, the only variance being the end destination. As I mentioned previously, this was my greatest and gravest letdown with Starfield and an unfortunate result of a scope that didn't quite meet expectations.

There's another avenue of complaint to my issues of exploration and scope, and it is in the worlds of Starfield at large. My next statement may gesture itself as hyperbole but I assure the reader that I mean it in sincerity: I found there was genuinely nothing interesting about the planets in Starfield. Outside of legitimately well constructed cities like Neon and New Atlantis, the planets you do land on for side and main stories alike felt completely lifeless. Recycled clear procedural generation made for planet after planet of monotony with no motivation to poke around in other than completing a flora & fauna scanning log and collection of materials for resource crafting that I also found rather unengaging. Starfield didn't position itself to be No Man's Sky in that aspect and the expectation of the general public for it to be so is completely unfounded and misguided. But in the times I did find myself off the beaten path on the seemingly endless worlds at large, it was simply a nothing burger out there. I'd look out at the vast expanse of the freshly landed-upon planet and continue straight on my way, as there was nothing for me to poke around and find.

This takes me to my next issue with Starfield, and I promise this review is not just a laundry list of problems I had with the game, as I am giving it a favorable score. I touched previously on the great job the (recent) Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles did, and that was give the player an organically engaging approach to side content in the ways of questing and base building. Starfield sort of just... dumps everything on you pretty much right away. Quickly jaunting through New Atlantis (the game's starting city and most important location,) dumps more quests on you than you can count, and they are almost all unprovoked. By walking through each district the activity log grows with people you need to speak to and places you need to find as a result of NPC's conversating about them to eachother. This in particular felt strange to me, you were no adventurer in need as you were in the Elder Scrolls helping the woman in her painted world, you were just an eavesdropper who heard a character complaining into the void. This didn't necessarily impact the quality of the sidequests, but beginning the game with four factions dropped on your and a laundry list of people I needed to seek out before even beginning the second main story quest was numbing.

My favorite part of this game was easily the factions and side content that it throws at you, despite the awkward nature that you first interact with it. I loved the way the factions worked and varied from one another. If you wanted to dabble in humorous corporate espionage, you had the Ryujin Industries questline. If you wanted to embark on a well thought out space pirate adventure (and who doesn't,) you had the Crimson Fleet storyline. Players looking for an excellent piece of science fiction with an incredible twist, there was the UC Vanguard. And lastly for cowboys, you had the uh, Freestar Collective. Each of these brought something new to the questing and enjoyment table that the other ones didn't, and I found the bulk of my seventy hour runtime was spent with these storylines and the missions throughout. I greatly enjoyed the variation of writing styles, mission structure, and combat that were involved and showed that Bethesda in all of its recent faults still had some incredible scenario writers on retainer.

I left out a faction, and that one would be "Constellation" AKA the main story questline. Because of the nature that Starfield drops its side content on you, I made sure to do as much as I could of it first before engaging with the main scenario. This meant for practically fifty hours I had gone without talking to the members of my crew patiently waiting for me in New Atlantis to set the events of the story in motion. By the time they had asked and instructed me to explore the galaxy, I had already done so. I had done things that led me to interesting storylines and met many interesting people. I'd been to the other two major cities in the galaxy, Neon and Akila City. I had already travelled from one end of the explorable system to the other and had weapons that could one or two shot most opponents. The point of the above is to effectively say that the main scenario felt diluted after doing the side content. I felt like I was saving the best for last, but in reality I had set aside the most mediocre and uninteresting narrative in the game which is... unfortunate to say the least for what is the main story. Maybe unfair because the tertiary questing in the Elder Scrolls/Fallout series was also probably more "fun" than the respective narratives of each game's set path, but the gap was just too large in Starfield. I didn't feel a connection to quite literally anyone in the faction that you fight tooth and nail with to protect. Sarah had a moral compass and ability to annoy you more than Fi did in the original Skyward Sword, Stroud was fun for the few missions you had with him but ultimately was a rich playboy, Sam was a boring version of Irvine from FFVIII, Vasco was a robot doing the recycled dry humor robot schtick, Barrett was supposed to be someone we cared about, and Andreja was just kinda... there. I couldn't empathize with a group like Constellation and their ongoing mission if I couldn't connect with any of the group. I felt a connection to the plight of Martin Septim and Jauffre in Oblivion, I felt a connection to the issues plaguing my father and the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3, I didn't get that in Starfield. Every time I walked into The Lodge (Constellation's hub area,) I did a side eye at those around me. I just felt... 100% detached from a group I was meant to empathize with. I know they're completely of different strokes, but its impossible not to think of a series like Mass Effect and how it quickly got you to care about each of your party members in its expansive sci-fi narrative. Bethesda's never been about that to the same degree but man, it just makes you think.

Honestly thinking about it too, you just straight up don't matter in this game other than an advancement to the plot. Once more, I don't really expect too much more from Todd and his expertise but there came a point towards the end of the game where I read some testimonials from my brother and others who were also playing and came to the question: Am I really present in the story? I don't have the opportunity to say anything very interesting, I'm quite literally just the vehicle for a questline that chooses you as important within an hour of the game. I'm not the dragonborn, I'm not the son of an important figure reshaping a wasteland, I'm not the father of a child whose importance is likely beyond my scope... I'm just a character who touched a rock. Not the end of the world, but it made me ponder my actual intentions and level of engagement with the world(s) at large.

Speaking of engaging... you know what's really hard to engage with even with an Nvidia 3090 GPU? Ding ding ding... it's Starfield! Performance in this game on a good rig is straight up inexcusable and is responsible for a large degree of my detriment to this game, even more so than the previously mentioned dissent on worlds, questing, and player agency. I have a good rig, I'm fortunate enough where I'm at a position to be playing with effectively top of the line hardware... I should not be able to see Steam's frame counter register sub thirty in combat towards the end of the game. This is not okay. First person shooters are not fun below a certain threshold and Starfield managed to reach it. One of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, Bloodborne, saw its personal rating fall by quite a bit from me because it was locked at thirty on the PS4 and that was a third person action game! Starfield is a first/third person shooter in which aiming is... important! Movement and tracking is... important! Running around Akila City and feeling like I was in slow motion because of how astonishingly low the framerate was felt like a slap in the face to me as the player. Even Cyberpunk ran better at launch... on worse hardware!!! Sometimes I would find reprieve in smaller zones inside cities or at space stations where I was able to hit a reasonable seventy to eighty frames per second, but these moments were remarkably few and far between. The majority of my seventy hours of Starfield were spent sub fifty and I can sacrifice framerate SOMETIMES for fidelity and beautiful vistas... but that was not present in Starfield. When it was running well the game looked good but not great, not worthy of the tradeoff that came in the form of gutter-level performance.

The framerate issue made combat tougher than it should have been. I didn't expect fighting in any way to be the best part of Starfield, as it decidedly isn't in any Bethesda game, but it was another element of this game that added my ultimate takeaway of "meh" as I saw the end credits roll. The guns didn't feel very interesting to me as they were all variations of familiar Fallout formulas but without the nuance and strategy of V.A.T.S. You use shotguns, snipers, pistols, melee, and lasers to cut your way through unimportant humanoid and arachnid enemies alike just as you did in Fallout. Aiming though was a nice callback to the pre-Oblivion days where it felt like a complete dice roll. I laughed at the amount of times I'd have my reticle on enemies only to whiff shot after shot after shot because the combat mechanics of Starfield deemed a miss necessary. I was never frustrated... just confused.

Combat leads into another point of contention I had with Starfield: space flight. Not only is the shipbuilder resoundingly obtuse and unfair in the way it gates creativity, but actually employing the ship you carefully crafted in a combat scenario is a most woefully uninteresting and grating endeavor that I could have easily gone without. Dogfighting is a tall task to make work, but EA and Pandemic studios were able to do it with Battlefront way back in 2005. It wasn't complicated, as it was a simple follow and target system, but it was fun. Starfield's space combat requires the player to face slam three attack buttons that control cannons, missiles, and lasers, until however many ships you are forced to defeat have been silenced. The tracking system was a dud, and I didn't want to chase the skill tree to make it any better as I knew that would take away my enjoyment of more tangible and useful things like the persuasion system or on-world combat. If you accidentally ported to a system that had space pirates or enemies target you upon entry and didn't have enough ship parts to heal right away, you were effectively S.O.L. Enemies have a tendency to fly right over you and evade your targeting, forcing the player to spend an awkward amount of time just so they can recalibrate. Weapons had an annoying level of recharge period that took the active interest and engagement levels of the fights completely away. For something I really wanted to love and have that simply living-out-my-Star-Wars-dream-jubilee with, I was rather against ever partaking in. All in all, I stopped having fun with a lot of the appeal of the title real quick.

Starfield was a game meant for a lot of people, it is Bethesda's first big IP in too many years to count and unfortunately, it missed my mark by a long shot. What I had hoped would be a game to rival FFXVI for my GOTY spot, is really nothing more than another candle in the wind. Starfield is a game somebody is going to enjoy, but not me. If I want to build outposts and get some sort of vindication in doing so, I could play Satisfactory. If I want to dogfight, I'll just jump on Ace Combat. If I wish for an engaging first person shooter, I can get back into DOOM. If I want peak Bethesda, I have my Oblivion GOTY edition sitting on the shelf next to me. I can't recommend Starfield and it breaks my heart. It's the first time I've played a Bethesda game and truly felt indifferent. I reached the credits and I didn't clap, I didn't smile, I did the worst thing imaginable... I asked my friends to play League of Legends.

Five Nights at Umbrella Corps

Crow Country is a really neat Resident-Evil styled survival horror that takes place in a theme park somewhere in the Atlanta metro. Being that I'm a huge fan of RE and the survival horror genre at large, when I saw this near the top of the highest rated Backloggd games for 2024 my interest jumped. This was everything I was looking for in a game while I await Shadow of the Erdtree. It's remarkably short (less than five hours, however I was afk for some of this,) fairly easy, has an awesome CRT aesthetic, an RE1 camera, and the lore was interesting enough and told well to keep me interested in its short run time. Plotwise it’s nothing extraordinary: You play as Mara, a girl investigating this dilapidated land of attraction. The more time you spend investigating the nooks and crannies of Crow Country, you meet more people and become further enveloped in the spooky mystery behind disappearances and fatalities alike. Zombies known as "guests" inhabit the park in various shapes and sizes. Some of these guests are large and tower over the area you're in, some nimble and move quick, others literal blobs on the map... they're remedied all the same by a few shots from whatever weapon you're using. I used the basic pistol, in RE style, for the majority of the game until the final boss and got along just well. There are several optional bosses as well, all of which went down with a few grenade tosses and a shot or two. I liked this a lot about Crow Country, its short and doesn't control all too well (I mean really, what tank control game ever did) and making combat as simple as it is just making the runtime feel better.

Now I am generally pretty positive in regard to this game, especially because it respects the players runtime, but I felt like a lot of the puzzling and item usage felt a little... random to me. This made the game for much of its latter runtime feel more like a metroidvania than an RE style survival horror than I believe was intended. Items required you to run from one end of the map to the other and sometimes puzzles felt a little obscure in their solutions. Overall I think it could take a hint from the RE2/3/4makes and be more intuitive than it was.

In all if you're a fan of survival horror, especially from indie studios, Crow Country is a must play for 2024. It's short, sweet, and wears its inspiration on its sleeves in the right way.