I really have to hand it to Bluepoint's Shadow of the Colossus remake, it was the first game to fill me with such vitriol at its mechanics and gameplay that I started emitting a red glow from my face and steam from my nostrils and ears. I realized that there is no being capable of deserving as much hate in media, across the thousands of generations of human storytelling, as the damn horse in Shadow of the Colossus. I am 100% certain this horse was meant to be sent to a glue factory. This is the Elmer's glue horse, this is the horse that started it all. Some pooor shmuck popped in Shadow of the Colossus into his Industrial era PS4 and jumped on the horse. It was his inspiration, it was his Joker moment. He quickly realized there was no being in history, nor the future, who could be as pain-giving as this horse. If you have recently played Elden Ring, Metal Gear Solid 5, or any video game post Magnavox Odyssey, you have played a game with a horse that has controlled better. I would rather eat clay and stick my head in mud while being smacked on each side by a baseball bat, than play this game using the horse as a mode of transport.

Plotwise there is probably a story here, but the narrative is played off in the obscure, meaning that you're dripfed some form of narrative into the game that is supposed to pay off at the end. Did it? I don't really care. I stopped caring the more I had to use the horse, maybe that's the narrative intention of this game. I think the creator has some form of equine-phobia. Just play Nier, any vibes of a cool game that I got made me think of Nier Replicant, it's a better game. Now this is all my subjective opinion, and given user/critic reviews and general influence of this game I am probably wrong, but I will continue to complain anyways. I streamed this game to a small crowd, and multiple times I had to stop, get on my knees, point towards the sky and apologize for my misdoings. I now know, what it is truly like to experience a game so mind numbing, that I can no longer experience true pain. The puzzling of the boss fights felt terrible and gimmicky, the soundtrack was extremely quiet, the game runs at a poor framerate on PS4, the flimsy attack mechanic feels generally awful as the game goes on, I am full of sorrow.

Uh, cool things about this game!
-Colossi design was great, Bluepoint did a great job bringing the ancient back to life.
-The world: while there was almost nothing worthwhile in it, the environment sure looked good.

Oh blah dih, oh blah dah, la la la la life goes on.

I played God of War all these years later after it finally got a PC port, despite owning a PS4, because I really wanted to see why it had defeated Red Dead Redemption 2 at the Game Awards in 2018. After completing the game, I am left even more confused than I was before. The 2018 release of God of War is a complete mess of gameplay decisions that obstruct what could be a fun and important gaming experience.

What does God of War do well? At least a few things. Kratos, one of the most legendary figures in all of gaming, remains a fantastic character in his limited conversation yet imposed depth of character. He's machismo to the T yet again, a Spartan warrior with the fury and rage to be unmatched, yet is capable of showing compassion make intelligent decisions. He is a rigid man, yet one that acts only with purpose and never without reason. Christopher Judge does an absolutely phenomenal job bringing the character to modern gaming, and to that point, he looks great too. Better advancements in tech after the original trilogy have Kratos looking better (and older) than ever before.

The other thing God of War has going for it, and I'm not sure how much I can really give to the game here, is the way it couples Kratos' backstory and time in Greece's mythos with that of the Norse mythos. The story that follows the dysfunctional family of Thor, Odin, and Freya is one built very, very long ago, but I think the game overall does a great job in its inclusion of the Norse "pantheon" and their impressions in the story and the world of Midgard and the seperate realms. It almost brings out the kid in me, I remember checking out myth books ad nauseum at the library and reading about each culture and their gods and godesses. God of War does a great job at bringing them to life and giving me an idea of what they would act like, how their quirks and unique attributes interact with eachother.

Outside of a phenomenal PC Port and great graphical fidelity, my praise for God of War basically stops there. This game, after playing a plethora of other games within the character action and action RPG genres feels like stale bread. It does everything other games do, but far worse. The combat within this game is probably the biggest qualm I have with it, genuinely nothing about it feels rewarding to play. It feels like a great majority of enemies are complete bullet sponges and require the same technique of hammering the right bumper to kill and it takes FOREVER. The dark elf enemies are the greatest example of this, especially when you fight them in the late game gauntlet. It took reloads, cheese strats, Spartan Rage perfect inputs to get through them, and this is as a veteran of games similar on harder difficulties. Nothing about the hack and slash of God of War made me, the person controlling Kratos, feel like an actual God of War... more like the God of Button Mashing. Everytime I walked into an open room and saw the first grouping of enemies spawn, I groaned because I knew what it meant. There were many times you enter an open area and enemies just continue to spawn, seemingly infinitely. I had to pause and question if I needed to restart because the game seemed bugged with unending enemies. But no, they really just balance the game by chucking as many enemies as possible at you until you eventually get bored and quite or power through and survive through the mundane combat experience. Upgrading my moves felt pointless and I legitimately never felt like a skill I had learned was beneficial to me in combat. DMC has been out for a while... why can't they just copy that model? Skills in DMC feel good to learn and exciting to master, in God of War it just felt like an unecessary chore.

A second issue I raise with the game is the oddly tacked on RPG elements that only took away from the overall experience. God of War has no need to be a level up RPG where you need to upgrade/craft new gear through finding raw materials. Why is that included? Why is my progress and skill gated by the fact that I haven't grinded my teeth into the ground messing around with the game's horribly boring combat. I strongly dislike the collecathon trend that's hit many of Playstation's big budget games. Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima(a game that I really enjoyed,) Days Gone, God of War (and probably many more) all have this issue. I don't get why God of War needs to have a huge map of side quests and totems to uncover. Why does this game with its narrative focus ask the player to scour every corner of every room to find all of Miscellaneous Objective X? That made far more sense in the recent Kirby release than it did in this AAA game that has as powerful visuals as it does. I legitimately don't understand what the post game valkyrie hunting brings to the game and its narrative either. Coming into the game I didn't think I would love it, but the completely unecessary RPG time-adders, were probably the biggest detriment for me in my enjoyment of this game.

On top of the above issues I had with it, I took great issue with the MacGuffin nature of the story and downright annoying characters. I felt like the games overall narrative made sense, you are on a journey to spread the ashes of Kratos' betrothed and Atreus' mother, however all of the in between was the "your princess in another castle" dilemma to its nth degree. If you wanted to go from point a to point b, you had to find item c. If you wanted to finally get to point b with item c, you were taken away to another area to get out of before you could return to point b. After completing point d you had to find item e to get into room f. After room f you had to find NPC g to complete their reqeust so that the bird in room h could retrieve the item I from giant monster J. After Giant monster J was felled, perhaps NPC K had something that could lead me back to location L and I'd finally be able to continue on to the next part of the journey. I wish I was kidding when I went on that tangent but thats how the story feels to me. In a year where Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in the same year, God of War doesn't hold an inch of a candle to the narrative expertise it had. This game is a mess of story expose in which I routinely sighed everytime I tried to continue on the main path of the story to spread the ashes because I knew that SOME sort of random problem was about to fall in Kratos' lap. Trying to progress in God of War felt like needing to be slapped in the face before getting up, slapped in the face while making coffee, slapped in the face while brushing your teeth, then slapped in the face again while putting on your clothes. Like I mentioned before, there were some characters that I just couldn't stand. Atreus throughout the majority of the game was far more than a bratty kid, but randomly an edgy teen and back again to a normal companion. Companion characters in games are delicate because they can OFTEN be annoying and overbearing (looking at you FFXIII and RE6,) but God of War flipped a switch between decent and downright cringey. I don't know why this was done, most of the writing in the game was alright, but the conversations with Atreus were just annoying eventually and meaningless. There were a few other characters I was indifferent to like Freya and the dwarf smiths, I felt like they were copy and paste Hollywood Movie characters rather than something unique to God of War, and that felt like a disservice to a legendary franchise.

I can't recommend anyone to play God of War unless they are really that curious, it's a slog of an experience and narratively speaking there are many games out there that far outperform it. That being said, if you feel like you don't have enough stories about Norse mythos in your life, or are a fan of Kratos, this may be a good pick for you.

Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm action game that does just about everything right. My only qualm with it? It's too short!

Seriously this game is practically the entire DOOM aesthetic turning itself into a beat-timing slaughterfest and I was completely into it the entire time. You're spit through the eight or so levels extremely fast, running and gunning through corridors and wide arenas with a small group of unique but evenly gratifying weapons. Once unlocked, I chose to rock the dual pistols with the launcher equivalent and never looked back. Every weapon felt fun to use and the player is implored to tailor combat to their liking. Unlike in DOOM Eternal (yes this is a Marauder complaint post,) no enemy gimmick felt annoying when they showed up which made the timing game and general fluidity of Hellsinger a lot easier to approach. The demons present their own few basic moves but could all be taken out quickly enough to keep the pedal to the Metal (hehe) and combat going at its correct pace.

The true hero of this game, which really is no suprise, is the fantastic metal soundtrack that features legends like Randy Blythe from Lamb of God and Serj Tankian of System of a Down fame. There are many other artists whom I'm not familiar with yet but each map had an appropriate song to match the vibe and fighting going on. The music vocals only ticked in boss fights (at the end of each level) and once you reach 16x fury (mechanic achievable in combat) which is the appropriate timing to make you the player feel like you're making an impact on the game. The more badass you are, the better you are, the cooler the music is. The transition when losing fury and gaining it and the vocals coming in and going was seamless, making for a musically stutter-free playthrough.

This game is rather short, but seems to have some serious replay value with the challenges alotted to each level. I played this on Microsoft Gamepass, but I really wouldn't mind buying it seperately to support the devs for the fantastic endeavour.

Dream Drop Distance is a game so mystifyingly poorly outlined in narrative scope and creative ambition that I have a genuine confusion as to its existence as a title. There's a lot of legitimately interesting lore packed into the latest moments of this game that players jumping and tentatively becoming uninterested would have no earthly idea of its existence.

What sees you as both Sora and Rikku world hopping from select Disney properties eventually involves some of the entire KH story's most important figures and integral plots. Not only was the story pacing misaligned, but difficulty and overambitious mechanic additions muddy what could have been a rather interesting title.

Whatever compelled Nomura and company to add another confusing and unnecessarily obtuse mechanic in its Chao-Buddy-Pal Thing system is a mystery to me. Just because you're adding another game in the series doesn't mean you need to reinvent the wheel on combat... just make it playable. DDD adds an entirely new layer and forces the player to learn it for no additional value. Couple this with routine gimmick boss fights and you have a beyond frustrating game to actually... play.

Enemy design is again repetitive, but what is most worthy of scorn is once more the inundated placement of monotonous foes throughout each realm you visit. It's one thing to fight the same group of enemies, its another when you are doing so at every single clearing/zone possible, and its another when you're doing it twice over as the game sees you re-tread each world you visit as both Rikku and Sora. I don't understand the infatuation with the KH dev team to force the player into physically playing the same locations (this is twice in a row now with Birth By Sleep) just to soak in some extra narrative. They explain it in DDD, but could and should have easily been bypassed through other means. It's alright to do things once... sort of, but making you run through everything you've just seen to move the story along is inexcusable.

Dream Drop Distance really could have been something interesting if it pressed the story that makes KH actually interesting into the earlier elements of the game, drip feeding it throughout, instead of waiting until the last moments of the title to do so.

Not Funny: Didn't Laugh

I can hardly muster up the strength to review Immortals: Fenyx Rising. It's such an affront to every thing I deem "positive" within the history of gaming and the industry at large that it's honestly hard to narrow down in an honest and complete writeup. It's more Ubisoft garbage, meant in with full connotation of what such terminology in 2024 could possibly bring. Want your towers? You got it! Want your frivolous objectives to complete? You got it! Want your battle pass thrusted into your eyes at every conceivable moment (including completion of the game?) You got it!!!!!!!!! Hey and to chase that all down, we'll even include a faux mouse on the menu screen for controller instead of letting d pad select what you want... because why not!

Genuinely little to nothing about this game was good except for the fact that it was easy on the eyes? The terrain looked pretty swell, and the game ran crisply at high settings throughout... but man the world was lifeless and filled with nothing to interact with. I get that it's effectively the story driven playfield of Prometheus and Zeus as they telll the tale of your titular "hero," but the world felt pointless to explore. For a game that is as shamelessly a Breath of the Wild knockoff as Immortals, you'd think they'd have understood that part of what makes Zelda special (especially BotW) is that the world that is out there is teeming with life and fresh experiences to be had. You can find new villages with new NPC's that are sure to give you dialogue with sharp wit or humor along a hopefully interesting task. This title has none of that, it has vaults for you to complete... challenges for you to painstakingly comb through. Because why become inventive with your copycat title when you can simply become lazy?

I spoke briefly about the narration from the legendary titans in Zeus and Prometheus, and I'll warn the reader that this remains a constant throughout the entire game. From minute one to the end, these two narrate your every move and try their hardest to be "funny" the whole time. I won't try to argue that I know the complete definition of "humor," but the constant attempts at creating jokes and funny hee hee ha ha's wore thin as soon as it could. Again, the beauty of BotW and TotK lies within how many moments are spoken by the player's mind. The journey Link shapes as he explores Hyrule and takes in the sights and sounds of a boundless expanse lie ultimately in origin to the person guiding it. Immortals throws this all in the garbage, drives it to the incinerator, and turns the flames to their hottest temperature. No moment can be truly taken in by the player and enjoyed as is with the two speakers accompanying every single step.

I can't with good confidence recommend anyone play Immortals Fenyx Rising. This game isn't fun, it isn't funny, and it was surely a waste of the time and $6 spent on it.

Soul Hackers 2 is an endurance marathon of a video game that left me with an shockingly profound case of Stockholm Syndrome.

I gave 76 hours of my life that I will never get back to trudge through the most abysmal dungeons in any video game that I've ever played, a remarkably bland story, mostly unlikable characters, and I don't even know if I'm upset.

This game has so few redeemable qualities in regards to the time it requires out of the player, it is downright impressive.

Soul Hackers 2 is an affront to the adult human. Time is not respected. Sanity is not respected. Intellect is not respected. The hypothetical of watching the entirety of One Piece is a resoundingly better use of time.

Little about this experience in retrospect could be described by the four letter use of diction in the English language that is the word: good.

Usually I would write a long form review, as I do with most of my plays, for games that I have a generally strong positive/negative reaction to, but Soul Hackers 2 drained enough out of me, Dracula would be proud.

I liked Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but no game should have the player ever, in a modicum of occurrences, say "I would rather play Tokyo Mirage Sessions."

Seriously, I have never complained about a game I've played this much, for this long, and had that come up in my review. I am mellow, I am very mild-mannered, but Soul Hackers 2 had me considering donning a purple jacket, some clown makeup, and changing my legal name, that my lovely mother and father gave to me, to Arthur Fleck, also known in the DCComic Universe as The Joker.

Speaking of Joker, man do I miss Persona. This is an SMT game through and through, that should've been a sign to me. I knew it was SMT, and I kinda like SMT, but I don't Liiiiiiiiiike SMT.

I pledge to play video games that respect my time a little more.

The genuine pros of this game, is that the hub vistas that you revisit are quite beautiful and the game design of the environments (minus the dungeons) is great. The character design, minus Arrow, is awesome and some of the better that I've seen in the JRPG space recently. Ringo, Figue, Milady, Nana, and Saizo all had great and unique designs that were candy to the eye and played to their respective characters. Speaking of the (main) characters, they were pretty good actually. Though they were sort of juvenile in their approach
to the tentative apocalypse that would lead to the death of all humanity, they were fun to listen to talk and hang out in the downtimes.

The shop menus and art style was very well done too. The presentation of Soul Hackers 2 was the lone spotlight in a sea of begrudgingly depressing and miserable decisions.

I can't recommend you play this game, unless you have a lot of free time, and not the will to enjoy a good game.

This has legitimately numbed my approach to video games, I'm hoping in a sort of shell-shocked fashion that I will get over. I hope the next game I play, has some redeeming quality that makes me smile or interested in what I'm interacting with, Soul Hackers 2 may be a paradigm shift in the way I approach games. I hope one day, that the spark that Elden Ring brought will return, because playing Soul Hackers 2 is the complete antithesis of everything I enjoy.

The more I think about the plot, the more I want to go out into the country of the state I live in and lie in a field of grass so that I can forget how poor it is.

Saizo really was a great character though, I just wanted to let that be known.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a Yakuza game through and through, meaning that a S tier mob story that is topped with fantastic interpersonal dilemma and nuance is also coupled with a downtrodden combat system that made me sing "Baka Mitai" everytime I got into a boss fight.

Kiwami 2 is a great story, following up on the events of Kiwami 1 while also carrying over key narratives and characters from 0. Kiryu is back as multi-faceted protagonist we grew to know and love in the previous two games, but this time we see a different side of him; the romantic. I like the time that RGG Studio takes in setting up Kiryu in a style that is almost unheard of in the gaming industry. In his first (canonical) journey he's a hungry hatchling in the mob world, growing up around the Kazama family as a strong and respectable man, but not quite there in all the facets of a true leader. In Kiwami 1, we see Kiryu really become the Dragon of Dojima and an honored man amongst his comrades. In Kiwami 2 he takes another leap into becoming the effective Patron Saint of Kamurocho and unlocks the ability to love. I personally believe that a lot of games (and media in general) fumble romance, either jumping into it too quick or taking on an awkwardly juvenile angle at it, but Kiwami 2 made it feel authentic.

The story jumps the player between the familiar locations of Sotenbori and Kamurocho with a fairly even mix until the later stages of the game. Even though Kamurocho is fun and teeming with life, the changing of scenery is appreciated to ensure that the game's pacing feels fresh throughout. There are new foes and familiar faces abound, with characters from the storied Omi Alliance and Tojo Clan taking center stage for the entierity of the game. It's pretty much unecessary to talk about the excellence that RGG holds in creating a narrative that excels this well in establishing conflict and consquence between criminal organizations, but boy do they do it again. Kiwami 2 has the player analyzing and second guessing everybody they come across, learning piecemeal over the sixteen chapters who can be trusted and which people really sowed the seeds of war. This story brings a plethora of new characters into the mix and merges their stories in with those that are already involved in the series, another element that long running franchises outside of Yakuza seem to not be able to grasp fully. I loved being able to piece together and guess at where the story would be, practically at the edge of my seat through each story cutscene and conversation because I knew it would add some serious gravity and impact to the narrative at large. I was very glad that Kiwami 2 resolves itself quite well, both in the game's main story and addtionally provided Majima Saga, the latter of which provides some great context to Goro Majima's relationships in Yakuza 0.

To that point, one of my major qualms with Kiwami 1 was the discredit it did to what was a very in depth and captivating Majima in Yakuza 0. While still slapstick a bit (see scene of him slamming his head into a desk ad nauseum,) Goro brings back some of that 0 swagger and intrigue that he used to have. He's not really an ally of Kiryu per se, but he is cognizant of the need for a united Tojo Clan, Kamurocho, and the implications that an imbalance would bring to the world of the Yakuza. His intelligence and cunning reappears and I was greatly happy to see that.

Okay, it's now time for my tidbit on the combat which is uh, yikes. I figured that the jump from the Yakuza 0 engine to the Yakuza 6 engine might re-fresh the combat to make it feel better... and it kinda does? No longer do you switch styles and level up a skill tree like in the previous two titles in favor of a massive stat book and a single brawler stance. On paper I like that because I pretty much only used the brawler in 0 and Kiwami 1, but I felt like the experience gain and cavernous depth to skills in Kiwami 2 left a lot to be desired. I put most of my experience gained into raw skills (defense, heat, health, damage) when I could, but I had no idea on the legitimacy of doing so instead of jumping into upgrading the other skills. Why is that really so? Because weapons are so extremely broken that I bypassed using or learning new skills in favour of just executing heat actions on swords, bats, and police batons that would nuke boss health bars. I learned quickly bosses felt cheap and way too difficult like they did in Kiwami 1 so I consulted the internet for tips. Once I beat the first "real" boss after hording weapons in the room previous I felt like the devs got a little lazy in crafting a captivating combat experience. Yakuza is a series with swagger dripping at the seams, why can't they just make boss combat... kind of fun? It feels more like a chore, especially with how much you are tasked to go through it as the player. in Yakuza 0 (which I speak on in my review,) combat is boring but at least it's quick to learn and the enemies feel mostly fair. In Kiwami 1 and 2, bosses neglect hit stun, knock Kiryu across the arena plenty (thanks to the ragdoll effect in the new engine,) and deal crazy damage. I didn't stress boss fights yet I did shrug my shoulders each time because I knew it was just an item check.

Music is again great in a Yakuza title, with the recurring main theme by SiM becoming a great vehicle for emotional scenes and moments within the game. I'm going to listen to that track a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooot for the foreseeable future, and I was glad to see it was by a band still making great tunes (like the Rumbling for Attack on Titan.)

Kiwami 2 is absolutely stunning from a visual perspective, I spent a decent amount of time in the first person camera just walking around Kamurocho staring at all the pretty neons and other citizens walking by. When a game succeeds in making a city feel alive and real, it does a number into making that experience feel memorable. I'll forever remember the sights, sounds, and characters I witnessed as I waltzed around Tokyo and Osaka.

I would recommend Kiwami 2 for fans of the series or newcomers (like myself) looking to continue Kiryu's saga. It's a very good story with more middling combat, but the former is so so so so worth it that it is warranted to stomach the latter.

PS: Any final boss fight that has a closing moment in which you can fail due to spontaneous QTE, is a bad final boss fight.

Yeah man, this sucks.

Congratulations soldier, you have graduated suma cum update and are at the top of your class at Activision. As part of your duties, we will now implore you to launch the current iteration of Call of Duty. You have clicked "Call of Duty" in your steam launcher, now that you have loaded the game, please restart so you can install another update. After this you must navigate through a menu filled with more tiles than a Home Depot. Congratulations soldier, you have located Modern Warfare III, please wait as we restart the game once more so you can magically be teleported a la horadric cube into what we hope is the right game. Now, in your best David Byrne impression please jest aloud "that is not my beautiful wife" as you gaze at the familiarly unfamiliar menus. Surely you have loaded into the same game right, everything looks similar but... it feels a little off? You look more and let out a "this is not my beautiful house" as you open up the weapons loadout menu for multiplayer. It's okay though, the game may require jumping through more hoops than a dog agility course, but at least you got to something worthwhile right? Oh no you gaze up at the product you have purchased with seventy hard earned United States Dollars and relent "where is that large automobile?"

This game sucks man.

Let's start with the campaign, or rather the first red flag of many that draped the release line of Modern Warfare III. Gaming journalism in the tail-end of 2023 is effectively meaningless, trusted content creators are really the only place I'll look for reviews in, and even then I take my own favorites with a grain of salt. I know why SkillUp doesn't like something, and at this point after however many years of experience in the field he has, I know why Jeff Gerstmann may not like a title. It's with following creators like this that you can form a benchmark in gauging new releases. Publications like IGN, Gamespot, and even my former flame in Gameinformer have greatly lost any credibility that they had in a reduction towards meaningless clickbait laden SEO borne ad revenue vulturing. This isn't a joker moment essay on the industry, it's just an introduction to the doom and gloom that surrounded the singleplayer content of MW3 before it came out... again. Just about every media outlet and individual that had an advance copy seemed to approach the campaign with a heightened degree of malaise that was greatly foreign to the the series thus far.

It's short, like real short. I beat it in two days as I had obligations going on but it could easily be done in one sitting. At the end of the day, this isn't a big issue as first person shooters ultimately run a serious risk of monotony (see my recent review of Nightdive's Quake II,) and all things considered short games when paced well can out perform some of my favorite longer titles (Looking at you Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.) The problem is that MW3's singleplayer is like a McDonald's McBurger order that they somehow managed to completely destroy. A McBurger doesn't have the best ingredients and it surely doesn't have to last, but man at least fucking do it right. This campaign jumps more sharks than Will Smith did in 2004 with next to zero exposition as to the legitimate motives of the antagonists, reasonable efforts by the "good guys" or a fitting ending. That McBurger you want has mayo on it, they forgot the cheese, and they didn't even include the fries in the order. You're so sad you don't even go back, you're out of money because you don't have your card on you and the fourteen cents in the cupholder won't get you another McBurger. Gas is running low and you just have to get home. That's how MW3 felt like with Like a Dragon: Gaiden on the horizon. The campaign was so extremely sad as a user experience that I wanted it to be over with almost as fast as it started.

Careful Snake, this is a sneaking mission!

Why was every level a sneaking mission in MW3? Why was I as the player so greatly enabled to sneak and silent kill my way through the entire game? I didn't see Hideo Kojima in the staff credits. Each level design felt like an afterthought, almost as if Activision was trying to resurrect a playable singleplayer experience like it was a Beatles song written over fifty years ago. Wait... that happened? And it was kinda okay? Oh. Seriously though, sneaking my way through some poorly designed open-zone maps that had a hard focus on not engaging in an all-out firefight against your enemy felt like a massive antithesis to the Call of Duty I grew up on, and even experienced last year with the re?release of MW2. You could tell some guy in the board room in the fourteenth hour of crunch was implored by upper management to add some variety to the environmental experiences of MW3. "HEY HOW ABOUT A WATER LEVEL, HOW ABOUT A SNOW LEVEL, HOW ABOUT... MAKAROV RUNNIN' AROUND" he frantically says as bits of hair fall from his scalp. He spins around in his Steelcase Series 2 3D Airback Chair beating his chest and slamming his eighth cup of coffee within the hour. Did I mention this man is a literal chimpanzee? It was nice seeing the familiar faces from the franchise heretoforth in Ghost, Soap, and Price, but its clear they just needed the guys to do a few more things for a few hours with no real end point for some campaign content. I am not joking with you when I say that the entirety of this game could not have happened and I believe the geopolitical state of the world within Call of Duty would have remained the exact same. You know it's bad when the McGuffin's in the story don't even lead anywhere with any legitimate credence or point.

I spent seventy hours last year playing Soul Hackers 2 in a mostly lukewarm experience and I legitimately think it was a better use of time than the two half afternoons I spent on the MW3 campaign. It's not just bad, it's aggressively uninteresting and that is one of the larger indictments you can have on a game with a budget of this caliber.

You decide the campaign wasn't for you, so you load up the mulitplayer, which is more or less the only reason you bought the game. Excited you are to play the old Modern Warfare II maps that you played in 2009 when you were much younger and the world was much more innocent. I'm kidding by the way, as a Metro Detroiter at the time the world was decidedly not better, but whatever. You remember all those broken lobbies on Rust that you got north of 100 kills on because some guy who had computer skills seemingly more insidious than Mr. Robot and wanted to level up quick? Yeah, Rust is back baby and it... sucks! I love going back and playing some Shipment on MW2 (2022) because the gameplay loop fits, its quick and really doesn't overstay its welcome. Everyone has the same sightlines and there are legitimate places to hide if you need a breath. It's such a tight experience because it has been optimized to be so, and even then its only really fun in bursts. Well, Rust is back and it sucks.

The immersion you have in breaking the "Wow Modern Warfare 2 (2009)'s maps kinda suck" was a moment I had way too quickly in MW3 to enjoy the rest of the game. They're unfair a lot of the time, boring, and you'll play them NONSTOP because there were 0 (Zero, nil, nada) new maps in the release of MW3. How lazy can you be to cook up a bad at best singleplayer with zero new content in the environmental design of the multiplayer? Sure it felt cool to quickscope some dudes on Highrise for a few minutes, but then I realized that you could and would be killed from everywhere just like you were back in the day. I'm not old, but I'm not a spry slide canceller either. I can hold my own in most FPS' quite well, but it was clear I hadn't studied the blade as well as the other folks loading in to this game with the optimal builds to abuse some genuinely miserable design on these maps. Rust gives you no moment of reprieve or a place to even think of setting up, Invasion takes approximately forty years to travel from one point to the end (that is if you are going mach 3.2 in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird,) Afghan rewards camping more than an REI, and Terminal has spawns that could have been better created by a Hainan black crested gibbon (yes I did have to give "species of gibbon" a google") given fifteen minutes in a world editor. The bottom line here is that the maps are nostalgic and varied, sure, but they don't feel good to play in the modern gamesphere. The temporal shift I feel in jumping from MW3 back to MW2 in regards to map design is colossal.

And then you load into the map.

I'm convinced you could watch the entirety of One Piece's 1075 current episodes in the time it takes to kill someone in MW3. I don't even know who this rewards? Getting the drop on one person or a group should be a vindicating experience to the predator stalking their prey, and in most games it is. In Modern Shitshow 3 you could read every accepted book within the expanded Warhammer universe before an assault rifle mag could take down two to three enemies. This was the most immediate shellshock to me coming from MW2 the day before, even moreso than the poor design of the retro maps. I kept shooting, I aimed well, I checked the time and four hours had passed, the same guy was still in front of me. I can't conceive of a reason to bump this up from where it was at in MW2 and even MW1 (2019.) I don't know who this benefits, because it surely isn't those who have the skill. Gunfights in MW3 feel more like they do in an Apex Legends or something where it's not necessarily the drop you get, but how you engage after the drop, which was never Call of Duty to me. Several times in my few days of playing have I been shot and had a full opportunity to disengage prone and run to cover because the enemy didn't account for the four hundred and fifty years that were required to kill me. With the first bullet of your magazine, a nineteen year old Lebron James is the first pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2003 NBA Draft. By the time you've killed the guy, he's now thirty eight and in his sixth season with the Los Angeles Lakers. I streamed this to friends and family alike in discord calls to confirm whether or not my suspicions about how poorly tuned this felt was just on me or not, and the resounding takeaway was Time to Kill (TTK) was simply way too long. In the time it took to write this review I have listened to aespa's 4th Mini album "Drama" twice through, this is not enough time to have killed someone in MW3.

I have three hundred something hours in MW2 over the last two-ish years and I unlocked just about everything I needed to outside of battle pass added content. The big billing was that I didn't have to unlock the guns that I had unlocked in MW2 once more in MW3, which is... good. But why do I have to unlock perks again? More on that in a second. Why do I have to unlock the same exact killstreaks (by grinding levels) once more? Did my operator (of whom I play the same exact one) forget the phone number to his VTOL guy? Does it really require fifty more levels or however much it actually is to relearn this all? It's stuff like this that clearly indicates to me that MW3 is the money hungry cash grab it appears to be, dangling enough in front of the player to make it seem familiar, but taking enough away that they feel the need to get it all back. Oh even more fun, all those guns you still have, remember that? None of your loadouts carry over so I hope you either took screencaps of your ten classes from MW2 or remember every single change you made to tune and augment your weapons, because haha pranked! Tee hee! Silly you!!! Those didn't carry over! After attempting to re-create my go to classes from MW2 I gave up and realize my enjoyment of the game shouldn't rely on living in the past (ironic ain't it,) and that I should give the new guns a try. Same as it ever was.

I'd just like to make fun of this game's "perk" system real quick before I close out. Instead of having perks like you've had since the original CoD: Modern Warfare back in 2007, you have... equipment! It all does the same shit, but check this out... it's gear! Because "Scavenger" was too familiar with the player, you now have twinkles space dust rubs fingers in the air does a mystifying spin in my pointed cap and robes "Scavenger gloves!" Thats right perks were too reasonable so we've subbed them out for gloves, boots, vests, and headsets? I couldn't tell you what does what (outside of boots) because I don't care anymore. I am completely indifferent to this experience. As soon as I unlocked the Gunner Vest I put it on, because it is Overkill from the last few games, allowing you as the player to carry two primary weapons. This was a non negotiable for me in MW2 because I like to have both my close and long range options offered. I mistakenly thought this might resuscitate my enjoyment of MW3 from its Mariana-Trench level grave but it didn't, because it turns out a dilapidated McBurger is still a dilapidated McBurger. In equipping my vest, just like real life, I couldn't wear boots anymore. My #xXxT4CSPRINTxXx wasn't as long as it used to be pre-vest, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. At Max Boot level, again because perks are too hard to use and make no sense, you gain the ability to SILENTLY MOVE WHEREVER YOU WANT. Because that's fair! Level to win! Max level you become Psycho Mantis!

I have zero willingness to max out my rank in this game or really dedicate any more time to the multiplayer experience of MW3 because just about every element of it is somehow more magnificently frustrating that I could imagine. I would sooner pay someone an exorbitant fee to slap me as hard as they can when I wake up every morning then spend another hour playing on the same exact maps I spent hundreds of hours on fourteen years ago with a shooter experience this poor.

Dobby can't be hurt anymore, Dobby is a free elf. I am Dobby.
This game sucks man.

The tragic beauty of the story told in Spec Ops: The Line has been told in so many video essays and others' reviews that I won't touch on too much of it, other than that I'm extremely glad to have actually experienced it full hand.

Spec Ops tells a harrowing tale of the horrors of war and the horrific nature of Western involvement in the Middle East. Playing through this game is not pleasant at all, beginning as a typical third person cover shooter and delving very quickly into the psyche of a soldier in command of a nightmarish operation.

I knew going into this that it wouldn't be sunshine and smiles at all, and that was definitely the case. I think this is a very necessary playthrough for folks if they can catch it on sale. It's short and rarely overstays its welcome in any segment of the gameplay, allowing the dark story to stay at the forefront of the player's experience. Visuals, storytelling, and voice acting all accent what is an excellent campaign experience.

The main drawback within Spec Ops is the combat, and I think many others would agree. For a fair comparison it feels like the first Uncharted game, where you're tasked with making some fairly difficult shots with a not so friendly targeting and recoil system. Thankfully the game gives you guns that have some serious "Umph" but it can get quite frustrating. Lack of enemy variety and the excessively short TTK on the main character added to major gripes I had with the non-story aspect of the game.

As I've mentioned, there are others who have done phenomenal jobs dissecting this game and I strongly urge everyone to check those out. For those who find that story is the most important aspect of a game, and want to experience one of the better ones out there, Spec Ops: The Line is your game. It's not perfect, but it's a standout title.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this... mansion?

My "calm" moments in my apartment are spent after a day at work, then at the gym, and then sitting down at my computer and booting up whatever game I'm giving my all. While I do that, I like to have a little quiet source of company in the form of a Twitch Stream so I get a little feel that I'm not alone. One of my go-to streamers is Vargskelethor, aka Joel, and if you're a fan of the Vinesauce umbrella you're well aware of who he is. I remember Joel messing around on Teardown and having an issue in one of the latter missions getting a bomb to the detonation site so he could begin a heist. Something about the crazyness of spending all this time on prep and having it go so miserably wrong had me in tears while the chat lambasted his physics skills.

Months and maybe a year even later I found myself with a good computer, one that could finally take on the voxel based goliath that is Teardown. At its core, Teardown is a game about pulling off heists. Most missions start the player at a certain spot with a list of goals they have to accomplish within a minute of time. Not all missions have the timeclock, but most do. The caveat is that this minute doesn't begin to kick until you've begun on your heist, meaning that you have an entire map of prep work to do. Something about this tickled my brain in all the right ways, it allows the player to tailor their experience of the game to how they problem solve. Often in puzzle and mind games, I've felt like the way these problems are to be completed are in the game wants you as the player to do them, rather than applying your own approach. I LOVED the way Teardown allows you to work painstakingly at pulling off a perfect theft. I found myself feverishly and minutely carving out my route between goals in each mission, often doing five or more dry runs to make sure I could get away scot free.

Though the freedom oriented level design is what I would call the "real hero" of Teardown, the physics engine is a walking miracle. In a game with as many assets as this, it's quite hard to make it all work in a way that is conducive to player movement. Just about everything is destructible in some way with the right tools, vehicles like cranes and dump trucks work in the scenarios they should, and gravity feels as good as it can. While the weight of certain vehicles and items were the cause of many a level reset, I felt almost betrayed by how much the physics made sense. Sometimes I wanted to abuse what most games would allow and get a hollow victory, but had to respect the confines of Teardown's engine and whittle myself to a getaway.

Whether its the basic sledgehammer, the iron-man shotgun, or the impactful bombs, the arsenal the player is gifted in Teardown is another excellent touch to what makes it feel like a well oiled machine. You can play as soup to nuts as you want, using items only to make holes in walls and extensions between buildings via planks, or you can get as nifty as you want and use rocket thrusters to literally and metaphorically yeet yourself to victory. Once i unlocked the "Cable" I wondered the entire game what it was for, as I got it fairly early on. It wasn't until the last mission when I realized I could use it to tow a vehicle behind me, a galaxy brain moment that could have made previous missions easier.

Teardown is a lot more than a fun sandbox or a good excuse to blow things up, it's a genuinely enjoyable heist game that makes player agency the key focus. I heavily recommend Teardown as a must play.

AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative is a certified Kotaro Uchikoshi classic.

This was, after playing the first entry in 2020 and the subsequently the entire Zero Escape trilogy, my highest anticipated game and I'm extremely proud to say that it delivered to every expectation and more. While I don't want to delve into story spoilers because Spike Chunsoft games are highly narrative driven and event based, I will speak on the other parts of the game that filled me with intrigue and joy.

Nirvana Initiative returns most of its cast from its predecessor, which was one of the best groupings of characters in contemporary gaming, and adds a whole new group of intricate and multi-faceted personas that greatly enhance the AI experience. Everyone has that funny quirk about them with a darker side underneath. The nature of everyone in the first game to be the butt of a joke in one second, and the focus of the plot in the next was something masterfully crafted by the writing team. This feature returns in the sequel, a gentle reminder that Uchikoshi is a phenom in character writing. The quirky anime cast that leaves you smiling from ear to ear with their jokes, gags, and unique brand of humor is a staple of AI, something I hope other writing teams in the industry can attempt to pick up on to enrich their experiences. Tama, Ryuki, Lien, Gen (Shoutout ProZD!,) and Kizuna (amongst others) were all great additions to the cast. This legitimately may be the funniest game ever written.

For those who played the original AI, it may not be a surprise to hear that the new environments and settings outside of the Somnium aren't anything too special, but they do offer more room for humor and character exposition. You travel to both old and new locations in your quest to solve the Half Body killings, meeting new people and exploring from top to bottom. This is enough to keep the gameplay loop fresh and appealing to nostalgia from the preceeding experience. One of the largest improvements from the first game to the second was the jump in involvement and logic required to complete Somnium's. In the first AI they were... very interesting and an overall great experience, but ultimately until the end, not too complex. Again, to not tread on spoilers I don't want to speak on how impressive these cases got or whose were the most captivating, but I will say that I found myself in awe many times at the settings, and actually having to think about logical solutions to the dream cases rather than randomly guessing to get what the game "wanted" me to pick. Honestly, the only critique I really have about these new Somnium's is there were a few that felt a little too "Zero-Escapey" in the amount of logic and number-bending they required. This might be alright if there was a feature for recording notes or important information like there was in the Zero Escape games.

Fans of the first AI will ultimately love its sequel, as I can say it was worth every single second of the wait I had for it. No arc felt like it lasted too long, no character had me frustrated or bored, the plot featured Uchikoshi's patented mind-melting twists and turns. There are two Japanese series that I have completed and smiled this much, Persona and AI, and I can't wait for the next step in both! I salute everyone at Spike-Chunsoft who made this game possible, as it is an ambitious title that succeeds at just about everything it attempts to accomplish. I strongly recommend AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative to any fan of Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Visual Novels, or psychological thrillers.

And yes the ending got me to tear up.

When the Going Gets Gonk

I was an early supporter of Cyberpunk 2077 during its less than stellar launch in December of 2020. Even though I had an experience unfortunately filled with bugs that didn't run the best on a recently upgraded system, I loved the world and story that CD Projekt Red had crafted. I felt like Night City was one of, if not the most, enriching metropolitan locations of any game that I've played in my two-plus decades of PC Gaming. I think the criticism of the game's launch for last gen consoles and PC issues was warranted, but I also strongly believe a majority of healthy discourse for the game was lost in the internet anger and hid what made Cyberpunk special. For all intents and purposes, this review will not cover changes made in the 2.0 patch.

Now with the good faith of the anime and CDPR's commitment to pulling a No Man's Sky on Cyberpunk with the announcement of DLC to come, I got excited once more. I pledged that I would jump into Phantom Liberty with a new mind, no longer excusing any performance/mechanical issues and not blindly hoping for a remarkable experience. What I got in loading in and playing through the probably twenty hours of expansion was a reminder of how incredible CDPR is at constructing worlds that tell the narrative in their ambience, and at authoring characters whose relationships with the protagonist stretch far beyond the scope and expectation of your average video game.

Phantom Liberty felt like a part of the main game, and in a perfect world probably could be. Not only does the physical location of the DLC in Pacifica's Dogtown lie in the middle of the map of Night City, but tonally the degree of heinousity, treachery, and general scumbaggery of the characters within felt very true to the narrative already in place.
The narrative here is fantastic once more. As I usually do, I will evade embarking on narrative spoilers, but the amount of suspicious nuance in character motivation in Phantom Liberty leads to some incredible hard decisions that have monumental consequences on newly added endings to Cyberpunk 2077. I found myself frequently paused at decisions between helping two equally morally grey parties because I wanted to plan for any eventual fallback from supporting their campaigns. Am I going to assist in this person who has dragged me into deeper into a mess far beyond my comprehension under the guise that they will be able to help me? Or will I side with the party who is looking for the best interest of the State? It gets rough and it gets tough, and in true Cyberpunk fashion... there is no real winner. What decisions you make, what ending you come across will leave you feeling like dust in the wind. I felt equally crushed finishing Phantom Liberty as I did watching the anime, they really know how to take the emotional wind out of you.

There were so many special things that remind you how impressive the staging and environmental design of 2077 are within this DLC. Moments like where your conversations begin and end with Idris Elba's character Solomon Reed: a basketball court overlooking the dilapidated and defunded skyscrapers that stand tall over the downtrodden community. Another being the beginning sequence in which you are evading inquisitive opposition forces with the President of the NUSA, frequently peering over balconies engulfed in flames that feature paradiddles of rain collapsing through the concrete. It's the staging of these events within the DLC that are located all throughout that are easy reminds about how phenomenal the direction, writing, and choreography of this game and CDPR truly are. The ability to utilize environmental scale to aide in the telling of a story is something that propelled the Witcher from a standard low fantasy fare to one of the greatest works of the genre is present once more in Cyberpunk. Even if the distance travelled in the DLC feels a little small, because in truth it is, you are constantly reminded about how tiny of a cog you're V is in the machine that is Night City.

The experience was not without its frustrations though, but that's PC gaming in a nutshell in 2023 apparently (after playing Starfield to boot.) There were a few times within the main questline that missions would either not load, I would bug out of objectives, or I would be softlocked and couldn't move. These were nowhere near as egregious as they were in the base game closer to launch, but they did rub me the wrong way. The ultimate mission in the DLC (not counting the added missions to new endings) was beyond bugged for me, and the important enemy that is supposed to be your last match was completely non aggressive to me. This just felt... not great. I felt like the DLC story was heading to a climax that was manifesting into a monumental implosion of the interrelationships of its characters and then pop, the big bad that was sent after me wouldn't attack. My immersion wasn't completely ruined but it was tarnished in a way that is hard to ignore, and I didn't want to re-load the entire questline.

I strongly recommend Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone with a knack for science fiction and open worlds (and fans of Bladerunner,) and I'd say that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a must play for fans of the base game.

Really incredible end to the initial run of the Kiryu Kazama saga before the series transitioned into Like a Dragon, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life was almost everything I wanted after seven games with the Dragon of Dojima.

It's hard after so many of these reviews to really harp on my detractions with a Yakuza game or sing its praises because they tend to follow the same outcome. Story again was extremely well done, a pretty solid narrative that stretches Kiryu and company from his familiar Kamurocho to the new streets of Hiroshima. Where Song of Life departs from its predecessors is seeing Kiryu at his most emotionally unhinged, we see a man who truly loses all interest in his well being as long as he can save those he loves. I enjoyed seeing this side of him, not that I was bored with the impervious white knight who fought for the sake of good, but I did like seeing him depart from honor and ethics in the name of his daughter and friends.

Again the cast was great, as has been the case in quite literally every one of these titles. Familiar faces grace the game with their return (my favorite of which will always be Date... and Akiyama,) and new friends enter the mix (like Yuta and Nagumo.) Even though I really didn't like Hiroshima cast they, like in every Yakuza game, truly grew on me. RGG intentionally paints them as annoying and coniving run of the mill street gangsters but methodically opens them up to Kiryu as trusted friends and allies. A lot of this change relies on very important story spoilers so I will not divulge.

The voice acting/modelling had me in actual disbelief, firstly when I encountered the group JUSTIS which borrowed top talent from New Japan Pro Wrestling like Kazuchika okada, Tetsuya Naito, and Hiroshi Tanahashi. Now with how big of an IP like Yakuza has become, this shouldn't really be very surprising but I sat there with my mouth agape as Okada went through his motions as the "Rainmaker." Also starring in Yakuza 6 is legendary director/actor Beat Takeshi as well as actor Tetsuya Fujiwara (who is the main character in Battle Royale, one of my favorite films.) Fujiwara and Takeshi play characters quite integral to the plot, so it felt like a treat to see them perform so well.

Combat was again so/so, I honestly after seven of these games just resigned myself to playing on easy for the first time because I couldn't stomach any more annoying boss fights/encounters. In the end this was undoubtedly the correct decision as I felt like my time was much more respected than last titles... hah.

My points of detraction come from the initial slow crawl to a starting point this game had (in my opinion) which set up the story. I think other Yakuza games had been a little more effective in hooking me right away. I also wasn't a tremendous fan of the cast of antagonists. I love the reaction and conflict that Kiryu and his cohort embrace in combatting them, but I didn't care too much for their characters/motives. I also kinda thought the big twist in chapter twelve was a little... silly, which is a big part of it for me too.

Yakuza 6 has one of the series' best endings though, and for that I strongly recommend the reader to experience it for themself, as I am really glad I saw this initial series run through. I will be taking a break from RGG games until I play Judgment (playing some other titles in between,) and eventually Y7/Like a Dragon which I'm greatly looking forward to. I've been all aboard the Yakuza train and I dont' want to get off yet!