this may be shocking, but ive somehow avoided a good chunk of the discourse surrounding this game since its release. so when i say that i had low expectations, that negativity mostly stems from the numbing experience that was the first game. but also because of my bottomless ire for neil druckmann. druckmann is a wannabe, constantly wanting to live up to the names of sam lake, hideo kojima, and shinji mikami. in pursuing fame, the fake auteur clutches onto the medium of video games with pitiful fingers. although he and naughty dog catch a lot of flak, the developers deserve credit for their hard work. the game looks outstanding, feels great to play, has some sick art, and has a neat scavenging gameplay loop. but as a director, druckmann deserves all the shit i and other people throw at him. the story's plot is alright, and there are also some good tidbits (ellie's missing fingers at the end was a great touch). however, the gross romanticization of misery and inspiration for the story throws all the good under the bus. the game wants you to feel bad. it wants you to feel bile in your throat, dried blood on your gamer hands, and an uncomfortable twist in your stomach. violence is cruel, revenge is cruel, but to have players succumb to it for 20+ hours paired with the discord of satisfyingly explosive headshots, the last of us part 2 fails to evoke those feelings outside of cutscenes. it fails so badly that dogs are introduced to the combat as a cheap attempt to guilt the player. which is so odd when the story is already geared for emotional compulsion.

the characters you play as are bad people. they are selfish, violent, and vengeful. they have little to no redeeming qualities outside of helping those they care for. and that's the point. i don't understand the bashing of the protagonists for being unlikeable. they're anti-heroes; you're not supposed to like them, but you root for them because of something they've done that shows some glimmer of humanity. that's probably the one saving grace of the masturbatory playtime (inflated by how almost disrespectfully long cutscenes can get). but even then, the game's idf propaganda. one half, it's a venture into a foreign land for blood. the second half, it's a disgusting dehumanization of the palestinian people. druckmann's gone on record citing the lynching of 2 idf reservists as a major inspiration to the story for this game. and it shows because it's so clearly written from a zionist's point of view. "wow look how barbaric and violent these religious zealots are. theyre so transphobic and misogynist! the wolves (IDF stand-in) are normal people; look how cool they are with their militarist regime!" at times it tries to show that the wolves (WLF) aren't as good as they seem, but it's never fairly compared to the seraphites. it's so excessively biased, only making the WLF a full-on enemy in abby's story when she wants to be her own person. it's never a complete decry of the WLF, but it's always a condemnation of the seraphites. at least the game's version of the idf are just as much of a warmonger lol.

if i could strip away the politics and my ingrained distaste for the game's creator, the game is just mid. it's a run-of-the-mill AAA third-person shooter blockbuster. it looks next gen but it plays like Sony's stuck in 2009. there's nothing special going on here. It's the first game with some new guns, skills, and enemies. the level design is improved, but the visual clutter of photorealism sometimes detracts from the enjoyability of exploration. the story did not deserve the gut-twisting and palm-sweating reactions of its players. this game did not deserve to be heralded as the future of video games. neil druckmann did not fucking deserve to be awarded as a legendary "innovator" of games for directing the same game he did 7 years prior. if this is what AAA games are expected to become, i'll just continue digging into my hole of indies and classics. developers are being abused, neglected, and vacuumed into obscurity just to put out something to fulfill the dreams of the vainglorious. the games industry is fucked.

alas, im but a measly gamer... i dont know what's right for gaming. hail druckmann, the savior of the medium! we've truly found gaming's citizen kane! finally, our hobby is legitimized in the world of art!!1! miss me with that bullshit. im going back to silent hill 3 or some other good stuff.

the level design is so fucking fantastic like it is legitimately so tight and amazing idk what else to say about it. the tension, the atmosphere, the b movie but entertaining dialogue and story make for a hell of an experience. the puzzles were also amazing, literally could complete pretty much all of them with enough thought and only had to google a puzzle ONCE. my friend told me that the game was so cryptic and confusing that its frustrating but it was cryptic and confusing in a way where i loved solving the puzzles in a mysterious mansion because the atmosphere compelled me and i felt so smart for solving the puzzles

doom 64 is my personal favorite of the classic doom games (if we're talking base/original games so no ultimate doom). it's the most atmospheric of the three and in my opinion the most gorgeous. the lighting, colors, and skyboxes stand out to me more in memory than those of doom 1 and 2. it's also still a bloody ride of thrills and gibs. combat is just as chaotic as doom 2 but not as mean; feeling like it was more concisely designed a la doom '93. most encounters are great fun, and the arenas almost always complement the fights. they get into the large and experimental but still maintain fluid pacing and organized layouts, it's amazing. though some levels include a decent amount of backtracking which hampers the experience a bit. the revenants and arch-viles missing do make me sad but also frustrate me because they included pain elementals and lost souls while buffing them a lot. if you thought pain elementals were bad, wait till you see them spit out not one but TWO lost souls in this game. besides the backtracking and even more annoying pain elementals, doom 64 is a great experience. doom 64 feels like a mix between the first two dooms while also being its own thing with the visuals and emphasized horror which to me makes it an incredible doom game.

what an endearing game! the roughness of its movement, a sublimely dreadful atmosphere, its unforgiving combat and puzzles. The Evil Within (TEW) seriously has the fixings for a fantastic survival horror game. a survival horror og, shinji mikami (Resident Evil (1996), Resident Evil (2002), AND Resident Evil 4) thought that the grime and dream logic of Silent Hill looked cool but also reminisced about RE4's action but then also thought TLOU's basic ass stealth would be a neat addition. thats TEW almost summed up. You move between locations that are impossible to connect in reality: a disgusting tiled mental hospital basement to a lakeside village, all while youre pulled into liminal industrial rooms at a moment's notice. TEW wants to let you know it's in control and youre a little worm writhing in its hands.

best to fight back then. the gameplay is one of tew's strengths. you're constantly on a fight for resources. this game is a glimpse into a frugalist's life. constantly on zero ammo for one or two weapons, all while keeping an eye out for lifesaving heals and ammo-saving matches. i was never fully out of ammo but i felt as if i was and thats how it should be in a game where its horrifying tensity stems from the gameplay just as much as its visuals and audio. gunplay is damn close to satisfying too. the audio isn't incredible nor is it terrible, it's alright for the most part but the visual feedback is cathartic. especially with headshots, it's almost on the level of Left 4 Dead with how you can shoot holes or chunks out of the heads of enemies. making me invested into blowing the heads off these dudes through the visceral gunplay is great since the enemies are ruthless. when youre grabbed, stunned, or knocked to the ground, you are STILL vulnerable to enemy attacks. i dont think i have to explain how brutal that is. ive died so many times at certain parts because of this and grew strong disdain for those enemies repeatedly killing me. though that doesn't mean the game isn't respectful of the player. most of the time when i considered unorthodox methods of attacking enemies, the game obliged and it felt rewarding. here's an example: you can throw bottles to stagger enemies when the bottle is only shown as a way to lure enemies with sound. also, like RE4, you can trip running enemies by shooting their leg or shoot the lit dynamite in an enemy's hand to make it explode. there's also boss fight where lit lanterns hang above where the boss runs which you can shoot for extra damage if it lands on the boss!! these give the impression of a detail-oriented game where serious thought and love were exerted into its design. stealth is also an option but like what its seemingly inspired by, its very simple. the stealth is tlou stealth. enemy sees you, they attack. enemy doesnt see you, you crouch by them or silently stab their head with the "stealth only knife." seriously it bugs me that the knife is only for stealth kills, the melee button is essentially a shove button. the stealth mechanic doesnt feel refined but it also isnt half assed, it just exists as a tool in a toolbox. this is disappointing but not as glaring of an issue like in tlou where the stealth is barebones to the point of making me rather cave in a survivor's head because i could not stand sneaking for 1 more second. on the other hand of the gameplay, puzzles are pretty good. honestly, the can get as good as the survival horror classics. most of them are never too obtuse to solve but also not too easy to make my eyes roll. there is one instance where the puzzle was practically on autopilot (the fuses elevator), but it's pretty excusable since it's there to basically start a boss fight. the level design, however, is close to what AAA games were and almost still are. long hallways with set dressing. it's not as bad as tlou or gow (2018) or uncharted, it's definitely more open and free. having just finished dead space 2 recently, tew feels close to home for my resident evil (2002) fanboy mind. tew has a lot of hallways and a considerable amount of scripted moments where you have to run in one direction, but it also has instances of exploring decrepit buildings or approaching an arena at the player's own discretion. it's nice, made me feel smart when i executed a plan or scared when i went through a location i had no idea was the right way. so if there's anything bad about the gameplay, it'd be either the movement or boss fights. the movement is going to be divisive i think. it feels janky, the inputs are relevant to where sebastian, the playable character, is facing. this can lead to frustration among some players as ive died to it a couple of times. then again, theres a reason i dont fully hate it. it may be unintentional, but i do have a soft spot for it because it's an added layer of tensity similar to the tank controls of classic survival horror games. the bosses are more glaring of a nitpick to me. some of them are straight up easy, while others are great puzzles. laura's fight is a good one, learning how to use the environment to kill her is fun and tense. heresy's boss fight is kinda lame since all you do is unload bullets into it and hope to not die to its worms or the enemies between phases. the final boss fight may be the worst, i had saved magnum ammo for it but to not spoil anything let me just say i was disappointed afterward.

aside from jank and nitpicks, the story is what i think disappoints most people. it's the definition of dream logic. a stew of memories and fantastical illusions portrayed to be believed as reality. to call it convoluted is almost insulting because of its negative connotation but admittedly justified. i cannot tell you what certainly happened. i have an idea, a pseudo-gist, a picture drawn by a toddler of what happened in this game's story. there are some concrete points such as the beginning, but there are many more instances of confusion held together by intrigue and presentation. the note pickups help to keep me invested and sometimes even gain a believable understanding of what was happening. but even then, a second playthrough or a wikipedia dive is warranted to truly understand what this game is about. thematically i assume it's about guilt and vengeance but the plotline and some characters make me think otherwise. i respect the crypticness, its refusal of spoonfeeding story. however, when it becomes this mysterious, this deep into the ocean of dreams, where a lot of things are illogical and eliciting what looks like has meaning but doesn't is when the mystery can become unfruitful and disatisfying. at least you get the sense of progression through upgrading your weapons and stats. now that isn't to say i hated the story, i actually liked it but only wished i could understand what it was trying to accomplish. the characters are pretty good, in a way they remind me of resident evil. maybe it's their line deliveries, but it's certainly their camaraderie and dedication to good or evil. take the raimi b-movie jank but filter it through the fat wallet of a publisher like bethesda is a way of describing it. oh man id love for bruce campbell to voice a character in a survival horror game in the vein of resident evil. the man is art incarnate: passion to the craft.

tew is dated visually, textures pop in and of course have low resolutions by today's standards. however, it is a visual feast. the art direction is impeccable. sinew, flesh, and blood adorn the walls of abandoned medical facilities, industrial zones, subways, cityscapes, and once-idyllic countryside villages. Even when otherworldly viscera isn't glued to surfaces, the game has a sense of grit and despair emanating from its walls. enemies growl and gurgle, winds taunt you, the soundtrack makes sure to let you know youre in a world of hurt. not sure if its worth going into depth as much in this section since the gameplay is what i loved most, but i will add that the enemy designs are fantastic. kudos to art and sound teams!!

overall its a lovely trip of horror for the senses. youve got nail-biting gameplay and atmosphere hampered by a near lame story. its ambition weighs down its accomplishments but its passion and dread wills me to not rate it lower than a 3.5 while tempting me to give it a 4. there's certainly better games out there, resident evil and silent hill are obvious contenders, but it also seems hard to find a game that's like the evil within. it's clunky and fogs up its intent, but its violent combat and enigma of a story charmed me into seeing the whole thing through. its got the influence from the classics but the bombastic exaggeration of story beats found in blockbuster titles. the og horror atmosphere with a modern twist in plot and certain gameplay elements (simple stealth and a skill tree). tew2 from what i hear is amazing and an overall improvement so i cant wait to get into that. though playing the first game already shows promise into the world and mythos of the evil within so even if there was no sequel i would have been happy with playing it and still disappointed by its shortcomings.

robocop fans are eating so fucking good this year. with the 5 hour making-of documentary released and now a pristinely faithful game, i can say that teyon made the true robocop 3 that the fans deserved. robocop 3 isn't a horrendous movie but it's depressingly far detached from the original it's supposed to build off of. less violent, less satirical, less paul verhoeven-isms, it's almost so sad that i wouldnt recommend it, but it has such a goofy ending it's worth watching if youre a robocop fan. trust me, robo3 is schlocky to all hell and can get so bad that it becomes good. also otomo was tragically underused since hes a cool monster, shoutout phil tippett. robocop 3 aside, what i meant to bring up was that rogue city is more robocop than one of the actual 3 robocop movies. its gore matches and surpasses the original movie's squibs, it's absurdly ironic, and, buddy, these Poles fucking love paul verhoeven. shoutout Poland, been enjoying lotsa games outta there from what i can remember. the hud, the lovely sluggish movement, the explosive gunshots of the auto-9, the gorgeous model recreations, the fantastically rebuilt detroit (even though robocop was filmed in texas), and Peter fucking Weller is BACK as Robo. it's more than a love letter to the IP, it's almost a rebirth with how well-executed everything was. like i feel that more people could get into Robocop just from the first level of this game.

i was gonna buy alan wake 2 but since i dont want to give epic games any of my money, i gladly bought teyon's robocop FPS after having enjoyed my time with their terminator game. their terminator game was clunky and rough around the edges, had some design i wasnt a big fan of, but good god was it a terminator game. from music to visuals to worldbuilding, their terminator game was exactly like another film entry in the franchise. robocop rogue city follows suit. it's all so beautifully grimey. rain running off bricks, damp asphalt streets, dilapidated apartments, oh we're in hyper-decayed detroit baby. thankfully, for a UE5 game, it actually has some style to it. it doesn't have that off-putting tech demo aura to its visuals, something i sometimes felt with the system shock remake (that game is still quite good looking though dont get me wrong). rogue city is somehow probably the best use of UE5 that ive ever seen. everything is photorealistic yet stylish to fit robocop's aesthetic. the human models are bit too fake at times, especially with their almost stiff animations (which were perfect for robo so im not talking about him). the environments thankfully take up more screenspace and focus in the game as they're phenomenal. every piece of rubble, debris, and bit of destroyed wall is wonderfully included before and after you annihilate a room. the music is great, especially the rendition of the robocop theme which followed the first film instead of pulling a robocop 2 and doing its own thing. hearing those strings as i marched through halls and gunning down punks is so fucking empowering. it was almost sickening being the literal fist of the law, almost like being a jingoist chopper gunner spraying hellfire into a jungle. granted that was hyperbolic but the power of the robocop theme man, i cant understate it, i'd love to hear that shit as i shot down a nationalist from their huey. gunshots are explosive, but youll be hearing the auto-9's bursts more than anything. weapons aren't that interesting in rogue city. your auto-9 has infinite ammo and can be upgraded, so its your go to. the guns you can pick up are superfluous with the exception of the explosive weapons. the grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and cobra rifle are all great fun and useful to deal with groups and armored enemies. but even then, get your auto-9 to full auto and pierce armor and youre good to go.

rogue city isn't really anything remarkable as an FPS. it's slow and not too varied. you meet pretty much every enemy in the first 2-3 levels and the only noteworthy ones are the bosses. you'll be exploding heads, organic or metal, for the entirety of the game with the same gun. enemies amount to dudes with different guns, snipers and grenadiers are the most dangerous ones (suicide bombers would be noteworthy but they only appeared once in the game lol). mowing them down with the auto-9 though kinda just makes up for how uniform the enemy roster is. it's beyond satisfying to obliterate a room in trying to kill just 3 guys. in the year where the supposed f.e.a.r. successor, trepang2, was released i would not have guessed that a robocop game did f.e.a.r.'s explosive gunfights and tight combat encounters better. though to be fair the combat doesn't really reach anything spectacular until youve put some points into the skill trees, specifically the slow-mo ability and ricochet ability. these two abilities singlehandedly made combat more enjoyable by taking the power fantasy to monolithic heights. finally, i can recreate one of the best parts of robocop 2. initially i wasnt a big fan of the skills trees, still am a bit iffy on them. as they currently stand, its a bit lame that these fun abilities (sometimes even necessary on higher difficulties) are locked behind an exp system, but player progression is always cool. i feel that it wouldve been better if teyon dug deeper into the immersive sim itch that im assuming influenced development. this is far from an imsim, it's a full blown shooter, but it holds elements of deus ex exploration and investigation in its small hub world of downtown detroit. cobbling together solutions from either questioning a witness or getting all the clues from the environment was always a neat albeit not too complex experience since many of these extra choices are relegated to skill checks. this minor 2+2=4 but so does 1+3 way of allowing one or two other ways of progressing a side quest brought up these side activities by a lot and i just wished rogue city delved more into that alongside its "important" dialogue.

rogue city's story is good but flawed. it's borderline copaganda, but i find it hard to call that since this is like an ideal world if cops really were altruistic selfless good guys and it was solely an evil capitalist conglomerate that was against the community. eh rogue city probably just is more pro-cop than it is critical of the police, but im coping since i love robocop so much. that isn't to say that it's sucking a fat hog, many times in the game you get to choose to help others or let them go even if it's against the law. dont give a kid a $100 fine for tagging a wall or let god's drunkest soldier enjoy his stupor, there are little moments that show policing can be humane if done by the right person. then there's bigger moments like helping a journalist expose how delta city is actually forcing people into homelessness, being a whistleblower for the good of the people rather than a company executive or a judge. however, teyon had a different focus on this game's main story. what rogue city instead decided to succeed in was robocop's humanity. alex murphy is dead, legally and literally, but his spirit lives on in his reanimated corpse entombed by steel and circuits and struggles to understand itself in its violated state. exploring who alex murphy was and who robocop is are the big servings of meat this game gives the player and it does so wonderfully and cheesily that it seriously just hurt me when i remembered this wasn't robocop 3. the heart strings were pulled ngl. what i was mostly surprised by was how tiresome it felt to be bombarded by every person asking if i really did think alex murphy was still alive. like man leave me alone, murphy is right here kicking ass, get that through your thick skull. enemies at the end of the auto-9's barrel but also outside of battle with their sour remarks or disparagements. when it all came together at the end, it honestly felt triumphant to see murphy feel comfortable in his bulletproof shell and remaining skin. the people rooted for robo and i unintentionally joined in after not expecting to be so invested in the character development for an FPS game. aside from that, the best part of the writing is the comedy. it's absurd, it's stupid, it's nonchalant, overall a lovely time. ads about getting your family cremated and the ashes sent into space, ed-209 still trips on stairs, OCP is full of suits with sticks up their asses, and you can shoot enemies in the nuts. wonderful.

overall a fantastic shooter. strip away the robocop and it becomes another AA FPS game with minor RPG elements. however, even if it wasn't a robocop game, it's competent and fun. genuinely, robocop fan or not, the shooting and combat are so destructive it's impossible to not enjoy it. it feels so good to play a shooter where it's arcadey but not hyperactively trying to make me jump around an arena or punishing me for being aggressive for realism's sake. i like a good in between every once in a while, a good shooter doesn't always have to be titanfall 2 or utrakill or tarkov. maybe play rogue city above normal if youre familiar with FPSs (i played on hard), but this game gets so much right it's hard for it to do wrong by you. quite possibly goty material, fucking primo ultraviolence. i'd buy that for a dollar! x50

saw some people say that teyon should make an 'escape from new york' game. i agree with this sentiment but would like to propose john woo's 'a better tomorrow' as an alternative, or big trouble in little china if we're gonna stick to just american action flicks. judge dredd would be neat too. so many adaptations to beg for.

fantastic lil rpg filled with scrutinizing detail and whimsy. felvidek is something special, not because it's innovating or groundbreaking (it's neither of those), but because it's just so precise in its execution. you meander around the countryside, uncovering a conspiracy and fighting hussites, cultists, and monstrosities. every horror is paired by absurdity, making the encroaching apocalypse feel like one sick joke. it's a struggle to get by as two dudes with limited funds and equipment, but eventually, you become terrifying. instead of getting bodied by cloaked madmen and brigands, you start leaving limp ragdolls on the way to the tavern. even when you get the fourth party member, they're basically a meat shield since they arent a renowned knight or priest. the old english dialog, amazing outfits, and cultural taboos of the time are all so well-realized that you're further enveloped into the game's world. listen to two priests debate celibacy and sobriety, watch how coffee influences the balkans, and witness medieval confusion after stumbling upon two gay dudes. for about five hours, you'll be wanting more and more, but you can't really get anything else out of it. pavol's story ended where it needed. the burg is saved and the fires of hell are put out.

honestly would be a "perfect" game for me if there was only one gun in the entire game. that shit's too op!!! I mean, it's a gun, so it makes sense lol but having two in one party is such a freebie.

i really wanted to love god of war 2018 (GoW18) but it's riddled with terrible design choices that only happen in modern AAA games or games that for some reason want to be like that. i first want to ashamedly admit that this was my first god of war game and since I've always heard about the combat in god of war that was what i was looking most forward to. in that department, the game almost gets it right. many of the moves you can do with the axe and blades feel very cathartic. the weight of the metal is tangible with how hard kratos swings his weapons. my favorite part is when im able to launch enemies up into the air, calling back to the combo action of old action hack'n'slash games like the dmc games or the original god of war titles. but that's pretty much where the good ends. the camera in this game is absolutely terrible for the enemy encounters. many times you'll find yourself getting swarmed and getting hit from almost always behind the camera. it's so antagonistic to put such a claustrophobic over-the-shoulder camera in a game where you fight hordes of enemies. this is made worse when fighting faster, more dangerous enemies like the valkyries. yes, the valkyries are optional, but why should that excuse the terrible camera? enemy variety is also another issue with the combat. lots of the enemies amount to just being different colored humanoids that deal different elemental damage that corresponds with their color. green = poison, red = fire, blue = frost. most enemies can be dealt with in the same manner: brutal violence. though i do appreciate how you're incentivized to switch to the blades when dealing with helwalkers and to be more patient with the revenants. even if they are a pain in the ass. in the end, i found that the combat was my favorite part of the game. when it worked, it WORKED. it was so satisfying comboing specials, parries, axe throws, atreus' arrows, and every other attack i could into a tornado of death. the worst part to me is the level design and exploration.

GoW18 will not shut up about how you should explore the game's beautiful locales. yea, i really dig what you did with the place santa monica. jormungandr surrounding the lake of nine, thamur's giant corpse, the fiery mountains of muspelheim, the environments don't hold back. sucks that they're all either gorgeously dressed hallways or vast empty planes. the game is pretty much a hallway or rock-climbing section, then a bigger area with enemies, and maybe a puzzle with some "secrets" strung along the way. a couple of secrets were decently hidden, but they're mostly just go opposite of the direction to progress. then there are some larger areas that are just large for being big. these areas are gigantic, the most notable being the lake of nine. its sense of scale is awing, but it also makes exploration in the early game such a drag. for some reason, the devs thought it would be a smart decision not to allow fast traveling to every found fast travel point until you reached a certain point in the game. if you're gonna give fast travel, go all the way. please don't make me boat across a lake for hours to the point where the npcs run out of dialogue to entertain me. and to make it worse, when i do get full fast travel, ive still got to travel across the lake by boat because, honestly, that may be faster than the fast travel system.

the fast travel system is abysmal. sure it was cool to walk on a branch of yggdrasil, the world tree, for the first time when fast traveling but having to do that EVERY time i fast travel is just plain annoying. why do this? is it to pad out an already decently long game? there's no reason to do this. i get making me have to walk on yggdrasil if the npcs have dialogue but if i just need to get from point a to point b and there's no new dialogue, just let me fast travel between places. i dont want to run around in a circle in silence every time i want to fast travel!

continuing on mechanics that really just had me scratching my head is the implementation of a crafting and loot system. having an upgrade system for character progression is good, i like that, but why make it this unnecessary crafting system when finding that upgrade as an item in the game world is just as good, if not better? why is there crafting in god of war? oh yea, it's a AAA game made in 2018. AAA gaming bingo: open world, crafting, rock climbing, "cinematic mature" story, color-coded loot... BINGO! we have a winner! kratos seems to also be having a fashion dilemma. he can wear full-on breastplate, his usual shoulder pad, some pauldrons, and varying wristbands and waistcloths if he wants to. again, not a concept i hate. it's some cool variety, progression, and player expression. however, the armor boils down to picking which armor makes kratos the highest level he can be. think of destiny's light level system: its like that in this game where the higher the level loot you use, the higher the level you become so you can fight higher leveled enemies. that is just HORRENDOUS. especially for a singleplayer rpg where grinding isn't a part of the gameplay loop. a traditional leveling-up system would have been way better, i mean theres already xp in the game. or why not make the levels of enemies tied to the level of your weapon, making exploration more incentivized and also so that there's not a stupid light level armor mechanic thing? why make players believe the armor system is flexible when all that matters is if the big number in the top right of the screen goes up?? at least finding different weapon abilities and even runes/enchantments didn't bother me entirely. i found those to be fine since they actually had an impact on the gameplay and playstyles as compared to the armor.

i guess the last thing to talk about would be the story and writing. it's alright for the most part, even reaching good or close to good at times. kratos and atreus have some great bonding moments that feel almost genuine at times. but they also have a lot of weird quick bonding moments that don't feel genuine. the writing has some odd pacing. sometimes it takes its time, but then it'll hastily speed things up in an instant, making some moments feel inorganic. at least the characters are mostly well-written. i enjoyed seeing a lot of the interactions between characters and hearing the dialogue between a lot of them, mimir has some great banter and stories. all the gods have great personalities, too. whether they're rowdy or more reserved, they all had unique voices that made them stand out on their own. speaking of the gods, i think this game actually does a solid job at presenting norse mythology. It's almost like they did some proper reading on the stuff the game's based on and have the gods appear more like they are in the prose edda and poetic edda. i feel like most people associate thor nowadays as marvel's cocky semi-goofy brick head who's all about being the good guy. same with odin being good since he's thor's father. the truth is how they're presented in GoW18. the aesir, and a whole lot of other people/creatures in norse mythology, are selfish greedy bastards. they couldn't care less for midgard's inhabitants. thor really was a bloodthirsty giant killing drunkard, usually killing giants if they did a little bit of trolling or if he simply felt like it. odin is also just as greedy and thirsty for knowledge as he is talked about in GoW18. odin really was a police-state-esque figure who meddled in the lives of everybody and everything, paranoid at what he didn't know. im just mostly glad that they didn't present the norse gods as some black-and-white entities since they really are more of a gray area when it came to morals (though i'd be lying if i didn't say there was some black-and-white morality sprinkled throughout the mythology).

overall, GoW18 has me so conflicted. i see glimpses of an amazing game, but that's stripped away from me because of the terrible design philosophy that so many AAA studios have become enamored with since ever. i want to attribute this design philosophy to naughty dog with uncharted, but i could be wrong. games becoming "mature" don't have to be so terrible in gameplay and cinematic in their stories. we don't need another "games grew up" situation in the industry. we just need fun games with a good story if possible. i mean resident evil (2002) has engaging gameplay and cinematic cameras. doom eternal is violently fun and cinematically ridiculous. max payne is all about having fun shootouts like if you were in a john woo flick. in terms of generic AAA games, this is on par with its peers but not atrociously incompetent. it could have been amazing if designed differently, but here we are with the current state of the AAA design philosophy.

i think i'll eventually get to GoW Ragnarok, but that'll probably be in 200 years when it's not costing an arm and a leg.

i see so many people call this a Quake-like when the only similarities this game has to Quake are the swathes of brown textures and some of the enemy roster, most notably an obvious spin-off of Quake's ogre. This is at its core, a Chasm-like with Duke Nukem 3D in the mix. and being a Chasm-like means it's more like Wolf3D than Quake. wait i gotta add that its also atmospheric like Quake so i guess its equal parts Quake and Wolf3D. Chasm was originally supposed to be a competitor to Quake but when playing it, it feels more like a more 3D Wolfenstein3D with an Eastern European flavor. so HROT is essentially all of that. A game that has the maze-like levels of castle Wolfenstein with Quake's violence and despair with Eastern European culture plastering it in Duke Nukem 3D's playful interactivity. HROT is a passion project. its a love letter to its inspirations and the developer's homeland's history and culture. even ignoring that, it's a fun time. gunplay is decent with the low fidelity presentation but lackluster sound design, but the enemy encounters are what make the combat fun. especially in episode 2 and some of episode 3, the game gets creative with its imposed limitations to make some fights memorable. the boss fights are the most notable of these encounters, usually being the highlight of an episode with not just their arenas and build-up but also by their uniqueness. the other memorable part of the game is the dense atmosphere in its simple presentation. the ambient soundtrack underscores the dreadful world painted in sick browns, nauseous greens, and pale offwhites. its mundane and haunting, full of otherworldly horrors and boring miscellanea like canned meat. horror contrasted by absurdity while all being equally normalized to its grounded setting. pairing the passion with this atmosphere is what pushes me into the "yea this is my shit, i love it too much" camp. i can set aside most of its shortcomings just because of the sheer passion put into this. a fun trip of love to surpass its labyrinthine sewers, currently one of my favorites of the year.

you ever just need to explore decrepit buildings filled to the brim with psychotic vagrants? plunge into urban decay and feel the dried blood and grime beneath your fingernails as you fight for your life. condemned is ashamedly nigh forgotten, understandably so when its sister game is fucking F.E.A.R. revisiting this game, though, was greater on a second playthrough, in both highs and lows. the atmosphere is disgusting. festering paranoia, rotting buildings, filthy footsteps, and ghastly whispers, condemned is one of the few games where i still got startled while knowing what was coming. the utter dilapidation of metro city is tangible in its industrial despair and collapsing floors, but the sickly enemies add to it alongside being able to rip off a weapon from the wall. incredibly simple, brutally visceral. the combat is rudimentary. it's a man killing another man with a rock and huffing with each swing. dodging is only a coincidence or a misstep. you either take a hit or adapt and block hits. yea the last chapter is a bit of a fumble, taking the horror into the background by throwing more and more enemies and guns. yea, the game is janky with audio bugs and a shoddy pc port. yea, maybe there were a few too many guns to overshadow the melee combat. but holy hell, there are not many games this cathartically terrifying. raw, cruel combat and dreadfully dense atmosphere, condemned may not be better than F.E.A.R. (and it's really hard to top F.E.A.R.), but it scratches a specific itch in my brain that not many other games can.

this is peak armored core 1. it's the refinement of the arena mode, abundance of content, return to a story full of investigative wonder, and of course: giant mecha annihilation. it's everything project phantasma should've been, but admittedly master of arena wouldn't be what it is without its younger sibling expansion.

arena is more in-depth due to it being intertwined with the campaign. at certain points in the game you won't receive any more missions until you progress through the arena, incentivizing the player to be a gladiator outside of a side hustle. even then, if youre fighting in the arena too much, your sponsor will temporarily suspend your arena license to make you do their bidding like a mother unplugging an xbox. it's not aggravating, but arena is so engrossing that you forget to do your obligations. like there's a total of 120 arena fights for fortune and glory to be made. the first disc has the campaign and 20 arena fights, but the second disc has 100 fucking fights if you ever get a bad itching for crunchy ps1 Armored Core combat. for as fun as beating up other steel giants is, the mission design in this expansion blows project phantasma and AC1 out of the water in both story and gameplay.

there's a greater innovation in the nuance in missions, learning not just to kill things but to kill specific things, to protect a submarine while killing other things, and destroy generators to permanently kill some lil dudes. it's all so much better than running to a target, killing them, and returning to the raven's nest screen, which got a nice makeover since it's pretty much the set of screens you'll see the most in the game. that's one thing master of arena fails to improve in: keeping the player more in the action gameplay than navigating menus. in the AC1 trilogy, you'll be spending so much time going from the mail, to the garage, to the shop, then back to the garage, and then maybe back to the shop to sell the part you just bought, and then finally to the mission select to then scroll through blocks of debriefing to THEN finally enter a mission that'll be over before you know it. it's tedious, monotonous, and repetitive, especially in long play sessions. one thing the first armored core has still done better than its expansions is the story. master of arena is undoubtedly better than project phantasma, but in this case, it doesn't say who you are IN the game. in the manual, assumedly, and through googling, master of arena's story is about a raven whose family was killed during the first game's events. this raven, who goes by the annihilator, seeks out revenge for his family by aiming to kill Nine-Ball, the top-ranking AC pilot of the entire Armored Core trilogy. it's a great premise, but it's only brought up in-game through an email saying something like, "oh yea, you were looking for nineball? you seem like you have some beef with him... ill help you." it never expands beyond that. it's something i think even those who own the manual skip over and miss. because of the ability to bring my AC from both the base game and project phantasma, i don't feel like a new character too. EDIT: came back to say that i think theres a cutscene that plays at the start of a new game with a fresh character on master of arena that sets up the game's premise, so i need to look more into this because that makes that whole bit of critique null lol. still even with that in mind, because of the very straight forward premise and the previous entries, there isnt much mystery to the story. you know what raven's nest is, you know about the powerful war AI, you know that something's up with Hustler One since there were TWO of them in the last mission of AC1.

an abundance of wealth, a much less mysterious story, and the continued slog of the heaps of menus make master of arena only slightly better than what came before it. the highs are definitely the highest the series had seen at this point. i mean, that final cutscene was fucking PEAK. a very good game, but sadly also not a very improved one. maybe i should do a king's field break before ac2, ooo maybe evergrace instead

a whirlwind of emotions encased by desolate beauty. not sure why this is a bit embarrassing to me, but new vegas was THE game that got me to appreciate games as much as i do today. new vegas is good, i love that game (probably, i havent played it since i was 15), but fallout 1 is very special to me. the rugged controls and graphics have aged well in its dilapidated world, making each interaction born out of genuine curiosity. piecing together solutions from scrounged bits of ammo or investigative conversations made the quests feel incredibly organic. not one bit of exploration is falsehood. you are truly lost in the wastes and must dig yourself out. new vegas is similar but fallout 1 has you tread across new california to seek guidance or stumble upon what you need. youre told "yea we need a new water chip, good luck," given a handful of supplies, and propelled into a hateful world of dust. the self-autonomy of saving a whole people, a whole community's world, is daunting yet so marvellously enticing. it's almost like youre 'the chosen one' (i know thats fo2's protag, but thats not what i mean here), given an insurmountable task to complete. yet what differs here is that you arent a godlike figure, youre just an average joe that knows nothing about this fucked up world, making each success so much more triumphant. standing over the corpses of raiders and irradiated horrors never felt so good.

granted, combat is obtusely brutal. "You miss. You miss. Raider hit you for 300 fuck-ass damage. FEEL THE PAIN. The scar looks kinda neat though!" if youre specialized less for combat, each encounter feels more like a roll of the dice. especially in the later game, when otherworldly horrors become common foes. it's a gambling addict's wet dream; trying over and over to finally hit it big and win a lootable corpse. not that it's wholly unfair, but at times you will be one shotted. it's unavoidable. lady luck fucking HATES you. but with the right equipment, maybe some companions, and perseverance, you can topple the mightiest of giants. "You hit for 12 damage. You miss. Raider critically misses and shoots themselves in the face for 800 damage!" the cartoonish violence is a dopamine farm. watching a raider liquefy into a puddle or a deathclaw get its head ripped clean off, you want to conquer more and more of this insufferable wasteland.

but nobody plays fallout 1 for the action. nobody, in their right mind, plays fallout for the action. i guess fallout 4 and 76 are the outliers, theyre more of a sandbox than anything. fallout 1 is a good story, one that i struggle to even explain to anybody. the writing is fantastic with funny as hell dialogue, amazing world building, and evil as fuck villains. throw in some sympathetic characters and investigative quests, and youve got a decent summation of a fallout game. yet, what i found most interesting about this games story wasnt the writing, but rather the gameplay that surrounded it. you constantly make treks and inquiries to secure the future of vault 13. what the main quest boils down to is just living through the world like any other survivor. you arent given priority or special treatment, youre a nobody to everybody you meet outside the vault. youve gotta muster up the courage to get any progress done. along the way, you get tidbits of dilemmas and philosophy. adytum's fascistic regulators, the hub's hellish economy, junktown's feud, necropolis' occupation by mutants, the followers of the apocalypse's existence, so much shit that just begs you to ponder. humanity is diverse in beliefs and cruelty. thats really what makes fallout, as a series, so interesting. it's not the world-building or rpg elements (which are really good), but more so the exploration of different beliefs and violence that humans are so good at conjuring. to see the extremes of every side of humanity, to quell or partake in them in a post-apocalypse, makes it so enticing. really that is just fiction in general, but fallouts american setting and premise hone in on real-world parallels, compelling me more to join on its experiment.

while being able to directly interact with the different philosophies, politics, and levels of violence found across the game, fallout 1 has a sort of disconnect to it. from what i remember with new vegas, you are very linked into whichever factions you support and whatnot. yet in this game, you can help all sorts of groups, commit terrible crimes for mob bosses, and yet you can move on. you're a middle man, a contract worker, helping with a very specific task but not a designated member of a group. while being able to join the brotherhood, youre free to leave and, basically, do whatever you want all because youre an outsider. fallout 1s dilemmas and quests feel more like windows into all sorts of walks of life than commitments. this isn't terrible, i just found it very interesting. this isnt also true to every decision. some acts will lock you into a position a group may hate you for, but most of the time you are a passerby. it feels like a road trip in a sense. you explore a dead america and experience its new frail life, allowing you to believe whatever you want to and feel however you want to. pretty much every conversation with a talking head npc and quest npc has the option to provoke violence! fuck getting to know people, i want blood. all the more to show how much of a jack-of-all-trades mediator you are. true to only you and your vault and nothing else. youre paid to do a job, and you leave because you have more pressing matters like saving the world.

and its all for not. a futile endeavor where youre gloriously praised and thanked. youve accumulated powerful equipment and skills, but you never could return to your old life. a fatalistic ending to shatter your pride and fill in the cracks with a bleak despair. ultimately, it was the impact you had on peoples lives, not the grand goals that vault 13's overseer bestowed upon you, that had any significance. seeing how your actions shaped the land, whether you brought prosperity or ruin, the stops you made on the way mattered more than the destination. revel in the fruits of good deeds, or wallow in crippling societal collapse.

you deserve rest. youre a hero to some and a cretin to others. but you must leave. never come back.

i love this game, cant you tell by the rambling?

the original system shock is one of my absolute favorite things of all time in the entirety of art. some things just transcend the medium they're made in. i love john woo's the killer as if it was my son, there isn't a day where i'll get tired of boris's flood, and 1994's system shock is a game i will always look at with the rosiest of tinted glasses. then there's also the fact that system shock is one of the most important games made. so much of its design echoes today. the silly 451 code number now overdone for no reason, the abundant audio logs to tell the game's story that so many games now replicate, and the foundation it laid for future imsims and other genres to build upon. oh and theres also how system shock is weirdly a pseudo metroidvania before castlevania symphony of the night released to define that genre. so when i decided to go against my value of never preordering games with the system shock remake, i prayed that i would see it released in a good state. by all means nightdive has stuck their landing.

system shock '23 is good. pretty damn good most of the time. the new bells and whistles made possible from newer technology are mostly good. obviously turn off most processing with bloom and motion blur, but the volumetric lighting is pretty nice and the shadows just add so much despair to the dark corners of the station. however, the beauty of the system shock remake's presentation is mostly from nightdive recreating every room to a damn T. fuck it, not even a T. they built a cross with how faithful their replication of citadel station is (minus the bridge from what i remember of the original). medical is just as coldly blue, storage is just as chaotic, security still has its looming height. it looks like system shock in terms of architecture, but it has more of a darker atmosphere than the cornea-burning bright hodgepodge of colors that made the original. from the 2 hours ive played of system shock 2, it feels like nightdive's crew loved SS2 more than SS1 and wanted to incorporate elements from the sequel into this remake. its more horror focused is what im saying and i welcome it but also sadly miss the constant overstimulation from the visuals and almost blaring music, fueling the confusion born from the labyrinth. the music mostly plays during combat. it's not a recreation of the original soundtrack. the original was hectic, whirring, thrilling. this remake is a synthwave combat track but that doesnt mean to make them bad, it's just different and doesnt evoke the same stress from the original's admittedly janky sound from its low fidelity. the ambient tracks are pretty nice too, they remind me a lot of prey 2017 which is what i think the nightdive team was also pulling a lot from because of the addition of recycling machines and junk.

the execution is alright. i like how it puts greater value onto inventory space, like in survival horror games a la resident evil, but it was also quite annoying if i wanted to fully take advantage of the tokens and recycling. it's not needed to complete the game, so its not that big of a deal but its also like a weird feature to add. its like nightdive wasnt satisfied enough with the modernization of the game so they added recycling, akin to the crafting systems that are almost always hamfisted or superfluously added in many games today. i mean fine, add recycling but did you have to take away one of the original's unique qualities with its overwhelming HUD/UI and control scheme? sure some gamers are already very squeamish about controls or gamepads even though lots of people will rebind keys to weird-ass alternatives like using the control key for interacting with things. cruelty squad taught me that games need to get back into using the control scheme to evoke discomfort or anxiety in players, and system shock '94 did so wonderfully in tandem with its HUD/UI where you swap between a cursor and mouselook. system shock '23 however doesnt have this even as an option, making it so routine in what ive played. it feels like prey 2017, deep rock galactic, basically any first-person game made in the past 10 years. this is nice for making the game more accessible to new players, but it tragically takes away a special bit of magic that makes up the gestalt of what it's remaking. at least with its modernization it brings satisfying gunplay. melee is a bit awkward but the guns are so nice to shoot and reload with their animations and enemy feedback. the peekaboo paranoia is still present too! leaning around walls to get the drop on a cyborg or mutant always felt great, making me feel defiant in this steel dungeon. enemies are genuinely terrifying not just from their grotesque designs but also the walloping strengths of their attacks. youre gonna want to find the shield augment as fast as possible and always look for upgrades and health kits. even the cyberspace is pretty good from a gameplay perspective. aside from a vaporwave-esque or synthwavey design that ive been so done with since 2019, system shock '23 makes me want to play descent more now. the six degrees of freedom is so smooth, confusing, and thrilling. the new enemies also make it so much more exciting but admittedly more annoying. sometimes the cyberspace projectiles you shoot feel too slow or too small or maybe enemies have too much health at times, there was just a bit of tedium felt at times that i couldnt pinpoint. i think it was mostly healthwise, so many cyberspace enemies are tanky. honestly i applaud this cyberspace for how nice it is with me never begrudgingly going "oh gotta do this one too? cmon." but i suspect nightdive were maybe not proud enough of their hacking or too proud to the point of thinking "lets spice up the final boss cyberspace encounter by having it be just a weak ass FPS section but with the cyberspace enemies!! (insane wow)" seriously i felt so blue balled in terms of gameplay at the end. reminds me of control (2019) where it had a bombastic build up to an admittedly lame final bit of gameplay.

system shock '23 though is still for the most part system shock. it's about shodan, citadel station, and the hacker rollerblading down halls with a laser rapier in hand. but its not as schizophrenic, paranoiac, and overstimulating of a dungeon as the original. it's just as free and emergent in terms of gameplay with the weapons and exploration, but it's not as unique or anxious because of the modern control scheme. an amazing remake, but it's personally not my system shock. i think i'll definitely return to this and the original, plus i dont regret preordering this, nightdive did a lovely job. it's just that if i had to choose on whether i wanted this remake to exist, im sure i would say yes but only because of the hope that some may check out the original. as much as remakes are hated (rightfully so most of the time), i welcome a lot of them because the originals still exist. to me, a remake can never be a total replacement or a superior product. it'll always be just an alternative.