Yultimona
The ethos of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken can best be seen in the various flying sections found throughout its relatively short campaign. A simple, glossy overview would say that a 2D sidescroller dogfighting section has to control snappy, feel responsive, and make you feel like you're always in control. Rocketbirds completely ignores this. Your first impressions of these sections will vary depending on what platform you play this game on (more on that later). But the agreed-upon consensus will probably be frustration. Your ability to move around in the air is based on your ability to hold down the button that activates your jetpack; your ability to shoot in the air depends entirely on what direction you're moving around in. For first-time players, this can be difficult to get used to. Especially on a gamepad, it's very easy to miss your targets entirely. But if repeat visits to this game have taught me anything, it's that that's the point. There's a joy in besting this control scheme that those initial impressions leave off the table. Everything feels like a constant, cyclical struggle. You'd be on the ground if you wanted to be in control. In the air, you are the bitch of gravity. Kicking gravity in the face, the space between you and the bastards you're after shrinks to almost nothing.
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a game that you will either have a bizarre eminent fascination with, or it won't click with you. This is a game filled to the brim with 90s attitude and design limitations, powered by MySpace-era alternative rock, and made by someone who had been wanting to make it for a very, very long time. It's Blackthorne by way of Tony Scott, making the least subtle WWII allegory possible via Saturday mornings on Cartoon Network. Movement is very slow, the cover system can get a bit tedious, platforming isn't a smooth affair, and you can only aim in the direction your character is facing. This is all intentional. Like the air sections I mentioned above, it all serves to put you in the position of the chaser. The guy you're after is the Terminator (down to the cheesy Schwarzenegger impression) and you're John Connor, but you're chasing him. You might consider this a misunderstanding of how action games work; Leon Kennedy is fast in Resident Evil 4 because if he was as slow as Mr. X, that opening village sequence wouldn't feel as intensely satisfying. As an expression of gratitude for cinema through the lens of a game, this is a far more faithful affair than a lengthy cutscene could provide. To plagiarize one of the most mocked terms in games writing as of late, it succeeds in making you feel like the unstoppable force that so many children must have saw Arnie as when they watched The Terminator for the first time, to the chagrin of their parents when that one scene came on. It's for this reason that the decision to add a Co-Operative mode almost seems baffling to me. If both parties are fine with what I've described, great. But I've yet to meet someone like that. Regardless of how you perceive this game to play, though, it's total eye candy to look at twelve years later. There is a good reason this thing shipped with the option to play it not only with a 3D TV but also with those cheap red-and-blue glasses you used to get in those old DVDs and movie theaters. My bet is that it has very little to do with Sony's attempt to push 3D technology into gaming at the time, not only because many of these options are still present in the PC version but also because I don't think Sony ever considered those flimsy glasses a suitable alternative. The main reason it's there is that the art style blends 2.5D backgrounds with stunning hand-drawn animation to great effect. It might not be on the same level as something like Cuphead, but this is a must-play if you dig cartoon art styles and don't mind the clunk and somewhat childish humor.
Outside of the gameplay and visuals, though, the other elephant in the room is the soundtrack. Behind me on a shelf full of CDs is the physical release of this game's soundtrack that came with the Limited Run Games release of its PlayStation Vita port. I still listen to it regularly. If Rocketbirds flawlessly succeeds at one thing, it's using the music at its disposal to bolster its set pieces and cinematics. A lot gets said about how incredible its opening cutscene is, but even something as silly and stupidly edgy as the background of this game's titular protagonist is given more weight than it otherwise would have had because of the music the developers chose to use. The operative term there is 'chose': when I described this game's soundtrack as being from the MySpace era, I wasn't being facetious. This might not shock you, but almost half of this game's soundtrack comes from an album by New World Revolution that came out four years before Hardboiled Chicken, and two before the flash version of Rocketbirds that Hardboiled Chicken is technically a remake of. From what can be gathered from the band's presence on Bandcamp, all but one song appears in Hardboiled Chicken, and the only song that doesn't is in the sequel. The resulting effect of this is that these developers have perfectly tuned each song to the setpieces they've built around them. If you want a good example of how much they nailed it, the remixes they inevitably use in the game are total bangers.
I don't know if it's exactly right to rate this thing so high, seeing as its appeal is very specific. But I absolutely adored this thing back then, and my opinion on that has hardly changed.
(As an additional aside, you know that PS Vita copy I mentioned? It's almost completely different from the version that was released on the PS3 and PC in 2011 and 2012, respectively. But I'll have more to say about that at some other point in the future)
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a game that you will either have a bizarre eminent fascination with, or it won't click with you. This is a game filled to the brim with 90s attitude and design limitations, powered by MySpace-era alternative rock, and made by someone who had been wanting to make it for a very, very long time. It's Blackthorne by way of Tony Scott, making the least subtle WWII allegory possible via Saturday mornings on Cartoon Network. Movement is very slow, the cover system can get a bit tedious, platforming isn't a smooth affair, and you can only aim in the direction your character is facing. This is all intentional. Like the air sections I mentioned above, it all serves to put you in the position of the chaser. The guy you're after is the Terminator (down to the cheesy Schwarzenegger impression) and you're John Connor, but you're chasing him. You might consider this a misunderstanding of how action games work; Leon Kennedy is fast in Resident Evil 4 because if he was as slow as Mr. X, that opening village sequence wouldn't feel as intensely satisfying. As an expression of gratitude for cinema through the lens of a game, this is a far more faithful affair than a lengthy cutscene could provide. To plagiarize one of the most mocked terms in games writing as of late, it succeeds in making you feel like the unstoppable force that so many children must have saw Arnie as when they watched The Terminator for the first time, to the chagrin of their parents when that one scene came on. It's for this reason that the decision to add a Co-Operative mode almost seems baffling to me. If both parties are fine with what I've described, great. But I've yet to meet someone like that. Regardless of how you perceive this game to play, though, it's total eye candy to look at twelve years later. There is a good reason this thing shipped with the option to play it not only with a 3D TV but also with those cheap red-and-blue glasses you used to get in those old DVDs and movie theaters. My bet is that it has very little to do with Sony's attempt to push 3D technology into gaming at the time, not only because many of these options are still present in the PC version but also because I don't think Sony ever considered those flimsy glasses a suitable alternative. The main reason it's there is that the art style blends 2.5D backgrounds with stunning hand-drawn animation to great effect. It might not be on the same level as something like Cuphead, but this is a must-play if you dig cartoon art styles and don't mind the clunk and somewhat childish humor.
Outside of the gameplay and visuals, though, the other elephant in the room is the soundtrack. Behind me on a shelf full of CDs is the physical release of this game's soundtrack that came with the Limited Run Games release of its PlayStation Vita port. I still listen to it regularly. If Rocketbirds flawlessly succeeds at one thing, it's using the music at its disposal to bolster its set pieces and cinematics. A lot gets said about how incredible its opening cutscene is, but even something as silly and stupidly edgy as the background of this game's titular protagonist is given more weight than it otherwise would have had because of the music the developers chose to use. The operative term there is 'chose': when I described this game's soundtrack as being from the MySpace era, I wasn't being facetious. This might not shock you, but almost half of this game's soundtrack comes from an album by New World Revolution that came out four years before Hardboiled Chicken, and two before the flash version of Rocketbirds that Hardboiled Chicken is technically a remake of. From what can be gathered from the band's presence on Bandcamp, all but one song appears in Hardboiled Chicken, and the only song that doesn't is in the sequel. The resulting effect of this is that these developers have perfectly tuned each song to the setpieces they've built around them. If you want a good example of how much they nailed it, the remixes they inevitably use in the game are total bangers.
I don't know if it's exactly right to rate this thing so high, seeing as its appeal is very specific. But I absolutely adored this thing back then, and my opinion on that has hardly changed.
(As an additional aside, you know that PS Vita copy I mentioned? It's almost completely different from the version that was released on the PS3 and PC in 2011 and 2012, respectively. But I'll have more to say about that at some other point in the future)
2012
Dishonored is one of the few games I've ever played where a direct recommendation of "play this with a controller/keyboard and mouse" cannot be made. Generally speaking, I enjoy playing stealth games with a controller. Stealth, like racing games, is a genre that benefits greatly from analog sticks. At the heart of a great stealth game is nail-biting tension and suspense. Vulnerability is stressed through risk outweighing reward. On a keyboard, all of your inputs are static. Are you pressing up? Good, you're moving up. Jolting an analog stick up can mean the difference between shuffling silently and bringing in nearby ears for inspection. Even in games where this choice tends to be an illusion, it heightens the already high stakes of weaving in and out of crowded spaces as little more than a specter in the night. If that's how you choose to play Dishonored, I recommend it. Leaning and inventory management can feel a little less natural than they would on a keyboard, but they're functional and aren't as distracting as they could potentially be. In the words of Godd Howard himself, "it just works."
The other side of the coin is this: combat-based playthroughs require vastly more precision than two analog sticks can allow. Far from the stealth game half of this game is, aggressive playstyles in Dishonored turn the game into a psychotically frenetic action-platformer about style. The ability to teleport goes from a neat tool for traversing large areas undetected to a weapon that allows you to change your position on the fly. Double jumping allows you to exploit the verticality of each level, creating moments where countering an attack means raising a blade from above as often as it does parrying a swing. Grenade kills are a gory spectacle that separates torsos from limbs and then torsos from themselves. But this brutality exists for more than shock value alone. Each decapitated body part can be picked up and thrown to be used as a distraction or to stagger oncoming attacks. Being of the same lineage of Dark Messiah, Dishonored features a host of supernatural abilities to go alongside teleportation, one of which allows you to throw enemies to the ground with a gust of wind. Paired with the ability to stop time completely, falling bodies go from quick executions to rather grim bridges used to access nearby rooftops. Also paired with the ability to turn the weapons of your enemies into your own, it allows you to disintegrate unaware platoons. As both a stealth game and a power fantasy, Dishonored succeeds.
As a narrative? I don't know what to tell you. This is where things start to get a little bit more complicated. At the heart of Dishonored isn't its cast of characters or the journey you go on but the morality of your actions. The choice to go silent or to leave bodies in your wake is one not only made for your character but the world he lives in. Going on a murderous rampage causes everyone to hate you while the world falls to shit. It's daring and bold, and I can't say it works entirely because this game loves to give you tools to just murder the fuck out of everyone. Your supernatural powers can be used to sneak around guards. But when upgrades can make my powers deadlier while others encourage me to go on thoughtlessly violent killing sprees, I don't know if I feel like the game is trying to instill any morals in me and succeeding in its job. Especially since the detail of this setting only makes me care about the characters I'm told to get rid of, the non-violent approach to Dishonored's narrative can feel a bit hollow.
Outside of that, though, this is one of the best immersive sims I've ever played. This is one of those quintessential 'reload your save every five minutes' games, and it's always a blast to revisit. I do wish its attitude toward women were a little friendlier. I wouldn't say it's the most misogynistic game I've ever played, but averypaledog's review hits the nail on its head.
The other side of the coin is this: combat-based playthroughs require vastly more precision than two analog sticks can allow. Far from the stealth game half of this game is, aggressive playstyles in Dishonored turn the game into a psychotically frenetic action-platformer about style. The ability to teleport goes from a neat tool for traversing large areas undetected to a weapon that allows you to change your position on the fly. Double jumping allows you to exploit the verticality of each level, creating moments where countering an attack means raising a blade from above as often as it does parrying a swing. Grenade kills are a gory spectacle that separates torsos from limbs and then torsos from themselves. But this brutality exists for more than shock value alone. Each decapitated body part can be picked up and thrown to be used as a distraction or to stagger oncoming attacks. Being of the same lineage of Dark Messiah, Dishonored features a host of supernatural abilities to go alongside teleportation, one of which allows you to throw enemies to the ground with a gust of wind. Paired with the ability to stop time completely, falling bodies go from quick executions to rather grim bridges used to access nearby rooftops. Also paired with the ability to turn the weapons of your enemies into your own, it allows you to disintegrate unaware platoons. As both a stealth game and a power fantasy, Dishonored succeeds.
As a narrative? I don't know what to tell you. This is where things start to get a little bit more complicated. At the heart of Dishonored isn't its cast of characters or the journey you go on but the morality of your actions. The choice to go silent or to leave bodies in your wake is one not only made for your character but the world he lives in. Going on a murderous rampage causes everyone to hate you while the world falls to shit. It's daring and bold, and I can't say it works entirely because this game loves to give you tools to just murder the fuck out of everyone. Your supernatural powers can be used to sneak around guards. But when upgrades can make my powers deadlier while others encourage me to go on thoughtlessly violent killing sprees, I don't know if I feel like the game is trying to instill any morals in me and succeeding in its job. Especially since the detail of this setting only makes me care about the characters I'm told to get rid of, the non-violent approach to Dishonored's narrative can feel a bit hollow.
Outside of that, though, this is one of the best immersive sims I've ever played. This is one of those quintessential 'reload your save every five minutes' games, and it's always a blast to revisit. I do wish its attitude toward women were a little friendlier. I wouldn't say it's the most misogynistic game I've ever played, but averypaledog's review hits the nail on its head.
poo long
fallen dy-nasty
fallen dy-nasty
2015
You're the first to race this track!
You'll be enshrined as the track's creator for all time.
And you've earned 100 coins.
If you want a good frame of reference for how our culture adapts to change, consider that AudioSurf was released a full three years before Spotify came out in the United States. As one of the first independent titles to really use Steam's API on Valve's, at the time, infamously closed off platform, it was considered significant enough to come in a bundle of twelve other independent titles officially endorsed by Valve in 2011, with a fancy TF2 hat to go along with it.
AudioSurf is not a game that could be released today and have the same impact. Case in point: when AudioSurf 2 was released with YouTube functionality and had its already minuscule playerbase disintegrate into double digits when it had to be gutted with no replacement in mid-2018. Music Racer, a less popular alternative priced at only two dollars, was released a month later with YouTube integration. To Audiosurf 2's credit, it managed to maintain a small but dedicated playerbase two years after its launch. To Music Racer's credit, it did ten times that in only fourteen months. If you want further proof that these games aren't sustainable anymore, in January of 2023, almost seven years after its release and my favorite of these games, Riff Racer, shut its doors for good.
As all functionality is tied to online connectivity, you can no longer purchase Riff Racer on Steam. To add insult to injury, without online connectivity, you cannot play any new songs. However, thanks to the efforts of a dedicated individual, Riff Racer is not entirely lost to time. Yet. But the competitive angle is gone for good. From here on out, all scores recorded in the replacement server were scores recorded before the official one turned off.
Racing along the bright neon colors with pulse-pounding music, causing the speed of the bar I'm chasing to outweigh my human capabilities without the ghost of another player to challenge me, Riff Racer begins to feel oddly hollow. But it would be wrong to blame the developers who couldn't afford to keep their servers running. It's the same issue with AudioSurf and its sequel, Music Racer, Beat Hazard, and any other game of this mold. In our current day and age of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, TikTok—fuckit, Pandora—who's buying MP3s anymore? The market for that isn't nonexistent. You can still go on Amazon, find a brand new album, and then pay to own a digital copy of it that's not reliant on their servers. But you have to go out of your way to do that (e.g. Amazon forces you to go through their interface for streaming music, and then click on a small button with three bubbles, to even see the option to buy MP3s). The only websites that are marketing themselves on MP3s nowadays are the YouTube download sites not killed by Google, shady Russian ventures only frequented by the desperate, and Bandcamp. As much as I adore Bandcamp, its artists range in recognition from Carpenter Brut to The Skeletones Four. You can't convince me that it's a mainstream site when all of its most popular acts are on other services, and the ones that aren't are niche bands like Battery Operated Orchestra.
Whether or not the shift to streaming has been beneficial largely depends on perspective. From the perspective of an artist, royalties can be a pain in the ass. Spotify is notorious for paying their artists' jack shit, and Apple isn't much better. It's easy to say that the ideal solution would be something like Bandcamp, where you get to stream as much of the music as you like if you're online, but you can only access the album offline if you've paid for it. But that'd be like saying WinRAR's business model has paid dividends in casual markets. As a consumer, it's convenient; you don't have to slap down tons of money for something you may or may not like. But if you're a game developer working around music that the user has control over, I can only imagine the headache. Right now, these kinds of games have to be in an adapt-or-die mentality. The only reason Beat Hazard has had two successors is because it's been willing to change its model to whatever the user is playing on their desktop. This creates the issue that games might run in perpetuity instead of playing out as levels. Between that and having to pay streaming services or face the reality that you're working on something downright ancient, unfortunately, there isn't much of a middle ground.
I liked Riff Racer a lot, and I still do. Playing through the entirety of Jasper Byrne's 2019 album Night with outrun aesthetics is a vibe I didn't know I wanted to feel. And it goes without saying that the visual style, plus the drift-based gameplay loop, makes this perfect for synthwave music and the occasional goofy track like that one from Initial D and that other one from that Fast and Furious movie that makes Enter the Void look like an accurate portrayal of Japan in comparison. I'm sad to say that I can't recommend this experience to you because you are no longer able to buy it. I pity the developers, truly. I want them to be proud of the thing they've created because I think they should. But outside of a fan patch with its own expiration date, they've lost the race. In retrospect, I can see them patting themselves on the back. But it's dead, and unless some act of god intervenes, it's going to stay that way.
Fuck, if they added anime girls to this game, they'd probably have Osu big-bucks by now.
You'll be enshrined as the track's creator for all time.
And you've earned 100 coins.
If you want a good frame of reference for how our culture adapts to change, consider that AudioSurf was released a full three years before Spotify came out in the United States. As one of the first independent titles to really use Steam's API on Valve's, at the time, infamously closed off platform, it was considered significant enough to come in a bundle of twelve other independent titles officially endorsed by Valve in 2011, with a fancy TF2 hat to go along with it.
AudioSurf is not a game that could be released today and have the same impact. Case in point: when AudioSurf 2 was released with YouTube functionality and had its already minuscule playerbase disintegrate into double digits when it had to be gutted with no replacement in mid-2018. Music Racer, a less popular alternative priced at only two dollars, was released a month later with YouTube integration. To Audiosurf 2's credit, it managed to maintain a small but dedicated playerbase two years after its launch. To Music Racer's credit, it did ten times that in only fourteen months. If you want further proof that these games aren't sustainable anymore, in January of 2023, almost seven years after its release and my favorite of these games, Riff Racer, shut its doors for good.
As all functionality is tied to online connectivity, you can no longer purchase Riff Racer on Steam. To add insult to injury, without online connectivity, you cannot play any new songs. However, thanks to the efforts of a dedicated individual, Riff Racer is not entirely lost to time. Yet. But the competitive angle is gone for good. From here on out, all scores recorded in the replacement server were scores recorded before the official one turned off.
Racing along the bright neon colors with pulse-pounding music, causing the speed of the bar I'm chasing to outweigh my human capabilities without the ghost of another player to challenge me, Riff Racer begins to feel oddly hollow. But it would be wrong to blame the developers who couldn't afford to keep their servers running. It's the same issue with AudioSurf and its sequel, Music Racer, Beat Hazard, and any other game of this mold. In our current day and age of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, TikTok—fuckit, Pandora—who's buying MP3s anymore? The market for that isn't nonexistent. You can still go on Amazon, find a brand new album, and then pay to own a digital copy of it that's not reliant on their servers. But you have to go out of your way to do that (e.g. Amazon forces you to go through their interface for streaming music, and then click on a small button with three bubbles, to even see the option to buy MP3s). The only websites that are marketing themselves on MP3s nowadays are the YouTube download sites not killed by Google, shady Russian ventures only frequented by the desperate, and Bandcamp. As much as I adore Bandcamp, its artists range in recognition from Carpenter Brut to The Skeletones Four. You can't convince me that it's a mainstream site when all of its most popular acts are on other services, and the ones that aren't are niche bands like Battery Operated Orchestra.
Whether or not the shift to streaming has been beneficial largely depends on perspective. From the perspective of an artist, royalties can be a pain in the ass. Spotify is notorious for paying their artists' jack shit, and Apple isn't much better. It's easy to say that the ideal solution would be something like Bandcamp, where you get to stream as much of the music as you like if you're online, but you can only access the album offline if you've paid for it. But that'd be like saying WinRAR's business model has paid dividends in casual markets. As a consumer, it's convenient; you don't have to slap down tons of money for something you may or may not like. But if you're a game developer working around music that the user has control over, I can only imagine the headache. Right now, these kinds of games have to be in an adapt-or-die mentality. The only reason Beat Hazard has had two successors is because it's been willing to change its model to whatever the user is playing on their desktop. This creates the issue that games might run in perpetuity instead of playing out as levels. Between that and having to pay streaming services or face the reality that you're working on something downright ancient, unfortunately, there isn't much of a middle ground.
I liked Riff Racer a lot, and I still do. Playing through the entirety of Jasper Byrne's 2019 album Night with outrun aesthetics is a vibe I didn't know I wanted to feel. And it goes without saying that the visual style, plus the drift-based gameplay loop, makes this perfect for synthwave music and the occasional goofy track like that one from Initial D and that other one from that Fast and Furious movie that makes Enter the Void look like an accurate portrayal of Japan in comparison. I'm sad to say that I can't recommend this experience to you because you are no longer able to buy it. I pity the developers, truly. I want them to be proud of the thing they've created because I think they should. But outside of a fan patch with its own expiration date, they've lost the race. In retrospect, I can see them patting themselves on the back. But it's dead, and unless some act of god intervenes, it's going to stay that way.
Fuck, if they added anime girls to this game, they'd probably have Osu big-bucks by now.
After eons of thieving about, my efforts were requested. A strange man halfway across the continent wanted to speak to me. He offered to pay me if I managed to plant incriminating evidence on someone who wasn't honoring a trade agreement. This "evidence" came from a separate, shadier individual with an asking price of a thousand coins. Like the gentleman thief I was, I calmly and maturely bartered with them: "fuck you, I'm stealing that shit." And with one swipe of her pocket, I did. After bum-rushing the safe I was now incidentally granted "permission" to access, I found myself scuba-diving for a small blue bottle. This was the key. After much deliberation, I tried to silently bum-rush the ship I was meant to plant this on, only to be met with a wall of boxes I couldn't climb without phasing through solid objects. No worries, I'll get it next time. Job well done, and after less than two hours of traveling, I was met with the client that started this all. Expecting my reward, I spoke with him, to which he responded by telling me that the man whose life I had thrown into jeopardy for petty reasons was already behind bars. Strangely, I didn't see any guards hastily dash in that direction, and the 24-hour news cycle doesn't exist in this universe, but I trusted him.
Worse yet was when I broke into a scientist's office to transcribe a journal written in a foreign, ancient language from beings so oppressed by their adversaries that they became cave dwellers out of survival. After less than a cursory glance at the text I had gleefully and meticulously taken for granted, the client knew exactly what he was looking at. I would think it takes longer than that, but you do you.
But I've saved the worst for last. After slitting the throat of a man in broad daylight for the shadowy organization—sorry, 'family'—I joined after gutting the owner of an orphanage, a courier pops up. I'm about to mount my horse and get out of dodge before anyone questions the blood when all of a sudden, I'm being handed a letter thanking me for my good deed seconds later. Do letters work like texts in this universe??? Were they invisible? Does this universe have a method of time travel that you can access at the snap of a finger?
I know this is probably going to sound like a headass, "why doesn't gasoline degrade in The Last of Us if it's so realistic?" take, but I genuinely find this type of storytelling to scrape under the bare minimum, and that's me being exceptionally polite about it. Trying to waive the baffling incoherence of Skyrim's timescale by saying "But it's an RPG!" is a worse excuse than any of the lies I told my teachers in high school when I didn't want to do my homework. "It's an RPG," but do you honestly expect me to believe that that guy picked up a wordy ass book and read it faster than Johnny 5 could skim through a dictionary?
The questions that linger about how time works in the universe of Skyrim are indicative of the package as a whole. The absurdly quick way in which events play out belies the beauty of the world presented, flexibility of RPG mechanics, and enjoyable quest lines. What ultimately shifts Skyrim into an atypically addictive guilty pleasure for me is that the foundation that all three of those reside on is hardly stable. It would have been generous to call the stealth mechanics here dated when this came out, and time has done that no favors. There are areas you'll end up overthinking on a playthrough with a Sneak-oriented character. Occasionally, the solution is to literally walk in front of the characters you're supposed to be sneaking around and hide in the corner before they go back to their positions. Using daggers, stealth kills are merely tolerable. Using a bow, it becomes gratingly tedious. Combat outside of stealth doesn't fare much better. The biggest issue a game that features both third-and-first person perspectives will inevitably run into is that some actions work better in one perspective over the other, and combat is a fantastic example of this. Owing to its default setting of first-person, the combat here has all of the functions of a basic hack-and-slash game but with none of the style. The option to block and dual-wield weapons are in there, but there are only ever two types of attacks with any melee weapon and the option to parry is non-existent. Magic is probably the most diverse option to go for, but the least straightforward. All in all, everything works out fine, but nothing is exceptional. You bring your own fun into Skyrim.
I don't hate Skyrim, though. In my very first review for this several years ago, I said something along the lines of it not being a classic. I also didn't know how to use the skill tree and thought it didn't function properly, so I was an idiot. With years behind me doing this now and having played some of the games that have followed in the wake of this, I do believe it is a classic. But not in the way that something like Citizen Kane is. We seem to revere that definition of "classic." It ushered in the new, but it's so damn good that it holds up even after all is said and done. But, to be honest, I have just as much appreciation for the classics that are flawed. Backwards flying dragons; modlists that keep breaking; mountains that I climb by noclipping; obviously discreet conversations that throw aside law and ethics being discussed in spaces where law enforcement has an active presence; relying on your bloodthirsty companion to do all of the combat for you while they insult you for moving slightly too fast while sneaking around; the disappointment of realizing your one invisibility potion stops working the moment you attempt to pickpocket someone. All of this is in here, and although the game can be generally whatever, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Worse yet was when I broke into a scientist's office to transcribe a journal written in a foreign, ancient language from beings so oppressed by their adversaries that they became cave dwellers out of survival. After less than a cursory glance at the text I had gleefully and meticulously taken for granted, the client knew exactly what he was looking at. I would think it takes longer than that, but you do you.
But I've saved the worst for last. After slitting the throat of a man in broad daylight for the shadowy organization—sorry, 'family'—I joined after gutting the owner of an orphanage, a courier pops up. I'm about to mount my horse and get out of dodge before anyone questions the blood when all of a sudden, I'm being handed a letter thanking me for my good deed seconds later. Do letters work like texts in this universe??? Were they invisible? Does this universe have a method of time travel that you can access at the snap of a finger?
I know this is probably going to sound like a headass, "why doesn't gasoline degrade in The Last of Us if it's so realistic?" take, but I genuinely find this type of storytelling to scrape under the bare minimum, and that's me being exceptionally polite about it. Trying to waive the baffling incoherence of Skyrim's timescale by saying "But it's an RPG!" is a worse excuse than any of the lies I told my teachers in high school when I didn't want to do my homework. "It's an RPG," but do you honestly expect me to believe that that guy picked up a wordy ass book and read it faster than Johnny 5 could skim through a dictionary?
The questions that linger about how time works in the universe of Skyrim are indicative of the package as a whole. The absurdly quick way in which events play out belies the beauty of the world presented, flexibility of RPG mechanics, and enjoyable quest lines. What ultimately shifts Skyrim into an atypically addictive guilty pleasure for me is that the foundation that all three of those reside on is hardly stable. It would have been generous to call the stealth mechanics here dated when this came out, and time has done that no favors. There are areas you'll end up overthinking on a playthrough with a Sneak-oriented character. Occasionally, the solution is to literally walk in front of the characters you're supposed to be sneaking around and hide in the corner before they go back to their positions. Using daggers, stealth kills are merely tolerable. Using a bow, it becomes gratingly tedious. Combat outside of stealth doesn't fare much better. The biggest issue a game that features both third-and-first person perspectives will inevitably run into is that some actions work better in one perspective over the other, and combat is a fantastic example of this. Owing to its default setting of first-person, the combat here has all of the functions of a basic hack-and-slash game but with none of the style. The option to block and dual-wield weapons are in there, but there are only ever two types of attacks with any melee weapon and the option to parry is non-existent. Magic is probably the most diverse option to go for, but the least straightforward. All in all, everything works out fine, but nothing is exceptional. You bring your own fun into Skyrim.
I don't hate Skyrim, though. In my very first review for this several years ago, I said something along the lines of it not being a classic. I also didn't know how to use the skill tree and thought it didn't function properly, so I was an idiot. With years behind me doing this now and having played some of the games that have followed in the wake of this, I do believe it is a classic. But not in the way that something like Citizen Kane is. We seem to revere that definition of "classic." It ushered in the new, but it's so damn good that it holds up even after all is said and done. But, to be honest, I have just as much appreciation for the classics that are flawed. Backwards flying dragons; modlists that keep breaking; mountains that I climb by noclipping; obviously discreet conversations that throw aside law and ethics being discussed in spaces where law enforcement has an active presence; relying on your bloodthirsty companion to do all of the combat for you while they insult you for moving slightly too fast while sneaking around; the disappointment of realizing your one invisibility potion stops working the moment you attempt to pickpocket someone. All of this is in here, and although the game can be generally whatever, I wouldn't have it any other way.
2017
Essentially, the Krunker of web-based battle royales. Any subtlety about what game inspired this is thrown out the window the second you discover that one of the URLs that redirects to it is literally fortnite.io. Zombs Royale isn't nearly as good as Fortnite: it's not as inventive with its mechanics; visually, it's kind of bland; it has big "what about me?" energy. But then you also have to consider that most of the people playing this aren't older than the age of twelve, and their access to the real deal is either limited or non-existent. As a game that you play on computers you don't own, it has a few advantages over the game you play on computers you don't own. Unlike Roblox, you don't need to install external software to enjoy this. The graphical fidelty is limited enough for it to run on just about computer. There's only one game available, so fears of running into a game that the others around you find inappropriate are dashed. With that context in mind, this is okay? But sort of like how Krunker sold fucking NFTs for a game played mostly by middle schoolers during lunch time, Zombs Royale has microtransactions. There's the obvious, "it's a free game, they need to money to keep running it" excuse, and then there's the fact that the main target audience for this is children. Personally, I find that gross and exploitative.
Other than that, this is fine. Zombs Royale is the margarine of battle royale games, if that's what you're looking for.
Other than that, this is fine. Zombs Royale is the margarine of battle royale games, if that's what you're looking for.
2010
Most of my issues with Mafia II come down to this:
As a movie, it does a decent job of integrating various influences into one without making the beats feel stale. As a game, it gives those influences a little more time to shine than a movie would, but, more often than not, it fails to use its medium to deliver something that a movie could not.
This is not a criticism delivered at the feet of Mafia II so much as it is an indictment of almost every Open World crime game in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III, including Rockstar's very own. While comparisons to L.A. Noire are more apt in this case with the historical setting and uneasy mixture of linear and open world designs, it's undeniable where it gets many of its ideas for gameplay. Especially where structure is concerned, Mafia II is nearly as linear as a Rockstar game; it just lacks the unintentionally hilarious strictness. However, as with L.A. Noire, this is an especially relevant criticism, given that the subject matter opens itself up more to non-linearity. If an espionage-themed RPG could work, I fail to see why one centered around gangsters can't. Hell, a version of Cyberpunk 2077 that drops the cyberpunk setting in favor of 1930s Chicago would be fucking GOATed. Mafia III almost counts, and had its development been less troubled, I might consider it a worthy successor. Other than that, I guess Empire of Sin gets close, kind of?
Judging Mafia II on the merits of what it is and not what it could be, this is a pretty solid game all around! It's decently atmospheric with great period-appropriate music, its visuals have mostly (surprisingly) held up, vehicles feel fun to control, and outside of how tiresome cover shooting can get, combat is really fun! All the weapons pack a punch, but the revolver and shotgun steal the show here. Hands down, this probably has one of the best shotguns I've ever seen in a game. It is incredibly satisfying to wipe out waves with that thing. The one thing that I do sort of have to note is that the aim assist can sometimes be too lenient on a controller, to the point where the difficulty in some setpieces becomes absolutely trivial. But damn if it doesn't feel good in conjunction with that boomstick. When you aren't shooting at guys, the melee combat system is actually a blast to use. If I were to make a serious Grand Theft Auto comparison, I'd say that this has a more punchy, less janky fist-fighting system than any of those games. The melee system is put to use pretty brilliantly in a prison-themed chapter—which is also a good springboard to talk about something less positive. Some of the stuff in Mafia II is YIKES. Being truthful and unsentimental about history is a balancing act that, when done well, can bring a surprising amount of insight and revelation into a time period. If you want a fantastic example of this, Mafia III is one of the ballsiest fucking big-budget games ever made, and it will probably remain that way for at least another decade. Mafia II, on the other hand, struggles to teeter the line between showing intolerance for the sake of historical accuracy and uncomfortably indulging in it at times. Racial stereotypes stand out the most, but I'd argue that the women in this game's cast aren't spared, either. If there's a woman that's not a motherly figure to your main character or your sister, she's a sex worker. I would almost consider this critical of the lifestyle portrayed, pointing out its shallow nature without saying too much. But the game also lets you collect Playboy pin-ups with the intent of them being 'cool, vintage collectibles!' without a hint of irony or self-awareness, and I'm... conflicted. If the treatment of women in Mafia II is supposed to highlight criticisms of its male characters, it only ends up coming off as slipshod in execution. If nothing else, I can at least say that I'm glad that the team that remastered this was conscious of these mistakes, and put a disclaimer about it in their version of the game. If none of this bothers you, or you're able to appreciate a fine game while staying critical of its more scrupulous aspects, go have fun! But if any of what I've described puts you off, I don't blame you.
Other than that, though, I had a lot of fun with this! I've technically played through its first half more than once, but that gives me all the more reason to say that I still enjoyed what was here. Again, I wish it played to the strengths of the medium a little more, but whatever.
As a movie, it does a decent job of integrating various influences into one without making the beats feel stale. As a game, it gives those influences a little more time to shine than a movie would, but, more often than not, it fails to use its medium to deliver something that a movie could not.
This is not a criticism delivered at the feet of Mafia II so much as it is an indictment of almost every Open World crime game in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III, including Rockstar's very own. While comparisons to L.A. Noire are more apt in this case with the historical setting and uneasy mixture of linear and open world designs, it's undeniable where it gets many of its ideas for gameplay. Especially where structure is concerned, Mafia II is nearly as linear as a Rockstar game; it just lacks the unintentionally hilarious strictness. However, as with L.A. Noire, this is an especially relevant criticism, given that the subject matter opens itself up more to non-linearity. If an espionage-themed RPG could work, I fail to see why one centered around gangsters can't. Hell, a version of Cyberpunk 2077 that drops the cyberpunk setting in favor of 1930s Chicago would be fucking GOATed. Mafia III almost counts, and had its development been less troubled, I might consider it a worthy successor. Other than that, I guess Empire of Sin gets close, kind of?
Judging Mafia II on the merits of what it is and not what it could be, this is a pretty solid game all around! It's decently atmospheric with great period-appropriate music, its visuals have mostly (surprisingly) held up, vehicles feel fun to control, and outside of how tiresome cover shooting can get, combat is really fun! All the weapons pack a punch, but the revolver and shotgun steal the show here. Hands down, this probably has one of the best shotguns I've ever seen in a game. It is incredibly satisfying to wipe out waves with that thing. The one thing that I do sort of have to note is that the aim assist can sometimes be too lenient on a controller, to the point where the difficulty in some setpieces becomes absolutely trivial. But damn if it doesn't feel good in conjunction with that boomstick. When you aren't shooting at guys, the melee combat system is actually a blast to use. If I were to make a serious Grand Theft Auto comparison, I'd say that this has a more punchy, less janky fist-fighting system than any of those games. The melee system is put to use pretty brilliantly in a prison-themed chapter—which is also a good springboard to talk about something less positive. Some of the stuff in Mafia II is YIKES. Being truthful and unsentimental about history is a balancing act that, when done well, can bring a surprising amount of insight and revelation into a time period. If you want a fantastic example of this, Mafia III is one of the ballsiest fucking big-budget games ever made, and it will probably remain that way for at least another decade. Mafia II, on the other hand, struggles to teeter the line between showing intolerance for the sake of historical accuracy and uncomfortably indulging in it at times. Racial stereotypes stand out the most, but I'd argue that the women in this game's cast aren't spared, either. If there's a woman that's not a motherly figure to your main character or your sister, she's a sex worker. I would almost consider this critical of the lifestyle portrayed, pointing out its shallow nature without saying too much. But the game also lets you collect Playboy pin-ups with the intent of them being 'cool, vintage collectibles!' without a hint of irony or self-awareness, and I'm... conflicted. If the treatment of women in Mafia II is supposed to highlight criticisms of its male characters, it only ends up coming off as slipshod in execution. If nothing else, I can at least say that I'm glad that the team that remastered this was conscious of these mistakes, and put a disclaimer about it in their version of the game. If none of this bothers you, or you're able to appreciate a fine game while staying critical of its more scrupulous aspects, go have fun! But if any of what I've described puts you off, I don't blame you.
Other than that, though, I had a lot of fun with this! I've technically played through its first half more than once, but that gives me all the more reason to say that I still enjoyed what was here. Again, I wish it played to the strengths of the medium a little more, but whatever.
2020
discover deez nuts
2018
It really blows that the developers went overboard on the freemium shit and started charging you to undo deaths and rewind years, because this is a game I would have been content to pay twenty to thirty dollars for and move on. Obviously, you have to ask yourself what child is going to have that kind of cash. But is it anymore ethical for that kid to keep asking their mother to open her wallet because the game pressures them into it when their character dies?
Otherwise, this is an inoffensive time waster that you can easily blow time off on. Mini-games aren't more than novel gimmicks, and nine times out-of-ten, you're praying to the RNG gods. But if you asked for a version of The Sims on your phone made for the platform instead of trying to accommodate for it, this is fine. It's satisfactory; it does the job.
It's fascinating to me that these developers bought out the team behind InstLife, because in some ways, it almost feels like a spiritual successor of sorts. Unfortunately, the most plausible case scenario I can think of is that they footed the bill because they wanted less competition. Knocked a star off for that bullshit.
Otherwise, this is an inoffensive time waster that you can easily blow time off on. Mini-games aren't more than novel gimmicks, and nine times out-of-ten, you're praying to the RNG gods. But if you asked for a version of The Sims on your phone made for the platform instead of trying to accommodate for it, this is fine. It's satisfactory; it does the job.
It's fascinating to me that these developers bought out the team behind InstLife, because in some ways, it almost feels like a spiritual successor of sorts. Unfortunately, the most plausible case scenario I can think of is that they footed the bill because they wanted less competition. Knocked a star off for that bullshit.
2016
The Oregon Trail holds educational value beyond its initial use in classrooms. Although it would be misleading to claim that it's a roguelike, it offers a glimpse at the foundation laid on the genre's feet. Judging it as a roguelike isn't possible because it lacks most of what the genre is known for. It's not procedurally generated, the terrain is mainly flat and navigatable with relatively few quirks, and there isn't exactly a process of learning not to die. In video games, the importance of death is typically a mixed bag. It's hard to argue whether or not the medium treats it with more dread than a television program or novel would. In my review for Shadow President, I spoke of the interaction games provide you and the consequences presented. To summarize my entire piece enough to be relevant, a lot of the impact of interactive media depends on how far away you are from the black box where the developers hide most of their tricks. With roguelikes, that distance is not an agreed-upon aspect. Death is the barometer used to gauge the quality of the space taken within boundaries. If death comes too quickly to account for, it's too far away from the black box. If it's too easy to avoid, it's too close. You can see something of growing pains for this in The Oregon Trail. The infamous phrase 'You have died of dysentery' indicates this; control over the fates of your travel buddies is not programmed into the game and tends to spread upwards until you're met with a customizable Game Over screen. Should you finish your trek with relatively few hitches, it's all too likely that at least one individual on board passed away on the trip. Restarting is an integral part of the experience. There's no purpose in simulating the hardship of such a journey if death always means the end. Judged as a roguelike, The Oregon Trail only has charm in its sparse visual aesthetic if we're talking about the Apple II version. The original version doesn't have that going for it. Viewed as a potential progenitor for some of the indie space today, The Oregon Trail is a fascinating piece of digital history.
With that in mind, I'm brought to a specific question: what value do modern interpretations have? Remakes vary in quality (1) (2) (3); parodies like You Have Not Died of Dysentery or Super Amazing Wagon Adventure don't amount to more than cute novelties. The answer to that question can be found in attempts to mimic the genre that The Oregon Trail partially inspired. I nominate Death Road to Canada as my game of choice for this answer.
If Death Road to Canada's name isn't a dead giveaway of its overall tone and attitude, its music is. Opening Organ Trail: Director's Cut, you're met with a track that blends adventure with caution. It doesn't invoke horror, but it provokes a feeling of weariness that gives credence that it isn't parodic. Within the first minute, you're given a gun and told to shoot down a wave of oncoming enemies. The process is slow and nerve-wracking, building a silent tension purely through the mechanical process of letting a shot off. The sound of adventure is lost in the music, replaced with an overbearing uncertainty. Opening up Death Road to Canada, you wouldn't be given that interpretation in a heartbeat. The opening song, aptly named after the game, packs a get-up-and-go feeling at odds with the premise of an undead being. The next song on the soundtrack, Zombonita Beach, elaborates on this, providing a pleasant and relaxing soundscape worthy of its title. Throughout your expedition, you'll run into random characters—some are randomized, and others are iconic. These iconic characters run the gamut from parodies of pop culture icons like Elvis and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the absurd like dogs.
All of this might lead you to assume that Death Road to Canada is in the same camp as Super Amazing Wagon Adventure; however, its sillier aspects belie a lot of the tension that lies under the surface. The Oregon Trail may not have been overtly a roguelike, but this is. For the most part, deaths are avoidable. Strategies can be formed, and I've played this enough to have a general sense of which paths will lead to the least harm to my party. Not every decision is obvious; some situations will play out like the lesser of two evils. But taking cues from The Oregon Trail, loss is not always something you can duck. You only have control of four resources: food, which is used as currency, and ammunition for pistols, rifles, and shotguns. You cannot ration the food you currently have and do not get to decide how your medical supplies are used. Your best characters may not always be the most healthy, and when the game inevitably forces you to put them into action, this can be used against you. Cars run out of gas and can break down, leaving you vulnerable until your party occurs across a new one. Most of what Death Road to Canada does is unique to the Oregon Trail formula. But it has enough of a footing in the classic material it's riffing on for it to be amiable in its effort to bridge a gap between two distant generations of game design. We are past watching a wagon move as engaging gameplay, and in hindsight, the stops made along the trek make it memorable. The value of interpretation is that both being recontextualized manage to be thrilling without feeling like an exhausted retread. It helps to hammer home an appreciation for where we were at a certain point but does so without being overly nostalgic or sentimental. Calling Death Road to Canada a piece of history is over-selling it, but as a way of understanding digital history without having to resort to people who were "there," it's worthy of the comparisons I've made thus far.
What bumps my score from four stars to four-and-a-half is multiplayer. This game is a genuinely enjoyable time with friends, granted they're in the mood for something this whacky—and you're playing on the mode that lets you start with four people if you're playing with more than one other person. I didn't realize that was an option until recently and having had experience trying modes that aren't the four-player one with four people in the room, it's the best way to ensure that a game of this doesn't get derailed by two people who don't want to wait for someone to show up. When you get everything set up, it's an outrageous experience that few games of this type provide, and it heightens the best of what's on offer.
If modern interpretations of The Oregon Trail were as fun as this, emulated version of the Apple II version would have less novelty.
(Recommended reading that I couldn't fit into the review)
With that in mind, I'm brought to a specific question: what value do modern interpretations have? Remakes vary in quality (1) (2) (3); parodies like You Have Not Died of Dysentery or Super Amazing Wagon Adventure don't amount to more than cute novelties. The answer to that question can be found in attempts to mimic the genre that The Oregon Trail partially inspired. I nominate Death Road to Canada as my game of choice for this answer.
If Death Road to Canada's name isn't a dead giveaway of its overall tone and attitude, its music is. Opening Organ Trail: Director's Cut, you're met with a track that blends adventure with caution. It doesn't invoke horror, but it provokes a feeling of weariness that gives credence that it isn't parodic. Within the first minute, you're given a gun and told to shoot down a wave of oncoming enemies. The process is slow and nerve-wracking, building a silent tension purely through the mechanical process of letting a shot off. The sound of adventure is lost in the music, replaced with an overbearing uncertainty. Opening up Death Road to Canada, you wouldn't be given that interpretation in a heartbeat. The opening song, aptly named after the game, packs a get-up-and-go feeling at odds with the premise of an undead being. The next song on the soundtrack, Zombonita Beach, elaborates on this, providing a pleasant and relaxing soundscape worthy of its title. Throughout your expedition, you'll run into random characters—some are randomized, and others are iconic. These iconic characters run the gamut from parodies of pop culture icons like Elvis and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the absurd like dogs.
All of this might lead you to assume that Death Road to Canada is in the same camp as Super Amazing Wagon Adventure; however, its sillier aspects belie a lot of the tension that lies under the surface. The Oregon Trail may not have been overtly a roguelike, but this is. For the most part, deaths are avoidable. Strategies can be formed, and I've played this enough to have a general sense of which paths will lead to the least harm to my party. Not every decision is obvious; some situations will play out like the lesser of two evils. But taking cues from The Oregon Trail, loss is not always something you can duck. You only have control of four resources: food, which is used as currency, and ammunition for pistols, rifles, and shotguns. You cannot ration the food you currently have and do not get to decide how your medical supplies are used. Your best characters may not always be the most healthy, and when the game inevitably forces you to put them into action, this can be used against you. Cars run out of gas and can break down, leaving you vulnerable until your party occurs across a new one. Most of what Death Road to Canada does is unique to the Oregon Trail formula. But it has enough of a footing in the classic material it's riffing on for it to be amiable in its effort to bridge a gap between two distant generations of game design. We are past watching a wagon move as engaging gameplay, and in hindsight, the stops made along the trek make it memorable. The value of interpretation is that both being recontextualized manage to be thrilling without feeling like an exhausted retread. It helps to hammer home an appreciation for where we were at a certain point but does so without being overly nostalgic or sentimental. Calling Death Road to Canada a piece of history is over-selling it, but as a way of understanding digital history without having to resort to people who were "there," it's worthy of the comparisons I've made thus far.
What bumps my score from four stars to four-and-a-half is multiplayer. This game is a genuinely enjoyable time with friends, granted they're in the mood for something this whacky—and you're playing on the mode that lets you start with four people if you're playing with more than one other person. I didn't realize that was an option until recently and having had experience trying modes that aren't the four-player one with four people in the room, it's the best way to ensure that a game of this doesn't get derailed by two people who don't want to wait for someone to show up. When you get everything set up, it's an outrageous experience that few games of this type provide, and it heightens the best of what's on offer.
If modern interpretations of The Oregon Trail were as fun as this, emulated version of the Apple II version would have less novelty.
(Recommended reading that I couldn't fit into the review)
2016
Deadbolt is one of my favorite indie games from the past decade. If it's not in my top ten, it's in my top twenty, easily. More a stealth game with experimental gimmicks that bring its gunplay to life in a way that's seldom been seen since the sixth console generation than a Hot-like (my affectionate term for any game appropriating aspects from the seminal Hotline Miami and its influences), I'm saddened to say that it's flown under a lot of radars. Unless you're talking in a circle that plays a lot of niche indie games, you probably won't ever hear it come up.
And its Nintendo Switch port is probably part of that.
Let me be clear: this is a PC-ass PC game. It's not overly complex and doesn't do the MMO thing of turning your entire screen into an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers and menus, nor is it that graphically demanding. It requires a level of precision that's just... not there on a controller. The gimmick I spoke of is something that only works on a mouse. Like in most shooters, the further your target is from your gun, the more likely it is that your bullets will miss them. Due to Deadbolt being a 2D sidescroller, there's more to it. The closer your crosshair is to your character, the more accurate they are. There's a strong and satisfying focus on headshots, and a big part of the game is trying to figure out how to align your crosshair from distances to achieve them. Translating this to a controller, you only really have two options: you try to do what Intravenous did, and have the crosshair feel awkwardly independent of the character. Or, you can just implement a clunky lock-on system that makes the precision required either less satisfying or too frustrating. Guess which option they stuck with. Here's a hint: this game only ends up using one analog stick.
It's a shame because most of what I love about this game is still there. There's still this feeling of each level being a contained, small-scale sandbox to keep revisiting. It's still satisfying to find ways to finish levels with only a gun, or a hammer, or headshots. The hidden delight of Deadbolt is this feeling I get every time I play it, where I want to go out of my way to choreograph each attack and move in an almost balletic fashion. It's too stiff to be near even the worst of Platinum Games' repertoire, and you will catch me in a ditch before I start calling every game ever made Dark Souls because they aren't mindless corridor shooters where brute force is the only option. But once you get to the point where you can clear initially tough stages in under a minute, none of that matters, and, lock-on or not, that's something that carries over.
Am I saying you shouldn't play the Switch version? I mean, if you have to, or you want a copy of this on the go. Otherwise, the PC version will do you just fine.
And its Nintendo Switch port is probably part of that.
Let me be clear: this is a PC-ass PC game. It's not overly complex and doesn't do the MMO thing of turning your entire screen into an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers and menus, nor is it that graphically demanding. It requires a level of precision that's just... not there on a controller. The gimmick I spoke of is something that only works on a mouse. Like in most shooters, the further your target is from your gun, the more likely it is that your bullets will miss them. Due to Deadbolt being a 2D sidescroller, there's more to it. The closer your crosshair is to your character, the more accurate they are. There's a strong and satisfying focus on headshots, and a big part of the game is trying to figure out how to align your crosshair from distances to achieve them. Translating this to a controller, you only really have two options: you try to do what Intravenous did, and have the crosshair feel awkwardly independent of the character. Or, you can just implement a clunky lock-on system that makes the precision required either less satisfying or too frustrating. Guess which option they stuck with. Here's a hint: this game only ends up using one analog stick.
It's a shame because most of what I love about this game is still there. There's still this feeling of each level being a contained, small-scale sandbox to keep revisiting. It's still satisfying to find ways to finish levels with only a gun, or a hammer, or headshots. The hidden delight of Deadbolt is this feeling I get every time I play it, where I want to go out of my way to choreograph each attack and move in an almost balletic fashion. It's too stiff to be near even the worst of Platinum Games' repertoire, and you will catch me in a ditch before I start calling every game ever made Dark Souls because they aren't mindless corridor shooters where brute force is the only option. But once you get to the point where you can clear initially tough stages in under a minute, none of that matters, and, lock-on or not, that's something that carries over.
Am I saying you shouldn't play the Switch version? I mean, if you have to, or you want a copy of this on the go. Otherwise, the PC version will do you just fine.
2015
This review is a coda to my other piece on ZombiU. Although reading it may not be necessary, it will help to address anything I leave out here.
Inspired by the movie 28 Days Later, a small team within Valve, formerly contracted to work on a Counter-Strike spin-off with a long and notorious development cycle began to work on a side-project for the company that involved surviving against hordes of the undead. The project originally used Counter-Strike as a base. The final product was anything but.
Left4Dead, along with many of the other zombie games inspired by famous movies, ultimately comes down to a power fantasy draped in darkness and horror motifs. You and your friends are the only ones who can withstand hordes of the undead, special undead that can maul you in about five to six different ways, and gym bros who never let death keep them from lifting. If you struggle, it's something to laugh at with your friends.
ZombiU stands out over a decade later for a few reasons. Among them being how evidently rushed its production was; you don't need an episode of What Happened? to tell you that canceling one launch title for a console that's barely a year off before announcing another one by the same team obviously meant a fair bit of ambition had to be left off the table. But for as janky as it can be, it gets what made 28 Days Later tick. There's a layer of vulnerability present in its game mechanics that you just don't get in Resident Evil, and a lot of that comes down to just how fucking cumbersome it is to use the Wii U gamepad for anything. I've heard a lot of people call it a basic controller gimmick in the past, and I've said as much to appease them. But if you want my honest-to-god opinion (formed through my playtime and that of others I've viewed), I believe it's a great example of video games as an art form. It takes moments from similar movies that instill fear and adds a layer of context to them that makes it that much worse. The Wii U gamepad, as a storytelling device, was pitch-fucking-perfect for horror games, but sadly got overlooked due to its home console's target audience, poor sales, and even worse marketing. ZombiU, for all of its unfortunate downsides, is not something that has been replicated since, and will probably never be replicated again.
Case in point? That time they tried to replicate it.
I'm going to contradict my past self here, but this rerelease absolutely reeks of desperation. Although ZombiU eventually sold a million copies, it was almost immediately cited as a financial disappointment by Ubisoft's (shady) CEO. Any plans for a sequel became a stillborn dream. Hoping to squeeze some money out of it, Ubisoft contacted Straight Right, a studio whose only other non-Wii U game was a port of Need for Speed: Shift 2 for iOS. Prior to Zombi, their only other work consisted of Wii U ports for Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
The end result? For an uncomfortably long time, you literally could not play the PC port without circumventing its DRM, even if you owned a legal copy of the game through Steam. That guide I linked to was originally posted in January of 2021; the actual patch came out ten months later. During that ten-month period, they were still selling the game for at least twenty dollars without any warning on the Steam page.
Let that set the precedent for what I am about to tell you. Zombi is the absolute worst way to experience ZombiU. This is a bottom-of-the-barrel port that makes a few welcome quality-of-life changes, but otherwise absolutely guts what made the original game unique, to begin with. I'll start by saying that, fundamentally, they've done fuck-all in terms of approaching this as a remaster. It does run at higher resolutions, but that's about it. If ZombiU's visuals had aged gracefully, this wouldn't be a complaint. If they aren't touching up the visuals, maybe they're doing it to preserve a classic. Here's the thing: ZombiU isn't a classic. As I said, it has issues. Most, if not all, of the things it gets right have to do with the Gamepad. By awkwardly merging both screens onto one without any of the thought or care that the original game had toward cultivating a tense and uncertain atmosphere, at best, they've turned a potentially terrifying game into a funny one. At worst? You'd be hard-pressed to see a zombie popping up. Rushed to market as it was, ZombiU was careful about divvying up what it showed you, lest one screen become too cluttered to navigate. In a game about situational awareness, everything being on one screen borks the entire experience. Zombi is the theatrical cut of ZombiU, Harrison Ford's narration and all. And boy is it not the experience you'd want to have playing this game.
A good solution would have been to maybe enforce a second screen mechanic, like on your phone or on another device like a laptop. Think of how Fallout 4 has a companion app that lets you dig through your Pip-Boy in real-time. But it would be foolish to assume that such a thing would be properly maintained when this port was so rushed that not even the haphazardly implemented multiplayer mode from the original could be carried over.
I'm still proud that this is the game that gave me enough attention to keep wanting to write these reviews. But all of these years later, it's... not good.
Inspired by the movie 28 Days Later, a small team within Valve, formerly contracted to work on a Counter-Strike spin-off with a long and notorious development cycle began to work on a side-project for the company that involved surviving against hordes of the undead. The project originally used Counter-Strike as a base. The final product was anything but.
Left4Dead, along with many of the other zombie games inspired by famous movies, ultimately comes down to a power fantasy draped in darkness and horror motifs. You and your friends are the only ones who can withstand hordes of the undead, special undead that can maul you in about five to six different ways, and gym bros who never let death keep them from lifting. If you struggle, it's something to laugh at with your friends.
ZombiU stands out over a decade later for a few reasons. Among them being how evidently rushed its production was; you don't need an episode of What Happened? to tell you that canceling one launch title for a console that's barely a year off before announcing another one by the same team obviously meant a fair bit of ambition had to be left off the table. But for as janky as it can be, it gets what made 28 Days Later tick. There's a layer of vulnerability present in its game mechanics that you just don't get in Resident Evil, and a lot of that comes down to just how fucking cumbersome it is to use the Wii U gamepad for anything. I've heard a lot of people call it a basic controller gimmick in the past, and I've said as much to appease them. But if you want my honest-to-god opinion (formed through my playtime and that of others I've viewed), I believe it's a great example of video games as an art form. It takes moments from similar movies that instill fear and adds a layer of context to them that makes it that much worse. The Wii U gamepad, as a storytelling device, was pitch-fucking-perfect for horror games, but sadly got overlooked due to its home console's target audience, poor sales, and even worse marketing. ZombiU, for all of its unfortunate downsides, is not something that has been replicated since, and will probably never be replicated again.
Case in point? That time they tried to replicate it.
I'm going to contradict my past self here, but this rerelease absolutely reeks of desperation. Although ZombiU eventually sold a million copies, it was almost immediately cited as a financial disappointment by Ubisoft's (shady) CEO. Any plans for a sequel became a stillborn dream. Hoping to squeeze some money out of it, Ubisoft contacted Straight Right, a studio whose only other non-Wii U game was a port of Need for Speed: Shift 2 for iOS. Prior to Zombi, their only other work consisted of Wii U ports for Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
The end result? For an uncomfortably long time, you literally could not play the PC port without circumventing its DRM, even if you owned a legal copy of the game through Steam. That guide I linked to was originally posted in January of 2021; the actual patch came out ten months later. During that ten-month period, they were still selling the game for at least twenty dollars without any warning on the Steam page.
Let that set the precedent for what I am about to tell you. Zombi is the absolute worst way to experience ZombiU. This is a bottom-of-the-barrel port that makes a few welcome quality-of-life changes, but otherwise absolutely guts what made the original game unique, to begin with. I'll start by saying that, fundamentally, they've done fuck-all in terms of approaching this as a remaster. It does run at higher resolutions, but that's about it. If ZombiU's visuals had aged gracefully, this wouldn't be a complaint. If they aren't touching up the visuals, maybe they're doing it to preserve a classic. Here's the thing: ZombiU isn't a classic. As I said, it has issues. Most, if not all, of the things it gets right have to do with the Gamepad. By awkwardly merging both screens onto one without any of the thought or care that the original game had toward cultivating a tense and uncertain atmosphere, at best, they've turned a potentially terrifying game into a funny one. At worst? You'd be hard-pressed to see a zombie popping up. Rushed to market as it was, ZombiU was careful about divvying up what it showed you, lest one screen become too cluttered to navigate. In a game about situational awareness, everything being on one screen borks the entire experience. Zombi is the theatrical cut of ZombiU, Harrison Ford's narration and all. And boy is it not the experience you'd want to have playing this game.
A good solution would have been to maybe enforce a second screen mechanic, like on your phone or on another device like a laptop. Think of how Fallout 4 has a companion app that lets you dig through your Pip-Boy in real-time. But it would be foolish to assume that such a thing would be properly maintained when this port was so rushed that not even the haphazardly implemented multiplayer mode from the original could be carried over.
I'm still proud that this is the game that gave me enough attention to keep wanting to write these reviews. But all of these years later, it's... not good.
2015
Rare Replay is a good collection of classic games from a notable developer. I'm not going to sit on my high horse and say that other collections like Atari 50 wouldn't have been released without it, but at the very least, it showed an interest in future releases in its vein.
Why good and not fantastic? Simply put, Rare Replay is a superb piece of preservation for some games—but not all. All of the games are on the disc, even the ones that need to be downloaded. But the ones that need to be downloaded require an online connection to be activated, lest the user pirate a digital copy of a game that they acquired from an official, Microsoft-endorsed physical one.
Right now, this is a fantastic deal. Twenty years from now, I don't know if those activation servers will still be up. Should that happen, the worst emulation in any three of the Midway Arcade Treasures games will have more value than a game you have installed but will never be allowed to play.
The hostile takeover from owning the games you play to owning glorified rentals is going to have severe consequences for preservation in the long haul. In fact, you can already start to see some of those consequences in action. Piracy is not a good solution; it requires a lot of the right pieces to be in place in order to function, and if any of them get scattered, it's entirely possible that the hard work of an entire team over long stretches of time will be lost to time.
Rare Replay will still be mostly playable when, or if, that happens, but it will never be a complete package.
Why good and not fantastic? Simply put, Rare Replay is a superb piece of preservation for some games—but not all. All of the games are on the disc, even the ones that need to be downloaded. But the ones that need to be downloaded require an online connection to be activated, lest the user pirate a digital copy of a game that they acquired from an official, Microsoft-endorsed physical one.
Right now, this is a fantastic deal. Twenty years from now, I don't know if those activation servers will still be up. Should that happen, the worst emulation in any three of the Midway Arcade Treasures games will have more value than a game you have installed but will never be allowed to play.
The hostile takeover from owning the games you play to owning glorified rentals is going to have severe consequences for preservation in the long haul. In fact, you can already start to see some of those consequences in action. Piracy is not a good solution; it requires a lot of the right pieces to be in place in order to function, and if any of them get scattered, it's entirely possible that the hard work of an entire team over long stretches of time will be lost to time.
Rare Replay will still be mostly playable when, or if, that happens, but it will never be a complete package.
2015
About as good of a portrait of my disillusionment with the .io craze as can be was the first time I heard that Agar.io, the cute and simplistic game that teaches you basic biology with its game mechanics, had fucking GAMER CLANS with EPIC INTROS and COOL ASS NAMES/LOGOS, and predictably went, "What the fuck? WHY?" Let me tell you: if you wanted to satirize Gaming culture as a whole, you'd start with that as your logline. It's like if FAZE switched from Call of Duty to LittleBigPlanet.
I always viewed the idea of Agar.io as more artistic in nature. It's kind of like watching a giant white canvas try to give birth to something miraculous; kind of like the opening stage of Spore, but without a definitive win/lose state. The potential for .io games isn't just in simplistic games that you can riff on with friends during lunchtime, it's experimental games that break down the defined rules of what a game is and can be. In a way, I respect Agar.io for trying to be this. But I guess you can only be so experimental before the cute game you play with friends turns into an honest-to-god grudge match of tug-of-war where there are a million strands of rope to pick up on from any angle and vendettas abound. That description seems more befitting for something like a game show than a game about green circles eating magenta ones, but what do I know?
After this, there was snake.io, and wings.io, and a million other games before this until we landed on Zombs Royale using fortnite.io as a legitimate redirect without a hint of irony. Maybe I'm wrong about what art can be, and that's... disappointing.
I always viewed the idea of Agar.io as more artistic in nature. It's kind of like watching a giant white canvas try to give birth to something miraculous; kind of like the opening stage of Spore, but without a definitive win/lose state. The potential for .io games isn't just in simplistic games that you can riff on with friends during lunchtime, it's experimental games that break down the defined rules of what a game is and can be. In a way, I respect Agar.io for trying to be this. But I guess you can only be so experimental before the cute game you play with friends turns into an honest-to-god grudge match of tug-of-war where there are a million strands of rope to pick up on from any angle and vendettas abound. That description seems more befitting for something like a game show than a game about green circles eating magenta ones, but what do I know?
After this, there was snake.io, and wings.io, and a million other games before this until we landed on Zombs Royale using fortnite.io as a legitimate redirect without a hint of irony. Maybe I'm wrong about what art can be, and that's... disappointing.
2007
(For personal reasons, I've decided against marking these types of impressions as reviews in the future. If you want to see more of them, be sure to check out the list I'm compiling of each.)
More fascinating as a byzantine reflection of mid-to-late 2000s internet culture through the proxy of jokes that you had to "be there to get" than as a game itself, which means one of two things: you were either "there," or you're watching someone else suffer through the entire thing because Adobe Flash died years ago. Understood as a game that you watch people get mad at, there really isn't a lot to write home about here. The silly interactive bits and hair-splitting final question do give a bit more leverage over, say, a Kahoot quiz with nonsense questions and esoteric answers that sometimes repeat themselves. But other than that inch, the effect is nearly identical. Perhaps if I were trying to write a serious piece about this, I'd say that it's almost unintentionally successful in producing this looming sense of dread through its repetition and that the structure of failing a bajillion times to finally succeed is similar to, fuck it, I don't know, Dark Souls? But I'm not writing for Kotaku over here. The overall question this all makes me ask is: is it even worth that? And by its own admission, I don't think it is. The Impossible Quiz is more obtuse than punk, but it has the right spirit, and I guess that counts enough to warrant this as not an absolute trainwreck?
But I still wouldn't recommend playing it.
More fascinating as a byzantine reflection of mid-to-late 2000s internet culture through the proxy of jokes that you had to "be there to get" than as a game itself, which means one of two things: you were either "there," or you're watching someone else suffer through the entire thing because Adobe Flash died years ago. Understood as a game that you watch people get mad at, there really isn't a lot to write home about here. The silly interactive bits and hair-splitting final question do give a bit more leverage over, say, a Kahoot quiz with nonsense questions and esoteric answers that sometimes repeat themselves. But other than that inch, the effect is nearly identical. Perhaps if I were trying to write a serious piece about this, I'd say that it's almost unintentionally successful in producing this looming sense of dread through its repetition and that the structure of failing a bajillion times to finally succeed is similar to, fuck it, I don't know, Dark Souls? But I'm not writing for Kotaku over here. The overall question this all makes me ask is: is it even worth that? And by its own admission, I don't think it is. The Impossible Quiz is more obtuse than punk, but it has the right spirit, and I guess that counts enough to warrant this as not an absolute trainwreck?
But I still wouldn't recommend playing it.