Zakdj
57 reviews liked by Zakdj
This review contains spoilers
i'm a big fan of metal gear, and i've played and enjoyed all the experiences i've had in the series so far. peace walker was kind of a small rock that found its way into my socks, since i had played the phantom pain before (a terrible mistake, yes), and the prejudice of it being a portable game also got to me, leaving the game as a low priority target until i felt like it
i have tried to play this game in the past via the ps3 port, and it was already kind of a disappointment then. i remember feeling that the game engine was ported 1:1 with some adaptations for a real controller to balance it out, but it just didn't work well. i've written on my review for the hd edition how i think it'd be a better experience if i played it on an actual portable console, so here we are
playing this on the vita made me glad that i didn't just have a psp, assigning the right stick to the camera was a godsend.
the game suffers from the same issues the hd port has (not something worth noting but hey), i was fighting against the controls more than i was fighting against the enemies of the game. bosses are a big pain in the ass, and good luck doing them non-lethally without previously knowing that 1. all bosses have a set number of regular troops before they run out and 2. you need to deal a certain amount of damage to the tank/helicopter/whatever and fulfill the previous requirement to make the captain pop-out and allow you to shoot him with the tranq gun. you know the rule of three (writing)? that helicopter fight in the main story needs the helicopter deploying reinforcements 4 times before you can aim for the helicopter itself (keep in mind it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to stun/sleep and fulton a single squad while a helicopter shoots rockets at you). because giving the player the illusion that a fight is nearly over is not quite there, you gotta break their expectations! make them think that there's no end!
mother base's progression forces replayability that just isn't there. you sure can repeat the same extracting side op dozens of times to fill up mother base, but if you'll have any sort of fun while doing so is another story
it's hard for me to judge the unlock/upgrade system if i have the phantom pain doing the same system but better lodged into my brain, i bet it was okay at the time? in a sense it makes peace walker a good game to bring with you on a deserted island, i guess
outer ops did not give me any signs that it was contributing to anything in my base besides killing/injuring my soldiers and boosting the morale of the rest
zeke made me discover another shoddy aspect of the game: collecting ai parts
it just didn't ring a bell to me anywhere that i was supposed to not hit the other parts of an ai weapon to get the main zeke parts, since those and the ai boards are kind of given the same hints, but that could just be me being bad at comprehending the game's script while i deal with the annoyance of having to fight a boss in this game
story-wise... *deep breaths*
the temptation to say that it felt "rushed" is strong, but i feel like maybe that isn't the case, i haven't looked into the story of the game's development but it's one case where it did successfully hook me until really close to the ending, where utter disappointment resided
the final non-boss mission (the one where you're fighting the helicopter and a bunch of dudes in nicaragua) felt to me as a naive attempt at what's supposed to be the game's "epic moment", with the right for heavens divide and everything, but it felt more forced than anything else, it certainly wasn't anything special at all, i just wanted it to end
surely the ending will make up for it right....?
that's already past the point where the whole main focus of the game is explained, but let me go back a little to say about the premise. having the boss made into an ai was okay? ish? back when i started i also wanted to know what the heck was going on
i'll ignore hot coldman's name to say that he was an okay villain, bit goofy but everything about him kind of looped back into being an okay depiction of a mad antagonist
strangelove was my favorite character in the entire peace walker cast, but i'm not really sure if she was worth making the story look like a poor fan continuation of 3. i was dumbfounded with the last cutscene thinking "god damn! this is really stupid!" and i didn't believe it ended like that, clutching up to callbacks and references like it was milking the previous game. i'd expand on this but it's just the general feel on how it was directed
but god, how i wish it ended like that. the true ending was the last straw: the only way i could possibly conceivably interpret it would be thinking it was kojima shitposting, and i'd be fine with that, there are some ridiculous jokes in the past entries and all, but they're all non-canon. big shoutout to the "date with paz" mission where it's implied snake has sex with a girl who was deemed underage until she's revealed to be a spy whos 10 years older than she originally was way after that mission. but anyway, making that shitpost of an ending canon is what really made me dislike this game. it's incredibly poor comparing to every other entry in the series (excl. portable ops, haven't played) and you're telling me metal gear solid five continues from this? i would've been better off with just the short summary that ground zeroes provides. at least there'd be no koi no yokushiryoku playing on the scene depicting the final boss, what a laugh that was, jeez
Edit: i felt this review had too much negativity, so i'll list out some things i liked about the game that i didn't mention
- the twist where amanda and her crew storm the base in nicaragua saving snake
- the overall message that the game tried to convey with the whole shiz about deterrence and peace walker sans the stuff related to the boss
- the 2001: a space odyssey references and mentions
- the cutscene artwork, ashley wood is a really good artist
- the references to che guevara, they were fun and it didn't seem unreasonable to jam those in - seeing snake bow before him is slightly humorous
...but those alone weren't worth my 30 hours invested. it's a game i'd watch a playthrough of instead of playing if i had the chance to turn back time and tell myself in the past that it wasn't gonna be worth it
i have tried to play this game in the past via the ps3 port, and it was already kind of a disappointment then. i remember feeling that the game engine was ported 1:1 with some adaptations for a real controller to balance it out, but it just didn't work well. i've written on my review for the hd edition how i think it'd be a better experience if i played it on an actual portable console, so here we are
playing this on the vita made me glad that i didn't just have a psp, assigning the right stick to the camera was a godsend.
the game suffers from the same issues the hd port has (not something worth noting but hey), i was fighting against the controls more than i was fighting against the enemies of the game. bosses are a big pain in the ass, and good luck doing them non-lethally without previously knowing that 1. all bosses have a set number of regular troops before they run out and 2. you need to deal a certain amount of damage to the tank/helicopter/whatever and fulfill the previous requirement to make the captain pop-out and allow you to shoot him with the tranq gun. you know the rule of three (writing)? that helicopter fight in the main story needs the helicopter deploying reinforcements 4 times before you can aim for the helicopter itself (keep in mind it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to stun/sleep and fulton a single squad while a helicopter shoots rockets at you). because giving the player the illusion that a fight is nearly over is not quite there, you gotta break their expectations! make them think that there's no end!
mother base's progression forces replayability that just isn't there. you sure can repeat the same extracting side op dozens of times to fill up mother base, but if you'll have any sort of fun while doing so is another story
it's hard for me to judge the unlock/upgrade system if i have the phantom pain doing the same system but better lodged into my brain, i bet it was okay at the time? in a sense it makes peace walker a good game to bring with you on a deserted island, i guess
outer ops did not give me any signs that it was contributing to anything in my base besides killing/injuring my soldiers and boosting the morale of the rest
zeke made me discover another shoddy aspect of the game: collecting ai parts
it just didn't ring a bell to me anywhere that i was supposed to not hit the other parts of an ai weapon to get the main zeke parts, since those and the ai boards are kind of given the same hints, but that could just be me being bad at comprehending the game's script while i deal with the annoyance of having to fight a boss in this game
story-wise... *deep breaths*
the temptation to say that it felt "rushed" is strong, but i feel like maybe that isn't the case, i haven't looked into the story of the game's development but it's one case where it did successfully hook me until really close to the ending, where utter disappointment resided
the final non-boss mission (the one where you're fighting the helicopter and a bunch of dudes in nicaragua) felt to me as a naive attempt at what's supposed to be the game's "epic moment", with the right for heavens divide and everything, but it felt more forced than anything else, it certainly wasn't anything special at all, i just wanted it to end
surely the ending will make up for it right....?
that's already past the point where the whole main focus of the game is explained, but let me go back a little to say about the premise. having the boss made into an ai was okay? ish? back when i started i also wanted to know what the heck was going on
i'll ignore hot coldman's name to say that he was an okay villain, bit goofy but everything about him kind of looped back into being an okay depiction of a mad antagonist
strangelove was my favorite character in the entire peace walker cast, but i'm not really sure if she was worth making the story look like a poor fan continuation of 3. i was dumbfounded with the last cutscene thinking "god damn! this is really stupid!" and i didn't believe it ended like that, clutching up to callbacks and references like it was milking the previous game. i'd expand on this but it's just the general feel on how it was directed
but god, how i wish it ended like that. the true ending was the last straw: the only way i could possibly conceivably interpret it would be thinking it was kojima shitposting, and i'd be fine with that, there are some ridiculous jokes in the past entries and all, but they're all non-canon. big shoutout to the "date with paz" mission where it's implied snake has sex with a girl who was deemed underage until she's revealed to be a spy whos 10 years older than she originally was way after that mission. but anyway, making that shitpost of an ending canon is what really made me dislike this game. it's incredibly poor comparing to every other entry in the series (excl. portable ops, haven't played) and you're telling me metal gear solid five continues from this? i would've been better off with just the short summary that ground zeroes provides. at least there'd be no koi no yokushiryoku playing on the scene depicting the final boss, what a laugh that was, jeez
Edit: i felt this review had too much negativity, so i'll list out some things i liked about the game that i didn't mention
- the twist where amanda and her crew storm the base in nicaragua saving snake
- the overall message that the game tried to convey with the whole shiz about deterrence and peace walker sans the stuff related to the boss
- the 2001: a space odyssey references and mentions
- the cutscene artwork, ashley wood is a really good artist
- the references to che guevara, they were fun and it didn't seem unreasonable to jam those in - seeing snake bow before him is slightly humorous
...but those alone weren't worth my 30 hours invested. it's a game i'd watch a playthrough of instead of playing if i had the chance to turn back time and tell myself in the past that it wasn't gonna be worth it
There is very, very, VERY little to enjoy about Peace Walker. The stealth mechanics are so over-simplified that they almost become a joke. Combat is much more useful in getting around grunt enemies, to the point where there is almost no point in stealth. HOWEVER, if you don't stealthily take out enemies to build your base, you will fall so far behind that you will need to grind to an absurd degree. Hell, you NEED to grind the shit out of the boss fights just to beat the game, and that can take forever if you don't know what you're doing, which you probably don't unless you're using a walkthrough. Every mission is the same: hit enemies with tranq gun, fulton them to mother base, if you get caught whip out your machine gun. Every boss is the same: hit the AI pod with missiles, when you run out of missiles use your machine gun, when you run out of bullets call in a supply drop. For longer fights like the titular Peace Walker, this process can take upwards of 30 minutes. It's no wonder this game has such an obvious crossover with Monster Hunter-- the bosses are basically Monster Hunter with guns, except in the absolute worst way possible. The only thing keeping me from giving this game the lowest of the lowest possible ratings is the story, which occasionally manages to be impressive when it's not shoving pointless one-off characters with no personality in your face. Maybe you should have focused a bit more time into the relationship between Strangelove and The Boss instead of introducing Chico and Cecile, who offer basically nothing of substance. Fuck this game.
Highly recommend for how in depth the settings are. There’s even a switch that lets me cause everyone who has ever opposed me to die of a heart attack.
okay, but can we have the 17 steps anime adaptation already?
Silver Jiken
1999
i dont speak japanese
I'm very much of two minds about this latest murder-mystery adventure game from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka; there's a lot I actively disliked and I had a pretty low opinion of the game for a good amount of my playthrough, but when things finally kicked into high gear in the last couple chapters, I basically found myself totally won over and was suddenly having a great time with it.
On the one hand, some of the character writing can be pretty grating (Desuhiko's whole wannabe playboy shtick and Shinigami constantly saying things like "boom-kill" and "mysteriful" and repeatedly referring to a teenage girl as "flatty" are the worst offenders), the pacing really drags in the middle to the point where I was pretty bored for a lot of chapters 2 and 3, and the game runs pretty terribly on Switch, with frequent and lengthy loading screens.
On the other hand though, the presentation is top notch, Masafumi Takada killed it with the soundtrack as always, and like I said before, the last couple chapters were so good that they completely turned around my opinion of the game. The final reveals were actually really interesting (and way more fucked up than I was expecting), and there's one tidbit in particular that's such a clever play on audience expectations (especially if you're familiar with Danganronpa) that it genuinely had me cackling when it was revealed.
Basically what I'm saying is, I do recommend this game, but only if you have the patience and tolerance to slog through many uneven hours to get to the best parts. I found the experience extremely worthwhile in the end, but your mileage may vary.
On the one hand, some of the character writing can be pretty grating (Desuhiko's whole wannabe playboy shtick and Shinigami constantly saying things like "boom-kill" and "mysteriful" and repeatedly referring to a teenage girl as "flatty" are the worst offenders), the pacing really drags in the middle to the point where I was pretty bored for a lot of chapters 2 and 3, and the game runs pretty terribly on Switch, with frequent and lengthy loading screens.
On the other hand though, the presentation is top notch, Masafumi Takada killed it with the soundtrack as always, and like I said before, the last couple chapters were so good that they completely turned around my opinion of the game. The final reveals were actually really interesting (and way more fucked up than I was expecting), and there's one tidbit in particular that's such a clever play on audience expectations (especially if you're familiar with Danganronpa) that it genuinely had me cackling when it was revealed.
Basically what I'm saying is, I do recommend this game, but only if you have the patience and tolerance to slog through many uneven hours to get to the best parts. I found the experience extremely worthwhile in the end, but your mileage may vary.
Emotions must be discarded to reach a perfect solution through a perfect deduction.
Flappy Bird
2013
guys don't delete flappy bird from your iPhone you can't get it back
If Valorant represents the hero shooter at one extreme, Gigantic sits at the other: it is primarily a MOBA with shooter elements, more in a line with a traditional League of Legends or DoTA 2 experience than anything like Overwatch, Paladins or Apex Legends. Because of the massive burst damage and CC potential of the melee units, you get that tight negotation of space so emblematic of traditional MOBAs: players engaging in passive stare downs, waiting for the slightest perceptible opening to pounce. A high stakes game of chicken where there is just a hairs breadth between "overextending" into certain death or confirming a kill. In contrast, the ranged characters play and feel like your more traditional hero shooter fare, but the power that would come with so much map control has been heavily nerfed to compensate. Primary fire damage is low, time to kill is obscenely high, and everything revolves around disengagement and cooldowns. There's no creeps to farm, but the movement and mechanics are undoubtedly MOBA.
But these concepts don't translate as well as they probably should. I noted it in this game's Korean cousin, Storm Strikers, as well; this game's readability is complete trash. The time to kill being so high, you just get a crowd of characters wailing on eachother, spamming cooldowns with very little thought. Bright colors flash all over the screen, giant AOES of no discernible origin cover the ground, and giant white letters pop up to say "FROZEN. ARMOR BROKEN. SLOWED. POISONED. VOID GRIPPED." It's just graphical vomit, the kind people will tell you "Don't worry bro, it all makes sense after 1000 hours bro, I swear bro." Be that as it may, the problem with these games is player retention, and it doesn't have the benefit of the older MOBAs long-running communities to fall back on. New players are not going to know what is killing them, how fast and why. It might be novel while everyone plays with the new toy; but as the playerbase wanes and the skill gap widens this is going to be a problem. Just ask Storm Strikers with its 10 daily players.
As a long time player of these titles, I know good concepts when I see them, and Gigantic has some really strong points in its favor. The game has great pacing in the current "Rush" mode and I feel like it rewards both game sense and high mechanical skill equitably. I can see why this game had a diehard community, and it's satisfying to see these players get their game back in the era of GaaS. Many of my favorite MOBAs and hero shooters are gone for good, casualties of a mix of bad marketing and corporate greed. I never even got to play Gigantic before it got hit with the end of service announcement. Now that I've finally played it, I can see both why its loved and why it was canned.
Games like this need to focus on player retention, especially if they are paid titles. So the developers undoubtedly have their work cut out for them. Framerate optimization, server stability and UI fixes stand out as the most important pain points; but the new user onboarding has to also be drastically improved. Then it is a matter of making sure those players stay onboard- and the answer is never a battle pass or balance patches. What we need to see out of Gigantic is alternate ways to play the game- as these sorts of options are appeal to casual userbases. Different gamemodes are an important part of the hero shooter ecosystem because they allow for healthier player seperation. Let the tryhards dominate modes with more competitive depth, but give the normal players a low-stakes gamemode where they can just relax and turn their brains off.
As it is, Gigantic feels doomed to fail, but all hope is not lost if the developers have been paying as close attention to the industry as the players have.
But these concepts don't translate as well as they probably should. I noted it in this game's Korean cousin, Storm Strikers, as well; this game's readability is complete trash. The time to kill being so high, you just get a crowd of characters wailing on eachother, spamming cooldowns with very little thought. Bright colors flash all over the screen, giant AOES of no discernible origin cover the ground, and giant white letters pop up to say "FROZEN. ARMOR BROKEN. SLOWED. POISONED. VOID GRIPPED." It's just graphical vomit, the kind people will tell you "Don't worry bro, it all makes sense after 1000 hours bro, I swear bro." Be that as it may, the problem with these games is player retention, and it doesn't have the benefit of the older MOBAs long-running communities to fall back on. New players are not going to know what is killing them, how fast and why. It might be novel while everyone plays with the new toy; but as the playerbase wanes and the skill gap widens this is going to be a problem. Just ask Storm Strikers with its 10 daily players.
As a long time player of these titles, I know good concepts when I see them, and Gigantic has some really strong points in its favor. The game has great pacing in the current "Rush" mode and I feel like it rewards both game sense and high mechanical skill equitably. I can see why this game had a diehard community, and it's satisfying to see these players get their game back in the era of GaaS. Many of my favorite MOBAs and hero shooters are gone for good, casualties of a mix of bad marketing and corporate greed. I never even got to play Gigantic before it got hit with the end of service announcement. Now that I've finally played it, I can see both why its loved and why it was canned.
Games like this need to focus on player retention, especially if they are paid titles. So the developers undoubtedly have their work cut out for them. Framerate optimization, server stability and UI fixes stand out as the most important pain points; but the new user onboarding has to also be drastically improved. Then it is a matter of making sure those players stay onboard- and the answer is never a battle pass or balance patches. What we need to see out of Gigantic is alternate ways to play the game- as these sorts of options are appeal to casual userbases. Different gamemodes are an important part of the hero shooter ecosystem because they allow for healthier player seperation. Let the tryhards dominate modes with more competitive depth, but give the normal players a low-stakes gamemode where they can just relax and turn their brains off.
As it is, Gigantic feels doomed to fail, but all hope is not lost if the developers have been paying as close attention to the industry as the players have.
"What they could not unlearn was hidden away in darkness - obfuscated, then lost. They did not want to see their story end." -The prisoner
After beating the game I was really excited to experience more of the game with the DLC however the more I delved into the DLC the more I realized it strays somewhat from what made the original game special while excelling at using its own format to tell its story.
I do very much want to start with the positives as I genuinely find this to be a fantastic DLC. the setup towards it and getting there is so well done and when you finally get to the main area of the DLC they made it in such a way that you become so excited to see all the areas you could potentially explore.
The brand new gimmicks in this DLC while very different from what is expected and controversial I think are all so excellent and make for some of the best puzzles in the game. They go a long way to make the atmosphere feel so unnerving and unwelcoming which I believe goes really well with the message that the DLC wants to send.
And just like the base game this DLC has things that genuinely boggle me how they programmed these things in. They integrate the music with some thing so well it really does an incredible job of immersing you into its story telling.
Now unfortunately we reach to the bad and most of it come from while it branched out to do its own brand new ideas it neglects what made the original game so special and I believe that attributes to 3 major pillars: wonder, freedom, and drive to learn.
After beating the game I was really excited to experience more of the game with the DLC however the more I delved into the DLC the more I realized it strays somewhat from what made the original game special while excelling at using its own format to tell its story.
I do very much want to start with the positives as I genuinely find this to be a fantastic DLC. the setup towards it and getting there is so well done and when you finally get to the main area of the DLC they made it in such a way that you become so excited to see all the areas you could potentially explore.
The brand new gimmicks in this DLC while very different from what is expected and controversial I think are all so excellent and make for some of the best puzzles in the game. They go a long way to make the atmosphere feel so unnerving and unwelcoming which I believe goes really well with the message that the DLC wants to send.
And just like the base game this DLC has things that genuinely boggle me how they programmed these things in. They integrate the music with some thing so well it really does an incredible job of immersing you into its story telling.
Now unfortunately we reach to the bad and most of it come from while it branched out to do its own brand new ideas it neglects what made the original game so special and I believe that attributes to 3 major pillars: wonder, freedom, and drive to learn.
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