31 reviews liked by arvan59


raaaa yaaay i love observation duty/exit8-likes raaa
love how anomalies interact back here, overall good fun

I love that this game came with Strider 1 on a second disc, and every single copy of the game was misprinted so that Strider 2 was on the Strider 1 disc and vice versa.

Just feels absolutely awful to play compared to the original version. Like you’re both weighed down and have too much momentum at the same time (but it somehow doesn’t balance each other out). The original version has its own issues too, but it’s still better than this.

This review contains spoilers

I can’t believe I realized only like 5/6ths of the way through that I was feeding Rusty CHOCOLATE DONUTS. He LOVES them, and it was at Rusty Jr.‘s suggestion. I don’t know what to make of this. Couldn’t it have been like strawberry or something instead? Why dog-killing chocolate? Is Rusty immune to dog-killing foods? Is he the chosen one? Or is it gonna be like Phantom Thread but like with chocolate donuts. I mean there is apparently an alien invasion that happens after the events of the game, so who knows? This game rules.

More like Lies of Plagiarism.

This is actually the worst Soulslike game I've ever played. Its existence is an airtight argument for the abolishment of the Soulslike genre.

This game shamelessly copies the aesthetic of Bloodborne. It cherry-picks mechanics from From Software's contemporary releases, haphazardly combining them without attempting to ensure they actually gel.
It's been quite some time since I've played a game with mechanics that actively work against each other the way they do in this. Health regains after taking damage works in Bloodborne because you get rewarded for pressing your attack and maintaining aggression. It adds a sense of accelerated pace to the Souls formula.

It doesn't work when you tie the same mechanics to a block. This is compounded by the fact that blocks knock the player backward.

The parry is among the worst I've ever seen in a game. It's not a frame one parry, and the window is a super tight eight frames--that also locks you into a long animation--so it feels like it has a half-second input delay. This means you have to parry before the attacks hit. It's not difficult, but it just feels unsatisfying. Moreover, the parry barely builds stagger meter, but failing to execute it results in half of your health (or more) being taken, so it's mostly taking a considerable risk for little reward.

The dodge, like many of the character's latent abilities, is underpowered because someone decided that carving out abilities that players should just have and throwing them into a skill tree was a good idea. It's a pathetic way to try and force some layer of progression. Still, it is an active detriment to the experience.

Couple these issues with the fact that bosses have far too much health and very few windows for attack, and these encounters mostly boil down to tests of patience.
It's not even particularly challenging. It just feels fucking awful play. If you're gonna emulate something you closely, you better not miss, and Lies of P fucking whiffs in an almost impressive fashion.

It's clear that the developers did not actually understand the games they were ripping off. Instead, they took unharmonious mechanics, tried to slap them together, and made slight adjustments so it didn't look like they straight-up copied From's homework.

But like the kid in school that tried to cheat off of you, they fucking failed.

Robocop: Rogue City starts tonally similar to the first movie with Robocop himself feeling like a monstrosity as enemies cower in fear and only charge at you when taking high doses of PCP. Robocop isn’t a badass, but the husk of a man denied peace in death that has been turned into a machine for corporate use. It's effective and shows that the developers at least understand the source material on some level.

However, that quickly falls to the wayside as the game becomes pure power fantasy. Usually, this is where I would complain about this being a failure akin to making an unironically "cool" Starship Troopers game and that any attempt at a sincere exploration of Robocop as a tragic character is undone by gleefully exploding enemy heads fruits, leaving coats of thick, raspberry jam all the walls.

But it's hard to care when it's just so much... fun... Robocop feels fantastic to play as you pick-up fucking motorcycles and throw them into crowds of enemies or shoot mercenaries in the dick because the rest of their body is covered in armour.

It's also the closest we've gotten to a game structured like The Darkness in forever. Levels are broken up by small, dense hub areas that provide many side quests of overall sound quality (we love saving kittens from burning buildings and solving political murders).

Decision making highlights an exciting concept even though it isn’t complex nor does it necessarily shape the world. Robocop has three prime derivatives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. Interestingly, Rogue City posits that sometimes the first two are in direct conflict with the latter. For example, the game has an obfuscated binary morality system that involves public trust vs. upholding the law. You will make decisions that may bend or even break the law to protect a citizen, but this will increase the public's trust in Robocop, suggesting that often, the law is not justice.

But it has its.. trouble. While it is very obviously anti-corporate and pro-citizen–one of the components of the plot is that OCP is essentially scamming homes out from underneath Detroiters so they can create a new city on top of the ruins of Detroit–; its message is muddied by its dedication to not showing the police as an inherently antagonistic force under its socioeconomic system and instead as a force for good within the community with rotten apples and corruption from corporate influence. Politically, the developers are so close, yet so far.

Nevertheless, Rogue City is pretty fucking great and feels video gamey in all of the right ways. It proves that we desperately need more focused, small-scale experiences that aren’t designed to capture a 90+ score on Metacritic.

After coming away from Resident Evil (2002) with the firm belief that the ink ribbon save economy is a genius-tier game mechanic, I couldn't resist starting my first playthrough of Resident Evil 2 (2019) as Claire in hardcore mode. Having done so, I can say with confidence: I was absolutely correct. The mechanical soul of these games is in the risk/reward calculus of limited resources and carefully planned runs. When you're running on the long end of a save and you choose to push a little further, that's the truest terror. When you first set foot in a new room with unknown horrors and everything to lose, that's when the zombies start to feel real.

Even aside from the impeccable mechanics, the vibe of this game is excellent. I lost track of how many times I legitimately jumped at a scare, or started shouting "OH NO OH FUCK" when a zombie came at me unexpectedly. Mr. X is a particularly inspired design element, destroying what scant comfort you can take in routes you thought were safe and violating the sanctity of the central atrium (the first time this happened I fully screamed). Claire is charming and Leon's stupidity plays perfectly into Ada's no-nonsense demeanor.

When I first started playing, a friend told me this was her favorite of all the RE games and remakes. I was skeptical: Resident Evil (2002) has a degree of mechanical purity that seemed impossible to match. But now I think I kind of agree: Hardcore mode brings the same mechanical genius (although part of me misses the compositional artistry of fixed camera and tank controls), while the rest of the game delivers excitement and frights well beyond what I got from the first game. This one is really magnificent.

Look, it’s rough around the edges, yes, but it’s just so much fun. I got to date HANGMAN ADAM PAGE IN THIS GAME. (Yes he did leave me for Thunder Rosa, but we’ll ignore that part). I really love how they handled Road to the Elite, it’s not too long to beat (which is refreshing compared to how long and dragged out WWE My Rise is) and it has some slice of life/management elements and it’s just so much fun! Learning about all the different food staples at the different restaurants, going on a date with Hangman Adam Page at said restaurant, getting booped by Kris Statlander, ya know? Is it buggy and unpolished? Yes. But did it make me somehow fall in love with AEW even more? Also yes.

Tchia

2023

This review contains spoilers

Tchia cut off a dude’s hand, jumped out of a plane, and gave him the finger on the way down. IM NOT JOKING. This game is wild.

Really liked most of the levels, but that last one that was all nooks and crannies and details on one robot that was very hard to traverse was annoying.