How could anyone think this is the Metropolis people want to adventure through? A city Superman has abandoned that appeals only in an opening cutscene before revealing itself to be a lifeless hub of non-interaction. Thinking back on it a few days from now I’ll probably only recall endless rooftops with endlessly respawning enemies and giant guns. Go here, shoot stuff, go somewhere else, shoot some more stuff. Do that and nothing else over and over and over again until your eyeballs start bleeding.

Some nitwits at Warner Bros. seriously thought this was what people were craving not only out of a game set in the “City of the Future” but a sequel to the Arkham series. “According to these charts gamers played something called ‘Destiny’ so they MUST want something else that poorly imitates it!” They’ve all decided ahead of time that all players want is the same shit shoveled out to them because of the 𝒶𝓁𝑔𝑜𝓇𝒾𝓉𝒽𝓂, the 𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓀𝑒𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑒𝒶𝓇𝒸𝒽, the ⓓⓐⓣⓐ. And then when it’s rejected as it has been time and time again it’s taken out on the employees being forced to partake in its creation instead of the people who actually make the decisions.

Kudos to Rocksteady for actually taking risks despite being shackled by the games as a service model. Actually killing off the Justice League is a bold move that isn’t unique to the source material but is radical in the world where crybabies go on the internet and complain because their favorite character isn’t kept alive for every single entry of a franchise (see: The Last of Us: Part II). But it’s no wonder the risk stood out and made news because it’s the only risk. It’s buried under junk that isn’t risky at all in the slightest. Or maybe it was now that the actual sales numbers have started coming out. Whoops.

I’m sure if Rocksteady is allowed another chance they’ll either return to their roots and do another thing in the vein of Arkham—which is fine by me and I’ll be there—or they’ll move on. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe the games industry needs to move out from under the ever-increasing demands of out of touch corporate snakes. Because what’s going on right now ain’t it, chief.

AEW came out of the gate swinging with a massive amount of support from professional wrestling fans. The company’s aim to be a competitor/an alternative to WWE has been viewed as a victory for the business. So naturally they set their sights on the lucrative world of video games. After several delays Fight Forever finally arrived in June and unfortunately the delays were foreshadowing for a disappointing experience. WWE 2K23 released stuffed with content in a mostly successful effort to cover its technical shortcomings. Fight Forever doesn’t do nearly enough to distract from its much worse limitations.

Simplified controls and a story mode that can branch off in several directions attempt to harken back to the glory days of games like WWF No Mercy or SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain. Being able to switch camera angles and activate pyro at any point during a wrestler’s entrance is pretty neat, even if the entrances themselves are puzzlingly short clips that only last a few seconds. The variety of match types with additions such as the ridiculous Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch (based on the very awful one between Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega) is surprising. On the surface it all seems like a wrestling game that’s trying to be just that: a straightforward, old-fashioned pro wrestling video game.

Yet it all has a very “one step forward, two steps back” feel to it. The aforementioned story mode, called Road to Elite, changes based on what the player does, but it’s very quickly obvious how limited and poorly written it is (some of the cutscenes are agonizingly cringy). It’s short, which in turn means the replay value is low because of how little it actually offers. The creation modes are very sparse, offering less customization than games from the 90s did. The roster is a headscratcher, lacking several AEW stars who would seem like shoo-ins but featuring the likes of Cody Rhodes who hadn’t been in AEW for over a year at the time of the game’s release. The plethora of mini games are bad across the board, not to mention a confusing thing for Yuke’s to have spent time and resources on.

Perhaps some or all of that could be excused or at least taken in stride if the gameplay wasn’t smothered by unresponsiveness. The controls are sluggish and the collision detection is poor. Hits or grapples often simply don’t connect, which makes playing the game on a harder difficulty a nightmare. Also, a thing that isn’t unique to this game (it has plagued WWE games for a little while now) but still annoyed me is the amount of rope breaks registered to the point where it seems as if you have to pin or submit an opponent in the dead center of the ring. If a body part isn’t under or touching a rope it shouldn’t count as a rope break!!!

It’s a shame to see AEW’s first swing at a major wrestling game fall short because the good ideas are frustratingly noticeable. I believe they can and will improve upon what Fight Forever attempts with future iterations. But when stacked up against their major rival in the year of Luigi 2023, AEW has lost the gaming battle to WWE. Tony Khan would probably say they aren’t competing, but this is my review dammit.

———

Note: I haven’t played the Stadium Stampede mode and probably won’t get a chance to anytime soon.

I’m not a Call of Duty hater. I’ve played most if not all of the games and enjoyed many of the ones I’ve played. Warzone has, without a doubt, become the worst of them all. It’s plagued from top to bottom with technical issues, from constant hard freezes to guns that bug out randomly to textures that don’t ever load properly in every. single. match I play. But what makes Warzone truly abhorrent now is the amount of obvious cheating that has permeated the game and transported it beyond being a lost cause to the nether regions of the unsalvageable. It’s the worst case of blatant hacking I’ve ever seen in the history of gaming. Activision/Infinity Ward actively lie about it too with claims of bans that very clearly aren’t happening and slapping bullshit smokescreens like the new “Ricochet” anti-cheat system into the game that don’t do jack (it’s called Ricochet because when you report a cheater the report ricochets off the dev that receives it and into the trash). It’s an anger-inducing absolute failure of a multiplayer experience that would have to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up to fix its problems. But as the player base falls off in large swaths monthly because they’re tired of all the fuckery I’m sure nerfing the accuracy on some SMG no one uses will bring them back. I’m happily done with and deleting Warzone now as my nephews and I prepare to start Dying Light 2. Good riddance.

It shows that games do have new ideas to explore even within the confines of a familiar platforming adventure. I was surprised by how much new life kept being pumped into the combat system as the game progressed. And it’s gorgeous even on PS4, which is what I played it on…and wherein I believe most of my experience with it suffered. I’m sure the weird difficulty spikes that are tangled up with some lackluster boss battles that feel tacked on are present in any version of it, but the technical issues present in the PS4 port are almost impossible to ignore. The framerate sometimes can barely handle all that’s going on onscreen and the game froze completely a few times while I was playing it. It’s really a problem during an especially intense fight when the lag causes an attack to not land properly or Kena to fail to defend herself when I know I nailed the required inputs. A boss battle towards the end had me lowering the difficulty not because it was tough (it was), but because the game was stuttering so badly every time it wasn’t worth the hassle of overcoming the challenge. I wish I could play it on PS5 just to see it running as intended, but unfortunately PS5s are still unavailable to all but the most adept at clicking links in the blink of an eye. So what I’m stuck with is a tarnished beauty. I’m disappointed.

This is one of the best of the long line of games that are obviously inspired by Resident Evil 4. Some say it isn’t as “scary” as its predecessor because of its more action-oriented approach (the common gripe also aimed at RE 4), but I love the kind of intensity this approach to survival horror provides. It’s a sort of “Jason Voorhees walking” vs. “Jason Voorhees running” scenario and I argue that Jason running is far more terrifying (probably why I’m not a fan of most of the Friday the 13th movies). It features such a great balance of various inexplicable grotesqueries. It’s a clinic of pacing. The plot is serviceable enough without being too over the top or too vague. The game nearly fires on all cylinders and offers something cool and new around every corner.

Another year, another Far Cry. Far Cry 5 is my least favorite entry in the series, following up my second least favorite numbered entry, Far Cry 4. So I wasn’t expecting much from this. Yet I had fun playing it because of the cool new systems in place and I found the plot somewhat compelling (mostly the great performance from Giancarlo Esposito). The world kept pulling me back in too even as I started feeling burned out by the length and repetition of the side activities. I still haven’t played a better Far Cry than 3, but this is a step in the right direction for the franchise going forward. I’m including the writing in that assessment, even if it does sacrifice real representation in its attempt at moral complexity.