I have not yet completed Elden Ring. Anticipating a 30 hour FromSoft title, I poured a lot of time into this one, expending as much energy as possible into learning every nook and cranny of it. What I found is that Elden Ring is a game that stretches itself a long way, and that using as much energy as I had been had left me burnt out 50-60 hours in. My build also wasn't as much fun as I had hoped, and for that reason I resigned to restart in a couple of weeks.

Elden Ring is a beast of a game. It doesn't take too long until you find out the large area you have been exploring for 15-20 hours was just a tiny fraction of the true map, a true world that is inhabited by the strange npcs and insane locations of every Dark Souls game. The nature of this game is very non-linear, ensuring that you can go anywhere, fight anyone at any time and path your way to the Erdtree to become Elden Lord, or perhaps take another future entirely for your destiny. The combat of Elden Ring, although not as tight as Bloodborne or Sekiro, has a significant variety of options - the ways to play in this title are expanded to allow for more people to be able to pick up and try this game without sacrificing much of its extreme hardship, the very core of these games ideals.

I cannot give a full review, but I can list the negatives that have been piling up as I explored the Lands Between.
The game stretches itself too thin - it is incredibly long but sacrifices quality for quantity in some ways, with a lot of repeated bosses and poor side dungeon designs that harken back to the dreadful ways of Dark Souls II. Some of the dungeon bosses are actually unfun in too many ways, which forced me to play in a way I fundamentally refused to play at first, which was the use of summoning spirits. The bosses have not been the most exciting so far either, with a couple of cool fights taking place, but a lot less impactful than those in earlier games from Fromsoft. I feel as though the open nature of the game takes away from the feeling of pushing through hardship, as troublesome foes can for the most part be avoided to fight another day when one is a higher level or holds higher powered gear.

I like Elden Ring a lot - but I also kinda don't like it as much as I want to. It's a hard thing to judge, but until I replay it and finish it I will reserve my negative judgements and give it a score based on the extreme amount of positives that can be found from this game. Very worth playing, just maybe don't expect something as inherently polished as Bloodborne or Sekiro.

Evolution Studio's swan song.
It had a rocky launch but the devs continued to support the game through updates for two years until the studio's closure. Those updates were some of the best post-release content I have seen that rivals No Mans Sky such as an amazing weather system, different physics, rich set of events, vehicles and tracks.
It has a good blend of arcade and simulation racing that it becomes incredibly fun and thrilling with its great sense of speed and lovely car selection.
The whole game is so beautiful that only Gran Turismo can rival its looks. The sound design is also near realistic and the soundtrack is amazing. But despite all these, there lingers some of its flaws from the original release, inconsistent difficulty and ruthless AI that don't care about your presence.

On release, Driveclub is nothing special. Driveclub at its final update to its death is the "Snyder cut" that makes it one of the most underrated racing games. A type of racing game that probably won't be replicated again. (Project Cars 3 tried but couldn't. It even had devs from this game.) Gran Turismo 7 and Forza 8 are coming out but what also we need is another Driveclub like game.

Dark Souls III is all killer, all filler, and I'm dead and stuffed.

Regardless of one's opinion on this or any of the other more recent From Software games, I think it somewhat uncontroversial to say that the somewhat polarized reception of its sequels and successors only serve to highlight the strength of the original Dark Souls. Despite whatever imperfections it may have had, Dark Souls was a game that did so many things right that a lot of people found wildly different reasons to love it. Dark Souls is in so many facets so close to the absolute essential core of what makes video games great that even if another game could get even closer in even one aspect, it would always come at the cost of something else.

Dark Souls III's core gameplay is most similar to the original Dark Souls, but with its animations and character control fine-tuned to perfection; this is the first From Software game where it feels good to simply move around. The game has all of the quality of life improvements that began as band-aid fixes in Dark Souls II. Every level in the game is as detailed, sprawling, and multi-layered as one of Bloodborne's best, yet their arrangement within the world as a whole is as transparent as in the first game. Speaking on gameplay specifically, calling Dark Souls III a "greatest hits" of the series is still selling it short. It's not just borrowing the most memorable situations and set-pieces from previous games, it's picking and choosing elements of the games' systems and structures themselves, and still building upon them yet.

One of my favorite moments in Dark Souls was on my second playthrough, reaching the tower before the Taurus Demon boss fight, and realizing just how much of the world I could see. Picking out landmarks and realizing how (despite being rendered in much lower detail than it would be up close) decidedly congruous the world was, and more importantly how intentional it all felt. The popular phrase when showing a game's scale is to point at something in the distance and say "you can go there", but "there" is often not a place of any import, and the "go"-ing process is rarely anything all that special. One of Dark Souls III's earliest moments is the game giving the player a similar view of virtually every above-ground area of the game, with only a couple of places barely obscured (though one should not assume that the game has nothing to hide, as it in fact has some of the most obtuse secrets in the series). At virtually any point in the game the player can look around, see where they've been, where their goal lies, and think of all the challenges they overcame to get to where they are. While Dark Souls may have had a more interconnected world and the potential for more diverse routes, I genuinely believe that Dark Souls III surpasses it in both level design and in its believability as a space.

While the player's quest is ultimately to defeat all of the Lords of Cinder and link the first flame once more, the bulk of the journey through the aforementioned spaces is spent hunting down one in particular: Aldrich. A web of interconnected side-quests eventually narrows into this encounter, chasing him from the Cathedral of the Deep to Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. A trek that lasts the better part of the entire game ends in Anor Londo, perhaps the most hallowed location from the original game, its cathedral now stripped from its original context, a sort of museum artifact for some invading heretic. The player finds within an avatar of pure consumption, puppeting around one of surprisingly few named returning fan-favorite characters. The message could not be more clear, the anti-climax could perhaps only barely be more intentional, this is an absolutely naked indictment. Dark Souls has to end, because if it continues it will turn to sludge and cannibalize everything you love about it.

The heart of Dark Souls III's narrative is, like Dark Souls II before it, ultimately about the futility of this whole sequel project. Dark Souls II did do the roar, but it also smashed the cake, all the while yelling "Ya like that!? Huh?!"

As Dark Souls III plays its hand it feels more like the game has sat you down to sternly say "listen, we know you like this, and we'll give it to you one more time, but this is it." I personally think that video games' status as commercial entertainment products has been pretty much a disaster for their ability to tell stories, and a side effect of this is that some of the most potent stories they can tell are often bittersweet metanarrative musings on this predicament. Dark Souls III may not be the absolute strongest example of this, but you absolutely could do so, so much worse, and its real triumph is in delivering a compelling version of this story in balance with just being a plain fantastic gameplay experience.

The DLC only makes it more clear, with its principle locations being another world, plagued with rot and its denizens begging for death, and the entire Dark Souls universe compacted like trash. Dark Souls III's world, the "converging lands", was already a kind of new Pangaea, the different continents of the Lords of Cinder merging together into a tangled mess of ravines and canyons. By the end of the Ringed City DLC, everything has compressed together to the point where all that's left is an endless desert of ash. The final goal of these DLC areas, the finale of the entire series, is to help a certain NPC paint a new world. What is this world? It doesn't matter. Giving some clear-cut explanation, like "It's Bloodborne! Or Demon's Souls!" would completely undermine the entire conclusion.

The only thing that matters is that it's new, that it's something else.

One NPC in the Ashes of Ariandel DLC says, specifically, that the player must "make the tales true, and burn this world away."

This is the real curse of a zombie franchise, the lack of any real finality will always give every element of its story a kind of impermanence. Without an absolute true ending, anything in the narrative is up for debate, can be rewritten and ret-conned to suit a new installment. Dark Souls II was itself an admission that its own existence meant that there could be no true tale of the original game, and while it initially tries not to let the cat out of the bag, Dark Souls III's grand anti-climax also invalidates a particular player decision in the original game by canonizing only one particular option.

Dark Souls had to end, absolutely end, so that it could be anything at all.

Pretty sure this game is what cocaine feels like. It just kinda throws shit at you not caring if it actually works or not and I kinda love it for it. When it just lets you fight dudes it’s so much fun, but it gets a little carried away with things you can’t really counter. Anytime I saw the ninjas that throw incendiary shurikens at you I’d just get upset, same with the skull worms. But the combat feels good enough that those annoyances just kinda fade away as soon as you get to start swinging a fucking demon scythe at dudes. Every single boss outside of the final one was kind of a joke, after a certain point I was able to beat them all by just spamming Y with the scythe. The story was basically nothing but I wasn’t expecting different so who really cares tbh. The dismemberment system was actually a really neat addition, seeing fiends throw other fiends’ body parts at me was really cool.

[a shaky foundation.]

burnout is a racing game. it kinda sucks. there is very little else to say about it beyond that and yet here i am about to say many things about it. because this game was saved from the annals of obscure 6th gen mediocrity and miraculously spawned a series of games that are all far superior to it, off the back of one little feature. and because of that it is Historically Significant and thus i felt the need to play it for the first time in the year of our lord 2022.

maybe i'm a bit off the mark calling it a "little feature" because the crashes in this game are basically the only thing that sets it apart from being the most generic racing game of all time, and also there was a pretty decent emphasis put on them. but compared to the later games with their crash modes and far more detailed damage physics, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. and yet, as tame as they feel now, they were the main selling point back in 2001.

honestly they're kind of a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay, further exacerbated by the frequency with which they happen because the crash "detection" is super oversensitive and will often wreck you from a light tap. later burnout games improved this by adding features like aftertouch and crashbreakers, but here they're just kind of annoying as all you can do is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you slightly scraped a car. it all feels very purposeless, something that was bound to age poorly because its only draw was "look how cool the crashes look with our 2001 technology."

aside from the crashes, burnout plays much like an arcade racing game - as in a literal arcade game - translated to consoles. actually my friends were surprised it was not literally an arcade port. you've got a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive - just like sf rush! - and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints. tacked onto this is a means of progression in the championship mode, which consists of four 3-race "grand prix" events and 2 "marathon" events. completing each grand prix unlocks a one-on-one "face off" event which earns you an unlockable car.

and that's pretty much it! the game is very barebones in terms of content. you have 5 generic cars unlocked at the start, and there are 4 unlockable cars - two of which are competitive, whereas the other two are large, heavy, impractical vehicles that are basically just for "fun" only they aren't even good for that since they crash almost as easily as any other car. ultimately the unlocking of cars is kind of irrelevant unless you want more variety, since the muscle car is unlocked from the start and it's arguably tied for the best car in the game.

aside from that, there's a fair amount of tracks, but only 5 unique locations. the game pads itself out using variations that are reversed or at a different time of day, although they also have slightly different layouts so they feel reasonably "different" to drive. the designs of the tracks are honestly pretty solid, although brought down by extremely questionable scripted traffic decisions. the traffic patterns in this game are pre-set, meaning that there will always be traffic in the same place on each track depending on what lap you're on. of course criterion apparently thought it would be funny to frequently do things like putting two cars crossing an intersection at the same time or a passing bus blocking it completely, which are nearly impossible to avoid. realizing that the traffic is scripted and that these things were done intentionally as opposed to just being bad luck made them more infuriating.

of course i also have to talk about the "marathon" tracks, which combine all the courses in a given region (3 american tracks, 2 european tracks) to form one massive track. they're a neat idea! i think it's cool to have all these interconnected courses as a sort of endurance race, taking 12 minutes to complete the euro marathon and 18 minutes for the usa marathon. the problem comes when one crash near the end can force you to do those 12-18 minutes all over again, even if you drove completely perfectly the whole way until then. because at that point the marathon races stop being "a neat idea" and instead become a thoroughly miserable experience.

yes it's time to talk about the rubberbanding. it is extremely blatant. later games would at least offer you the illusion of making a gap, since they constantly remind you how many seconds you are ahead (or behind). this game does no such thing. no matter how fast you are, the opponents will be right behind you. if you crash, you WILL get passed unless you're lucky enough that the ai crashes into your wreckage. but maybe even more egregious is that once they get far enough ahead of you, the rubberband snaps. see, the ai is actually kinda neat in that they also make mistakes and crash into traffic which helps equalize the races. the problem is the traffic only spawns around the player, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? what this means is that once the ai is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.

rubberbanding aside, the actual racing mechanics of this game are occasionally fun but mostly pretty mediocre. the driving physics aren't the worst i've played in a racing game, but they tend to be slippery and imprecise, especially when you're trying to drift, and very numb otherwise. there's not really much else to it. you can't take opponents out like you would in burnout 3, but you can perform a pseudo-takedown by shoving them into traffic, which is about as exciting as this game gets aside from when you're boosting. boosting is probably the only thing that sets this game apart aside from the crashes, and naturally became another one of the series' signature mechanics. and here we find another problem with this game.

your boost meter, filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills WAY too slow, and is very easily taken away by a single crash. also, you can only start to use boost once the meter is full. so you barely get to use boost - i tended to get boost once per lap if i was lucky, and occasionally i'd go a whole race without getting to use it at all because whenever the boost bar was full or nearly full i'd get screwed by traffic and lose it all. which sucks because it's when this game's driving really gets fun. evidently, the later burnout games realized this, and allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay. good job criterion!

there is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. if you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you do a "burnout" which by default restores the boost bar to about half. if you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chaining burnouts together. which is neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions while trying to chase that high, since the fact of the matter is there's very few situations in the game where you can actually use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. but even knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because boost = fun = happy and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all.

from a technical perspective, the game is nothing to write home about. its best aspect is its solid 60 fps framerate, which helps elevate its sense of speed and fluidity, no doubt aiding its novel perception in the eyes of the gaming press circa 2001. this comes in exchange for graphics that are exceedingly average in a post-gran turismo 3 world, alongside a very generic aesthetic style and ui that certainly doesn't shake off the feeling that this is an acclaim-published budget title. to its credit, the environments and different time of day variations look fairly nice.

it's a miracle that boost does feel as fun as it does considering there is almost no visual or audio feedback - you've got the plainest looking meter youve ever seen, no flames from the exhaust, no burning sound effect or really any change besides more motion blur and the music fading to a thumping heartbeat. the engine sounds are very flat-sounding to the point where i don't remember a single time i even noticed them.

speaking of the music, it doesn't really help fill the void left by the sound design as it's some of the most utterly inoffensive and bland "racing game music" i have heard in a game. it wasn't bad or annoying at any point but it also made basically zero impression. there was also a pretty wack attempt at "dynamic" music mixing. i noticed multiple times when the music went silent for a moment before returning in an attempt to loop. additionally each location has a "normal" and a "dramatic" music track, and it abruptly switches to the latter usually after crashing on the second or third lap. the way it switches is really jarring and pulled me out of it when i was actually kinda vibing to the normal music.

i'm grateful to the original burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce imo the greatest racing game ever made. but i'm gonna be 100% real: there is just no reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. not even really a weird quaint early-series charm to it. it's basically a nothing-game. you can complete it in 4 hours and there's very little reason to come back to it afterwards. god bless acclaim for being desperate enough to let this happen and also get a sequel.

4.7/10

Has really interesting writing and characters, but has one of the most tiring gameplay loops I've ever experienced.
> Have to grind for money.
> Go accept a mission
> Have to spend 30 seconds going to my destination in a barren "open world", only other thing to do is to collect stuff for slight upgrades.
> Do my mission.
> If I want to retry I have to accept the mission again and drive back to the same spot

The stages are also pretty gimmicky and unremarkable and while most bosses are cool, they're sandwiched by the most unfun parts of this game.

Death Stranding: Director's Cut marks my second full playthrough of Death Stranding, a game that I invested an unhealthy amount of time into on the PS4 original. My review comes from a perspective of someone who has a mostly clear mental image of the game's map, and is familiar with most of the game's quirks and mechanics.

For people who are new to this, Death Stranding is an uphill climb (both literally and figuratively). The gameplay is a more deliberate "walking simulator", with an emphasis on maintaining your balance, choosing routes with less difficult terrain, or forging onward on rough territory by using tools and structures to your advantage. The other defining trait of Death Stranding is being a "package delivery simulator". You take what people need to them, and bring everyone onto the "chiral network", in an attempt to bring America back together in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event known as the "Death Stranding".

There's a lot of micromanagement involved in controlling Sam. For the record, due to story reasons, Sam doesn't actually die. He can revive an infinite amount of times as a "repatriate". What can die is your cargo. You need to always be using the left/right triggers to shift Sam's weight in real-time. By using your Odradek to scan the terrain ahead, you can plan out the safest route ahead of you, so as to not trip on a bunch of rocks like a dumbass. Sam has a stamina meter that drains as he exerts himself, whether it be due to carrying excessive amounts of cargo, walking on rough terrain, climbing up cliffs, the list goes on. The fetus in a pod attached to your chest isn't just there to be "trademark Kojima weirdness", it's what enables you to see BTs, ghost-like creatures that roam where timefall occurs (think "rain that accelerates aging"). Sneaking around ghosts is probably one of my favorite parts of the whole game. The flitting of your Odradek accelerating as you approach these invisible threats, Sam holding his breath so as to not be heard, the atmosphere in these areas is as haunting as it is daunting. Getting your delivery from point A to B completely intact and hearing the praise of the preppers is a surprisingly gratifying feeling, and your efforts are repaid in turn with access to more tools with the potential to make your life easier. After a certain point (probably ziplines), the game transforms into something completely different. No longer content to walk everywhere, you'll create your own vehicle routes, build structures exactly where you need them, and take on upwards of 10 orders at once, aiming for top marks on all of them. Or maybe that's just me.

The new content in Death Stranding: Director's Cut is mostly extra, in my opinion. The game would be fine without it (like it was originally), but I'm glad it's here. You have a literal racetrack that you can rebuild, new structures to try out that can make your life much easier, and even a firing range to test weapons in, with trials akin to those of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance's VR Missions. The game also hosts a variety of ranked challenges for races, delivery challenges, boss rematches, and the firing range trials. None of this needs to be here, but I find that it helps further build the game's sense of community. There's also a fair amount of quality-of-life changes, such as introducing a few new tools early in the game, to make people's gameplay experience a bit more pleasant as they make their way through the "tutorial area".

Death Stranding is the most fascinating example of asynchronous multiplayer I've ever experienced. Once you bring a facility onto the chiral network, that portion of the map is filled with the online structures of other players. Any structures that you create have a chance of popping up in other players' games as well. Despite the fact that in-game, you're the only one out there trekking across America, you never feel truly alone. There are others doing the exact same thing as you, whether you get to see them or not. You can share copious amounts of "likes" to structures that you really want to praise. I genuinely believe that the joy of feeling like you're helping others is the biggest draw for me in this game, the satisfaction of a virtual job well done. Watching likes go up isn't satisfying because "big number get bigger", it's because it shows "hey, people are using the things you made. it makes your life easier, and theirs". I couldn't care less about the counter itself; sharing likes is simply your method of sharing gratitude with these other Sams that you'll never actually meet. That, and helping out in more explicit ways: delivering cargo that others ended up losing/entrusting, sharing excess tools/materials in the share locker, etc. You can even call out if you're in a boss encounter with a giant BT, and mannequin-esque Sams will rise up from the goop and toss extra supplies at you.

I'm conflicted on Death Stranding's plot. I was originally going to say that "I only began to get truly invested in the latter third of the game's story", but that's not entirely true. I love the individual development that each member of Bridges gets. Most of all, I love the mystery surrounding Sam, BB, and the man he keeps seeing visions of every time he plugs himself in. I think my lack of interest in the overarching plot comes from the disconnect that occurs when I fuck off to deliver an extra 28 packages in between the intended story beats. The other thing that may make or break the story for people is well, Hideo Kojima's role as director. Anyone who follows Hideo Kojima in any capacity knows that he is obsessed with film, and the cast of actors definitely reflects that. Pretty much all of the actors are famous people that Kojima knows and/or loves, and he wanted them to be in his game. Anyone who keeps an ear to the ground in terms of pop culture is bound to recognize several of the faces in this game, to the point of it being actively distracting. Kojima's idea of "symbolism" can also be so blunt that you'd swear it borders on parody at points. But on the other hand, the man knows his cinematography damn well. His primary choice of non-game soundtrack, Low Roar, fits Sam and the atmosphere of the world immaculately. The art direction of Yoji Shinkawa never misses; I love the design of the technology, the BTs, the characters, the world. For everything that you could point and laugh at in this game, I see it as a fully realized vision, flaws and all.

Death Stranding is not a game for everyone, but there's nothing quite like it out there. When it was first announced and Sony gave a big fat blank check to Kojima, saying "make one of your critically acclaimed masterpieces for us", I'm sure they were completely horrified when they were shown gameplay, and Kojima was like "you walk and deliver packages". It sounds boring on paper, but in practice, apparently it's all I've ever wanted, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Un pequeño comentario respecto al port de Metal Gear Solid 2 que estuvo disponible por la tienda virtual GOG.

Relanzados de manera digital en el año 2020 mediante GOG, Metal Gear Solid 1 y 2 se basan en las versiones expandidas de sus respectivos juegos siendo la Integral y Substance.
No veo que haya mucho que recalcar con MGS1, y como aparentemente Konami no mueve un dedo por estos juegos (amenos que se sientan intimidados al respecto y los quiten) entonces es solo básicamente el port original de PC de hace años sin cambios visuales significativos aunque claro, con el detalle de que ahora tiene compatibilidad con hardware actual y también un menú para las opciones gráficas y de control del juego. (aunque cabe resaltar de que la configuración por defecto con control no es muy buena, así que quizás terminaras queriendo cambiarlo tu mismo.) eso y que ademas en ambos juegos las cinemáticas vienen a una un poco menor resolución.

MGS2S también toma como base el port original del 2003 de su juego para nuevo hardware sin cambios tan significativos, no como por ejemplo las versiones para Xbox 360 y PS3 que presumían de tener un mejor rendimiento sin los tirones de frames que llegaba a tener el juego original en PS2, en cambio, a pesar de esto de alguna manera no incluye las features del port de MGS1, desde un menú integrado para las opciones gráficas o uno para el mapeado del control o el mal funcionamiento de la vibración del mando, falta de texturas y sombras etc, lo cual puede resultar exarcerbante en una primera toma de contacto al no tener una idea clara que como jugar con este esquema de control sumamente problemático. (aunque se agradece que el juego venga disponible en múltiples idiomas entre ellos, español.)
Así que si estas interesa en jugar este clásico de esta forma asegúrate de parchearlo instalando V's Fix ya que ofrece una manera mas versátil y con mas opciones de configurar el juego que tener que abrir el dx cfg por defecto, desde la resolución y demás opciones gráficas con la posibilidad de ponerlo en alta resolución como configurar el esquema de controles del juego ya sea con layouts hechos por la comunidad para jugar el juego con teclado como la posibilidad de personalizar el tuyo propio e incluso la integración de mods para el juego, por ejemplo uno que te permitía jugarlo y moverte enteramente en primera persona.

Enlaces:
https://github.com/VFansss/mgs2-v-s-fix/releases/tag/v1.8 (Descargar parche.)

https://github.com/VFansss/mgs2-v-s-fix/wiki/Controllers-&-Actions (Perfiles para configuración en teclado)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzKQOMBs1zk&t=9s&ab_channel=Snoopii (Demostración: Metal Gear Solid 2 en primera persona.)

Honestamente opino que esta es la forma mas cómoda y accesible de disfrutar este clásico pero sigue significando un tedio tener que parchearlo para obtener una experiencia decente solo a causa de las consecuencias de la inoperancia de ciertas entidades.

you can tell the dev was mad that people didnt like his dumb story in the first one, and only wanted more gameplay. this games whole shtick is "more superhot". unfortunately what "more" means is around a half dozen levels that you kill infinitely spawning enemies in and then repeat the exact same levels in a different order and spawning somewhere else a million times.
hacks are cool, and i like the idea behind cores but im not gonna choose a cool but ultimately pointless ability over more lives, are you insane? i didnt get far enough to meet the dreaded dogs ive heard so much about, but judging from what ive heard, all they do is make the game more annoying and not fun or really challenging.
new weapon types are really neat, sniper is a blast and i love knives/shuriken.
ultimately the vr game i played at a friends house was the best one, because it actually made me move around and there wasnt any story (from what i played). according to my friend i "got way too into it" which is code for "you did a somersault and punched my brother in the shin"

Sleeping Dogs is actually True Crime: Hong Kong for most people who didn’t know. Does anyone care? No, because the True Crime series had two previous games that were mediocre to poor and there was little hope for this game. Square Enix picked up the project, seeing the potential in the game, and released it as Sleeping Dogs because they did not buy the name from the previous company. What we have here is probably the best GTA clone since Saints Row and that’s saying a lot. There have been many GTA clones but very few are any good or do anything different. Sleeping Dogs features a fluid martial arts system, a huge open world, gripping story and characters, and a few side missions.


The story is actually very gripping and entertaining. You play as an ex-triad member turned cop named Wei Shen. You are working undercover to bring down the Son On Yee triad gang and bring in their Chairman. Your rival gang is the 18K which is relentlessly making hits on your turf. This isn’t just your typical gang war story. You actually get to really like the characters and feel for all of them in different ways. While you were working for the triad you can do cop missions on the side as well as busting drug deals throughout the city. This story is pretty epic and has a satisfying ending; I never once felt bored or detached from the story.

If that isn’t enough then the combat system should help bring you in. The combat system is simple, but deep and requires some skill to stay alive. You can counter when enemies turn red, but you must use the attack button and hold the button in combination to bring them down. The animations are fluid and you can really feel the punches. This isn’t just some wailing and kicking combat system that feels half-baked and broken. Some enemies may have weapons which you can take and use, but they are pretty rare because they do so much damage. If you are doing really well you will go into an adrenaline type state and start to heal while enemies may flee from you. The other half of this combat is the gunplay which is really smooth and well designed. The cover system works great because as you leave cover you can go into slow motion and shoot out enemies who might be an immediate threat. This also goes for jumping from ledges. Once you actually start completing missions you will earn Cop, Triad, and Face experience which allows you to upgrade to better moves. Each one can be upgraded to level 10, but I reached this level way before I finished the game so I felt all that experience, later on, was wasted. There just aren’t enough upgrades in the game.


Another main feature of the game is a parkour system similar to Assassin’s Creed. Chase sequences play out often, but instead of climbing up walls you can climb ledges and jump gaps. The trick here is to hit the sprint button just before each obstacle so you smoothly go over them. Keep fumbling over everything and you will lose your target. This is something that has never really been incorporated into a GTA clone, and Sleeping Dogs nails it perfectly.

Of course, you can travel around the huge open city of Hong Kong, but there isn’t much to do. There are the drug-busting side missions, favors, races, and random events, as well as finding hidden boxes for money and clothes. That’s about it. I wound up doing all the favors and most drug-busting side missions but didn’t care for the others. There are some hacking mini-games thrown in here as well as lock picking, bug planting, and other mini-games which are fun. There’s a lot of detail put into the gameplay of Sleeping Dogs, but I just wish I could do more in this huge city.

After you finish the main story there’s no reason to really go back unless you want to collect all the boxes (which can all be shown on your map thankfully), but after you finish this you will probably have had enough. The driving works great, there are lots of different cars, taking taxis is convenient, and there are other things you will be familiar with in this kind of genre, but Sleeping Dogs masters the story, characters, and combat system very well. My biggest complaint is only the lack of side mission variety and the large about of bugs and glitches in the PC version.


The PC versions do give us some nice DirectX 11 visuals with a free high-resolution texture pack for people who have 1GB video cards or better. There is a huge difference with the game maxed out over the consoles. The anti-aliasing and FXAA make the game look smooth and flawless, plus the ambient occlusion adds a little extra that consoles can’t do. The PC version is by far the superior version, and most of the bugs have been ironed out by now since there have been 5 patches released thus far, but a large number of crashes and bugs were unacceptable at launch.

Sleeping Dogs is a beautiful game both in execution and spirit. The game really captures the Chinese culture, atmosphere, and triad feel of Hong Kong. This is a must buy for any fan of the genre, and if you have the high-end PC, make sure to pick that version up.

Persona 4 Golden is my favorite game of all time.

2016. I was a depressed, angry, suicidal teenager who had just graduated the year before and had spent his post high school life wandering aimlessly through life and pushing away everyone he had ever cared about.

I had not felt joy in years and the hobby that had previously brought me comfort now only bored me. A friend of mine convinced me to get a Vita and a copy of this game so I gave it a shot. I was not ready for what I was about to experience.

Persona 4 Golden is a genuine work of art. It is a truly beautiful game... and it saved my life.

-Story-
Persona 4 Golden is a very long game, but it uses that length to it's advantage by giving the story plenty of time to breathe. You spend a lot of time taking in the sights, exploring the town and talking to its residents. Even more time however is spent getting closer to and learning about your party members and a few select special individuals. You truly learn a lot about these people, and this town and you really get attached. The story itself I will not spoil, but it is a murder mystery with a super natural spin and all the twists and turns are very interesting and keep you engaged from start to finish and for an 80+ hour game that is a major victory.

-Gameplay-
The SMT series as a whole is constantly revamping the JRPG turn based formula and Persona 4 is no exception. The game is split into two halves. The "real world" where you live your life as a normal high school student, getting closer to your friends working jobs, going to holiday gatherings, and living in this new town and the "shadow world" where you fight the existential horrors of mankind given form. The balance between the two keeps things from getting stale and the actual battles themselves are made ever more engaging with the unique spin on turn based combat that incentivize using the proper moves on the proper enemies to steal turns away. Play your cards right (pun intended) and you can finish fights without even giving your opponent a single turn.

-Music-
The Persona series is full of amazing music and this game is no exception. Don't even waste your time reading my words talking about it, just go listen to the soundtrack right now even if you don't play the game! Persona music is just simply THAT good!

I love this game so much. It really is one of the most special experiences I have ever had the joy of playing through and I will NEVER forget my time in Inaba. I love the entire series, but this game will always have a special place in my heart as the game that literally saved my life.

Thank you for listening.