burnoutenjoyer
273 Reviews liked by burnoutenjoyer
The game that set the bar for what a licensed superhero game could be. The dedication to create such an atmospheric and faithful rendition of the Batman universe will forever mark this game for greatness. The innovative combat system this game pioneered would also become a template for many games that followed, and it remains an engaging and challenging system to use and learn to master. Add in the predator missions that play into the fantasy of the Batman with a number of tools to use to beat each challenge, and you arrive at a gameplay framework that delivers on every aspect of what it feels like to play as the Batman.
Where the game falters though is the boss battles against iconic Batman villains. When they aren't boring or unengaging, they are reskinning a normal enemy, which is downright tragic. The game also struggles to maintain momentum going into the final act, and that lackluster conclusion is an unfortunate black mark on an otherwise great game.
Arkham Asylum reinvented what it means to adapt comic book superheroes to video games, and even when it has since been surpassed, it is important to remember just how much this game got right the first time around. It still remains a fun an engaging experience, and one that any existing or prospective fan of the source material should definitely play.
Where the game falters though is the boss battles against iconic Batman villains. When they aren't boring or unengaging, they are reskinning a normal enemy, which is downright tragic. The game also struggles to maintain momentum going into the final act, and that lackluster conclusion is an unfortunate black mark on an otherwise great game.
Arkham Asylum reinvented what it means to adapt comic book superheroes to video games, and even when it has since been surpassed, it is important to remember just how much this game got right the first time around. It still remains a fun an engaging experience, and one that any existing or prospective fan of the source material should definitely play.
This review contains spoilers
Cyberpunk 2077 / Phantom Liberty Review
There are three things that cyberpunk 2077 and its expansion excel at and those are its major characters, its art direction and its setpieces, everything else works well enough but isn’t outstanding. I’m happy I got around to playing this now in its patched and re-released state, because if it was released in this state when it was actually supposed to, I think a lot of people would not only be more fair on it, it would probably be regarded as one of the greatest first person rpgs ever, a reputation it is steadily earning but it still sours people with how its launch went down and how it has still got a lot of rough edges. But I have to hand it to cd projekt, they got extremely ambitious and wanted to create something special, something different, something people would remember for a long time - and in my mind they did just that even with its rough edges, largely unimaginative gameplay and mild inconsistencies.
I’ll get the negatives out the way because I want to focus on what I loved about cyberpunk but frankly, I do not love cyberpunk’s open world all that much; its too small to feel worth exploring and didn’t motivate me to sink my teeth into it but it is simultaneously big enough that you’re forced to spend a long time just trying to get around when its simply not that fun and pads the game out somewhat. Up until you can get the dash and a double jump or charge jump, walking and running around is slow and boring especially since there’s not much to see or do besides admire the aesthetic, shop and interact with a bar or club once and never do it again because there’s no point. Driving is fine but just feels kind of tacked on, most vehicles feel too bulky and slow or too slippery and finicky to control. Shooting / combat is the main focus of cyberpunk’s core gameplay and definitely the most fleshed out and interesting part of it since there’s a lot of variety and a nice range of weapons and builds to play with, any of which can be used at any time with no restrictions or necessary optimisation. You could probably do this whole game melee and with only a few exceptions, you’d likely have no trouble, you can hard focus on a particular weapon / style as I did with the shotgun, or you can get a taste for everything and not suffer for it, its well executed. With this being said though, enemy ai is often plain dumb and the difficulty is never particularly challenging or balanced on normal since its largely a breeze + when it IS slightly more difficult, it feels kind of artificial because it means they just throw tons more enemies at you or have enemies zip around and just delay their inevitable death, same could be said for enemy hacks which just feel like a mild annoyance rather than a real challenging gameplay obstacle. There’s some noticeable dissonance in cyberpunk between the constant fear and stakes being held over V’s head / the trauma that V undergoes in cutscenes and the cakewalk shooting sequences which consist of a gallery of meat puppets that you can mow down with little more than a gust of wind. There’s times that style of gameplay works though, like making me seem like a badass in johnny’s sequences and during particularly driven story moments, but its often such a breeze that I feel like going stealthy or playing a hacker when you’re up against such pissant enemies would bore me to tears. I can think of two fights in this entire game where it was particularly difficult and one is because there’s infinitely spawning enemies and one is the final boss so, stands to reason I guess? There are times where the gameplay gets interesting and tries something new which I appreciate, such as scanning through braindances to find clues for your jobs, which I think work quite well and add to the immersion of a technologically advanced universe - but it could have been done more often and with more variety in honesty.
Which brings me to the story, the highlight and driving force behind everything in this game’s world, something cd prokect clearly put a ton of time and resources into, even hiring two a-list celebrities (keanu & idris) to work with and help promote the title and its expansion. All that work does pay off because when we’re talking the main story beats, the game at its finest moments, yeah its pretty fuckin’ preem alright. Not very gonk at all. Without going off on a complete tangent, what I will say is Jackie Welles is in this game for what, 2 hours? I love him so much, he is my choom for life, an absolute king and his death hit me like a truck and actually made me shed a tear. Not only that, while knowing my V was going to be a street punk with dreams of becoming a boss in the crime business, I never expected my ideal path would be so strongly swayed by Jackie’s irreplaceable friendship and shared dream of the ‘major leagues’ we were both reaching for. I never forgot my roots and wanted to fulfil our dream which I ended up getting, bittersweet as it felt without him by side. But just as important is Johnny, your ride or die partner, love him or hate him Johnny is not going anywhere and as a result, the game teeters on an edge narratively, wherein if Johnny does not work, the game does not work, he is purely that important. I had my doubts, I like Keanu as much as the next person but I never understood the worship of the man, but then after seeing him in stuff like the matrix, john wick and point break, I have a feeling this might be the best performance of his career and shows how he has honed his talent. Sure Johnny is just an asshole stuck on you like a leech, a professional cynic bitter and angry at the world, but Keanu and the writers make him so much more, they make you understand him. Johnny is a killer but so are you, he fucks people over and inevitably, so do you, V will have something in common with him whether you like it or not. He will question you, berate you, stare you down during ordinary encounters and judge your every move because he’s sharing the same body but has little control over the choices you make. But then, when you get down to it, I don’t think he even knows what choices he’d make in the same position, part of him just enjoys the chaos and he practically says so himself. While he’s a cliche in part as the anti-establishment rockerboy, Johnny actually breaks a lot of stereotypes and preconceptions as the story humanises him and forces you to see from his perspective. Aspects of his come off as childish and immature, but then he comes out with lines that make me question myself if im doing the right thing or being played and he demonstrates a far deeper understanding of the world and how it works than I once thought. Just seeing Johnny appear mid-conversation or mid-cutscene, knowing nobody else can see him, is so good, there’s something special about knowing you’re not alone at any time, even at your lowest, in your most humiliating defeats, Johnny is there with you and most of all, he will come around to genuinely want to help you. In the beginning he wants you gone but can’t get rid of you, so he too comes to understand you and it forms a bond, an unusual and one of a kind bond that nobody else could ever truly understand, its awesome stuff.
The relationship between V and Johnny is so good infact, that it feels almost like so many eggs in one basket that the other baskets become nearly empty, side quests and side characters like the fixers you’ll run into and folk you do gigs for won’t scratch the same itch, they are often hollow quest givers and faces, which is a shame. But there are exceptions, and like all of cyberpunk, at their best, they are outstanding. Judy, Rogue, Reed, Songbird and of course my man Jackie all won me over completely, showing emotional richness, flaw and vulnerability that build character and form deep connections and personal relationships. The strongest of V’s relationships form with some of the lowest or most hard up of society because V is going through the same shit and I think that’s great. In its main story beats there is tons of payoff, political intrigue and moral choices to be made and almost all of them hit. But they feel somewhat hindered by a relatively lifeless free-roam world, overly familiar looting & checklist formulas and an overload of random side jobs, gigs and errands that bloat the game out while you wait for the good stuff and rarely feel worth the reward. In my opinion, cyberpunk didn’t actually need to be open world, in a way, I think i’d like it even more if it was just a linear action rpg with a hub saferoom or something from which you can start missions, but what we got is far from bad, I just think you could save on all that time and double down your dev team on the already great story missions.
As for the art design and aesthetic, its all executed beatifully and many of the visual and action-packed setpieces it will throw at you are works of art. From konpeki plaza to the arasaka parade and the many gorgeous sequences in phantom liberty, there are some hugely impressive sequences that play out throughout the game. Phantom Liberty in particular involves a few moments of covert espionage and deception that rival some of the best movie scenes in just how intense and beautifully, intentionally crafted they feel. While the cyberpunk aesthetic and its key facets play an important role in gameplay from scanning your environment to hacking on the move to literally implanting cyberware into your body, the actual relative story & in-world implications of the advanced tech and dystopian ramifications of corporate greed are surprisingly few and far between. This is a story helped along by its timeline & setting, but not one that is hugely driven by it and while it can appear complex what with its own in world jargon / slang and detailed environments jam-packed with repressive imagery and corpo ad spaces, its honestly not that conceptually deep overall. The characters, their motivations and your own player choices are the driving force behind cyberpunk narratively, not so much the world you find yourself in, much as the game tries to drive the nail in with dialogue, journal entries and text logs that kind of hamfist the notion of ‘this place is a shithole and we’re all bad people’. Like alright, I get it!
Cyberpunk is actually very depressing huh! Where’s the hover skateboards mate? (kidding).
All in all I really enjoyed my time in night city and would come back for more, which is mainly because of the characters and the playstyles over wanting to spend much more time in the world, nice as it can be to soak in the incredible architecture & environments. This is a beautifully designed experience artistically and its dlc expands on it even more with phantom liberty offering some of the deepest and most intense final moments and personal decisions i’ve seen in a game to date, featuring a complicated moral dilemma and a gripping tale of loyalty and doing the right thing. There is one thing reed said in this dlc that stuck with me, mentioning Welles and the choice I made and it really made me think - infact, a lot of lines in this game make me stop and think and that’s rare because most of the time I just want to blow shit up. Infact, sometimes I want to be done with blowing shit up so that I can get back to the story, because its that fucking good!!
Cheers for reading this one was a bit of a ramble lol.
There are three things that cyberpunk 2077 and its expansion excel at and those are its major characters, its art direction and its setpieces, everything else works well enough but isn’t outstanding. I’m happy I got around to playing this now in its patched and re-released state, because if it was released in this state when it was actually supposed to, I think a lot of people would not only be more fair on it, it would probably be regarded as one of the greatest first person rpgs ever, a reputation it is steadily earning but it still sours people with how its launch went down and how it has still got a lot of rough edges. But I have to hand it to cd projekt, they got extremely ambitious and wanted to create something special, something different, something people would remember for a long time - and in my mind they did just that even with its rough edges, largely unimaginative gameplay and mild inconsistencies.
I’ll get the negatives out the way because I want to focus on what I loved about cyberpunk but frankly, I do not love cyberpunk’s open world all that much; its too small to feel worth exploring and didn’t motivate me to sink my teeth into it but it is simultaneously big enough that you’re forced to spend a long time just trying to get around when its simply not that fun and pads the game out somewhat. Up until you can get the dash and a double jump or charge jump, walking and running around is slow and boring especially since there’s not much to see or do besides admire the aesthetic, shop and interact with a bar or club once and never do it again because there’s no point. Driving is fine but just feels kind of tacked on, most vehicles feel too bulky and slow or too slippery and finicky to control. Shooting / combat is the main focus of cyberpunk’s core gameplay and definitely the most fleshed out and interesting part of it since there’s a lot of variety and a nice range of weapons and builds to play with, any of which can be used at any time with no restrictions or necessary optimisation. You could probably do this whole game melee and with only a few exceptions, you’d likely have no trouble, you can hard focus on a particular weapon / style as I did with the shotgun, or you can get a taste for everything and not suffer for it, its well executed. With this being said though, enemy ai is often plain dumb and the difficulty is never particularly challenging or balanced on normal since its largely a breeze + when it IS slightly more difficult, it feels kind of artificial because it means they just throw tons more enemies at you or have enemies zip around and just delay their inevitable death, same could be said for enemy hacks which just feel like a mild annoyance rather than a real challenging gameplay obstacle. There’s some noticeable dissonance in cyberpunk between the constant fear and stakes being held over V’s head / the trauma that V undergoes in cutscenes and the cakewalk shooting sequences which consist of a gallery of meat puppets that you can mow down with little more than a gust of wind. There’s times that style of gameplay works though, like making me seem like a badass in johnny’s sequences and during particularly driven story moments, but its often such a breeze that I feel like going stealthy or playing a hacker when you’re up against such pissant enemies would bore me to tears. I can think of two fights in this entire game where it was particularly difficult and one is because there’s infinitely spawning enemies and one is the final boss so, stands to reason I guess? There are times where the gameplay gets interesting and tries something new which I appreciate, such as scanning through braindances to find clues for your jobs, which I think work quite well and add to the immersion of a technologically advanced universe - but it could have been done more often and with more variety in honesty.
Which brings me to the story, the highlight and driving force behind everything in this game’s world, something cd prokect clearly put a ton of time and resources into, even hiring two a-list celebrities (keanu & idris) to work with and help promote the title and its expansion. All that work does pay off because when we’re talking the main story beats, the game at its finest moments, yeah its pretty fuckin’ preem alright. Not very gonk at all. Without going off on a complete tangent, what I will say is Jackie Welles is in this game for what, 2 hours? I love him so much, he is my choom for life, an absolute king and his death hit me like a truck and actually made me shed a tear. Not only that, while knowing my V was going to be a street punk with dreams of becoming a boss in the crime business, I never expected my ideal path would be so strongly swayed by Jackie’s irreplaceable friendship and shared dream of the ‘major leagues’ we were both reaching for. I never forgot my roots and wanted to fulfil our dream which I ended up getting, bittersweet as it felt without him by side. But just as important is Johnny, your ride or die partner, love him or hate him Johnny is not going anywhere and as a result, the game teeters on an edge narratively, wherein if Johnny does not work, the game does not work, he is purely that important. I had my doubts, I like Keanu as much as the next person but I never understood the worship of the man, but then after seeing him in stuff like the matrix, john wick and point break, I have a feeling this might be the best performance of his career and shows how he has honed his talent. Sure Johnny is just an asshole stuck on you like a leech, a professional cynic bitter and angry at the world, but Keanu and the writers make him so much more, they make you understand him. Johnny is a killer but so are you, he fucks people over and inevitably, so do you, V will have something in common with him whether you like it or not. He will question you, berate you, stare you down during ordinary encounters and judge your every move because he’s sharing the same body but has little control over the choices you make. But then, when you get down to it, I don’t think he even knows what choices he’d make in the same position, part of him just enjoys the chaos and he practically says so himself. While he’s a cliche in part as the anti-establishment rockerboy, Johnny actually breaks a lot of stereotypes and preconceptions as the story humanises him and forces you to see from his perspective. Aspects of his come off as childish and immature, but then he comes out with lines that make me question myself if im doing the right thing or being played and he demonstrates a far deeper understanding of the world and how it works than I once thought. Just seeing Johnny appear mid-conversation or mid-cutscene, knowing nobody else can see him, is so good, there’s something special about knowing you’re not alone at any time, even at your lowest, in your most humiliating defeats, Johnny is there with you and most of all, he will come around to genuinely want to help you. In the beginning he wants you gone but can’t get rid of you, so he too comes to understand you and it forms a bond, an unusual and one of a kind bond that nobody else could ever truly understand, its awesome stuff.
The relationship between V and Johnny is so good infact, that it feels almost like so many eggs in one basket that the other baskets become nearly empty, side quests and side characters like the fixers you’ll run into and folk you do gigs for won’t scratch the same itch, they are often hollow quest givers and faces, which is a shame. But there are exceptions, and like all of cyberpunk, at their best, they are outstanding. Judy, Rogue, Reed, Songbird and of course my man Jackie all won me over completely, showing emotional richness, flaw and vulnerability that build character and form deep connections and personal relationships. The strongest of V’s relationships form with some of the lowest or most hard up of society because V is going through the same shit and I think that’s great. In its main story beats there is tons of payoff, political intrigue and moral choices to be made and almost all of them hit. But they feel somewhat hindered by a relatively lifeless free-roam world, overly familiar looting & checklist formulas and an overload of random side jobs, gigs and errands that bloat the game out while you wait for the good stuff and rarely feel worth the reward. In my opinion, cyberpunk didn’t actually need to be open world, in a way, I think i’d like it even more if it was just a linear action rpg with a hub saferoom or something from which you can start missions, but what we got is far from bad, I just think you could save on all that time and double down your dev team on the already great story missions.
As for the art design and aesthetic, its all executed beatifully and many of the visual and action-packed setpieces it will throw at you are works of art. From konpeki plaza to the arasaka parade and the many gorgeous sequences in phantom liberty, there are some hugely impressive sequences that play out throughout the game. Phantom Liberty in particular involves a few moments of covert espionage and deception that rival some of the best movie scenes in just how intense and beautifully, intentionally crafted they feel. While the cyberpunk aesthetic and its key facets play an important role in gameplay from scanning your environment to hacking on the move to literally implanting cyberware into your body, the actual relative story & in-world implications of the advanced tech and dystopian ramifications of corporate greed are surprisingly few and far between. This is a story helped along by its timeline & setting, but not one that is hugely driven by it and while it can appear complex what with its own in world jargon / slang and detailed environments jam-packed with repressive imagery and corpo ad spaces, its honestly not that conceptually deep overall. The characters, their motivations and your own player choices are the driving force behind cyberpunk narratively, not so much the world you find yourself in, much as the game tries to drive the nail in with dialogue, journal entries and text logs that kind of hamfist the notion of ‘this place is a shithole and we’re all bad people’. Like alright, I get it!
Cyberpunk is actually very depressing huh! Where’s the hover skateboards mate? (kidding).
All in all I really enjoyed my time in night city and would come back for more, which is mainly because of the characters and the playstyles over wanting to spend much more time in the world, nice as it can be to soak in the incredible architecture & environments. This is a beautifully designed experience artistically and its dlc expands on it even more with phantom liberty offering some of the deepest and most intense final moments and personal decisions i’ve seen in a game to date, featuring a complicated moral dilemma and a gripping tale of loyalty and doing the right thing. There is one thing reed said in this dlc that stuck with me, mentioning Welles and the choice I made and it really made me think - infact, a lot of lines in this game make me stop and think and that’s rare because most of the time I just want to blow shit up. Infact, sometimes I want to be done with blowing shit up so that I can get back to the story, because its that fucking good!!
Cheers for reading this one was a bit of a ramble lol.
Control
2019
I found Control to be kind of mid. And I don't know if I should blame the game or myself for it. Remedy's universe seems to be really interesting, but the game itself is less so. When I was in about 3/4 of the game a friend tells me I was supposed to read the stuff I found along the way. I guess that's what explained many things and what makes the game actually interesting, but how was I supposed to know? I get that they didn't want to obstruct the gameplay for people who where there just for the shooting, but if reading and caring about the story is supposed to be such an important part, I don't see why they didn't put any effort in making it clear to the player that it is important. I do like games where I need to put from my part to learn about it and stuff, but I need to know what the game expects of me. If reading really was important, I would have made it an essential part to read to be able to progress in the game, and it almost seems like a coward move to just let you skip everithing to go shooting and be able to progress normally. The least I would ask for is for there to be a deliberate message saying something like "To get the best experience from control, you need to explore the world, put attention on the details and read the entries of your journal", or maybe it would also help if when you grab a readable it opens it automatically instead of needing to akwardly go to the menus and search for the one that you just grabbed (it is very easy to have the "pulse x button to open entry" to go before you manage to press anything.
If you play the game like purely a shooter, like I did since I didn't know what to expect, it is an alright game. Below average probably. The shooting is pretty much as basic as it gets. Just walking and shooting with some extra powers that are not really that creative nor fun to use. Upgrades that do not really add much to the experience, they actually even make it worse since you need to keep looking at numbers that do not really change your playstyle in any meaningful way, and do mini side-challenges that are not at all fun to do. Hitsgan humanoid enemies, noting really interesting either in that department.
The graphics are cool, the first two hours. After that, it becomes really, really repetitive and that repetition not only affects the visual style, but the level design too, since with how similar the areas look and how complex the layout can get, it is sometimes really difficult to tell where you need to go. The visuals are also really inconsistent in the cinematics department. Sometimes you have these very cool and almost mystic cinematics with a strong color direction, and then you have fallout-type dialogues with other characters, which really contrast with the previous mentioned cinematics.
So, what is the point of the game? After completing it I can't really tell. In the end (kind of spoilers) there's a section which I think that tries to criticize the the Laboral environment? Maybe that is kind of the point of the game, but I don't really know since the game was so worried that I would get bored after 1 minute of not shooting enemies. I think that if this game was a more directed experience that focuses on the themes on the story and makes you able to understand (at least a bit) of the universe instead of mindless boring shooting it would be a much better game. And as I said in the start, is it my problem or the game's problem that I didn't put enough attention at the universe to be able to understand it? I think is a bit of both I guess, but the experience I had was mediocre so that's how I'm rating this game.
If you play the game like purely a shooter, like I did since I didn't know what to expect, it is an alright game. Below average probably. The shooting is pretty much as basic as it gets. Just walking and shooting with some extra powers that are not really that creative nor fun to use. Upgrades that do not really add much to the experience, they actually even make it worse since you need to keep looking at numbers that do not really change your playstyle in any meaningful way, and do mini side-challenges that are not at all fun to do. Hitsgan humanoid enemies, noting really interesting either in that department.
The graphics are cool, the first two hours. After that, it becomes really, really repetitive and that repetition not only affects the visual style, but the level design too, since with how similar the areas look and how complex the layout can get, it is sometimes really difficult to tell where you need to go. The visuals are also really inconsistent in the cinematics department. Sometimes you have these very cool and almost mystic cinematics with a strong color direction, and then you have fallout-type dialogues with other characters, which really contrast with the previous mentioned cinematics.
So, what is the point of the game? After completing it I can't really tell. In the end (kind of spoilers) there's a section which I think that tries to criticize the the Laboral environment? Maybe that is kind of the point of the game, but I don't really know since the game was so worried that I would get bored after 1 minute of not shooting enemies. I think that if this game was a more directed experience that focuses on the themes on the story and makes you able to understand (at least a bit) of the universe instead of mindless boring shooting it would be a much better game. And as I said in the start, is it my problem or the game's problem that I didn't put enough attention at the universe to be able to understand it? I think is a bit of both I guess, but the experience I had was mediocre so that's how I'm rating this game.
Horizon Chase Turbo
2018
This game was made by idiots who don't understand that cars aren't coated in flubber, can't bump THROUGH other cars, and that race rracks should be wider than a hiking footpath AND not riddled with multiple blind hairpin turns into nothing. AND TO HELL WITH WHAT THEY DID TO THE BATMOBILE.
Disco Elysium
2019
Now this is a game I'm entirely on the fence about. On one hand I think how the game is structured in tandem with the unique interactive mechanics and its overall non-linearity is downright brilliant (with a few hiccups, of course) And on the other hand I absolutely despise the unsatisfying and rushed finale that literally renders most of what you do in the game completely pointless.
Alright, so the beginning stretch of this game can be tad bit confusing and overwhelming but after sinking in a few hours and getting accustomed to all the mechanics and skills it's very easy to get hooked in and fast. The different skills aka the various parts of your psyche that affects the dialogues and how you interact with the world is unarguably the best part of this game. Depending on what part of your psyche you put the most points in you will get VASTLY different outcomes of little tasks like getting a hanged body down from a tree, while also affecting your abilities to pick up on certain leads. Which ultimately ends up giving the game a lot more variety and replay value than it'd initially have if it stuck to the more linear and rigid story telling formula of most other CRPGs. Also the way all the seemingly pointless and insignificant side quests loop back into main quests in the most unexpected way imaginable is done competently and can lead to a lot of "ah ha" moments. I also appreciate the fact that despite the game being entirely reliant on texts the dialogues are delivered in a digestible manner with everything fully voice acted and the voice acting is surprisingly top notch. At first when I was trying to read through every single line of text I thought the dialogues felt dense but that's objectively the wrong way to go about playing the game as you're punished for picking too many options. Once you start playing the game as it is intended you start to appreciate how well written the character interactions are with a lot of genuinely funny banters that don't feel forced. But there is something else entirely that can actually interfere the with the game's pacing and it's the constant DnD skill checks which forces you to do a lot of backtracking and chore-ish tasks just to have a higher chance of succeeding and even then you can fail. Which I can see being the main contributor behind putting off a lot of people and rightfully so and it's objectively a bad game design approach when most people playing the game save scum repeatedly to get past them.
Now onto my main gripe with the game and it's the ending. The finale is flat out terrible with absolutely zero thought put behind and it contradicts the whole investigation this game revolves around. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, it's the whodunnit. It's entirely detached from everything you do throughout most of the game, from every lead you gather throughout your entire investigation. And to address all the idiotic copium takes I see defending this god awful ending like "oh no but it's supposed to be meta! it fits the themes! it was never about the murder mystery", The game quite literally frames itself as a murder mystery that is LITERALLY your entire objective throughout the whole thing and the game failing to deliver a proper satisfying conclusion shouldn't be above criticism, it's objectively bad and if you can't see that you lack critical thinking skills. Also if there ever was a game that would benefit from having several different endings that vary vastly from one another it'd be THIS but what the game delivered was the exact opposite an extremely linear final segment which contradicts the rest of the game's open-ended nature.
Disco Elysium is a game that has a lot of never-before-seen unique mechanics in a narrative game with a lot of entertainment value but all of it is bogged down by a HORRIBLY botched ending.
Alright, so the beginning stretch of this game can be tad bit confusing and overwhelming but after sinking in a few hours and getting accustomed to all the mechanics and skills it's very easy to get hooked in and fast. The different skills aka the various parts of your psyche that affects the dialogues and how you interact with the world is unarguably the best part of this game. Depending on what part of your psyche you put the most points in you will get VASTLY different outcomes of little tasks like getting a hanged body down from a tree, while also affecting your abilities to pick up on certain leads. Which ultimately ends up giving the game a lot more variety and replay value than it'd initially have if it stuck to the more linear and rigid story telling formula of most other CRPGs. Also the way all the seemingly pointless and insignificant side quests loop back into main quests in the most unexpected way imaginable is done competently and can lead to a lot of "ah ha" moments. I also appreciate the fact that despite the game being entirely reliant on texts the dialogues are delivered in a digestible manner with everything fully voice acted and the voice acting is surprisingly top notch. At first when I was trying to read through every single line of text I thought the dialogues felt dense but that's objectively the wrong way to go about playing the game as you're punished for picking too many options. Once you start playing the game as it is intended you start to appreciate how well written the character interactions are with a lot of genuinely funny banters that don't feel forced. But there is something else entirely that can actually interfere the with the game's pacing and it's the constant DnD skill checks which forces you to do a lot of backtracking and chore-ish tasks just to have a higher chance of succeeding and even then you can fail. Which I can see being the main contributor behind putting off a lot of people and rightfully so and it's objectively a bad game design approach when most people playing the game save scum repeatedly to get past them.
Now onto my main gripe with the game and it's the ending. The finale is flat out terrible with absolutely zero thought put behind and it contradicts the whole investigation this game revolves around. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, it's the whodunnit. It's entirely detached from everything you do throughout most of the game, from every lead you gather throughout your entire investigation. And to address all the idiotic copium takes I see defending this god awful ending like "oh no but it's supposed to be meta! it fits the themes! it was never about the murder mystery", The game quite literally frames itself as a murder mystery that is LITERALLY your entire objective throughout the whole thing and the game failing to deliver a proper satisfying conclusion shouldn't be above criticism, it's objectively bad and if you can't see that you lack critical thinking skills. Also if there ever was a game that would benefit from having several different endings that vary vastly from one another it'd be THIS but what the game delivered was the exact opposite an extremely linear final segment which contradicts the rest of the game's open-ended nature.
Disco Elysium is a game that has a lot of never-before-seen unique mechanics in a narrative game with a lot of entertainment value but all of it is bogged down by a HORRIBLY botched ending.
I was never really a big fan of mechs, but now, now I understand it.
Portal 2
2011
Valve just get it, I don’t even like puzzle games but Portal is different - literally and figuratively. It just sucks me in. Its not one thing though, it is many things, all stacked up on top of each other. Portal 1 is really good but felt like a short demo into what could be done with the portal mechanics and the game engine, Portal 2 on the other hand is the magnificent culmination of that - i’ve not even technically finished it yet, i’m just wrapping up single-player and i’ve not even touched co-op or any mods yet, but it is a near perfect game through and through.
Even when I am scratching my head through portal 2’s challenging puzzles, there’s a constant drive that I feel that is the kind of rush that only great games can deliver. Plus even when i’m struggling and getting a bit frustrated, I can appreciate great design and recognise when something is just me. Many of Portal 2’s resounding successes are down to valve’s state of the art, perfectionist approach to game design which puts the player first at all times, orchestrates the pace like an award-winning conductor and strives to give this constant, enrapturing satisfaction. Not to mention the eccentric and often dark sense of humour which has aged remarkably well as well as the excellent art direction and dynamic audio that seems to ‘follow’ the player through their various tasks and interactions with the environment. The banter between glados and wheatley in particular is so good that you could make an entire tv show out of just them talking and it would work.
One thing I loved about portal 1 and even moreso here is the distinction between the flat, futuristic, cold testing areas and the industrial underbelly that you explore. I also find it impressive how a game that is about as linear as it gets on the surface doesn’t actually feel all that linear, something you could also say about half-life. The reason being because there’s no real cutscenes, everything is from your perspective and everyone is going to have a different experience of the same set of sequences. Sometimes exploring an idea that you don’t expect to be the solution ends up being the solution because trial and error is part of the experience, sometimes I would really struggle to figure something out, other times it would just click. Even playing around and experimenting with ideas feels good in portal because it has such an interesting and unique core mechanic, there’s really not much else like it, then its combined with all sorts of fun new additions like the light bridge, gels and excursion funnels to form the basis for what could honestly be a near endless stream of clever puzzles. But that would definitely get repetitive, portal 2 never is, no one puzzle is too alike to another and when an idea is explored well enough, it takes a backburner.
It makes me excited to see what more the community have done with these things because as always, valve embrace player creation with their tools and though they rarely ever develop games anymore, their philosophy and spirit lives on through the passionate modders that never stop putting out great stuff. But when you give valve’s devs the tools and let them design the levels from scratch, something hits differently, its like having your meal prepped by a professional chef, its something else man.
Other things that I love about portal & portal 2:
• A protagonist that doesn’t say a word (just how it should be), can you imagine if they talked while solving puzzles or gave advice like its god of war ragnarok or something, fucking hell…
• Stephen Merchant, Ellen McLain & JK Simmons absolutely killing their performances
• This dynamic, ever-changing feeling of progression where you’re descending, then ascending through the facility and feeling lost in this immersive world (even though its practically impossible to actually be lost)
• Finally, the fact that the game makes you feel so fucking smart. Like i’m no genius at all but there’s parts in this game where I was just like yeah, i’m the goat, i’m the puzzle king (usually right before getting royally humbled)
Just deserving of all of its praise really isn’t it, plus its going to be immensely replayable and I just know i’m going to be able to get so much out of this game even after I finish single-player. Its mad how i’ve only just played it now, but perhaps even madder that its 12 years old and not even aged a day.
Even when I am scratching my head through portal 2’s challenging puzzles, there’s a constant drive that I feel that is the kind of rush that only great games can deliver. Plus even when i’m struggling and getting a bit frustrated, I can appreciate great design and recognise when something is just me. Many of Portal 2’s resounding successes are down to valve’s state of the art, perfectionist approach to game design which puts the player first at all times, orchestrates the pace like an award-winning conductor and strives to give this constant, enrapturing satisfaction. Not to mention the eccentric and often dark sense of humour which has aged remarkably well as well as the excellent art direction and dynamic audio that seems to ‘follow’ the player through their various tasks and interactions with the environment. The banter between glados and wheatley in particular is so good that you could make an entire tv show out of just them talking and it would work.
One thing I loved about portal 1 and even moreso here is the distinction between the flat, futuristic, cold testing areas and the industrial underbelly that you explore. I also find it impressive how a game that is about as linear as it gets on the surface doesn’t actually feel all that linear, something you could also say about half-life. The reason being because there’s no real cutscenes, everything is from your perspective and everyone is going to have a different experience of the same set of sequences. Sometimes exploring an idea that you don’t expect to be the solution ends up being the solution because trial and error is part of the experience, sometimes I would really struggle to figure something out, other times it would just click. Even playing around and experimenting with ideas feels good in portal because it has such an interesting and unique core mechanic, there’s really not much else like it, then its combined with all sorts of fun new additions like the light bridge, gels and excursion funnels to form the basis for what could honestly be a near endless stream of clever puzzles. But that would definitely get repetitive, portal 2 never is, no one puzzle is too alike to another and when an idea is explored well enough, it takes a backburner.
It makes me excited to see what more the community have done with these things because as always, valve embrace player creation with their tools and though they rarely ever develop games anymore, their philosophy and spirit lives on through the passionate modders that never stop putting out great stuff. But when you give valve’s devs the tools and let them design the levels from scratch, something hits differently, its like having your meal prepped by a professional chef, its something else man.
Other things that I love about portal & portal 2:
• A protagonist that doesn’t say a word (just how it should be), can you imagine if they talked while solving puzzles or gave advice like its god of war ragnarok or something, fucking hell…
• Stephen Merchant, Ellen McLain & JK Simmons absolutely killing their performances
• This dynamic, ever-changing feeling of progression where you’re descending, then ascending through the facility and feeling lost in this immersive world (even though its practically impossible to actually be lost)
• Finally, the fact that the game makes you feel so fucking smart. Like i’m no genius at all but there’s parts in this game where I was just like yeah, i’m the goat, i’m the puzzle king (usually right before getting royally humbled)
Just deserving of all of its praise really isn’t it, plus its going to be immensely replayable and I just know i’m going to be able to get so much out of this game even after I finish single-player. Its mad how i’ve only just played it now, but perhaps even madder that its 12 years old and not even aged a day.
The Invincible
2023
One of the scariest things to me is being alone on a planet. I've had a recent fascination with this, especially after reading The Martian by Andy Weir. It's a different form of psychological horror. The human mind is a vast pit of emotions and an endless imagination. The fear of the unknown and the human mind running rampant combined is a scary combination that very few media tackle. The Invincible is one such story, and it's done well.
First and foremost, this is a walking simulator, but with a bit more freedom. There's really no gameplay, but you can interact with objects and control a vehicle a couple of times, but that's about it. It does what walking simulators are supposed to do well, and that's provide good characters with great writing and a story that keeps you hooked. The Invincible starts out slow and may come off as a typical space adventure with pretty colors and nothing more, but the story just gets darker and darker as you move along. The length is a couple of hours longer than a typical game of its kind, and it helps. There is more character development, more explanation of what is going on, and more of this planet, Regis III.
It's a desert planet similar to Mars, but with an ocean. You play as Yansa, one of a small crew of scientists scouting out a possible Earth-like planet. You learn about two warring factions known as the Alliance and the Commonwealth. The space race to find a planet of paradise is very apparent. I don't want to talk too much about the story, as I can easily spoil something. I will just say the story keeps going when you think it ends and gets darker and deeper, and the theories behind what is going on are very fascinating. There seem to be some choices you can make in the game, but I'm not sure if they impact the ending or not. Most of the dialogue is between Yansa and another crew member on her ship, the Dragonfly. The story has so many ups and downs, emotion-wise, as your fight for survival takes a back seat to a larger plot point, and the excellent voice acting helps suck you into this void.
You spend most of the game climbing ledges, dropping down ledges, and examining objects. There are a few large open maps, but you have a linear path you need to follow thanks to the well-designed map system. The interactions are always changing, and the pace is great after the first opening sequence, and things pick up. There is always something new happening, and I love that about this game. You aren't just walking in a straight line in a borefest like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and it's not a jump-scare-induced horror roller coaster like Layers of Fear. The terror of survival, death, and being alone is omnipresent in The Invincible. Just seeing a robot can make you feel less alone. The atmosphere is so well done in this game.
I usually start complaining about a lack of gameplay or that the story is so short that there's no time for anything interesting to happen, but The Invincible does what walking simulators haven't really done in a long time: make you want to walk through something and keep going. Between the 50's art deco-style designs of the ships and equipment, the immersive first-person view, and the excellent voice acting, there's so much to take in. Sure, the visuals aren't impressive on a technical scale. There is also no ultrawide screen support, which is a real bummer, but it's not enough to knock this game down. The Invincible makes you think and talk about the story to your friends because you want to theorize, and it entices you to think about life on other planets, which might make you go read a book or watch a movie like Apollo 13 or The Martian to continue experiencing this fear of being alone on a planet. Walking simulators aren't this good very often. Enjoy it while it lasts.
First and foremost, this is a walking simulator, but with a bit more freedom. There's really no gameplay, but you can interact with objects and control a vehicle a couple of times, but that's about it. It does what walking simulators are supposed to do well, and that's provide good characters with great writing and a story that keeps you hooked. The Invincible starts out slow and may come off as a typical space adventure with pretty colors and nothing more, but the story just gets darker and darker as you move along. The length is a couple of hours longer than a typical game of its kind, and it helps. There is more character development, more explanation of what is going on, and more of this planet, Regis III.
It's a desert planet similar to Mars, but with an ocean. You play as Yansa, one of a small crew of scientists scouting out a possible Earth-like planet. You learn about two warring factions known as the Alliance and the Commonwealth. The space race to find a planet of paradise is very apparent. I don't want to talk too much about the story, as I can easily spoil something. I will just say the story keeps going when you think it ends and gets darker and deeper, and the theories behind what is going on are very fascinating. There seem to be some choices you can make in the game, but I'm not sure if they impact the ending or not. Most of the dialogue is between Yansa and another crew member on her ship, the Dragonfly. The story has so many ups and downs, emotion-wise, as your fight for survival takes a back seat to a larger plot point, and the excellent voice acting helps suck you into this void.
You spend most of the game climbing ledges, dropping down ledges, and examining objects. There are a few large open maps, but you have a linear path you need to follow thanks to the well-designed map system. The interactions are always changing, and the pace is great after the first opening sequence, and things pick up. There is always something new happening, and I love that about this game. You aren't just walking in a straight line in a borefest like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and it's not a jump-scare-induced horror roller coaster like Layers of Fear. The terror of survival, death, and being alone is omnipresent in The Invincible. Just seeing a robot can make you feel less alone. The atmosphere is so well done in this game.
I usually start complaining about a lack of gameplay or that the story is so short that there's no time for anything interesting to happen, but The Invincible does what walking simulators haven't really done in a long time: make you want to walk through something and keep going. Between the 50's art deco-style designs of the ships and equipment, the immersive first-person view, and the excellent voice acting, there's so much to take in. Sure, the visuals aren't impressive on a technical scale. There is also no ultrawide screen support, which is a real bummer, but it's not enough to knock this game down. The Invincible makes you think and talk about the story to your friends because you want to theorize, and it entices you to think about life on other planets, which might make you go read a book or watch a movie like Apollo 13 or The Martian to continue experiencing this fear of being alone on a planet. Walking simulators aren't this good very often. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Severed Steel
2021
i always wonder how Mirror's Edge would look like with great shooting mechanics
highly kinetic, the idea of having a hand cannon that lets you destroy walls and find new ways to explore and move during combat is fantastic
very light in terms of anything else, so that's a big bummer
highly kinetic, the idea of having a hand cannon that lets you destroy walls and find new ways to explore and move during combat is fantastic
very light in terms of anything else, so that's a big bummer
Qué inmenso desperdicio. Un sistema de combate mal concebido aplicado a un sistema de niveles insípido, secuencias de sigilo completamente superfluas y una historia y caracterización que parece abrazar más que nunca la idea de "Resident Evil in Space" de la que Dead Space nunca se terminó de librar. Jugar a esto me ha hecho replantearme seriamente si la trilogía original de Schofield fue tan buena como recordaba, o si me dejé llevar por los pitos y flautas del momento. Es aún peor jugar a esto en la versión localizada, porque tienes a actores de calidad doblando escenas que claramente no tenían permitido ver, con lo que el tono se pierde completamente.
En un mundo ideal, esto habría sido el equivalente a Condemned que Monolith diseñó tras el éxito de F.E.A.R. Tal y como se ve ahora, es poco más que una demo técnica vistosa, pero apenas estable, de un ejercicio de soberbia artística.
----------------------
What a waste. A poorly conceived combat system applied to bland level design, completely superfluous stealth sequences, and a story and characters that seems to embrace more than ever the "Resident Evil in Space" premise that Dead Space never quite got rid of. Playing this has made me seriously rethink whether Schofield's original trilogy was as good as I remembered, or if I got carried away by the whistles. It's even worse to play this localized, because you'll have quality actors dubbing scenes they clearly weren't allowed to see, so the tone gets completely lost.
In an ideal world, this would have been the Condemned equivalent that Monolith delivered after the success of F.E.A.R. As it stands now, it's little more than a flashy but barely stable technical demo of an act of artistic hubris.
En un mundo ideal, esto habría sido el equivalente a Condemned que Monolith diseñó tras el éxito de F.E.A.R. Tal y como se ve ahora, es poco más que una demo técnica vistosa, pero apenas estable, de un ejercicio de soberbia artística.
----------------------
What a waste. A poorly conceived combat system applied to bland level design, completely superfluous stealth sequences, and a story and characters that seems to embrace more than ever the "Resident Evil in Space" premise that Dead Space never quite got rid of. Playing this has made me seriously rethink whether Schofield's original trilogy was as good as I remembered, or if I got carried away by the whistles. It's even worse to play this localized, because you'll have quality actors dubbing scenes they clearly weren't allowed to see, so the tone gets completely lost.
In an ideal world, this would have been the Condemned equivalent that Monolith delivered after the success of F.E.A.R. As it stands now, it's little more than a flashy but barely stable technical demo of an act of artistic hubris.
If I had to shortly describe this game, it is kind of a middle point between Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Call of Duty. It's a lot more arcade than CoD without reaching the mecha-nazi killing gameplay/atmosphere of RtCW, and I think here is where the problems start, as this game seems to lack certain... something.
You can see love put behind every environment and animation, but it feels like something was cut by an EA that even at the time kind of forgot what the name "Electronic Arts" meant. A more specific example can be the blood: this game has a complete lack of any gore or blood. And asking for it is not just a whim, since this is a game about the most violent war in humanities' history, and taking the biggest symbol of violence, the liquid red, out of it just to get a lower PEGI and make it more marketable is almost disrespectful. Signs of the creators wanting to make something that truly resemble this conflict are there, like the numerous different stagger animations that the enemies have, which can be really brutal and emotional.
That aside, how does this game play? Playing it simple; the level design in this game changes inconsistently between good, well paced levels to the most absurdly broken, insane, unfair and dumb levels ever made in a shooter. Featuring never-stopping enemies from front and back, quick reaction time never-stopping high damage and infinite flinch stational heavy machinegun soldiers, complete sections without any kind of healthpacks and worst of all: absolutely impossible to spot speed-firing respawning snipers which hide behind the most obstructively-textured bushes ever.
In conclusion: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a an inconsistent game both in gameplay and presentation, which feels like a fairly generic and commercial WW2 experience which offer much of value in 2023 outside of revisiting an important game and precursor for the tendencies from the early 2000's.
You can see love put behind every environment and animation, but it feels like something was cut by an EA that even at the time kind of forgot what the name "Electronic Arts" meant. A more specific example can be the blood: this game has a complete lack of any gore or blood. And asking for it is not just a whim, since this is a game about the most violent war in humanities' history, and taking the biggest symbol of violence, the liquid red, out of it just to get a lower PEGI and make it more marketable is almost disrespectful. Signs of the creators wanting to make something that truly resemble this conflict are there, like the numerous different stagger animations that the enemies have, which can be really brutal and emotional.
That aside, how does this game play? Playing it simple; the level design in this game changes inconsistently between good, well paced levels to the most absurdly broken, insane, unfair and dumb levels ever made in a shooter. Featuring never-stopping enemies from front and back, quick reaction time never-stopping high damage and infinite flinch stational heavy machinegun soldiers, complete sections without any kind of healthpacks and worst of all: absolutely impossible to spot speed-firing respawning snipers which hide behind the most obstructively-textured bushes ever.
In conclusion: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a an inconsistent game both in gameplay and presentation, which feels like a fairly generic and commercial WW2 experience which offer much of value in 2023 outside of revisiting an important game and precursor for the tendencies from the early 2000's.
Lords of the Fallen
2023
This is a game that had quite literally everything laid out for itself on the 'idea board' to be a successful soulslike and even carve out an identity for itself in the sea of mediocre copycats. But unfortunately this is made by a bunch of incompetent "soul" jerking apes thus the end result turned out to be one of the worst games made this whole year
Let's get the pros out of the way first as there isn't that many and they get overshadowed quite easily by the myriad of cons
‣ I hear all this nonsense about this game's world/map design being on par with DS1 which flat out isn't true because it's leagues better. The interconnectivity of LoTF remains consistent from start to finish constantly looping you back to the start of the game through various different shortcuts that would leave you surprised while remaining actually cohesive. On the other hand, DS1's interconnected design of the map doesn't extend past the halfway point and is all random starting from Anor Londo till the end of the game.
‣ The levels REQUIRE you to explore every nooks and cranny to progress and having to switch between two different dimensions to find your way through them can be frustrating since you'll spend a good chunk of time being lost but it's also rewarding at the same time. It's obvious that a lot of the work went to crafting the physical space for the levels and having them constantly loop back and making new shortcuts
‣ Even though the combat is largely clunky I appreciate the fact that the posture bar is visible on the lock on. Which might not seem like a big deal at first but once you realize that it's one of the core mechanics to these games, hiding it makes absolutely no sense and honestly more devs should make it visible instead of hiding it for "oh no my immersion" or whatever
I wasn't lying when I said the cons easily outweigh the pros, you'll see why
‣ The game will quite often show off its world through pretty vistas which should make you appreciate its competently designed world and the pretty artstyle, right? But, no. That's not the case. You're left with utter disdain and disgust at the fact that you had to sit through some of the worst areas/levels ever made in any soulslike ever. Which bring me to my second biggest gripe with the game
‣ The levels in this game are absolutely ATROCIOUS to the point going through them made me physically sick at times. I like the fact that the levels are designed in a way that encourages exploration where you have to switch between dimensions but the enemy density and the worthless eyeball mechanics work counter-intuitive and basically kills the whole point of the non-linear and more interconnected layout. The incompetent enemy placement along with the constant fodder spawns due to the eyeball mechanic incentivizes running through the levels instead of engaging in combat as there's no point in doing so since more and more zombies will pop out of nowhere and overwhelm you to death. Putting a timer on exploration in and of itself is extremely hypocritical and only leads to more time being wasted. Speaking of wasted time, the game BARELY gives you any major checkpoints and instead gives you custom ones that you have a limited access to that you can place on certain areas. You have very little access to these at the start of the game and you're left with no choice but to run across the whole area everytime you die. To make things worse sometimes the way the game loops back to the main checkpoints is through elevators and the elevators in this game are so ridiculously SLOW to the point it becomes frustrating to sit through, especially when you have to sit through them repeatedly. Also the custom checkpoints not being permanent is also dumb as you'll be needing to run through the whole level yet again in case you miss a route or some significant items to make progress which is quite common in this game given the non-linear world design. Also, why in the world is platforming a thing? It adds nothing of value to the levels and only makes them more annoying to go through.
Bottom line being, the areas/levels just LOVE to waste your time for no reason at all while simultaneously making you feel sick to your stomach. And what is your reward for sitting through some of the most miserable areas ever designed?
‣ You should be rewarded with a fun fight at the end of a level that has a satisfying learning curve to it, right? Wrong, all you'll get is more misery. The boss fights are incontestably the worst part of this game and it's not even close. The fights are mostly all mobs slapped on with boss HP or ganks that make no logical sense at all or plain out annoying gimmick fights. Even the ones that you'd think are decent by this game's standards are completely ruined by stupid design choices like slapping on an AoE that is completely desynced with the actual moveset and last for so long that it becomes a genuine annoyance. I've also noticed movesets of major bosses getting recycled with dual phase bosses with identical movesets with little to no difference in how you approach the fight except for the fact that it's suddenly far tankier which drags the fight to an unbearable length. The run back to the bosses can be quite insufferable if you're out of custom checkpoints and sometimes you're forced to clear out mobs every single time you face off against the bosses as there are certain mobs can one shot you from 200 miles away
‣ Enemy variety in this game is quite literally non-existent the only way this game can overwhelm the players is through spamming the same worthless zombie mobs or to reuse the mini bosses as fodders with bloated HP only to add to the overall misery of going through the already cramped levels with 500 different zombies spawning on your ass
‣ As you'd expect from a soulslike there isn't really much to its combat but the implementation of parrying is done in such an incompetent way that it leaves you questioning why they even added it to begin which is why I couldn't help but bring it up. Making lighter weapons parry better than the heavier ones make absolutely no sense as you already have a weight advantage when it comes down to lighter weapons and nothing when it comes down to heavier weapons. It should've been the other way around then parrying would legitimately be a viable playstyle despite the lackluster presentation with god awful sound effects
‣ I've respecced in this game 3 different times and the conclusion I came to is that this game is biased towards spell casting magic builds while making melee builds utterly useless especially when you're going through the god awful areas which is like 90% of the game. Even against the complete excuse of "bosses" spells can make the fights somewhat less miserable as you can quickly deal with dogs in one hit that the game LOVES to spam for whatever reason. Basically, build variety is non-existent go with either inferno/radiance build or suffer
‣ The lock-on in this game screwed me over way too many times than I could even bother to remember. It'd automatically remove itself or move onto another object in the area causing you to die. And when the platforming segments that require you to use the lock on most of the time never works if there are enemies nearby in turn making running past everything not a viable option.
‣ The requirements to get different endings are beyond idiotic. The fact that you get locked into the worst ending possible with the Deacons of The Deep final boss only makes it worse as from what I've seen the other endings reward you with far better finale
There are some things I'm on the fence about or simply don't care for and these are
‣ Art direction is quite strong with plenty of variety in its visuals with the different biomes and all but I honestly couldn't careless when the levels individually look quite samey especially in the umbral realm where everything just has a blue tint
‣ Music is nothing I'll go out of my way to listen to but they aren't offensively bad either
‣ the NPC quests are extremely convoluted but so is the case with every Fromsoft souls game so I'll cut them some slack here
Lords of the Fallen is an incompetent title made by a group of incompetent devs.
Steer clear of this game at all cost
0/5
Let's get the pros out of the way first as there isn't that many and they get overshadowed quite easily by the myriad of cons
‣ I hear all this nonsense about this game's world/map design being on par with DS1 which flat out isn't true because it's leagues better. The interconnectivity of LoTF remains consistent from start to finish constantly looping you back to the start of the game through various different shortcuts that would leave you surprised while remaining actually cohesive. On the other hand, DS1's interconnected design of the map doesn't extend past the halfway point and is all random starting from Anor Londo till the end of the game.
‣ The levels REQUIRE you to explore every nooks and cranny to progress and having to switch between two different dimensions to find your way through them can be frustrating since you'll spend a good chunk of time being lost but it's also rewarding at the same time. It's obvious that a lot of the work went to crafting the physical space for the levels and having them constantly loop back and making new shortcuts
‣ Even though the combat is largely clunky I appreciate the fact that the posture bar is visible on the lock on. Which might not seem like a big deal at first but once you realize that it's one of the core mechanics to these games, hiding it makes absolutely no sense and honestly more devs should make it visible instead of hiding it for "oh no my immersion" or whatever
I wasn't lying when I said the cons easily outweigh the pros, you'll see why
‣ The game will quite often show off its world through pretty vistas which should make you appreciate its competently designed world and the pretty artstyle, right? But, no. That's not the case. You're left with utter disdain and disgust at the fact that you had to sit through some of the worst areas/levels ever made in any soulslike ever. Which bring me to my second biggest gripe with the game
‣ The levels in this game are absolutely ATROCIOUS to the point going through them made me physically sick at times. I like the fact that the levels are designed in a way that encourages exploration where you have to switch between dimensions but the enemy density and the worthless eyeball mechanics work counter-intuitive and basically kills the whole point of the non-linear and more interconnected layout. The incompetent enemy placement along with the constant fodder spawns due to the eyeball mechanic incentivizes running through the levels instead of engaging in combat as there's no point in doing so since more and more zombies will pop out of nowhere and overwhelm you to death. Putting a timer on exploration in and of itself is extremely hypocritical and only leads to more time being wasted. Speaking of wasted time, the game BARELY gives you any major checkpoints and instead gives you custom ones that you have a limited access to that you can place on certain areas. You have very little access to these at the start of the game and you're left with no choice but to run across the whole area everytime you die. To make things worse sometimes the way the game loops back to the main checkpoints is through elevators and the elevators in this game are so ridiculously SLOW to the point it becomes frustrating to sit through, especially when you have to sit through them repeatedly. Also the custom checkpoints not being permanent is also dumb as you'll be needing to run through the whole level yet again in case you miss a route or some significant items to make progress which is quite common in this game given the non-linear world design. Also, why in the world is platforming a thing? It adds nothing of value to the levels and only makes them more annoying to go through.
Bottom line being, the areas/levels just LOVE to waste your time for no reason at all while simultaneously making you feel sick to your stomach. And what is your reward for sitting through some of the most miserable areas ever designed?
‣ You should be rewarded with a fun fight at the end of a level that has a satisfying learning curve to it, right? Wrong, all you'll get is more misery. The boss fights are incontestably the worst part of this game and it's not even close. The fights are mostly all mobs slapped on with boss HP or ganks that make no logical sense at all or plain out annoying gimmick fights. Even the ones that you'd think are decent by this game's standards are completely ruined by stupid design choices like slapping on an AoE that is completely desynced with the actual moveset and last for so long that it becomes a genuine annoyance. I've also noticed movesets of major bosses getting recycled with dual phase bosses with identical movesets with little to no difference in how you approach the fight except for the fact that it's suddenly far tankier which drags the fight to an unbearable length. The run back to the bosses can be quite insufferable if you're out of custom checkpoints and sometimes you're forced to clear out mobs every single time you face off against the bosses as there are certain mobs can one shot you from 200 miles away
‣ Enemy variety in this game is quite literally non-existent the only way this game can overwhelm the players is through spamming the same worthless zombie mobs or to reuse the mini bosses as fodders with bloated HP only to add to the overall misery of going through the already cramped levels with 500 different zombies spawning on your ass
‣ As you'd expect from a soulslike there isn't really much to its combat but the implementation of parrying is done in such an incompetent way that it leaves you questioning why they even added it to begin which is why I couldn't help but bring it up. Making lighter weapons parry better than the heavier ones make absolutely no sense as you already have a weight advantage when it comes down to lighter weapons and nothing when it comes down to heavier weapons. It should've been the other way around then parrying would legitimately be a viable playstyle despite the lackluster presentation with god awful sound effects
‣ I've respecced in this game 3 different times and the conclusion I came to is that this game is biased towards spell casting magic builds while making melee builds utterly useless especially when you're going through the god awful areas which is like 90% of the game. Even against the complete excuse of "bosses" spells can make the fights somewhat less miserable as you can quickly deal with dogs in one hit that the game LOVES to spam for whatever reason. Basically, build variety is non-existent go with either inferno/radiance build or suffer
‣ The lock-on in this game screwed me over way too many times than I could even bother to remember. It'd automatically remove itself or move onto another object in the area causing you to die. And when the platforming segments that require you to use the lock on most of the time never works if there are enemies nearby in turn making running past everything not a viable option.
‣ The requirements to get different endings are beyond idiotic. The fact that you get locked into the worst ending possible with the Deacons of The Deep final boss only makes it worse as from what I've seen the other endings reward you with far better finale
There are some things I'm on the fence about or simply don't care for and these are
‣ Art direction is quite strong with plenty of variety in its visuals with the different biomes and all but I honestly couldn't careless when the levels individually look quite samey especially in the umbral realm where everything just has a blue tint
‣ Music is nothing I'll go out of my way to listen to but they aren't offensively bad either
‣ the NPC quests are extremely convoluted but so is the case with every Fromsoft souls game so I'll cut them some slack here
Lords of the Fallen is an incompetent title made by a group of incompetent devs.
Steer clear of this game at all cost
0/5
Control
2019
WHAT A GAME
That was my filler text in the post until I was ready to write the review, but I think I will leave it where it is. Control is a game by Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Quantum Break. Their games have always looked interesting to me but outside of most of Max Payne 1 and an hour or so of Alan Wake (the review for which will follow this one shortly I am sure), I'd never given them much attention. But here comes Control with some very cool looking trailers showing off telekinesis powers and weird monsters and bizarre locales and that led me to do something I haven't done in quite a long time - purchase a game for 60 US dollars. Life is full of impulse decisions, and they often don't turn out very well, or at least as good as you hoped. Control however is definitely one of my best choices.
The game stars Jesse Faden (Fayden?), a young woman who has some mysterious incident involving her family and home town in her past that led to enormous amounts of death, and now she's hunting down the people who took her only remaining link to the world - her brother Dylan. She also talks to a mysterious entity only she knows about (who doesn't say anything back we can hear, only odd bright and swirling visual anomalies she seems to understand) pretty frequently, or we hear her thoughts about events and people she meets. I found her to be a compelling protagonist, with just enough relatable traits but also doesn't freak out every time something weird happens like a normal person (because the game would take 80 hours if so). Her growth through the story as a person and with her powers was one of the best parts of the story of the game, which is more interesting in concept than well executed.
The game is set in The Oldest House, a "building" in NYC, that on the outside is one thing, but on the inside is actually a sprawling extradimensional portal of sorts that the Federal Bureau of Control makes their home. This bureau finds all manner of paranormal and magical objects and tries to, well, control them. Ostensibly they say their mission is to contain, but as we learn through the story there is far too much dicking around with these objects of immense power to consider these folks safety oriented. Scattered throughout all the environments are HUNDREDS of notes, memos, pictures, short movies, etc. that talk about the various challenges and items the bureau encounters and how the people who work there deal with things. Each note you pick up is some combination of funny, interesting, or mysterious. They straight up lifted the SCP move of blacking out random nouns and verbs to make things spooky or funny, and it works damn well.
But how about the actual game itself? Oh yeah, that's a joy as well. At first you're limited to telekenis (awesome) and a regular semi-auto pistol (boring), but things mix up pretty fast with other powers and guns. About halfway through you gain the power of levitation however, and that is when shit officially Pops Off. Floating high above a battlefield and raining down missiles, debris, and the bodies of your foes upon those still unlucky enough to still live basically NEVER got old or boring. Environments are hugely destructible along with craploads of items that are able to be interacted with/manipulated. Neat artsy metal spheres in glass cases in a lobby? Grab them with your mind, yank them through the glass and hurl them through tables and chairs and watch all of it neatly fly up into the air and smash into concrete which shatters beaneath the weight of it all. Magnificent! Sadly I can't put gifs into these reviews otherwise you'd see twenty of those...
The last main topic to hit - the visual design. My god this game is gorgeous. Are the graphics great? Yes it looks amazing, but that's not what I'm talking about. The lighting, the cinematography, the layout of everything is just phenomenal. Almost every area that you walk into in this game is a visual feast which made exploration for its own sake a joy. Just look at all the fucking pictures I attached here, it is just stupendous and I feel like I'll never see anything great like this again. Which I suppose isn't fair, Dishonored 2 was only a few years ago and that was also amazing (but not Control amazing).
In the end, this is a fantastic game with only a few tiny niggles bringing it down. Jesse feels way too squishy throughout most of the game, there needs to be a few more guns/powers for offensive use, enemy variety is good, but needs to grow WAY past ordinary looking dudes (granted most of them can do weird shit, that is good), and the ending of the story doesn't really feel like an ending... But OH! It had a fake ending with fake credits!! I fucking loved that. Oh and the Ashtray Maze and when its special soundtrack kicks in and the game goes Doctor Strange/Inception on us...
That was my filler text in the post until I was ready to write the review, but I think I will leave it where it is. Control is a game by Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Quantum Break. Their games have always looked interesting to me but outside of most of Max Payne 1 and an hour or so of Alan Wake (the review for which will follow this one shortly I am sure), I'd never given them much attention. But here comes Control with some very cool looking trailers showing off telekinesis powers and weird monsters and bizarre locales and that led me to do something I haven't done in quite a long time - purchase a game for 60 US dollars. Life is full of impulse decisions, and they often don't turn out very well, or at least as good as you hoped. Control however is definitely one of my best choices.
The game stars Jesse Faden (Fayden?), a young woman who has some mysterious incident involving her family and home town in her past that led to enormous amounts of death, and now she's hunting down the people who took her only remaining link to the world - her brother Dylan. She also talks to a mysterious entity only she knows about (who doesn't say anything back we can hear, only odd bright and swirling visual anomalies she seems to understand) pretty frequently, or we hear her thoughts about events and people she meets. I found her to be a compelling protagonist, with just enough relatable traits but also doesn't freak out every time something weird happens like a normal person (because the game would take 80 hours if so). Her growth through the story as a person and with her powers was one of the best parts of the story of the game, which is more interesting in concept than well executed.
The game is set in The Oldest House, a "building" in NYC, that on the outside is one thing, but on the inside is actually a sprawling extradimensional portal of sorts that the Federal Bureau of Control makes their home. This bureau finds all manner of paranormal and magical objects and tries to, well, control them. Ostensibly they say their mission is to contain, but as we learn through the story there is far too much dicking around with these objects of immense power to consider these folks safety oriented. Scattered throughout all the environments are HUNDREDS of notes, memos, pictures, short movies, etc. that talk about the various challenges and items the bureau encounters and how the people who work there deal with things. Each note you pick up is some combination of funny, interesting, or mysterious. They straight up lifted the SCP move of blacking out random nouns and verbs to make things spooky or funny, and it works damn well.
But how about the actual game itself? Oh yeah, that's a joy as well. At first you're limited to telekenis (awesome) and a regular semi-auto pistol (boring), but things mix up pretty fast with other powers and guns. About halfway through you gain the power of levitation however, and that is when shit officially Pops Off. Floating high above a battlefield and raining down missiles, debris, and the bodies of your foes upon those still unlucky enough to still live basically NEVER got old or boring. Environments are hugely destructible along with craploads of items that are able to be interacted with/manipulated. Neat artsy metal spheres in glass cases in a lobby? Grab them with your mind, yank them through the glass and hurl them through tables and chairs and watch all of it neatly fly up into the air and smash into concrete which shatters beaneath the weight of it all. Magnificent! Sadly I can't put gifs into these reviews otherwise you'd see twenty of those...
The last main topic to hit - the visual design. My god this game is gorgeous. Are the graphics great? Yes it looks amazing, but that's not what I'm talking about. The lighting, the cinematography, the layout of everything is just phenomenal. Almost every area that you walk into in this game is a visual feast which made exploration for its own sake a joy. Just look at all the fucking pictures I attached here, it is just stupendous and I feel like I'll never see anything great like this again. Which I suppose isn't fair, Dishonored 2 was only a few years ago and that was also amazing (but not Control amazing).
In the end, this is a fantastic game with only a few tiny niggles bringing it down. Jesse feels way too squishy throughout most of the game, there needs to be a few more guns/powers for offensive use, enemy variety is good, but needs to grow WAY past ordinary looking dudes (granted most of them can do weird shit, that is good), and the ending of the story doesn't really feel like an ending... But OH! It had a fake ending with fake credits!! I fucking loved that. Oh and the Ashtray Maze and when its special soundtrack kicks in and the game goes Doctor Strange/Inception on us...
very overwhelming game, i guess its my fault for starting this 4 years & dozens of updates later
Streets of Rage 4
2020
Alright I'll keep the review brief but one thing's for sure this is hands down one of the better games I've played this year
For me this game is split into two halves, first half being consistently good like every stage introducing new enemies that need to be countered in unique ways with intelligent enemy placement that actually makes you use your brain plus lots of variety in the presentation to keep things fresh. But as soon as you move past the 6th stage which is the halfway point of the game all of that gets thrown out of the window as it becomes more and more apparent that the devs ran out of creative juices, pinning you up against reskinned mobs and reused bosses turned gank from earlier stages and artificially inflating the difficulty by randomly throwing in more tougher enemies that can easily interrupt your combos in hordes. Basically, the game takes a nose dive in overall quality in the latter half compared to the first half
Despite the lackluster second half I still think this game has tons of replay value because of the competently designed plus satisfying combat with a surprising amount of depth and the roster of 8 different playable characters that each have substantially different playstyle which can make every playthrough after the initial one feel like a completely new campaign. I can vouch for the replayability as I've beaten the game 4 times (once on hardest and three times on mania)
And my god the music in this game can be REALLY good at times
For me this game is split into two halves, first half being consistently good like every stage introducing new enemies that need to be countered in unique ways with intelligent enemy placement that actually makes you use your brain plus lots of variety in the presentation to keep things fresh. But as soon as you move past the 6th stage which is the halfway point of the game all of that gets thrown out of the window as it becomes more and more apparent that the devs ran out of creative juices, pinning you up against reskinned mobs and reused bosses turned gank from earlier stages and artificially inflating the difficulty by randomly throwing in more tougher enemies that can easily interrupt your combos in hordes. Basically, the game takes a nose dive in overall quality in the latter half compared to the first half
Despite the lackluster second half I still think this game has tons of replay value because of the competently designed plus satisfying combat with a surprising amount of depth and the roster of 8 different playable characters that each have substantially different playstyle which can make every playthrough after the initial one feel like a completely new campaign. I can vouch for the replayability as I've beaten the game 4 times (once on hardest and three times on mania)
And my god the music in this game can be REALLY good at times