I was quite surprised when looking back at games I have played that I’d not played Battlefield: Bad Company after enjoying the sequel so much. It was about time I fixed that.

Battlefield: Bad Company was exclusive to consoles Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Thankfully it is playable on Xbox Series X thanks to their backwards compatibility program. Typically with backwards compatible games on Xbox the graphics are updated to a degree to make them look closer to their modern counterparts. However for Bad Company this was not the case. I longed for a bit of antialiasing to make the game look a bit more presentable in 2024 but I wasn’t going to let that affect my experience of the game. Playing an FPS on console instead of my preferred PC was what stunted my experience with this game.

Battlefield: Bad Company games are a less series take on the Call of Duty/Battlefield military shooter games. It focuses less on realism and more on shooty shooty bang bang.

The plot isn’t all that, it’s a team of army misfits and outcasts on their own mission to steal gold while going officially MIA.

This game lacks a lot of refinement which works against itself. The driving mechanic leaves a lot to be desired. Vehicles no matter how big or heavy will glide around on the ground as though they are on ice. If you try to swap seats with the gunner to shoot enemies, more often than not the gunner is facing the complete opposite direction, requiring you to slowly move the turret around to start shooting. The enemy AI can be quite unfair at times. There is 0 stealth in this game. If you shoot an unaware enemy then every single enemy in the area will know where you are and will pummel you with everything they have no matter what you hide behind or how far away from you. They will blast you with inhuman accuracy. The spawning enemies around you prevents you from being tactical about clearing out areas as you will think you’re moving to an area without enemy markers then before you know it they spawn around you.

Luckily the game cuts you some slack by making you quite resilient against bullets and if you die, you will be returned back to the last checkpoint with the enemies you killed still dead.

It’s perhaps unfair to criticise this game in 2024 with how spoiled we are with the solid FPS games we have nowadays. It was highly reviewed at the time so I will give it the benefit of the doubt. The second Bad Company game is far superior though and is definitely worth playing over this one if you were to only pick one of the games.

Okami is an action-adventure game which plays very similar to the The Legend of Zelda games. Funnily enough, Okami came out just before The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which bears a massive similarity to Okami where you also play as a wolf with a sidekick.
The plot of Okami follows the journey of Amaterasu (Ammy), the Japanese sun goddess who takes the form of a white wolf. Ammy is accompanied by Issun, a tiny wandering artist who rides on her back. The game takes place in a beautifully stylized version of ancient Japan, heavily influenced by Japanese mythology and folklore. It all begins with the land of Nippon (based on ancient Japan) being cursed by darkness after the resurrection of the demon Orochi. Ammy awakens from her slumber to defeat Orochi, a fearsome eight-headed serpent demon that terrorises the land of Nippon and restore light and peace to the world.
Reading other people’s reviews, the same topics come up again and again: slow pace, too hand-holdy, incredible graphic design and music. It’s very easy to see what everyone means.
The game starts with a slow paced dialogue cutscene using beautiful Japanese illustrations to tell the backstory of the adventure you’re about to set out on. The game's on-screen text immediately turned off as it uses similar noise effects as games like Banjo-Kazooie. The opening cutscene goes on for around 20 minutes before the player takes control of Ammy. It is little wonder why people struggled to stick with this game through the first area. Once you gain the ability to move around the beautifully artistic world, the game teaches you the basic controls before you journey to Kamiki Village. There, you're assigned the task of restoring life to the land of Nippon from the darkness by utilising your celestial brush. To do this you circle trees which allows them to bloom once more.
The celestial brush is the core mechanic of the game. Throughout the game, Ammy collects a total of 13 brushes, each of which functions similarly to the items in Zelda, allowing her to open up new paths, interact with scenery to solve puzzles, or attack enemies. You can use a cutting brush to cut down trees or enemies in battle. Other brush techniques enable the player to change the time of day or create bridges that were previously destroyed. Executing brush strokes is not always as easy as it should be. Either the game will be fussy about what it considers a straight line or as some brush strokes are very similar to one another, you will accidentally conjure the wrong action at a vital moment. All that aside, it's a great unique feature of the game and can be a lot of fun at times. Curing areas of darkness is a satisfying experience, as you watch cutscenes of the darkness being washed away by greenery and flowers. Afterwards you’re able to freely run around the area and explore all the secrets.
You can use Ammy’s different brush strokes to reach certain areas. Some are inaccessible at first but if you return later with more brush strokes you can then reach them. Annoyingly most of the time the items are just ones for you to sell at merchants. It is very rarely a cool item you can benefit from there and then. It makes the effort spent getting to the item chest feel like a bit of an anti-climax.
The graphics for the original game and the HD remaster are very unique and are wonderful to admire. That’s not to say I’d want to see this style more in other games, I like how it’s unique to Okami (as far as I know).
The other element that people talk about a lot is the soundtrack and it is absolutely beautiful. Easily one you could stick on in the background and listen to while doing other things besides playing the game. It’s all inspired by classical Japanese works.
The dialogue speed varies from scene to scene and there isn’t anything that judges what scenes should have fast dialogue or not. This was one of the very few games that I started to feel a tightness in my chest due to frustration of how slow the dialogue is.
Okami is a relatively easy game to play, Issun who is Ammy’s accomplice through the game will point out exactly what you need to do. If you are struggling with a brush stroke for the first time, he will eventually show you on the screen how to do it. The battles are quite easy too and stat improvement items are plentiful. People complain about how hand-holdy this game is but I liked it. It’s clear Capcom just wanted players to be able to experience this game no matter the skill level. This is my gameplay preference. “Stray Beads” are one of the game's collectable items and if you collect all of them it gives Ammy unlimited health and a massive attack boost. This can be considered overkill, particularly when certain enemies can already be taken down with relative ease.
The game uses another Zelda trope of leading you to believe you have fought “the big boss” but in reality you’re only a third of the way through the game. By that point you have 9 of the 13 brush strokes, you’ve explored many areas and got most of what the game has to offer. By that point I would have been happy if the game had ended there. This false ending actually made the rest of the game feel like it dragged on a lot slower than it should have. The slow dialogue, battling bosses multiple times and the fact you need to do a lot of ground traversal didn’t help with the pacing either. People complain about the pacing at the start of the game but I thought the last two thirds of the game was a lot worse.
There are mini-games in Okami which are unfortunately not optional. The compulsory mini-games are either fishing or digging. The fishing minigame is pretty standard but the underground digging game is very much like Dig Dug meets Lemmings. This game requires the player to complete it 5 times. With each one getting harder and harder. It frustrated me so much I nearly binned the game several times because of it.
Okami is a game which belongs in a video game classics archive. The story is great, it has its own unique visual style. The music enhances the experience as you explore each area and restore life to the land overrun with darkness. However, the game is notorious for its pacing issues, leading many players to abandon it before completion. The game is very accessible due to its low difficulty allowing all kinds of gamers the ability to comfortably experience this wonderful game. I’m glad I got to experience Okami but it shot itself in the foot with the false ending making the bulk of the game feel like a slog. If you love Zelda games and like me like to experience every different type of game available, this is definitely the one for you.

As a big Final Fantasy fan and having a fondness towards Disney I really wanted to get into and like Kingdom Hearts but I just couldn’t make it happen.This was my 4th attempt at getting into the game. The first 2 times I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to get past the first area where you need to collect items. The 3rd attempt I gave up in Wonderland due to the frustrating platforming and this time I got as far as the colosseum before throwing in the towel once and for all.

Final Fantasy and Disney is a perfect formula, one that would never happen today as Disney are now on a high with the amount of properties they own. The characters are a mix of ones found in Disney cartoons and Final Fantasy. The character you play is an entirely new character Sora who looks like a Disney version of Tidus from Final Fantasy X. The game looks and sounds like it was designed for kids but it becomes clear they are targeting a teenage audience instead.

At the start of the game you’re asked to pick between a Sword, Shield or Staff. Seasoned RPG players will know this is picking your class however a little later you’re asked to answer questions based on your personality and this decides how you level in the game which is far too cryptic for any one of any age with any experience. The tutorial makes the game seem relatively straight forward too.

When you get to the beach you’re asked to collect certain items to build a raft and then once again after. Yes the game tells you what you need to do but gives you zero guidance on where to go. One of the items, a cloth, is a flat texture on a wall that doesn’t look like in any way an item you can pick up.

The music for the game is beautiful, the Kingdom Hearts theme is a lovely piano melody. The intro cinematic however is a pop/dance number which fits neither Final Fantasy nor Disney, and it’s quite jarring.

The version I played was the HD Final Mix on the PS4. The graphics are clean and crisp and the game runs at 60fps. Unfortunately some of the character animation and dialogue is stuck in the early 2000s. The controls have been revamped for this version however there is still very little customisation. Being able to control the camera speed would have been very welcomed as the camera has one setting and that setting is slow.

The platforming in this game is just so frustrating. It’s like you’re playing an alpha version of a platforming game and the slow camera doesn’t make it any easier. The camera will refuse to clip into walls to give better angles on jumps. It’s hard to tell where Sora will land when jumping onto things. As platforming is an essential part of boss fights (well at least jumping is) so this can make battles more frustrating.

The battles are very basic. You have no sense of damage you are dealing due to lack of damage numbers on screen or health bars. Yes, I have just rated The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds 4 out of 5 and does that have damage numbers or health indicators? No. However Kingdom Hearts will give you stats, strength, defence, magic etc so I’d expect to see this reflected in battle so I can gauge how effective my attacks are and if I need to switch them up. You have the ability to cast spells or use items but unlike more modern Final Fantasy games the gameplay doesn’t pause or slow down while you navigate through menus so you can end up dying while using healing spells or items.

Between areas or kingdoms you do an R-Type style flying level which seems so out of place in Kingdom Hearts. It’s like an optional minigame you’d expect to find in the Gold Saucer of Final Fantasy VII. However in Kingdom Hearts it's compulsory for the start of the game. I was getting frustrated having to travel back to the starting area to restock and do those bloomin gummi missions all over again. It would also take me a few attempts to do each mission adding to the frustration.

I tried to give this game the benefit of the doubt by googling “Kingdom Hearts games ranked” hoping to see it at the bottom of people’s lists, but nope, it was often near the top of their favourite Kingdom Hearts games. Then I learned about how many Kingdom Hearts games there actually are and how mental, confusing and twisted the story gets. Obviously killing my enthusiasm more to give this game as many chances as I could manage. I even listened to the Cane and Rinse podcast episode on this game to see if their love for the game could help encourage or convince me to like it too. Unfortunately everything they said just supported the reasons why I didn’t like the game.

One day I might give Kingdom Hearts 2 a go out of curiosity but the only thing that could make me play this game again is a ground up remake. The controls are too frustrating, you’re often left not knowing where to go or what to do, the platforming and camera speed are annoying and the story is convoluted.