gamemast15r
This review contains spoilers
Last review of 2022, so I'll finish the year with a game that I played and platinumed at the very beginning of the year. Made by Guerilla Games, Forbidden West is a sequel to the first one and because I'm a PlayStation exclusive whore, I decided why not and pre ordered this even though I felt the other one was average. This one is....a tad bit better though still average. I'll start again with the story.
In this entry of the series, you play as Aloy again after the first game. You're now searching for a backup of GAIA after defeating Hades from the previous game, hoping to use it to restore the Earth. Lance Reddick, who I learned in this game was made Sylens (who I actually remembered his name this time) tells her to go out West to find more answers. You end up finding the corpse of Hades from the previous game's stinger (after going through a valley in the midst of Civil War with your friend Varl), of which you're able to find a backup of GAIA. However, this was interrupted by humans who fled Earth using special tech during the great collapse centuries ago, who also have their own Sobeck clone. From there you find a mountain base where GAIA reunites with other AI and tasks Aloy to merge her with even more AI in certain spots (like Vegas BAYBEEEEEEEEEE as well as San Francisco where you encounter Ted Faro's corpse who looks like something out of Oat's Studios Zygote) to make her whole again all while dealing with the rogue human colony (who is called Far Zenith). You also juggle in between several different tribes and gain new allies while trying to get these pieces of AI. However after trying to trap an AI, the Zeniths kill your buddy Varl and everyone's depressed including his girlfriend from another tribe. However one of the Zeniths, Carrie Anne Moss (aka Trinity from the Matrix) saves her and explains that she used to date the original Sobeck, that she has regrets and that Sylens has been instigating the tribe war and supplying the rebel threat with tech to fight the Zeniths. After defeating the rebel leader, Aloy and her group team up with Sylens to defeat the Zeniths and take down the threat. They manage to do so, avenging Varl's murder while learning of the Plot Hook for the next game: Another rogue AI destroyed the Zenith colony on a different planet, and if I remember correctly activated HADES from Zero Dawn? Don't know if that's true but Carrie Moss dies after trying to force Aloy to join her, GAIA is now whole and they plan to stop Nemesis in Horizon 3.
I'm actually surprised I remember more of the plot and didn't have to copy paste from Wikipedia, though much of it was still hazy and suffered from a lot of issues that the first game did: certain characters are fleshed out and interesting from Varl and Eruend to Sylens. Other characters I don't remember, it's a step up from what happened in the last game but it's still kind of an issue here. From the goofy names I can't remember to characters that are built upon sort of but not really, I'm not sure if it's because I suck at fancy medieval sounding names or if it's just cause the characters weren't interesting but I just didn't remember much from the last game. I remembered a bit more of course; Aloy, Sylens, Varl and Eruend. But others are kind of hit and miss. That's all I can think of right now for story.
The gameplay is more of the same, it still feels good but now you can swim underwater with the Diving Mask and you can use new tools like the Glider and the Pullcaster (with more I don't remember). It's mostly minor improvements, enough to make it noticeable but not enough to make it a huge overhaul and that's fine cause the truth is the gameplay is still the best part of Horizon anyways, though still following that Ubisoftish formula with your tallnecks, your bandit outposts, etc.
It's more of the same but even prettier than the last one, with beautiful landscapes that represent Nevada and California with varied biomes from swamps to desert to snow land. Guerilla as always hits with their graphical presentation and art style, with the soundtrack also fitting with the environments they're putting them in.
To finish off the review, I'll say this. Didn't encounter any glitches other than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Et7X4WwF8&ab_channel=gamemast15r
The game is fine, a bit better on some ends but is overall more of the same. If you loved Zero Dawn I think you'll love Forbidden West and that's fine, I hope for the third It'll be much better but I kind of doubt it and I'm really mixed on how Guerilla is going all in with the Horizon IP but if it makes them happy god bless. I'll probably buy the new DLC when it comes out and try it out just because I'm a completionist but truthfully as a game it's ok. A friend of mine put it best:
"Visually stunning yet entirely uninspired. It’s beautiful, and I love how the world of Horizon looks from a design point of view, but the gameplay is a predictable fanfare of Tomb Raider-isms (both original and reboot). It's a spectacle."
If I were to make a comparison maybe I'd compare it to Avatar, the series that makes billions of dollars but also feels average; though I still hope/think that 100 percent they'll eventually port this to PC especially considering how popular the series is. Last review for 2023 I'll see ya'll next year!
In this entry of the series, you play as Aloy again after the first game. You're now searching for a backup of GAIA after defeating Hades from the previous game, hoping to use it to restore the Earth. Lance Reddick, who I learned in this game was made Sylens (who I actually remembered his name this time) tells her to go out West to find more answers. You end up finding the corpse of Hades from the previous game's stinger (after going through a valley in the midst of Civil War with your friend Varl), of which you're able to find a backup of GAIA. However, this was interrupted by humans who fled Earth using special tech during the great collapse centuries ago, who also have their own Sobeck clone. From there you find a mountain base where GAIA reunites with other AI and tasks Aloy to merge her with even more AI in certain spots (like Vegas BAYBEEEEEEEEEE as well as San Francisco where you encounter Ted Faro's corpse who looks like something out of Oat's Studios Zygote) to make her whole again all while dealing with the rogue human colony (who is called Far Zenith). You also juggle in between several different tribes and gain new allies while trying to get these pieces of AI. However after trying to trap an AI, the Zeniths kill your buddy Varl and everyone's depressed including his girlfriend from another tribe. However one of the Zeniths, Carrie Anne Moss (aka Trinity from the Matrix) saves her and explains that she used to date the original Sobeck, that she has regrets and that Sylens has been instigating the tribe war and supplying the rebel threat with tech to fight the Zeniths. After defeating the rebel leader, Aloy and her group team up with Sylens to defeat the Zeniths and take down the threat. They manage to do so, avenging Varl's murder while learning of the Plot Hook for the next game: Another rogue AI destroyed the Zenith colony on a different planet, and if I remember correctly activated HADES from Zero Dawn? Don't know if that's true but Carrie Moss dies after trying to force Aloy to join her, GAIA is now whole and they plan to stop Nemesis in Horizon 3.
I'm actually surprised I remember more of the plot and didn't have to copy paste from Wikipedia, though much of it was still hazy and suffered from a lot of issues that the first game did: certain characters are fleshed out and interesting from Varl and Eruend to Sylens. Other characters I don't remember, it's a step up from what happened in the last game but it's still kind of an issue here. From the goofy names I can't remember to characters that are built upon sort of but not really, I'm not sure if it's because I suck at fancy medieval sounding names or if it's just cause the characters weren't interesting but I just didn't remember much from the last game. I remembered a bit more of course; Aloy, Sylens, Varl and Eruend. But others are kind of hit and miss. That's all I can think of right now for story.
The gameplay is more of the same, it still feels good but now you can swim underwater with the Diving Mask and you can use new tools like the Glider and the Pullcaster (with more I don't remember). It's mostly minor improvements, enough to make it noticeable but not enough to make it a huge overhaul and that's fine cause the truth is the gameplay is still the best part of Horizon anyways, though still following that Ubisoftish formula with your tallnecks, your bandit outposts, etc.
It's more of the same but even prettier than the last one, with beautiful landscapes that represent Nevada and California with varied biomes from swamps to desert to snow land. Guerilla as always hits with their graphical presentation and art style, with the soundtrack also fitting with the environments they're putting them in.
To finish off the review, I'll say this. Didn't encounter any glitches other than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Et7X4WwF8&ab_channel=gamemast15r
The game is fine, a bit better on some ends but is overall more of the same. If you loved Zero Dawn I think you'll love Forbidden West and that's fine, I hope for the third It'll be much better but I kind of doubt it and I'm really mixed on how Guerilla is going all in with the Horizon IP but if it makes them happy god bless. I'll probably buy the new DLC when it comes out and try it out just because I'm a completionist but truthfully as a game it's ok. A friend of mine put it best:
"Visually stunning yet entirely uninspired. It’s beautiful, and I love how the world of Horizon looks from a design point of view, but the gameplay is a predictable fanfare of Tomb Raider-isms (both original and reboot). It's a spectacle."
If I were to make a comparison maybe I'd compare it to Avatar, the series that makes billions of dollars but also feels average; though I still hope/think that 100 percent they'll eventually port this to PC especially considering how popular the series is. Last review for 2023 I'll see ya'll next year!
2021
This review contains spoilers
Chasing Static is a game by Headware Games, set in rural Wales near the town of Hearth. You play as Chris Selwood, who is called by the old folks home and given his father's diary after his death. This diary tells of his life's work, and in order to confront his past he drives to his old childhood home of Hearth (I think? Unsure tbh). I'm going to go into Spoilers here:
You drive to the Last Stop Cafe, where you meet a waitress named Aneira, who tells you that you made a wrong turn but in exchange for a lift she can give you directions. You agree, make coffee and turn the power back on after it goes off. Freaky s h i t starts happening and you wake up with everything changed. You explore the woods nearby, find a bunker and a disembodied voice named Helen tells you about strange paranormal stuff and that in order to leave you have to contain the nearby sites of which there are three and you're on your way.
You contain the sites before going back to the bunker and going up to the Echo Garden on urging from Helen. Inside you make your way through the facility and downstairs to a special machine where you hook up and you learn some things: Throughout the game, you learn that a meteor crashed into Site C. This meteor seemed to have effected everything strangely, you have a strange connection to the afterlife (Your dad's the head scientist, exploiting you in experiments in order to try to get in contact with his dead wife named...Aneira. That's right, you were talking to your deceased mother early). Other effects include wandering ghosts, strange fungus, and turning one scientist into a psychotic murderer. Helen turned out to be the one nice scientist who saved you and put you in a foster family far away from everyone, being your only friend. You regain your memories and leave with everything going back to normal, that is if this is all actually real and a part or all of it isn't in your head. Endings follow here:
Survivor- Don’t find all collectibles or save ghosts; and you get the normal ending described above.
Foreshadow- If you collect all the notes, echoes (I'll describe soon), and get rid of ghosts it's the same as Survivor except there's a post credits scene of a facility in a snowy area, implying more to come.
Salvation- If you turn on your car 3 times (and don’t get collectibles or ghosts), you drive away only to crash it and wake up in a ditch near the bunker, go through the game and it's the same ending except you hitchhike out.
And Umbrella (cheeky RE reference)- Switch the levers in the final room and it all shuts down and you die by ghosts.
I enjoy the story, it's intriguing and going through the world I just wanted to know more about everything that happened in it, why it happened, what happened? A lot of the plot can be interpreted in different ways and by the end of it all I can say that I'll continue to think about it for a while; the way it tells it's story you can tell it takes a lot from games like Silent Hill and truth be told almost all the way through I felt immersed...except when I didn't. Let me explain.
The Gameplay is basically a "Walking Sim", you walk around, figure out puzzles, and use your ghost detecting device thing to encounter Echoes (visions of past events of which there are 17), read notes (of which there are 9) and contain Sites. Tying into the spoilers, In order to get rid of a ghost at each site you need to get a modified loudspeaker, find the ghost and shoot it. Here's my issue, the walking sim part is great, but if you try for the extra ending it gets tedious. These ghosts are finicky as hell, and if you're exploring you need to be careful cause if you run into them once they're gone forever, necessitating a fresh start. You have to find them (look for three floating green dots that move), shoot them and then they're gone. Even with that in mind, I had a HELL of a time with glitches in this game: certain items and echoes wouldn't spawn sometimes (even if I completed it in the same order) so I had to reload an older save after exiting the game completely and getting back on, I had to restart the story once or twice due to the ghosts (a normal play through may take 2 hours if that). Stuff like that frustrated me and took me out of the loop, If I'm wrong about the glitches feel free to beat me up but it still pissed me off a bit. That being said even though you just walk, solve inventory puzzles (pick up items to use on others), and detect ghosts it's still good and I think that's due to the atmosphere.
This game is creepy as hell, and I love it. From the PS1 style visuals (I'm weak for those), to the unsettling atmosphere and creepy but calm soundtrack, the old sound design when you pick stuff up, the voice acting is spectacular, even the found footage stuff on the main menus, this game does a fantastic job at the atmospheric side. Keep in mind, there are no jump scares so don't expect that kind of game, just walk around and take it all in. I can't express enough how I feel this game presents that stuff immaculately, and truth be told holds the experience up with the story in the end. Once you complete the game you get a New Game (Restless Dreams) mode that's supposedly a visual filter but I didn't really see anything different from my first playthroughs? So who knows what that's about but nice Silent Hill reference.
Overall I recommend this title, I got it as a game from a buddy of mine on sale and on sale it's worth it, just keep in mind that it might be glitchy/frustrating at certain points. I used this guide to help me out with the ending stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2649882944, so in case you need help it's there. I'm also interested in the developer's new game, Hollowbody, which another friend of mine put me on it's kick starter so I'm excited for when that finally comes out.
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headwaregames/hollowbody
Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2123640/Hollowbody/
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
You drive to the Last Stop Cafe, where you meet a waitress named Aneira, who tells you that you made a wrong turn but in exchange for a lift she can give you directions. You agree, make coffee and turn the power back on after it goes off. Freaky s h i t starts happening and you wake up with everything changed. You explore the woods nearby, find a bunker and a disembodied voice named Helen tells you about strange paranormal stuff and that in order to leave you have to contain the nearby sites of which there are three and you're on your way.
You contain the sites before going back to the bunker and going up to the Echo Garden on urging from Helen. Inside you make your way through the facility and downstairs to a special machine where you hook up and you learn some things: Throughout the game, you learn that a meteor crashed into Site C. This meteor seemed to have effected everything strangely, you have a strange connection to the afterlife (Your dad's the head scientist, exploiting you in experiments in order to try to get in contact with his dead wife named...Aneira. That's right, you were talking to your deceased mother early). Other effects include wandering ghosts, strange fungus, and turning one scientist into a psychotic murderer. Helen turned out to be the one nice scientist who saved you and put you in a foster family far away from everyone, being your only friend. You regain your memories and leave with everything going back to normal, that is if this is all actually real and a part or all of it isn't in your head. Endings follow here:
Survivor- Don’t find all collectibles or save ghosts; and you get the normal ending described above.
Foreshadow- If you collect all the notes, echoes (I'll describe soon), and get rid of ghosts it's the same as Survivor except there's a post credits scene of a facility in a snowy area, implying more to come.
Salvation- If you turn on your car 3 times (and don’t get collectibles or ghosts), you drive away only to crash it and wake up in a ditch near the bunker, go through the game and it's the same ending except you hitchhike out.
And Umbrella (cheeky RE reference)- Switch the levers in the final room and it all shuts down and you die by ghosts.
I enjoy the story, it's intriguing and going through the world I just wanted to know more about everything that happened in it, why it happened, what happened? A lot of the plot can be interpreted in different ways and by the end of it all I can say that I'll continue to think about it for a while; the way it tells it's story you can tell it takes a lot from games like Silent Hill and truth be told almost all the way through I felt immersed...except when I didn't. Let me explain.
The Gameplay is basically a "Walking Sim", you walk around, figure out puzzles, and use your ghost detecting device thing to encounter Echoes (visions of past events of which there are 17), read notes (of which there are 9) and contain Sites. Tying into the spoilers, In order to get rid of a ghost at each site you need to get a modified loudspeaker, find the ghost and shoot it. Here's my issue, the walking sim part is great, but if you try for the extra ending it gets tedious. These ghosts are finicky as hell, and if you're exploring you need to be careful cause if you run into them once they're gone forever, necessitating a fresh start. You have to find them (look for three floating green dots that move), shoot them and then they're gone. Even with that in mind, I had a HELL of a time with glitches in this game: certain items and echoes wouldn't spawn sometimes (even if I completed it in the same order) so I had to reload an older save after exiting the game completely and getting back on, I had to restart the story once or twice due to the ghosts (a normal play through may take 2 hours if that). Stuff like that frustrated me and took me out of the loop, If I'm wrong about the glitches feel free to beat me up but it still pissed me off a bit. That being said even though you just walk, solve inventory puzzles (pick up items to use on others), and detect ghosts it's still good and I think that's due to the atmosphere.
This game is creepy as hell, and I love it. From the PS1 style visuals (I'm weak for those), to the unsettling atmosphere and creepy but calm soundtrack, the old sound design when you pick stuff up, the voice acting is spectacular, even the found footage stuff on the main menus, this game does a fantastic job at the atmospheric side. Keep in mind, there are no jump scares so don't expect that kind of game, just walk around and take it all in. I can't express enough how I feel this game presents that stuff immaculately, and truth be told holds the experience up with the story in the end. Once you complete the game you get a New Game (Restless Dreams) mode that's supposedly a visual filter but I didn't really see anything different from my first playthroughs? So who knows what that's about but nice Silent Hill reference.
Overall I recommend this title, I got it as a game from a buddy of mine on sale and on sale it's worth it, just keep in mind that it might be glitchy/frustrating at certain points. I used this guide to help me out with the ending stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2649882944, so in case you need help it's there. I'm also interested in the developer's new game, Hollowbody, which another friend of mine put me on it's kick starter so I'm excited for when that finally comes out.
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headwaregames/hollowbody
Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2123640/Hollowbody/
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2022
This review contains spoilers
TRAFFIC is a short indie game/walking "where the hell do I go simulator" with a story about domestic abuse, kidnapping, and a trade of some sort?. Truth be told, this game was kind of a confusing one, I went in blind and for the most part had no idea what I was doing, and by the end of the game I still have no idea what I did. I don't even know too much of what happened, as the story is kind of muddled and the most in depth plot explanation is that:
"TRAFFIC is about a family living in Wyoming as they traverse through the economic recession of 2008. You play as the single child in a family of three, along with your Mother and Father." Keep in mind that this is something you get from the steam page, otherwise this is what I got for those who care:
"You live in an abusive home, you dad's a piece of s h i t and an old man he had as a guest has set his sights on your family. Your mother dies, your father tries to lock you in the shed out back only to die later on, then you get kidnapped. This is in between paranormal shadow creatures watching you so my guess is dad made a pact with some sort of demon?"
I'm not sure, that's how I interpreted it but I'm sure anyone could interpret it with something more interesting to be honest.
The gameplay is basically another "walking simulator" where you follow through random objectives. I don't hate the game but it does get really vague sometimes, basically looking up a walk through to help along certain points when I get stuck. There was also a bug where I tried to talk to Mom and it wouldn't let me past the first sentence.
It's atmosphere is definitely creepy and as always I'm a sucker for PS1 graphics so I can't hate on the audio visual department.
Pros:
Cheap
Small game
Creepy
PS1 Graphics
Cons:
A big buggy here and there
Vague and confusing
Overall it's not a bad title; it's small, short and cheap at 2.99 US not on sale, so if you want a short horror experience and you have time to kill why not give it some time? I enjoy little romps like this on occasion. Just keep in mind it'll be a bit disturbing, and if someone has a better explanation for the plot feel free to put it out there.
UPDATE: Playing the Halloween Event I didn't know existed until recently, it's an interesting addition, you basically go to the TRAFFIC house, the creepy old man invites you in and you play a weird form of CoD: Zombies. One ending includes walking away, but if you continue on you can buy guns off the wall, open up doors, and fight a boss called the Deep One. Interesting Stuff.
UPDATE 2: The dev has now lowered the price to 0.99, which is an even better deal than before. Also if you want to follow the dev here are some links:
https://laudgames.com/About-Me/
https://www.youtube.com/@Laudplays/featured
https://twitter.com/zzzlaud
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
"TRAFFIC is about a family living in Wyoming as they traverse through the economic recession of 2008. You play as the single child in a family of three, along with your Mother and Father." Keep in mind that this is something you get from the steam page, otherwise this is what I got for those who care:
"You live in an abusive home, you dad's a piece of s h i t and an old man he had as a guest has set his sights on your family. Your mother dies, your father tries to lock you in the shed out back only to die later on, then you get kidnapped. This is in between paranormal shadow creatures watching you so my guess is dad made a pact with some sort of demon?"
I'm not sure, that's how I interpreted it but I'm sure anyone could interpret it with something more interesting to be honest.
The gameplay is basically another "walking simulator" where you follow through random objectives. I don't hate the game but it does get really vague sometimes, basically looking up a walk through to help along certain points when I get stuck. There was also a bug where I tried to talk to Mom and it wouldn't let me past the first sentence.
It's atmosphere is definitely creepy and as always I'm a sucker for PS1 graphics so I can't hate on the audio visual department.
Pros:
Cheap
Small game
Creepy
PS1 Graphics
Cons:
A big buggy here and there
Vague and confusing
Overall it's not a bad title; it's small, short and cheap at 2.99 US not on sale, so if you want a short horror experience and you have time to kill why not give it some time? I enjoy little romps like this on occasion. Just keep in mind it'll be a bit disturbing, and if someone has a better explanation for the plot feel free to put it out there.
UPDATE: Playing the Halloween Event I didn't know existed until recently, it's an interesting addition, you basically go to the TRAFFIC house, the creepy old man invites you in and you play a weird form of CoD: Zombies. One ending includes walking away, but if you continue on you can buy guns off the wall, open up doors, and fight a boss called the Deep One. Interesting Stuff.
UPDATE 2: The dev has now lowered the price to 0.99, which is an even better deal than before. Also if you want to follow the dev here are some links:
https://laudgames.com/About-Me/
https://www.youtube.com/@Laudplays/featured
https://twitter.com/zzzlaud
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2017
This review contains spoilers
Hidden Agenda is a game created by Supermassive Games, known to gamers as the company behind previous hit Until Dawn and future games The Quarry and the Dark Pictures Anthology series (as well as porting the PS3 Version of Killzone 1 but I already reviewed that technically).
Gameplay:
These sort of games are known to me as the "Movie Games", games of which you interact with the game by quick time events on whatever controllers you have. This game is similar to those but with one distinct difference: you use your smartphones. That's right, this is a party phone game exclusive to the Playstation where you play with friends by downloading the Hidden Agenda app on your phone. You dictate the choices in the game by swiping to certain areas on the screen to succeed in certain events (although to get certain outcomes you need to "fail" certain events, mostly shooting at people to be honest); you also choose between two choices on screen for certain situations to determine an outcome and depending on if you're playing coop you can do "takeovers" which you get from getting to quick time events and finding clues first while also trying to get the highest on the leaderboard (at least in the game's Competitive Mode) by guessing other players Hidden Agendas or succeeding in your own (the Hidden Agendas being random objectives dictated by the game that you need to try to pull off using Takeover cards or manipulating the other players in real life). There are two modes: the Competitive Mode where you try to compete against your friends and fulfill your agenda and the regular story mode where you just play to see how everything plays out. This system, best played with friends, can lead to some interesting party dynamics, for example: Imagine drinking crystal head vodka by Dan Ackroyd (available at your local liquor for the low price of 49.99 (buy now LOL)) while intentionally trying to fuck up and choose the worst choices possible for shits and giggles (that was our first run and we actually caught the killer who shot themselves, I'm not even sure how we did it but we did). It can be a very fun party game, but when played by yourself I'll be honest it can be boring as shit. I know this because I went out to platinum the game and by god it got boring quick but that was my fault for going to platinum the game. That being said, the game is mostly good for days when you have friends over and you're bored as shit and you got about two-three hours to go. I almost forgot to mention that you can keep track of story events, characters, clues and such on your phone while playing the game and keep in mind that each decision that you make will lead to potentially different outcomes, or at least somewhat subtly. I say this somewhat subtly because this ties into my next part: Visual and Audio Presentation.
Visual/Audio Presentation:
The game's audio is fine, I don't have any complaints against the game's audio to be honest. The music is fine (the usual thriller music though that intro electronic music is a bop), and the voice actors do well (with the killer being creepy as fuck which fun fact I didn't notice until the second time around how creepy the killer sounded speaking monotone). My main issue is the graphic stuff, specifically the glitches. There were numerous times where models would look fuckin googly eyed while talking to each other, effects like rain would suspend itself in midair above certain characters (look at Detective Tom at the hotel near the end), or how every character looks like they're about to collapse from heat exhaustion with how much sweat they pump out before suddenly disappearing in the next character. Other times like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH6BgBHGlVo&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: His model was waiting out of the way to actually spawn in, I assume this was a programming error or something but I just saw that and was confused)
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EAcaOCmgRA&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: I was going for the good ending, caught the killer and they walked through a car)
Shit like that is wonky, and the stuff in between the choice transitions (like voting for certain decisions will still have the same videos in between to the next choices with some potential slight alterations) will pop in a split second too early and is noticable. My main point of all of this is that while this game is made by Supermassive and looks somewhat decent, you could tell that this was cranked out on a smaller budget with a probable limited amount of time for their Playlink program. What is Playlink? I don't know I guess some sort of Playstation Phone party game app but that's reserved for the last section.
Story:
So I'm mostly going to go over a general plot synopsis and give my opinions because it's a story game and there are so many decisions in this game that it's too broad to cover. You play two characters, jumping back and forth between Officer Becky Marney and District Attorney Felicity Graves. You end up capturing the Trapper serial killer in the prologue with your partner Tom (with dictated choices leading to Tom's death, promotion to Sargent or your partner in Homicide), and the killer Johnathan Finn is sentenced to death via lethal injection. Years later, Johnathan tells of the supposed real killer, one Adam Jones, and wants to repent and help find the real killer as they had made a deal to get back against those that hurt them at the orphanage where they lived as kids; meanwhile Becky faces increasing suspicion of corruption after being accused of mishandling evidence (and later being the Trapper) and you have to navigate your way through the police investigation while trying to find clues to clear yourself.
The plot actually isn't bad, and it was actually a decent murder mystery that caught us by surprise towards the end. It plays it's angles well, nothing groundbreaking but it was enjoyable. Again me and a friend played through it the first time not taking it seriously at all and we somehow found who the killer was AND got him to kill himself. It was enjoyable but once we stopped playing we forgot about the plot, and I only remembered stuff after replaying it later this past week to get the trophies.
Overall:
It's not a bad game, you have a decent murder mystery to play on your phones (with the game playing out on your PS4) while shooting the shit with your buddies. The game is worth a go around or two but otherwise it's average. Playing through it solo will be the most boring experience so don't play it solo is my recommendation. I guess the last thing I wanna leave off on are these two points: the log dates start 2019 but end 2023, that's to get my platinum trophy. You can beat this game in 80 minutes to 2 hours and that's literally it; it's the size of the movie and it's paced well. The last note is that I'm not sure when the Playlink Hidden Agenda app will go away or be shut down by Supermassive or whomever at Sony demands it, but considering the game released on 2017 and now it's 2023 I'm kind of surprised when they decide to shut this app down it's going to be the end (unless they decide to keep it alive by other means) of the game entirely and you won't be able to replay it again. That's the main flaw but also the biggest feature: smartphone play. My recommendation is get it on sale and play it with friends, as otherwise it's an average game.
Final Note: Sorry for the Crystal Head vodka quote, my buddy is yelling at me over my shoulder stupid joke suggestions and I appease my peeps cause I like them lol. Also this game again can only be played via Playstation so keep that in mind.
Gameplay:
These sort of games are known to me as the "Movie Games", games of which you interact with the game by quick time events on whatever controllers you have. This game is similar to those but with one distinct difference: you use your smartphones. That's right, this is a party phone game exclusive to the Playstation where you play with friends by downloading the Hidden Agenda app on your phone. You dictate the choices in the game by swiping to certain areas on the screen to succeed in certain events (although to get certain outcomes you need to "fail" certain events, mostly shooting at people to be honest); you also choose between two choices on screen for certain situations to determine an outcome and depending on if you're playing coop you can do "takeovers" which you get from getting to quick time events and finding clues first while also trying to get the highest on the leaderboard (at least in the game's Competitive Mode) by guessing other players Hidden Agendas or succeeding in your own (the Hidden Agendas being random objectives dictated by the game that you need to try to pull off using Takeover cards or manipulating the other players in real life). There are two modes: the Competitive Mode where you try to compete against your friends and fulfill your agenda and the regular story mode where you just play to see how everything plays out. This system, best played with friends, can lead to some interesting party dynamics, for example: Imagine drinking crystal head vodka by Dan Ackroyd (available at your local liquor for the low price of 49.99 (buy now LOL)) while intentionally trying to fuck up and choose the worst choices possible for shits and giggles (that was our first run and we actually caught the killer who shot themselves, I'm not even sure how we did it but we did). It can be a very fun party game, but when played by yourself I'll be honest it can be boring as shit. I know this because I went out to platinum the game and by god it got boring quick but that was my fault for going to platinum the game. That being said, the game is mostly good for days when you have friends over and you're bored as shit and you got about two-three hours to go. I almost forgot to mention that you can keep track of story events, characters, clues and such on your phone while playing the game and keep in mind that each decision that you make will lead to potentially different outcomes, or at least somewhat subtly. I say this somewhat subtly because this ties into my next part: Visual and Audio Presentation.
Visual/Audio Presentation:
The game's audio is fine, I don't have any complaints against the game's audio to be honest. The music is fine (the usual thriller music though that intro electronic music is a bop), and the voice actors do well (with the killer being creepy as fuck which fun fact I didn't notice until the second time around how creepy the killer sounded speaking monotone). My main issue is the graphic stuff, specifically the glitches. There were numerous times where models would look fuckin googly eyed while talking to each other, effects like rain would suspend itself in midair above certain characters (look at Detective Tom at the hotel near the end), or how every character looks like they're about to collapse from heat exhaustion with how much sweat they pump out before suddenly disappearing in the next character. Other times like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH6BgBHGlVo&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: His model was waiting out of the way to actually spawn in, I assume this was a programming error or something but I just saw that and was confused)
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EAcaOCmgRA&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: I was going for the good ending, caught the killer and they walked through a car)
Shit like that is wonky, and the stuff in between the choice transitions (like voting for certain decisions will still have the same videos in between to the next choices with some potential slight alterations) will pop in a split second too early and is noticable. My main point of all of this is that while this game is made by Supermassive and looks somewhat decent, you could tell that this was cranked out on a smaller budget with a probable limited amount of time for their Playlink program. What is Playlink? I don't know I guess some sort of Playstation Phone party game app but that's reserved for the last section.
Story:
So I'm mostly going to go over a general plot synopsis and give my opinions because it's a story game and there are so many decisions in this game that it's too broad to cover. You play two characters, jumping back and forth between Officer Becky Marney and District Attorney Felicity Graves. You end up capturing the Trapper serial killer in the prologue with your partner Tom (with dictated choices leading to Tom's death, promotion to Sargent or your partner in Homicide), and the killer Johnathan Finn is sentenced to death via lethal injection. Years later, Johnathan tells of the supposed real killer, one Adam Jones, and wants to repent and help find the real killer as they had made a deal to get back against those that hurt them at the orphanage where they lived as kids; meanwhile Becky faces increasing suspicion of corruption after being accused of mishandling evidence (and later being the Trapper) and you have to navigate your way through the police investigation while trying to find clues to clear yourself.
The plot actually isn't bad, and it was actually a decent murder mystery that caught us by surprise towards the end. It plays it's angles well, nothing groundbreaking but it was enjoyable. Again me and a friend played through it the first time not taking it seriously at all and we somehow found who the killer was AND got him to kill himself. It was enjoyable but once we stopped playing we forgot about the plot, and I only remembered stuff after replaying it later this past week to get the trophies.
Overall:
It's not a bad game, you have a decent murder mystery to play on your phones (with the game playing out on your PS4) while shooting the shit with your buddies. The game is worth a go around or two but otherwise it's average. Playing through it solo will be the most boring experience so don't play it solo is my recommendation. I guess the last thing I wanna leave off on are these two points: the log dates start 2019 but end 2023, that's to get my platinum trophy. You can beat this game in 80 minutes to 2 hours and that's literally it; it's the size of the movie and it's paced well. The last note is that I'm not sure when the Playlink Hidden Agenda app will go away or be shut down by Supermassive or whomever at Sony demands it, but considering the game released on 2017 and now it's 2023 I'm kind of surprised when they decide to shut this app down it's going to be the end (unless they decide to keep it alive by other means) of the game entirely and you won't be able to replay it again. That's the main flaw but also the biggest feature: smartphone play. My recommendation is get it on sale and play it with friends, as otherwise it's an average game.
Final Note: Sorry for the Crystal Head vodka quote, my buddy is yelling at me over my shoulder stupid joke suggestions and I appease my peeps cause I like them lol. Also this game again can only be played via Playstation so keep that in mind.
Uhhhh this is a uh.....it's a different mod. I'm calling it a mod because it was originally supposed to be a mod until it was made a game. I'm just so indifferent that I'll just give it brief thing I guess.
Pros:
I liked the idea of the story
Setting is cool
It's a short game if you wanted to just have a small game to play for a day
Soundtrack is WAY better than this game deserves
Enemy design is cool I guess
Cons:
Stealth Segments suck
Depending on who you are it's short as hell, like 4-5 hours IF you take your slow a ss time
"WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN??!"
I don't know, I'm rather indifferent to this mod, it's not particularly bad and I'm trying to stay positive here but this isn't my style of game for me. I'm not into the Dear Esther type thing. I'd say if it's cheap and you're bored one day give it a go. But you could get WAY more satisfaction on everything by just watching a playthrough or going to the Amnesia Wiki.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Pros:
I liked the idea of the story
Setting is cool
It's a short game if you wanted to just have a small game to play for a day
Soundtrack is WAY better than this game deserves
Enemy design is cool I guess
Cons:
Stealth Segments suck
Depending on who you are it's short as hell, like 4-5 hours IF you take your slow a ss time
"WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN??!"
I don't know, I'm rather indifferent to this mod, it's not particularly bad and I'm trying to stay positive here but this isn't my style of game for me. I'm not into the Dear Esther type thing. I'd say if it's cheap and you're bored one day give it a go. But you could get WAY more satisfaction on everything by just watching a playthrough or going to the Amnesia Wiki.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
The Sopranos: Road to Respect is a game created by 7 Studios which takes place during the fifth and sixth seasons of the show.
Gonna go into plot now: You play as dead mobster Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero's illegitimate son Joey LaRocca; you run into mob boss Tony Soprano one day robbing an old lady of her purse right in front of Satriale's and Tony is pissed throwing you around before offering you a place in the family. The game is sort of loosely built plot wise so I'm gonna post the Wikipedia article here and kind of go over it piece by piece: "During his first job, he accidentally kills Mario Buscetta, the nephew of Angelo Buscetta." With context, Mario Buscetta is a mob guy who works for his Uncle Angelo in Philadelphia, and while doing bouncer duty at the Bada Bing you encounter this guy trying to talk to Tony before harassing Paulie in the men's bathroom. Paulie gets tired of him and commands Joey to beat the shit out of him, which he does but beats him so badly that he thinks he kills him. Paulie demands you get rid of him by dumping him off at the docks, and so you grab your stupid douche friend Reggie to join you. After fighting your way through the docks, you find he's still alive, THEN shoot him while finding a watch "From Angie" before dumping his body in the harbor. Having no clue who Angelo is, Reggie just thinks it's from his girlfriend and steals it while Joey just says fuck it. You run get Reggie out of a nearby casino while he's drunk (going through floors trying to find this guy) before finally pulling him out. You also help out Christopher with getting protection money from a gym ran by Saul, a pervert who films stuff in the women's locker room. Some stuff that I forget happens, and they find out that Reggie was seen wearing Mario's watch. With the fact that Reggie could be tracked down and what happened to Mario would come to light, he's made a liability and you're commanded to kill him.
"Angie sends a hitman to kill Joey, but Joey kills the hitman during a rooftop chase." You're told to track him down to his apartment, you attempt to kill him but you fail cause of a distraction, beat up a bunch of dudes and then try to kill him before killing another mob guy (named Tuzzio who I didn't remember) from Angelo's family who tracked down Reggie to kill him.
"A few days later, Tony's son A.J. has a drug deal go bad on him; his partner wasted the drug money, prompting the dealers to kill his partner and steal his dad's car." This is basically verbatim, and during one of the other subplots AJ asks you in the bathroom in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah to help out because he knows his father would flip shit.
"Joey retrieves the car and kills one of the dealers, only to have the car stolen by Angie's men. While Joey is fearful the theft of Tony's truck may get him whacked, Tony says that A.J. admitted responsibility. Tony has Joey retaliate for the theft by burning down one of Angie's businesses." This is also true, though Tony is also giving you a stern warning about stuff too, and this is also in between doing more favors for the other mob guys, collecting money from Lawyer Neil (who is a frequent user of the Bada Bing and borrowed money to do something? I think) while also taking Tuzzio off of life support before he can blame you for shooting him on the rooftops.
"A few days later, Angie returns Tony's car, completely wrecked, and containing Joey's girlfriend, Trichelle, beaten and raped." This is also verbatim, but Trichelle is Joey's girlfriend in the game, an old friend of his from his younger years (though he does have an on and off flirtatious thing with one stripper) whom he ran into and established a relationship with. Also the plot device of a sexual assault and the whole "Girlfriend gets attacked" thing is really....contrived and completely unnecessary and honestly feels derivative. You have a couple scenes here and there with them both but nothing really that memorable to build her to be more than just a tool to drive the plot forward.
"Joey vows vengeance. At the docks, he finds Angie and throws him off of his yacht, killing him." That is also true, but again this is in between fifteen different subplots involving the Gym where you work with Christopher and others I can't remember, and the game ends with the ghost of Big Pussy telling you he's proud and you become a made member of the family. I'm not gonna look up the rest of the plot because not only are there so many side bits and character moments (like multiple moments where Joey talks to the ghost of his dead dad whose like "Hey Joey I was a fuckin rat, fuck it I died but I love my buddies so be nice to em you fuckin mook") but also because I'm not that bothered but if it's wanted later on I'll edit this review, and also on top of that it both doesn't matter in the main series/overall canon anyways. So truth be told, you get what amounts to an episode or two worth of material that's non canon if they only focused on the mafia side of the thing and little on the actual family side other than AJ. If you're wondering where Carmela and Meadow Soprano are they're not here, and if you're wondering where Joey is in the main series, he's not there. In fact, if I remember correctly I remember reading that David Chase wrote it specifically in mind for that. I'm gonna plug the video for behind the scenes on the game right below, sorry for the choppiness, maybe one day I'll re-record it for later and some of it will be cited later. To finish off my feelings on it, it does feel like it was written to be a Sopranos episode, and I love the main series so it's fucking great writing wise and plot wise it's fine even if it's just sort of a side note.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-cVUIHW5zo&t=772s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff
Gameplay is where I'm gonna go next and oh boy is it fucking garbage, I've played this a couple of times over my years and I'd safely say I'd rather be shot in a creek point blank multiple times, smothered with a pillow, burned alive in a car bomb, garroted, have my shit kicked in, get called a Dickfart and laughed at, stabbed over a horse, and finally get ran over by a motherfucking truck than ever play through the combat again. It is the most shallow and repetitive shit, and there were multiple times where I wanted to smash my fucking skull into a curb and stomp myself because honestly that's what it felt like playing this game. For the most part you can punch people, hit em with objects, grab them and use environmental takedowns but it can also just be a slog to get through. There were a couple of times, like Neil the lawyer's office at the end of the game where these dudes just somehow felt invincible and kept wailing on me nonstop and it was the spongiest shit and with how the fighting in the game moves it was a repetition of "I'll grab you, you throw me off, you grab me, I punch you some more" rinse and repeat and it was just frustrating as fuck to deal with. I'll also tell you that you get a pistol in this game, but you don't ever use it except for certain situations because if you use it in public once you get this cutscene where Tony and them shoot you off of a boat and you're like "Come on Tone please I'm sorry don't shoot me" and while it looks cool it's also frustrating I can't use anything but this lousy ass combat system (though the pistol for the most part does fuck all damage and sounds like shit). After you use this lousy ass combat system, what you do is you loot money off of people's bodies (and also in random spots in the area), you'll end up using this money for two things: Pay tribute to earn respect back after losing some respect from shooting off bullets or due to certain story mandates or to earn concept art and some video trailers or whatever, other than that it's useless. You can also get this money by running into little sidequests during your missions, mostly revolving around talking to certain people and for 95 percent of it ends in a fist fight where you loot money off of them or interact with them in a dialogue tree thing (which isn't complex and doesn't usually end in anything different it's just hit left on D-Pad for friendly, nothing for neutral or right on D-Pad for aggressive and it happens throughout the game). I promise you I'm making it sound deeper than it actually is, it's really a simplistically mediocre game. I'm trying to think of other things off the top of my head but other than being able to play Poker against the guys (of which is probably the only good part gameplay wise) and get really bad virtual lap dances you don't really have much in the way of good in this department. Onto Audio/Visual.
Audio/Visual is good when the main cast is involved but it's a strange mix. Tony looks like a fuckin teletubby but his voice acting is immaculate, same with Paulie (the funniest guy here) and some others. Silvio and Christopher look decent, as does main character Joey (which fun fact is voiced by Christian Maelan, the same guy who David Chase originally wanted for Christopher but brought him into this game instead). Other characters audio wise sound ok but can suffer from some dialogue that isn't the best in their department, and you can tell there's a dip in quality compared to when the actors actually do it. Like it's some sort of strange hodgepodge then when it works it's believable and when it's not you can sit back and sort of laugh at how stupid someone looks or sounds. The soundtrack consists of "Woke Up this Morning" by Alabama 3 of course but there are also tracks from the Bada Bing involving "Catchy Sounding Electro song" and "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Motley Crue along other licensed tracks and they do the job. It's just the mixture is so jarring sometimes that I don't really know what to think, but it could also be that my memory has it tainting this game so if I'm wrong about the sound design I'll gladly raise the rating to a 2.5 but otherwise it's sticking to a fucking 2 cause it's frustrating.
Overall:
The game sucks, that's obvious. I'll tell you why I played this game: first time I was young and in a "gangster/mafia game" phase and this was one of many games I've played before giving it away to a friend who then lost it. The second time I picked it up was because I became a HUGE Sopranos fan, as well as an Exclusive games collector and some friends wanted me to stream the game on Discord one day. Funny note about the game, it's only PS2 exclusive because the other ports were cancelled (like in the video above, the graphics are high enough to look like it could be an Xbox 360 Port at certain points). If you're a huge Sopranos fan and you want to play it out of curiosity so be it, just know you'll be suffering through a four to five hour game that'll feel longer than it needs to be out of the sheer combat alone. And it's not gonna be an open world crime game either so don't get excited. If there's anything else I think of I'll edit the review and put it out there but for the love of god do yourself a favor and spare yourself the torture.
Gonna go into plot now: You play as dead mobster Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero's illegitimate son Joey LaRocca; you run into mob boss Tony Soprano one day robbing an old lady of her purse right in front of Satriale's and Tony is pissed throwing you around before offering you a place in the family. The game is sort of loosely built plot wise so I'm gonna post the Wikipedia article here and kind of go over it piece by piece: "During his first job, he accidentally kills Mario Buscetta, the nephew of Angelo Buscetta." With context, Mario Buscetta is a mob guy who works for his Uncle Angelo in Philadelphia, and while doing bouncer duty at the Bada Bing you encounter this guy trying to talk to Tony before harassing Paulie in the men's bathroom. Paulie gets tired of him and commands Joey to beat the shit out of him, which he does but beats him so badly that he thinks he kills him. Paulie demands you get rid of him by dumping him off at the docks, and so you grab your stupid douche friend Reggie to join you. After fighting your way through the docks, you find he's still alive, THEN shoot him while finding a watch "From Angie" before dumping his body in the harbor. Having no clue who Angelo is, Reggie just thinks it's from his girlfriend and steals it while Joey just says fuck it. You run get Reggie out of a nearby casino while he's drunk (going through floors trying to find this guy) before finally pulling him out. You also help out Christopher with getting protection money from a gym ran by Saul, a pervert who films stuff in the women's locker room. Some stuff that I forget happens, and they find out that Reggie was seen wearing Mario's watch. With the fact that Reggie could be tracked down and what happened to Mario would come to light, he's made a liability and you're commanded to kill him.
"Angie sends a hitman to kill Joey, but Joey kills the hitman during a rooftop chase." You're told to track him down to his apartment, you attempt to kill him but you fail cause of a distraction, beat up a bunch of dudes and then try to kill him before killing another mob guy (named Tuzzio who I didn't remember) from Angelo's family who tracked down Reggie to kill him.
"A few days later, Tony's son A.J. has a drug deal go bad on him; his partner wasted the drug money, prompting the dealers to kill his partner and steal his dad's car." This is basically verbatim, and during one of the other subplots AJ asks you in the bathroom in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah to help out because he knows his father would flip shit.
"Joey retrieves the car and kills one of the dealers, only to have the car stolen by Angie's men. While Joey is fearful the theft of Tony's truck may get him whacked, Tony says that A.J. admitted responsibility. Tony has Joey retaliate for the theft by burning down one of Angie's businesses." This is also true, though Tony is also giving you a stern warning about stuff too, and this is also in between doing more favors for the other mob guys, collecting money from Lawyer Neil (who is a frequent user of the Bada Bing and borrowed money to do something? I think) while also taking Tuzzio off of life support before he can blame you for shooting him on the rooftops.
"A few days later, Angie returns Tony's car, completely wrecked, and containing Joey's girlfriend, Trichelle, beaten and raped." This is also verbatim, but Trichelle is Joey's girlfriend in the game, an old friend of his from his younger years (though he does have an on and off flirtatious thing with one stripper) whom he ran into and established a relationship with. Also the plot device of a sexual assault and the whole "Girlfriend gets attacked" thing is really....contrived and completely unnecessary and honestly feels derivative. You have a couple scenes here and there with them both but nothing really that memorable to build her to be more than just a tool to drive the plot forward.
"Joey vows vengeance. At the docks, he finds Angie and throws him off of his yacht, killing him." That is also true, but again this is in between fifteen different subplots involving the Gym where you work with Christopher and others I can't remember, and the game ends with the ghost of Big Pussy telling you he's proud and you become a made member of the family. I'm not gonna look up the rest of the plot because not only are there so many side bits and character moments (like multiple moments where Joey talks to the ghost of his dead dad whose like "Hey Joey I was a fuckin rat, fuck it I died but I love my buddies so be nice to em you fuckin mook") but also because I'm not that bothered but if it's wanted later on I'll edit this review, and also on top of that it both doesn't matter in the main series/overall canon anyways. So truth be told, you get what amounts to an episode or two worth of material that's non canon if they only focused on the mafia side of the thing and little on the actual family side other than AJ. If you're wondering where Carmela and Meadow Soprano are they're not here, and if you're wondering where Joey is in the main series, he's not there. In fact, if I remember correctly I remember reading that David Chase wrote it specifically in mind for that. I'm gonna plug the video for behind the scenes on the game right below, sorry for the choppiness, maybe one day I'll re-record it for later and some of it will be cited later. To finish off my feelings on it, it does feel like it was written to be a Sopranos episode, and I love the main series so it's fucking great writing wise and plot wise it's fine even if it's just sort of a side note.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-cVUIHW5zo&t=772s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff
Gameplay is where I'm gonna go next and oh boy is it fucking garbage, I've played this a couple of times over my years and I'd safely say I'd rather be shot in a creek point blank multiple times, smothered with a pillow, burned alive in a car bomb, garroted, have my shit kicked in, get called a Dickfart and laughed at, stabbed over a horse, and finally get ran over by a motherfucking truck than ever play through the combat again. It is the most shallow and repetitive shit, and there were multiple times where I wanted to smash my fucking skull into a curb and stomp myself because honestly that's what it felt like playing this game. For the most part you can punch people, hit em with objects, grab them and use environmental takedowns but it can also just be a slog to get through. There were a couple of times, like Neil the lawyer's office at the end of the game where these dudes just somehow felt invincible and kept wailing on me nonstop and it was the spongiest shit and with how the fighting in the game moves it was a repetition of "I'll grab you, you throw me off, you grab me, I punch you some more" rinse and repeat and it was just frustrating as fuck to deal with. I'll also tell you that you get a pistol in this game, but you don't ever use it except for certain situations because if you use it in public once you get this cutscene where Tony and them shoot you off of a boat and you're like "Come on Tone please I'm sorry don't shoot me" and while it looks cool it's also frustrating I can't use anything but this lousy ass combat system (though the pistol for the most part does fuck all damage and sounds like shit). After you use this lousy ass combat system, what you do is you loot money off of people's bodies (and also in random spots in the area), you'll end up using this money for two things: Pay tribute to earn respect back after losing some respect from shooting off bullets or due to certain story mandates or to earn concept art and some video trailers or whatever, other than that it's useless. You can also get this money by running into little sidequests during your missions, mostly revolving around talking to certain people and for 95 percent of it ends in a fist fight where you loot money off of them or interact with them in a dialogue tree thing (which isn't complex and doesn't usually end in anything different it's just hit left on D-Pad for friendly, nothing for neutral or right on D-Pad for aggressive and it happens throughout the game). I promise you I'm making it sound deeper than it actually is, it's really a simplistically mediocre game. I'm trying to think of other things off the top of my head but other than being able to play Poker against the guys (of which is probably the only good part gameplay wise) and get really bad virtual lap dances you don't really have much in the way of good in this department. Onto Audio/Visual.
Audio/Visual is good when the main cast is involved but it's a strange mix. Tony looks like a fuckin teletubby but his voice acting is immaculate, same with Paulie (the funniest guy here) and some others. Silvio and Christopher look decent, as does main character Joey (which fun fact is voiced by Christian Maelan, the same guy who David Chase originally wanted for Christopher but brought him into this game instead). Other characters audio wise sound ok but can suffer from some dialogue that isn't the best in their department, and you can tell there's a dip in quality compared to when the actors actually do it. Like it's some sort of strange hodgepodge then when it works it's believable and when it's not you can sit back and sort of laugh at how stupid someone looks or sounds. The soundtrack consists of "Woke Up this Morning" by Alabama 3 of course but there are also tracks from the Bada Bing involving "Catchy Sounding Electro song" and "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Motley Crue along other licensed tracks and they do the job. It's just the mixture is so jarring sometimes that I don't really know what to think, but it could also be that my memory has it tainting this game so if I'm wrong about the sound design I'll gladly raise the rating to a 2.5 but otherwise it's sticking to a fucking 2 cause it's frustrating.
Overall:
The game sucks, that's obvious. I'll tell you why I played this game: first time I was young and in a "gangster/mafia game" phase and this was one of many games I've played before giving it away to a friend who then lost it. The second time I picked it up was because I became a HUGE Sopranos fan, as well as an Exclusive games collector and some friends wanted me to stream the game on Discord one day. Funny note about the game, it's only PS2 exclusive because the other ports were cancelled (like in the video above, the graphics are high enough to look like it could be an Xbox 360 Port at certain points). If you're a huge Sopranos fan and you want to play it out of curiosity so be it, just know you'll be suffering through a four to five hour game that'll feel longer than it needs to be out of the sheer combat alone. And it's not gonna be an open world crime game either so don't get excited. If there's anything else I think of I'll edit the review and put it out there but for the love of god do yourself a favor and spare yourself the torture.
This review contains spoilers
The Night of the Scissors is a VERY short game by a guy named Tomas Esconjaureguy, I don't know much about this guy other than I saw this game randomly in my recommendations and thought "WOW, this s h i t looked creepy and it's another PS1 aesthetic game and I'm weak for those so let's wishlist it and see what it's like". My review is, it's good.
The story is a small one, it revolves around two burglars named Kevin and Adam who break into an abandoned post office so they can rob the place in order to score money for drugs or something among those lines. Hilariously putting a log of all things underneath the shutter, you go inside and attempt to rob the place when the shutters close behind you and you're trapped. Not knowing what happened to your buddy, your go out of your way to search for the way out all while avoiding this really quiet killer maniac guy with scissors. Not much plot wise is revealed about the killer other than three people have gone missing, as well as the fact he likes to feed the soda machines? Also he killed your buddy and hung him outside and when you escape you encounter police sirens with the notion that you might just be arrested for the killer's crimes, what a great downer note to end on.
The gameplay is basically the usual survival horror affair, and truth be told this game literally isn't that long. You find clues in your environment to figure out the next step while also trying to avoid the killer. You can avoid the killer by basically running and hiding inside of lockers (just make sure he doesn't see you enter them) as you have no way to defend yourself. What I like about this game's atmosphere is honestly the fact that there is no jump scare music (for the most part), no real loud musical cue to detect the killer around your area other than the static getting hazier, footsteps and the snips of the scissors themselves. Luckily if you die you just restart at the nearest checkpoint with all your progress intact so no worries about losing anything. To me, this made for an excellent horror atmosphere, though one where I died multiple times. Once you figure out the steps though you can speedrun it in less than five minutes and truth be told I literally got most of the achievements in 40 minutes. One last thing I want to add is that there are two camera angles: there's the traditional fixed camera angle and the 3rd person camera angle; the 3rd person camera angle isn't bad but mixed in with the tank controls it can be kind of wobbly and certain areas can be less visible (example: After falling down a hole, you have to walk your way through a trap of hanging scissors or else the alarm will sound off and the killer will burst out of a door and chase you down).
The atmosphere is immaculate as always and I'm always weak for the PS1 aesthetic because yeah I like the PS1 idk what to tell you. There's not much in the way of actual music much which to me enhances the atmosphere other than maybe a stinger or two, and walking through this abandoned post office is creepy as hell. Nothing but positives on this end.
Overall, great game, very short but with the full price of 2.99 honestly you can't really go wrong if you're looking for a short game to kill an hour or so with. Haven't played Cannibal Abduction but I plan on doing so soon.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The story is a small one, it revolves around two burglars named Kevin and Adam who break into an abandoned post office so they can rob the place in order to score money for drugs or something among those lines. Hilariously putting a log of all things underneath the shutter, you go inside and attempt to rob the place when the shutters close behind you and you're trapped. Not knowing what happened to your buddy, your go out of your way to search for the way out all while avoiding this really quiet killer maniac guy with scissors. Not much plot wise is revealed about the killer other than three people have gone missing, as well as the fact he likes to feed the soda machines? Also he killed your buddy and hung him outside and when you escape you encounter police sirens with the notion that you might just be arrested for the killer's crimes, what a great downer note to end on.
The gameplay is basically the usual survival horror affair, and truth be told this game literally isn't that long. You find clues in your environment to figure out the next step while also trying to avoid the killer. You can avoid the killer by basically running and hiding inside of lockers (just make sure he doesn't see you enter them) as you have no way to defend yourself. What I like about this game's atmosphere is honestly the fact that there is no jump scare music (for the most part), no real loud musical cue to detect the killer around your area other than the static getting hazier, footsteps and the snips of the scissors themselves. Luckily if you die you just restart at the nearest checkpoint with all your progress intact so no worries about losing anything. To me, this made for an excellent horror atmosphere, though one where I died multiple times. Once you figure out the steps though you can speedrun it in less than five minutes and truth be told I literally got most of the achievements in 40 minutes. One last thing I want to add is that there are two camera angles: there's the traditional fixed camera angle and the 3rd person camera angle; the 3rd person camera angle isn't bad but mixed in with the tank controls it can be kind of wobbly and certain areas can be less visible (example: After falling down a hole, you have to walk your way through a trap of hanging scissors or else the alarm will sound off and the killer will burst out of a door and chase you down).
The atmosphere is immaculate as always and I'm always weak for the PS1 aesthetic because yeah I like the PS1 idk what to tell you. There's not much in the way of actual music much which to me enhances the atmosphere other than maybe a stinger or two, and walking through this abandoned post office is creepy as hell. Nothing but positives on this end.
Overall, great game, very short but with the full price of 2.99 honestly you can't really go wrong if you're looking for a short game to kill an hour or so with. Haven't played Cannibal Abduction but I plan on doing so soon.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Play With Me: Escape Room is a point and click puzzle game about getting into a car crash with your wife after going out to celebrate your birthday and waking up in a room chained up, and you have to go through numerous different puzzle rooms in order to escape this death trap. See, you were kidnapped by the "Illusion Killer', and you play as Robert Hawk, a reporter, who has been reporting on the killer and his traps for a long time. That's the basic gist of the story, you basically solve difficult puzzles, read clues about previous victims (who were kidnapped because they weren't persecuted for their crimes as the justice system blows donkey d i c k. You also have a poison serum thing in your veins, and you have to go through in a time limit. This is where I'm gonna go into gameplay because WOW do I have issues with this game.
The gameplay is basically a puzzle room game, you go through about twenty different rooms trying to figure out solutions to get the puzzle for the keypad to get into the next puzzle room. Certain rooms are easy enough, with puzzles telegraphed in a way that makes sense; but that's CERTAIN ROOMS. Most of them I have no fu c k ing clue what the hell I'm doing, and even the clues they give are confusing as hell. If this is what it's like being in a trap from the Jigsaw Killer, I'm f u c ked if I ever get caught because I can't solve puzzles to save my life. Now you're thinking, why give the game a bad review if you suck at puzzles? Well I do suck at puzzles, but at the very least, I'd like to feel like I have a sporting chance and that I feel dumb as hell when the solution is actually found. But I don't, because some of these things are so convoluted, I don't even understand how to get it in the first place. So, there's a prison cell room near the end of the game, in this room you have to knock out some blocks with a hammer right? Cool, behind it is a bunch of random numbers. This game is full of trial and error so what you'll end up doing is that you'll be trying numbers in all sorts of different numbers in a bunch of different combinations. Here's another issue, sometimes the graphical render is so blurry you can't understand what the hell they're saying. What I ended up doing was in certain rooms, I just decided to give up and reveal the code via spoiler so I could get out of there. Some codes they give we're kinda iffy like they'd have for example: 875Cat right? But the won't register, so it's basically an 8 you have to type. And segwaying into another thing, you'll find computers that give secret info I guess according to a guide (which I used often because what the hell?), you're supposed to break out text command prompts but I could never really understand what I'm doing because I don't do text command prompts? See a part of me feels stupid for writing this all up, but the way a friend of mine put it, the puzzles should at least should be solvable and not overly convoluted with random s h i t you can't understand unless you're using a guide. Again, I suppose the puzzles in this game would make the Jigsaw Killer proud, but by the end I was just using a guide full force because I had no clue what I was doing. Also you're doing this in a time limit, so you'll need to race against the clock, pick up syringes to get your health back, and try not to die in certain rooms (whether it's wiggling your flashlight, or clicking on certain things before you can get certain items). One mixed thing I will say is that it does some meta stuff well, like for example: one room you have to lower the music volume in the settings all the way to open a door. BUT HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? One thing towards the end had me blow a candle out by literally blowing into the mic, the last example involves, get this, getting the secret ending by going to a hidden website hidden inside of one of the game's promotional trailers which leads to an story bit I'll discuss next. Other things I'll mention are you have to replace batteries for your phone and flashlight sometimes, puzzle solutions ARE randomized, you have to use your in game phone to take calls or texts to actually solve puzzles, and you can play goofy little games or change your ringtone (Ringtone 3 was the goofiest and gave me and my friend watching a chuckle). You can also collect teddy bears, "Signs of Illusion", and confession notes as well as newspapers and other code pages. So I may suck at puzzles, but I felt this game did it in a way that was a bit too much. Gonna go into the plot here:
The story is again about Robert Hawk, a reporter, and your wife Sara, a lawyer, going out on Robert's birthday to do stuff. You get into a crash and you wake up in chains and have to escape. You also learn about the Illusion Killer and how they target criminals who got away with their crimes which is cool, I like the SAW movies so I'm cool with this. In two separate instances you have to solve puzzles under a timer in order to save both Sara and Patrick offscreen for the best endings. Like the puzzles, there's a variation for each one living and dying as well as if you unlock the secret room in Room 10. If you unlock the secret room it's figured that you and Patrick are up to something fishy (which we kinda already guessed). Go through the rest, and you get locked in a coffin. Gonna throw some spoilers here: : If you save both Patrick and Sara, it turns out Sara is the Illusion Killer. That's right, one of THREE characters is the Illusion Killer, and what a shock we predicted it in the third room. There was also another prediction that Patrick and Robert are the killers, and if you got the secret ending, they were both trying to frame Sara for the murders so they can "continue their work" and will continue it again. What do I think of this story? About average really, and the twists are predictable because they only really introduced three characters anyways, so who else we're we supposed to think it is? So let me get this straight. If Sara was the killer, and they were trying to frame her, did they trap themselves there? Did she just decide to play killer to go along with this? Why did she dress up and do all this stuff if you were framing her? I feel like it would be more realistic for the police to just shoot her (like they do anyways in real life) and her yelling bout her innocence then give some sort of speech explaining why she was the killer when she wasn't? I don't know, maybe I'm looking too far into this but it feels like a plot hole. Basically, it's an average story which atmospherically it gels great with SAW, but without an interesting twist or at least a bonkers one. Basically, think the last Saw movie in terms of predictability and you got it.
Graphical Presentation/Atmosphere is decent, the atmosphere is really creepy and unnerving, you'll have bugs crawling across your screen and above your clicker making you think it's actually your PC when it's not which is cool. It's a dark, oppressive, and hopeless feeling which I like. Graphics are the usual hidden object artwork style which I like and think it's charming. The music is unnerving, and it works for the game as it didn't help us with our panic levels much. The one downside I could give is that you can tell that the production of the game is in a different country, with Sara and Patrick sounding completely different then Robert, who sounds like an American and is emotive; of course I understand that budget constraints and such can lead to dips in acting quality and I know whatever country these guys are from it might sound odd emoting in English, not me dissing on them it's actually of humorous; but it's noticeable.
Overall, I would only recommend this game for people with A LOT of patience, and the ability to think WAY outside the box. Otherwise skip it. The store page said: Slowly go mad thanks to a realistic system determining the mental state of your character. It worked.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The gameplay is basically a puzzle room game, you go through about twenty different rooms trying to figure out solutions to get the puzzle for the keypad to get into the next puzzle room. Certain rooms are easy enough, with puzzles telegraphed in a way that makes sense; but that's CERTAIN ROOMS. Most of them I have no fu c k ing clue what the hell I'm doing, and even the clues they give are confusing as hell. If this is what it's like being in a trap from the Jigsaw Killer, I'm f u c ked if I ever get caught because I can't solve puzzles to save my life. Now you're thinking, why give the game a bad review if you suck at puzzles? Well I do suck at puzzles, but at the very least, I'd like to feel like I have a sporting chance and that I feel dumb as hell when the solution is actually found. But I don't, because some of these things are so convoluted, I don't even understand how to get it in the first place. So, there's a prison cell room near the end of the game, in this room you have to knock out some blocks with a hammer right? Cool, behind it is a bunch of random numbers. This game is full of trial and error so what you'll end up doing is that you'll be trying numbers in all sorts of different numbers in a bunch of different combinations. Here's another issue, sometimes the graphical render is so blurry you can't understand what the hell they're saying. What I ended up doing was in certain rooms, I just decided to give up and reveal the code via spoiler so I could get out of there. Some codes they give we're kinda iffy like they'd have for example: 875Cat right? But the won't register, so it's basically an 8 you have to type. And segwaying into another thing, you'll find computers that give secret info I guess according to a guide (which I used often because what the hell?), you're supposed to break out text command prompts but I could never really understand what I'm doing because I don't do text command prompts? See a part of me feels stupid for writing this all up, but the way a friend of mine put it, the puzzles should at least should be solvable and not overly convoluted with random s h i t you can't understand unless you're using a guide. Again, I suppose the puzzles in this game would make the Jigsaw Killer proud, but by the end I was just using a guide full force because I had no clue what I was doing. Also you're doing this in a time limit, so you'll need to race against the clock, pick up syringes to get your health back, and try not to die in certain rooms (whether it's wiggling your flashlight, or clicking on certain things before you can get certain items). One mixed thing I will say is that it does some meta stuff well, like for example: one room you have to lower the music volume in the settings all the way to open a door. BUT HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? One thing towards the end had me blow a candle out by literally blowing into the mic, the last example involves, get this, getting the secret ending by going to a hidden website hidden inside of one of the game's promotional trailers which leads to an story bit I'll discuss next. Other things I'll mention are you have to replace batteries for your phone and flashlight sometimes, puzzle solutions ARE randomized, you have to use your in game phone to take calls or texts to actually solve puzzles, and you can play goofy little games or change your ringtone (Ringtone 3 was the goofiest and gave me and my friend watching a chuckle). You can also collect teddy bears, "Signs of Illusion", and confession notes as well as newspapers and other code pages. So I may suck at puzzles, but I felt this game did it in a way that was a bit too much. Gonna go into the plot here:
The story is again about Robert Hawk, a reporter, and your wife Sara, a lawyer, going out on Robert's birthday to do stuff. You get into a crash and you wake up in chains and have to escape. You also learn about the Illusion Killer and how they target criminals who got away with their crimes which is cool, I like the SAW movies so I'm cool with this. In two separate instances you have to solve puzzles under a timer in order to save both Sara and Patrick offscreen for the best endings. Like the puzzles, there's a variation for each one living and dying as well as if you unlock the secret room in Room 10. If you unlock the secret room it's figured that you and Patrick are up to something fishy (which we kinda already guessed). Go through the rest, and you get locked in a coffin. Gonna throw some spoilers here: : If you save both Patrick and Sara, it turns out Sara is the Illusion Killer. That's right, one of THREE characters is the Illusion Killer, and what a shock we predicted it in the third room. There was also another prediction that Patrick and Robert are the killers, and if you got the secret ending, they were both trying to frame Sara for the murders so they can "continue their work" and will continue it again. What do I think of this story? About average really, and the twists are predictable because they only really introduced three characters anyways, so who else we're we supposed to think it is? So let me get this straight. If Sara was the killer, and they were trying to frame her, did they trap themselves there? Did she just decide to play killer to go along with this? Why did she dress up and do all this stuff if you were framing her? I feel like it would be more realistic for the police to just shoot her (like they do anyways in real life) and her yelling bout her innocence then give some sort of speech explaining why she was the killer when she wasn't? I don't know, maybe I'm looking too far into this but it feels like a plot hole. Basically, it's an average story which atmospherically it gels great with SAW, but without an interesting twist or at least a bonkers one. Basically, think the last Saw movie in terms of predictability and you got it.
Graphical Presentation/Atmosphere is decent, the atmosphere is really creepy and unnerving, you'll have bugs crawling across your screen and above your clicker making you think it's actually your PC when it's not which is cool. It's a dark, oppressive, and hopeless feeling which I like. Graphics are the usual hidden object artwork style which I like and think it's charming. The music is unnerving, and it works for the game as it didn't help us with our panic levels much. The one downside I could give is that you can tell that the production of the game is in a different country, with Sara and Patrick sounding completely different then Robert, who sounds like an American and is emotive; of course I understand that budget constraints and such can lead to dips in acting quality and I know whatever country these guys are from it might sound odd emoting in English, not me dissing on them it's actually of humorous; but it's noticeable.
Overall, I would only recommend this game for people with A LOT of patience, and the ability to think WAY outside the box. Otherwise skip it. The store page said: Slowly go mad thanks to a realistic system determining the mental state of your character. It worked.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Omerta: City of Gangster is a “What’s the Rumpus?” simulator/mafia simulation turn-based tactical combat game developed by Haemimont Games and released for the PC and the Xbox 360. I don’t know anything about the development of this game as information seems to be slim to zilch but the developers had previously worked on Roman city-building games as well as taking charge of development of Tropicos 3-5. In fact, that’s how I originally got into this game was hearing about how the guys developed Tropico 3 & 4 and loving my time with those games as a young lad and loving some Italian mobster shit, I had picked it up for the 360 back in the day. I hadn’t played it much other than Sandboxing a bit here and there before I eventually dropped it because it didn’t really do it for me like Tropico did because you couldn’t even build your own cities. I still have it locked up somewhere, but I decided later on at some point to pick it up on Steam for dirt cheap and give it a try. After playing Empire of Sin last year and still getting hooked on random Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos clips, I figured I’d give it a spin and throw my thoughts out there to see if it held up for me or it didn’t.
The plot, like most simulation games, is often simple and this one is no different; though compared to Empire of Sin it’s a little bit more involved. You play as Boss D’Angelo, who immigrated to the United States during the Prohibition Era (for the youngin’s, they basically banned booze and like all capitalism, opportunities were made illegally) from Sicily and tries to create a better life for himself and his friends from the ground up. He first gets coerced into working for Louis Castaneda, a capo underneath top boss Danny Corsini. However you’re eventually betrayed by Louis, protecting Danny from any retaliation as Louis wants to become the top dog. Working under Corsini, things go well for D’Angelo…that is until your brother also immigrates over from Sicily and becomes a federal agent. At first he doesn’t know and things go swimmingly before tension erupts over the Boss’s underworld position. He puts pressure on everyone in the city, and Danny decides that your brother needs to go. Against the criminal code, you assassinate the hitmen going after your brother and another war goes on until Danny proceeds to die. Now you’re the top dog, and the feds are putting the heat on you hard; however eventually you outlast the federal cases til’ the end of Prohibition and you retire as a rich man with the relationship with your brother mended.
It’s a bit of a simple plot but also a little bit more involved, something I actually enjoyed out of it. I could see this being a part of a television series of some sort just LIKE Boardwalk Empire with all the key players in the game and that was nice. It’s here where I’ll also mention that the DLC plotlines for the most parts are one-offs that take place within the story except The Japanese Incentive, which takes place right during your time working under Louis and has to do with a partnership with the Yakuza and a love triangle between D’Angelo, Yakuza Boss Hikaro Eda and his wife Mikoto. This is a separate campaign and as close as I was to the end, I wasn’t able to beat it due to glitches involving enemy spawns on the map. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back one day and figure that out but for now the game is done.
Speaking of gameplay, what is it compared to something like Tropico 3 & 4? No, not in the slightest. Well kind of, I don’t 100 percent know how to explain it other than this: you won’t be building anything like you do in Tropico and picking where you want stuff. Basically, you’ll start by creating your mob boss, giving them a name and choosing from a couple of pre-set scenarios for their origins which can affect their main stats. If you’re playing in the main story you will always be Boss D’Angelo as addressed but spiritually you can be “Timmy Fuchs” or whatever you like. Then you get into the game and there will be two different modes: the overworld section and the turn based combat sections. The overworld section is honestly to me the best part of the game, it’s where you’ll manage your henchmen, upgrade them, buy businesses, trade alcohol, and all the interesting stuff. You won’t be able to build any business any place, you’ll get a specific set amount of buildings where you’ll be allowed to build things like “Joints”, smaller businesses you can build to establish anything from a higher fear or liked rating to dirty or clean money or other bonuses or construction sites where you get bigger businesses that you can build but cost more. You build more businesses and acquire more money, money which you can use to bribe local snitches and such to give you the details on the rest of the district piece by piece. Over time you can hire more men to send out on jobs in both the overworld and through the job menu, where you can send them on random missions to do a variety of stuff from buying/selling booze, guns, laundering money or special missions depending on the scenario. If you get too much heat on you depending on your activities, I oftentimes wasn’t too worried because I usually had enough money on me to bribe them a lot of time, or you could perhaps snitch on a rival joint (of which there are independent joints) and get the cops to go after them. It’s honestly a simple system that can’t be boiled down to a steam review, and some people fault the game for not being complex. I don’t care, I enjoy simplicity because sometimes I’m really not in the mood for something in-depth. I think the most that it gets difficult is when you’re fighting another gang and I was only able to do that on the DLC, and sending people to get a car to commit 40 drive-bys for the chance percent hope that they vacate the business so that I could take over is honestly kind of a pain in the ass. Actually what I’ll say is that compared to the base game, the DLC actually has a lot more quality of life improvements such as the ability to hire guards, some real competition, adding certain businesses and the like.
My real peeve with the game is the turn based combat, which to me I just don’t feel feels great personally. It’s the basic turn-based combat where you’ll fight mobsters or cops, take cover, throw grenades and the usual stuff. I guess my main thing about this is that it’s just kind of tedious and doesn’t really feel good, and oftentimes I can’t really pin down why. I’ve seen some reviewers say that it’s because the amount of times you miss is too high, friendly fire is too much, that it’s repetitive, etc. I can’t really say too much about this because it normally isn’t my genre, and there are a lot of games that kind of play like this and have been more highly rated. I can’t give you a specific reason why other than I agree with all the above, and for a casual and chill time I also used WeMod cheats. However, there’s a downside to this: from what I understand the game gets REALLY glitchy. There were a couple of times where I would have goons that wouldn’t spawn, or there would be 100 something goons AND the last couple wouldn’t spawn. I was able to evade this for the most part through sheer luck, turning off certain cheats like infinite turns, and not using the Boss and instead using his henchman (of which some of them just suck, and some of them are pretty solid). It perhaps could be related to certain stats but I’m unsure. However, speaking of stats, I believe this is where the stats from the character creator come into play, and depending on the combat scenarios you win or other factors you can level up your character and gain perks like higher critical chance, the ability to save movement points for the next turn, and the like. I guess I’m just not into this aspect of the game and that’s sad. Maybe I’m just not used to the older styles, but who knows?
The sound design is pretty solid, and I’ll start with the music because I feel it perfectly captures that high energy twenties Jazz music that fits the vibe. You’ll hear the main menu theme a lot more often than anything else, but wasn’t really bothered about it and consider it akin to Tropico’s constantly looping caribbean and salsa music, which was pretty catchy and filled in really well. However, these tracks don’t seem to have names so get used to seeing titles like “Track 1” if you’re trying to find something specific. I’m also not seeing who created the soundtrack as I can’t find a name other than “Jack Carver'' but that could be the guy hosting the Youtube videos and that’s it so I’m unsure. Either way, it’s solid and can capture both the high and low energy vibes pretty well. Another thing that fits pretty well is the voice acting, which pretty much everyone plays their parts well, especially the Italian guys which I can’t get enough of. However, I can’t really give voice acting credits because I can’t seem to find any of those either so to wrap up voice acting: it’s solid and oftentimes I would be repeating some of these lines back to great effect. Sound effects are solid too from the gunshots, the car horns, the ocean waves and the bells ringing from the storefronts that all add to it.
Graphically speaking the game is fine, it’s a 360 title so it’s not going to be the most high definition stuff and even compared to Empire of Sin it’s very much low poly, but more consistent in it’s design unlike EOS. The overworld where you actually control the action looks great from when you’re looking down on the world below and seeing everything unfold. I think if there were a graphical low point it would probably be when you actually get into your turn based tactical gameplay, where everything looks okay but a little bit on the worse side. I don’t want to trash it too much, I’m sure this game was made on a low budget so that doesn’t concern me. How is the atmosphere on the other hand? Well it certainly captures the 20s Atlantic City vibe with the buildings of old, the pictures representing the various people you encounter, the colors being more muted in the menu but a bit more on the darkish side when in the overworld. You’ll see real buildings like the Boardwalk itself or the Traymore Hotel though I haven’t ever been to Atlantic City so I can’t really say what really looks 100 percent to the T, but even if it wasn’t I still feel it would fit what Atlantic City’s vibe would actually be. Overall, I can’t really complain much about this, it looks fine and that’s perfectly well enough.
Haemimont Games would later go on to develop Tropico 5 before seemingly being dropped from that series entirely. They would go on to develop some titles that I would recognize, though only from quick glances such as the action RPG Victor Vran, city-builder Surviving Mars and finally the tactical RPG Jagged Alliance 3. I only heard about the Jagged Alliance games through others so I can’t say anything about the quality of any of these games. However Omerta was one of those games where as much as I would appreciate the ideas that it had going for it, and as much as I maybe need to shrink back my expectations, it still isn’t the mafia simulator game that I’m personally looking for which is something like Gangsters except remade and with some new elements. I like certain bits and pieces of what it has but overall, it’s a painfully simple game with a monotonous feeling turn based combat that I’m sure some will be satisfied with and others wouldn’t. I was mixed, preferring they didn’t have the turn based combat but what can you really do? If you’re in the mood for a mafia game like this, you have patience and there’s a sale I would say why not give it a try? Just keep in mind that it’s kinda okay and that in itself is also okay.
Links:
https://omerta-city-of-gangsters.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/OmertaCityOfGangsters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MgG92ZUZBw&ab_channel=Canalabandonadob
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHEm0j-0XIJibXs7yPzAziLxme0wZCzy-
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot, like most simulation games, is often simple and this one is no different; though compared to Empire of Sin it’s a little bit more involved. You play as Boss D’Angelo, who immigrated to the United States during the Prohibition Era (for the youngin’s, they basically banned booze and like all capitalism, opportunities were made illegally) from Sicily and tries to create a better life for himself and his friends from the ground up. He first gets coerced into working for Louis Castaneda, a capo underneath top boss Danny Corsini. However you’re eventually betrayed by Louis, protecting Danny from any retaliation as Louis wants to become the top dog. Working under Corsini, things go well for D’Angelo…that is until your brother also immigrates over from Sicily and becomes a federal agent. At first he doesn’t know and things go swimmingly before tension erupts over the Boss’s underworld position. He puts pressure on everyone in the city, and Danny decides that your brother needs to go. Against the criminal code, you assassinate the hitmen going after your brother and another war goes on until Danny proceeds to die. Now you’re the top dog, and the feds are putting the heat on you hard; however eventually you outlast the federal cases til’ the end of Prohibition and you retire as a rich man with the relationship with your brother mended.
It’s a bit of a simple plot but also a little bit more involved, something I actually enjoyed out of it. I could see this being a part of a television series of some sort just LIKE Boardwalk Empire with all the key players in the game and that was nice. It’s here where I’ll also mention that the DLC plotlines for the most parts are one-offs that take place within the story except The Japanese Incentive, which takes place right during your time working under Louis and has to do with a partnership with the Yakuza and a love triangle between D’Angelo, Yakuza Boss Hikaro Eda and his wife Mikoto. This is a separate campaign and as close as I was to the end, I wasn’t able to beat it due to glitches involving enemy spawns on the map. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back one day and figure that out but for now the game is done.
Speaking of gameplay, what is it compared to something like Tropico 3 & 4? No, not in the slightest. Well kind of, I don’t 100 percent know how to explain it other than this: you won’t be building anything like you do in Tropico and picking where you want stuff. Basically, you’ll start by creating your mob boss, giving them a name and choosing from a couple of pre-set scenarios for their origins which can affect their main stats. If you’re playing in the main story you will always be Boss D’Angelo as addressed but spiritually you can be “Timmy Fuchs” or whatever you like. Then you get into the game and there will be two different modes: the overworld section and the turn based combat sections. The overworld section is honestly to me the best part of the game, it’s where you’ll manage your henchmen, upgrade them, buy businesses, trade alcohol, and all the interesting stuff. You won’t be able to build any business any place, you’ll get a specific set amount of buildings where you’ll be allowed to build things like “Joints”, smaller businesses you can build to establish anything from a higher fear or liked rating to dirty or clean money or other bonuses or construction sites where you get bigger businesses that you can build but cost more. You build more businesses and acquire more money, money which you can use to bribe local snitches and such to give you the details on the rest of the district piece by piece. Over time you can hire more men to send out on jobs in both the overworld and through the job menu, where you can send them on random missions to do a variety of stuff from buying/selling booze, guns, laundering money or special missions depending on the scenario. If you get too much heat on you depending on your activities, I oftentimes wasn’t too worried because I usually had enough money on me to bribe them a lot of time, or you could perhaps snitch on a rival joint (of which there are independent joints) and get the cops to go after them. It’s honestly a simple system that can’t be boiled down to a steam review, and some people fault the game for not being complex. I don’t care, I enjoy simplicity because sometimes I’m really not in the mood for something in-depth. I think the most that it gets difficult is when you’re fighting another gang and I was only able to do that on the DLC, and sending people to get a car to commit 40 drive-bys for the chance percent hope that they vacate the business so that I could take over is honestly kind of a pain in the ass. Actually what I’ll say is that compared to the base game, the DLC actually has a lot more quality of life improvements such as the ability to hire guards, some real competition, adding certain businesses and the like.
My real peeve with the game is the turn based combat, which to me I just don’t feel feels great personally. It’s the basic turn-based combat where you’ll fight mobsters or cops, take cover, throw grenades and the usual stuff. I guess my main thing about this is that it’s just kind of tedious and doesn’t really feel good, and oftentimes I can’t really pin down why. I’ve seen some reviewers say that it’s because the amount of times you miss is too high, friendly fire is too much, that it’s repetitive, etc. I can’t really say too much about this because it normally isn’t my genre, and there are a lot of games that kind of play like this and have been more highly rated. I can’t give you a specific reason why other than I agree with all the above, and for a casual and chill time I also used WeMod cheats. However, there’s a downside to this: from what I understand the game gets REALLY glitchy. There were a couple of times where I would have goons that wouldn’t spawn, or there would be 100 something goons AND the last couple wouldn’t spawn. I was able to evade this for the most part through sheer luck, turning off certain cheats like infinite turns, and not using the Boss and instead using his henchman (of which some of them just suck, and some of them are pretty solid). It perhaps could be related to certain stats but I’m unsure. However, speaking of stats, I believe this is where the stats from the character creator come into play, and depending on the combat scenarios you win or other factors you can level up your character and gain perks like higher critical chance, the ability to save movement points for the next turn, and the like. I guess I’m just not into this aspect of the game and that’s sad. Maybe I’m just not used to the older styles, but who knows?
The sound design is pretty solid, and I’ll start with the music because I feel it perfectly captures that high energy twenties Jazz music that fits the vibe. You’ll hear the main menu theme a lot more often than anything else, but wasn’t really bothered about it and consider it akin to Tropico’s constantly looping caribbean and salsa music, which was pretty catchy and filled in really well. However, these tracks don’t seem to have names so get used to seeing titles like “Track 1” if you’re trying to find something specific. I’m also not seeing who created the soundtrack as I can’t find a name other than “Jack Carver'' but that could be the guy hosting the Youtube videos and that’s it so I’m unsure. Either way, it’s solid and can capture both the high and low energy vibes pretty well. Another thing that fits pretty well is the voice acting, which pretty much everyone plays their parts well, especially the Italian guys which I can’t get enough of. However, I can’t really give voice acting credits because I can’t seem to find any of those either so to wrap up voice acting: it’s solid and oftentimes I would be repeating some of these lines back to great effect. Sound effects are solid too from the gunshots, the car horns, the ocean waves and the bells ringing from the storefronts that all add to it.
Graphically speaking the game is fine, it’s a 360 title so it’s not going to be the most high definition stuff and even compared to Empire of Sin it’s very much low poly, but more consistent in it’s design unlike EOS. The overworld where you actually control the action looks great from when you’re looking down on the world below and seeing everything unfold. I think if there were a graphical low point it would probably be when you actually get into your turn based tactical gameplay, where everything looks okay but a little bit on the worse side. I don’t want to trash it too much, I’m sure this game was made on a low budget so that doesn’t concern me. How is the atmosphere on the other hand? Well it certainly captures the 20s Atlantic City vibe with the buildings of old, the pictures representing the various people you encounter, the colors being more muted in the menu but a bit more on the darkish side when in the overworld. You’ll see real buildings like the Boardwalk itself or the Traymore Hotel though I haven’t ever been to Atlantic City so I can’t really say what really looks 100 percent to the T, but even if it wasn’t I still feel it would fit what Atlantic City’s vibe would actually be. Overall, I can’t really complain much about this, it looks fine and that’s perfectly well enough.
Haemimont Games would later go on to develop Tropico 5 before seemingly being dropped from that series entirely. They would go on to develop some titles that I would recognize, though only from quick glances such as the action RPG Victor Vran, city-builder Surviving Mars and finally the tactical RPG Jagged Alliance 3. I only heard about the Jagged Alliance games through others so I can’t say anything about the quality of any of these games. However Omerta was one of those games where as much as I would appreciate the ideas that it had going for it, and as much as I maybe need to shrink back my expectations, it still isn’t the mafia simulator game that I’m personally looking for which is something like Gangsters except remade and with some new elements. I like certain bits and pieces of what it has but overall, it’s a painfully simple game with a monotonous feeling turn based combat that I’m sure some will be satisfied with and others wouldn’t. I was mixed, preferring they didn’t have the turn based combat but what can you really do? If you’re in the mood for a mafia game like this, you have patience and there’s a sale I would say why not give it a try? Just keep in mind that it’s kinda okay and that in itself is also okay.
Links:
https://omerta-city-of-gangsters.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/OmertaCityOfGangsters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MgG92ZUZBw&ab_channel=Canalabandonadob
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHEm0j-0XIJibXs7yPzAziLxme0wZCzy-
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2022
BABBDI is a game created by the Lemaitre brothers, of whom I know nothing about and is as mysterious as the game itself, which to me works out well considering how interesting the game's atmosphere is. This is gonna be a shorty as it's a short game.
The story is literally just you need to leave the town of Babbdi, and to do that you need to find train tickets. The plot isn't really important as it's mostly just an excuse to run around and explore your environment. This'll be where I get into the gameplay now: what you'll be doing for the most part is jumping around and exploring the small town/city block of Babbdi, and that goes from free running to using Pickaxes to climb walls to driving motorcycles you find around. You can find secret objects as well as interact with the townspeople who mutter the strangest s h i t I can think of; a lot of which you can find just from messing about and taking strange paths around the city that feel both intuitive and non-intuitive (this game is a speed runner's wet dream, they literally give you a baseball bat to hit walls for speed as well as a vacuum to float and a spinning thing to run really fast). The one thing I can say was that this game was funny as hell, as for a good portion of it I had found a Trumpet I think and just went to town hitting the high notes (of which you can switch between three different styles of music) while doing parkour and eventually falling down (no fall damage by the way). That's kind of basically just what you do, it's basic but for the most part it's serviceable and works in tandem with the atmosphere, basically it's a walking/climbing sim.
Sound Design/Graphics section? The sound design is creepy sounding in certain areas. You'll hear lots of muttering and sim sounding dialogue while hearing strange droning going on in the background. With the whole art style they have going (which of course is PS1 looking low poly stuff), it's effective in it's Eastern Europeanesque atmosphere it's trying to get off. To me, I like it.
I don't really know what else to say about this game except it's interesting and if you're into small projects and you want to play a game that you can mess around, climb buildings and explore passageways you didn't think you'd find then try it out. It's not long and it's free so that's an added bonus. I guess the only thing I can really add that could be a negative is that not every place you go to is going to be populated with objects to interact with, sometimes you'll just see empty buildings or whatever but again it's pretty solid and all around strange. Most of my play through consisted of me saying "What the hell is going on" and "This is some strange s h i t" as well as "Damn they really detailed this trumpet didn't they?". All in all, it's impressive and though it maybe strange and empty at times I really liked it.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The story is literally just you need to leave the town of Babbdi, and to do that you need to find train tickets. The plot isn't really important as it's mostly just an excuse to run around and explore your environment. This'll be where I get into the gameplay now: what you'll be doing for the most part is jumping around and exploring the small town/city block of Babbdi, and that goes from free running to using Pickaxes to climb walls to driving motorcycles you find around. You can find secret objects as well as interact with the townspeople who mutter the strangest s h i t I can think of; a lot of which you can find just from messing about and taking strange paths around the city that feel both intuitive and non-intuitive (this game is a speed runner's wet dream, they literally give you a baseball bat to hit walls for speed as well as a vacuum to float and a spinning thing to run really fast). The one thing I can say was that this game was funny as hell, as for a good portion of it I had found a Trumpet I think and just went to town hitting the high notes (of which you can switch between three different styles of music) while doing parkour and eventually falling down (no fall damage by the way). That's kind of basically just what you do, it's basic but for the most part it's serviceable and works in tandem with the atmosphere, basically it's a walking/climbing sim.
Sound Design/Graphics section? The sound design is creepy sounding in certain areas. You'll hear lots of muttering and sim sounding dialogue while hearing strange droning going on in the background. With the whole art style they have going (which of course is PS1 looking low poly stuff), it's effective in it's Eastern Europeanesque atmosphere it's trying to get off. To me, I like it.
I don't really know what else to say about this game except it's interesting and if you're into small projects and you want to play a game that you can mess around, climb buildings and explore passageways you didn't think you'd find then try it out. It's not long and it's free so that's an added bonus. I guess the only thing I can really add that could be a negative is that not every place you go to is going to be populated with objects to interact with, sometimes you'll just see empty buildings or whatever but again it's pretty solid and all around strange. Most of my play through consisted of me saying "What the hell is going on" and "This is some strange s h i t" as well as "Damn they really detailed this trumpet didn't they?". All in all, it's impressive and though it maybe strange and empty at times I really liked it.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/