Spec Ops: The Line is a game developed by YAGER Development GmbH, previously known for Xbox Original Exclusive "Yager" (hah) and then later known for games like Dreadnought and The Cycle: Frontier, two games I've never played nor heard of. It was developed as the tenth entry in the Spec Ops franchise as well as a reboot and having NEVER played those other games I don't know how well those match up to them. However, I can tell you how this game matches up to other third person shooters in general and my thoughts are "It's pretty f u c king good". This game is VERY well known for it's violent "war is bad" story inspired by Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (of which a favorite game of mine, Far Cry 2, also took inspiration from), and having both watched a friend of mine play this game, and then played it myself for my own merit I have my thoughts.

The story starts with Martin Walker and his squad mates Lugo and Adams landing down in Dubai to try to find out where the 33rd Battalion and their leader, John Konrad. You fight your way through insurgents (which CIA coverups) and the 33rd Battalion itself as you try to figure out what's going on. It's a simple story, but with interesting meta narrative and strange moral choices. Spoilers Ahead: One thing I enjoyed is that when you first start the game, you start out on a helicopter mini gun shooting people, of which when you later do this in Chapter 12 Walker questions as to why this shootout feels so familiar. Another revolves around a main conflict: In order to charge a gate in Chapter 7, you're forced to use White Phosphorus to clear out the 33rd Battalion surrounding it before you accidentally kill innocent civilians while using it. Lugo tells you it's an awful idea and that there's always a choice, whereas Walker tells him there is NO choices, of which of course the game won't let you move along unless you use it. This sort of thing is intriguing to me, blurring the lines between narrative and game in a sense and I enjoy moments like this when done well. There is the whole CIA thing mentioned where they commit horrible acts in order to get everyone killed and cover up that Konrad and the 33rd war crimed the city because of threat of retaliation and world war but while that sounds good it just sort of kinda feels like some side thing I forget about sometimes because the CIA guys aren't fleshed out. To me, the main characters you know are Walker and Konrad himself, whereas I feel your squad mates are ok but kind of just average? But your soldiers are supposed to be just that, average soldiers caught up in war so I kinda feel the need to give that a pass and since Walker is so focused on the mission it sorta makes sense that it doesn't really focus on them. The one thing I definitely wanna bring up is the final twist: Konrad's been dead the whole time, you imagined him up as an enemy to make yourself feel better for killing innocent civilians. This ultimately culminates in either shooting yourself or shooting him in your mind and having reinforcements come pick you up, where you can choose to go with them or kill them and retreat back into Dubai. Whereas I do like this twist, it feels underwhelming in a sense; there's foreshadowing stuff but it's also structured in a way where it's very artificial and delivered in a weird way? Like it works well, but it just doesn't do it to it's fullest potential. And that's something that was in the regular choices as well, whereas it doesn't really change anything in the story. It feels mixed to me because they don't have an impact on your character and there are no branching paths; but that is also kind of a highlight of the story because it was made to immerse you in the messed up atmosphere; I just wish it made an impact personally. Like they don't matter, because the situations will always be awful and it kind of speaks to Walker's mindset and his narrow minded perspective on always deciding his way as how he sees it. It's ultimately Walker's game, his story; you're just controlling him which in another meta narrative sense it reminds me of other war games where you go through, do your usual cleanup and then move along and nothing happens even if you used really messed up methods. In this game, you're similarly railroaded but it makes a point of it and whereas I'm mixed on that stuff in general it makes it's point really loud and fucking clear. Another thing that also interests me is that throughout the game you go through hell and the further you get into and the worse your mental state goes the worse your off your character is: your outfit and skin is burned, shot grazed with bullets, your executions become more bloodthirsty (what would amount to shooting them once in the beginning of the game would amount to smashing a dude's face with the butt of your shotgun in the latter). as well as the game's loading screen tips becoming more and more insane and demeaning towards your actions. Speaking of.

The game play is basically that of an average cover shooter Gears of War type, if you played or seen games like that you'll see what this game is about. It's short, you can beat it in six hours, and it's kind of average as a cover shooter. Like it's not bad, it's serviceable and it's not the highlight of the game obviously but it's fine. The only detail I can add really is that you can shoot certain windows of sand and that it'll stun or kill enemies. Also, when playing through myself as well as my buddy playing through the first time; you can command your squad to take out certain enemies and such and we didn't really use it too often? It's certainly useful in FUBAR modes and such but I don't know I didn't end up using it that much so it just felt kind of there.

The sound design/atmosphere of it is it's really brutal, it's good and feeding into the story like it's brutal, with miles of empty sand and destroyed buildings; it's depressing and oppressive and I hate it but I love it because of that. Again the details are great, and how your characters look over time as you go through this war is amazing, like I can't say anything bad about the atmosphere. The sound design is also good, with the notable likes of Nolan North and Jake Busey being the two big names behind it. The only one that doesn't fit in for me is Nolan North kind of? Like he's a bit too recognizable and takes me out of it but overall I can't complain about that, nor will I complain about the atmospheric music pieces of songs like "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas and Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner". I think overall, the atmosphere/sound design really works well in tandem with the game's story and truth be told I have nothing to say other than that.

Final point, it's good! It's great in a meta narrative, story context where it kind of analyzes both war and it's trivialization and effects on people as well as it's examination between war video games and the player itself. It's a complicated combination that is both really good and hard to explain, and I hope I explained it the best that I can. With that in mind, I'd personally say wait for a sale, but if you're looking for a game to think about, play it cause it's short and good.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/

Twisted Metal is a game developed by SingleTrac for Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 1 console, the first in a franchise of long running exclusive games as well as being one of my personal favorite franchises ever. I won’t go too long into this game’s development (as I’ll post the documentary found on Twisted Metal: Head On - Extra Twisted Edition for the PS2), but the basic gist is that David Jaffe (one of the designers of the game as well as the creator I believe of the God of War series) pissed off a lot of people and was told to make a game with these guys or else that’s kind of the end of the line. They originally came up with the concept after imagining blowing up a highway full of vehicles after being stuck in traffic. It originally went under other names like Urban Assault and High Octane (of which whose name can still be seen in the first arena in the beginning of the game) before settling on Twisted Metal and developed this game alongside another title, Warhawk, while also dealing with technical limitations as well as with budgetary ones: one “blunder” included live action endings, which were supposed to be in and we’re directed by David Jaffe but were dismissed due to poor quality and “offensive content”, which to be honest I wish they were included as they contributed to the campy tone, but we’re instead replaced with text scrawls which is less interesting. It was released to mixed-to positive reviews and sold enough to land on the Playstation’s Greatest Hits. My history with the series mainly started due to me hearing about it on Youtube and picking up Twisted Metal: Head On - Extra Twisted Edition and loving that, when I got older I bought each game in the series one by one but I haven’t sat down and really played them much but decided to hunker down and try this game out for a couple of days, and these are the thoughts I pulled out of it.


The plot of this game is a rather simple and short one: an enigmatic and mysterious burn victim named Calypso who lives underneath the streets in the city of Los Angeles is hosting a competition called Twisted Metal, which is hosting its 10th annual contest in the city above. According to the game manual, each contestant got an email from Calypso asking them in a simple, flashing red message: WILL YOU DRIVE? The main goal of this competition is for everyone to destroy one another, in which the final one standing will get any wish of their desire, no matter how big or small it is (though often times, moreso in Twisted Metal 2 and on he will attempt to twist the wish back onto the winner to screw them over in some way). You’ll have characters like Specter, who just wants to come back to life in the flesh after being killed by “a serial killer clown at a carnival”; Outlaw, a cop who wants to take Calypso down and save lives (a far cry from what modern day police do lol), and you’ll get evil characters like Sweet Tooth, a serial killer clown who joined the competition to “find his best friend” which in a humorous twist at his ending ends up being a paper bag named Harold the Wacky Lunch Sack or some shit. As you could probably tell due to the clown on the cover, Sweet Tooth (aka Needles Kane) IS the mascot for the franchise, the main draw if you will. In every single game he’s one of if not the main feature and the contestant connected the most to the other contestants in some way, mostly through his serial murder sprees and sheer evil brutality. The only thing I can really mention in this section is that I appreciate the pictures of each contestant are strapped to the walls of the first level in the game, a small arena in which you fight one other person; another tip is if you play the game on Hard difficulty and destroy the glass roof you can get a secret level: this first level arena but you fight against five other contestants. It’s really difficult however and you don’t get anything from winning it so whether that matters or not is up to you.

The gameplay is basically this: you play as one of twelve vehicles, each driven by a contestant and your job is to pick up weapons on the battlefield and become the last man standing. As such you’ll be able to pick up weapons such as your machine gun (which has infinite ammo but is on a cooldown) weak fire missiles (which can aim a little bit but won’t always home in), powerful Homing (which are the most accurate) and Power missiles (which are the best kind of weapons but have no homing capability whatsoever, making accuracy important; mines, rear missiles and rear flamethrower in order to damage opponents who are on your ass, tire spikes which is supposed to slow down these opponents when ran over, oil slicks which make them spin out. I feel that the freeze missile is the biggest pain in the ass, but it’s useful for holding an enemy down in place while you can get a free hit off of a different weapon. You can also pick up turbo markers (which get you super speed, and you press the Triangle button to start it up) as well as the catapults which launch you or your enemy into the air if you’re looking to throw your opponent off balance or jump to a different area. You can also run around to certain areas of the minimap (which also detect which enemies are nearby due to a colored dot, though it’s painfully simple with no streets shown on this map) and drive up to health stations (marked as a plus sign on the minimap), which can be used only sparingly as well as by other contestants so you have to kind of think strategically in that regard. Now keep in mind, this game is difficult in both actual game ways and also kind of general jank; to address some of the gameplay difficulty stuff first I’ll start by saying that the controls can get some getting used to. Mix that in with a camera that stays on your back more than shit on stink, sometimes moving around can be difficult; sometimes you’ll be able to drift really well, and sometimes you’ll end up smacking into walls repeatedly, while backing up isn’t exactly smooth either and requires you to hold down on the D-Pad, either pressing the circle button.

There are no analog controls (which I’m not sure was around back then), and any movement you make will be with the D-Pad which can make the driving feel really stiff, leaving you open to enemy attacks if you really don’t know what you’re doing, It gets a bit better the more you play but I don’t think that I ever really got used to it enough where I got comfortable, though I did get used to drifting. If you want a general control scheme for the game (of which you can change to three or so different control schemes if you want something different, though you can’t change buttons), I’ll put some stuff down here now:

X button is to drift
Circle is to stop/reverse
Triangle is to activate turbo
Start is to change angle (like first person driving, or zooming in right behind the car; though if you activate the helicopter view cheat in certain areas you can see your vehicle from a camera angle above the map; cool but impractical)
Select button is pause
L1/R1 is to switch weapons
R2 is to shoot machine guns
L2 is to shoot off your weapon of choice


With this in mind, if you’re going to start up a character I would recommend either Roadkill, Outlaw or Thumper; they’re pretty reliable with their mobility while other vehicles like Hammerhead and Darkside are heavier and more powerful but the handling isn’t the best. I would also say DO NOT choose Sweet Tooth as your first vehicle, he’s the most popular but jumping into Sweet Tooth as your first run isn’t recommended as he also doesn’t have the greatest handling. On top of that however, the enemies felt like they kind of banded together to gang up on me sometimes, which mixed in with the controls felt kind of frustrating unless I threw on cheat codes beforehand; and keep in mind not only are your opponents trying to kill you but you’ll also have random people (Called Refs in the game’s manual) shoot at you with machine guns and missiles from the ground as well. Now, thankfully for the most part you can kill them with ease but they can also hit you when you’re not paying attention and let me tell you health is precious in this game; though what I will mention is that you can run over innocent civilians as well littered about the stages (though thankfully not the dog located in River Park Rumble). The final boss, Minion, can also be a bitch and a half as the final boss as an armored up tank who has the specials of almost everyone in the game; now it is doable if you can get it just right and keep your distance BUT luckily there is a bit of a cheese for this game if need be towards the end. However, I had some difficulty locating weapon respawns sometimes when playing this game, especially on the final level which takes place on a series of rooftops and that can be frustrating as well with only one health recharge and three enemies beforehand. Another thing is that in this game, your progress relies on two things: it has a life system (in which you can die three times or else you fail) as well as a password system. Now this password system not only dictates the gameplay cheats (like invincibility/infinite ammo), but also a level system as well (with the beginning of each level putting down their own code which you could either write down or use a guide on the internet for later use) so you can get back to these points but it doesn’t rely on a save system but it’s a system of the old days so it can be kind of archaic in certain points. Other things to mention non difficulty wise is that the physics can sometimes be fucky, for example you can blow up another vehicle and crash right into them and you’ll kind of be thrown everywhere. Getting stuck on another vehicle or thrown around can be a death sentence, especially if there are other vehicles nearby. It can be really easy to flip over, get stuck on car wrecks and acquire damage because of this as well so it’s important to be both patient as well as aware of your environment constantly at all times. With enough practice and if you decide to play through the game legitimately it can work out if you have a lot of patience, but also if you decide to play with cheats, I don’t really blame you as they’re readily available and I did after a while.

The only other gameplay feature that I can think of but forgot about is the two player duel stuff; playing the game by myself I didn’t really have anyone to play it with so I didn’t bother trying but my guess is that it’s a split screen experience with just you and your couch buddy with no NPCs. However I could be wrong about the NPCs, it was a common inclusion at the time and makes sense considering the time; maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.

The soundtrack/graphics/atmosphere/art design is as follows here: as always the PS1 graphics are a weak point for me that I can’t help but love. It was 1995 when the game debuted and as the studio’s first title with this ambitious concept, it’s not necessarily a surprise that you can tell that it’s a bit on the cheap side due to similar effects like the explosion/fire effect looking like it came straight out of an FMV film. Keep in mind, it’s no complaint as they had to do what they could for the time and as someone from the future looking back on how this game feels it really fits right in with the wacky sort of tone they had going for it. If there was a downside it’s that sometimes the environment looks a bit choppy, like seeing black lines connecting certain pieces of the environment, the draw distance being poor and pop in only appearing when you’re right next to a different area in the map and yet again the frame rate being a bit on the lower end so if you’re a stickler for 60 FPS then you’re going to HATE this game. Oftentimes you’ll drive by a wall (or hop over) and see underneath the map as well as building textures; which again I’m not complaining about as it adds a sort of throwback charm to games of the old age like that. The tone of the game is one that’s goofy, and not to be taken seriously however; the contestants themselves are eccentric looking; with Sweet Tooth is of course a creepy clown with his clothes drooping about and Calypso himself, who is supposed to be a burn victim, looks like really weird face paint due to low budget constraints. If one were to watch the lost FMV videos (which I’ll put in the links below), it was definitely a low budget thing, which again adds to the charm of it all. The soundtrack is a sort of old rock feel that legitimately slaps and adds to the whole atmosphere of the game as well, and really helps make this game more memorable amongst the other titles as one of the better soundtracks in the series.

Finally, we’re at the finish line with one last question: Is it worth playing? Honestly, I don’t really know, I guess it’s down to perspective. I decided to pick this game up because of a couple reasons: to knock out the backlog and get my one game per console thing done (with this being my PS1 of the year though I’ll play others), to get footage for a friend of mine who might do a video in the future, and also because the Twisted Metal series on Peacock is coming out soon (and it doesn’t really look that good from that one clip I saw). With all of that in mind, I genuinely like this game not only for its atmosphere and endearing jank but due to the fact that it’s the first in one of my favorite video game series of all time. However, I can acknowledge that I’m also looking at it through rose tinted glasses; it’s a very jank game that doesn’t have too much in the way of features, proper endings, the lack of destruction compared to the other entries in the series, it can be kind of difficult sometimes due to the game’s balancing (or lack thereof), again lots of different issues. I’ll say I do recommend it, with the caveat that it’s a game that is noticeably old and came out the next year after the Playstation 1 came out in December of 1994. Put it on maybe for some nostalgia, have a giggle, maybe have a couch co-op session and play with some friends; it deserves respect for its place but I don’t see myself coming back to it except for the casual aspect or to collect footage again. But in the end that’s ok, I had myself some fun and that’s all I can ask for in a game sometimes, but it’s been done better in the subsequent sequels; if you want to try to play the game now you could either try to get it on the PS3 digital store for between 5-10 dollars, get a PS1 copy for around 20-60 dollars approximately depending on the edition, or if you’re on PC you could download the Abandonware copy that came from Japan. If I’m missing anything as well, I’ll try my best to update the review later at a different point to fill in any missing information, but I'm basing my review on my time completing all twelve character's stories.

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phm0uvThtk&ab_channel=PolandBizkit (Soundtrack)
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/twisted-metal-bf2 (Abandonware PC Port)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY2tSSblO94&ab_channel=TacticalBaconProductions (Minion Cheese, start from 25:28)
https://www.liveabout.com/twisted-metal-cheats-3409267 (Cheat Codes)
https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Twisted_Metal_Manual_PS_EN.pdf (Manual PDF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u47jyl07fDU&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal: The Dark Past Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tu-m5SlIw4&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal 1 Lost Endings/Text Endings)

Killzone: Shadowfall is a game developed by Guerilla Games and the last title in the entire Killzone series, released for Playstation 4 as a launch title (including the likes of Knack, and thatgamecompany’s Flower). The game ended up getting a mixed reception and effectively killed the franchise, with Guerilla later moving onto the hit Horizon series of third person action RPGs (one of which was a VERY impressive transition). My feeling on the series have kind of been mixed so far, the first Killzone, while decent, had its fair share of jank and frustration; while Liberation is something that I’d rather fucking shoot myself then ever play again in my life. Killzone 2 was a mass improvement in most ways though the story/characters were less interesting; Killzone 3 kept the improvements in, added more stuff, but also had some glitches that made it less stable than 2. Mercenary was fantastic (from what I played) though attempting to get the platinum pissed me off when the Vita corrupted my save file (from what I don’t know) so I’m not even going to attempt to review/platinum that game until next year; so I was expecting this to be as others would call “The worst of the worst” in the franchise. It’s not, it has its issues but I argue it’s actually one of the better titles for what it’s worth.

So the story is one that I feel is the most polarizing part; and I totally understand where people are coming from. My experience was this: I really liked the first half, and where it was leading up to, but the second half is where the game falters a bit. The game takes place decades after the ending of Killzone 3, an event now called “The Terracide” which wiped out the entirety of the Helghast Race off of Helghan. Since then, Vekta has immigrated as many Helghans as possible to their planet and split the entire planet; Vekta is still Vekta but the other half is New Helghan. In a parallel to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, the Vektans (under the VSA, Vekta Security Agency) and the Helghast perform covert operations so they can one up each other, and this is where the game starts. You play as Lucas Kellan, who (in the first mission) as a kid had his father die while they tried to escape to Vekta City, with Shadow Marshall Augustus Sinclair rescuing him and raising him to be a shadow marshall as well. I don’t hate this introduction but I feel the whole slideshow way of showing him through the years is cheap and doesn’t help build character development between you or Sinclair. In fact, I’m going to throw this out there now, most of the characters are kind of one note in their appearance: your main protagonist is generic white guy number 9 and you have no real personality. Other characters are like this too (another good example is future antagonist Vladko Tyran, a terrorist for the “Black Hand” who basically is the stereotypical “crazy” terrorist who reminds me of the base template for this kind of character: Vaas from Far Cry 3, again boring as hell). Regardless you undertake several missions through the game that seem unrelated at first but involve a biological weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar, an extremely hateable scientist who believes in “racial purity” who I really wanted to put a fuckin hole in her skull; both the Helghast and the VSA are fighting over her as this biological virus is to be weaponized to wipe out the other race by each side, and you also meet up again with a Helghast operative named Echo (whom you see in the end of Mission 1 during a prisoner swap).

This goes on while pressure is mounted against the VSA by the Black Hand terrorist group, led by Vladko Tyran with numerous terrorist attacks, and after attempting to capture and then assassinate him he ends up escaping to New Helghan. Kellen infiltrates New Helghan to assassinate Tyran and after finding him and blowing up his house (with his boss revealed to be Jorhan Stahl from Killzone 3, in a breathing machine and strapped to a chair, sadly not played by Malcolm McDowell but he sounds decently close) he gets captured by Helghast forces, after which Echo breaks him out of this prison and gets him over the wall in exchange for him trying to convince Sinclair to stop this battle as this war will lead to everyone dying. Tensions flare up as Kellan is unable to convince Sinclair to stand down and he is accused of being a traitor before sending him again to a mining vessel in space to capture Massar after she defected to the Helghast regime. This goes awry, it’s learned that Stahl has the biological weapon and Echo arrives to murder Massar, in which is a success. Echo and Kellan team up to go to the ruins of planet Helghan to find and stop Stahl. Here you explore these ruins to find more facilities and you learn that Tyran is actually alive…for a little bit before you kill him with Echo. The ISA then invade as well, and Echo/Kellan invade Stahl’s base. Kellan confronts Stahl in his breathing machine before Sinclair comes and not only kills Stahl but you as well. You then play as Echo in the final mission as you sneak your way through a populated mall area before sniping Sinclair and ending his threat once and for all.

So here are my thoughts on the story overall: I think that the set pieces are cool and that this game kind of operated more from set piece to set piece than actually having something really cohesive. The story and characters take a backseat for the most part, some are more prominent than others while some just kind of appear and then are never seen again. One example is Helghast commander Anton Saric, a guy whose name I only know due to the Killzone Wiki but plenty of other things are learned, such as Echo being a half Vektan/half Helghast as well as the daughter of Hera Visari, the heir to the Visari throne. Kellan as I said is boring as hell, while Echo has some interesting ideas I could roll with, and Sinclair is cool I guess. You can also learn about bits and pieces of the Killzone lore through collectibles, of which it’s learned that Rico and Sev from the previous games have gone MIA, and the Helghast want them dead for the Terracide. I remember watching a review a long time ago by a guy named Jarekthegamingdragon, and he made an interesting point: the story ends in a thud and doesn’t mean anything in the greater universe. I agree for the most part, though the extent is something I’m not sure but I guess it’s kind of the point considering it’s inspired by the Cold War so I suppose having a status quo would make sense, but if that’s the case also why have the game to begin with if nothing changes? Again, this is a game about set pieces; of which my favorites are in Mission 2, Mission 5 and the last mission; of which I will tell you why in the next paragraph.

The gameplay as were most of the other games except Liberation, were first person shooters. The huge difference this time is that compared to Killzone 2 and 3, it feels WAY better; the gunplay almost feels Call of Duty-like and say whatever you want but Call of Duty at least FEELS good. Shooting feels punchy for the most part, as does melee (which by god feels fucking great, I swear I’m normal lol) and for the most part it all feels great. You even have a drone that you can use during the game which can stun enemies, shoot a grapple line to traverse the environment, shoot soldiers (though this wasn’t as useful because it was kind of spongy and only worked for a bit), and put a shield in front of you (which I didn’t really use that much if at all) as well as hack certain terminals and the most important feature: Reviving you if you die which is fucking fantastic cause it makes the “Don’t die throughout the game once” trophy a lot easier to deal with. I guess the only thing I can really criticize about the gunplay is that the minigun sometimes feels a bit unreliable due to the swaying time though I guess because it’s a giant bulky minigun that’s not too much of a surprise. Also the jumping is fuckin awkward and I don’t like how it feels, like every gap I jump across I’m always about to fall off

The level design in the missions above are a lot more open ended too, feeling almost like Far Cry in a sense with how open it is and how you can tackle certain objectives in numerous ways; for example in Mission 2 you land in a forest after ziplining from a Dam to find multiple objectives for finding survivors, turning off the alarm, etc. and there’s also a stealth system for the game. It’s the same for Mission 5, where you infiltrate New Helghan in an open area as you can either choose to go loud, stay stealthy and choose your way to do objectives (and optional objectives sometimes that doesn’t really change the story in any way and you can choose whether to do them or not) as well as Mission 10, which is a little bit more limited as you have to do certain objectives to perform an assassination but same thing, but with different abilities such as the one to go invisible to sneak past enemies. I feel like this is the natural evolution the series could take before it could become stale from the usual Call of Duty shooting gallery formula and the truth be told, while it doesn’t TOTALLY follow the Far Cry open world formula it shows potential. Other highlights that really pop out to talk about is that in Mission 3, you sneak aboard a space station and towards the end you can shoot nearby windows to burn Helghast soldiers and Mission 6 you can have Echo snipe enemies so you can sneak your way through certain areas. If there were any frustrating moments I’d say there were three: Mission 4 has you turning off bombs at a train station and there were a couple of times I’d have to reload the section due to the “Don’t die” trophy because of moving trains, but I could pass it off as “it is what it is”. The worst parts however happen sequentially in the beginnings of Mission 7 and 8: in Mission 7 you have to jump down a giant hole and maneuver past giant rotors before landing in a SPECIFIC spot which was kind of annoying, and one where I died multiple times trying to figure it all out. If you want a tip, I’d say fall towards one of the rotors, they’re all going a certain direction and if you move towards the rotors you will end up going through the holes (heh) instead of hitting the blade. I have no tips for Mission 8, in which you glide through Old Helghan ruins as you make your way through the ruined city, the controls are fuckin weird, overshoot and often times I’d die because I couldn’t figure out how to move in a way that made sense; it doesn’t feel good and I just wanted this section to end.

Final section to mention is multiplayer: I can’t say much about it but when I learned that the servers for this and Mercenary would be shutting down in August of 2022, I decided to get cranking out the multiplayer trophies. Now while this was a grind, and working to get these trophies sometimes felt monotonous especially since I was racing against the clock (I still feel that there should either be no multiplayer trophies or that they should be on a separate list or better yet just auto unlock them for people who actually want to get the platinum later on) what I can say is that the game’s multiplayer in its last leg was actually kind of fun. It’s the usual affair, the usual CoD styled game modes but it was a nice bit of fun and sometimes I go and play the Botzone if I feel like doing something with it.

Now what can I say about the other stuff; meaning the sound design, voice acting, art design, music, etc? Well for starters, again graphically Guerilla like always has outdone itself; in fact I’d say that this is their number one strength as a game studio is that they know how to make their games look fucking beautiful and top everything else; for example Mission 2, The Shadow, the forest is looks amazing with it’s use of lighting and forest textures. Vekta City is beautiful as a cyberpunk-like dystopia, with light colors contrasting New Helghan’s darker and more oppressive atmosphere; the Decima is an amazing engine and there’s no wonder it’s been used in all of Guerilla’s titles, Until Dawn and Death Stranding (along with it’s in development sequel). Legitimately, you could mistake this for a Playstation 5 title sometimes and if you were to play this on Playstation 5 you’d probably agree. The voice acting is decent for the most part; David Harewood does a decent job playing Sinclair (side note: The dude looks like Sylen’s (Horizon series) voice actor Lance Reddick, rest in peace) but there aren’t really too many standouts here, but sometimes that’s ok as they all fit in the game and make it sound believable. The sound design is good for the most part, and it fits almost everything that it intends to (though some of the guns, I forget which one could be a little more punchy). Last thing I can mention is the soundtrack; done by Tyler Bates (who did God of War: Ascension and later Far Cry: New Dawn) along with Lorn (whose contributed tracks to the likes of Sleeping Dogs, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Gran Turismo 5); the music can sound a bit tense sometimes in it’s moments and honestly, sort of slaps. Granted I don’t remember much of anything in the way of actual tracks but it works well with its purpose. As with most things in the Killzone franchise, they don’t have much in the way of standout stuff but they’re good at making stuff immersive for the most part and as long as it doesn’t sound misplaced or awful (like Resident Evil 1’s Mansion Basement), for the most part I’m satisfied or won’t bat an eye to it.

So what exactly are my thoughts on Killzone: Shadowfall? I understand why people feel like it’s average. It isn’t exactly pulled off the best plot wise, almost everyone is forgettable in terms of characters, and the truth is it does end on a thud. And to be honest, I’m kind of sad about that; because the truth is between Killzone and Horizon, I feel like Killzone even in shoulder shrugging genericness has a lot of potential for more than what it had. It had a lot of cool ideas, I really liked the more open ended level design, the improvements to the combat compared to the previous Killzone games, it’s just a lot of things around it weren’t pulled off the best and with how it ended it didn’t feel like a satisfying finish to the series. In essence it reminds me of The Order: 1886, another game I got the platinum trophy for; not pulled off the best but it has a lot of things around it that really boost it up for me.

For my final bit on this, here me out; I know Guerilla has moved onto Horizon. But I feel like with the natural progression of Shadow Fall’s game design that there could be something in the way of one last game I feel they should do to end the series off on a good note. Have it be an open world RPG (minus the Ubisoft formula), since the Killzone series has its stuff parallel to real world events and so if Sinclair’s assassination is the parallel to JFK’s assassination then I feel like the next (and last) game should be set in their version of Vietnam. Have it be an entirely different planet, the VSA are invading to re-establish a dictatorship while the Helghast are using the opportunity to fund guerillas while having seedy intentions, pull aspects from Killzone: Mercenary in terms of doing mercenary work for everyone, don’t have the world be this super huge thing as much as it is dense and full of stuff to do, make it dynamic; like there’s a lot of stuff you could do with an open world Killzone, a lot of thematic “War is Hell'' stuff you could do and say with it. Hell I have so many ideas that if I was able to do graphic design work, I’d write up my own PDF and release it just so y'all would know what I’m talking about. Alas though, like many others, the series has kind of stagnated and fell behind in importance for Playstation history, and understandably so. But there’s no reason you can’t end things off on a good note. Oh, and again I’m going to be annoying here: PORT THE GAMES TO PC. In fact, port all the old games to PC, and make them good please (no one wants a repeat of The Last of Us Part I’s port).

First thing I will say point blank is that gameplay and graphically it feels WAY better than the first Killzone did and I think that's great. It took me a bit of time to get used to it and at first I'll be honest I wasn't feeling it but then it actually started to click. This game is a marginal improvement over the other two in most aspects and for that I totally and completely get why people LOVE this game and herald it as the best in the franchise (or at least out of the ones I played so far, though that's not saying much persay), and that's the E3 2005 trailer aside which from what I understand overhyped the game a bit even if it didn't look like actual gameplay anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnZJSse_9Pw&ab_channel=SnazzyAI (shoutout to Snazzy for the 4K upgrade goddamn).

However, it does have some issues, but first I wanna go out of my way to give some positives here.

I'll start with graphics because that's the easiest thing to talk about with this game. Guerilla knows their shit with how to make their games look phenomenal, which truth be told they only got better with over time and truth be told to me it looked like a late lifespan PS3 game. I can't really say much else about this off the top of my head other than I also again don't care much for the grey mid to late 2000s grey filter BUT it does kind of fit the atmosphere of a planet run by an oppressive facist regime so I guess I'm cool with it. I can't say anything else graphics wise without repeating myself so yeah it looks great.

Gameplay wise it's good too! Weapons feel weighty but not really sluggish, you can actually aim down sights which is nice unlike the previous game, like for the most part everything about the gunplay was improved immensely, and that most of them feel powerful. If I were to critique something about any of the guns is that I don't particularly care about the flamethrower really, it doesn't necessarily feel right, if anything it feels like I'm kind of missing my target but again I think it has to do with the guns being more weighty and I didn't use it much anyways so I wasn't bothered. One thing I didn't like is that they put in Sixaxis mandatory stuff for the game (in order to turn wheels mostly, place bombs and to help aim your sniper rifle).

Again I don't really have too much to say at this moment, as doing so would just make me repeat myself over and over again. To sum up, graphics and gameplay is good. Soundtrack is also good, though nothing I would go home and put on the stereo or something like it helps serve it's purpose well.

Now my main critique is the story/characters/and dialogue of which there's A LOT more I can say. Going based off memory after thinking about it a bit, the story starts off after Killzone and Killzone: Liberation; the ISA are now invading Helghan to capture Scholar Visari, the leader of the Helghast. The invasion is led by Jan Templar from the last two games, who commissions your squad (led by Rico from the last two games) to help out with the invasion. You play some dude named Sev, and along with two other generic military dudes go through the motions of shooting Helghast and blowing stuff up. Along the way you run into the Helghast counterpart to Templar, Colonel Radec. Some electric arc things destroy the first convoy, leading to the discovery that these things were made from a refinery outside of the city. You go there, your people get kidnapped, you and Rico go in, people get shot and die. Then afterwards, they attack the main ISA sky convoy where Templar is, Templar gets shot trying to protect nuclear launch codes before sacrificing his ships to crash into the electric whatever the fuck to destroy the ultimate electric weapon thing before Visari decides to go to DEFCON 1 and just nuke his own city while hanging out at the palace like a crazy bastard. You and your squad squabble amongst each other, fight your way to the palace, before fighting and kill Radec in an extended fight involving multiple waves of goons and a final boss who's a definite asshole with his cloak. He dies, you go to arrest Visari, he goes on a giant dictator rant before Rico guns him down and that's where the story ends. For me it's a bit of a mixed bag because whereas I enjoy the pacing, it being short and sweet at 10-11 Levels; the characters are....less interesting.

I'll say from the first couple of missions the dialogue is....just fuckin wow. I don't know how to put it but these guys are stereotypical military douchebags, like I don't know how to describe it so I'm gonna put a clip down that I got from a playthrough cause I didn't have a recording device on hand.

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxtYDiqquTCCVFNjA3b6-uz78Ff9D7T2gD

Now keep in mind, this is the funniest banter I encountered. I don't remember most of the other quotes but truth is I don't really need to because most of it is generic dude bro bullshit. Your playable protagonist isn't interesting but he's notable with the fact that I don't hear him talk much (or I don't remember hearing him talk much so that's a plus) and neither are the other two Randoms whose name I don't recognize. The real person to pay attention to is Rico to be honest, at least how they dealt with him. Now, personally I'll start with I don't think it's too out of character for him to be this much of a loose cannon, in fact the first half to 3/4s of the game I didn't notice too much that was out of character so whatever. The real tension comes within the last three missions, where he gets inpatient, gets one of your squad buddies killed, and then gets hyper aggressive for the remainder of the game and basically goes against orders by killing Visari instead of taking him alive for trial, leading to him being martyred and the Helghast going ballistic. Do I think that's stupid? Yeah. I'm kind of torn though whether not it feels believable or if the dude is just kind of a trope and this whole thing was pulled out of his ass but to be honest I'm leaning towards the former with the whole "Fuck Helghans" aspect from the first game and the death of his buddy Templar. Templar is kind of one note, not interesting, and without Luger there to serve as a foil (no mention of her in the game) and no Hakha to serve as a foil for Rico (no mention of him either), it kinda falls flat in that regard. That leads to the final two characters to mention:

Colonel Radec, who for the most part is one of the more memorable characters in this game just due to his design alone, I don't personally think he was as cool as everyone tried to make him sound, I guess I can see why they made him the series mascot but for the most part he served his purpose as sociopath general who loves murder and serves his master obediently. Visari on the other hand, Jesus H they really leveled up the ham on this fucker cause he goes ALL IN on the crazy dictator speech that he's actually to me the most compelling character in the game even with the limited screen time he has.

Now with that I guess I should address one last thing: the multiplayer. They shut down the servers in 2018 I believe but thanks to a game preservation group PSOne, the unranked multiplayer servers are back online for those who want to take a chance and play again. So far I've played twice, both saturdays over two weeks and whereas I didn't stay for long I had a good time with it. Just keep in mind if you're gonna trophy hunt for the game, you can't get the trophies for the multiplayer wise as of 2022 still so no platinum on my end. However, one day I hope to go through and mop up the remaining single player stuff with the off chance that maybe they'll bring back trophy support online (though I highly doubt it).

And finally again, obligatory rant at the end of every playstation exclusive review (or game stuck on consoles). I know it's not gonna get you millions of dollars but Sony please port your old games to PC, keep history alive. And if they don't, luckily ya'll can just get the PS3 emulators up and running I know but I'd like to see these games remastered and ported some day along with all the other franchises stuck on old systems.

I guess if I were to tl;dr this I'll say this: Gameplay/Sound Design/Graphics good, Story isn't the most memorable but is paced well and didn't feel like a slog, and characters were one note, boring and cliched on the protags side with the Helghans being the more interesting part. Multiplayer is back online, just look up PSOne.

Adios is a narrative adventure game (or what the kids would call a "walking simulator") developed by a game developer named Mischief. I don't really know much about this game's history in the slightest, all I personally know is that I either ran into a Youtube playthrough one day or a friend of mine wishlisted it and it said "Disposed of bodies for the mob" and I instantly got giddy and wishlisted it as I love playing games with guys like Paulie and Joey as they eat fettuccine and beat up guys while wearing see through socks and track suits. That being said, this is not that game. In fact I'm going to go out of my way to tell you the gameplay here, as I said it's a "Walking simulator", you go around your farm doing chores and conversating about life with your mafia handler and so you do a lot of walking and clicking on stuff. Personally for me, I was okay with that because primarily it's a story game and it's a game whose themes really resonated in some ways for me.

The story goes like this, as stated in the steam store page, you play a Pig Farmer who doesn't want to dispose of bodies and feed the meat to his pigs anymore; all your reasons for doing this arrangement are now gone and you're left with the inevitability of what's to come: regrets and death, something we all will have to come to grasps with eventually in our lives. What follows is you and your mob buddy going around your farm and doing activities such as milking goats, shoveling s h i t, playing horseshoes and more as he tries to convince you not to sever ties. One thing I like about this game is how convincing the relationship between the handler and the farmer; they have a professional relationship and yet they respect each other and joke around, and it upsets him that he won't just continue their business together not only because it's convenient but that because you can't get out of your association with the mafia unless it's through the feds or death and for the farmer, he just wants to die anyways. His life has gone downhill, his wife died years ago (being put into a nursing home for Alzheimer's) and his son hates him (for the fact he put his wife in a nursing home); mix that in with mortality issues such as death and thoughts on religion, and just wanting there to be some positive end even if there's no sure way that it'll really work due to his past actions.

There were many scenes that were poignant to me, the two especially being the section called The Soda, where you discuss with your mob handler the meaning of hobbies, how they feel and what they mean to the protagonist, before ultimately segwaying into grief and how people often handle it by going into their escapist roots, a feeling that is all too relatable to me. But however, the most memorable would have to be when the father calls his son on the phone near the end of the story; throughout the game you were given multiple choice dialogue options in the way you respond to people, but when you call your son Bill and you have the harrowing talk about why they're strained, most of the dialogue options are blanked out, thoughts that the Farmer desperately wants to say to his son but doesn't feel like he can, another thing that's all too relatable with guilt, he had to do a lot of things he didn't want to do for what he viewed as the greater good and no matter what he will be judged for that. The Farmer isn't a perfect man, in many ways he reminds me of a lot of my father figures; he means well and tries his best, only taking up the job because he wanted to support his family; but ended up messing up a lot of his relationships along the way (not that it excuses their actions).

The story is something whose themes I'm not sure I could articulate fully without it actually being experienced as the writing REALLY does it's job well and made me empathize with all the characters in game, each having things that I can identify with in a sense (minus the whole mob shooting people thing of course). The voice acting is phenomenal too, Resident Evil fans will recognize D.C. Douglas (of Albert Wesker fame EDIT: didn’t know he was a creeper too, the things you learn off the internet) as your handler but Rick Zieff is the highlight with his farmer, whose voice carries a lot of weight as he shifts emotional tones trying to strike these tough conversations with people, a tone that embodies the character of someone who wishes he did better, something to me that's identifiable.

I guess to finish off the review, the graphics the usual indie graphics affair, (the most I could really notice is that the Handler walks kind of funny to me personally), but the design of the farm where you live captures the Early 90s country farm feeling. Everything looks beautiful, but empty; alone, like the Farmer himself. It's a short game, you could complete it in an hour and a half to two if you're going for all the achievements and what I will say here is that the price for this game personally to me is a bit high at 18 dollars but I guess the value is up to the player themselves, as to others the game's handling of themes could more than make up the price and I wouldn't blame them as I'd also recommend plaything through the game multiple times to really digest it emotionally but to me but to me, I'd say wait for a sale.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/

When I first played this game, I played it a bit on Xbox One (via Backwards Compatibility) and I only played the first couple of levels before I stopped because it wasn't gripping me. This time a buddy bought me a bunch of Star Wars games during my birthday so I felt like I might as well get back to this one and finish it all the way through, and I have some thoughts.

The Story isn't bad, I actually don't have a problem with it even though it feels like fanfiction at times (but made by LucasArts themselves). The story is basically you're Darth Vader's Apprentice, he killed your dad and now you go around killing Jedi before gathering them back again to host a rebellion against the Emperor, inadvertently starting up the Resistance. Along the way you encounter some fan service (in the form of cameos such as Darth Maul and Obi Wan from a certain character) as well as form a romantic relationship with your pilot Juno, one of which I didn't really understand how they even started feeling that way but whatever I guess. It ends with you choosing whether to finish off and kill Darth Vader (for the bad ending) or rescue your friends and fight the Emperor (for the good ending). I did the good ending, and it was fine.

Same with the three DLCs, one is just you go to the Jedi Temple sometime during the story and you fight the Dark Side of yourself in a hallucination (which was eh). The other two DLC take place during A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (With the New Hope you being dropped off in Tatooine where you try to find C-3PO and R2D2 while encountering Jabba, Boba Fett and Old Obi Wan; and the other one you fight and then turn Luke Skywalker towards the Dark Side during Hoth).

So why am I spoiling this stuff? I mean cause truth is, the story stuff even though it's a self insert character is probably the only part of the game that actually feels good or interesting. Like fan service can be mixed with me, in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War, I really don't care about it because it plays fast and loose with the canon. I can sort of get behind the idea behind this story and have it be somewhat believable, I don't know I guess that's just preference. I also heard they tried bringing back Starkiller to the new Disney universe and I find video game characters being adapted into the main canon to be interesting, especially after a rumor of the main guy from Fallen Order might be getting his own stuff. Tangent aside, gameplay next.

It feels clunky, janky, I didn't really enjoy it that much. There were times where it felt ok don't get me wrong, but most of the time it felt like a generic third person action game except worse. The first couple of levels were ok at first but then got more frustrating as I fought the stiff platform jumping, combat which mostly includes my health getting whittled down real quick and my favorite: getting knocked down over and over multiple times in a row before I die, or fall off a cliff then die. I swear to god I felt like I was falling down more than actually killing anything, it reminded me of high school except I was tripped less back then. Playing with a controller was fine but I struggled to move certain objects I needed to move, and some objectives were just unintuitive or sometimes broken (ex. there was a section where I had to crush a Star Destroyer, but I couldn't find the prompt or the indicator to do it, until I learned from a buddy that that was a glitch apparently that others encountered. Glitches were abound plenty of times, and the quicktime events were iffy as well. Overall, shit was stiffer than d i c k and not really fun. I heard that this might've just been a bad port and that I should play other versions but truth is, I don't know if I want to to be honest.

Sound Design and Visual Design are as follows: it's Star Wars. You'll hear the same John Williams score, the same "Woom woom" sound you used to make with your mouth while clashing lightsabers, it's good. No complaints. Graphics are from 2006-8 so not surprise there, didn't notice anything in the way of negatives there.

Pros:
Star Wars Visuals and Sounds are accurate and good
Story is ok, better than I thought it would be

Cons:
Combat feels exhausting
Glitches up the a s s
Platforming works against you
Quicktime events were whatever

I guess to wrap it up, I didn't like this game. I wanted to but I didn't. Maybe everyone is right and I should play a different port of the game (I heard the Wii is the best port) but truth be told, I don't know if I wanna touch any of it. I have the sequel, I'll play that eventually but otherwise I sadly didn't like this other than the odd thing here and there. It's clunky, if you get this game on Steam, get some patches or something I guess if there is one and be aware it'll feel janky. And if you like this game besides that, I respect you for it and god bless you.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/

Siren (or known as Forbidden Siren in the Europe/Asia markets) is a game developed by Japan Studio under the banner of Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 2 console. This game is a fascination to me, in fact it’s been a fascination to me I believe since I watched NitroRad’s video on it (link below) though the truth is I’ve known about it for a bit longer than that due to the fact I’m a weird Sony exclusive historian guy so I’ve always gone out of my way to collect these. However, I originally bought it on PS4 for ten dollars or so due to Nitro’s video on it; and that’s basically the console I played it on because the game is expensive (though I’d love to collect to own it in the future) due to the fact that the game didn’t exactly sell well due to it’s gameplay concepts, of which I will discuss here in a bit. This is due to the fact that the game’s director, Keiichiro Toyama (originally of Silent Hill 1 fame), wanted to create something unique with the series, something that hadn’t been done before. Though I can’t confirm this because writing this review is off the cuff, apparently he wanted this game to be a sort of puzzle that players would have to put together with other people, preferably on the internet. Again, I don't remember the source other than a few offhand bits of info I heard from Youtubists (which could be wrong), but this stuff is kind of rare in concept (the only other example I heard being like this was Kojima’s P.T.; which in a sudden twist of fate was a Silent Hill game but that’s a whole nother bag of shit to get into) and even more rare in the fact that this game came out in 2003, so not a lot of people we’re really doing that as far as I’m aware, at least not like it is now. Because of this, the game didn’t exactly sell well, garnering two more games (the second which only sold in Europe and Japan with no way to play other than region locked PS2 consoles from those versions or alternatively emulating via PC, as well as a “Reimagining” of the first game which I heard was not so great), as well as some movie adaptations in Japan and some manga comics. Truth be told, with how this game plays out, I’m not surprised that more people didn’t play this game, and whereas I’m disappointed and sad, I also can’t really fault anyone. It took me 10 hours to beat based on in game stats but it doesn’t count the constant retrying of deaths so it was more like 15 I would make a guess, which factors into the gameplay which is up next.

So here’s the basic concept of the gameplay: you start out as one of ten characters (which range from main character Kyoya Suda, professor Tamon Takeuchi, Priest Kei Makino, his twin brother Shiro Miyata, Risa Onda (a woman who is also looking for her twin sister, who was dating Shiro), teacher Reiko Takato, student/child Harumi Yomoda, celebrity/70s sitcom mom looking Naoko Mihama, old badass/poopy diaper grandpa (as a friend called him lol) Akira Shimura and finally Tomoko Maeda, a student who ran away from home after her parents read her diary. You get placed in a random section of a map and you’re often told to do an objective, and for the first couple of loops you can do those objectives while also completing secret secondary objectives (which are basically kept secret unless you’re following a guide, look to the bottom of the page) so other people in different missions down the line can do other objectives needed in order to pass. After you beat a bunch of these missions, you’ll unlock the “Link Navigator”, which helps you choose which missions you wanna do as well as tell you which missions haven’t gotten their secondary objectives done. However, sometimes these objectives don’t even pop up properly unless you do a bunch of other missions first and get the prerequisites done, even if you already unlocked certain missions previously. For example, there’s this mission where you play as Akira Shimura and you have to protect Tamon Takeuchi’s student, Yoriko Anno, as she’s attacked by Shibito (the main enemy fodder, they’re reanimated villagers who are kind of like zombies except a whole lot more human and can be armed with anything from shovels to big ass rifles) and one of the prerequisites for a later mission (spoiler) is to “Remember Akira”. To do that, you need to tell Yoriko to hide in an area around some houses, however if you hadn’t completed some other missions (which I have no clue what missions are needed and if they even tie into anything) she won’t find a picture of Akira lying on the ground which won’t be used later by Tamon to remember Akira after he’s been Shibitofied and plugs him with some bullets. Another example, you play as Kei Makino as you have to escort Tomoko through a cliffside village area, once you get to the end and split up you’re supposed to (as a secondary objective), go back to the nearby temple, sightjack (give me a second) and watch as a nearby Shibito puts in a code to unlock the temple door so you can grab something and leave; problem is the fucker doesn’t spawn until you do a bunch of other missions beforehand.

This, while I enjoy the meta concept to the whole “Time Loop” concept that the game has (which will be explored in the story section), and whilst I understand that it plays into the “Cooperate with other players to figure out how to continue the game”, nobody was doing that shit back then that I’m aware of so it came off more frustrating than most, unless of course you use a guide which I’m gonna be honest with you, in order to understand what’s going on YOU WILL NEED A GUIDE. Trust me on this, I suck at puzzles cause I’m a dummy idiot simpleton fuck who can’t solve most puzzle games without one, but dude I doubt anyone could sit through this game and intuitively think “Wow, this game is really cohesive with what it wants me to do and I’ll snap to it like that”, it’s unique don’t get me wrong but it’s obtuse as hell, especially for it’s time period which was 2003. This is I think one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, but again also a strength with how it ties into the metanarrative it’s got going, a strange catch-22 of sorts because while I like it a lot for it, it’s really confusing and I guarantee you because of this (as well as some of the controls), not a lot of people got passed the first mission, as for some people the first impression is the only impression you get.

Hell, I’ve been kind of afraid to touch it, having wanted to but knowing I would get way too frustrated on my own, I’ve been streaming it once or twice every week for a friend as a sort of excuse to delve head first into it, and having gotten to the end and beaten it I’m glad, but I also understand. Bringing it back to the controls for a second, this game is a bit of a confusing mish mash; it’s a third person over the shoulder survival horror, except it doesn’t play all in one go. You play a mission at a time, with maybe a checkpoint here and there dependent on how long the stage is but because of these short, segmented stages you won’t get much in the way of guns and ammo, sometimes you’ll get a melee weapon and sometimes you just won’t get shit at all and have to survive only using your wits. This can actually lead to some tense moments (and frustrating moments). The more frustrating side tends to come when the Shibito have guns, specifically long rifles, if you are seen it’s a death sentence; for example there’s a mission with Kyoya where you have to escort Yoriko through a giant nest of buildings with armed guards patrolling the place, of which I was only able to get through with the IGN guide as well as a Youtube channel whose moves I replicated (thanks to P.B. Horror Gaming, link on the bottom). With this in mind, another thing I want to bring up; if I wasn’t streaming the game I would’ve gotten really pissed at this game as it’s very much trial and error; you will die A LOT in order to figure out a pattern to complete the objective and it can really try your patience so make sure to have A LOT of that as well as the guide because sometimes it’s not explained properly.

My scariest moment was playing as Harumi trapped in a house, defenseless against three other Shibito (all of them being Tomoko and her family); the only tool you have is the Sightjack ability, which you use to close your eyes and moving the left thumbstick around can sort of “tune in” to different Shibito, seeing from their eyes as they move around the area. This is both useful in the sense that you can figure out their patterns and learn to avoid or confront them and scary as fuck cause if one of those guys sees you while you’re sightjacking? Run. It’s a unique game mechanic I haven’t seen pretty much ever except one game, Atama (which takes inspiration from Siren anyways) on Steam (Link below). Other than the sightjacking, you have combat which if you can you should probably avoid unless absolutely necessary. Ranged combat should only be used for people you need to knock out in a jam (they don’t die, they WILL get back up so shoot wisely) or for certain objectives (mainly involving the Onda twin shibitos) because you could both run out of bullets quickly. Melee combat isn’t bad but can be a bit funky, if you get too close you have a good chance of getting grabbed which means you lose health and there aren’t any health packs in the slightest and you can die really quickly without button mashing; of which I don’t know which button to press whether it’s X or Square (EDIT: Just learned it was the left thumb stick, I’m an idiot my apologies). Also, for melee you have the light attack by tapping X and the strong attack by holding X; learn the timing for the strong attack not only because it knocks em’ out faster but if you’re in a shorter area like a tight hallway, the light attack is useless as your range is stopped by nearby walls, trust me on this. Along with the fact that the more the game progresses, the tougher the Shibito get: spider shibito are fast and can get in your ass quick while climbing around and fly shibito are basically mobile sentries that usually have a revolver and can blast your ass quick, along with other forms. I should also bring up the controls really quick:

Controls:
Square is the flashlight
X is to open doors, and interact with stuff in the environment like collectibles
Circle is to crouch
Triangle is to open up the interaction menu, which allows you to: Call/tell people to wait, shout at enemies to lure them to you, interaction with certain objectives, etc.
L1 is to strafe and you move left or right
L2 is to Sightjack, with the left thumbstick helping you channel to different enemies
R1 is to aim, if you have a rifle like Akira, it’s zoomed in and you move the right thumb sticks though keep in mind it’s kind of awkward
R2 is to go into First Person mode, where you can move but very slowly
Start (or right on the PS4 face pad) is to open up the main menu
Select (or left on the PS4 face pad) is to open up a map (you won’t be told where you are so you kind of have to triangulate yourself and figure it out)

As far as I know clicking the thumbsticks does nothing, but moving the right thumb stick quickly moves your camera a tad but doesn’t exactly move your character in a way that’s normal as it’s still a survival horror game. Any movement you do will be primarily the left stick, which I’ll give you some advice: the tight maneuvering (as well as the longer animations sometimes) can lead to Shibito gaining on you if you’re running away, so if you’re in an open space it’s fine to run but if you have a tight corner, slow down then move to the desired direction because I ran into so many walls and it takes a bit for your character to get out of it. Also goes for jumping off of or climbing stuff, the animations are slow and if you get hit you’re back to square one, so you have to gauge the distance/pray the shibito miss if they have a gun. It gets especially frustrating when trying to help people up whatever cliffside, as it takes a while to do so. I don’t think I have much else to put out there in the way of gameplay, except three things: as Kyoya you’ll be escorting a blind girl named Miyako sometimes, don’t run too far ahead of her or else she won’t be able to sightjack through you (because she’s blind of course) and it helps her orientation if you’re looking at her. Another thing to note is that you can get into vehicles sometimes, but when you do you’ll be first person and each section will be its own thing you have to press Triangle on to figure out what does what (mainly throwing this out there for the first mission as Kyoya), the third is to take your time with it’s game and get comfortable with repetition as if you’re trying to do the collectibles/secret objectives and you die after getting some progress done, if you’re not restarted at the beginning stage then there’s this glitch where certain things don’t actually count towards your progress and they get erased so either you’ll have to go get this stuff again or alternatively restart. Keep in mind, though a lot of it is clunky and definitely frustrating, once you get the hang of it, it all sort of clicks and there were times where I felt REALLY good playing the game. If there’s something I’m missing, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it in. I’m gonna go onto the story here because there’s a lot to unpack for me personally.

The story starts out relatively simple but gets complicated and rather confusing and convoluted quickly. You start out as Kyoya Suda, traveling to a remote village in the Japanese mountains called Hanuda, investigating a massacre that happened decades ago along with the paranormal side effects (which I didn’t even catch this, shoutout to the wiki). Of course, like all horror games, there’s a cult that is trying to sacrifice a blind girl named Miyako in a ritual, Kyoya’s presence lets her escape and the ritual is foiled, leading to the entire area to go to hell really quickly. After escaping a drunk cop (not officially a Shibito as he hasn’t died yet but drunk cops shooting at civilians? Why does that sound familiar?) and getting shot he lands in a red river and wakes up next to a village with a priestess named Hisako Yao, who helps him get his bearings. Along the way you’ll discover the motives of other people involved: Tamon was originally from Hanuda and his parents died in a mysterious landslide in 1977, Kei Makino is a priest in the local religion (called the Mana Religion) but is apparently a really nice guy and a bit of a wimp while his twin, Shiro is a bit of a sociopath who murdered his girlfriend Mina Onda, a nurse who worked with him, for telling him that she’s pregnant with his baby, and after the Shibito outbreak guess who pops out of her grave. Meanwhile her sister Risa Onda is looking to find her, like keep in mind there are so many plot details and intricacies that I can’t really put it all in this review as it would just be blatant copy paste wiki articles at this point.

What I can say is this: everything is happening because of an event centuries ago: a famine happened long ago in the late 7th century, and the people of Hanuda was suffering through a drought that really hurt their ability to consume; they perform a ritual rite calling for rain and all the sudden a decade later a creature comes falling down on a comet where it’s mistaken for a fish and is eaten; it doesn’t exactly like that so it screams and brings about a curse, specifically on Hisako Yao; that’s right the priestess is immortal and has erected this Mana Religion in this creature’s honor, named Datatsushi as everyone else dies a painful death. She’s also pregnant apparently and starts the Kajiro family bloodline, known in Hanuda as royalty and is shown to have gained the sightjacking ability as a sort of miracle and having been cursed to resurrect Datatsushi, forgets her duty. With this in mind, she interrupted another ritual in 1976/7, which sunk another part of Hanuda into a landslide (which Tamon’s parents died in) and sending that piece into an alternate dimension, or as the game would say “The dimension that’s between life and death” or something along those lines. After that she regains her memories to revive her god, and has since been determined to appease it yet again, so sacrifices Miyako in 2003. Kyoya fucks it up of course and everything goes to hell; what I liked out of the game is the interconnectivity between the characters and the plot, for example Akira’s son was apparently 1976 Miyako’s boyfriend and that’s led to a long line of depression and hatred for the local cult; Shiro has always been jealous of his brother Kei’s upbringing and has longed to become him, he’s also a bit of a mad scientist as he conducts experiments on the Shibito to learn their secrets; however he disappears after Day 2 because he grabs the Uryen (a plot macguffin that helps both harm the undead as well as representing Yin and Yang (which little note here, symbolically is represented multiple times between Shiro/Kei as well as Risa and her twin Mina Onda)) and from then on you just play as Kei Makino. But wait, his voice sounds familiar right? Well if you play one of Harumi’s alternate missions in Day 3 you learn why, out of sheer jealousy (as well as due to the fact that Kei’s stepfather gifted the entire control of the religion to him in his will) murders his own brother and dons the garb, with Shiro finally becoming the person he wanted to be all along: his brother. I love this twist, and it’s the little details like that even when out of order, if it’s brought back together correctly it makes for a fantastic twist. Again, there are so many details that sort of loop back into itself that even logically speaking make sense, like something that I got from Nitro’s video was that Miyako had a dog (until her adoptive brother killed the pup and attempted to kidnap Miyako back before getting wacked in the head with a stick), and since she’s blind and sees through sightjacking, they’re a literal seeing eye dog. Another thing I enjoy is Harumi’s bond with her teacher, Ms. Takato who takes a motherly bond with her and refers to Harumi as her daughter, and goes out protecting her in a fantastic send off involving explosives. Another detail I like, Naoko is career obsessed and worries about her beauty so a remark from Akira (in a negative light) about being immortal due to the red water (final bit here before I explain the red water and wrap up the plot) leads to her getting the idea that she can get eternal youth and beauty by bathing in the red water; that’s not the case and it leads to her transforming into a shibito. In fact, anyone who gets in contact with the red water will eventually become a Shibito, with Kyoya being the only difference due to a blood transfusion between him and Miyako, and she’s immune due to her bloodline. The titular siren the game talks about is the call of Datatsushi, which leads shibito to bathe in the red water so they can transform into more fucked up versions of themselves (which is a reason why spider shibito and fly shibito exist).

The game finally starts to close when Miyako is sacrifice and Datatsushi sort of reincarnates; shit gets even worse as the fates of Shiro/Kei and Tamon are revealed; Shiro sacrifices himself to kill off all the remaining Shibito I believe with the Uryen (of which there are two, one which he gives to Kyoya, and also he floods the shibito nest by opening up the dam) while Tamon gets a tragic ending and ends up finding his parents, to him they look the same but he’s had contact with the red water so to others they’re not. In fact, barely anyone gets out alive save (thank fuck) for Harumi, who is rescued via helicopter from the ruins of the town which were revealed to be, shock, “a landslide”, repeating the same events from the 70s (of which since it’s the same dimension both the 2003 timeline and 1970s timeline kind of merge in this one dimension). Kyoya however confronts Hisako Yao and her underling, Miyako’s brother (and piece of shit dog killer Jun Kajiro) in a difficult sniper battle that ends up in a final confrontation with Datatsushi itself; however you have someone who could help you: Miyako in spirit. After picking up the Homuranagi (an ancient sword of which only really works to decapitate if you knocked down four separate stone markers as four separate people before playing as Reiko Takato and knocking down four other stone markers in one mission in a specific order) and killing Datatsushi (of which if you sightjack the praying mantis/wasp elder god looking fucker you can see Miyako point to a nearby pyramid which will help you reveal the location/distance of Datatsushi, or alternatively you could just run a bit, do a 180 and either activate the Uryen immediately or wait between 3-6 seconds to stab it with a sword) the fate of the remaining characters are revealed: Hisako Yao grows old and falls through a time vortex with the fallen god’s head, later giving it to her past self so the time loop continues and Kyoya Suda is now trapped in the underworld with Miyako’s blood in his veins. However he proceeds to roam the dimension armed with both the Uryen, the Homuranagi and a rifle he picked up along the way, and proceeds to annihilate the shibito.

Overall, to wrap this story up; I don’t usually care for stories that make you get all the collectibles in order to understand ANYTHING about what’s going on (talking about you Outlast 2), but this game does it in a way where I LOVE it and how it goes together. It’s a fascinating take on time loops, yin and yang, good and evil; there’s a lot of stuff in there to unpack and on top of it I consider this game to be Lovecraftian horror and in that sense it’s fucking amazing too. The only complaint I have is that a couple different times when you follow certain mission paths and go from mission to mission they’ll bring you to the final cutscene out of context: Kyoya murdering Shibito while loud rock music plays (bringing his loop full circle as he was up in Hanuda investigating a massacre from the 1930s, which he’s doing right now though I don’t know where the 1930s part comes in? I’ll have to look it up), which is tonally inconsistent and funny as fuck when just viewed out of nowhere. Me and my one friend nearly shat ourselves (more me of course) trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. In fact, that’s kind of the whole game in a nutshell; it’s confusing as hell and you’re trying to unravel everything and figure out what the hell is going on and truth be told I can’t believe I’m saying this: in the words of Todd Howard? “It Just Works”. Because the more you play the more invested you get, and the more you kind of connect the dots together. I’m gonna quickly move onto the other stuff before wrapping up here:

The graphics are PS2 era but are laden with uncanny valley facial movement as the game used a strange early version of motion capture; it looks unsettling as hell in the way it moves as if it’s as NitroRad said, an actual face being projected onto the face of a mannequin. I feel like that’s a huge part of what gives the horror the unique identity it does along with everything else; on PS4 it’s upscaled so it all looks good there. The soundtrack is creepy as hell (though funny in the final cutscene); the track “Hoshingoeika” (created by composer Hitomi Shimizu) does a fantastic and unique job at bringing about all the old creepy cult chants together in a way that helps form the atmosphere, it’s not Akira Yamaoka with Silent Hill but that’s not the vibe it’s going for in the slightest. It’s honestly a lot MORE creepy whereas Yamaoka’s soundtrack is godly and can be creepy but a lot of his stuff his more melancholic and sad (again I LOVE IT) but it contrasts to what this game is trying to do. Speaking of sounds, the environmental sounds are creepy as hell; yeah the Shibito are creepy as fuck with their grey skin and bleeding eyes but dear god when you sightjack them and hear them breathing? That’s the stuff of nightmares and definitely made me feel uneasy as I went through the game. The only thing I could consider a downside is that the voice acting isn’t great; you get used to it after a while but I really wish they had a Japanese dub/English subs thing because the british voice acting is more hilarious than anything else, though it can help add levity to the game even though it wasn’t quite meant to originally. I think my favorite is when Harumi calls out “MRS. TAKATO”, mainly because it sounds like an old H3H3 bit where Ethan would get into that weird high pitched voice and say something messed up after coughing violently. Basically the VA ranges from “somewhat ok and not noticeable, to unintentionally hilarious/kind of bad.

To finish up here, I actually really love this game; however I’m giving it a 4 instead of a 4.5 or a 5 for a number of reasons; it has a lot of confusing fridge logic and jank, the VA isn’t that great, some of the enemy placements feel really unfair sometimes and it’s based in trial and error, and for some people the whole “look at collectibles to understand what’s going on” can 100 percent be frustrating. In fact I’ll even say, if I wasn’t streaming this for a friend over a period of two months once or twice every week I’d probably want to smash my head into a wall as I’m not really the patient type and I'm unsure as to whether or not I would really play this ever again. However beneath all of the dirt and grime there’s a real solid gem here, something beautiful and special that I feel deserves way more credit than it gets, even if it understandably doesn’t get a lot of points with people over it’s confusing direction and design. It makes it even worse that Siren 2 wasn’t even ported or released in the U.S. and that Siren: Blood Curse got a digital only copy (though the physical copy which I bought for 80 dollars cause I’m a collector) only released on the PSN Store. Since the release of Siren, he worked on both sequel games as well as another series I platinumed last year: Gravity Rush (of which one day I will come back and review both of these games because I have thoughts about them too). After these games he left Sony to start up his own studio: Bokeh Game Studio, which is in the process of developing a game called Slitterhead. Now I’m VERY interested in this game, however I’ll admit I still miss Siren. As always, I wish Siren had a PC port, I wish Forbidden Siren 2 had both a PS5 AND a PC port, and Siren: Blood Curse I think you can play through PSN Plus but don’t quote that but even if it’s not the best game apparently it deserves the same amount of treatment. However, as our capitalist system would incline: money talks and fuck everything else, which is sad that even for preservations sake doesn’t get more. Also I’d really like them to make a Siren 3, and if I had a choice I’d say do it with the old PS2 styled graphics and Mocap, it really seals in the unease. I’m also gonna leave some links down below for those who want to watch or listen to some stuff or read up on some of the guides I used or wiki pages I read to refresh my memory on certain things and if I ever think of something else to add to this review then I will. Thank you for reading if you did and if you would rather a single sentence summarization, look below.

tl;dr good but jank, no normal person would ever play this.


Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/31/siren-walkthrough-508738

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114Ygup5-x4&ab_channel=NitroRad

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2019840/Atama/

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Siren/Controls

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hanuda_Village#History:

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hisako_Yao

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Homuranagi

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_(video_game)#Playable_characters

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Datatsushi

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Harumi_Yomoda?so=search#Forbidden_Siren

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Water

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Uryen?so=search#The_Uryen_in_Forbidden_Siren

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Kei_Makino#Story

https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Miyata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6EgutJLqA&t=18s&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rEyCVRelds&list=PLEE2727EDFDE65968&index=1&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoLtWQ1Pnc&list=PLd4jZRAzc5n8R0gE9U90SsUqJt4V04PHe&ab_channel=P.B.HorrorGaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZI968UaZw&ab_channel=Fakan

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/275063-siren-trophy-guide-amp-roadmap/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkG3DH6IZw0&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZcsWN_KBc&ab_channel=BoulderPunch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2wj65MimUc

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Siren

UPDATE:
Found some more sources for stuff if you want to look into it, just be careful with security of the site.

http://siren.kakurezato.com/

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/siren-arg.1636588/

Didn't know there was an ARG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYdxGjgSrA&ab_channel=InfiniteRetry

https://web.archive.org/web/20040110033312/http://www.occultland.com/

So after a while of playing through the Resistance series, I decided that I would go through the Killzone series (and continue my edgy mid 2000s shooter thing with maybe Gears of War sometime after I beat this series) and since I beat Killzone 2 recently I figured why not review the first game in the Killzone series. But first I want to say, I got this version from the Killzone Collection on PS3, which is on the same disc as Killzone 2, and platinumed it in half a month? If you want a tip for platinuming this game somewhat easily, since you have to play it on the hardest difficulty, the PS2 cheats still work so use the Powerful Weapons cheat and you can kill most things in one shot.

https://www.ign.com/wikis/killzone/PS2_Cheats

Now I'll start with this, Killzone was created by Guerilla Games straight after Shellshock: 'Nam 67 and since then it's only stuck to two series under Sony Interactive: Killzone and Horizon. You can kind of tell that this is one of Guerilla's first BIG games because fucking Jesus Christ it's janky. On the upside it has an interesting sort of world and I enjoy the idea of paralleling actual history into the lore of the world in game (like I believe in Level 6 there's actually a D-Day reference where you and other ISA fight against Helghast landing on a beach and storming it). On the other hand, there are times where it just feels...iffy gameplay wise. What do these two points have in common? For one interesting thing, another thing kinda comes in and smacks you in the head. It has a lot of interesting things, like the world is interesting, graphically it's somewhat solid (though that grey filter goddamn), and I like how they split the campaign into four characters (though only two play somewhat differently).

The story basically is this: there's a traitor in the ISA who sold out your planet to the facist Helghast faction, and what you have to do is follow Jan Templar, Shadow Marshall Luger, Heavy Weapons guy Rico, and undercover operative Hakha to do...something? I don't remember a lot but that's the main gist.

Now playing as Templar and Hakha are the same fundamentally, except Templar is an ISA commando shooter guy and Hakha is a Helghast undercover agent commando shooter guy. The second most interesting of the bunch is Rico, the heavy shooter guy who has a big ass gun you can use to mow down people. The most interesting person you can play as is Luger, who is more stealth based, can crawl into certain spaces, etc. Not that it totally matters because it all boils down to shooting people that are in your way, it's just with each campaign you just have certain alterations and paths (ex. Two campaigns you have to go one way to avoid lasers, another campaign there are no lasers), and each campaign starts where they start in the story (ex. Templar is the very beginning, Luger starts from Chapter 3 I believe, Rico on Chapter 4 and Hakha on Chapter 5). The main difference between them at the end is how they respond to the the hammy traitor general's speech (Hakha's being my favorite because it's kind of a comparison on the fact they're both traitors to their side).

Graphically, Guerilla's always been kind of a powerhouse in that, that's their strength. Great graphics, gameplay hit or miss, and the world is hit or miss. Like this game looks fine for 2004 (though the comparisons to Halo are sorely mistaken, this isn't even trying to reach Halo's thing like Haze or Resistance: Fall of Man sort of did), other than the grey filter of which I got tired of. And overtime they've gotten better, I mean look at Killzone 1 compared to Killzone 2 (which looks fuckin good, minus the grey filter) and then compare that to Horizon which is Fucking gorgeous. Though bringing in my last super positive point is that it has an interesting world and lore, even if the story is simple and shoulder shrug worthy.

The gun combat is the basic stuff, you shoot people, they go BAHHHHHH and they fall to the ground in comic ragdoll form. Though when I played it, I remember it feeling kinda iffy, like it lacked a punch with most weapons and sometimes even a bit spongey and the bullet spread is all over the place. Also the alternate fire modes are always nice, can't usually complain about those. Off the top of my head at this moment writing this review, that's all I really remember off the top of my head?

Point being it's a rough game, you can tell Guerilla was just kind of starting out making these games. Honestly, just please keep this in mind going through with this game. If you're curious about it go for it, though do yourself a favor: Please don't compare this to Halo. It's not Halo, it never was. Just think of it as a first person shooter, a somewhat generic feeling one but still. And what I will say is that if you're not feeling it, that's fine. Killzone 2 is also on PS3 and that might be better for you to start in (and for god's sake unless your a masochist, ignore Liberation).