The Darkness II is a comic book simulator/linear first person shooter game developed by Digital Extremes as a sequel to the first video game, which in itself is an adaptation of a spin-off to a comic series called Witchblade. Fun stuff right? What else has Digital Extremes done? Apparently a lot, they’re most famous for Warframe now but other titles I recognize are Pariah (an Xbox Original FPS), Dark Sector, the PS3 port for Bioshock/multiplayer for Bioshock 2, and a third person Star Trek game based on one of the newer movies. How did they get involved in The Darkness II after Starbreeze Studios developed the first title? I’m unsure but my guess is that the owner of the IP, 2K, decided to just switch development over to these guys and apparently weren’t even given the option to develop it and only heard about it in the middle of development for Starbreeze’s Syndicate FPS game. Digital Extremes went on to develop this for around three years or so (retaining the writer from the previous game, Paul Jenkins, as well) and the game released to a generally positive reception for the most part.

My experience with encountering this game started however many odd years ago as a young lad, back when I lived in my old town. I couldn’t buy games much but my mom (shoutout to my mom) would rent me games that I’d ask for and I’d give them a solid try before the store would eventually close down. I had never heard of this game nor was I interested and I think I wanted something a bit different at the time but she got me a rented copy of this game and while I was confused (though I think she got it for me because it had mentions of the mafia and I’m fascinated with organized crime) I gave it a spin on my Xbox 360 back in the day and I legitimately enjoyed it for the most part. I later picked it up on Steam to play cooperative multiplayer with people and having had the same friend who played The Darkness 1 on the hardest difficulty play this title on the hardest difficulty, I felt I had some thoughts to give on my viewpoints of the game.

Taking place two years after the events of the previous game, the possessed Jackie Estacado is now living a quiet life after the death of his girlfriend Jenny, having avenged her death against Paulie Franchetti and taking over the reigns as the Don of the Franchetti Crime Family. The game opens up with a throwback to the previous game, having Jackie sit in a dark room all by himself while narrating about his life and the events of the previous game. From there it opens up to him walking through a restaurant, the liveliness of it all as it’s made clear that he’s the top dog in the place, and on top of that he’s on a date with two blonde twins. This ends poorly with one of the girls getting a poor Moe Green special, and the restaurant is under siege by a mysterious group of armed men. He’s dragged away by his cohort Vinnie, and the two return fire while ultimately being surrounded and the shootout ends with a gas leak and a giant explosion. Jackie is on death’s door when he sees a weird guy with a hunched back and one eye, who looks clearly different from everyone else in the attack force. He tells the goon to “push you further”, and it looks like the only way out is to listen to the voice inside of your head. Here’s the problem with that, The Darkness is an ancient and supernatural entity that’s been hidden inside of him all of these years and is looking for a new host, and it FEEDS off of the negativity and the body count that Jackie’s previous massacre had provided. Somehow in the time since then, he’s kept the Darkness trapped within him, contained and unable to harm anyone else. However, this is life or death and Jackie decides to listen to the metaphorical and literal devil on his shoulder; this literal devil bursts out of your body with tentacles and proceeds to utterly massacre all of the nearby hitmen.

Jackie proceeds to shoot his way through the streets, killing off the armed squads of hitmen and meeting back up with the Darkling from the first game (though given a singular British voice and personality) before trudging into Canal Street Subway. For those who’ve played the previous game, it looks eerily familiar yet different at the same time, probably due to the updated art style but I digress. He ends up running into Jenny’s ghost and gets hit by a train, after which he wakes up in an asylum. He talks to Johnny and Tony (two people you’ll see later) who ramble about strange shit and Jackie wakes up to find himself possessed by The Darkness, who proceeds to finish off a goon tentacle to mouth. The Franchetti’s flee the scene back to the mansion, and Jackie freaks out due to being possessed which leads to Jackie sending goons to find his old occult assistant Johnny Powell. Lighting a candle for his old girlfriend Jenny, Aunt Sarah (from the first game) gives Jackie shit for not moving on and his goons (Butcher Joyce returns from the first game) nervously side-step around talking about Jackie’s powers, referring to them as “his thing”. Jimmy the Grape (also from the first game) comes back with info on the attackers: more of their businesses and people are getting whacked and a waiter recognizes a potential culprit, a guy named Swifty. Jimmy and Jackie get some guys and they all roll out to Swifty’s neighborhood where Jackie kills and decapitates goons through a pool hall and takes out Swifty’s wrecking ball ambush. He escapes, but Jackie runs into Jenny’s ghost again and they share a tender moment dancing again. If there’s anything that the two games know how to do, it’s pull on your heart strings with beautiful moments between this and watching TV in the first game. Of course after this the Darkness pulls away and reminds it’s host that he’s alone, and Jackie chases Swifty into a warehouse. More dead goons and radio dialogue later, it’s learned that Swifty and his goons were threatened and bribed into going after Jackie by guys “who looked like whacked out monks”. Swifty says that this “secret club” was posted out of a brothel and that’s where he met the leader to spearhead the ambush before the Darkness decides to murder the poor bastards against Jackie’s whims.

Jackie heads back to the mansion with the envelope full of cash from Swifty’s corpse, and Vinnie tells him that they found Johnny Powell but it wasn’t willingly as he had previously skipped out on Jackie. Powell speaks about how the Darkness was seducing him, whispering to him and that it was changing him. Jackie gives Powell the envelope and tells him to find out who tried setting him up for the hit and Jimmy the Grape and some of his boys, Eddie and Frank, tell Jackie about how through their own activities (snorting coke off of a hooker’s ass of course) that this “secret club” is placed out of the Brimstone. The hooker also saw the weird looking guy who tried to have Jackie “pushed '' at this place, and this “pushes” Jackie to head out. Meeting up with Vinnie, he tells him about his friend “Venus”, who could give him any intel he needs. Johnny stops by and freaks out and hints that whomever hired Swifty were “really fucking bad” before retreating back to do more research. Heading to the Brimstone, Jackie meets up with Venus who gives him a gun and sends him on his merry way but not before hearing horror stories of the “secret club” and how hookers have been disappearing. A whole bunch of dead bodies later, Jackie is captured after having an army of lights shine upon him and is fucking crucified as a result. The guy with the hunchback is here, and Venus is dead and slung up nearby. The hunchback tells him that he needs to choose to give back the Darkness, which is slowly sifting away into a giant golden staff called “The Siphon”. The hunchback tells his assistant to turn on the TV and as the camera films the inside of Jackie’s mansion basically bragging to Jackie’s face that he will “destroy his entire organization” and makes Jackie choose between Eddie or Frank to live, the one not chosen will be shot point blank by his number one guy Bragg. Before I continue, I’m going to go on a bit of a spiel here.

So you have to choose between who dies right, Eddie or Frank? The only thing you know is that they’re your henchmen, so being a good boss you’re supposed to care about your men right? Who are they? The one time I remember seeing them it’s comic relief about snorting coke off of a hooker. Being funny is cool but I haven’t spent enough time with them to truly get their personality. There’s also an achievement to not choose anyone to die, which to be honest I chose to do every time not just because I don’t like choosing who dies, but because why should I care about them other than they’re Jackie’s guys? Give me character development or otherwise the choice is going to be meaningless and I won’t really give a shit.

Jackie at the end of the day tells the guy to go fuck himself, and in return for rejecting his offer of giving them the Darkness, the hunched man tells Bragg to kill everyone in there starting with Aunt Sarah. While being put under a Rocky-beatdown type torture, the Darkness tells him to fight or else he’ll never get back the one thing that it holds over Jackie: Jenny’s soul. Jackie rips his hand out of one of the nails in the cross and stabs his torturer to death. Of course it’s here where your best friend Quasimodo goes on a narcissistic rant about how “he tried to give you an out” and that “he was only trying to help you” as if he didn’t just attempt to assassinate you and threaten to kill everyone you love. Jackie escapes as the Brimstone ironically is lit on fire and Jackie starts to kill secret society goons who intercept him, wearing strange armor. Jackie is picked up by Butcher Joyce and some others and they race off back to the mansion, fighting his way from the underground parking lot and up. Here you meet crazed loon Dolfo and meet up with Vinnie and Johnny Powell, who finally gives you a run down on the secret society: The Brotherhood. These guys have been around for eons and were the original keepers of The Darkness, led by a mysterious hunchback with a name: Victor. You learn that The Siphon was a device originally created by the Darkness’s equivalent in the light realm: the Angelus, as one of the only things that could contain this creature. Jackie and the Darkness rip and tear through the mansion and put down the goons only for Bragg to slice open your Aunt Sarah and shoot you in the head. You wake up again in the Asylum, and the question opens up about whether you’re in Heaven or Hell. He meets up with Doctor James, a version of Jimmy the Grape, who gives him the spiel about how Jackie should be taking his medicine before sending him to Nurse Jenny.

Even Nurse Jenny writes off Jackie’s concerns about everything going on as “delusions”, who freaks out about how this isn’t real. Nearly injected with knockout juice, Johnny comes to save the day with a tackle and Jackie manages to make a run outside before a fade to black. After recounting a story about how his father almost killed him as a kid, he wakes up to find Johnny Powell who tells him Aunt Sarah’s funeral is today. He tells Johnny about the Darkness’s plans, how it wants the Siphon for itself and Johnny makes some VERY good points about hallucinations and how potentially she might not even be real. Regardless, they go to Aunt Sarah’s funeral (on the way experiencing a small hallucination of the asylum. They go to Aunt Sarah’s coffin and talk before that Dark Brotherhood asshole Bragg comes in and ruins the whole process. Multiple dead bodies and one angry mafia boss later, Bragg taunts Jackie and tells him that Victor is at Hellgate Field in Astoria, before getting his literal heart ripped out in a painful yet poignant death.

Jackie and his men head back to the mansion and check in with Johnny, and Jackie tells him the plan: he’s going to Hellgate to put an end to The Brotherhood once and for all, even if it is a trap. This game is so short that this is what I would consider the endgame, even though it’s a pretty long endgame. Jackie meets up with Vinnie and Jimmy the Grape, whom he tells to lay low while him and “his thing” finish off Victor and his secret society once and for all. Arriving at the Boardwalk, Jackie goes through a long sequence where he relives his old days with Jenny and kills more Brotherhood goons before running into Victor, whom he thinks it's a good idea to stand in front of an Iron Maiden trap for. He wakes up again in the Asylum trapped inside of a closet, this time encountering asylum counterparts to Victor’s assistant Peevish and even Swifty. Dolfo’s counterpart, Adolf, puts on his best Hitler impression and gives him orders to break into the janitor’s closet for some chemicals. The janitor lets him in, where he reveals himself to be the Darkling who brings him through hell and tells him that it’s all a hallucination and to not let The Brotherhood take the Darkness. He lets Jackie pilot it’s body, who sneaks and kills his way to a dungeon and rescues himself. Victor has stolen the Darkness, and refusing to let it steal Jenny away from him, goes back to rescue it. Jackie roams around and learns that The Brotherhood set up shop in his father’s old home, and grabbing a gun travels in further only to find Victor stabbing Peevish with the Siphon and giving him powers. Killing Peevish, he acquires some Darkness powers and heads further in and finds a picture of his dear old dad. Victor confronts him about his past, how his father was obsessed with the Darkness and that he had reached out to the Brotherhood for help. If they found the Siphon, they could take the Darkness so Jackie could live a normal life. They’re here to collect a debt and reveal their true intentions: to make the world kneel before the being itself. Jackie and Victor clash in the attic after the rest of the Brotherhood members are shot down, and instead of giving The Darkness the power of the Siphon, Jackie decides to stab himself with it so he can go down to hell (but not before killing Victor with the Siphon itself).

Jackie stabs himself with it to get to Jenny before waking up in the Asylum one last time. Being led out to Nurse Jenny (and running into Doctor Victor), the darkling janitor gives him an opening to escape from the roof and dies by sunlight exposure as a sacrifice. He proceeds to attempt to jump when Nurse Jenny tries to talk you out of it and you’re given two choices: either go back inside with Nurse Jenny or jump off the roof. Nurse Jenny is the false ending, one where Jackie dances with Jenny again but is forever trapped. The real ending has Jackie reject them and jump off the roof, which sends him to hell and puts the Darkness in an angry frenzy. Jackie sees Jenny strung up and shoots through demons with fleshy looking Existenz-looking guns to rescue her and it finally pays off. Jackie and Jenny embrace yet again and tell each other that they love each other before Jenny transforms into a strange creature. This creature is The Angelus, and she chose Jenny to be her new host. Now free from her shackles, The Angelus traps Jackie in hell and flies out with Jackie screaming NO to be the last thing anyone hears.

What I can say about my feelings of the plot is that for the most part I enjoy a lot of the concepts that it has going for it, the personal focused journey of Jackie as he has to deal with his past while he controls the Darkness within him. The struggles of a mafia boss as he deals with a cult who wants to take him down piece by piece to steal an ancient entity. The characters whether main or side are likable and charming, each one with their own sort of personality that you get to see in the limited amount of time you see them. There are new characters you haven’t seen like Vinnie, Dolpho or Enzo (though I get confused sometimes cause there’s an older Vinnie in the first Darkness and I don’t remember him dying) to returning characters like Jimmy the Grape, Aunt Sarah or the ghost of Jenny. Jackie Estacado himself is a badass (stereotypical term I know) who slaughters everything in his path with magical demon powers and kills s h i t. If you’re looking for an example of a group that’s so easy to want to kick in the teeth then Victor and his Brotherhood cult will make you want to kick them in the throat so that’s pretty cool, though I wish there was more to it. In fact, that’s the main issue: I wish I could spend more time with them, in fact I wish I could spend more time with all of them. Maybe not everything needs a super amount of depth but there wasn’t enough for me to personally care for the Brotherhood or their impact on Jackie. While this is a subjective take, to me they’re a non-entity that I really couldn’t care for and I had more interest in Jackie murdering mobsters again, or at the very least having the game take a bit longer and build up to the reveal of the Brotherhood with some more fleshed out backstory. Even if this group was in the comics, and they reveal bits and pieces of lore here and there, the truth is I wasn’t satisfied with it like I was with the lore around Darkness 1. In general, the game needed to be longer and that’s not something I say often because games nowadays are so bloated with unnecessary filler that I’d rather games be shorter and more concise. I guess overall, it needed more meat to it and while I enjoyed the set pieces and overall packaging, it didn’t deliver as well as I would’ve liked and it rushes to a conclusion that’s a cool idea, but with any cliffhanger kinda depends on whether or not it’s guaranteed that there would be a sequel and since then? Nothing. It's like waiting for Dad to get home with the milk only to find ketchup packets and a postcard from Hawaii in the mail from him and his younger girlfriend.

The multiplayer campaign, a cooperative affair called Vendettas, is a bit different. Playing as four different characters (including Jimmy Wilson, a drunk scottish man who carries a Darkness ax; JP Dumond, a voodoo doctor who carries a Darkness staff; Inugami, a young samurai who carries a Darkness samurai sword; and Shoshanna, a former mossad agent who carries Darkness guns) as you’re hired by the Franchetti Crime Family over the course of the campaign to help out in the fight against other mafia groups and their backer, The Brotherhood by any means. They’re the ones who find Johnny Powell who was kidnapped (though funny enough the campaign said they found him living under a bridge in a box) and work for him to find out information on Jackie’s attackers. The group are sent to track Swifty’s and Luigi Palladino’s (a multiplayer target) boss at a paper factory where a large amount of dark essence is being held. Sensing more dark essence from a News Channel 6 van that the boss pops out of, they head there next to track its trail. Along the way you learn of another artifact The Brotherhood has their eyes on: The Spear of Destiny. This spear was used to kill Jesus on the cross and can in theory kill Jackie so they can take The Darkness from him. Their second leader, David Graves, tries to recruit the four but to no avail so he sends Brotherhood soldiers after them. Thinking the Spear will be at the docks, the four go to the docks only to have David Graves attempt to recruit them AGAIN, which AGAIN fails so he sends two of his highest members to kill them which fails poorly. Instead, they find a shipping manifest which after research is confirmed that the Spear is at the Manhattan Trust Bank, which Graves apparently owns. The four and Dolfo make their way to the front of the bank to plant a bomb, shooting their way through numerous Brotherhood goons before managing to break into the VIP Vault. David Graves confronts them and it turns into a boss battle which drags them to hell and makes them fight a giant hell beast before finally killing Graves and stealing the spear. With their work done, they head back to the bar where Vinnie thanks and congratulates them for their work before telling them not to leave work as “there’s more to come”. The plot for this section is okay, it’s an excuse to have a cooperative campaign and it does kind of fill in the blanks in some spots but it’s not a necessary addition to the overarching narrative and truth be told could’ve not existed and I would’ve been fine.

Here’s what I’ll say about the gameplay: as much as I love and honestly prefer the first game’s movement, shooting, and everything attached to it: this game feels a lot more smooth and polished with it. You actually reload guns in this game instead of picking them up and dropping them when you run out of ammo and in a lot of ways they feel a lot better, though I do miss the lack of up close kill animations. There are multiple different guns that are fun to pick up and play with, and you can get boosts and perks by unlocking them with skill points via different floating purple upgrade stations throughout the story. How do the powers fare? They feel pretty solid too and in some ways a lot better than the first game as well. Slashing things with your Darkness tentacles feels way better than the slash from the first title, grabbing feels powerful as do executions (which you can choose different animations for different perks like a health boost or a temporary power boost to guns), and stealing the hearts out of the corpses of your enemies is always a good time. The ability to use environmental items as throwable weapons is pretty cool too, they bring back special abilities like the Black Hole power and The Darkling is back as well! However, it doesn’t have multiple choices in terms of which kind of Darkling you can have, you just get one that you can summon to sick enemies for a distraction, steal weapons in the field and explode on command (though I don’t remember this as much). However, AGAIN compared to the first one it pales in comparison because you could summon bomber darklings, minigun darklings, regular darklings, all sorts of stuff. The coolest thing that you could perhaps do is control them once or twice throughout the plot and that’s about it. The Darkness powers were also a lot more in depth with the ability to control a tentacle to sneak your way through an area and perhaps kill some mobsters or reach a collectible in an out of place section. Finally before I move onto some more criticism, like the first game the light is Jackie’s weakness and if you walk into the light the Darkness will recede, your vision will go blurry and you won’t be able to regen health.

One thing that I was discussing with a friend of mine while writing up the review for this game is that while it’s very polished, it’s also a very “safe” game. It’s a linear first person shooter with one hub-ish area (the mansion) with barely any side quests except picking up collectible Darkness artifacts (which give a cool bit of lore to the world) as well as a pigeon shooting game with your guy Dolfo. Apparently the mansion and the asylum were supposed to be hubs during the main storyline where you could receive little side quests but were according to the Darkness wiki, “discarded due to budget constraints”. There was also DLC planned for the game in general before the Borderlands 2 train derailed any hope for further plans with Jackie Estacado which sucks a lot in terms of replayability. It’s a short game, one of which doesn’t have much other than maybe playing the campaign once or twice and perhaps getting invested in the cooperative multiplayer. It’s here where you will play as four unique characters with their own skill trees and animations as you go through missions, which are either classified as Vendettas (main story missions) or Hit List (one off missions) that are fun in it’s own way even if it’s also a one in done deal. The only real technical problem I could find was that invisible walls would prevent you from moving forward but that can be fixed by enabling V-Sync in the options menu so it’s a quick fix pretty much.

The atmosphere and the art style of the game is one in the same, as graphically they took a lot of inspiration from comic books. Everything is much more cell shaded and less realistic compared to the first one, which used Starbreeze’s realistic looking engine to create detailed characters and environments. This game’s set dressing and models, while a bit detailed, are I’m sure a lot less intensive then something that’s ultra realistic but I find that most of the time the environmental stuff is pretty good. As for whether or not the atmosphere is as good as the first one? I don’t know to be honest, I’ll say that in general I didn’t really have much of an opinion on this one artistically other than “good” and that atmospherically it’s also “good”. I hate that I’m not able to give much of an opinion on it but for the most part you don’t really get much in the way of notable environments that don’t have to do with the actual comic book graphic style. You’ll go through alleyways, more alleyways, warehouses, and whatever the hell but without much in the way to make it feel unique in a way. I guess Hellside is cool, the mansion looks clean and Hell definitely looks like Hell or the stereotypical version of hell at least but it doesn’t really do it for me. I appreciate the psychological aspect of Hell being the asylum in this game but the original game had a World War 1 hellscape with undead soldiers, constant bombs and the freakiest black metal imagery available. Sadly I just don’t feel much of anything other than “oh this is good” and that sucks because it is good, it just doesn’t strike anything to me that plenty of other games haven’t done before.

So what’s the sound design at least like? To me it’s honestly better in the sequel than the first game, and that’s not a diss. I liked the awkwardness of the first game’s Jackie but Brian Bloom brings this oomph to Jackie and I ended up liking this guy’s emotiveness a bit more but that’s not a diss on the old performance. Mike Patton is back as The Darkness itself and Jesus fucking Christ does that guy know how to screech and sound evil as fuck while doing it and he just eats up his performance, Mike Patton IS the Darkness and honestly the best voice actor in the whole damn game, in a game full of great voice acting. Other voice actors include William Salyers as Victor who plays such a hateable character that he just makes it work (as I actively wanted to punch Victor in the face), Rick Pasqualone and Frank Ashmore are here as Vinnie and Jimmy the Grape, which makes me think that 2K was just like “yo, if you need mafia voice actors hit these guys up they did GREAT a year or two previously”. Stefanie Frame brings this innocence to Jenny and embodies it fantastically while Barbara Goodson plays Aunt Sarah as a great grandmotherly figure. Though what I will say is that while everyone is great, I’m surprised that they replaced everyone except Mike Patton, though if they did replace Mike Patton that would be a fucking crime because again he plays the Darkness perfectly.

The licensed soundtrack is also varied with tracks from Wild Thing by Tone Loc to Black Betty by Ram Jam to I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos, and this is only in one mission. While I don’t necessarily remember the others, I think the selection they had even for this one level is good and varied enough. The actual soundtrack compositions by Tim Wynn, whose main menu theme here is pretty solid but again I don’t remember much else about the music other than orchestral. I respect orchestral music by the way, don’t get me wrong; however most of the time unless it has something unique that pops out at me (like Demon’s Souls soundtrack for example), it just doesn’t do it for me. However, he apparently did tracks for The Punisher, Gun and Command & Conquer games before this before and would move on to XCOM 2, a bunch of Total War games and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. As for the actual sound effects and environmental noise for the game, it’s pretty good for the most part. There isn’t much in the way of ASMR or anything but the gun noises were pretty meaty to them, from the dual wielded pistols to the pump shotgun to the machine guns. In fact, if any of them were to pop out the most it would be the Striker, which I swear sounds similar to the Desert Eagle off of Modern Warfares 1 and 2 from back in the day. Overall, the weapon sounds feel powerful for the most part though that’s really it for the most part? Nothing else comes to mind of truly crazy sound design other than the guns but for the most part it works and that’s perfectly fine.

I'm gonna be honest with you. I enjoyed the first Darkness a lot more than I did this one. It’s by no means that this game is a bad game, in fact for a lot of people it has a lot more charm. Jackie is more emotive, the gunplay feels a lot less clunky and a lot more fluid in the sequel, and usually I’m all for smaller scale games. However, The Darkness’s world felt a lot more interactive from the side quests to the NPCs in the semi-free roam open world, the realistic and darker atmosphere. I preferred the focus on killing mobsters compared to weird cult members, the truncated length led to it feeling less satisfying to me, the comic book art direction is solid but didn’t hit the vibe I was personally looking for. Again, it’s a solid game compared to the first one and one that I’ll never regret playing, and one I’ll probably pick up again and again over the next couple of years if I feel like playing it in short bursts. This is a subjective take but I want more and different, more akin to the first one then what the developers attempted to do here. But it’s still a great game overall and holds up on its own merits even if it slips and falls here and there with certain ideas. If you’re looking for a shorter, stylistic comic book first person shooter where you can wipe the floor with your enemies with magical demon powers then buy it on sale.

What happened after The Darkness II then? The developers had attempted to pitch a Darkness III originally and had plans to drag Jackie out of hell apparently, with the cliffhanger ending involving The Angelus finally being solved. Along with a pitch document was apparently a small prototype but the game never moved forward into any sort of development stage and to be honest with you, that sucks. I’m not a fan of cliffhanger endings as most of the time they aren’t followed through on and instead you’re left with empty promises and what could have been. As for IF there is any sort of Darkness game in the future? Who knows. Maybe one day, but I haven’t heard of anything though I think I can say that we would love to see a finisher to Jackie’s story. As for Digital Extremes they would mostly go on to develop and release Warframe and while they’ve released other content since it seems they’ve kind of just coasted on with the success Warframe has made, updating it presumably with new content while Jackie is kind of stranded in hell. Who knows, maybe one day he will rise from its ashes and a new game will be made. One can only hope I suppose but for now, the Angelus is out somewhere and that’s where the game, and this review ends.

Links:
https://www.gamesradar.com/the-darkness-2-10th-anniversary-retrospective-the-darkness-3-prototype/
https://thedarkness.fandom.com/wiki/The_Darkness_II

https://www.engadget.com/2011-05-17-starbreeze-giving-the-darkness-2-to-digital-extremes-was-out-of.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvfLSvfWPRw&ab_channel=2KUnitedKingdom

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gggvn692qC8&ab_channel=XboxViewTV

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/the-darkness-sequel-shines-light-on-london-video-game-studio/article_5346671a-dd47-534a-b12f-c6cded501932.html

https://thedarkness.fandom.com/wiki/Darkling

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/TheDarkness

It's a long one, gonna start at plot now:

The plot starts off with you playing as a scientist named Igor, who gets a picture of his missing wife Tatyana, whom disappeared thirty years ago, right before the Chernobyl Incident. Being haunted in his dreams, he goes back to hunt down any leads and figure out what happened to his wife; sneaking into the power plant where him and his wife used to work, s h i t goes to hell resulting in one of his mercenaries that he hired being murdered by a being known as The Black Stalker, him stealing a crystal to create a portal gun, and green s h i t flying. With everything going to hell, Igor decides that he needs to figure out a plan, gain allies, build up his base and find the answers leading to what happened.

To finalize the plot, I wanna discuss the remaining parts that hit me and a part that kind of lost me a bit. You do your final heist, you learn that one of your men is a spy, and then you finally learn that The Black Stalker isn't Boris (a friend who you learn turned himself into The Black Stalker after betraying your wife to the local soviet shadow government after she rejected his advances), it's actually the REAL Igor. You are a clone created during the experiments, given a sweater and dropped off somewhere where you eventually come back after your big bad guy Semonov manipulates events to get you to come back. It also turns out that your wife that's talking to you in hallucinations the whole time has been The Chernobylite itself, which is some cosmic being inside the material, with the portals and wormholes and whatever the hell being the veins. The comparisons to a cosmic turtle really brought to mind memories of Stephen King's It, with the "Good" presence being a cosmic turtle. It's a strange thing, but I really like that idea that you're being manipulated by this cosmic mineral being. The thing I don't particularly care about is the clone thing, cause I feel like that's kind of a cop out and an awful plot twist, I would've preferred if they had just made it an alternate universe Igor who messed up and was the bad guy, or they had just stuck with Boris though I think the alternate universe Igor killed Boris and took his identity? I'm unsure, that whole thing was confusing personally to me and was the one thing about the ending I didn't care for. Other than that, I like the plot twists and turns, how your choices affect the outcome, and some of the sci-fi explanations for stuff as well as the character's personal investment in it. It's not some mind blowing huge scale RPG but it's stuff that I enjoy.

I'll say with the plot that personally I love it, and even though the whole "Alternate Dimensions" thing has been used to death in every form of media these past many years, I thought it's effects on the gameplay were actually really cool. In a cool blending of story/gameplay, you have an option in the early part to burn some documents or save them. If you save them, you get another clue that's closer to finding your wife, however that leads to consequences down the line where it ends up triggering traps that kills a bunch of soldiers but leads you into an ambush where you get thrown out of the building in an explosion and captured. I don't want to go any further in the choices but that to me felt cool, and I didn't expect it coming like that, however you can change outcomes if you have enough Chernobylite too. Go into a radioactive zone and die (at the cost of losing inventory items) or if you have enough supplies to build a radioactive machine, you can kill yourself in the machine and use some Chernobylite to change certain scenes to build up a rapport with your allies or switch around certain fates if you're looking to get other clues. Every decision has an effect on the game in some way and I like it like that.

This segways perfectly into game play for me; don't go into this expecting some giant STALKER or Fallout RPG. Even though it's basically Stalkout 4, it's also not. Chernobyl is split into a couple different sections, each one where you can choose to do main quests or side stuff like gathering supplies or hunting monsters. You'll be seeing these A LOT in your time, and can change day by day depending on your actions or inaction. It's recommended you build as much anti radiation and anti monster machines as possible or you'll be pee pee smacked with numerous radioactive clouds or The Black Stalker themselves going out of their way to kill you if you don't build the machine to halt the cosmic storm though you could complete your mission easily before this stuff happens.

The gunplay is simple, you can pick up and use certain weapons (though you can't loot them off soldiers most of the time because of "Biometric Locks", which blows wads faster than my boyfriend does but I digress) as well as create your own (which are the standard affair of Revolver, Makarov, AK, Shotgun, Railgun, and Crossbow I believe). Each serve their own purpose and can be used effectively defending on your situation. However using these weapons should be used only in certain times cause if you start shooting soldiers for fun, it'll tank your "Psyche". You have the usual health meter as well to worry about, as well as avoiding radiation (which is actually kind of easy to me in this game) which can affect your health meter if it gets filled up too high. There's also certain environments where if you have lock picks or anti-chernobylite flares can open up new areas for clues for your wife's death or loot; as well as strange encounters in the environment with hallucinations or attempted executions, the usual affair. Luckily these are marked on your map with a big question mark.

You can choose to send your allies on the loot missions and you effectively have to balance their "I like you cause you chose what I want" meter, with their hunger meter at the end of the day with rationing out supplies. Also, another Fallout 4 mechanic is building your own base, which mostly leads to building structures like beds, VR headsets (which you can use to alter one of your companions feelings towards you once for each companion per play through in case your struggling keeping up with everything), radio stations, weapon workshops, air filtration units, etc. These companions will also train you with the XP you earn, with these training sessions actually being shown to you in real time (like for Mikhael, running out and looting as much mushrooms and roots as you can in a minute).

The sound design and the art design are fantastic, and the whole green hue fits perfectly with the whole STALKER sci-fi thing they have going. The soundtrack is also good, not too many tracks that standout but it works.

Now for flaws, as it's not perfect. There are moments of genius, but also moments where the game just has a stroke and decides to not to work. There's been times where I've been caught on certain things in the environment but nothing is as painful as the constant crashing and my favorite: the portal gun disappearing. Yes, remember that portal gun I mentioned earlier? The only way you exit an environment is by using this and by god, if you have a mechanic where the only way you can leave is to use this, make sure it works. There's been numerous times where I'd have to exit the game, then reload, only for it to be a hit or miss chance at it coming back. If you want my advice on it, if you ever get stuck, what I did was run way across the map to hit another save checkpoint, quit the game and then come back to it. If it doesn't work keep trying or you might alternatively have to restart the mission which sucks and I had to do that once or twice. Now I heard the dev patched it, so I have no clue why I had it going. Maybe my save was from before the patch? I don't know.

tl;dr: STALKER meets Fallout 4, most of it is small scale genius with a lot of bugs. Get on sale, it's a good one and I wish I could say more here but character limits.

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

This game is one of many things to me: of my all time favorites, the game that got me into the Souls series, one of the first games I've ever played on PS4 (which includes Yakuza 0 and I had a copy of Until Dawn but I wanted to play it with people and just got it started this year so I guess it doesn't count?) and finally: my very first platinum. I had a lot of fun memories with this one, playing it with my older sister on a character she created and then just viciously dying because of the difficulty curve. There's a lot in here I WILL be looking at with rose tinted glasses but even then fuck it because I love this game. Let's start with the story.

You play as a hunter of your creation, operation on by an old man who gives you a transfusion of blood to combat something called "The Paleblood". Shit happens and you wake up in a bad dream, on the table in a clinic in the city of Yharnam. From there you die, die, die again, die some more, continue fucking dying, and then afterword's you keep dying. Along the way you'll meet the usual horror monsters like Werewolves, rabid dogs and the like, to other hunters driven insane by bloodlust to creatures beyond comprehension, with one look their way driving you to madness. And you have to kill all of them. The main reason I picked this up was because of the Lovecraftian aspect specifically and boy does it deliver on this, delivering fantastic and creepy lore on the state of Yharnam, the factions, how it came to be and etc.

The combat in this game compared to the previous FromSoftware games is a lot more fast paced, there are no shields and if there is one it's not that good. You attack enemies with a variety of weapons, that also have a secondary form or attack (ex. The Hunter's Axe going from something short with one hand to a longer axe with extra reach). The game expects you to go aggressive, move in for the kill, use your secondary weapon (usually a pistol of some sorts, a torch, etc.) to Parry enemies at specific moments in order to lead them for a stun attack or to cancel out attacks entirely. Finding their weaknesses is crucial, taking advantage of dodge frames at a certain time to roll through an attack unscathed, and when you get damaged you jab a vial of blood into your side, keeping the momentum a bit but not to a full stop like the Estus Flask or the Moon Grass featured in Demons Souls and Dark Souls. And the final part of this section of combat are the bosses: truly unique in how fucking horrifying and scary they are, most of them have a unique strategy to them. Father Gascoigne in the beginning is there to teach you how to parry but also kick your ass. The Blood Starved Beast is a flayed creature who has a huge weakness to fire but loves to throw out poison so you have to carry around anti-poison stuff. I don't want to go too into depth because then it'll be the size of the Bible but you get the point.

You move through certain areas, discovering NPCs (along with specific questlines that pop up in specific spots), fighting new enemies, collecting new weapons, all the while gaining Blood Echoes for each kill which you use at the Hunter's Dream. The Hunter's Dream is a place you go when you first die, a safe spot, the sanctuary of the Souls series which is just a church, a graveyard and an infinite void of grey. You can level up your character with the Blood Echoes by talking to the Doll or go to the fountain nearby to buy ammo, molotovs, pebbles to lure certain enemies away when you throw it, etc. Over the course of the game, things will change up and you'll also get access to dungeons, where you can farm for supplies, explore randomized areas and kill bosses for rewards.

What I will say as a little thing is that if you're going for the platinum trophy, the dungeons WILL be the hardest part, mainly because in later ones there will be bosses that kick your ass and I required assistance from people with OP builds who kill them in one shot. Actually this transitions well to another point, if the game's kicking your ass you can summon other players or certain NPCs by using your Insight (gained from being summoned yourself and helping other hunters, witnessing certain events, consuming Knowledge skulls, entering new areas or maybe perhaps invading other players and murdering them. That's right, summons go both ways, people can invade your game to murder you, so you have to prepare for that in advance as well.

Moving on from combat, the graphics are beautiful (though stuck at 30 FPS), and the environmental design is immaculate from gothic architecture to creepy forests to landscapes of Lovecraftian nature, there is nothing that this game can't pull off, and paired with the sound design it's amazing what these guys did to create this game.

If I could think of a bad thing to say about the game, it's really just kind of the same stuff that people wouldn't like about other Souls games. Certain Bosses can be too OP, quests can be really vague and require a lot of backtracking, etc. But honestly, out of all the Souls games THIS one is my standout, my favorite, and truthfully one of the best games on PS4. If there's anything to God that I want it's that this game gets ported to PC, I will buy this game for everyone I know but truthfully that's up to FromSoftware and the powers that be. Miyazaki made a fucking beautiful one here, though I'm sad that my least favorite, Dark Souls 2, had to suffer because of this. Still nonetheless, if there's anything I could recommend I would say please buy this game. If I could add more to this review I would, but I can't because that would require a five hour video essay on the game and I'm not a dope ass game reviewer like Grimbeard or anything so I can't do shit. Just play. If I'm missing anything please forgive me, it's a lot to cover; and also truthfully maybe it's best to dig into the game yourself (though if you want a hint, there's three endings, one which requires "A Third of an Umbilical Cord", if you're trying to get all three endings at once, wait til the very end of the game to consume them and before you do upload your Playstation Cloud save. Thank me Later).

This game has been one of the most mixed and confusing game experiences of my life. I have absolutely no words for how batshit confusing this game is gameplay wise and tone wise. On one hand, the gameplay isn't something that I particularly care for but the atmosphere and story are so early to mid 2000s straight to DVD goth "Human gets teleported to fantasy world to become champion and save everybody" that I can't help but adore this part. I'll give some brief story stuff (or at least stuff that I remember), then go on about the other parts.

Created by (at the time) SCE Cambridge Studios, their past and future games include PS1's Frogger and the Medievil series, to 24: The Game and one of their final titles (and best FPS/one of the best Vita games) Killzone: Mercenary; it's a studio of which I've played a game or two. Having looked at their history, their output has been kinda mixed to positive but with A LOT of potential. The story starts with Jen and her boyfriend, a member of some rock band, being stalked in a club while her boyfriend is playing. Suddenly an ambush happens and this giant, Mr. X looking fucker puts you in a coma and your boyfriend disappears. You wake up in a strange world where you're greeted by a talking gargoyle named Scree, who persuades you to fight for his master against the forces of darkness, of which Jen agrees because she believes this'll help her find her boyfriend. Over time you gain demon powers (one per world with a total of four), banter/bond with Scree and help liberate each of the four worlds from the dark forces. I think that the bond between Scree and Jen form the backbone of the game, bringing out the best in one another while also having their conflicts and issues with each other. They go through and liberate a kingdom whose queen brainwashes the king to be dictator, a water world where you liberate the fish people (mainly the queen) from her bastard husband, liberate an old gothic village with weird looking vampires (which btw this world is funny as hell, gonna plug two clips in from my channel to really throw the vibe out):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYblVTa9GQk&ab_channel=gamemast15r

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjHN6oG6U3M&ab_channel=gamemast15r

And finally go to some weird Roman looking Sun/Sand world (aka the realm of chaos). Overall this story maybe kind of by the numbers and goofy, but the main characters are what bring this game into charming territory and the story and the atmosphere are bright positives to me for this. Graphically it's a PS2 game, but the PS4 port looked good though glitchy at times, with a place or two where I can walk through walls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKduzPQB0Cc&ab_channel=gamemast15r

The gameplay however is the main issue for me. Your main thing that you do when you go through the game is you solve puzzles, go through some sluggish combat encounters, and then walk/backtrack a bit. The problem is, you have no clue where you're going. If you know where you're going playing this, if you find this intuitive god bless you, I'm jealous. But I got stuck numerous times trying to figure out where the hell I was going. The first world was ok for a bit, but after a while I had to break out a step by step walkthrough on where the hell to go because good god I kept getting lost. Maybe I'm just an awful gamer? I don't know. But that consists of about 80 Percent of the gameplay, going places and solving puzzles while trying to navigate where you are.

The other 20 Percent is combat, which is placed somewhat sporadically here and there. You can choose between your demon forms to fight other creatures (though don't change into your fish form while on dry land), and this can feel kind of sluggish really. I mean it's not awful, it's serviceable, but I don't know how to explain it really other than you lock on to creatures and fight them one by one but sometimes they gang up on you I think sometimes you don't?

I almost forgot to say this: Scree doesn't fight as much as you can use him to scout ahead to see what enemies lie as everyone tends to ignore the walking and talking gargoyle. However, Scree is very useful at siphoning energy from certain spots and special crystals. If Jen loses her health in demon form she'll be ok, with this life energy helping her regain her health. However if she dies in human form, Scree has to run to the nearest rift gate in a time limit or else she permanently dies in the real world.

I don't remember too much other than this cause it was again kind of sporadic. What I can say is this, the PS4 version that I played was kind of glitchy, and in combat it sometimes led to gems like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNlEmLlY9xQ&ab_channel=gamemast15r

I guess this is a good transition to the Port stuff. I'm unsure of how the PS2 version plays, but the PS4 port is kind of glitchy here and there. Along with some of the stuff I ported earlier, I got two glitches during cutscenes both at the beginning and the end of the game with hilarious results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ze_jKQqrec&ab_channel=gamemast15r

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28OwdSWsZfY&ab_channel=gamemast15r

It's not a bad port, just kinda off sometimes. Again to me, the Story and Atmosphere without going into any more spoilers is what really settled on my liking of the game, with the relationship between Scree and Jen being the highlights of it. But dear god the gameplay to me is left to be desired and actually figuring out where you're going is a chore to do. I respect this game, and I respect this game's place in the Sony Library, and along with the usual rants of "Please port this old game to PC", I kind of wish that more people at least knew about these characters, like I'm kind of surprised (kind of because the two mains are really memorable) and not so surprised (because not too many people played the game sadly) that they didn't bring these two to Playstation All Stars Battle Royale or something. Overall again, it's one of the most mixed experiences I've ever played in my life, but it's certainly memorable to say the least. If you have a PS4, around 10 dollars and smarter than me I would suggest you get it. Would I play it again? No. But I enjoyed my time with it, at least whatever time I didn't spend getting lost.

Also, I'm surprised they didn't port Ghosthunter as well, considering they teased the game at the end of Primal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1-SyAf10_U&ab_channel=gamemast15r

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/

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a game created by Guerilla Games as the first ever in a series of third person action RPGs created after the critical failure of Killzone: Shadowfall. Since the start of Killzone 1, the only games these guys have worked on were Killzone and now Horizon games and after having platinumed Horizon: Forbidden West this year and the announcement of numerous Horizon projects, including:

A remaster of this game (unneeded in my opinion the game looks fine)
Horizon: Burning Shores (DLC for the sequel)
Horizon: Call of the Mountain (PSVR2 Exclusive)
A multiplayer oriented spin-off

And I'm sure many more to follow. I respect that Guerilla has found it's stride with this series, and hope that they have their success with it. Problem is for me personally, I didn't really find this game (or it's sequel, though to me it's marginally better) that interesting. To me, it felt like literally every other open world RPG, with comparisons to Witcher 3, less so Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I'm sure more. Let me explain.

The plot has you play as Aloy in the 31st Century, who is cast out from the Nora tribe at birth is trained under Rost to compete in some sort of prove your worth tournament to join the tribe. You also gain access to the Focus, a futuristic device that lets Aloy see things others can't. After she wins the Nora tribe is attacked by masked cultists who murder a whole bunch of them. She sets out to find who led the attack and it's learned that the world ended when CEO Ted Faro unleashed robot dinosaur peacekeepers. Elizabeth Sobeck, another famous old world figure, who started trying to terraform the earth and reverse Faro's stupidity. I'm gonna skip to the finish and post some of Wikipedia's recap on the plot cause truth be told I can't remember much of this game anyways:

"Aloy is contacted by Sylens (Lance Reddick), a secretive figure interested in uncovering the fate of the Old Ones. Aloy learns that Sobeck was sent to a decommissioned Orbital Launch Base to complete Zero Dawn, which is located under the Citadel, the centre of Eclipse power. Inside the base, Aloy learns that Zero Dawn was a vast underground system of databases, factories, and cloning facilities controlled by a single artificial intelligence, GAIA (Lesley Ewen). Once all life had been extinguished, GAIA developed a countermeasure to deactivate the Faro robots and build its own to restore the Earth's biosphere. Once the planet was habitable again, GAIA's next goal was to reseed life on Earth based on stored DNA and teach the first human clones not to repeat their predecessors' mistakes. However, APOLLO, the subsystem designed to teach humanity, was sabotaged by Faro's founder and CEO Theodore Faro in a fit of nihilism, and the first humans were reduced to a tribal, subsistence society. The Eclipse are secretly controlled by HADES (John Gonzalez), another of GAIA's subsystems designed to enact controlled extinction if the outcome of Zero Dawn was not favorable for human existence. Reaching Sobeck's office, Aloy obtains a registry to give her access to the door beneath the Nora's mountain. She is captured by Helis and sentenced to death at the Citadel, but escapes with the help of Sylens. Aloy helps the Nora fight off the Eclipse and unlocks the mountain's door.

She finds a recording from GAIA, revealing that a signal of unknown origin caused HADES to activate and seize control of her functions; as a last resort, GAIA self-destructed in order to stop HADES. Without GAIA to maintain the terraforming process, the entire system began to break down. As a contingency plan, GAIA created a clone of Sobeck in the form of Aloy, in the hope that she would find GAIA's message, destroy HADES, and restore GAIA's functions. Aloy learns that Sobeck sacrificed her life to ensure the Faro robots would not find GAIA. Aloy manages to obtain the master override to destroy HADES. Sylens reveals that he was the founder of the Eclipse, originally tempted by HADES' promises of knowledge. They surmise that HADES intends to send a signal to reactivate the Faro robots to extinguish life on Earth. Aloy kills Helis and helps fight off machines, before stabbing HADES and activating the master override, ending the war. She journeys to Sobeck's old home, finding her corpse, and mourns her predecessor. In a post-credits scene, HADES is trapped by Sylens, who intends to interrogate HADES to find out who sent the signal that activated it."

Now you're probably wondering why I didn't finish up the recap on the plot by myself instead of borrowing from Wikipedia? Because truth be told I don't remember shit. I don't remember most of the characters, most of the plot, like the two characters I remembered from this plot are Aloy herself and for the longest time until I beat Forbidden West I didn't remember Lance Reddick's name, who I just called Lance Reddick in this character. I feel like to me the plot is kind of convoluted personally (though it has interesting ideas), the characters didn't really strike me as memorable (especially the names holy shit), and overall it didn't illicit much in the way of feeling out of me. And keep in mind this isn't because of some "Fuck SJWs and Women" bullshit because truth is I don't care about that, women are great so playing as a woman? Fuck it why not. It's because the story is painfully average and lacking anything in which I find interesting, and whereas with other games I can sit down and be passionate about how shit it is and rip it apart, I don't have anything for this to remember it by and I think that to me is the ultimate sin. I just don't care. Like I feel like if I'm not able to tell you who the antagonist is other than "Lance Reddick" and even who Aloy's father is that's a huge issue for me. I'm just gonna leave it at that because to me any further point is gonna be me regurgitating the same shit on the plot. On to the gameplay.

The gameplay is average to good, and truth be told was the best part of the game. The combat feels fluid and great, and for the most part you fight robot dinosaurs, you use your bow (and other weapons like slingshots, ropecasters, your spear, etc.) as well as certain ammo types to take down each dinosaur strategically, with certain robots being weak to certain types and in certain places. You hit these places and you could get specific loot that you could use to help craft ammo, new weapons, etc. Of course you can dodge roll, you can hide in bushes and do stealth kills, craft satchels and clothing, study these dinosaurs and depending on if you've raided the nearby dino creation facilities you can turn them into your allies or if I remember correctly even ride them (though this could be bleeding into Forbidden West which does have this feature so If I'm wrong I apologize). Of course there is some standard "Ubisoft" formula stuff: bandit camps, jump on the tall ass giraffe looking dinosaurs and get to the top and you can unlock a portion of the map, level up with skill points, acquiring old world artifacts, etc. I suppose I shouldn't be clowning on stuff everyone does but at this point this is part of the "Average open world RPG" thing that a lot of games do and it's by numbers. This is a part of my thesis on Guerilla games and what they do: Their games are kind of average and not memorable in actual plot wise, but their worlds are memorable (though Horizon is less so). I think character wise it's better than Killzone (especially Aloy cause she's actually memorable) but I still can't remember their names. I think other than gameplay, the best thing this game does is graphics, this is what Guerilla is one of the best at, like truth be told this game is one of the best looking games on the PS4 period, and truth be told you could tell me it was a PS5 game and I couldn't tell the difference. The environments are beautiful with different biomes and I can't tell you how great that stuff is. Soundtrack is decent too, it fits the game generally and that's what matters. Voice actors are great and they help lift the material for an otherwise kind of boring plot. It's amazing what the Decima Engine does with this game.

To finish off this review, I read up on Wikipedia that this game was one of 40 pitches that we're thrown into a pot, and I don't want to be the guy that shits on this idea but it really didn't captivate me, and most people I talked to actually agree with me on this. As always if you enjoy this game, I'm happy for you, enjoy what you love. But this game didn't do it for me except the gameplay and graphical design. Also the complete edition has the DLC and other extra added content.

Also as a note, I always bitch about how many console games don't get PC Ports. I'm at least happy to say that along with Days Gone, Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the first PS Exclusive games from Sony themselves (that I know of) that got put on PC.

https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1151640/

https://www.gog.com/en/game/horizon_zero_dawn_complete_edition

If you want to play these games on PC, here are two links to put in, it includes everything as well as the DLC. I may not be a Horizon fan much but I'm happy that these games are being preserved and put on PC, because even if I don't like this game that much other people do and they have a right to play these games. Also if they're really "Remaking" or "Remastering" Horizon Zero Dawn for PS5, I'm not sure how in depth they're going but if they charge an asston for it that's iffy as hell, it feels like it should be a free update or something and I'm wary of this whole "Remake a game released a short time ago that looks good" trend. It's iffy and feels like a cash grab.

Chop Goblins is a short indie retro FPS game made by David Szymanski, the guy who made games like DUSK and Iron Lung. Having played and beaten DUSK but not made an official review, I can tell you that it's mucho bueno, pretty damn good. I haven't played Iron Lung yet but I know people who have and seen game play of it and it looks pretty creepy and great. With this game being the last game released by David during the year, I guess it's fitting one of my buddies get me this game for Christmas as well, with it being most likely MY last game of the year as well. I don't have too much to say cause it's a short game but I'll go through it briefly.

The story is simple, you break into a museum in the 80s cause you're bored and you unleash evil accidentally in the form of the titular Chop Goblins. These little bastards throw axes at you and talk to you in Gremlin speak, and you shoot your way through them through the museum, a city, Count Dracula's castle, Greece and then finish off in an alternate future. You wake up in the museum again with everything ok except a cliffhanger which teases a potential sequel of sorts. It's not much for plot, it's the standard FPS plot of "go in and shoot shit" and that's fine with me. The plot isn't really meant to be taken seriously, and truth be told I feel kind of stupid even recapping what plot there is.

The game play is by far the most important feature in this; you like shooting little goblins with a small array of guns? You got it. You have a dagger, a flintlock, a gun that shoots stakes, a street sweeper shotgun, and a magic wand that obliterates and you go through the regular Goblins, Goblins that throw axes, little annoying Vampire dogs, 50s Housewife goblins who hurt you with words an ex-partner would, etc. They feel great. You go through short form levels, where you can unlock secrets and potentially alternate ways of going through the level. It feels good and doesn't overstay it's welcome and I love it for that. If I were to point out a favorite moment it's getting chased around a small building (including the halls) by the Chop Goblins driving a car surprisingly well (though I died, it was still funny) and the boss fight against Dracula himself who spews catchphrases and damages you with bright orange images of bats.

The visual design is great, the standouts to me are The City and Greece with Greece taking the best for looking beautiful and the soundtrack is good too. I guess if there was anything to really add here I'd say you can take off the VHS grain in the options menu.

Overall, like it's a short game you can beat in one sitting, and it's in the vein of a retro style FPS, or as the kids would call it "The Boomer shooter". Only thing I don't really like is the fact I can't jump but honestly it's whatever with how the game is made.

Pros:
Short
Guns feel good
Got a goofy sense of humor

Cons:
No jumping

Truth be told I'm kind of grasping for straws making this because it's short but it's good and I definitely recommend getting it. If you're looking for an hour or two to kill you can buy this for five dollars and it's not bad in the slightest. Buy this game, even if it's once I think it's good enough to have fun for an hour or two.

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

Last review of 2022, so I'll finish the year with a game that I played and platinumed at the very beginning of the year. Made by Guerilla Games, Forbidden West is a sequel to the first one and because I'm a PlayStation exclusive whore, I decided why not and pre ordered this even though I felt the other one was average. This one is....a tad bit better though still average. I'll start again with the story.

In this entry of the series, you play as Aloy again after the first game. You're now searching for a backup of GAIA after defeating Hades from the previous game, hoping to use it to restore the Earth. Lance Reddick, who I learned in this game was made Sylens (who I actually remembered his name this time) tells her to go out West to find more answers. You end up finding the corpse of Hades from the previous game's stinger (after going through a valley in the midst of Civil War with your friend Varl), of which you're able to find a backup of GAIA. However, this was interrupted by humans who fled Earth using special tech during the great collapse centuries ago, who also have their own Sobeck clone. From there you find a mountain base where GAIA reunites with other AI and tasks Aloy to merge her with even more AI in certain spots (like Vegas BAYBEEEEEEEEEE as well as San Francisco where you encounter Ted Faro's corpse who looks like something out of Oat's Studios Zygote) to make her whole again all while dealing with the rogue human colony (who is called Far Zenith). You also juggle in between several different tribes and gain new allies while trying to get these pieces of AI. However after trying to trap an AI, the Zeniths kill your buddy Varl and everyone's depressed including his girlfriend from another tribe. However one of the Zeniths, Carrie Anne Moss (aka Trinity from the Matrix) saves her and explains that she used to date the original Sobeck, that she has regrets and that Sylens has been instigating the tribe war and supplying the rebel threat with tech to fight the Zeniths. After defeating the rebel leader, Aloy and her group team up with Sylens to defeat the Zeniths and take down the threat. They manage to do so, avenging Varl's murder while learning of the Plot Hook for the next game: Another rogue AI destroyed the Zenith colony on a different planet, and if I remember correctly activated HADES from Zero Dawn? Don't know if that's true but Carrie Moss dies after trying to force Aloy to join her, GAIA is now whole and they plan to stop Nemesis in Horizon 3.

I'm actually surprised I remember more of the plot and didn't have to copy paste from Wikipedia, though much of it was still hazy and suffered from a lot of issues that the first game did: certain characters are fleshed out and interesting from Varl and Eruend to Sylens. Other characters I don't remember, it's a step up from what happened in the last game but it's still kind of an issue here. From the goofy names I can't remember to characters that are built upon sort of but not really, I'm not sure if it's because I suck at fancy medieval sounding names or if it's just cause the characters weren't interesting but I just didn't remember much from the last game. I remembered a bit more of course; Aloy, Sylens, Varl and Eruend. But others are kind of hit and miss. That's all I can think of right now for story.

The gameplay is more of the same, it still feels good but now you can swim underwater with the Diving Mask and you can use new tools like the Glider and the Pullcaster (with more I don't remember). It's mostly minor improvements, enough to make it noticeable but not enough to make it a huge overhaul and that's fine cause the truth is the gameplay is still the best part of Horizon anyways, though still following that Ubisoftish formula with your tallnecks, your bandit outposts, etc.

It's more of the same but even prettier than the last one, with beautiful landscapes that represent Nevada and California with varied biomes from swamps to desert to snow land. Guerilla as always hits with their graphical presentation and art style, with the soundtrack also fitting with the environments they're putting them in.

To finish off the review, I'll say this. Didn't encounter any glitches other than this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Et7X4WwF8&ab_channel=gamemast15r

The game is fine, a bit better on some ends but is overall more of the same. If you loved Zero Dawn I think you'll love Forbidden West and that's fine, I hope for the third It'll be much better but I kind of doubt it and I'm really mixed on how Guerilla is going all in with the Horizon IP but if it makes them happy god bless. I'll probably buy the new DLC when it comes out and try it out just because I'm a completionist but truthfully as a game it's ok. A friend of mine put it best:

"Visually stunning yet entirely uninspired. It’s beautiful, and I love how the world of Horizon looks from a design point of view, but the gameplay is a predictable fanfare of Tomb Raider-isms (both original and reboot). It's a spectacle."

If I were to make a comparison maybe I'd compare it to Avatar, the series that makes billions of dollars but also feels average; though I still hope/think that 100 percent they'll eventually port this to PC especially considering how popular the series is. Last review for 2023 I'll see ya'll next year!

Chasing Static is a game by Headware Games, set in rural Wales near the town of Hearth. You play as Chris Selwood, who is called by the old folks home and given his father's diary after his death. This diary tells of his life's work, and in order to confront his past he drives to his old childhood home of Hearth (I think? Unsure tbh). I'm going to go into Spoilers here:

You drive to the Last Stop Cafe, where you meet a waitress named Aneira, who tells you that you made a wrong turn but in exchange for a lift she can give you directions. You agree, make coffee and turn the power back on after it goes off. Freaky s h i t starts happening and you wake up with everything changed. You explore the woods nearby, find a bunker and a disembodied voice named Helen tells you about strange paranormal stuff and that in order to leave you have to contain the nearby sites of which there are three and you're on your way.

You contain the sites before going back to the bunker and going up to the Echo Garden on urging from Helen. Inside you make your way through the facility and downstairs to a special machine where you hook up and you learn some things: Throughout the game, you learn that a meteor crashed into Site C. This meteor seemed to have effected everything strangely, you have a strange connection to the afterlife (Your dad's the head scientist, exploiting you in experiments in order to try to get in contact with his dead wife named...Aneira. That's right, you were talking to your deceased mother early). Other effects include wandering ghosts, strange fungus, and turning one scientist into a psychotic murderer. Helen turned out to be the one nice scientist who saved you and put you in a foster family far away from everyone, being your only friend. You regain your memories and leave with everything going back to normal, that is if this is all actually real and a part or all of it isn't in your head. Endings follow here:

Survivor- Don’t find all collectibles or save ghosts; and you get the normal ending described above.

Foreshadow- If you collect all the notes, echoes (I'll describe soon), and get rid of ghosts it's the same as Survivor except there's a post credits scene of a facility in a snowy area, implying more to come.

Salvation- If you turn on your car 3 times (and don’t get collectibles or ghosts), you drive away only to crash it and wake up in a ditch near the bunker, go through the game and it's the same ending except you hitchhike out.

And Umbrella (cheeky RE reference)- Switch the levers in the final room and it all shuts down and you die by ghosts.

I enjoy the story, it's intriguing and going through the world I just wanted to know more about everything that happened in it, why it happened, what happened? A lot of the plot can be interpreted in different ways and by the end of it all I can say that I'll continue to think about it for a while; the way it tells it's story you can tell it takes a lot from games like Silent Hill and truth be told almost all the way through I felt immersed...except when I didn't. Let me explain.

The Gameplay is basically a "Walking Sim", you walk around, figure out puzzles, and use your ghost detecting device thing to encounter Echoes (visions of past events of which there are 17), read notes (of which there are 9) and contain Sites. Tying into the spoilers, In order to get rid of a ghost at each site you need to get a modified loudspeaker, find the ghost and shoot it. Here's my issue, the walking sim part is great, but if you try for the extra ending it gets tedious. These ghosts are finicky as hell, and if you're exploring you need to be careful cause if you run into them once they're gone forever, necessitating a fresh start. You have to find them (look for three floating green dots that move), shoot them and then they're gone. Even with that in mind, I had a HELL of a time with glitches in this game: certain items and echoes wouldn't spawn sometimes (even if I completed it in the same order) so I had to reload an older save after exiting the game completely and getting back on, I had to restart the story once or twice due to the ghosts (a normal play through may take 2 hours if that). Stuff like that frustrated me and took me out of the loop, If I'm wrong about the glitches feel free to beat me up but it still pissed me off a bit. That being said even though you just walk, solve inventory puzzles (pick up items to use on others), and detect ghosts it's still good and I think that's due to the atmosphere.

This game is creepy as hell, and I love it. From the PS1 style visuals (I'm weak for those), to the unsettling atmosphere and creepy but calm soundtrack, the old sound design when you pick stuff up, the voice acting is spectacular, even the found footage stuff on the main menus, this game does a fantastic job at the atmospheric side. Keep in mind, there are no jump scares so don't expect that kind of game, just walk around and take it all in. I can't express enough how I feel this game presents that stuff immaculately, and truth be told holds the experience up with the story in the end. Once you complete the game you get a New Game (Restless Dreams) mode that's supposedly a visual filter but I didn't really see anything different from my first playthroughs? So who knows what that's about but nice Silent Hill reference.

Overall I recommend this title, I got it as a game from a buddy of mine on sale and on sale it's worth it, just keep in mind that it might be glitchy/frustrating at certain points. I used this guide to help me out with the ending stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2649882944, so in case you need help it's there. I'm also interested in the developer's new game, Hollowbody, which another friend of mine put me on it's kick starter so I'm excited for when that finally comes out.

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/headwaregames/hollowbody

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2123640/Hollowbody/

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