John Woo presents Stranglehold is a game developed by Midway; known for games like: Mortal Kombat, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, NBA Jam, etc.; and co-developed along with John Woo’s Tiger Hill Entertainment, which was co-founded by John Woo and his producer partner Terence Chang, this would be the first outing for Tiger Hill Entertainment. Before creating this company to develop solely one video game and that’s it; it’s main founder (John Woo) helped direct classic Hong Kong action movies such as: Hard Boiled, The Killer, Bullet in the Head and A Better Tomorrow; whereas his partner, Terence Chang, was his producer from The Killer onward until The Crossing (another John Woo flick which was a two part historical drama).

Their outing was actually a pretty good collaboration with Midway Games, utilizing the same heavily modified Unreal 3 Engine that they used in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (except with Havok Physics and a “Massive D” modification, link here: https://www.shacknews.com/article/45555/john-woo-presents-stranglehold-interview) and brought in the same director from Psi-Ops, Brian Eddy, to help develop this game.

The end result of this partnership was Stranglehold, a video game sequel to John Woo’s classic flick Hard Boiled; where you play as Inspector Tequila Yuen as you shoot your way through environments in the style of Woo’s old over the top Hong Kong action movies. You could say one of it’s influences could be, yeah I know, Max Payne considering their implementation of the action except with this game having more interactivity. It’s funny how Stranglehold was influenced by Max Payne, which was in turn influenced by John Woo movies as well. It’s kinda cool. The team was also studying John Woo’s movies every day to get a sense of the direction they wanted to take it in.

Now I don’t know too much about the development but I’ll give you what I can find. Announced in 2005 originally, everyone involved seemed pretty excited about the project, with both Midway’s side and John Woo’s side praising the collaboration, calling it “an interactive entertainment experience that filmgoers and gamers alike will appreciate and enjoy” according to Businesswire. They announced that the actors that would be joining (link: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/midway-unveils-hollywood-voices-for-i-stranglehold-i-) were Chow-Yun Fat (of course), Randall Duk Kim (who played the Keymaker in the Matrix), and Arnold Voosloo (who played The Mummy in the titular movies), amongst others. For Chow-Yun Fat himself the team flew over to Hong Kong where he lived and got body scans and voice over sessions with Chow in order to truly recreate Inspector Tequila in game; they also photocopied and then photoshopped a combination of people to create new original characters.

There was this focus on an east west hodgepodge (link: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/07/our-interview-with-the-art-director-of-stranglehold/) sort of mix that John Woo and the others wanted for the game, from eastern clothing styles on the characters to the location of Chicago to even the voice acting being only in English. The goal was to also create levels with the idea that if you haven’t seen it before in a video game, then it would be a good location to use. They decided to photocopy certain environments; which they then created in game with a wide array of destructible items. The idea was that the player would be able to use the destroyed objects to their advantage, like creating makeshift cover; along with making certain arenas able to have objectives completed in multiple different ways. (Link: https://www.psu.com/news/psu-interview-stranglehold/)

They met with John Woo repeatedly in order to get approval of the work that they were doing. He apparently loved the way that the team operated and gave them a lot of creative freedom, though he was also deeply involved with the process. Some of the things that were left on the cutting room floor (according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranglehold_(video_game)#Development) were the involvement of traditional chinese clothing, and apparently story beats such as the export of body parts. But other than that John Woo was happy with what they delivered, often helping produce and flesh out story beats, with him having the final say on pretty much everything (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oscMsnENTAI&t=2s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff). Usually this spells out bad news but in this case it ended up going pretty well.

The promotion for this game, it seems, was pretty good. They had the usual stuff, like Websites that have since gone defunct or belong on MySpace (https://myspace.com/strangleholdgame); Advertising the game in the extra section of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, being promoted alongside Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run, and a collector’s edition which featured the game and the full movie Hard Boiled on disc for PS3 (https://rbr.com/midway-games-delivers-campaign-for-stranglehold/), as well as receiving a Stranglehold branded Xbox 360 Faceplate (https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/7dcAAOSwsiJhFYby/s-l300.jpg), a shot glass (https://www.bonanza.com/items/like/262049959) and more interestingly, a comic which I can’t find.

The only thing I ever saw was a Limited Edition Bonus Disc for Xbox 360 that came with the game which I bought on Ebay for a couple of dollars in order to help make this video.
The thing that popped out to me the most however was their Movie Contest, True to John Woo. Announced in late 2007 (link here: https://rbr.com/midway-games-delivers-campaign-for-stranglehold/), contestants were to make short films that emulated John Woo’s style of filmmaking the most, with the winner getting 25,000 dollars (link here: https://www.gamezone.com/news/midway_announces_stranglehold_s_true_to_john_woo_short_film_contest_on_myspace/), a trip for two to Midway’s Chicago studios to meet the developers, an authentic "Hard Boiled" movie poster autographed by John Woo himself, some mobile phone with service, and a copy of Stranglehold. They would also tape an interview for Spike TV, where they would premiere the short film; They even had a lineup (along with some other games that look and sound mediocre, link here: https://www.awn.com/news/midway-brings-john-woos-stranglehold-more-e3) at E3, which I couldn’t find footage of the event just the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKDayRrQ0Gs&ab_channel=WhichEntertainment). It was later released to positive reviews, around a 7 to late 7 out of 10 and was a mild success at 1 Million dollars but it was swept under the rug by the likes of an equally short game but with much more triple A budget, Halo 3, amongst other shooters that came out in 2007 (https://techraptor.net/originals/gaming-obscura-john-woos-stranglehold).That and the budget was like 30 Million, the cost of Midway getting way too generous with their money without being smart and also losing their billionaire gaming sugar daddy Sumner Redstone amongst other problems. And honestly? It’s a damn shame cause I thought this game and John Woo deserved more than that. Let’s talk about it shall we?

Plot/Spoilers:
The story begins in the intro of the game, where it opens up to Chicago and Hong Kong separately. The Russian Mafia kidnap a Chinese woman and her daughter in an apartment building in Chicago while at the same time two triad gangsters kidnap and murder a cop in Hong Kong. One Russian gangster knocks the daughter against shelves in the apartment to reveal a picture frame that shows a man holding her mother: this man is Inspector Tequila Yuen, one of the two main characters of Hard Boiled, and the playable character portrayed by the one and only Chow Yun Fat. For the story from here on out, you should expect slow-motion action scenes, Mexican standoffs, betrayals, more slow-motion action scenes, MORE Mexican standoffs, and about 3-5 hours worth of story. What I liked most about the story other than the action (no shit) is just that authenticity the game has with John Woo’s involvement. As you can tell, I basically worship the guy. He directs great action and great story, and to be fair the first one is done pretty well. The story isn’t bad itself, it’s good; but at the same time you can tell it was Americanized, for the Hollywood American gamer guys. Yeah that's the right term. It feels like it sometimes tries too hard to appeal to the West, not in the manner of everything is American. In that way, I mean it’s more so focused on everyone speaks English, it goes to America, it doesn’t really have the feel of John Woo films emotionally, it’s sorta like a worse Hard Boiled: it’s a fun ride and you enjoy yourself with the combat but you don’t come out feeling like anything particular in terms of sadness or goofiness. It’s basically a straight up action flick. I won’t be amazed by the mind bending twists or the feeling of overwhelming sadness of your girlfriend getting shot just as she was about to get eye surgery, it’s more so just an American action film but with John Woo dressing over the American cuisine, though the dressing is actually decently pulled off in my opinion.

Now I don’t know shit about food, but to me it’s good but it’s not personally my tastes to blend it together like that. I would’ve preferred more of a Hong Kong classic feel, because to me the most interesting action is from Hong Kong. If I had the choice to see Chow Yun Fat dive over a table, slide under another one and shoot a dude above him or Steven Segal wildly flailing his arms like an idiot while spraying a machine gun around and surprisingly hitting every enemy he comes across, there’s no comparison. Chow Yun everyday baby! It kind of feels like the two action styles mixed up in a weird way, it’s not totally bad, I like it the way it is. I would’ve just preferred if it was more into Hong Kong then the Yankee Doodle Doo if that makes sense, hell I would’ve loved it if they had a Chinese voice option with English subtitles like the way I watch the movies; though I understand that since some of it takes place in America that they have English as the main thing but I don’t know. I guess it’s just preferences.. So the story isn’t the most captivating but you’re not necessarily here for the story, you’re here to shoot people. And this game delivers that VERY well. So I’m going to talk about the story here, and I’m going to generally spoil it since it’s a short game.

Chapter 1:
It starts in Captain Lee, Tequila’s boss’s, office in Hong Kong where a voice message taunting the police about a missing police officer leads Inspector Tequila to disobey orders to wait for a SWAT team and go to the rendezvous point by himself in Kowloon Square to find out the fate of this cop. After shooting through a bunch of goons that try to ambush him he ends up in Kowloon Square, where he learns that the cop was already killed. The meeting itself turns out to be an ambush.

He makes his way to a nearby bar when he’s confronted with a standoff between him and more triads. When asked who killed the cop, he is told to “Go to Tai-O and ask an I-9”. He survives the stand off and continues to make his way through the market and into the bar where the I-9 Triad and Golden Kane Triad are making a deal for passports. Pop in a cameo from John Woo himself playing the same role he did in Hard Boiled; Tequila gets a drink as the deal continues on. Above the deal; two members of the Golden Kane, one the actual killer of the cop later revealed to be the right hand man to the organization.

Making note of Inspector Tequila’s presence, the right hand man (named Lok) tells the other guy that Tequila should be dead and to take care of the job before he leaves to go to a place called The Mega. A misunderstanding seems to erupt in the deal when Tequila’s presence is known and it goes sour. After a gauntlet shootout in the bar, golden disco boy brings out a rocket launcher of all fucking things to kill Tequila. It fails. It’s learned here that this was a message and that someone's trying to start a war between the Golden Kane triad and the Dragon Claw triad, to which the suited guys were members of the latter, being in a special group called the Imperial 9s, or I-9’s for short. The Golden Kane is led by a guy named Yung whereas the Dragon Claw/I-9 are led by an older man named Wong. After Captain Lee gives him a scolding about causing property damage and warns him not to go to Tai-O, Tequila ignores him and heads straight there.

Chapter 2:
Inspector Tequila later arrives in Tai-O, which turns out to be a fishing village, to ask around about the Imperial Nine stuff they were on about earlier while attempting to coerce the people in the village to talk to him by showing them a picture of the dead cop. One dude snitches about Wong being around only to be shot for it, which brings Tequila to go through the entire village and wipe out the triads. Along the way he destroys a bunch of drug labs, goes through a turret section and THEN blows up a bunch of boats. He sneaks onto a boat nearby, revealed to be Wong’s boat before being caught by undercover cop Jerry who is actually working for Wong.

Tequila meets with Wong where he learns that the reason why Tequila was brought to Wong’s office is because Mr. Wong needs Tequila’s help, no matter the bad blood. As explained, Golden Kane put out the hit on the cop and blamed him to make him look bad. On top of that the Golden Kane is hooking up with the Russian Mafia in Chicago and they want to muscle Wong out of Hong Kong. In order to do that they kidnap Wong’s daughter and granddaughter; Billie and Teko. The daughter is the same one that Tequila was holding in the picture in the intro, leading to the revelation that Tequila was dating her on the downlow against Mr. Wong’s wishes until he found out.

The only reason Wong didn’t send anyone out is because the FBI would bust his ass and the Russian, Zakarov, promised Wong that he would kill Billie and Teko from the footage. He decides it should be Tequila who rescues them, saying that he’s someone the “Cops won’t watch”, which is also wrong considering DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY GUYS THIS ONE MAN HAS KILLED? A LOT. Police murdering suspects isn’t exactly well loved in the police dep….nevermind.

Blaming Wong for taking them from him, Tequila begrudgingly agrees after decking Wong in the face and blows up the docks nearby on orders from Wong because of Golden Kane’s attempted takeover. After Tequila plants the bombs, his superior picks him up on a boat about the usual good cop spiel before Tequila just quits on site, undermining Wong’s point about not being watched because now he JUST QUIT THE FORCE.

The final scene shows a flashback of Tequila and Billie meeting up, with Billie announcing she’s pregnant. He gets excited and proposes that they escape the country on a plane that same night. It then fades into Chapter 3.

Chapter 3:
Tequila arrives at the Mega casino that the big guy was talking about earlier, where Jerry gives him two Desperado looking guitar cases full of goodies and tells him the Golden Kane is meeting up on the top floor. Tequila shoots his way through like three to four floors while Golden Kane sends more guys down to kill him. After shooting his way through more guys, and protecting an entire band while shooting down guys in a difficult but cool as all hell set piece, Yung escapes the casino. It’s learned that he’s planning on leaving for Chicago to look at the Russian’s operations, hoping to move more Heroin that way.

To give him time, Yung leaves Lok, the cop killer, behind to take care of Tequila when he gets to the top floor. Tequila arrives at the top floor only to find Lok with a giant fucking machine gun and attempts to eviscerate Tequila. This however fails as Tequila is not only not eviscerated but he manages to escape with Jerry after Imperial Nines place bombs all around the casino. After jumping off of the casino american action style, Tequila and Jerry go to Chicago to chase after Yung. There was also a cutscene at the end where it shows Tequila at the plane waiting for his girlfriend Billie to arrive when Wong does the honors instead, with Tequila getting the shit kicked out of him by Wong’s guys. That didn’t show up for me on GOG, which I believe is a glitch since it shows up on the regular console version.


Chapter 4:
It skips to the present day again with Yung yelling at his boys on the phone after the attempt on Tequila in the last level has failed. Zakarov, the leader of the Russian Mafia, talks to Yung about his criminal operation at the museum and corrals Yung and the girls over there to look at his operation; while leaving his brother Vlad behind to kill Tequila and Jerry after they appear on the camera feed in the parking garage.

Meanwhile in the parking garage, the gang split up to search for clues and Tequila gets ambushed by a bunch of angry russians. He shoots his way up to the Penthouse only to encounter laser grids, explosives, a helicopter gunship and more angry Russians before running into this level’s boss: VLAD Zakarov. This devolves into a chase sequence involving laser patterns and not getting shot before running into the frustrating boss battle of the level: Vlad on the minigun of the helicopter. After you shoot him and take him down, you find Jerry in a broom closet shot in the shoulder with invitations to the Chicago History museum. Tequila heads off on his own to the museum, leaving Jerry there to take care of his wounds.

Chapter 5:
Tequila arrives at the museum only for some special forces motherfucker to spot him and snitch, causing Zakarov and Yung to get into an argument and blame each other for Tequila killing his brother Vlad. They strike a deal to bring Teko back to Hong Kong, while Billie stays with Zakarov and he brings her back separately. Tequila shows up just in time to crash the party and goes after Zakarov to get to Billie. He goes through Russian Gangsters, Triad Gangsters and Special Security looking gangsters to get to Zakarov and after they get into a battle while ends in Zakarov’s death. Tequila embraces Billie, and it’s learned that she missed the plane in order to keep both Tequila and Teko safe from her father before Tequila reveals her father sent him to rescue her.

Billie freaks out because she knows what’s up and that slimy piece of shit Jerry busts in and starts shooting, mortally injuring her. She tells Tequila that Teko was brought back to Hong Kong by the Golden Kane and being righteously pissed Tequila goes after Jerry. He eventually kills Jerry and picks up his phone which conveniently plays the full video shown against Wong. It turns out Zakarov is also conveniently threatening Wong with blackmail and exposing him as a criminal, making his daughter send him away to jail to keep Teko safe. The whole plan was to either send Wong to jail or get him to step down from leading the Hong Kong Criminal Underworld forever. Wong sent Tequila and Jerry there to have Jerry tie up any loose ends and advantages that Zakarov and the Golden Kane have against him. Wong then ends up conveniently texting Jerry’s phone at that specific moment, with Tequila responding back as Jerry telling Wong that both Tequila and Billie are dead, and that he will handle Teko before name dropping one of John Woo’s most tragic movies. Jerry attempts to kill Tequila one last time before he runs out of bullets and just dies, with Tequila throwing the dead cop’s badge onto Jerry as some sort of final fuck you cause it looks cool.

Chapter 6:
Tequila charges into Yung’s office in Hong Kong to strike a deal with the Golden Kane. Yung thinks that Wong will set up a deal, until Tequila points out that Wong is not honorable and shows him a text conversation proving that Wong was going to try to set up and kill them instead. The deal changes and Yung sets up the old drop spot in Yung’s old neighborhood, the Slums of Kowloon as the chapter select puts it. Tequila arrives in the neighborhood, where Captain Lee calls Tequila and tells him not to get involved with the kidnapping trade going on. Going against his orders, Tequila gives him the “I don’t want my badge back” spiel and fights through the slums in the shortest level in the game possibly.

Yung goes through with the deal when Tequila doesn’t show up on time; which ends up in a standoff between Tequila, a surprised Wong and Yung himself. Yung ends up dead, Wong takes Teko and Tequila shoots his way through them in a cutscene matching the spirit of the movies before chasing after them in a vehicle himself.

Chapter 7:
Tequila chases them back to Wong’s estate, going through hordes of men with throwing knives, rocket launchers and another giant attack helicopter, which after filling it full of bullets conveniently crashes into Wong’s front door. Tequila enters the mansion and finds Wong holding Teko hostage; who promises Tequila that if he takes Teko away forever then everything will be done forever. Not falling for his bullshit but trying to save Teko, he puts down his gun only to get ambushed by goons. Teko escapes via kicking the big bald boy in his balls and running away, and the big bald boy, named Da Pang here, and Wong get caked in bullets before Teko throws Wong over the railing to his death. With both Da Pang and Wong dead, Teko reunites with her father before the police captain freaks out about the paperwork that’ll have to be written up before giving Tequila back his badge. He gives it to his daughter and they walk off to a happy ending.

Gameplay:
The gameplay, the most important and fundamental part of a video game, to me if the story sucks I can at least play the game. And what do I think of the gameplay? It’s a nice, short couple hour romp of shootouts, explosions, more shootouts and explosions. I remember when doing research for this video that In an Ars Technica interview (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/07/our-interview-with-the-art-director-of-stranglehold/) with the game’s art director Jason Kaehler, he said the beta testing for the game led to about 12 hours of gameplay. I assume this comes from playing the game repeatedly to try out new ways because depending on the game difficulty you’re not getting 12 hours in one game, maybe like 4-5 depending. Honestly it depends on the difficulty you play and how often you die, for me it was like three to four hours of basically you going through little hallways and arenas full of interactables you can use to your advantage as you shoot your way through hordes of goons with guns waiting to kill you as fast as possible. It’s not necessarily the gameplay loop that’s the unique thing about it, you can go shoot people in any game with slow motion and it’ll still feel fun, like: Max Payne, Total Overdose, F.E.A.R.; like it’s almost always fun; they have different names for it but it’s the same concept.

They call this games version of slow motion Tequila Time and of course you can dive, slide and dodge bullets as you do cool stunts and kill people. In game you can usually just activate it by pressing the left mouse (or any other controller corresponding buttons) button (doing it on it’s own without any special moves) or alternatively if you press the spacebar you can do a dive and sometimes it automatically activates for you when there are goons around to shoot. I much prefer the diving because it looks fuckin cool as shit though when you fall on the ground and you start rolling everywhere it feels a tad awkward especially with 5,000 dudes shooting you and sometimes when there’s Tequila Time you end up sliding over everything which is funny but sometimes awkward depending on the situation.

There’s also this cool move I like to do where I use Tequila’s legs to boost himself off of a wall to do another dive. You can also crouch to take cover which will help in certain situations, you can kick up certain tables to add cover or you can press a certain button to take cover behind a wall, where you can peek out and shoot people. I didn’t really use these much and honestly I forgot about it, but I’m glad it’s there as it adds a nice thing of detail. The interactables I told you about are usually poles, railings, movable carts, chandeliers and the like, which usually helps you dodge stuff in slow-motion or alternatively depending on the railing it brings you to different places depending on the map that leads to collectible paper cranes, which fill up your special ability meter, called here the Tequila bomb.

What’s on the special ability meter? Four separate abilities: One is the healing option which I used way more than any other ability; another one is the ability to do a slow motion aiming thing, a reference to Tequila’s tense shots in Hard Boiled, where you zoom in to your gun and when you shoot it the camera follows the bullet to the guy your trying to shoot. My favorite place to shoot? The balls. Heh. But thanks to the engine and all of the good stuff it provides you could shoot almost anywhere and it provides a cool little animation pretty much.

The third ability is the ability I use the second most, something I call the “Murder everyone in your way” ability. Basically using this brings the camera over your shoulder and you shoot your way through everything in your path for a limited time, basically becoming invincible and with unlimited ammo. The fourth ability is pretty cool, it has Tequila spin around, with the trademark Doves flying out, and kill I guess everyone in your room but I didn’t find myself using that much because I like to know how many people are in the room and just because I like the action. Now that you know all of that stuff? You’re basically set.

You can use these abilities to murder everyone in your environment, but on top of that you can also shoot certain things in your environment that kills people immediately; for example: barrels or propane tanks (no shit), signs, suspiciously placed wooden things that hold giant boulders, etc. It’s all marked by giant white flashing lights and sometimes shooting this stuff is essential to get to the next place. Speaking of they used this Massive D engine pretty effectively, it’s not only this stuff that’s able to be destroyed but basically the whole environment is able to be taken down by gunfire, destroyed into bits and pieces, statues toppling over, it’s amazing what they did to make stuff destructible. This destructibility lends to the overall pace and difficulty of the game, which you always have to be on the move as if you stay in one place for too long the bullets will cut you to ribbons.

Staying on the move is essential because if you play this game on normal or higher you will get fucked up, using up most of your bullets (in which you’ll essentially have no ammo unless you go up to someone and smack em in the face and take their guns). The worst example I remember is the Museum level, where you get ambushed by a bunch of special forces looking guys with guns and the destructibility of the cover means you won’t be using much cover for long, especially since they’ll be spawning everywhere. I’d say the most difficult levels in the game for me personally would be the American levels, being the Penthouse and the Museum. The museum I just told you about but on the penthouse? It’s all sorta normal until you actually get in the penthouse itself, which will be rigged with 50,000 fucking lasers that will basically fucking kill instantly, with the only way to destroy the lasers would be through shooting the shiny white destructible stuff nearby.

What will you be shooting with? Guns obviously but the guns here are pretty standard, nothing unique or special but in the environment it makes sense: the usual pistols which you can dual-wield, shotguns, submachine guns (my favorite), assault rifle, a SAW in the later levels, a rocket launcher, and in secret and/or special locations a golden pistol which immediately kill almost anyone except bosses. Grenades were introduced in later levels but I didn’t exactly use them much either. All of this stylistic killing is in service for one thing: Stars which will be used to rate your style level at the end of the mission which humorously calculates the damage done to the environment. What do these stars do? Not really much except an arbitrary rating and I guess the ability to unlock a bunch of stuff later on in the shop. But the more stylistic the kill the more stars you get which means the better the rank.

Style is definitely in the game, there’s a lot of stylistic and special situations for Tequila to get into: again I mentioned the museum and the penthouse but in the second level you get into blowing up boats and shooting people on a turret and in the third level, Tai-O, you get guitar cases for the first couple of floors to drop in special arenas that help refill health and ammo, delivering a homage to old action alike. Before I stop I talk about something I mentioned in the plot spoilers: standoffs. Harkening back to the old action movies, in game Tequila gets ambushed numerous times by a bunch of angry gangsters in a giant group. This little minigame has you swing over to each person in the group in slow motion and dodge left or right while aiming your cursor over to the guy so you can wipe him out before moving to the others. Depending on the mission and environment you can use certain interactables to blow them up while you do it. I know realistically it would just be easier for everyone to shoot you but I guess you're super fast in game lore wise...until the later levels. The later levels have you do the dodging and shooting but with less slow motion, which makes it increasingly harder to kill and believe me getting shot in this game mode means taking a chunk of your health. Take too long and they’ll just skip to the next guy. Sometimes they make you continue the shooting until everyone's dead, most times they don’t. Overall I like the mechanic, it breaks up the pace and makes the game feel like a more interactive Max Payne.

And now that I’m done ranting about all of this stuff? My overall summary is yeah, the gameplay feels great in my opinion. Some of the footage has me sucking at it but I’m not too used to mouse and keyboard but other than that? There’s not really much I can complain about really except again it's a short single player which I would’ve preferred to be a bit longer and more in depth and sometimes the game feels kind of awkward? Oh and normal difficulty just switches up into fucking insane, which I can’t say it doesn’t feel fair I’m just a filthy fucking casual and I like having a more chill experience. Other than that, gameplay wise it’s perfectly great and I enjoy the fact it exists.

Atmosphere:
The first thing that I’m gonna be talking about here is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is pretty good, though you can’t really find the entire score on Youtube I managed to find a couple of pieces here and there. Each one of them serves the fighting going on in the background very well, escalating gun battles to the likes of an actual John Woo flick.

Apparently, according to IGN (https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/08/24/the-music-of-stranglehold-the-symphony-of-six) back when they were somewhat decent, John Woo enlisted about six composers to help compose the soundtrack. For what they did I thought they did a pretty good job translating the music into a good game soundtrack, though I think my favorite piece in there is the Jazz influenced one that slams the most. They have this little piece harkening back to Tequila’s love of being a musician and the Jazz Influence in Hard Boiled and honestly? To me this sorta stuff is the perfect track. In the article by IGN the guys making the music were told to stay away from the Jazz inspired score of Hard Boiled and...I mean they did good with what they did, they got some good drum action, some electronic stuff, etc.. I can’t complain really, though I did kinda wince when they said they took more influence from the newer Americanized John Woo style. Here are some playlists I found of the soundtrack on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL11FE86F12513E7DC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kckXCRQsf2c&list=PLZxdl25_WLrc50uG0MMyJCv2mnWx0NmCH&index=1&ab_channel=neruto

You’ll be hearing these tracks a lot, though I was never bothered by it as they actually fit pretty well, as it all blends into the background most of the time cause you’re so focused on actually shooting people then not. Though I did wish they went into Jazz a tad bit more than one track on the bonus menu and the actually legitimately tight Jazz piece they did in the Casino shootout where you protect the band.

They also said that they were trying to enhance the nuance of certain vibes and they did to a certain extent, only the action really. They had more somber tracks for more emotional elements but they don’t make me “feel”, like something in The Killer or Bullet in the Head.

The sound design itself is pretty tight too, the sound of bullets whizzing right by as you dodge it in slo-motion is tight.

While I was doing research and Watching the behind the scenes video, some of the notable things that stuck out to me personally was the engineers acquiring a bunch of breakable items in the studio and just smashing it in front of a microphone as well as having the instrument players during the jazz band section randomly collapse over certain parts of the composition, it’s little things like that that make me appreciate the sound even more.

I can’t complain about the sound design, nor say anything bad about it. They did an excellent job, from the wooden crates breaking to the sound you make when you collect paper cranes to the sound of just shooting someone in the dick. Yeah, no complaint about the sound at all. The only thing I would have to complain about is the voice acting.

Ahhhh the voice acting. What do I say about this? It's not awful, and I understand why they made everyone speak English, with the whole Americanized action thing they got going on with the game. But I’m mixed on it. On a personal preference, I felt since that the original movie was in Chinese that this game should allow Chinese with subtitles. There’s no subtitles to this game at all and the voices are only in English from what I can tell.

Another reason why I don’t care about the whole English thing too much is because whereas the voice acting is fine on the actor’s part, some of the delivery is…yeah. Especially in the first cutscene oh fucking Jesus is it bad. There’s no tension, no nothing. In these scenes they just sound like they don’t care. And I know that English isn’t Chow Yun Fat’s first language, again I’m not hating on him for that. I think he did well for the rest of the game considering. But dear god the first cutscene is laughably bad. Everyone else did an ok job, especially Russell Wong as Yung, Arnold Voosloo as Damon Zakarov and Randall Duk Kim as Wong, which hot damn I like his voice. He sounds like what an evil Triad boss sounds like; otherwise it sounds goofy and considering not too many people took gaming seriously I guess I'm not too surprised by that delivery.

I also understand that it would feel weird if everyone was speaking Chinese when they went to America but maybe a blend of it would work? Or maybe Tequila and Jerry speak a tad bit of English when they go to America for the two scenes? I don’t know, I can understand why they didn’t do Chinese but I would’ve liked an option to be honest, but for some reason according to a comment in the GGManlives video the guys at Tiger Hill required English, I don’t know why if it’s true but ok I guess. Subtitles I felt like they should’ve just kept in because of people who need it.

The Visuals, what can I say? For 2006 they’re pretty good in my opinion. I mean of course it’s 2006 no shit nowadays games like Ghost of Tsushima and the upcoming Cyberpunk and whatever look better who cares. I like the style they’re going for this game, in the behind the scenes video they talked about how they tried to emulate the film that the movie was made on for a specific movie style and I think they optimized the Psi-Ops engine pretty damn well to be honest. It looks pretty damn good if you play it on GOG with HD, but you’ll still get your usual character models from 2006; albeit with really unique story characters (like Lok) and less so the actual gangsters. Even then though they actually coded the game where it mixes and matches the parts of the goons that you shoot to give them different clothes and faces. You’ll still see a lot of the same clothing and faces but not as often which is cool. (Link here: https://gamedumpuk.wixsite.com/dump/post/john-woo-s-stranglehold)

Now, the best part of the visuals is the environments, especially with the destructibility fueled by an Unreal 3 modification called Massive D (heh) and something they called Woo Glue, which would hold the environments together and allow this destruction on almost everything on every level. You shoot a table on one end it’s destroyed in that one end and doesn’t fuck up the entire table. I can’t say much else about graphics wise but again I think the destructibility is actually a pretty impressive feat. I mean sure there are games from the past who also had destructibility but I don’t know, I actually like it a lot. It’s pretty good. The whole tan when you go into slow-motion I have no opinions but the slow-motion itself, the bullets flying by with the rings attached to it is also pretty cool.

Multiplayer/Bonus Stuff/Settings:
They also developed a multiplayer component to the game, but it’s not really active anymore, and to be honest I highly doubt it was active much to begin with but from what I saw it was the standard third person multiplayer thing but slow motion and interactive environments. If you were to try to boot up the multiplayer to make it work right now it wouldn’t. Servers are shut down, if you’re genuinely curious you can try to watch a video of the multiplayer but I find the ham-fisted multiplayer aspects of old games to be kind of boring, like the multiplayer for Condemned 2: Bloodshot as an example. I think it looks interesting but I feel like Rockstar did this better with Max Payne 3’s multiplayer, however keep in mind it was probably difficult as all hell trying to match up mechanics like these while attempting to make a tight multiplayer experience at the same time. Am I saying this multiplayer is bad? No. But to me it looks average.

So there’s nothing really of note multiplayer wise, but connecting it to the multiplayer as I said earlier, there is an area where you can buy multiplayer characters using the points you earn from a single player to get it. Except it’s not worth getting them so don’t waste your time just get all the bonus art and videos and stuff. The art is just the artwork for Stranglehold mind you but the videos are….interesting. One of these videos is a gameplay concept using the restaurant map from the first mission but using the old Psi-Ops models, and another is watching a guy show you how to make an Origami crane, facial animation stuff, etc. Some of the other bonus stuff there includes trailers for Wheelman and Blacksite: Area 51; and before I move on I just wanted to say I find this trailer promotion inside of other games to be fascinating, a thing of it’s era I guess but still heavily fascinating.

Other Stuff:
See now I’m going to go into more personal stuff so if you were just looking for a review of the game then yeah there it is. However I wanna go on about WHY I LOVE this game, even if it’s kind of average. See this all sort of starts when I was a huge Mortal Kombat fan as a kid, Armageddon was basically my favorite fighting game I could get my hands on. I played that game nonstop, though I only popped in a couple of times in the bonus features. Specifically, the bonus trailers like Stranglehold have on It’s bonus menu. This game had Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run and John Woo’s Stranglehold and I was interested in the second one...except for the fact I couldn’t play it cause it was on next-gen consoles. I didn’t have money as a kid for that so I just forgot about it until WAY later.

I only got into John Woo films much recently, when I was bored one day searching through the internet I heard of a movie called Hard Boiled. Through just curiosity I found a full movie rip on Youtube (surprisingly enough) and I watched it. I loved it; it’s cinematography, the chaotic violent shooting mixed in with the thrilling plot and it’s tense soundtrack pulled me in and I was enamored with it. I thought the two main leads were great, and when I learned Chow-Yun Fat and Tony Leung starred in other John Woo flicks I decided to give all of his Chinese action movies a shot. Two of them, The Killer and Bullet in the Head, along with this one are amongst my favorite movies of all time. The Killer and Bullet in the Head were much more dramatic, sad, and at the time I was (and still am) a sad, depressed kid who enjoyed movies. These two movies are movies I consider to be art. Even the other movies that people don’t really think about like Heroes Shed No Tears, and Just Heroes are fantastic though Just Heroes really needs to go back into reprint. A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2 are fantastic, though the second one is my favorite for it’s really weird parts and it’s more so over the top action violence. Once A Thief is good too but it was my least favorite, though it’s commendable considering John Woo wanted to take a more lighthearted approach. I haven’t watched too many of his american flicks except Hard Target (which is good only because of John Woo’s direction) and Face Off, which is good schlocky fun but not really what I’m looking for. But I respect it, I respect what he does. And honestly I know he’s moved onto Historical Dramas and such, which I respect 100 percent but I would love to see John Woo do a couple more of these action flicks. This brings me into the next point.

I have this tendency to know about video games but not understand them. I heard of Stranglehold a couple of times here and there but I never really KNEW about it until I started my John Woo fanboy phase. When I learned he made a video game I shit my pants and went out and got a copy. In fact I loved it so much I got TWO Copies; and then I loved it so much that I got it on GOG, which unless you have an older console is the best place to get it nowadays as it’s only ten dollars, and honestly minus like two glitches on the fourth chapter it’s a fantastic looking and feeling game. Even though I think the game itself is sorta average I think the John Woo stuff brings it up, though I’ll admit I feel disappointed about the whole American influence. This American influence would later seep into the game’s rumored, then confirmed, then cancelled sequel: John Woo’s Gun Runner.

John Woo’s Gun Runner was effectively supposed to be a cover shooter by Midway which had Inspector Tequila and a character played by action star Vin Diesel, rumored to be his character from another Midway game: Wheelman. The leaked prototype footage would see them in Prague shooting through what I assume to be terrorists in a hotel in Prague, along with car chases and all sorts of high octane American actiony shit. Which in a way would sort of make sense, as to me Hard Boiled felt like the best action movie of all time just not necessarily the emotional stuff. Which to me is what a lot of American action movies are, not really a lot of good emotion just blowing stuff up, which is ok. And of course there’s going to be exceptions, and I’m not saying Hard Boiled was a dumbed down American action flick in Chinese form. To me Hard Boiled is the closest to the best action film (other than say Die Hard and the etc.), John Woo mastered what no one else did and did it beautifully, I remember at one point hearing a quote about how his style was moreso a drama with guns, a ballet of murder and honestly? I love it. But I also see why this game was more so gearing towards the American action crowd. In all honesty, I wish I could’ve seen Tiger Hill Entertainment work on Gun Runner, with the care put into the action in Stranglehold and hopefully changing it from a Gears cover shooter type and more so pushing the Slow-Motion action thing in it’s own way. At this point even if it’s not a game I would’ve loved to see a Gun Runner graphic novel and maybe repackage Hard Boiled, Stranglehold and Gun Runner into one complete box set trilogy of sorts. Hell I would’ve loved to see what he would’ve done with his game company in general, though later on Midway Games cancelled the project and switched to some other game called Gun Runner, dropping the John Woo aspect before just liquidating everything and closing shop. As for Tiger Hill, After this game they attempted to make game’s named ShadowClan, John Carpenter’s Psychopath, Clive Barker’s Demonik, amongst a couple of others before John Woo eventually decided to shift his focus onto films again. Which I’ll be honest it’s a shame, as I would’ve at least loved to have seen Clive Barker’s Demonik as well but it is what it is. He’s moved on and sometimes things just don’t work out. Also they were supposed to do a Stranglehold movie, which at first didn’t make sense until I did more research (https://techraptor.net/originals/gaming-obscura-john-woos-stranglehold) and learned that Director Stephen Fung was supposed to direct the movie and that the movie itself would’ve been a prequel with a younger Inspector Tequila. At this point however, I don’t know if I would want the movie just because of time eroding the prospect. The last thing I would want is a bad prequel like Carlito: The Rise of Power or a movie like The Irishman where they CGI’d the characters to make them look younger.

Where is John Woo today? Well since then he’s done as I said historical dramas, one action movie he released called The Manhunt (no relation to Rockstar) which I wanna look up and watch one day, see what it’s like. I know he also released a graphic novel around the same time as Stranglehold debuted called Seven Brothers and a game called Bloodstroke for the ios and android which I haven’t touched. Regardless of where he’s at now, his past has influenced so much greatness, so many movies and so many video games. I mean christ he’s influenced Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, The Wachowskis with the Matrix, I can’t list everything but it goes on. For video games it would be obviously the Max Payne series, F.E.A.R., I’m sure there’s so much stuff I can go on about but I can’t because then this would be an essay on John Woo with Bullet Time and not a game review and my overall thoughts on everything around it. But to make a final point of that, maybe John Woo didn’t invent his style, but he sure as hell perfected it.

Note: This was an old script I was making for a youtube review channel years ago, I just don't like editing or doing youtube stuff so I figured I'd edit a bit, spruce it up and remove video references. I still believe the same stuff but if worded weirdly my apologies. I played this originally from GOG but watched a buddy replay it on PS3 so I figured I'd throw my thoughts on here. Here are some extra behind the scenes footage as well from the bonus disc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMGHj3s0AI&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBVQYBj0A9o&t=77s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCeKYRYLLBs&t=1s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWcEg2a8wM0&t=5s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD3t63Ty-0s&t=5s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

TRAFFIC is a short indie game/walking "where the hell do I go simulator" with a story about domestic abuse, kidnapping, and a trade of some sort?. Truth be told, this game was kind of a confusing one, I went in blind and for the most part had no idea what I was doing, and by the end of the game I still have no idea what I did. I don't even know too much of what happened, as the story is kind of muddled and the most in depth plot explanation is that:

"TRAFFIC is about a family living in Wyoming as they traverse through the economic recession of 2008. You play as the single child in a family of three, along with your Mother and Father." Keep in mind that this is something you get from the steam page, otherwise this is what I got for those who care:

"You live in an abusive home, you dad's a piece of s h i t and an old man he had as a guest has set his sights on your family. Your mother dies, your father tries to lock you in the shed out back only to die later on, then you get kidnapped. This is in between paranormal shadow creatures watching you so my guess is dad made a pact with some sort of demon?"

I'm not sure, that's how I interpreted it but I'm sure anyone could interpret it with something more interesting to be honest.

The gameplay is basically another "walking simulator" where you follow through random objectives. I don't hate the game but it does get really vague sometimes, basically looking up a walk through to help along certain points when I get stuck. There was also a bug where I tried to talk to Mom and it wouldn't let me past the first sentence.

It's atmosphere is definitely creepy and as always I'm a sucker for PS1 graphics so I can't hate on the audio visual department.

Pros:
Cheap
Small game
Creepy
PS1 Graphics

Cons:
A big buggy here and there
Vague and confusing

Overall it's not a bad title; it's small, short and cheap at 2.99 US not on sale, so if you want a short horror experience and you have time to kill why not give it some time? I enjoy little romps like this on occasion. Just keep in mind it'll be a bit disturbing, and if someone has a better explanation for the plot feel free to put it out there.

UPDATE: Playing the Halloween Event I didn't know existed until recently, it's an interesting addition, you basically go to the TRAFFIC house, the creepy old man invites you in and you play a weird form of CoD: Zombies. One ending includes walking away, but if you continue on you can buy guns off the wall, open up doors, and fight a boss called the Deep One. Interesting Stuff.

UPDATE 2: The dev has now lowered the price to 0.99, which is an even better deal than before. Also if you want to follow the dev here are some links:

https://laudgames.com/About-Me/

https://www.youtube.com/@Laudplays/featured

https://twitter.com/zzzlaud

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

25 to Life is an action third person shooter crime game developed by both Avalanche Software (Not related to Avalanche Studios of Just Cause/Mad Max fame, moreso the newest Hogwarts Legacy game and Disney Infinity Stuff) and Ritual Entertainment (of SIN and Quake: Scourge of Armagon fame whom apparently collaborated in terms of cinematics but besides the point) and released around Early 2006. Also known as the "Early to Mid 2000s Gangsta Game era", it was popularized in the hands of youngsters such as myself: GTA was popular as ever, games like True Crime and The Getaway were behind that and 50 Cent had just made his own game in the form of 50 Cent: Bulletproof. How did this game fare against the rest? Abysmally, horribly, all the bad synonyms. It did worse than 50 Cent: Bulletproof (of which I have thoughts and will put down someday), and truth be told yeah it's not really a great game. But it's also not the worst game I've ever played. I'll explain my thoughts below:

The Story: You play as gangster Freeze, who is trying to get out of the "game" and go straight with his wife Monica and his son Darnell. He tells his best friend, a gangster in the D-Boyz named Shaun Calderon that he wants out and he angrily agrees under the condition that he does one last deal for him. With how suspicious he plainly acts, it doesn't occur to Freeze that it's a set up which fuckin badabing it is! Corrupt DEA Maria Mendoza killed the other party and starts shooting at you, and you make your way back to your apartments to learn that Shaun kidnapped your family for "running with the money" even though clearly that's too suspicious. You decide to rob a bank to get him his money back, you do so only to get arrested and THEN realize you were set up.

Mendoza decides to set up Shaun (I think?) by getting her fellow Officer Lester to go after him after learning 8 Kilos of coke disappeared from impound. You raid Shaun's home before you chase him through a nightclub and down into a subway to catch him. You do that, though Maria shoots you and frames Shaun for it before telling him to leave.

As Shaun, you go to Mexico and decide to take over the Sargosa Cartel; you shoot your way through the Tijuana streets to kill a big shot, rob the boss's casino and then kill the boss before ruling the city with an iron fist.

Then finally, in the last chapter you play as Freeze where you escape prison, mow down corrupt cops (including Mendoza) before finally killing Shaun with multiple bullets and a knee to the throat. You locate your son in the security room, the cops come in and you prepare to shoot it out with the cops; as for your wife? Who knows she doesn't really get shit in terms of screen time other than one or two cutscenes and neither does your son so fuckin whatever I guess.

My thoughts on the story are this: It's not bad. It's average, with Shaun's part being the most interesting part in my opinion though I love empire building gangster stuff so that's probably just my niche. Other than that I only remember it because of a Wikipedia recap and a video by a guy named MrHammers (shoutout here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDP07_3s8yU&ab_channel=MrHammers, very good video) going through the story again. Here's what I can tell you what I mostly remember about the game.

I remember the game a bit from my days in the PS2 era where I played it, beat it once then forgot about it. I then picked it up on my Xbox Original, played the first three and a half chapters streaming for buddies via elgato before I stopped because personal shit. From what I remember playing those first chapters, the gameplay is OK. It's not awful. You go shooting gangsters and cops through about 12 different levels, with side objectives in each level awarding you now defunct multiplayer items (including the ability to play as rappers like Kurupt and Tech N9ne in the multiplayer?) as well as clothing items and tattoos. You can do them if you want, I do cause I'm a completionist. The combat itself is like Max Payne except worse with no slow motion and leaning around corners. That being said it's playable, and they litter health kits throughout each room so health is in abundance though sometimes certain areas are a bit challenging in terms of the amount of enemies (that last level had a guy who run and guns a rocket launcher from the top of a mansion who you kind of have to know is there otherwise you get pp smacked real quick). Enemies can be spongy but overall guns felt ok, just again be real careful of the last couple chapters cause they break out the splash damage rocket launcher and it's oof. Grenades feel kind of sluggish, you hold down a meter sure and it's fine but I found myself overshooting or undershooting sometimes. I also want to point out (and so did MrHammers) that when you play as the cop you can arrest people; but truth is other than the side objective it's not really conducive to the gameplay. You don't get penalized for shooting people on sight, nor do you get rewarded much otherwise for arresting them so the gameplay is still run of the mill shooting. I don't really have much else to say except again it's ok, average gunplay of which I have no real opinions on.

Soundtrack is hip hop themed of course with tracks from 2Pac, Tech N9ne, Public Enemy, Notorious BIG soundalikes Guerilla Black and Shyne, amongst some others here. They're fine, the soundtracks work for the gunplay. The sound design is ok if a little watered down to me personally and the voice acting even though it's average has some CRINGE ass dialogue from time the time that makes me yikes in my soul. As for graphically it's a mid 2006 game but honestly looks a lot older, even GTA 3 looked better in my opinion but I don't hate it cause graphics aren't really something I can judge and the visual design is of course the gangster stuff from the mid 2000s. If I were to finish off the single player portion it's that AI don't really have a strategy and they don't really do much except run around and shoot with an occasional but very rare melee weapon guy every now and then.

The multiplayer is something I never once played in my life so I can't say one way or another how it is but I wouldn't mind getting an Xbox Original game up one of these days just to check it out, I feel it could be really interesting especially considering everyone gave the most props (if that) to the multiplayer section.

Overall it's an average game, it's not great but it's not the shittiest game I've ever played in my life, if you're looking to play a gangster game and you have an afternoon to kill and you don't have a copy of Saints Row or GTA, it's not the worst game you could play but if you can get any other game (even 50 Cent: Bulletproof) you should try for them first.

Hidden Agenda is a game created by Supermassive Games, known to gamers as the company behind previous hit Until Dawn and future games The Quarry and the Dark Pictures Anthology series (as well as porting the PS3 Version of Killzone 1 but I already reviewed that technically).

Gameplay:
These sort of games are known to me as the "Movie Games", games of which you interact with the game by quick time events on whatever controllers you have. This game is similar to those but with one distinct difference: you use your smartphones. That's right, this is a party phone game exclusive to the Playstation where you play with friends by downloading the Hidden Agenda app on your phone. You dictate the choices in the game by swiping to certain areas on the screen to succeed in certain events (although to get certain outcomes you need to "fail" certain events, mostly shooting at people to be honest); you also choose between two choices on screen for certain situations to determine an outcome and depending on if you're playing coop you can do "takeovers" which you get from getting to quick time events and finding clues first while also trying to get the highest on the leaderboard (at least in the game's Competitive Mode) by guessing other players Hidden Agendas or succeeding in your own (the Hidden Agendas being random objectives dictated by the game that you need to try to pull off using Takeover cards or manipulating the other players in real life). There are two modes: the Competitive Mode where you try to compete against your friends and fulfill your agenda and the regular story mode where you just play to see how everything plays out. This system, best played with friends, can lead to some interesting party dynamics, for example: Imagine drinking crystal head vodka by Dan Ackroyd (available at your local liquor for the low price of 49.99 (buy now LOL)) while intentionally trying to fuck up and choose the worst choices possible for shits and giggles (that was our first run and we actually caught the killer who shot themselves, I'm not even sure how we did it but we did). It can be a very fun party game, but when played by yourself I'll be honest it can be boring as shit. I know this because I went out to platinum the game and by god it got boring quick but that was my fault for going to platinum the game. That being said, the game is mostly good for days when you have friends over and you're bored as shit and you got about two-three hours to go. I almost forgot to mention that you can keep track of story events, characters, clues and such on your phone while playing the game and keep in mind that each decision that you make will lead to potentially different outcomes, or at least somewhat subtly. I say this somewhat subtly because this ties into my next part: Visual and Audio Presentation.

Visual/Audio Presentation:
The game's audio is fine, I don't have any complaints against the game's audio to be honest. The music is fine (the usual thriller music though that intro electronic music is a bop), and the voice actors do well (with the killer being creepy as fuck which fun fact I didn't notice until the second time around how creepy the killer sounded speaking monotone). My main issue is the graphic stuff, specifically the glitches. There were numerous times where models would look fuckin googly eyed while talking to each other, effects like rain would suspend itself in midair above certain characters (look at Detective Tom at the hotel near the end), or how every character looks like they're about to collapse from heat exhaustion with how much sweat they pump out before suddenly disappearing in the next character. Other times like here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH6BgBHGlVo&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: His model was waiting out of the way to actually spawn in, I assume this was a programming error or something but I just saw that and was confused)

And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EAcaOCmgRA&ab_channel=gamemast15r (context: I was going for the good ending, caught the killer and they walked through a car)

Shit like that is wonky, and the stuff in between the choice transitions (like voting for certain decisions will still have the same videos in between to the next choices with some potential slight alterations) will pop in a split second too early and is noticable. My main point of all of this is that while this game is made by Supermassive and looks somewhat decent, you could tell that this was cranked out on a smaller budget with a probable limited amount of time for their Playlink program. What is Playlink? I don't know I guess some sort of Playstation Phone party game app but that's reserved for the last section.

Story:
So I'm mostly going to go over a general plot synopsis and give my opinions because it's a story game and there are so many decisions in this game that it's too broad to cover. You play two characters, jumping back and forth between Officer Becky Marney and District Attorney Felicity Graves. You end up capturing the Trapper serial killer in the prologue with your partner Tom (with dictated choices leading to Tom's death, promotion to Sargent or your partner in Homicide), and the killer Johnathan Finn is sentenced to death via lethal injection. Years later, Johnathan tells of the supposed real killer, one Adam Jones, and wants to repent and help find the real killer as they had made a deal to get back against those that hurt them at the orphanage where they lived as kids; meanwhile Becky faces increasing suspicion of corruption after being accused of mishandling evidence (and later being the Trapper) and you have to navigate your way through the police investigation while trying to find clues to clear yourself.

The plot actually isn't bad, and it was actually a decent murder mystery that caught us by surprise towards the end. It plays it's angles well, nothing groundbreaking but it was enjoyable. Again me and a friend played through it the first time not taking it seriously at all and we somehow found who the killer was AND got him to kill himself. It was enjoyable but once we stopped playing we forgot about the plot, and I only remembered stuff after replaying it later this past week to get the trophies.

Overall:
It's not a bad game, you have a decent murder mystery to play on your phones (with the game playing out on your PS4) while shooting the shit with your buddies. The game is worth a go around or two but otherwise it's average. Playing through it solo will be the most boring experience so don't play it solo is my recommendation. I guess the last thing I wanna leave off on are these two points: the log dates start 2019 but end 2023, that's to get my platinum trophy. You can beat this game in 80 minutes to 2 hours and that's literally it; it's the size of the movie and it's paced well. The last note is that I'm not sure when the Playlink Hidden Agenda app will go away or be shut down by Supermassive or whomever at Sony demands it, but considering the game released on 2017 and now it's 2023 I'm kind of surprised when they decide to shut this app down it's going to be the end (unless they decide to keep it alive by other means) of the game entirely and you won't be able to replay it again. That's the main flaw but also the biggest feature: smartphone play. My recommendation is get it on sale and play it with friends, as otherwise it's an average game.

Final Note: Sorry for the Crystal Head vodka quote, my buddy is yelling at me over my shoulder stupid joke suggestions and I appease my peeps cause I like them lol. Also this game again can only be played via Playstation so keep that in mind.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition is a game developed by Undead Labs and published by Xbox Game Studios, and is obviously the second in a game series that I have a love hate relationship with. Don't get me wrong, this game is good and I like it but I've also gotten frustrated at getting my s h i t kicked in. Regardless though I do love it, and here's why:

To me the meat of the game is obviously in it's main mode. You randomly pick survivors (except if you do the tutorial) and you end up in one of four or so regions as you go out of your way to search for supplies, settle into bases, create weapons, find and ally with survivors where you will need to keep them happy (as well as hostile ones) while also completing two main objectives: fulfilling a legacy (of which there are four) and clearing out all the plague hearts on the map. Plague Hearts are basically where plague zombies spawn and they're basically the more difficult version of a regular zombie, not in combat but due to the fact that if it harms you enough you basically get infected and you have three actual hours before they basically keel off. Now these plague hearts are difficult but you can always recruit one of your survivors to help you destroy them or get a friend to help you out. Whereas this game can be played without it, online coop is where A LOT of the fun comes from and helps offset the difficulty the combat can present sometimes. Keep in mind the combat is rather simplistic, you just hit them and then execute them on the ground or shoot them BUT you can with a lot of training unlock special fighting moves to help you out. While simplistic in nature, honestly the combat is satisfying though you still have to be careful because you can be swarmed quick and screwed.

With this combat of course you're asking "well are you fighting just zombies?". There are hostile survivors who will shoot at you and attack you with all they got but there are also the stereotypical "special" zombies that just kinda jack from Left 4 Dead (ex. Bloaters are Boomers, Ferals are Hunters, etc.). Whereas they're not bad, they just kinda fill the stereotypical roles that every other zombie game seems to have kinda just taken from Left 4 Dead. Regardless that kind of caps off the combat that I can remember to mention at the moment.

To cap off the main mode, this is where you'll most likely be spending your time in and truth be told if you're looking for a Walking Dead community simulator thing that's not directly based on the IP this is basically your game. There's no real main story in this mode other than the objectives above you do side quests for people and you become attached to your characters before they're ripped apart and butchered cause of bad luck or one mistake. That being said, there are lulls sometimes and it can be kind of boring waiting for objectives to pop up depending but it kinda is what it is I guess.

The next mode is Heartlands; this is considered the "Story Mode" of the game. It takes place between the first game and the main mode, you'll choose between one of two groups to go into the first game's location. Not much is different other than skills and certain quests but the main goal is the same: find survivors, build your community, kill some plague hearts but with the added quest of helping Dr. Hoffman take down Plague Walls. With this quest you will need to build up your arsenal and be on your A-Game because you WILL die if you screw up because you will be inundated by plague zombies and their special units. I didn't hate this mode, it's not bad for those who are into State of Decay's lore but I wouldn't really play it more than once.

The last mode is Daybreak, which is basically your "survive in one spot, keep rebuilding the wall, protect a person and kill every zombie" thing that seems to be in a lot of games. I did one game of it and to be honest I don't hate it, it's kind of a standard mode I just don't really wanna play it again and to me it didn't really add much to the game itself besides rewards you can unlock in the main game.

Overall, I liked this game mostly other than a few things here and there I didn't care for. This is one of those games to me that has the potential for infinite replayability with the pregenerated survivors. Playing as them I formed an attachment building these random characters up before seeing them get ruthlessly eaten. If you're desperate to save or keep certain survivors you can spend influence to send them to the "Legacy Pool", where you can always call them in if you need them later on or in a different survivor enclave entirely if you want (though alternatively you can access them for free if you start off in a new game as well). That being said, I can understand why people would give this game mixed reviews overall; there are some things that aren't really fleshed out as well as I would like (base building would be my pet peeve, I'd prefer to just be able to build whatever wherever instead of limited to certain squares in a single area but I digress), the survival aspects for the most part is still the same as the first game (which I'm ok with but I can understand others are not), sometimes you'll be driving and you'll get stuck every five seconds and it's annoying. I'm sure there are many other things I'm not touching base on, but the character limit on Steam makes it iffy to go over everything. Some last things I will mention is that at the moment they're making State of Decay 3; I wasn't excited at first because I had some frustrating moments on Xbox One with it (mostly confusion with the legacy pool deleting all my best characters) but having replayed this I'm heavily interested now. The second thing is that according to a buddy of mine there's actually a mod or a character editor in which you can kind of create your own survivors and edit stats so to me that adds to the replayability of it. However if I were to put out a recommendation, I'd say just take some breaks in between play sessions and such otherwise some of the flaws tend to kind of poke out and make itself aware, that and it gives you a reprieve from the fear of killing your best survivors. I'll repeat a statement I made earlier in the review: If you're looking for a Walking Dead Community simulator with no attachment to the IP or no pregens, this is a good title to look into. Just be aware it'll kick your s h i t in and it has some issues.

Also shoutout to my dude Dewey for getting me this game thank you very much!

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

I don't know how to start this except wow, this game is amazing and I'm sad more people aren't aware of it; I just played through the entire game and streamed it for a friend of mine and we both got creepy vibes as well as a couple of laughs.

Story:
You wake up in a storeroom in the Heilwald Klinikum, a well respected medical facility in Germany. However, upon leaving, you encounter strange horrors and freaky visuals. In most of the areas (except the endgame area), you encounter multiple different wings of the facility and you'll gather clues on stuff that has happened, though the game keeps it very vague. I'm gonna throw out some spoilers here for my own experience: In the beginning of the story it's learned that the head doctor, Dr. Randolph, has made it his sole mission to make sure that no one in the facility will die, to that end he works with a strange entity that talks to the people in the numerous holes scattered around the walls of the facility. Something happened to where they were all plugged in, and for the most part everyone's turned into nightmarish distortions of who they were. If I were to name a personal favorite, I would say my two favorites are Nurse Anne in Electroshock for her really strange aura and her humorous ability to open doors by violently kicking them while keeping the creepiest smile possible; as well as my favorite character in the game: The Trash Guy. He's the friendliest character and sustains himself off of trash, while giving tips and even helping you in the endgame. Other highlights include a certain neglected patient who just blows up every toilet he comes across as well as a guy named Dohku who really wants his teddy bear back. In the end you unplug a huge hole to talk to this faceless entity who gives you more backstory on the characters before walking into a dental facility and trapping a distorted Dr. Randolph into a loophole himself. What else goes on, I can't honestly tell you because it's sort of vague but it's the vague that I REALLY like and leaves me wanting to know more. Who is this entity? What did they do to the facility? They're not really hostile to you but what are their motives? What exactly did Dr. Randolph Do? Who knows. Overall you kind of just go through these facilities and vaguely learn what happened with each person in it, but keep in mind in order to do that you have to die a lot too.

Gameplay:
For the most part there is a "Loop" here which leads to different outcomes, but in nature this is a walking sim. For the most part each area has three loops of different natures where the outcome is different. One outcome will usually be the way forward while the others end up getting you more knowledge (which you'll need five of them anyways for a different puzzle later on), and a lot of them require you to die or get captured in order to move onto the next area. Want to go to electroshock therapy? Get captured in the Sick Ward BUT you have to grab the crowbar; Get captured without one and you go to the cafeteria; go to electroshock and knock out Nurse Anne there and get her key card, then loop back to Sick Ward, get the crowbar and unlock both the doors and you leave to the courtyard. It's stuff like this that constantly had me think about what I was doing, and loop back to figure out if it solved certain puzzles. The thing that I really liked about this is that I blow at puzzles, but playing this game it felt natural and I only broke out a guide later for achievement hunting and basically got all my achievements first run.

Audio/Visual Presentation:
This game is freaky as hell and I love it. The visuals are PS1 aesthetic which I die for, and it's uses of light and shadow are great for it as well; and the music is creepy and fits the game perfectly. You can tell a lot of the games influenced by it (like Silent Hill) but it's solely unique in the sense that I sat down and didn't really feel derivative. It has the old PS1 sound effect noises we all love too, and to me the freakiest part is everyone speaks like a Sim, but certain people have certain words and phrases that stand out (like Dr. Randolph SCREAMS "Get back here Now" in a distorted voice and it startled the f u c k out of me the first time I heard it). The monster designs are unique and strange as hell, and you know when something looks normal for the most part something is wrong. Overall, I can't say anything bad about this department.

Final:
There were a couple of times where I'd play and I would get startled (the aforementioned screams in the audio/video), sometimes I'd laugh (again, Nurse Anne in Electroshock has this strange fascination with kicking doors open action movie style that it's funny as hell) and sometimes both (example: Sickward has a patient crawling towards you really fast, like a weird jump scare before asking you to follow him to the toilet where he "blew up" the seat with s h i t). It balances these moments well in the fact even though there's literal toilet humor there's a lot of creepy set pieces and situations. The game knows what it's doing, it doesn't waste your time and it presents a unique concept that doesn't wear itself thin; sometimes the objectives for certain loops can be vague but I somehow was able to figure it out with a bit of intuition. And I guess if I were to finish off here: this is objectively one of the best "PS1 Retraux Horror Games" I've ever played, and I've played a decent bunch to a fair lot of them.

Pros:
Creepy Atmosphere
Interesting Story, gives you enough but not too much
Interesting Characters/Creepy Monsters
Gotta love the PS1 Aesthetic
Balances humor well
Pretty much almost everything else

Cons:
Sometimes Loop objectives can be vague, and one achievement glitched

If you like the PS1 Aesthetic and you're looking for a short horror game, get this. I don't care if it's on sale or full price, it deserves your money. Shoutout to my buddy Dino for getting it for me! Here's your fucking soup!

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

50 Cent: Bulletproof is a game developed by Genuine Games, a studio that hasn't created anything else? I'm not sure if they created anything else but what they did create was legendary. To those who don't know ANYTHING about rap, or gangsters or gangster video games, 50 Cent is a rapper who became famous in the Early 2000s after getting shot 9 times and surviving, eventually hitting the scene with his major hit album "Get Rich or Die Tryin", and from there expanded the G-Unit Brand to feature shit from clothes, more music (mostly surrounding him and his group which included Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck as well as The Game but that fizzled out into an infamous rap feud later on), a movie of the same name as his first album and THIS game. 50 Cent was a fucking powerhouse back in the day, this game being another part of the G-Unit Legacy.

Now how is this game? It's average, it's not the worst game ever created and it's not the worst feeling game to play; I originally picked it up on PS2 and played it as a kid before playing it on my OG Xbox now, streaming it for friends where I had a fucking blast. It's certainly janky in the way of controls and such and the story/atmosphere even though it was created in an interesting way (bringing I guess what you call Hip Hop Noir vibes?) it's also goofy as fuck. I'm going to start with the story here.

You play as 50 himself as you get a call from your boy K-Dog, who begs you for help as he's being attacked by an unknown force. You go with your people (also Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck) to help out K-Dog, shoot through strange masked men and finally get SHOT 9 TIMES. From there you wake up a while later, in the doc's office with this big dude named Friday. You eventually heal up before hitting the street to get info from your next rap cameos: Eminem as corrupt detective McVicar and arms dealer Grizz (Played by Dr. Dre). Detective McVicar gives him info on a safehouse where K-Dog is at upstate, of which 50 goes and starts shooting shit up only for K-Dog to be found dead, where you take his phone before leaving.

After looking at K-Dog's tattoo and going to pawn shop owner Bugs (and getting your shit back), you trace messages on his phone to a junkyard where a bunch of bikers led by Spider hang out, and it's insinuated that K-Dog was involved in a huge drug smuggling operation. After murdering every single biker, you get documents and then cut off the dude's tattoo before bringing it back to Bugs to learn about a connection to the Triads over in Chinatown.

In Chinatown, you confront the leader before getting into another shootout and taking his money; and on the way home in the subway you get ambushed by more masked men, before the game comically derails the train and you end up in abandoned subway tunnels, killing the leader of these masked men to learn, surprise, they're DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency for those not in the know).

In exchange for more information, Detective McVicar asks you to kill someone for him who was about to testify and you track him to the projects where you kill the fucker in a battle that I felt was iffy. You also meet a character named Booker, a homeless man who points you to a warehouse down at the docks where you shoot through more goons and you learn that the drug smuggling operation includes giant shipments from South America and the Middle East. You get back only for Booker to get shot down in a drive-by, and you go to the funeral to meet his daughter, Alexa, whom you team up with. You meet with McVicar who tells you of the dead body of Eduardo Vasquez, who also has the tattoo and a balloon in his stomach which contains opium, and escapes after shooting more dudes who come to clear up the crime. You also learn that the dude who shot you up was rogue DEA detective Spinoza, before Ediminem gives you the scoop on a recent drug bust in the Italian Mafia that involved Opium and 50 goes to Little Italy to follow up on the lead. 50 Cent and friends get captured and in the gnarliest scene ever his buddies get butchered via chainsaw before Dr. Dre as Grizz comes to save the day and you shoot through more mafioso and finally the boss himself. It turns out the mafia boss himself was the informant and you get tapes discussing business between him and Spinoza as well as a third person: Mohammed, terrorist and drug dealer extraordinaire. Spinoza and Mohammed kidnap Alexa while Edmininemesistoafeminist arrests 50 to keep him out of the way for a huge drug bust against Spinoza. Booker, later revealed to be a CIA agent, gets 50 out of jail and with the rest of the G-Unit (or the ones that aren't chopped to bits), 50 storms the ship containing the drugs. He shoots his way through Mohammed before killing Spinoza and leaving the scene; Booker well...books it before his daughter can recognize him. Alexa smacks 50 on the ass and then 50 goes over to Detective McVicar/Edimenem to rub salt in the wound before walking off to the soundtrack of, guess who, 50 Cent.

There's a lot of 50 Cent so let me toss in my 50 Cents about the plot, it's actually not that bad? I enjoyed the noir aspect of it, the twists of the plot and I certainly didn't see things coming. It's by no means as great or emotionally impactful as say, Max Payne getting revenge for the death of his wife and child but as a fun gangster romp it's good. The characters you see often (mostly 50 and Eminem) are the most engaging, while the others don't really offer much in the way of character development I guess I'm not really surprised much at it since it's really 50 Cent's game. Overall, while certain pieces of the story I had to get reacquainted with by looking it up on Youtube, I remember stuff for the most part.

Gameplay wise it's obviously a third person shooter and you go through the game ya know, shooting people. Once you kill them, you can loot their corpse to get money of varying qualities (and for a lot of the unlockables, which I'll explain in a second, you'll need to grind a good bit to get them). These unlockables mainly consists of buying guns from Grizz of which you can start up levels with loadouts I think, buying executions from a crazy fuck named Popcorn (named Popcorn cause of his obsessions with movies and hanging out in an abandoned movie theater), of which look cool as fuck (with some named after 50 songs like Gunz Come Out) but you don't really do much other than look cool really, as well as buying, get this, more G-Unit related music such as "Bootleg" music videos, medical supplies from Doc Friday (with fucking Vitamin Water as a health pickup LOL) and songs from DJ Whoo Kid. I'll discuss the music videos/songs in the audio/video presentation later, but I want to mention now in between most levels you'll walk around your block where you can go and browse these unlockables, talk to people sometimes, and walk around your apartment.

But to go back for a second to the combat I want to mention that the combat is adequate, it again feels janky and kind of sloppy in certain cases (especially during the boss fight against the guy McVicar asked us to kill), with a strange sort of sway that makes it hard to actually aim at enemies sometimes but overall it's serviceable and you'll probably have played much better or worse games for combat. I don't remember encountering any bugs persay (other than the pawn shop owner lol) so I can't really speak much on that but on my playthrough for the most part everything was fine. It's not gonna be as good as GTA or something and truth be told this game is more akin to The Punisher but worse.

The Audio/Video Presentation I think is where the game shines, though in a hilarious way. If this was a normal gangster game I would just give it three stars but this extra half is for two reasons, Number 1: I like 50 Cent/G-Unit's music so I don't mind listening to that shit while shooting dudes and Number 2: Because the amount of self advertisement, while understandable is fucking hilarious. I'm gonna list some examples from what I mentioned earlier: Doc Friday sells the usual pain pills and med kits but he also sells Vitamin Water? Wanna know why? Cause 50 had a huge deal with them in the early to mid 2000s and was making big money off of it brand wise. DJ Whoo Kid sells as I said before, Bootleg 50 Cent/G-Unit music videos and songs, so essentially 50 is buying bootlegs of his own work from a meta standpoint. These songs/videos are mostly old stuff (Like 50's first two albums, G-Unit's first album, and the first solo album from Lloyd Banks, Young Buck and Tony Yayo though with less songs of course; as well as instrumentals for a lot of them). Good thing is once you buy them you keep them, and can switch songs on the road while shooting gangsters and masked DEA; or if you want you could take a break and watch Tony Yayo's So Seductive music video compressed to hell. In 50's apartment, in the music studio are literally a bunch of G-Unit albums to finish off the constant plugging. As mentioned, there are original songs as well which are more expensive in game to buy but are worth it as they're actually pretty good, with Maybe We Crazy and Pimpin' Part 2 being the highlights for me. This game SCREAMS gangster rap and if you love that shit like I do, you'll love it here. If you don't, then I'm not sure why you're playing this game but nonetheless. As always, visual presentation is fine, the usual PS2/Xbox era graphics but they have looked better in other games though I have noticed Eminem and 50 looking better than the rest but I don't know if it's because G-Unit is kind of an afterthought? Because truth be told again you don't really get much in the way of character from them but nonetheless.

Final Thoughts:
This is a funny ass game to me and honestly a guilty pleasure of mine, and when I hear of people saying this is one of the first game's ever I'm not buying it. Sure, it's goofy as fuck, and the controls aren't the best; but the story is actually decent and the gangster rap self plug soundtrack is immaculate in my honest opinion. I streamed this game for friends a couple of years back and I honestly had a fun time, and truth be told I actually wouldn't mind going back and playing again? It's not a classic, and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand apparently improved on a lot of shit but overall it's not a bad time. I picked it up for my Xbox OG dirt cheap, so I'm gonna guess that most copies of this game will run that way for you too? If you want, give it a try, but know that it's a flawed ass game.

The Sopranos: Road to Respect is a game created by 7 Studios which takes place during the fifth and sixth seasons of the show.

Gonna go into plot now: You play as dead mobster Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero's illegitimate son Joey LaRocca; you run into mob boss Tony Soprano one day robbing an old lady of her purse right in front of Satriale's and Tony is pissed throwing you around before offering you a place in the family. The game is sort of loosely built plot wise so I'm gonna post the Wikipedia article here and kind of go over it piece by piece: "During his first job, he accidentally kills Mario Buscetta, the nephew of Angelo Buscetta." With context, Mario Buscetta is a mob guy who works for his Uncle Angelo in Philadelphia, and while doing bouncer duty at the Bada Bing you encounter this guy trying to talk to Tony before harassing Paulie in the men's bathroom. Paulie gets tired of him and commands Joey to beat the shit out of him, which he does but beats him so badly that he thinks he kills him. Paulie demands you get rid of him by dumping him off at the docks, and so you grab your stupid douche friend Reggie to join you. After fighting your way through the docks, you find he's still alive, THEN shoot him while finding a watch "From Angie" before dumping his body in the harbor. Having no clue who Angelo is, Reggie just thinks it's from his girlfriend and steals it while Joey just says fuck it. You run get Reggie out of a nearby casino while he's drunk (going through floors trying to find this guy) before finally pulling him out. You also help out Christopher with getting protection money from a gym ran by Saul, a pervert who films stuff in the women's locker room. Some stuff that I forget happens, and they find out that Reggie was seen wearing Mario's watch. With the fact that Reggie could be tracked down and what happened to Mario would come to light, he's made a liability and you're commanded to kill him.

"Angie sends a hitman to kill Joey, but Joey kills the hitman during a rooftop chase." You're told to track him down to his apartment, you attempt to kill him but you fail cause of a distraction, beat up a bunch of dudes and then try to kill him before killing another mob guy (named Tuzzio who I didn't remember) from Angelo's family who tracked down Reggie to kill him.

"A few days later, Tony's son A.J. has a drug deal go bad on him; his partner wasted the drug money, prompting the dealers to kill his partner and steal his dad's car." This is basically verbatim, and during one of the other subplots AJ asks you in the bathroom in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah to help out because he knows his father would flip shit.

"Joey retrieves the car and kills one of the dealers, only to have the car stolen by Angie's men. While Joey is fearful the theft of Tony's truck may get him whacked, Tony says that A.J. admitted responsibility. Tony has Joey retaliate for the theft by burning down one of Angie's businesses." This is also true, though Tony is also giving you a stern warning about stuff too, and this is also in between doing more favors for the other mob guys, collecting money from Lawyer Neil (who is a frequent user of the Bada Bing and borrowed money to do something? I think) while also taking Tuzzio off of life support before he can blame you for shooting him on the rooftops.

"A few days later, Angie returns Tony's car, completely wrecked, and containing Joey's girlfriend, Trichelle, beaten and raped." This is also verbatim, but Trichelle is Joey's girlfriend in the game, an old friend of his from his younger years (though he does have an on and off flirtatious thing with one stripper) whom he ran into and established a relationship with. Also the plot device of a sexual assault and the whole "Girlfriend gets attacked" thing is really....contrived and completely unnecessary and honestly feels derivative. You have a couple scenes here and there with them both but nothing really that memorable to build her to be more than just a tool to drive the plot forward.

"Joey vows vengeance. At the docks, he finds Angie and throws him off of his yacht, killing him." That is also true, but again this is in between fifteen different subplots involving the Gym where you work with Christopher and others I can't remember, and the game ends with the ghost of Big Pussy telling you he's proud and you become a made member of the family. I'm not gonna look up the rest of the plot because not only are there so many side bits and character moments (like multiple moments where Joey talks to the ghost of his dead dad whose like "Hey Joey I was a fuckin rat, fuck it I died but I love my buddies so be nice to em you fuckin mook") but also because I'm not that bothered but if it's wanted later on I'll edit this review, and also on top of that it both doesn't matter in the main series/overall canon anyways. So truth be told, you get what amounts to an episode or two worth of material that's non canon if they only focused on the mafia side of the thing and little on the actual family side other than AJ. If you're wondering where Carmela and Meadow Soprano are they're not here, and if you're wondering where Joey is in the main series, he's not there. In fact, if I remember correctly I remember reading that David Chase wrote it specifically in mind for that. I'm gonna plug the video for behind the scenes on the game right below, sorry for the choppiness, maybe one day I'll re-record it for later and some of it will be cited later. To finish off my feelings on it, it does feel like it was written to be a Sopranos episode, and I love the main series so it's fucking great writing wise and plot wise it's fine even if it's just sort of a side note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-cVUIHW5zo&t=772s&ab_channel=G15ExtraStuff

Gameplay is where I'm gonna go next and oh boy is it fucking garbage, I've played this a couple of times over my years and I'd safely say I'd rather be shot in a creek point blank multiple times, smothered with a pillow, burned alive in a car bomb, garroted, have my shit kicked in, get called a Dickfart and laughed at, stabbed over a horse, and finally get ran over by a motherfucking truck than ever play through the combat again. It is the most shallow and repetitive shit, and there were multiple times where I wanted to smash my fucking skull into a curb and stomp myself because honestly that's what it felt like playing this game. For the most part you can punch people, hit em with objects, grab them and use environmental takedowns but it can also just be a slog to get through. There were a couple of times, like Neil the lawyer's office at the end of the game where these dudes just somehow felt invincible and kept wailing on me nonstop and it was the spongiest shit and with how the fighting in the game moves it was a repetition of "I'll grab you, you throw me off, you grab me, I punch you some more" rinse and repeat and it was just frustrating as fuck to deal with. I'll also tell you that you get a pistol in this game, but you don't ever use it except for certain situations because if you use it in public once you get this cutscene where Tony and them shoot you off of a boat and you're like "Come on Tone please I'm sorry don't shoot me" and while it looks cool it's also frustrating I can't use anything but this lousy ass combat system (though the pistol for the most part does fuck all damage and sounds like shit). After you use this lousy ass combat system, what you do is you loot money off of people's bodies (and also in random spots in the area), you'll end up using this money for two things: Pay tribute to earn respect back after losing some respect from shooting off bullets or due to certain story mandates or to earn concept art and some video trailers or whatever, other than that it's useless. You can also get this money by running into little sidequests during your missions, mostly revolving around talking to certain people and for 95 percent of it ends in a fist fight where you loot money off of them or interact with them in a dialogue tree thing (which isn't complex and doesn't usually end in anything different it's just hit left on D-Pad for friendly, nothing for neutral or right on D-Pad for aggressive and it happens throughout the game). I promise you I'm making it sound deeper than it actually is, it's really a simplistically mediocre game. I'm trying to think of other things off the top of my head but other than being able to play Poker against the guys (of which is probably the only good part gameplay wise) and get really bad virtual lap dances you don't really have much in the way of good in this department. Onto Audio/Visual.

Audio/Visual is good when the main cast is involved but it's a strange mix. Tony looks like a fuckin teletubby but his voice acting is immaculate, same with Paulie (the funniest guy here) and some others. Silvio and Christopher look decent, as does main character Joey (which fun fact is voiced by Christian Maelan, the same guy who David Chase originally wanted for Christopher but brought him into this game instead). Other characters audio wise sound ok but can suffer from some dialogue that isn't the best in their department, and you can tell there's a dip in quality compared to when the actors actually do it. Like it's some sort of strange hodgepodge then when it works it's believable and when it's not you can sit back and sort of laugh at how stupid someone looks or sounds. The soundtrack consists of "Woke Up this Morning" by Alabama 3 of course but there are also tracks from the Bada Bing involving "Catchy Sounding Electro song" and "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Motley Crue along other licensed tracks and they do the job. It's just the mixture is so jarring sometimes that I don't really know what to think, but it could also be that my memory has it tainting this game so if I'm wrong about the sound design I'll gladly raise the rating to a 2.5 but otherwise it's sticking to a fucking 2 cause it's frustrating.

Overall:
The game sucks, that's obvious. I'll tell you why I played this game: first time I was young and in a "gangster/mafia game" phase and this was one of many games I've played before giving it away to a friend who then lost it. The second time I picked it up was because I became a HUGE Sopranos fan, as well as an Exclusive games collector and some friends wanted me to stream the game on Discord one day. Funny note about the game, it's only PS2 exclusive because the other ports were cancelled (like in the video above, the graphics are high enough to look like it could be an Xbox 360 Port at certain points). If you're a huge Sopranos fan and you want to play it out of curiosity so be it, just know you'll be suffering through a four to five hour game that'll feel longer than it needs to be out of the sheer combat alone. And it's not gonna be an open world crime game either so don't get excited. If there's anything else I think of I'll edit the review and put it out there but for the love of god do yourself a favor and spare yourself the torture.

The Night of the Scissors is a VERY short game by a guy named Tomas Esconjaureguy, I don't know much about this guy other than I saw this game randomly in my recommendations and thought "WOW, this s h i t looked creepy and it's another PS1 aesthetic game and I'm weak for those so let's wishlist it and see what it's like". My review is, it's good.

The story is a small one, it revolves around two burglars named Kevin and Adam who break into an abandoned post office so they can rob the place in order to score money for drugs or something among those lines. Hilariously putting a log of all things underneath the shutter, you go inside and attempt to rob the place when the shutters close behind you and you're trapped. Not knowing what happened to your buddy, your go out of your way to search for the way out all while avoiding this really quiet killer maniac guy with scissors. Not much plot wise is revealed about the killer other than three people have gone missing, as well as the fact he likes to feed the soda machines? Also he killed your buddy and hung him outside and when you escape you encounter police sirens with the notion that you might just be arrested for the killer's crimes, what a great downer note to end on.


The gameplay is basically the usual survival horror affair, and truth be told this game literally isn't that long. You find clues in your environment to figure out the next step while also trying to avoid the killer. You can avoid the killer by basically running and hiding inside of lockers (just make sure he doesn't see you enter them) as you have no way to defend yourself. What I like about this game's atmosphere is honestly the fact that there is no jump scare music (for the most part), no real loud musical cue to detect the killer around your area other than the static getting hazier, footsteps and the snips of the scissors themselves. Luckily if you die you just restart at the nearest checkpoint with all your progress intact so no worries about losing anything. To me, this made for an excellent horror atmosphere, though one where I died multiple times. Once you figure out the steps though you can speedrun it in less than five minutes and truth be told I literally got most of the achievements in 40 minutes. One last thing I want to add is that there are two camera angles: there's the traditional fixed camera angle and the 3rd person camera angle; the 3rd person camera angle isn't bad but mixed in with the tank controls it can be kind of wobbly and certain areas can be less visible (example: After falling down a hole, you have to walk your way through a trap of hanging scissors or else the alarm will sound off and the killer will burst out of a door and chase you down).

The atmosphere is immaculate as always and I'm always weak for the PS1 aesthetic because yeah I like the PS1 idk what to tell you. There's not much in the way of actual music much which to me enhances the atmosphere other than maybe a stinger or two, and walking through this abandoned post office is creepy as hell. Nothing but positives on this end.

Overall, great game, very short but with the full price of 2.99 honestly you can't really go wrong if you're looking for a short game to kill an hour or so with. Haven't played Cannibal Abduction but I plan on doing so soon.

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

Until Dawn is an "Interactive Drama Horror" game created by Supermassive Games (using Guerilla Game's Decima Engine) of Killzone HD and LittleBigPlanet DLC fame before this became their MAIN claim to fame, and truth be told the quality of this game really shows. Originally created as a PS3 exclusive with the PS Move peripheral, it changed to a third person PS4 exclusive after debuting at a game show and becoming massively popular with the audience and truth be told it was A LOT better for it. I remember personally hearing about this game and being excited because I was huge into Heavy Rain and wanted another horror based "movie game", and so when I first picked up my PS4 in 2017 I got this game, Yakuza 0 and Bloodborne. However, I didn't really touch it for years and every time I tried I stopped myself because truth be told, I wanted to play this game with people for my first playthrough, and my family both wasn't interested and mostly sucked at games and I couldn't get enough people gathered to want to do it. Six years later in 2023 however I somehow was able to convince some buddies to join me and beat this game and Jesus Fucking Christ were we awful at it. We literally managed to get everyone killed except one of the main characters Sam; one of my friends who played Mike played him as the biggest douche on the planet; and another friend played as Chris, built up his budding romance with Ashley only to choose the cowardly way out and shoot her during a russian roulette styled scene as a shock to everyone else. Emily of course got killed because no one liked her, I eventually decided to say fuck it and got Ashley killed, it was a fun time and it was something that this game was BUILT for. I believe the popularity of couch coop was the reason why in the later Hidden Agenda, Dark Pictures Anthology and then this game's spiritual successor, The Quarry, have couch coop elements whereas this game does not. I wanna go into gameplay and describe elements of it.

The gameplay is phenomenal, though I'm weak for movie games in general. The whole style of the game is basically you walk around certain set pieces while looking at clues, talking to people and either making certain dialogue choices or actual physical movement choices (With QTE's so if you like quick time events have fun) which can change the path the story takes no matter if it's small or large. Certain decisions can ripple into different outcomes, for example bringing up a friend of mine who played Chris, when the "Killer" tied them up russian roulette style and forced Chris to choose between shooting himself or shooting Ashley, he shot Ashley. Other than being a dick, this led to the romance utterly failing and when the real threat of the Wendigo shows up (of which I'll discuss in the next paragraph or so), she left him to die. Other choices I can remember off the top of my head is going down to the basement as Sam while turning on the power with Josh and getting a baseball bat out of a certain container leads to it being available one of the next times if you choose to wail out on the killer. The relationships fluctuate all the time and can really change how certain people react to you and how certain events later play out. HOWEVER, with this in mind, of course the game will pigeonhole you into certain set pieces regardless to keep the pace up with the story (for example, I escaped the basement of the lodge from the killer as Sam, ran down and hid in an elevator. In the previous playthrough, one friend ran down the hallways instead of hiding, and both times you get drugged and knocked out). That being said however, I'm not sure of every single event and how every outcome comes about, mainly because it's such a SUPERMASSIVE GAME (hah I'm gonna go shoot myself now lol) that you can't really keep track of all the pieces. Just know that your choices matter. Segwaying into another gameplay piece, you can learn of certain outcomes by collecting Totems, of which there are five categories (and six totems per category) and are randomly scattered throughout the story and include premonitions of death, injury, fortune, and etc. Among this you're also able to find clues of the story going on in the background relating to The Twins, a mysterious man with a flamethrower and a mysterious event that happened in 1952; and they all piece together well enough to create something cohesive and interesting. Bringing it back a bit to the QTEs, some of these can be very unforgiving and if you're playing with friends that aren't well versed in it, it can be...frustrating. Certain people died because of how quick these go and some choices were fucked up because of the Motion Sensor events, which basically have you stay still and not move. It's recommended during these events you have a table nearby and just plop the controller down on it during these situations because if not it can be a bit sensitive and fail and were probably my least favorite of all of these. One last thing here, in between each chapter you talk to a therapist character played by Peter Stormare and you get choices on your phobias/fears, how you feel about the characters and such and it affects how certain things play out (like what mask the killer wears, what weapons are used, certain jump scares, etc). Overall though, I enjoy the gameplay and had a blast playing it, though the part I'm sort of mixed on is the story.

The story starts out as a prologue of one year before when a group of students play a mean prank towards a girl named Hannah who had a crush on a jock named Mike. She runs out in the cold in embarrassment and her twin sister, Beth, chases after her and it all ends in both of them falling down a ravine and tumbling to their death after a man with a flamethrower attempts to save them (or kill them depending on if you know the story beforehand). You can't change this outcome, and it goes to a year later. Everyone is affected by it and feels shame, sadness or both and on the urging of their brother Josh come back to celebrate again to the same cold ass cabin in the woods on the mountain. Little by little, everyone is separated and events unfold; Mike and his girlfriend Jessica canoodle in a cabin nearby only for Jessica to be kidnapped with Mike going on to try to save her. The others are at the main cabin and fall into a strange Jigsaw styled killer game where they're all hunted; the cable car is sabotaged, Josh is "killed", "Ghosts" are spotted and everyone is taunted about their role in the disappearance of the twins. While most of them are dealing with the main Jigsaw killer style hunt, Mike follows Jessica's trail (which can end in her death if you're not quick enough) and find the abandoned sanitorium. The flamethrower guy and two wolves are there, and you can discover clues of Miners that were trapped in a cave in back in the fifities (it brings it back to the main plot I promise). Eventually they all come back to the main cabin and after Chris/Ashley are forced into a russian roulette styled game it's revealed that there was no killer and that Josh faked his death and set up this elaborate ruse to embarrass them like they embarrassed Hannah that previous year. My thought of this twist is that we found it to be kind of obvious, and truth is that we saw it coming from a mile away (not the fake part though, although to me it kind of ruined the twist a bit, even if it was thematic). It's then revealed what the main threat is: The Wendigo. Remember I mentioned the flamethrower guy and the mining cave in? In 1952, a cave in occurred and miners started eating each other, and later on ruined the nearby Sanitorium (with details revealed in the Until Dawn VR Spinoff "The Inpatient" which I won't play cause it's expensive though if it's ported to Steam I'd play it there). The flamethrower guy was thought to be dead and has been trying to trap all the Wendigos in the Sanitorium as a makeshift prison to make sure no one gets trapped again. One by one your survivors can die by these freakish spider/humanesque creatures, Josh gets taken away (and can be killed later) and everything culminates in a final showdown at the lodge where you blow up the lodge just at the break of Dawn and rescue arrives (of which you go to find a nearby radio tower with Emily/her current boyfriend Matt to call for help earlier in the game). One thing I forgot to mention is that you know the therapist character played by Peter Stormare? All in Josh's head, and it's sad seeing him fall into a spiral of mental anguish before eventually being murdered by the Wendigo (of which Hannah was turned into one after digging up and eating her twin sister's corpse, although Josh I believe can turn out to be alive in a post credits stinger?), the credits roll showing the fates of your characters and their thoughts while getting interviewed by police. My feelings on the whole "Wendigo" twist are mixed, though it's hinted at well and is decently done, I felt like the whole "Oh yeah the killer is fake, BUT WAIT THERE IS AN ACTUAL THREAT" was kind of lackluster and I was kind of disappointed, but overall I liked the story and what was delivered.

The final part of the review is Sound/Art Design and graphical presentation. It's on the Guerilla Game's Decima Engine so it looks fucking good, and unlike Hidden Agenda I don't feel like I'm staring into the eyes of a lifeless corpse most of the time (unless it's literally a corpse or a Wendigo lol) so that's phenomenal. The art style is cold, dark and oppressive which works cause it's on a mountain, and the sound design is great as well. They brought a bunch of interesting actors together from Hayden Panettiere as Sam, Rami Malek as Josh, Peter Stormare as Josh's pretend therapist Dr. Hill, Larry Fessenden as the flamethrower guy and overall the rest of the cast are great and believable.
I think the only part that I didn't like is that some of the dialogue is kind of cringeworthy and you can tell this was written nearly ten years ago with constant teenagerisms like saying "Hashtag Unfriended" after finding out that the "killer" ransacked the only way out and other weird quips and such. It's not on the level of say something like the newly released Forspoken but it was noticeable enough to make fun of it; otherwise everyone does great and plays their archetypes VERY well, though some aren't as memorable as others (like you barely play as Matt) mainly because the way the story is plotted doesn't give some of them enough time to shine.

Overall I liked this game a lot, and even though I haven't platinumed it yet I plan on platinuming it over the many days (hopefully making it my last January platinum), it's a fun time with buddies as well as solo (though I prefer playing it with friends to be honest), and the runtime can take about 8-10 hours depending on your choices so if you're gonna play this I'd suggest spreading it out over one or two days to give yourself time to relax. It's a fun game with a creepy horror atmosphere and I'm gonna finish this review with these notes:

Number 1: I put this at four stars because of some of my feelings on plot beats and character dialogue, but truth be told this could also be a very easy 4.5 as well. I'm not sure if we could call this a "classic" game yet (or at all), but if I were to give it a designation compared to a lot of other games it's at least a "Personal classic".

Number 2: Jesus Christ Sony/Supermassive, please for the love of god I know I harp on this shit a lot but PORT THE FUCKING GAME TO PC. Almost all of the other Supermassive movie games are, this game sold well and it would be popular enough to at least guarantee a decent amount of sales as it was considered a "Sleeper Hit". And if you're looking to throw out some VR stuff "The Inpatient" would be cool just to give some background info on the main game itself.

Number 3: If you want to see the development cycle, once you beat the game you can see behind the scenes stuff but also I'm gonna post some youtube links down below of the PS Move port stuff, a wiki link and also after I platinum this game I'm gonna try to record the behind the scenes stuff via capture card and put it on one of my youtube channels before editing the review and posting the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm35otCvlqU&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czzrjlHPKfQ&ab_channel=Emulators%26GameplayHD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppmjf8rAOyg&ab_channel=PtoPOnline

https://until-dawn.fandom.com/wiki/PlayStation_3_Beta

As always if I think of anything to add then I'll edit this review, but otherwise yeah it's good, if you have a PS4/PS5 you could either pay 20 dollars to get it digital, probably more or less physical and even free on PS5 if you have PS Plus. Try it out if you haven't already.

NOTE: It's 2024 and they announced a PC port for this game as well as a remaster for PS5. The remaster is a given but FUCK YEAH A PORT FOR PC!! FUCKING FINALLY DOOD!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2172010/Until_Dawn/

Made Man: Confessions of the Family Blood is a third person action crime game created by SilverBack Studios about a war veteran turned mafioso named Joey Verola (voiced by Rick Pasqualone, aka Vito from Mafia 2) as he engages in criminal activities, Vietnam flashbacks, and rumored caskets of stolen gold. It was written as a collaboration between crime author David Fisher as well as Salvatore Bonnano, the son of the infamous mafia boss Joseph Bonnano of the Bonnano Mafia Family in New York. This game is a game that honestly, despite its very apparent flaws, I really enjoy despite it? I mean for fucks sakes I'm weak to crime games, especially one about the "AYYYY I LOVEADEGABAGOOL" kind of gangsters. I first played this during my "Mid 2000s crime game addiction" phase when I was younger and after giving this game (along with Sopranos: Road to Respect and a few others) to a buddy of mine (after I got stuck on Mission 13 and couldn’t figure out to shoot the tower wires), I repurchased it for my PS2 (of which there's also a PC Port) and decided to give it another spin in the last year or so, and here are my thoughts:

The story is...strange. I personally enjoy it for its back and forth noir styled time jumps but it can also be kind of confusing depending? I'll give a brief overview of each mission as well as when it takes place. Joey first runs out of Calvary Cemetery in New York City, talking to his nephew about his life in the family business as well as musings on his past and present circumstances while driving around new York. He first goes into his first job in the mafia in North Carolina.

Mission 1: A Little Business (North Carolina, June 7th, 1971)- Joey Verola’s old vietnam buddy Johnny “Eggs” Biando takes him along to unveil some “big plans”, and they go to Little Italy to meet up with Johnny Egg’s adoptive father: Philly “Pies” Lombardi. Philly thanks Joey for protecting Eggs in ‘Nam and hires Joey to “take care of some business” in North Carolina. He asks Joey to go down to North Carolina, buy a bunch of cigarettes and bring them back to New York to sell them at a better price, explaining that what most mobsters do to get money is “mundane stuff”. Obviously it doesn’t work out however, as a bunch of rednecks who work for “Weasel Walt” rob him of his truck and Joey goes through the back and fights through rednecks through junkyards and swamps, before he sees an attack helicopter and is transported in his mind back to Vietnam.

Mission 2: Johnny Eggs (Vietnam, July 11th, 1968)- This mission is mostly just a vietnam flashback where Joey goes through tunnels while shooting Vietcong while narrating about Joey’s backstory as someone who joined the war to get some sort of internal revenge for his brother Petey dying in Vietnam. He also runs into Johnny Eggs and snaps him out of him cowering, while protecting him and saving his life. They get rescued by a Huey chopper before fading back to real life.

Mission 3: A Little More Business (North Carolina, June 7th, 1971)- Joey fights back through more swamps against Weasel Walt’s boys before finally ending the mission on a sniper trying to shoot Joey from the helicopter. Joey asks why anyone would wanna kill a nobody like him before he shoots at the helicopter enough to make them fly away. Someone then takes Joey’s truck, AGAIN.

Mission 4: The Print Job (The Flower District, New York; July 15th, 1971)- Joey is spared after North Carolina, and after the feds surveillance on the Don’s counterfeit money operation is out and about, the Don closes the printing press down to get rid of the heat. Philly sends in Joey to grab the plates and bring them elsewhere for safekeeping when the “Feds” go berserk and start shooting at Joey and the other mobsters. Joey shoots his way through the factory and figures out that these “Feds” are working with the rival Corelli Mafia Family. Finally Joey gets out and Johnny Eggs conveniently shows up to drive him away from the factory before it’s hinted that Philly’s gonna usurp the don and take control of the family.

Mission 5: Calvary Cemetery (Calvary Cemetery, July 21st, 1989)- Joey goes back to Philly with the counterfeit plates and Philly gives him a verbal pat on the back. Joey relates to his nephew that he figured out the previous day that the gold from Vietnam was in Calvary Cemetery. His nephew asks what happened and Joey tells him that a bunch of mobsters ambushed him and his mafia cohorts at the cemetery in an attempt to take the gold away from them. He recognized some of them as having used to work with Philly and Joey gets to the hearse and tells the driver to go back to the coffin before more mob guys show up.

Mission 6: Family Matters (The Flower District, New York; August 16th, 1974)- It’s explained that the mob guys in the last level were working with the Triads before explaining that power struggles were always a thing in the mafia. He then talks of the time when Philly brought him along to take down the Don in a coup de at along with Johnny Eggs. Philly asks Joey to leave the don for him before Eggs sends Joey to stealth kill his way through the factory and open the bay doors on the other side. They shoot through more guys and get to the Don’s office, where Philly shoots him out of a window and then takes control of the family.

Mission 7: FBI (Little Italy, New York; October 23rd, 1974)- Joey explains that he proved himself to Philly and as a result gets trusted to do more and more over time as Eggs is kind of pushed out of the picture. It’s explained that the feds are watching them more and more from across Philly’s apartment and he sends Joey next door to “Send a message”. Joey goes next door to smash up the Fed’s recorder when Egg’s voice is heard on it talking about finding the gold and how “the tracks were hidden a little too well and so it’ll take time”. Joey smashes it up and the feds come back from plowing hookers, before Joey kills them all. It’s learned that the Corelli Family were paying corrupt federal agents to get to Philly, and Joey shoots his way out onto the rooftops and through apartments before walking down into the streets and slipping away unnoticed.

Mission 8: Jade (Chinatown, New York City; February 3rd, 1972)- Joey tells his nephew that Philly was pissed off at Joey for shooting up the feds and tells Joey he needs him to go get 50 grand that night to pay off the feds and make everything right again. He also mentions that Philly was pissed off about the triads, led by Jade Li. It flashes back to years ago as Philly sends Joey to go collect money from Jade that she refuses to pay up. Since her father died, she’s taken over and she ambushes Joey, tells him politely in business terms to fuck off and die and Joey has to shoot his way out of the resteraunt. This marks the beginning of the triads quote “Becoming a huge fuckin problem for the families”.

Mission 9: A Quick Buck (New York Arena, New York City; October 23rd, 1974)- The Nephew brings the story back to the previous point of Joey having to pay off the feds 50,000 dollars worth of cash. Joey tells his nephew about how later that night they decide to rob the arena because it was “on Corelli’s books” and that “some of them were Corelli born and raised” and that since they caused him trouble recently that they should pay up. Joey and his guys dress up in animal masks and start the robbery, getting only 30 grand from the first safe. They decide to go to the other ticket office, with Joey and some guy named Tommy shoot through dudes with Joey calling Tommy a “good guy who's been around the family around the same time he has”. Of course, Tommy catches a bada bing and his body bada booms to the ground later on. Finally finishing off at above 60 grand, Joey shoots through guards above the concert. Joey finally makes it to the garage where the driver, Vinnie, awaits him. Joey has a stand off against the Corellis before making his escape with Vinnie in the van.

Mission 10: Family Rivalry (Little Italy, New York City; May 5th, 1979)- Joey explains that the feds/Corellis were off their backs and that he couldn’t trust Eggs after hearing him on the wiretap to his nephew. He explains that with the rivalry between Philly and the triads that Philly wants to sit down with the other families to discuss a truce at a place called “Cha Cha Charlies” with the hopes that they could ally with each other and take down the triads. It turns into an ambush from the rival families and Joey/Philly make their way through the joint. Throughout the mission Joey describes Philly as a tough guy who did a lot of contract killing and was so fearsome that he wasn’t surprised that “the old Don kept him as close as he did”. It turns out Philly took Johnny and his mother in and raised Johnny as his own son because he couldn’t have kids with his wife. Johnny then picks them up again before praising Joey for his ability to help him survive.

Mission 11: Negotiations (Chinatown, New York City; April 3rd, 1974)- It’s explained that the other families didn’t side with the triads but that they thought Philly was weak for wanting to sit down with them so they figured they could take him out of the picture. Now the situation has escalated to a war with all of all the families as well as the triads. It flashes back to Philly sending Joey and the guys to send Jade Li a message so they don’t “make a monkey out of him any longer”. They go to her business only to engage in ANOTHER shootout with Jade’s men, getting ambushed by dudes in samurai outfits (LOL). To piss her off, Joey destroys Jade’s priceless artifact collection before personally meeting with Jade to discuss her payments. Jade gets pissed and sends him back to Philly with a message: she’s not paying them shit and that if she ever sees them again that it’ll be the last time. Philly doesn’t like that message at all.

Mission 12: Back in ‘Nam (Vietnam; July 21st, 1969)- Over the years the Family and the triads clash more and more over the gold from Vietnam. Joey tells his nephew about how he figured out the location of the gold, the day before he was listening to a radio broadcast of the 1969 Moon Landing and when asked about where he was that day he has a flashback to ‘Nam again. Eggs sneaks Joey into the mortuary to see the military putting gold away into caskets where he overhears “This one’s another Calvary”. The Viet Cong then ambush the area and Joey’s sent out to fight them while Johnny cowers in the corner again. Joey questions why the gold would be buried, before thinking that whatever the original plan was it went badly and something was changed. He describes his loyalty to his current mafia family and says that now “the gold belongs to them” as well; all while for most of the mission it’s just going through the base and shooting more vietnamese soldiers before ending the assault with a turret section. It’s also learned that Johnny Egg’s dad was a small-time mobster in Philly’s shadow and that he disappeared because he bad-mouthed Philly to his face. It ends with the assault repelled and a flash forward to the car ride again.

Mission 13: Unfinished Business (Wall Street, New York City; July 21st, 1989)- Discussing again how he found the location of the gold, and that he looked up a GI who died a day or two before the moon landing located in Calvary and that would be the gravestone that the gold is buried in. He then stops outside of a Wall Street firm with the intention of figuring out where Eggs is taking the gold, this place is Li Enterprises and yes they’ve been working with Johnny Eggs. He shoots his way through the lobby before heading up the elevators to try to get to Jade’s apartment. Jade doesn’t take kindly to this and sends more and more goons after him. After confronting her in her apartment, he chases her to the rooftops. Joey snipes out more triads before Jade attempts to escape in a helicopter, which he foils when he shoots out some support wires holding a tower and the tower falls before she’s able to climb up and get to her helicopter. Her last words while hanging on for dear life are to beg for her life and to tell Joey that Eggs is taking the gold to Pier 6 of the Brooklyn Docks. She then falls to her death.

Mission 14: Turf War (Brooklyn Docks, New York City; June 15th, 1979)- He goes all the way back down to the car, which is right in front of her building and somehow no one notices the crazy amount of gunshots or explosions right outside or the fact that Jade fell to her death? Who cares I guess. Joey and his nephew talk about how Eggs has been in bed with the triads for years and that he disappeared a while back after abandoning Joey during a job to pick up a shipment at the docks. It flashes back to this deal, and Joey describes how a lot of people left Philly’s family because they felt he was weak. It’s clearly obvious that Johnny Eggs intends to betray everyone but Joey goes inside to see that everyone has died and there’s ANOTHER ambush. Joey’s guys get shot up and Joey shoots through more mobsters, who turn out to be formerly friendly with Joey as members of Philly’s family. Eggs is gone of course

Mission 15: Calvary Part 2 (Calvary Cemetery, New York City; July 21st, 1989)- Johnny disappeared off the radar, and after Philly and some guys cleaned up the bodies and got the weapons wouldn’t reappear til way later. Discussing how Johnny was in Calvary, it flashes back to the second half of Joey’s shootout in the cemetery next to the hearse. He shoots his way through more mob goons while describing Johnny as someone with a bad temper and never shies away from a fight, and how one day he tried to fight a whole street gang and got sent to the hospital and he got the named Johnny “Scrambled Eggs” Biando (or Eggs for short) is because they thought he probably had his brains scrambled to take on a whole gang and Joey theorizes that after the fight that Johnny changed personality wise and became a coward. He eventually kills a guy who tries shooting him from the top of a building and when he staggers out, Joey recognizes him as the guy who tried to kill him from the helicopter back in North Carolina (called South Carolina here). He sees Johnny Eggs drive off with the hearse full of gold before it flashes to the present.

Mission 16: Chinatown (Chinatown, New York City; March 2nd, 1982)- Joey and his nephew talk about how Johnny wanted him dead in North Carolina but couldn’t pull the trigger himself. He then talks about how Johnny reappeared when Philly and the family were starting to get heavy weapons to go against both the other families AND the triad, turning the tide and winning the war. Representatives from the other families and the triads meet up in Chinatown to discuss how much of a problem the Lombardi Family has become. Setting up an LMG, Joey and the others set up shop right outside the meeting spot when Eggs comes in and tries to ambush Joey. The triads and the other families descend on them, and Joey mows down the representatives of the triads with the LMG before going in and killing the capos from the other families personally. He then heads back to Philly to let him know Eggs sided with the triads, and now Eggs is persona non grata; and that was the last he saw of Johnny before the present day.

Mission 17: Brooklyn Docks (Brooklyn Docks, New York City; July 21st, 1989)- Joey finishes up his talk with his nephew by telling him that he told him all of this stuff because he doesn’t want his nephew walking into the crime life blind and that the money belongs to Philly and the family, before telling his nephew to split if trouble comes around. Joey shoots his way through the docks and numerous goons before tracking down Eggs to a triad ship. Johnny breaks his legs escaping and begs for his life after Joey confronts him. Philly shows up and orders Joey to shoot Eggs. After Eggs dies, they escape before the cops show and the final shot shows Joey walking into a house with his nephew waiting outside in the dead of night; either Joey will get made or he will get wacked.

Overall, I like the story a lot. There are some points where I can point out some plot holes (like again at the end of mission 15, did no one notice Joey just shoot through an entire tall ass building of security?) to the fact that the hitman from Calvary Part 2 only showed up once before and I only recalled who it was from watching a video helping me recap events. But otherwise, I thought it was actually the main highlight of the game for me, and by the end I was glad to see the game finish decently enough. I figured I would write out the whole plot synopsis in case someone was interested in the story but didn’t want to watch a playthrough or play the game. Shoutout to Willzzy for his videos helping me recap some stuff I wanted to recap to give a full picture.

The Gameplay is the average part of the game, the serviceable part. The main point of this game is to shoot people, and so you have a number of weapons that’ll do the job from the pistol to the .50 cal pistol to Uzis, the shotgun, AK-47’s, M16’s and etc. The weapons honestly to me all feel good and they sound great like they actually pack a punch. I think one of the funnier parts to me gunplay wise is that you can dual wield shotguns and assault rifles like they aren’t gonna destroy your fucking spine if you shoot them both at once. Otherwise the game revolves around shooting people in the head and for the most part that goes along fine. I guess what I don’t like combat wise is that the cover system can be a bit iffy sometimes and everything is usually poking out? Like for example, I disliked Mission 12 the most because the final section you get a couple health kits here and there but an infinite amount of goons just keep spawning and spawning and your health can whittle to nothing in a couple of seconds and then the checkpoint system makes you do it ALL OVER AGAIN and there isn’t much cover at all and I basically got through it with luck. That happens a couple of times in the game, where the combat and the checkpoints to enemy ratio aren’t exactly balanced well but for the most part I got through the game without dying. You get health back via health vials, med kits, and body armor which are all over the place so it doesn’t really matter as well as the “Retort” system (which by the way has hilarious dialogue which yells shit like “TIME TO DIE FUCKO”), which if an enemy is crawling on the ground you can taunt him and shoot him to get your health back. You can also go into a worse version of Bullet time called where you can slow down and shoot people while running at them with infinite bullets. Sometimes you interact with certain objects but other than that all you do is shoot people, and sometimes you can throw grenades and molotovs but I don’t remember getting them enough for it to actually be useful.

The Audio/Visual department is as follows, as usually I don’t have a problem persay with the visuals though the audio is…wow it’s not great. Rick Pasqualone playing Joey does a great job and is the backbone of the game whereas the others…are serviceable to unintentionally hilarious. Whenever I hear Philly the first thing that pops into my mind is a frog, and Johnny Eggs sounds like every weasily mob character ever, and most of them aren’t mixed very well. To me the most infamous example is Mission 5, where two mobsters are bantering and joking over opera music and FOR FUCKS SAKE I CAN’T HEAR THE JOKE OVER THE MUSIC. It’s mixed like dog shit and there are numerous times where conversations won’t be mixed very well, the music will blare over each other, or people will be constantly talking over each other at the same time and I can’t figure out what’s going on. The music selection is decent, with Unkle’s Eye for an Eye playing as the main music theme and Nowhere to Run by Martha and the Vandellas playing in the first mission, as well as a couple other tracks here and there playing. Silverback probably spent their budget on getting music more than mixing the game’s audio well cause to be honest to me it was noticeable.

Final Thoughts are this: It has its VERY noticeable flaws but I actually kind of like it? It’s endearing to me, I love mobster shit too and it’s leagues above The Sopranos: Road to Respect that’s for damn sure. Every now and then I find myself coming back to this game for it’s flaws, it’s jank, and pretty much everything else. I’ve seen a few youtubers cover it but I kind of wish this game had more attention, but I’m not surprised it didn’t. In fact, it took me pestering a youtube buddy of mine to make his own video because he hadn’t heard about it before. I’m gonna plug his video right below here because it’s good and it offers a way more professional explanation than anything I could ever offer, as well as the fact he’s great and deserves more attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CYNy6kRqb8&ab_channel=thesummerofmark

If one wants to play this game, you can download it off MyAbandonware or buy a copy of it off Ebay (for both PC and PS2), but I’m gonna throw my copy down here for those who want it (and will later delete the link if it’s not available anymore.

https://archive.org/details/made-man_202310

This copy should have everything unpacked and ready to go, just keep in mind the highest graphical fidelity is like 1280 I believe? If you do anything higher, all of the next and in game textures WILL NOT show up, and it’ll just be a strange skybox. And if I have anything else to add to this review I will edit it and post stuff later on but for now I’m exhausted and I’m gonna leave this game to that.

Play With Me: Escape Room is a point and click puzzle game about getting into a car crash with your wife after going out to celebrate your birthday and waking up in a room chained up, and you have to go through numerous different puzzle rooms in order to escape this death trap. See, you were kidnapped by the "Illusion Killer', and you play as Robert Hawk, a reporter, who has been reporting on the killer and his traps for a long time. That's the basic gist of the story, you basically solve difficult puzzles, read clues about previous victims (who were kidnapped because they weren't persecuted for their crimes as the justice system blows donkey d i c k. You also have a poison serum thing in your veins, and you have to go through in a time limit. This is where I'm gonna go into gameplay because WOW do I have issues with this game.

The gameplay is basically a puzzle room game, you go through about twenty different rooms trying to figure out solutions to get the puzzle for the keypad to get into the next puzzle room. Certain rooms are easy enough, with puzzles telegraphed in a way that makes sense; but that's CERTAIN ROOMS. Most of them I have no fu c k ing clue what the hell I'm doing, and even the clues they give are confusing as hell. If this is what it's like being in a trap from the Jigsaw Killer, I'm f u c ked if I ever get caught because I can't solve puzzles to save my life. Now you're thinking, why give the game a bad review if you suck at puzzles? Well I do suck at puzzles, but at the very least, I'd like to feel like I have a sporting chance and that I feel dumb as hell when the solution is actually found. But I don't, because some of these things are so convoluted, I don't even understand how to get it in the first place. So, there's a prison cell room near the end of the game, in this room you have to knock out some blocks with a hammer right? Cool, behind it is a bunch of random numbers. This game is full of trial and error so what you'll end up doing is that you'll be trying numbers in all sorts of different numbers in a bunch of different combinations. Here's another issue, sometimes the graphical render is so blurry you can't understand what the hell they're saying. What I ended up doing was in certain rooms, I just decided to give up and reveal the code via spoiler so I could get out of there. Some codes they give we're kinda iffy like they'd have for example: 875Cat right? But the won't register, so it's basically an 8 you have to type. And segwaying into another thing, you'll find computers that give secret info I guess according to a guide (which I used often because what the hell?), you're supposed to break out text command prompts but I could never really understand what I'm doing because I don't do text command prompts? See a part of me feels stupid for writing this all up, but the way a friend of mine put it, the puzzles should at least should be solvable and not overly convoluted with random s h i t you can't understand unless you're using a guide. Again, I suppose the puzzles in this game would make the Jigsaw Killer proud, but by the end I was just using a guide full force because I had no clue what I was doing. Also you're doing this in a time limit, so you'll need to race against the clock, pick up syringes to get your health back, and try not to die in certain rooms (whether it's wiggling your flashlight, or clicking on certain things before you can get certain items). One mixed thing I will say is that it does some meta stuff well, like for example: one room you have to lower the music volume in the settings all the way to open a door. BUT HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? One thing towards the end had me blow a candle out by literally blowing into the mic, the last example involves, get this, getting the secret ending by going to a hidden website hidden inside of one of the game's promotional trailers which leads to an story bit I'll discuss next. Other things I'll mention are you have to replace batteries for your phone and flashlight sometimes, puzzle solutions ARE randomized, you have to use your in game phone to take calls or texts to actually solve puzzles, and you can play goofy little games or change your ringtone (Ringtone 3 was the goofiest and gave me and my friend watching a chuckle). You can also collect teddy bears, "Signs of Illusion", and confession notes as well as newspapers and other code pages. So I may suck at puzzles, but I felt this game did it in a way that was a bit too much. Gonna go into the plot here:

The story is again about Robert Hawk, a reporter, and your wife Sara, a lawyer, going out on Robert's birthday to do stuff. You get into a crash and you wake up in chains and have to escape. You also learn about the Illusion Killer and how they target criminals who got away with their crimes which is cool, I like the SAW movies so I'm cool with this. In two separate instances you have to solve puzzles under a timer in order to save both Sara and Patrick offscreen for the best endings. Like the puzzles, there's a variation for each one living and dying as well as if you unlock the secret room in Room 10. If you unlock the secret room it's figured that you and Patrick are up to something fishy (which we kinda already guessed). Go through the rest, and you get locked in a coffin. Gonna throw some spoilers here: : If you save both Patrick and Sara, it turns out Sara is the Illusion Killer. That's right, one of THREE characters is the Illusion Killer, and what a shock we predicted it in the third room. There was also another prediction that Patrick and Robert are the killers, and if you got the secret ending, they were both trying to frame Sara for the murders so they can "continue their work" and will continue it again. What do I think of this story? About average really, and the twists are predictable because they only really introduced three characters anyways, so who else we're we supposed to think it is? So let me get this straight. If Sara was the killer, and they were trying to frame her, did they trap themselves there? Did she just decide to play killer to go along with this? Why did she dress up and do all this stuff if you were framing her? I feel like it would be more realistic for the police to just shoot her (like they do anyways in real life) and her yelling bout her innocence then give some sort of speech explaining why she was the killer when she wasn't? I don't know, maybe I'm looking too far into this but it feels like a plot hole. Basically, it's an average story which atmospherically it gels great with SAW, but without an interesting twist or at least a bonkers one. Basically, think the last Saw movie in terms of predictability and you got it.

Graphical Presentation/Atmosphere is decent, the atmosphere is really creepy and unnerving, you'll have bugs crawling across your screen and above your clicker making you think it's actually your PC when it's not which is cool. It's a dark, oppressive, and hopeless feeling which I like. Graphics are the usual hidden object artwork style which I like and think it's charming. The music is unnerving, and it works for the game as it didn't help us with our panic levels much. The one downside I could give is that you can tell that the production of the game is in a different country, with Sara and Patrick sounding completely different then Robert, who sounds like an American and is emotive; of course I understand that budget constraints and such can lead to dips in acting quality and I know whatever country these guys are from it might sound odd emoting in English, not me dissing on them it's actually of humorous; but it's noticeable.

Overall, I would only recommend this game for people with A LOT of patience, and the ability to think WAY outside the box. Otherwise skip it. The store page said: Slowly go mad thanks to a realistic system determining the mental state of your character. It worked.

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

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/

Alisa is a survival horror retro throwback game created by indie developer Casper Croes, about an Elite Royal Agent named Alisa who with her partner chases down a thief who stole plans from the Emperor in an early 1920s fictional country inspired by France to a strange place in the woods, where she gets attacked and wakes up in a manor wearing only a doll dress. The game originally started as a Kickstarter Project, hitting its goal plus a bit over. Having looked at the page, the dude clearly had a vision going in and with what he got he executed a game that’s well made (though it’s sad some of the other stretch goals didn’t get met, as I haven’t seen a Full High Res mode or an extra side story mission though there was added content such as new dresses, items, and such in the developer’s cut). The game, while made by mostly a single dev on paper, was also worked on with his girlfriend who voiced the main character like the great soundtrack. For design/graphical stuff: they pulled it off really well. If you put me in front of this game and said it was made in the mid 90s I would’ve believed you. The sound design pulls straight up inspiration from RE, with the voice acting ranging from hilariously cheesy stereotypical french accents to weird american ones. The environment/enemy design is great with an interesting vibe that takes a clear Alice in Wonderland theme; I can’t complain about any of that. I’m going into story here:

The story starts out as stated above and more: You run into this goofy sock puppet named Pol, who sells you items in exchange for Toothwheels, this game’s version of currency. From what it seems of the plot, the main events happened because scientists unearthed a strange rock called “The Finger of God”, which of course looks like a finger and turns people into strange, inhuman machinery and/or figures while also driving everyone insane. One example of this is Dr. Pier Edmiston, the first boss who was locked up in a wing of the mansion where he turned it into a carnival funhouse. Another part of the game has you optionally helping a doll named Elise, who originally saved you in the beginning and needs your help getting her leg back. Eventually after going through a couple of areas including an underground water pool as well as the garden, you make your way to The Chapel where you run into the thief, and he tries to kill you while declaring himself the king. You take him down, build his bomb that he failed to create and plant it on the Finger of God. Pol comes out, or in actuality “The Doll Master”, a survivor of the experiments who’s been watching your every move and tries to stop you from escaping. You kill them, before you get one of three endings depending on factors I’ll get into gameplay section wise: The good ending in which you escape. In this ending it’s revealed that your partner faked swallowing his toothpick in the beginning, after which Alisa wakes up from her nightmare to read a note that says “The Truth about the Emperor’s Blueprints” before fading to black. The other two revolve around installing modifications, if you install less than six you barely escape and if you install all of them you become the true queen of the dolls. Some questions remain of course, like “What are the Emperor’s Blueprints”, “Why was your partner faking swallowing his toothpick”, “What is the Finger of God and where did it come from?" but truth be told, I kind of like that it didn’t answer everything? Like I enjoy having some vague mystery to it, though some elements I do wish were expanded upon, and definitely set up sequel stuff which hopefully we’ll get in the future. Otherwise it’s mostly environmental storytelling and not a lot of stuff I can really describe here.

Gameplay: You do your usual survival horror stuff, shoot and avoid enemies when need be but there’s one mechanic in the game that I find strange. As I mentioned, the puppet Pol is your main vendor, and you can buy all sorts of things from health kits to new guns & ammo. However, you can only buy these items by either finding toothwheels scattered about, or by killing enemies. This in itself creates a strange dichotomy where you are actively trying to kill enemies, but you don’t want to waste your ammo doing so. With this in mind, buying the Saber is a MUST so you can kill enemies in your path to get any and all currency, farming enemies when you can. However, these enemies don’t respawn, with previous rooms only being populated by new enemies after progressing the game. It’s a strange system, and one I have rather mixed feelings on because whereas in a way it does end up working out (after all your still encouraged to save ammo and not get hurt), you’re still kind of going out of the way to actively kill these enemies in a way that it doesn’t necessarily feel “survival horrorey” to me personally. I don’t hate it, it works but it’s strange. With these toothwheels, you can get certain endings by buying modifications. You buy anywhere between one and five and you get one ending; and if you buy all six you get the worst ending. Now I didn’t get these mods, but I know one of them is a cosmetic makeup kit, while another allows you to grab toothwheels from further away/auto aim, etc. These, like the dresses you can both buy/collect through the game, have different status effects that can help you in certain ways. Other things I know I want to mention is that in certain cases you’ll have little mini games (ex. Saving Elise’s leg means you have to go through three waves of enemies in a sewer area). I think one of the most jarring gameplay switches is when you end up fighting the thief towards the end of the game…while on a mechanical minigun horse in this really bizarre rail shooter segment; one of which I had great laughter one second before sort of fighting the strange controls that come with it. Another one to bring up is you get a pursuer enemy ala Mr. X from RE2 in the form of a floating ghost doll after encountering near the beginning. The enemies in this game vary in design and difficulty are creepy as hell and sometimes outright pants sh i t t ing (ex. A giant monkey with cymbals tries to kill you in a hallway late in the game). The puzzles can be kind of easy depending though one or two require you to take a picture with your phone to remember later or have trial and error. I think the most frustratingly tense for me was the RE style tribute puzzle, where the walls close in and you have to fiddle with a lock under a time limit and you CANNOT pause the game to look up how to solve it, nor can you exit and pause then go back to get your progress cause it WILL reset. I feel like I’m missing out a lot to explain cause there’s a lot of strange stuff yet clear love for the genre and the foundations that the old games built on that in a charming way even though there are frustrating segments it all kind of fits well.

Overall as a game it’s good, and deserves a play if you like old throwback survival horror with some caveats. There are going to be some weird oddities, some jank, some strange gameplay experiments (like a small stealth section, or minigames here and there); the most jarring piece being the weird economy system in the game. That being said, the game is 18 dollars. I got it during Christmas from a buddy of mine (Thanks Sab!), but with the 6 hours I took (with a guide of course cause I suck at puzzles even when they’re easy), and the 8 or so that he took, mixed in with NG+ and different endings that it’s worth your time. Check it out on sale. I apologize if it’s a scattered review, I’m working within Steam character limits. Here are some links if you want to look into it or the developer more:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Alisa
https://www.caspercroes.com/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/caspercroes/alisa-game

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