gamemast15r
This review contains spoilers
Dead Island: Definitive Edition is the remaster (2016) to the original game, which was released in 2011 after a wide marketing campaign involving a really sad CGI trailer with a dead child and some tie-in short films and novelizations. I can’t seem to find much about development as it keeps redirecting me back to the development hell of Dead Island 2 so I assume the game went swimmingly for the first part. I had initially missed the whole sad trailer hype so I never really knew what everyone was on about with the game per say, only that I had some buddies who played it and wanted me to join them. I remember first dropping into a 360 lobby with some peeps and a random person gave me a modded (not in game but an actual modded) baseball bat that sent people flying along with an infinite ammo shotgun. Playing the game with these items actually made the game fun but other than playing it with buddies from time to time, I didn’t really remember much of the game other than certain locations popping in my head every once in a while along with Sam B, so I bought the game for other people twice so I could play a coop game with them. The first two times failed because the game was incredibly boring and it didn’t mesh well with the others but third times the charm so shoutout to Brandon, Casey and Asian for the play session, and I'll also say that the Remaster comes with all the OG game's DLC in case you were wondering.
The plot for Dead Island begins as you wake up as one of the four playable characters which include rapper Sam B, American football star Logan Carter, bodyguard Purna Jackson, and Chinese police officer/spy Xian Mei inside of the Royal Palms Resort to find it abandoned and overrun by the undead after a wicked party the previous night before (same mission for everyone though it’s only a solo mission). A voice guides you out of the hotel before you fall unconscious due to another zombie and are rescued by a survivor named Sinamoi and his group. From here, the game mostly consists of helping the survivors move to the nearby Lifeguard Tower, clearing it out of infection. From here, they go on quests for more food and water as well as helping out other survivors trapped around the resort. Before I continue, I wanna warn you that Dead Island isn’t really a super plot heavy game; there are simple goals you follow with lots of downtime periods as you do side quests to level up and get gear. In between the busywork sidequests, you’ll learn that the survivors in the Resort area have been running low on every supply known to man, so it’s up to the main survivors (who seem to be immune), to go get the supplies from the nearby city of Moresby. They break back into the Royal Palms to steal an armored car before bringing it to a mechanic who’ll fortify it up, but only if they bring his daughter Jin along with them as he’s been bitten.
Act II consists of the gang traveling to the city to find food, only to run into a church full of survivors. Defending the church and doing more quests for the survivors there, they learn that more food could be located on the rich side of the city. They trek through the sewers to City Hall and learn that the supermarket has been raided by gangsters. The gang go through and kill the looters before bringing back the food, however the entirety of City Hall has been infected with zombies. They load up the van with the food via the destroyed bridge and make their way back to the church, where Mother Helen tells them that Jin was kidnapped trying to supply the raiders at the police station with food out of naivety. They cut through the entirety of the “Raskol” gang over there and rescue Jin before traveling back to the Resort, where they’re able to get in touch with The Voice once again. The Voice tells them that his name is Ryder White and that his wife is dying, and that in exchange for helping them get rescued, they travel to the jungle to a laboratory where they’ll get a cure for his wife’s infection. They travel through old Japanese bunkers and finally arrive.
Act III has the heroes make their way into the nearby jungle in order to find a smuggler named Mowen, who could bring the five to the laboratory where the cure is as well as the prison later on. Doing favors for the local village leader against the local warlord, they finally meet up with Mowen and he takes them to another lab nearby in the jungle. They meet up with the head of the lab, Dr. Robert West (love the HP Lovecraft reference by the way!) who tells them that in order to create this cure that they need to do his dirty work, and explains that the disease seems to be a strange variant of Kuru, an actual disease that cannibals can acquire. The main piece of dirty work is to find the local natives and gather a tissue sample from a native mummy. Being led by one of these fine cannibal tribesmen, the four kill this guy when he attempts to attack Yerema, the lone survivor. Bringing her back to the lab, they leave her in the hands of the creepy doctor and go to collect gas and other random shit I don’t remember. Eventually after a sad scene where Jin has to put down her undead dad back at the resort, Ryder White tells them to hurry back to the lab as something horrible went down. Traveling back, he was correct as everyone in there is mucho deado. After killing every zombie in the lab, they steal the cure and grab Yerema and head back to Mowen to travel on the boat to the prison.
Act IV consists of the main four, Jin, Yerema and Mowen sailing to the prison island with the cure and meeting up with Titus, the head of the prisoners. In exchange for certain favors, Titus will let them into Block C where Ryder White is supposedly located. Doing quests and leaving the girls in the hands of the prisoners, they eventually get told by Ryder to knock it off and get to them through the sewers. They arrive near White’s location and find Yerema and Jin, who tells them of Mowen’s sacrifice. Zombies raid Titus’s location after an uprising leads to their release, and everyone makes their way up an elevator to escape only to be gassed. After a while, they wake up to find Kevin (who helped them in a previous job in the prison), who tells them that their cure is missing as well as the fact that Ryder plans to escape with Emily and nuke everyone. Making a quick break for the roof, the gang fight Ryder and his mercenaries before cornering him and his strapped zombie wife on the helipad. A tense situation turns even worse when Jin has a meltdown and releases the zombie wife, who bites Ryder before both get shot in the face. Ryder decides to inject himself with the “cure” before it goes wrong and he’s mutated into a worse version of himself. The gang, Kevin and Yerema hop onto a helicopter towards a naval fleet while a news report talks about the outbreak, as well as the prison while mentioning a hacker named “Charon”. This is followed upon in Ryder’s Campaign, where it’s learned that “The Voice” was Charon (aka Kevin) all along, and manipulated Ryder into helping him in exchange for a cure for his wife. Using his connections to a secret organization, he worked with scientists in a lab to weaponize the virus further and manipulated everyone to go along with his plans. I’ll finish this off by saying Ryder’s campaign serves to fill in a couple of gaps and plot holes, though the passage of time compared to the base game is astounding considering how short the DLC is and honestly feels weird in comparison.
Overall, the plot in Dead Island is kind of middling a bit in my opinion. I like certain ideas about it, like the mystery behind The Voice, the potential to bond with and help survivors, the whole virus being a certain strain of Kuru in relation to the native tribes in the jungle, like it has some things I could see being interesting from a realistic perspective. However, I honestly hate to say this but I don't really care. The backstories you get for your main heroes don’t factor in at all to their character development in-game in anyway shape or form, and either you’re decent like Purna or Xian Mei or kind of an a s s like Logan or Sam B (not even an interesting one to be honest). The other characters are forgettable except Ryder White himself and Jin, with the latter just because she's kind of relatively annoying and kind of frustrating with certain story beats. For example, after being told multiple times not to go to the police station because they’re raiders and not nice people, she goes to deliver food anyways because it’s “the right thing to do” and then gets kidnapped for it, like no shit it’s not a good idea but she’s a good samaritan so I can respect the intentions. Getting shot because she released Ryder’s dead wife in the end however? That was just stupid to do, though the rest of it with her being sad I can sort of understand with her experiences. In fact, she’s the only one I do understand because Ryder’s stuff you only really learn in a two hour DLC and even though there’s a twist in there (with him not being the voice), it didn’t feel like much of anything changed anyways from what was presented in the main campaign. Honestly, I barely remember ANYTHING with the main plot because as one review I read put it, it’s basically doing “errands inside of errands inside of other errands” and it just feels boring. If I could compare the main plot of this game to something it would be a DoorDash delivery, because literally that’s kind of all it is. Same with the side quests, there are some interesting ones I sort of remember but not enough that I’d want to spotlight them to be honest, and you kinda need to do these in order to level up while speaking of the gameplay.
The gameplay is not my cup of tea really and here’s why. The game’s mechanics surround itself with a system that we still see even to this day: level based combat. Level based combat can be fine if it’s not monotonous, but here it kind of is. Luckily zombies level up as you level up so it’s not unfair that you’re restricted from certain areas due to you being a level 9 and them being 26 but it’s still frustrating a bit due to the tools you're given. You earn weapons doing quests and pick weapons up off of the ground to use against zombies, and you're encouraged to use resources to mod these weapons (which hilariously enough also requires money, which why? You stuffing dollar bills into your electro sickle?) but if you constantly invest money into these weapons only for an hour or two later to have a better weapon with better stats that makes your old weapon kind of pointless, then why spend the resources to upgrade it in the first place. This is a pattern that kept going on for me throughout the entire game, and at this point it only felt worth it to wait til I was at maximum level to do it. That’s not to say each hero can’t do damage on their own, as each one has their own skill trees depending on the type of person you are. I played as Sam B, who was mainly a bruiser guy and whose skills mainly used heavier blunt weapons. I barely used the heavy weapons cause they always felt like ass but besides the point, you kind of create your own build depending on your skill trees and what you want, and you can’t upgrade everything to the top from what I understand. Purna’s special involves pulling out a gun and guns are her main thing (which you don’t even get an actual gun til’ later in the city so it’s helpful in the resort), Xian Mei has knives and Logan is just projectiles (which feels kind of useless because Xian Mei has knives so if Logan has throwing knives then what’s the point?).
The zombies I’ll start out by saying that I appreciate how much of an actual threat they come off compared to zombies in say Dead Rising. It’s a very strategic game and combat is based off of “how much stamina do you have in your bar” and “this guy is kind of a powerhouse, could I perhaps cripple his legs and make him fall down for some free hits?” and I can appreciate that aspect in relation to the horror the game is based around. Even seeing a giant horde come around and attempt to murder me is scary, but also kind of annoying because it gets into this loop of getting bounced around like a pinball machine before eventually dying and losing a percentage of my money. The more money you have, the more money you lose and it always feels punishing no matter if it’s my fault or if it’s someone else's. As an example, two of my buddies got tired later in the game and started messing with grenades and I got killed multiple times by accident and lost 100 grand out of 160 and that was frustrating as hell to lose all of that. As for actual combat, my experience playing co-op mostly consists of knocking out a few zombies then having to team up with the homies to kill one. I also want to point out here, playing this game in co-op brings the difficulty up a lot, while it’s a lot easier if it’s just you to go solo though that goes with the caveat of not just being spawned in and having to reload constantly due to server stuff. I guess my main point is that while I appreciate the threat of the zombies, I feel like with how the game is balanced and mixed in with the level based combat system it goes from scary to annoying really quick, as I feel like I got cheap deathed (like pushed off a cliff for example) more than anything else, especially with suiciders.
The special infected for the most part are the usual Left 4 Dead inspired ones, like the Suicider echoing the boomer (minus the luring zombies) with the explosions or the Ram’s parallel with the tank as the “heavy guy”. The Butchers seem like the only new one but really they just hit really hard and that’s their gimmick. Between them, the regular zombies mixed in with heavy thug zombies and runner zombies it just kind of feels like they’ve all been done before. In essence, I can understand that it’s hard to create new special infected types and I’ve kinda resigned myself to whatever because I’m not in the game industry but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the game but it’s all bland, the loop of doing errands, the loot based system, it just hurts my head thinking about it.
The graphics compared to other games were definitely among the hyper realistic-looking games, all the models look okay and you can tell it’s from the 360 era so everyone has a look to it but not enough that it feels life-like. I think the coolest thing graphically is honestly the zombies, specifically the ones that you can cripple and such because of their in-engine system that renders broken bones and peeled flesh which is just horrifying and gives a little bit of uniqueness compared to other games which don’t have as advanced a system. I guess overall, graphically it looks good but even with the “remaster” glow-up it still looks like a 360 game, and plays like one too with the glitches that happen every now and then.
Environmental design for the most part is kind of unique and I can sort of remember most of the places I’ve been too. The Resort is the most memorable with the sandy beaches, the shining sun and the contrast with the zombie outbreak is a pretty cool vibe. The city of course being slummy and dirty due to economic disparities I definitely feel adds to the oppressive atmosphere as well, even though it’s a bit less memorable due to everything looking the same. My issues start to stem however with the jungle, because everything looks the damn same and the layouts aren’t memorable. I know, it’s the jungle so it’s a damn forest and so I suppose that could add to the feeling of isolation, to me it just feels like tiring level design. It gets better when you get to the Lab and the Prison but the game doesn’t really come back from that atmosphere. Also there’s a weird contrast between the sad vibes the game tries to give off compared to the character archetypes and the crazy weapon design you get. The game never made me feel sad or depressed once, or even immersed for that matter. It was just kind of there, and that sucks to be honest.
Voice acting I have the least amount to say about, because the only voice actors I could hear were Phil Lamarr as Sam B and Steven Blum seems to play everyone due to the fact he’s Australian and has a cool voice. There’s Kim Mai Guest as Xian Mei, though I haven’t played Metal Gear so I didn’t know her role as Mei Ling. Soundtrack is kind of okay too, you have the obvious “Who Do You Voodoo, B I T C H?” rap song by Sam B which is cool in a one-hit wonder play every once in a while with your friends gag, and I heard the main menu theme a lot but the game’s soundtrack feels kind of subdued, either sounding really sad to try to hit the atmosphere it doesn’t have or it has some sorta high energy stuff for attacks but nothing really memorable really hit me enough to care to be honest.
My final regards on Dead Island are this: I don’t like this game. I played it as a youth and having played it now, I don’t feel that it aged particularly well in almost any department to be honest. Say what you want about Dying Light’s main plot but other than that it basically improved on the gameplay Dead Island had in every way but better. If I wasn’t playing this with homies (shoutout to Casey, Asian and BFD Survivor) then I honestly wouldn’t have considered playing this at all. Hell, the only reason I did play this game was specifically to coop with people, and the only reason I’d consider touching this again is to play with people. Otherwise it’s sluggish, one note and frustrating while at the same time being monotonous and boring, even though it’s playable and most people seem to like it. As a remaster it’s still kind of glitchy but bearable, I can see the graphical updates and I appreciate them sticking all the DLC into one game so the remaster portion is solid even if the game itself is fundamentally ass. The developers at Techland would make Dead Island: Riptide before splitting apart and going under a new publisher at WB Games, creating Dying Light while the Dead Island franchise went under limbo with numerous bad spinoffs and a development hell for the sequel until it was released earlier this year. One day soon, I’ll play Riptide and maybe Dead Island 2 (if it gets on Steam) with buddies but other than that, I don’t know. If you don’t mind a monotonous gameplay loop with a crafting system that becomes irrelevant after five levels then go for it, but I couldn’t care less.
Links:
https://deadisland.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Island
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DeadIsland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Island
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot for Dead Island begins as you wake up as one of the four playable characters which include rapper Sam B, American football star Logan Carter, bodyguard Purna Jackson, and Chinese police officer/spy Xian Mei inside of the Royal Palms Resort to find it abandoned and overrun by the undead after a wicked party the previous night before (same mission for everyone though it’s only a solo mission). A voice guides you out of the hotel before you fall unconscious due to another zombie and are rescued by a survivor named Sinamoi and his group. From here, the game mostly consists of helping the survivors move to the nearby Lifeguard Tower, clearing it out of infection. From here, they go on quests for more food and water as well as helping out other survivors trapped around the resort. Before I continue, I wanna warn you that Dead Island isn’t really a super plot heavy game; there are simple goals you follow with lots of downtime periods as you do side quests to level up and get gear. In between the busywork sidequests, you’ll learn that the survivors in the Resort area have been running low on every supply known to man, so it’s up to the main survivors (who seem to be immune), to go get the supplies from the nearby city of Moresby. They break back into the Royal Palms to steal an armored car before bringing it to a mechanic who’ll fortify it up, but only if they bring his daughter Jin along with them as he’s been bitten.
Act II consists of the gang traveling to the city to find food, only to run into a church full of survivors. Defending the church and doing more quests for the survivors there, they learn that more food could be located on the rich side of the city. They trek through the sewers to City Hall and learn that the supermarket has been raided by gangsters. The gang go through and kill the looters before bringing back the food, however the entirety of City Hall has been infected with zombies. They load up the van with the food via the destroyed bridge and make their way back to the church, where Mother Helen tells them that Jin was kidnapped trying to supply the raiders at the police station with food out of naivety. They cut through the entirety of the “Raskol” gang over there and rescue Jin before traveling back to the Resort, where they’re able to get in touch with The Voice once again. The Voice tells them that his name is Ryder White and that his wife is dying, and that in exchange for helping them get rescued, they travel to the jungle to a laboratory where they’ll get a cure for his wife’s infection. They travel through old Japanese bunkers and finally arrive.
Act III has the heroes make their way into the nearby jungle in order to find a smuggler named Mowen, who could bring the five to the laboratory where the cure is as well as the prison later on. Doing favors for the local village leader against the local warlord, they finally meet up with Mowen and he takes them to another lab nearby in the jungle. They meet up with the head of the lab, Dr. Robert West (love the HP Lovecraft reference by the way!) who tells them that in order to create this cure that they need to do his dirty work, and explains that the disease seems to be a strange variant of Kuru, an actual disease that cannibals can acquire. The main piece of dirty work is to find the local natives and gather a tissue sample from a native mummy. Being led by one of these fine cannibal tribesmen, the four kill this guy when he attempts to attack Yerema, the lone survivor. Bringing her back to the lab, they leave her in the hands of the creepy doctor and go to collect gas and other random shit I don’t remember. Eventually after a sad scene where Jin has to put down her undead dad back at the resort, Ryder White tells them to hurry back to the lab as something horrible went down. Traveling back, he was correct as everyone in there is mucho deado. After killing every zombie in the lab, they steal the cure and grab Yerema and head back to Mowen to travel on the boat to the prison.
Act IV consists of the main four, Jin, Yerema and Mowen sailing to the prison island with the cure and meeting up with Titus, the head of the prisoners. In exchange for certain favors, Titus will let them into Block C where Ryder White is supposedly located. Doing quests and leaving the girls in the hands of the prisoners, they eventually get told by Ryder to knock it off and get to them through the sewers. They arrive near White’s location and find Yerema and Jin, who tells them of Mowen’s sacrifice. Zombies raid Titus’s location after an uprising leads to their release, and everyone makes their way up an elevator to escape only to be gassed. After a while, they wake up to find Kevin (who helped them in a previous job in the prison), who tells them that their cure is missing as well as the fact that Ryder plans to escape with Emily and nuke everyone. Making a quick break for the roof, the gang fight Ryder and his mercenaries before cornering him and his strapped zombie wife on the helipad. A tense situation turns even worse when Jin has a meltdown and releases the zombie wife, who bites Ryder before both get shot in the face. Ryder decides to inject himself with the “cure” before it goes wrong and he’s mutated into a worse version of himself. The gang, Kevin and Yerema hop onto a helicopter towards a naval fleet while a news report talks about the outbreak, as well as the prison while mentioning a hacker named “Charon”. This is followed upon in Ryder’s Campaign, where it’s learned that “The Voice” was Charon (aka Kevin) all along, and manipulated Ryder into helping him in exchange for a cure for his wife. Using his connections to a secret organization, he worked with scientists in a lab to weaponize the virus further and manipulated everyone to go along with his plans. I’ll finish this off by saying Ryder’s campaign serves to fill in a couple of gaps and plot holes, though the passage of time compared to the base game is astounding considering how short the DLC is and honestly feels weird in comparison.
Overall, the plot in Dead Island is kind of middling a bit in my opinion. I like certain ideas about it, like the mystery behind The Voice, the potential to bond with and help survivors, the whole virus being a certain strain of Kuru in relation to the native tribes in the jungle, like it has some things I could see being interesting from a realistic perspective. However, I honestly hate to say this but I don't really care. The backstories you get for your main heroes don’t factor in at all to their character development in-game in anyway shape or form, and either you’re decent like Purna or Xian Mei or kind of an a s s like Logan or Sam B (not even an interesting one to be honest). The other characters are forgettable except Ryder White himself and Jin, with the latter just because she's kind of relatively annoying and kind of frustrating with certain story beats. For example, after being told multiple times not to go to the police station because they’re raiders and not nice people, she goes to deliver food anyways because it’s “the right thing to do” and then gets kidnapped for it, like no shit it’s not a good idea but she’s a good samaritan so I can respect the intentions. Getting shot because she released Ryder’s dead wife in the end however? That was just stupid to do, though the rest of it with her being sad I can sort of understand with her experiences. In fact, she’s the only one I do understand because Ryder’s stuff you only really learn in a two hour DLC and even though there’s a twist in there (with him not being the voice), it didn’t feel like much of anything changed anyways from what was presented in the main campaign. Honestly, I barely remember ANYTHING with the main plot because as one review I read put it, it’s basically doing “errands inside of errands inside of other errands” and it just feels boring. If I could compare the main plot of this game to something it would be a DoorDash delivery, because literally that’s kind of all it is. Same with the side quests, there are some interesting ones I sort of remember but not enough that I’d want to spotlight them to be honest, and you kinda need to do these in order to level up while speaking of the gameplay.
The gameplay is not my cup of tea really and here’s why. The game’s mechanics surround itself with a system that we still see even to this day: level based combat. Level based combat can be fine if it’s not monotonous, but here it kind of is. Luckily zombies level up as you level up so it’s not unfair that you’re restricted from certain areas due to you being a level 9 and them being 26 but it’s still frustrating a bit due to the tools you're given. You earn weapons doing quests and pick weapons up off of the ground to use against zombies, and you're encouraged to use resources to mod these weapons (which hilariously enough also requires money, which why? You stuffing dollar bills into your electro sickle?) but if you constantly invest money into these weapons only for an hour or two later to have a better weapon with better stats that makes your old weapon kind of pointless, then why spend the resources to upgrade it in the first place. This is a pattern that kept going on for me throughout the entire game, and at this point it only felt worth it to wait til I was at maximum level to do it. That’s not to say each hero can’t do damage on their own, as each one has their own skill trees depending on the type of person you are. I played as Sam B, who was mainly a bruiser guy and whose skills mainly used heavier blunt weapons. I barely used the heavy weapons cause they always felt like ass but besides the point, you kind of create your own build depending on your skill trees and what you want, and you can’t upgrade everything to the top from what I understand. Purna’s special involves pulling out a gun and guns are her main thing (which you don’t even get an actual gun til’ later in the city so it’s helpful in the resort), Xian Mei has knives and Logan is just projectiles (which feels kind of useless because Xian Mei has knives so if Logan has throwing knives then what’s the point?).
The zombies I’ll start out by saying that I appreciate how much of an actual threat they come off compared to zombies in say Dead Rising. It’s a very strategic game and combat is based off of “how much stamina do you have in your bar” and “this guy is kind of a powerhouse, could I perhaps cripple his legs and make him fall down for some free hits?” and I can appreciate that aspect in relation to the horror the game is based around. Even seeing a giant horde come around and attempt to murder me is scary, but also kind of annoying because it gets into this loop of getting bounced around like a pinball machine before eventually dying and losing a percentage of my money. The more money you have, the more money you lose and it always feels punishing no matter if it’s my fault or if it’s someone else's. As an example, two of my buddies got tired later in the game and started messing with grenades and I got killed multiple times by accident and lost 100 grand out of 160 and that was frustrating as hell to lose all of that. As for actual combat, my experience playing co-op mostly consists of knocking out a few zombies then having to team up with the homies to kill one. I also want to point out here, playing this game in co-op brings the difficulty up a lot, while it’s a lot easier if it’s just you to go solo though that goes with the caveat of not just being spawned in and having to reload constantly due to server stuff. I guess my main point is that while I appreciate the threat of the zombies, I feel like with how the game is balanced and mixed in with the level based combat system it goes from scary to annoying really quick, as I feel like I got cheap deathed (like pushed off a cliff for example) more than anything else, especially with suiciders.
The special infected for the most part are the usual Left 4 Dead inspired ones, like the Suicider echoing the boomer (minus the luring zombies) with the explosions or the Ram’s parallel with the tank as the “heavy guy”. The Butchers seem like the only new one but really they just hit really hard and that’s their gimmick. Between them, the regular zombies mixed in with heavy thug zombies and runner zombies it just kind of feels like they’ve all been done before. In essence, I can understand that it’s hard to create new special infected types and I’ve kinda resigned myself to whatever because I’m not in the game industry but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the game but it’s all bland, the loop of doing errands, the loot based system, it just hurts my head thinking about it.
The graphics compared to other games were definitely among the hyper realistic-looking games, all the models look okay and you can tell it’s from the 360 era so everyone has a look to it but not enough that it feels life-like. I think the coolest thing graphically is honestly the zombies, specifically the ones that you can cripple and such because of their in-engine system that renders broken bones and peeled flesh which is just horrifying and gives a little bit of uniqueness compared to other games which don’t have as advanced a system. I guess overall, graphically it looks good but even with the “remaster” glow-up it still looks like a 360 game, and plays like one too with the glitches that happen every now and then.
Environmental design for the most part is kind of unique and I can sort of remember most of the places I’ve been too. The Resort is the most memorable with the sandy beaches, the shining sun and the contrast with the zombie outbreak is a pretty cool vibe. The city of course being slummy and dirty due to economic disparities I definitely feel adds to the oppressive atmosphere as well, even though it’s a bit less memorable due to everything looking the same. My issues start to stem however with the jungle, because everything looks the damn same and the layouts aren’t memorable. I know, it’s the jungle so it’s a damn forest and so I suppose that could add to the feeling of isolation, to me it just feels like tiring level design. It gets better when you get to the Lab and the Prison but the game doesn’t really come back from that atmosphere. Also there’s a weird contrast between the sad vibes the game tries to give off compared to the character archetypes and the crazy weapon design you get. The game never made me feel sad or depressed once, or even immersed for that matter. It was just kind of there, and that sucks to be honest.
Voice acting I have the least amount to say about, because the only voice actors I could hear were Phil Lamarr as Sam B and Steven Blum seems to play everyone due to the fact he’s Australian and has a cool voice. There’s Kim Mai Guest as Xian Mei, though I haven’t played Metal Gear so I didn’t know her role as Mei Ling. Soundtrack is kind of okay too, you have the obvious “Who Do You Voodoo, B I T C H?” rap song by Sam B which is cool in a one-hit wonder play every once in a while with your friends gag, and I heard the main menu theme a lot but the game’s soundtrack feels kind of subdued, either sounding really sad to try to hit the atmosphere it doesn’t have or it has some sorta high energy stuff for attacks but nothing really memorable really hit me enough to care to be honest.
My final regards on Dead Island are this: I don’t like this game. I played it as a youth and having played it now, I don’t feel that it aged particularly well in almost any department to be honest. Say what you want about Dying Light’s main plot but other than that it basically improved on the gameplay Dead Island had in every way but better. If I wasn’t playing this with homies (shoutout to Casey, Asian and BFD Survivor) then I honestly wouldn’t have considered playing this at all. Hell, the only reason I did play this game was specifically to coop with people, and the only reason I’d consider touching this again is to play with people. Otherwise it’s sluggish, one note and frustrating while at the same time being monotonous and boring, even though it’s playable and most people seem to like it. As a remaster it’s still kind of glitchy but bearable, I can see the graphical updates and I appreciate them sticking all the DLC into one game so the remaster portion is solid even if the game itself is fundamentally ass. The developers at Techland would make Dead Island: Riptide before splitting apart and going under a new publisher at WB Games, creating Dying Light while the Dead Island franchise went under limbo with numerous bad spinoffs and a development hell for the sequel until it was released earlier this year. One day soon, I’ll play Riptide and maybe Dead Island 2 (if it gets on Steam) with buddies but other than that, I don’t know. If you don’t mind a monotonous gameplay loop with a crafting system that becomes irrelevant after five levels then go for it, but I couldn’t care less.
Links:
https://deadisland.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Island
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DeadIsland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Island
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2005
This review contains spoilers
Geist is a first person shooter/ghost possession simulator developed by n-Space Inc., the developer of such games like “Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas”, the Nintendo DS ports to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as well as Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes. Why mention these three? These seemed like the most interesting to me out of all of them, considering the rest of their games seem to be ports to older generations or strange shovelware. However, this game was developed out of a desire for a partnership from Nintendo, who was hoping to hit up that Metroid Prime first person shooter sort of vibe for another Nintendo classic. According to the Matt McMuscles video I ended up finding, n-Space heard the call and went to town creating a specific pitch just for them. The game would be created as a fruitful and positive partnership, but one that had a clash of visions between the parent company and the developers themselves. The debut on launch wasn’t exactly solid either, it didn’t sell for shit and it was kinda swept under the rug, even though it was the second Nintendo Gamecube exclusive game to receive the M Rating (other than the beloved cult classic Eternal Darkness).
As for my personal history with the game, the only thing I ever remembered about this game was the cover art and that’s literally it. I didn’t know anything about this game other than seeing it here and there sparingly, though I eventually did get a copy in my quest to collect console exclusive games for all of my systems. This one I picked up at the nearby retro game store for around 60 dollars maybe a couple of years back? I honestly don’t remember, but this was back when I had a lot more disposable income to go ham on. As of recently, I’ve also been trying to hit up all of my consoles and at least beat one video game on each; this year was going to be Wind Waker after beating Breath of the Wild, but having tried it on my CRTV I could barely read any of the text. However, for some reason, I was able to read Geist’s text, and after a couple of buddies gave it a shot, I figured why not because I needed a shorter game after Shadowman. Gonna start off with the plot here because it’s a strange and unexpected one, like something you’d see from a 1990s blockbuster movie of sorts.
Volk’s Lab (Chapter 1): You play as John Raimi, a scientist who works for CR-2, a counter terrorism group who are investigating the activities of the Volks Corporation for…terrorist stuff. Raimi and other CR-2 members are preparing to raid a Volks base located in Southern France in order to rescue Raimi’s old college buddy, a guy named Thomas Bryson. Bryson has been working undercover into the Volks Corporation because CR-2 believes that the corpo has been creating biological weapons. Bryson’s last whereabouts had him relaying info about viruses and demons and shit and so the group raids this mansion compound where they find Bryson and rescue him while he’s doing sciency stuff. After uploading information to the PDA, shit goes haywire and CR-2 are forced to make an attempted escape, which ends in a lot of dead bodies and ghost friendly fire (aka possessing dead bodies and killing everyone in sight), which ends in Bryson and Raimi getting captured. When Raimi comes too, he finds himself strapped to the top of a machine half naked, where the machine forces the spirit out of his own body.
Containment (Chapter 2) cuts to the head of Volks Corporation, Alexander Volks and his butt buddy mercenary leader Rourke, are walking and talking about the “separation process” with the “civie”. Volks apparently thought very highly of Raimi in context with his experiments and as such prepares for him to undergo a brainwashing program. Stuck in some hyper optimistic form of nature, Raimi dwells only in the situation to overtly try to program him to kill and murder. However, he wakes up to a small green ghost girl destroying the machines named Gigi, who wakes you up and helps you escape. Raimi starts to build up his ghost skills and infiltrates a lab, where it’s learned that Bryson is scheduled for a “separation” later that same day. Raimi ends up having to shoot his way through the sector and learns that Bryson is still alive and is scheduled for the same process at a later date. Along the way he has a fight with Cord, an underling of Rourke’s, who escapes before Raimi shoots through tons of goons and then slips away into a pipe.
Separation (Chapter 3): The next time you see Raimi, he pops out of the pipe and into a dog bowl, which he uses to scare the nearby pupper so he can escape in his quest to free Bryson. He possesses an engineer and makes his way up to the control room which controls the laser hosting the Separation Process, before possessing the laser and destroying the entire machine as Bryson is strapped to the top. Not only does this halt the process, but also opens up an entire portal to the ghost underworld or whatever you call it in what you could call supernatural Half-Life on the Gamecube. In fact before I continue, in essence the game feels like it could be Half Life on the Gamecube, but just with ghost possession and such. Between the secret base in the desert, looping back around to certain areas, the soldiers, random creatures you have to fight and probably a lot more than I can note, it’s a strange and familiar feeling that I enjoy and adds a couple of notches onto the likeability meter for me. Regardless, Raimi possesses a mechanical engineer guy with a rivet gun and enters another boss fight with Cord that involves possessing everyone in a room and just going to town on Cord, and it’s here that Cord finally kicks the bucket. After Raimi leaves, Rourke kills an engineer in an attempt to keep the laser alive and brings forth a full demon ghost invasion before he initiates a quarantine and goes to meet with Volks.
Medical (Chapter 4) has Raimi popping out into a cave and infiltrating the medical unit, where through a cutscene we learn that Bryson is basically in some sort of vegetative coma, in which he needs a counter agent to come out of or else he flatlines. Rourke doesn’t give a shit though and pimp slaps a doctor lady in order to send the message to let the guy die. Back in the spirit world, Gigi talks to Raimi about her fears of the spirit world being opened. Raimi makes his way to the women’s shower room…yes it’s as weird as it sounds but it’s 2005 and everyone’s covered in soap suds or towels. Through some crazy DOOM 3 mirror shit, he scares the hell out of the doctor lady (named Samantha) and possesses her body before throwing on some clothes and exploring the facility. “Sam Raimi” (as I call her for now), goes to find Bryson in the lab before alien ghosts (?) pop out of the vents and kill the guards, causing chaos to erupt and lots of fire. Sam Raimi grabs a fire extinguisher and makes her way to the Morgue downstairs, fighting through more aliens and grabbing the counter agent out of the freezer. Sam comes back to save Bryson but he’s weak, and he also SOMEHOW recognizes that Raimi is possessing this doctor due to the fact that he never fucking speaks and it’s somehow one of the most unintentional funniest gags in the game. Like how the fuck do you recognize that this female doctor is your mute best friend from college? What gave you that idea? Do you even know that he’s a ghost now? Fuck if I know, shit’s mad weird. Regardless a soldier pops into the meet and greet before a weak Bryson slashes the dude in the hell and finishes him off. Sam Raimi steals soldier gear off the dead guy and puts her head in a bun before shooting their way out of the facility. They make their way to an elevator where Sam Raimi and Bryson confirm their suspicions that “Project Zed” has nothing to do with zombies before a giant creature named “The Hydra” swallows Bryson whole. Sam Raimi shoots this thing like fifty thousand fucking times before the shell snaps and the creature slithers into a whole. Bryson is alive though and covered in blue goo so very radical save on their end.
Escape (Chapter 5) is the longest chapter I think, and it starts with the reveal that Alexander Volks is actually possessed by a demon, which Rourke doesn’t know and can’t figure out I guess because why else would an old fuck in a Bond villain chair try to contact the spirit world? It doesn’t matter though as Sam Raimi fights her way through a facility before promptly being abandoned by the host to her own shit. Now just as Raimi, he floats and slips his way through the facility to possess boxes, rats and then finally a chef which he uses to poison an entire group of soldiers. Bryson has recovered now, and meets up with Chef Raimi to scheme their way into the control room. Raimi possesses a scientist guy before contacting his buddies at CR-2 for extraction in the radio room before finally breaking into the control room. It’s here where they both learn that Raimi’s body is still around and in Volk’s possession as well as learning what Project Zed is. Project Zed’s main goal is about gathering an army of ghosts, whose job it is (under Volk’s leadership) to possess a bunch of people at the “Paris Summit” and go to town assassinating certain leaders and saving others in order to fulfill a “New World Order” design under Volk’s rule. The urge to get the data to CR-2 presents itself and the two make their great escape which involves a lengthy process that includes: possessing turrets, possessing a motorcycle during an octane high action chase sequence before finally taking down four anti-air units to make way for evac. However, shit goes bad anyways and as Bryson escapes on the helicopter, some douchebag possessing Raimi’s OG body blows it up. Raimi gives chase to his old body and the next chapter comes up.
Chapter 6 (aka Gigi) is the exposition dump chapter, and it starts with Volks giving orders to his demon buddy possessing old Raimi to “keep the ghost contained and out of the facility”. That doesn’t really happen though as he just blows up a bridge before running off. Raimi instead makes his way through an old dilapidated mansion, and the origin story of Volks is acquired. He’s the brother of Gigi, the green ghost, and they both used to live at this mansion with their Aunt Giselle who built the place. Tragedy started years ago when the kids were at the big ass tree and Gigi fell off attempting to annoy Alexander, smacking her head on the ground below. Sadly having cracked her neck, and with her older brother taking an interest in the occult (the books he reads coming from his aunt), he decides in childhood nativity to resurrect her and everything goes horribly wrong. Gigi becomes a ghost and Alex is smacked by a giant demon, who leaves a mark that slowly possesses him over time. Gigi brings Raimi to a hole in the wall, and uses scare tactics to possess a soldier and proceeds through a destroyed subway station. However, he runs into a group of soldiers who set up an ambush and hit him with some ghost ray stuff which not only kills the host body (I think) but hurts him in the spirit world as well. Using Raimi’s OG body as bait, Volks recaptures Raimi and sticks him back into the brainwashing machine, but not before Rourke pops up and tells him that he’ll personally kill the ghost himself after the summit is done.
Captured (Chapter 7) is another long chapter like 5 and starts with Volks and possessed Raimi delivering plot exposition about brainwashing and their plans before ghost Raimi is thrown into a simulation. In here, Ghost Raimi is forced into several training exercises that involve CIA level black ops and assassinations and is probably one of the more interesting yet kind of frustrating chapters? However, an explosion rumbles everything and one of the demon monster things kills and breaks shit, which helps Raimi out of his containment unit in a twist of irony. Raimi goes about turning the power back and possessing some scientists with clever gags and some sick ass firepower. Using this sick ass firepower, he runs into the Hydra again below in the caves and slays it before disembarking his former host and jumping into a slip that leads to the auditorium where Volks is at. Volks becomes a full ghost demon and gives other brainwashed spectral assassins a speech on the downfall of humanity, the stupidity of politicians and talks about the “end of man”.
Chapter 8 (Rourke) begins with a time limit: the summit is in an hour and Volks charges Rourke with making sure no more complications arise. However, that doesn’t work for long as Raimi does his damndest to make sure he can possess Rourke. This consists of lifting up a sheet to scare his secretary, finding a white rat and leading other rats to their death, possessing the animal trainer and bringing her dog along for the ride. It was hinted at in Chapter 3 that Rourke does NOT like dogs in the slightest, and that finally comes to fruition here. Rourke has a near panic attack and attempts to kill the dog but that fails and ends in possessing the mercenary leader himself. Making his way through a restricted area, Rourke Raimi grabs some sick ass power armor and shoots his way through multiple facilities. An attempted ambush by the anti-ghost unit happens again but they’re all put down before Possessed Raimi taunts you to give chase. You end up abandoning Rourke to save Raimi’s old body (with the threat of old Raimi being crushed), but in return the demon possessing you takes over Rourke’s body. A boss battle commences which involves a lot of shooting that ends in Rourke’s death before you end up blowing the demon ghost up with a lot of grenades from the launcher.
Chapter 9 (Volks) has Raimi making his way up to the personnel transport holding the ghosts and shooting it down with both the anti-air launcher and a lot of machine gun fire. Following this, all the ghosts pop out and attempt to smash open your booty hole but end up dying with a lot of grenades…again. The rest of the chapter mainly consists of Raimi shooting through goons and soldiers before running into two giant statues that attempt to squash you violently. What are these statues? Who knows. They just kind of come out of nowhere and my strange headcanon for the game is that it’s demonic possession. Once Raimi destroys them, he enters the main portal room where Volk goes off on his evil speech about how humans are weak and messed up his plans before threatening to kill Raimi. This goes absolutely nowhere as it ends with Volks flopping out of his flying chair in death. Gigi attempts to mourn her now dead brother before the demon pulls her inside in a trippy futuristic 90s looking spirit sequence and you end up fighting the demon in a way that feels reminiscent to some weird hacking session in a cyberpunk game. Either way the little boy is still trapped and Raimi fights to destroy the demon once and for all. It ends with the Demon dying and the facility blowing up, though Alexander and Gigi reunite in the afterlife in peace, while Raimi escapes the facility and is saved in a helicopter by Bryson, the dog from earlier, and the blonde doctor that Raimi possessed earlier before flying off into the sunset.
The plot of Geist is one of those plots that to me felt interesting, but not in a super in depth sense. It has the vibe of a hollywood blockbuster, something fun and such for the audience to watch but not with so much in depth lore and plot that it’s built for a whole franchise or sequels. It has it’s main plot expositions in one chapter and honestly the game’s plot feels more revolved around the set pieces involving possession. The character development for Raimi consists of “old buddy” and “mute fucker” while anyone else of note in the story is kind of just there. The most interesting ones are Gigi and Alexander and they have the most motive and such even if it’s simplified. My question mainly involves plot holes right, like who is Aunt Giselle? Why does she have occult books for her nephew to read? Who was the demon possessing Volks? Who were these creatures? Why were there demon aliens and ghosts? Who were the golems at the end? How did Sam (I think that’s her name? Apologies if I forget) get out and use her guns when she was just a scientist before? Where are they going now? Why was the Volks Corporation getting investigated to begin with? Who knows, and honestly this isn’t the kind of game that really cares for those types of questions. That’s perfectly fine, not everything needs to be some sort of hit franchise thing and as a one off it’s good but if you end up wanting to play the game, come into it with the expectation of just having a fun time and that’s it.
Geist’s gameplay is probably the most interesting part of the entire experience playing it. The whole premise has two sides of it: either it’s a first person shooter or you’re playing as the ghost possessing people. In order to possess people they have to be in full fear mode, in which their character model is surrounded by a red outline of sorts. However, in order to do that, you’ll need to scare them and oftentimes you’ll need to possess multiple nearby objects (which are always available) in order to scare them. The thing about these possession mechanics is that these sections actually provide the most thinking AND the most fun, and once the game turns into an FPS that’s when the experience is kinda iffy. These possession mechanics are like a puzzle in itself, where you kind of have to figure out what’ll scare the person you’re trying to possess. It’s also pretty damn cool that you’re able to see the first person perspective of say, inside of a television or from the perspective of a pipe as you’re about to make it burst. There’s also a ghost health mechanic that you have that’s introduced in the second level but honestly feels kind of useless besides two separate occasions with anti-ghost units as they’re the only ones who can damage you EVEN if they have health stuff for the ghost placed everywhere. Unless I’m missing something entirely, which in case I guess I’m either lucky or dumb but if something is only used twice, placing ghost health things in places where there’s no danger kind of feels pointless but I digress.
Sometimes you’ll also run into collectibles, of which there are two versions: one of which you’ll only be able to collect as a physical host and the other of which you’ll only be able to unlock as Ghost Raimi. They don’t really do much except unlock multiplayer characters and levels, but if that’s the sort of thing you like, then it’s good. You’ll also unlock some of the ghost collectibles by jumping through “slips”, little holes created in random spots on the floor or walls that’ll kick you to another location on the map. Some of these collectibles are a bitch to find simply because it would be in a place you wouldn’t expect (like the bottom of a giant pit) as a ghost because you automatically assume heights with instant death but it’s nothing that a guide can’t fix. I also want to add that for the most part, humans and animals take scaring before possession, but generally other than that you can possess anything, or anything within reason I should say. There isn’t really a huge sandbox with possession, you can’t take the form of a pencil on a desk or something, it’s mostly structured and scripted objects that you can form into but at the same time like the effort is still there. Most of the other stuff is just flavored text which describes what the objects are.
The shooting itself isn’t exactly that bad either to be honest. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the actual combat itself and in all honesty I never really felt like I had a problem with it? It didn’t feel as good as say something like Halo or Call of Duty, but it felt serviceable and adequate without feeling like it was a bullet sponge cacophony. The only real mechanics for the shooting involves healing yourself with nearby medkits, and perhaps pressing the Z button to use a grenade launcher as an example and you’ll always have infinite ammo so that’s not really a big deal. Most enemies in terms of this combat as well are also pushovers, albeit pushovers whose AI are both really dumb and still attempt to kill you. That is until the latter half of the campaign, where the developers decided to push these enemies that possess your body in order to drag you towards something to die or to get shot out in public by others. While in concept it’s a cool idea, in actual game design it’s really fucking obnoxious, especially in the last level after you take down the helicopter. I remember dying once or twice to this and having to actively jank the game by hiding out in an area with a destroyed fence while these ghosts attempt to possess me and having to lure them out slowly one by one because otherwise they’d just drag my ass into the corpse of the nearby fiery helicopter I JUST took down. Other than that, you’ll fight some alien creatures too here and there but nothing really crazy. Overall, the combat, while it makes up a huge portion of the game, isn’t something that I hate and in fact feels decent but it didn’t really stand out in any way either. For me however, that’s okay because I’d rather it be average than be a fucking slog. Besides, I think most people are here for the ghost possession stuff, though if there’s one aspect of combat that I didn’t really care for it’s the boss battles.
I’ll say my experiences with the boss battles were a mixed bag for me, some of them are okay and just require constantly shooting at one spot while some require a bit of puzzling to do and were generally the better ones. Some of my least favorite boss fights include the one against Cord, one of the mercenaries under supporting antagonist Rourke. His boss fights require both ghost powers AND shooting people. In the first battle you have to kind of duck and weave all of his bullets and then switch to ghost when he throws his grenades. Now time slows down luckily, but my experience was that I would possess the grenade, roll it over to him and fuckin’ bada boom right? But while waiting for the animation to blow up and switch to ghost he’ll be shooting me and taking part of my health down unless I’m behind a certain cover and/or lucky, so unless I was doing it wrong that was a frustrating boss. The last one with Cord is more of a puzzle, where you have to switch back and forth between several different soldiers and turrets in one room, ignoring everyone else and just constantly pumping Cord full of bullets until the last corpse remains. Speaking of Cord, I had a weird glitch where I tried to get a collectible in Cord’s first boss room, but apparently I died after the cutscene but it still kicked me out to the next room anyways once I accepted the checkpoint. Luckily I restarted from the last checkpoint and it left me in that boss room but I was still really fucking annoyed that I almost lost a collectible due to some weird after cutscene death trickery bullshit. Other boss battles include a giant bullet sponge creature coming out of the ground that overstays its welcome a bit, two giant statues and a flying fat man ghost. My main issue with some of these other battles include the fact that they’re either monotonously long but simple and are just there to waste time or just feel unfair in some aspects like those two statues who rushed me straight after a cutscene where I took one down and killed me instantly.
In fact, that seems to be a strange pacing problem for the game. The beginning half to a bit into the third it’s actually pretty cool and clever with how it uses its game mechanics before it turns into a middling shooter around the last third or so. That’s not to say it’s bad or unbearable, but it definitely would have landed on its feet better instead of stumbling around. Some fun bits from the first two thirds of the game include set pieces like possessing a motorcycle while juggling not getting shot and exploding other props to make a path ahead of you; or alternatively a slower paced one involves taking over a chef and poisoning some customers with rat poison, or earlier than those two involve possessing a naked woman in the shower (notable because it’s weird but there are soap suds around the parts so I guess that’s better? I don’t know, I guess 2005 was pervert season). The variation between the set pieces is pretty good in all honesty, one time you’ll be hopping around riveting beams together and the next there’s a protection mission with your ghost form and then it’s a chase sequence. However, again it could’ve used a stronger third act; that’s not to say the last third doesn’t have stuff in it, in fact you get to possess a dog (adorable) and rats (just adorable depending on whom you ask) with their own sort of puzzle mechanics as well. It just means that it feels kind of middling throughout the final leg of the game, even if it has some fun stuff sprinkled in here and there.
Overall, I’ve heard alot of mixed things about the controls and the gameplay design from others. My feeling on that is that it’s totally valid to not care for the core gameplay, it has its issues and would have perhaps been a little bit better in certain departments. However, there’s something about the time that I played it where for the most part I was honestly having a fun time (besides boss battles and ghost possessor enemies). Even the controls I heard so many complaints about to me felt decent enough to where it wasn’t honestly a problem for me. I guess if I were to give a complaint about my time, it’s that sometimes it took me a while to grasp what objects needed to be possessed for progression purposes though I also would have just been a giant dunce. I remember needing to restart the last section in the Escape chapter due to figuring out the turrets that had me frustrated at first until I learned what to do. The escape thing with the motorcycle, while cool, maybe could’ve been choreographed better. I guess I wasn’t appreciative of having to replay the entirety of Chapter 6 again due to the fact there seemingly weren't many checkpoints and the game froze on me once or twice though there would have actually been checkpoints and I forgot. Overall I don’t know, certain aspects were mixed but overall it was a good time and I had my joy with it, especially due to the nostalgic feeling of playing the game on the GameCube. Who knows, though I’d say for the average player that most people would give it a shoulder shrug.
There’s also a multiplayer for those who went and got all the collectibles in the game like I did, however I didn’t really play the multiplayer nor knew anyone who wanted to give it a try. I can tell you however that a lot of people seemed to have fun with the possession mechanics in it and in all honesty, it looks like it could be one of the old Timesplitters games just from how wacky it is. Maybe one of these days if I play it with friends, I’ll give this section a rewrite and let you know how it is.
The sound design to Geist is a bit of an interesting one. If we’re going to start with voice acting, we’ll start with the fact that the third Raimi brother does not speak in the slightest. The entire time that you go through the game you’ll be silent and other people will be talking to you as if you’re having a conversation with them. It’s amusing and gets even more so when you possess a woman and rescue your buddy, who basically figures out your Raimi…somehow. In fact, for the most part there isn’t any in game voiceover at all besides a few bits here and there. When you greet people, they’ll play a generic voice clip (like Bryson just saying “Raimi”) while the actual words he’s saying are displayed with separate text. It’s not a bad thing persay, I didn’t really have a problem with that, though I do think it’s funny that the subtitles covered half of the lower screen on my CRTV. Voice acting is also fine for the most part, everyone does their job and blends in seamlessly to the game’s world. There aren’t any big names or even memorable performances for the most part that I specifically remember, though again I’m perfectly okay with it. The actual sounds for the rest of the game are decent though, with a lot of ear pleasers like rope sounds and footsteps, though I feel like the weapon sounds can be hit or miss. The pistol sounds straight out of Timesplitters to be honest, and they probably got it from the same sound pack. The AUG sounds like it should be a heavier weapon than it actually is, in fact most of the weapons sound like they come straight from the sound packs that other games use. It’s also fine, but don’t really feel like they have an originality to them otherwise. It is what it is though for the most part, and I can understand the need to get what you can get from the places you can get them from.
Geist’s soundtrack, composed by Michael Reed and Brad Martin is a very orchestral game, filled with choirs, heavy strings and a sort of bombasticness to it for a large portion of the run time. My personal feelings on it go along the lines of that it’s a decent score, and fits the game in the 2004-5 era that it encapsulates. However, it’s also for the most part just kind of okay to me. There aren’t really any tracks that pop out, nothing that really makes me wanna download it and listen to it often. In fact, the game kind of feels like it’s ripping on the whole Halo orchestral soundtrack vibe. Keep in mind that this isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s perfectly okay for it to blend into the background as long as it enhances what the game’s atmosphere is about and for the most part it does that decently enough. If I were to point out one track though that’s kind of odd, I believe it would be Juliet. See, in game, there’s a part where you need to possess a bunch of mice and force them to activate all of the mouse traps in order for them to get killed so you can make your way to the exit as the main mouse that needs to go back to their owner. Thing is that during this, you get music that straight up sounds like it could come from fuckin’ Matilda or some shit and it’s a really bizarre dissonance piece that I have no feelings on what to make of it.
What I can say about the graphics and art direction is this: whilst the game runs on the Gamecube and as such looks very similar to Metroid Prime in terms of blocky graphics, it also personally looks not only kind of improved in some ways but in all honesty gave me a lot of nostalgia for the old Gamecube days even if I had never played the game once in my life. I never really noticed anything bad graphically, though I’ll admit I never really focused too much on how good a game looks HD quality wise to the extent that others would be. The art design and atmosphere surrounding it however in all honesty, I’ll say that I enjoyed it for the most part. In a lot of ways it reminded me of a semi-worse version of Half Life with ghost possession: for the most part you’re at a military base in the desert and the only thing you’ll be seeing is cold steel and warm, crusty orange rocks on the outside. It’s not bad, though I’ll admit I wish there was a bit more variation in the environment. I’ll also say that for some reason, there are people who classify this as a horror game just because there were ghosts and possession. I’ll tell you from first hand experience that there’s no way in hell that this game was trying to be a horror game in any way shape or form, and if it was then it’s a bad one considering there wasn’t anything actually scary or any attempt at actually scaring anyone.
Geist to me was one of those games that while it flopped with the finances and has some frustrating qualities, it’s also one of those games that really grew on me despite the frustrations and for the most part I left the game feeling pretty decent about it. I feel like it’s one of those underrated titles that deserve a bit more attention and perhaps a backwards compatibility thing with the Switch. Will that ever happen? No, probably not and as always it’s a damn shame. It’s kind of forgotten in time, a distant memory of a memory that few people would even have the capacity TO remember anything other than the cool ass cover art. I’d say maybe Nightdive could potentially remaster it but considering how close to the chest Nintendo is with their property, I’ll sadly say that the game will probably just fade into obscurity and will have less of a chance than even fellow M Rated Eternal Darkness would. It doesn’t exactly help that for the rest of their years until the end their portfolio mostly consisted of more ports and more shovelware before they inevitably closed shop around 2016. As for gaming for the rest of the year, I have to write up reviews for Eternal Evil and probably Dead Island soon but after that besides some Steam games, I’ll probably just end up chilling out and playing some Lost Judgment til’ the end in anticipation for 2024.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(video_game)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Geist
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/8iaye9/nintendo_rewind_geist_2005/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHBotsjvLU&ab_channel=MattMcMuscles
https://www.destructoid.com/geist-developer-closed-down-after-21-years/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpE56aG06s&ab_channel=GoldMetalSonic
https://www.nsidr.com/archive/interview-n-space/
http://cube.gamespy.com/gamecube/geist/641298p5.html
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/meteos-geist-kirby-and-yoshi-coming-in-june/1100-6121267/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/killer-7-in-stores-7-7-no-geist-until-august/1100-6126759/
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2233/gdc-2005-geist-interview-with-jeff-kalles
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2260/the-geist-interview
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=8382.550
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/914965-geist/faqs/38594
https://www.ign.com/wikis/geist/Walkthrough_-_Volks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oVK07WA_UY&list=PLIWIHaWddtA00qRRNieKzig3tK4tcin
FG&index=19&ab_channel=chasebergamot
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/geist-ost-gamecube
As for my personal history with the game, the only thing I ever remembered about this game was the cover art and that’s literally it. I didn’t know anything about this game other than seeing it here and there sparingly, though I eventually did get a copy in my quest to collect console exclusive games for all of my systems. This one I picked up at the nearby retro game store for around 60 dollars maybe a couple of years back? I honestly don’t remember, but this was back when I had a lot more disposable income to go ham on. As of recently, I’ve also been trying to hit up all of my consoles and at least beat one video game on each; this year was going to be Wind Waker after beating Breath of the Wild, but having tried it on my CRTV I could barely read any of the text. However, for some reason, I was able to read Geist’s text, and after a couple of buddies gave it a shot, I figured why not because I needed a shorter game after Shadowman. Gonna start off with the plot here because it’s a strange and unexpected one, like something you’d see from a 1990s blockbuster movie of sorts.
Volk’s Lab (Chapter 1): You play as John Raimi, a scientist who works for CR-2, a counter terrorism group who are investigating the activities of the Volks Corporation for…terrorist stuff. Raimi and other CR-2 members are preparing to raid a Volks base located in Southern France in order to rescue Raimi’s old college buddy, a guy named Thomas Bryson. Bryson has been working undercover into the Volks Corporation because CR-2 believes that the corpo has been creating biological weapons. Bryson’s last whereabouts had him relaying info about viruses and demons and shit and so the group raids this mansion compound where they find Bryson and rescue him while he’s doing sciency stuff. After uploading information to the PDA, shit goes haywire and CR-2 are forced to make an attempted escape, which ends in a lot of dead bodies and ghost friendly fire (aka possessing dead bodies and killing everyone in sight), which ends in Bryson and Raimi getting captured. When Raimi comes too, he finds himself strapped to the top of a machine half naked, where the machine forces the spirit out of his own body.
Containment (Chapter 2) cuts to the head of Volks Corporation, Alexander Volks and his butt buddy mercenary leader Rourke, are walking and talking about the “separation process” with the “civie”. Volks apparently thought very highly of Raimi in context with his experiments and as such prepares for him to undergo a brainwashing program. Stuck in some hyper optimistic form of nature, Raimi dwells only in the situation to overtly try to program him to kill and murder. However, he wakes up to a small green ghost girl destroying the machines named Gigi, who wakes you up and helps you escape. Raimi starts to build up his ghost skills and infiltrates a lab, where it’s learned that Bryson is scheduled for a “separation” later that same day. Raimi ends up having to shoot his way through the sector and learns that Bryson is still alive and is scheduled for the same process at a later date. Along the way he has a fight with Cord, an underling of Rourke’s, who escapes before Raimi shoots through tons of goons and then slips away into a pipe.
Separation (Chapter 3): The next time you see Raimi, he pops out of the pipe and into a dog bowl, which he uses to scare the nearby pupper so he can escape in his quest to free Bryson. He possesses an engineer and makes his way up to the control room which controls the laser hosting the Separation Process, before possessing the laser and destroying the entire machine as Bryson is strapped to the top. Not only does this halt the process, but also opens up an entire portal to the ghost underworld or whatever you call it in what you could call supernatural Half-Life on the Gamecube. In fact before I continue, in essence the game feels like it could be Half Life on the Gamecube, but just with ghost possession and such. Between the secret base in the desert, looping back around to certain areas, the soldiers, random creatures you have to fight and probably a lot more than I can note, it’s a strange and familiar feeling that I enjoy and adds a couple of notches onto the likeability meter for me. Regardless, Raimi possesses a mechanical engineer guy with a rivet gun and enters another boss fight with Cord that involves possessing everyone in a room and just going to town on Cord, and it’s here that Cord finally kicks the bucket. After Raimi leaves, Rourke kills an engineer in an attempt to keep the laser alive and brings forth a full demon ghost invasion before he initiates a quarantine and goes to meet with Volks.
Medical (Chapter 4) has Raimi popping out into a cave and infiltrating the medical unit, where through a cutscene we learn that Bryson is basically in some sort of vegetative coma, in which he needs a counter agent to come out of or else he flatlines. Rourke doesn’t give a shit though and pimp slaps a doctor lady in order to send the message to let the guy die. Back in the spirit world, Gigi talks to Raimi about her fears of the spirit world being opened. Raimi makes his way to the women’s shower room…yes it’s as weird as it sounds but it’s 2005 and everyone’s covered in soap suds or towels. Through some crazy DOOM 3 mirror shit, he scares the hell out of the doctor lady (named Samantha) and possesses her body before throwing on some clothes and exploring the facility. “Sam Raimi” (as I call her for now), goes to find Bryson in the lab before alien ghosts (?) pop out of the vents and kill the guards, causing chaos to erupt and lots of fire. Sam Raimi grabs a fire extinguisher and makes her way to the Morgue downstairs, fighting through more aliens and grabbing the counter agent out of the freezer. Sam comes back to save Bryson but he’s weak, and he also SOMEHOW recognizes that Raimi is possessing this doctor due to the fact that he never fucking speaks and it’s somehow one of the most unintentional funniest gags in the game. Like how the fuck do you recognize that this female doctor is your mute best friend from college? What gave you that idea? Do you even know that he’s a ghost now? Fuck if I know, shit’s mad weird. Regardless a soldier pops into the meet and greet before a weak Bryson slashes the dude in the hell and finishes him off. Sam Raimi steals soldier gear off the dead guy and puts her head in a bun before shooting their way out of the facility. They make their way to an elevator where Sam Raimi and Bryson confirm their suspicions that “Project Zed” has nothing to do with zombies before a giant creature named “The Hydra” swallows Bryson whole. Sam Raimi shoots this thing like fifty thousand fucking times before the shell snaps and the creature slithers into a whole. Bryson is alive though and covered in blue goo so very radical save on their end.
Escape (Chapter 5) is the longest chapter I think, and it starts with the reveal that Alexander Volks is actually possessed by a demon, which Rourke doesn’t know and can’t figure out I guess because why else would an old fuck in a Bond villain chair try to contact the spirit world? It doesn’t matter though as Sam Raimi fights her way through a facility before promptly being abandoned by the host to her own shit. Now just as Raimi, he floats and slips his way through the facility to possess boxes, rats and then finally a chef which he uses to poison an entire group of soldiers. Bryson has recovered now, and meets up with Chef Raimi to scheme their way into the control room. Raimi possesses a scientist guy before contacting his buddies at CR-2 for extraction in the radio room before finally breaking into the control room. It’s here where they both learn that Raimi’s body is still around and in Volk’s possession as well as learning what Project Zed is. Project Zed’s main goal is about gathering an army of ghosts, whose job it is (under Volk’s leadership) to possess a bunch of people at the “Paris Summit” and go to town assassinating certain leaders and saving others in order to fulfill a “New World Order” design under Volk’s rule. The urge to get the data to CR-2 presents itself and the two make their great escape which involves a lengthy process that includes: possessing turrets, possessing a motorcycle during an octane high action chase sequence before finally taking down four anti-air units to make way for evac. However, shit goes bad anyways and as Bryson escapes on the helicopter, some douchebag possessing Raimi’s OG body blows it up. Raimi gives chase to his old body and the next chapter comes up.
Chapter 6 (aka Gigi) is the exposition dump chapter, and it starts with Volks giving orders to his demon buddy possessing old Raimi to “keep the ghost contained and out of the facility”. That doesn’t really happen though as he just blows up a bridge before running off. Raimi instead makes his way through an old dilapidated mansion, and the origin story of Volks is acquired. He’s the brother of Gigi, the green ghost, and they both used to live at this mansion with their Aunt Giselle who built the place. Tragedy started years ago when the kids were at the big ass tree and Gigi fell off attempting to annoy Alexander, smacking her head on the ground below. Sadly having cracked her neck, and with her older brother taking an interest in the occult (the books he reads coming from his aunt), he decides in childhood nativity to resurrect her and everything goes horribly wrong. Gigi becomes a ghost and Alex is smacked by a giant demon, who leaves a mark that slowly possesses him over time. Gigi brings Raimi to a hole in the wall, and uses scare tactics to possess a soldier and proceeds through a destroyed subway station. However, he runs into a group of soldiers who set up an ambush and hit him with some ghost ray stuff which not only kills the host body (I think) but hurts him in the spirit world as well. Using Raimi’s OG body as bait, Volks recaptures Raimi and sticks him back into the brainwashing machine, but not before Rourke pops up and tells him that he’ll personally kill the ghost himself after the summit is done.
Captured (Chapter 7) is another long chapter like 5 and starts with Volks and possessed Raimi delivering plot exposition about brainwashing and their plans before ghost Raimi is thrown into a simulation. In here, Ghost Raimi is forced into several training exercises that involve CIA level black ops and assassinations and is probably one of the more interesting yet kind of frustrating chapters? However, an explosion rumbles everything and one of the demon monster things kills and breaks shit, which helps Raimi out of his containment unit in a twist of irony. Raimi goes about turning the power back and possessing some scientists with clever gags and some sick ass firepower. Using this sick ass firepower, he runs into the Hydra again below in the caves and slays it before disembarking his former host and jumping into a slip that leads to the auditorium where Volks is at. Volks becomes a full ghost demon and gives other brainwashed spectral assassins a speech on the downfall of humanity, the stupidity of politicians and talks about the “end of man”.
Chapter 8 (Rourke) begins with a time limit: the summit is in an hour and Volks charges Rourke with making sure no more complications arise. However, that doesn’t work for long as Raimi does his damndest to make sure he can possess Rourke. This consists of lifting up a sheet to scare his secretary, finding a white rat and leading other rats to their death, possessing the animal trainer and bringing her dog along for the ride. It was hinted at in Chapter 3 that Rourke does NOT like dogs in the slightest, and that finally comes to fruition here. Rourke has a near panic attack and attempts to kill the dog but that fails and ends in possessing the mercenary leader himself. Making his way through a restricted area, Rourke Raimi grabs some sick ass power armor and shoots his way through multiple facilities. An attempted ambush by the anti-ghost unit happens again but they’re all put down before Possessed Raimi taunts you to give chase. You end up abandoning Rourke to save Raimi’s old body (with the threat of old Raimi being crushed), but in return the demon possessing you takes over Rourke’s body. A boss battle commences which involves a lot of shooting that ends in Rourke’s death before you end up blowing the demon ghost up with a lot of grenades from the launcher.
Chapter 9 (Volks) has Raimi making his way up to the personnel transport holding the ghosts and shooting it down with both the anti-air launcher and a lot of machine gun fire. Following this, all the ghosts pop out and attempt to smash open your booty hole but end up dying with a lot of grenades…again. The rest of the chapter mainly consists of Raimi shooting through goons and soldiers before running into two giant statues that attempt to squash you violently. What are these statues? Who knows. They just kind of come out of nowhere and my strange headcanon for the game is that it’s demonic possession. Once Raimi destroys them, he enters the main portal room where Volk goes off on his evil speech about how humans are weak and messed up his plans before threatening to kill Raimi. This goes absolutely nowhere as it ends with Volks flopping out of his flying chair in death. Gigi attempts to mourn her now dead brother before the demon pulls her inside in a trippy futuristic 90s looking spirit sequence and you end up fighting the demon in a way that feels reminiscent to some weird hacking session in a cyberpunk game. Either way the little boy is still trapped and Raimi fights to destroy the demon once and for all. It ends with the Demon dying and the facility blowing up, though Alexander and Gigi reunite in the afterlife in peace, while Raimi escapes the facility and is saved in a helicopter by Bryson, the dog from earlier, and the blonde doctor that Raimi possessed earlier before flying off into the sunset.
The plot of Geist is one of those plots that to me felt interesting, but not in a super in depth sense. It has the vibe of a hollywood blockbuster, something fun and such for the audience to watch but not with so much in depth lore and plot that it’s built for a whole franchise or sequels. It has it’s main plot expositions in one chapter and honestly the game’s plot feels more revolved around the set pieces involving possession. The character development for Raimi consists of “old buddy” and “mute fucker” while anyone else of note in the story is kind of just there. The most interesting ones are Gigi and Alexander and they have the most motive and such even if it’s simplified. My question mainly involves plot holes right, like who is Aunt Giselle? Why does she have occult books for her nephew to read? Who was the demon possessing Volks? Who were these creatures? Why were there demon aliens and ghosts? Who were the golems at the end? How did Sam (I think that’s her name? Apologies if I forget) get out and use her guns when she was just a scientist before? Where are they going now? Why was the Volks Corporation getting investigated to begin with? Who knows, and honestly this isn’t the kind of game that really cares for those types of questions. That’s perfectly fine, not everything needs to be some sort of hit franchise thing and as a one off it’s good but if you end up wanting to play the game, come into it with the expectation of just having a fun time and that’s it.
Geist’s gameplay is probably the most interesting part of the entire experience playing it. The whole premise has two sides of it: either it’s a first person shooter or you’re playing as the ghost possessing people. In order to possess people they have to be in full fear mode, in which their character model is surrounded by a red outline of sorts. However, in order to do that, you’ll need to scare them and oftentimes you’ll need to possess multiple nearby objects (which are always available) in order to scare them. The thing about these possession mechanics is that these sections actually provide the most thinking AND the most fun, and once the game turns into an FPS that’s when the experience is kinda iffy. These possession mechanics are like a puzzle in itself, where you kind of have to figure out what’ll scare the person you’re trying to possess. It’s also pretty damn cool that you’re able to see the first person perspective of say, inside of a television or from the perspective of a pipe as you’re about to make it burst. There’s also a ghost health mechanic that you have that’s introduced in the second level but honestly feels kind of useless besides two separate occasions with anti-ghost units as they’re the only ones who can damage you EVEN if they have health stuff for the ghost placed everywhere. Unless I’m missing something entirely, which in case I guess I’m either lucky or dumb but if something is only used twice, placing ghost health things in places where there’s no danger kind of feels pointless but I digress.
Sometimes you’ll also run into collectibles, of which there are two versions: one of which you’ll only be able to collect as a physical host and the other of which you’ll only be able to unlock as Ghost Raimi. They don’t really do much except unlock multiplayer characters and levels, but if that’s the sort of thing you like, then it’s good. You’ll also unlock some of the ghost collectibles by jumping through “slips”, little holes created in random spots on the floor or walls that’ll kick you to another location on the map. Some of these collectibles are a bitch to find simply because it would be in a place you wouldn’t expect (like the bottom of a giant pit) as a ghost because you automatically assume heights with instant death but it’s nothing that a guide can’t fix. I also want to add that for the most part, humans and animals take scaring before possession, but generally other than that you can possess anything, or anything within reason I should say. There isn’t really a huge sandbox with possession, you can’t take the form of a pencil on a desk or something, it’s mostly structured and scripted objects that you can form into but at the same time like the effort is still there. Most of the other stuff is just flavored text which describes what the objects are.
The shooting itself isn’t exactly that bad either to be honest. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the actual combat itself and in all honesty I never really felt like I had a problem with it? It didn’t feel as good as say something like Halo or Call of Duty, but it felt serviceable and adequate without feeling like it was a bullet sponge cacophony. The only real mechanics for the shooting involves healing yourself with nearby medkits, and perhaps pressing the Z button to use a grenade launcher as an example and you’ll always have infinite ammo so that’s not really a big deal. Most enemies in terms of this combat as well are also pushovers, albeit pushovers whose AI are both really dumb and still attempt to kill you. That is until the latter half of the campaign, where the developers decided to push these enemies that possess your body in order to drag you towards something to die or to get shot out in public by others. While in concept it’s a cool idea, in actual game design it’s really fucking obnoxious, especially in the last level after you take down the helicopter. I remember dying once or twice to this and having to actively jank the game by hiding out in an area with a destroyed fence while these ghosts attempt to possess me and having to lure them out slowly one by one because otherwise they’d just drag my ass into the corpse of the nearby fiery helicopter I JUST took down. Other than that, you’ll fight some alien creatures too here and there but nothing really crazy. Overall, the combat, while it makes up a huge portion of the game, isn’t something that I hate and in fact feels decent but it didn’t really stand out in any way either. For me however, that’s okay because I’d rather it be average than be a fucking slog. Besides, I think most people are here for the ghost possession stuff, though if there’s one aspect of combat that I didn’t really care for it’s the boss battles.
I’ll say my experiences with the boss battles were a mixed bag for me, some of them are okay and just require constantly shooting at one spot while some require a bit of puzzling to do and were generally the better ones. Some of my least favorite boss fights include the one against Cord, one of the mercenaries under supporting antagonist Rourke. His boss fights require both ghost powers AND shooting people. In the first battle you have to kind of duck and weave all of his bullets and then switch to ghost when he throws his grenades. Now time slows down luckily, but my experience was that I would possess the grenade, roll it over to him and fuckin’ bada boom right? But while waiting for the animation to blow up and switch to ghost he’ll be shooting me and taking part of my health down unless I’m behind a certain cover and/or lucky, so unless I was doing it wrong that was a frustrating boss. The last one with Cord is more of a puzzle, where you have to switch back and forth between several different soldiers and turrets in one room, ignoring everyone else and just constantly pumping Cord full of bullets until the last corpse remains. Speaking of Cord, I had a weird glitch where I tried to get a collectible in Cord’s first boss room, but apparently I died after the cutscene but it still kicked me out to the next room anyways once I accepted the checkpoint. Luckily I restarted from the last checkpoint and it left me in that boss room but I was still really fucking annoyed that I almost lost a collectible due to some weird after cutscene death trickery bullshit. Other boss battles include a giant bullet sponge creature coming out of the ground that overstays its welcome a bit, two giant statues and a flying fat man ghost. My main issue with some of these other battles include the fact that they’re either monotonously long but simple and are just there to waste time or just feel unfair in some aspects like those two statues who rushed me straight after a cutscene where I took one down and killed me instantly.
In fact, that seems to be a strange pacing problem for the game. The beginning half to a bit into the third it’s actually pretty cool and clever with how it uses its game mechanics before it turns into a middling shooter around the last third or so. That’s not to say it’s bad or unbearable, but it definitely would have landed on its feet better instead of stumbling around. Some fun bits from the first two thirds of the game include set pieces like possessing a motorcycle while juggling not getting shot and exploding other props to make a path ahead of you; or alternatively a slower paced one involves taking over a chef and poisoning some customers with rat poison, or earlier than those two involve possessing a naked woman in the shower (notable because it’s weird but there are soap suds around the parts so I guess that’s better? I don’t know, I guess 2005 was pervert season). The variation between the set pieces is pretty good in all honesty, one time you’ll be hopping around riveting beams together and the next there’s a protection mission with your ghost form and then it’s a chase sequence. However, again it could’ve used a stronger third act; that’s not to say the last third doesn’t have stuff in it, in fact you get to possess a dog (adorable) and rats (just adorable depending on whom you ask) with their own sort of puzzle mechanics as well. It just means that it feels kind of middling throughout the final leg of the game, even if it has some fun stuff sprinkled in here and there.
Overall, I’ve heard alot of mixed things about the controls and the gameplay design from others. My feeling on that is that it’s totally valid to not care for the core gameplay, it has its issues and would have perhaps been a little bit better in certain departments. However, there’s something about the time that I played it where for the most part I was honestly having a fun time (besides boss battles and ghost possessor enemies). Even the controls I heard so many complaints about to me felt decent enough to where it wasn’t honestly a problem for me. I guess if I were to give a complaint about my time, it’s that sometimes it took me a while to grasp what objects needed to be possessed for progression purposes though I also would have just been a giant dunce. I remember needing to restart the last section in the Escape chapter due to figuring out the turrets that had me frustrated at first until I learned what to do. The escape thing with the motorcycle, while cool, maybe could’ve been choreographed better. I guess I wasn’t appreciative of having to replay the entirety of Chapter 6 again due to the fact there seemingly weren't many checkpoints and the game froze on me once or twice though there would have actually been checkpoints and I forgot. Overall I don’t know, certain aspects were mixed but overall it was a good time and I had my joy with it, especially due to the nostalgic feeling of playing the game on the GameCube. Who knows, though I’d say for the average player that most people would give it a shoulder shrug.
There’s also a multiplayer for those who went and got all the collectibles in the game like I did, however I didn’t really play the multiplayer nor knew anyone who wanted to give it a try. I can tell you however that a lot of people seemed to have fun with the possession mechanics in it and in all honesty, it looks like it could be one of the old Timesplitters games just from how wacky it is. Maybe one of these days if I play it with friends, I’ll give this section a rewrite and let you know how it is.
The sound design to Geist is a bit of an interesting one. If we’re going to start with voice acting, we’ll start with the fact that the third Raimi brother does not speak in the slightest. The entire time that you go through the game you’ll be silent and other people will be talking to you as if you’re having a conversation with them. It’s amusing and gets even more so when you possess a woman and rescue your buddy, who basically figures out your Raimi…somehow. In fact, for the most part there isn’t any in game voiceover at all besides a few bits here and there. When you greet people, they’ll play a generic voice clip (like Bryson just saying “Raimi”) while the actual words he’s saying are displayed with separate text. It’s not a bad thing persay, I didn’t really have a problem with that, though I do think it’s funny that the subtitles covered half of the lower screen on my CRTV. Voice acting is also fine for the most part, everyone does their job and blends in seamlessly to the game’s world. There aren’t any big names or even memorable performances for the most part that I specifically remember, though again I’m perfectly okay with it. The actual sounds for the rest of the game are decent though, with a lot of ear pleasers like rope sounds and footsteps, though I feel like the weapon sounds can be hit or miss. The pistol sounds straight out of Timesplitters to be honest, and they probably got it from the same sound pack. The AUG sounds like it should be a heavier weapon than it actually is, in fact most of the weapons sound like they come straight from the sound packs that other games use. It’s also fine, but don’t really feel like they have an originality to them otherwise. It is what it is though for the most part, and I can understand the need to get what you can get from the places you can get them from.
Geist’s soundtrack, composed by Michael Reed and Brad Martin is a very orchestral game, filled with choirs, heavy strings and a sort of bombasticness to it for a large portion of the run time. My personal feelings on it go along the lines of that it’s a decent score, and fits the game in the 2004-5 era that it encapsulates. However, it’s also for the most part just kind of okay to me. There aren’t really any tracks that pop out, nothing that really makes me wanna download it and listen to it often. In fact, the game kind of feels like it’s ripping on the whole Halo orchestral soundtrack vibe. Keep in mind that this isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s perfectly okay for it to blend into the background as long as it enhances what the game’s atmosphere is about and for the most part it does that decently enough. If I were to point out one track though that’s kind of odd, I believe it would be Juliet. See, in game, there’s a part where you need to possess a bunch of mice and force them to activate all of the mouse traps in order for them to get killed so you can make your way to the exit as the main mouse that needs to go back to their owner. Thing is that during this, you get music that straight up sounds like it could come from fuckin’ Matilda or some shit and it’s a really bizarre dissonance piece that I have no feelings on what to make of it.
What I can say about the graphics and art direction is this: whilst the game runs on the Gamecube and as such looks very similar to Metroid Prime in terms of blocky graphics, it also personally looks not only kind of improved in some ways but in all honesty gave me a lot of nostalgia for the old Gamecube days even if I had never played the game once in my life. I never really noticed anything bad graphically, though I’ll admit I never really focused too much on how good a game looks HD quality wise to the extent that others would be. The art design and atmosphere surrounding it however in all honesty, I’ll say that I enjoyed it for the most part. In a lot of ways it reminded me of a semi-worse version of Half Life with ghost possession: for the most part you’re at a military base in the desert and the only thing you’ll be seeing is cold steel and warm, crusty orange rocks on the outside. It’s not bad, though I’ll admit I wish there was a bit more variation in the environment. I’ll also say that for some reason, there are people who classify this as a horror game just because there were ghosts and possession. I’ll tell you from first hand experience that there’s no way in hell that this game was trying to be a horror game in any way shape or form, and if it was then it’s a bad one considering there wasn’t anything actually scary or any attempt at actually scaring anyone.
Geist to me was one of those games that while it flopped with the finances and has some frustrating qualities, it’s also one of those games that really grew on me despite the frustrations and for the most part I left the game feeling pretty decent about it. I feel like it’s one of those underrated titles that deserve a bit more attention and perhaps a backwards compatibility thing with the Switch. Will that ever happen? No, probably not and as always it’s a damn shame. It’s kind of forgotten in time, a distant memory of a memory that few people would even have the capacity TO remember anything other than the cool ass cover art. I’d say maybe Nightdive could potentially remaster it but considering how close to the chest Nintendo is with their property, I’ll sadly say that the game will probably just fade into obscurity and will have less of a chance than even fellow M Rated Eternal Darkness would. It doesn’t exactly help that for the rest of their years until the end their portfolio mostly consisted of more ports and more shovelware before they inevitably closed shop around 2016. As for gaming for the rest of the year, I have to write up reviews for Eternal Evil and probably Dead Island soon but after that besides some Steam games, I’ll probably just end up chilling out and playing some Lost Judgment til’ the end in anticipation for 2024.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(video_game)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Geist
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/8iaye9/nintendo_rewind_geist_2005/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHBotsjvLU&ab_channel=MattMcMuscles
https://www.destructoid.com/geist-developer-closed-down-after-21-years/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpE56aG06s&ab_channel=GoldMetalSonic
https://www.nsidr.com/archive/interview-n-space/
http://cube.gamespy.com/gamecube/geist/641298p5.html
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/meteos-geist-kirby-and-yoshi-coming-in-june/1100-6121267/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/killer-7-in-stores-7-7-no-geist-until-august/1100-6126759/
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2233/gdc-2005-geist-interview-with-jeff-kalles
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/interview/2260/the-geist-interview
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=8382.550
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gamecube/914965-geist/faqs/38594
https://www.ign.com/wikis/geist/Walkthrough_-_Volks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oVK07WA_UY&list=PLIWIHaWddtA00qRRNieKzig3tK4tcin
FG&index=19&ab_channel=chasebergamot
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/geist-ost-gamecube
2022
This review contains spoilers
Eternal Evil is a survival horror game/”big titty vampire ragdoll” simulator developed by Honor Games for the Unreal Engine 4, being released in November of 2022. As someone who has tried to do research into the developers, I haven’t really come up with much in the way of information. Then again if I was the best researcher this review would take months and maybe I wouldn’t have flunked out of college. HOYEVER, I was able to find a bit on Reddit (Link below) where the developer was discussing his development of the game, created out of the feeling that the Resident Evil games after 3 (the original) were lacking in their eyes. The results were Eternal Evil, an eastern european survival horror game dealing with a vampire conspiracy. My experience with the game, if I were to remember correctly, was that I either saw it on Youtube at some point (probably through MathChief) or someone on my Steam Friends List wishlisted it. As someone who enjoys survival horror (though sucks at it), and as someone who thoroughly enjoyed first person Resident Evil, seeing creators make more games in that vein piques my interest (examples being ILL or Fobia: St. Dinfa’s Hotel). I had picked it up last year around christmas time and only now have gotten around to playing it because a friend of mine picked it for me to stream.
The plot concerns two protagonists: Detective Hank Richards (aka Hank Dicks as me and my friend would call him) and Marcus Black, two former best friends/special forces and takes place in 2001/2002. Hank calls upon Marcus for his help, as something terrible has happened in the town of Trier. What seems to be vampires have seemingly overrun the town and giant spikes pierce out of the ground, all of which falls back to an old police case involving town wide disappearances and an old hotel run by Howard (or Hovard) Cross. Investigating this hotel, Hank learns that Howard has been working with his assistant David and a prostitute named Jane in order to kidnap people and bring them to the basement. He’s doing this in service to Sefar, the giant behemoth vampire man in a trench coat who's using the blood for purposes unknown. Keep in mind, you won’t learn too much about the origins of the vampires here other than bits and pieces, but you will read up on Cross’s origins. See, Cross’s wife died after committing suicide due to a traumatizing sexual assault and while the assailants were arrested, he was left alone with his daughter. THEN his daughter was kidnapped and murdered, which drove Howard to despise humanity and ultimately accept his offer to kickstart the apocalypse. Sefar had also revealed the name of his daughter’s kidnapper/murderer: Hank Dicks himself. Hank calls up his buddy Marcus, who is making his way into the city. Hank tells Marcus to go to the Police Station instead in order to find evidence that Hank wasn’t involved in his daughter’s death, with the whole thing being a frame job.
Along the way you’ll run into more giant scorpions, snakes, spiders, bats and even Sefar once or twice for a boss battle. If you read some of the documents you’ll also learn that the mutated animals exist due to experimentation with vampire blood. Eventually towards the end you’ll run into Jacob Willis, a scientist who was working with Howard Cross on a cure for the vampire contagion in case everything goes wrong, and the first quarter or so of the game ends on a standoff between Hank and one of Sefar’s giant red trench coat wearing counterparts. Here is where I’ll give the game props, the first quarter and the rest of the game occur simultaneously with each other. Playing through with Marcus you’ll hear dialogue repeated to you by Hank, such as the police station dialogue from earlier, and for the rest of the game you’ll be playing as Marcus (along with encountering Sefar as him in the downtime where he’s not trying to kill Hank).
Marcus is making his way through to the city/town of Trier and reminisces on his friendship with Hank. It’s learned that it’s been three years since their “mission” together, and it’s hinted that something went really wrong. He stops at a nearby gas station, and he encounters Liam (one of the survivors at the beginning with Hank), who gives Marcus the rundown before sacrificing himself with a grenade to buy time. Marcus runs through a forest (encountering remains of a vampire cult) and takes over a train (after killing a vampire bear of course) to drive it into the city. Being told by Hank that he believes that Cross thought that he killed his daughter, Marcus makes his way to the nearby police station to find evidence in the case. Through various means, Marcus encounters evidence of the abduction with Cross’s daughter really being committed by Sefar along with a tape that reveals the rift between Hank and Marcus: Hank had disobeyed orders and innocent civilians died during an order to take down terrorists. Marcus is contacted on Hank’s frequency by Cross, who tells him that Hank has been captured and that he’s going to suffer. Marcus tells him however that he wasn’t responsible and that he found proof, so after a bit of convincing Marcus goes out to make his way to the hotel. Sefar throughout the city section has at least tried to murder the cop three separate times, but on the third time Marcus is able to escape and make his way to the other side of the draw bridge where the hotel is at. However for some reason, Sefar spares Marcus BEFORE he gets shot at and proceeds to jump and run away into the hotel. Making his way to the hotel and up into Cross’s office, he shows him the evidence that it was a set up job by the vampires. Here’s another lapse in judgment, Cross said he knew he couldn’t trust them at all but that he didn’t think he would be involved in his daughter’s death? Well why wouldn’t they? I mean I know he’s grieving but they’re fucking vampires and Sefar is kind of a weird manipulative bastard anyways, though I don’t know maybe I’m making something out of nothing. Regardless, Cross gives Marcus a stone and tells him that he needs to prepare something to attack Sefar with and to go see Hank.
Making his way down into the cellar, Marcus finds Hank vampirified and puts him down in a sad display. Cross tries to convince Marcus to take down Sefar and the vampire conspiracy and just runs off to “stop the apocalypse”. Marcus reads Hank’s last words before reading up on Cross’s notes and getting some silver together for gunpowder bullets. He leaves to the hotel lobby only to engage in a debate with Sefar about the state of mankind, free will and all of that before finally seemingly killing Sefar once and for all....in a cutscene. Yeah there’s no final boss battle for that but whatever I guess. Afterwards, Marcus makes his way to the nearby graveyard and finds Cross’s key before entering the catacomb. The final stretch of the game is where they end up dropping the most background lore and getting into some weird dark lord shit. Marcus finds an ancient book and learns of an ancient conflict between Sefar’s master, Saron, and Alukar. It turns out that millenia ago, vampires used to be the master race on Earth who enslaved humanity in order to ensure peace. Alukar was an underling who switched and helped humanity rebel against Saron’s ways and as such, the vampires were buried for a long time (including Alukar who was betrayed by the humans) with no one knowing of their existence presumably. Sefar being the only survivor, has worked in the shadows to resurrect and protect his master; whom you eventually get to meet.
Once you solve the puzzles and make your way to him, Saron wakes up and threatens Marcus’s life, before attempting to conscript him into the vampire cause. Deciding to wake up Alukar instead (as he decides to not kill Marcus immediately and gives him time to ponder death or conversion), a battle between the two vampire lords ensues before Marcus is left to finish the job. Shooting the metal thing on his chest and destroying his healing emitters, Saron is weakened and begs for you to spare him. You’re given two options: spare him and join him on his vampire quest or kill him and end the vampire threat once and for all. Either way however, it’s a bad ending; join Saron and you get your throat slashed, revived with ancient vampire blood and humanity is enslaved once again (though Howard and his assistant Jacob may have found a cure, and if you choose this ending it’s the only wrap up to Cross’s arc). Kill Saron and Alukar converts you into a vampire to stop future threats, and a timeline emerges where humanity ends up destroying each other with no vampire lords to enslave them. Either way you’re doomed, and the game ends with the undead Marcus leaving his pistol on top of Hank’s grave, mourning the death of his friend.
Overall, the plot is an intriguing one with a lot of detailed lore going on in the background. You mostly learn of this lore through in-game notes as well as cutscenes and while it’s occasionally confusing to morph together, once you beat the game you unlock a whole lore option in the menu where it gives you background info on characters and events. The story has themes of weakness versus strength and survival of the fittest and all of that and for the most part I felt like it did those fine. I just kind of wish some of this stuff was pieced together a little bit better, though that also could’ve been due to the fact that I had played it over several weekends and had forgotten some parts. However, I did feel that some things were a little bit confusing and if you didn’t read up on the notes then you’d have no idea what’s going on with certain things. Jacob is a huge example, you only run into him once in the main campaign and you’d be forgiven if you forgot about him because other than notes of “he’s helping to make a cure”, you don’t really see him or know anything about him and he’s kind of considered important to the lore. The too long didn’t read version is that the story for the most part is decent and has interesting tidbits, though I personally would’ve paced it differently and maybe would’ve foreshadowed the dark lord vampire Saron stuff a bit earlier than having it all happen in the last forty five minutes of gameplay.
The gameplay is very much akin to Resident Evil 7 in terms of it’s first person horror influence. You solve puzzles, try to perform headshots on vampires, most people know the general thing with survival horror games. I’ll say my experience with the gameplay for the most part is pretty solid, the most important part being the gunplay. Let me tell you, the actual shooting and gunplay feel pretty damn good considering the one man (or small indie team I keep hearing different things) show the game has going for it. Popping off shots feels immensely satisfying from the weapons, which range from pistols to the shotgun to an AK-47 and other unlockable weapons you can acquire by collecting Euros and buying them in store in the menu. Like getting actual headshots feels great, like you did some damage. The shotgun is the most overpowered thing alive (aside with dealing with boss creatures) and was my favorite gun in the entire game. The only weapon I didn't really like was the grenade launcher, but that was because it often felt off...I don't know how to explain it but it didn't have that "oomph" that it should. Otherwise, most of the weapons feel great and that's one of my favorite parts about the gameplay overall, I can't stress that enough. For the most part, finding ammo and health in your environment feels like the appropriate amount to make you feel powerful but wary of expanding your ammo. Obviously you can’t let enemies get close to you or else they’ll grab you and chomp into you, with the regular enemies morphing into fast crawling vampires that’ll hit harder the next time it chases. I appreciate this little detail, and it kind of reminds me of the Crimson Heads from RE1 Remake, a sort of more threatening upgrade of sorts so they’re not just some shambling corpses.
However, I’ll admit that at least with regular enemies that figuring out animations could sometimes be frustrating. If you were to say play the old RE games, you can kind of tell when a zombie was about to grapple you. Here it was sorta consistent, but there were times where I’d get grabbed and couldn’t tell an animation was going on because the character model on the vampires had no build up. These animations go even if they grab you through a door, and can damage you with swipes or grabs as well, though luckily because of the jank you can kind of headshot them when their head clips through the door as well. Obviously this isn’t intentional, but considering the arms tend to clip through doors anyways, it’s kind of a godsend with certain enemies if you wanted to jank them.
Also keep in mind, a lot of these monsters can come out of nowhere, which for scare purposes it’s excellent. The hotel however is a really claustrophobic place, and you’ll have giant scorpions pop out of nowhere and their running animation has no noise to react to. That was one of the things that had happened to me, running into a room that had a giant scorpion on the bottom floor, and it crawled up and it was dead silent and I got my booty hole smashed in five seconds. I guess that’s a nice way to transition to healing: If they damage you, you can pick up health items too though they only consist of chocolate bars and water bottles for 50% and 100% health refills only. I don’t have an issue with it, though I find it hilarious that the cure for a vampire bite is just to drink some water and you’ll be good. Either way though, th e level design in that regard is usually hit or miss, mostly in how often it likes to give you dead ends and not much room to maneuver in boss fights.
The biggest offender for this is Saron in the final fight, you literally only have a small T shaped walkway and his area of effect attacks tend to damage you real quick, and while it’s offset by the damage not being too bad it’s still kind of annoying to be honest. Another example is fighting the giant scorpion after climbing down the rope from the attic, it’s so big and catches up to you real quick and riding your ass right? Then they put down a chest for you to get ammo and stuff from, but if the scorpion is right on you all the time then why put it there? It probably would’ve been better to have lowered the speed of the scorpion if it’s such a small area in that case.
Bringing it to a different topic really quickly, the unlockables: You won’t be able to unlock everything in the first run, but I was able to unlock probably 75% of everything from infinite ammo, a survival mode (which I tried once and sucked at so didn’t bother trying again), futuristic pistols and machine guns and the ability to spawn weapons in your inventory. There are also weapon upgrades and inventory slots, though they only pop up in special encounters like the hotel in the city (one of only two places where the choice system actually matters…or appears at all) or in the city where finding the codes on dead cops leads you to get weapon upgrades which…I didn’t notice the difference. Most of these require you to solve some sort of puzzle and can be easily missed if you’re not paying attention.
Speaking of, puzzles for me for the most part felt fine, like I was able to figure most of them out by winging it. However, there were definitely a couple of stingers that confused the hell out of me. For example, I really don’t care for chess puzzles. I’m not a chess guy, and while they do have a note which explains certain puzzle solutions or shows hints, I felt like that was a bit much. In fact, most of the time that I was stuck in the game, it was the beginning quarter of the game due to the sheer confusion in figuring out your layout and what you're supposed to do. Some of my least favorite puzzles include the globe puzzle which is like a safe combination, you spin it to certain spots in order for it to open up. The whole knight statue crest thing has so many damn crests that it would’ve been really frustrating if I wasn't looking up a guide. Also, one puzzle solution requires you to open a wallet up for a key, so please keep that in mind and double check to examine your inventory in case you end up missing something.
One of the most frustrating puzzle bits in the later portion of the game is when you’re forced to go into the holding cells and there’s a gas leak. You can’t shoot the vampires or you die instantly, so the solution is to bring your knife. Another problem with that is at least when I played this section, the vampires were a lot more difficult to kill then usual and I died a couple of times just trying to kill them while also exploiting their noclip animations through the bar cells.
Luckily if one sucks at puzzles (though your stuck dealing with the gas), you can collect gray puzzle skulls, which when inputted right next to the puzzle itself will instantly solve it if you so wish for it to be solved, though keep in mind there aren’t that many skulls in the game so you’ll need to save some and be strategic…or just use a guide. Regardless, my summary on the gameplay aspect of the game is that it’s fine for the most part!! It just could’ve used a bit more polish and a couple of changes here and there but other than that, a lot of my complaints feel like nitpicks so who knows, maybe I just suck at games.
Graphically I’ll start out by saying that the game looks pretty good for the most part, except a few bits here and there. Sometimes the character models look phenomenal, but then sometimes they look a bit…strange. Obviously the undead are supposed to look strange and that’s perfectly okay, in fact I feel like the strangeness can work to their favor. But they look strange in a way where they look like strange marionettes more than threatening vampires. Obviously, the game was the work of one developer with the help of others and as such I’m not expecting them to look perfect. I guess it just looks like something is a bit unfinished and therefore kind of adds to the janky but endearing atmosphere that the game delivered to me.
None of this is more apparent once it breaks out the ragdoll physics, where one of the options in game is to pick up objects…as well as dead bodies. There’s been a couple of times where I would kill a vampire or a mutated scorpion and their arms would get caught in the environment in some way and they’d flop around all over the place. The animations with some of the other enemies are also weird, like what I call “The Tickler”, not because he actually tickles you but his running animation is so goofy that I can’t really take it seriously. Like, they run in place right? But they’re floating towards you and they look like Lickers from Resident Evil 2 if they were jacked and running in place. I guess graphically speaking otherwise, the game looks fine; it has the HD textures that look really smooth and I can definitely understand why the game is 30 or so gigabytes. I know I’ve heard mumblings of all of them being Unreal Engine asset flips, I don’t know because I can’t verify that (though I doubt it's the case), but most of the environments look pretty cool and high definition even if it’s imperfect due to the jank nature of the game.
The actual atmosphere itself is definitely on the darker and oppressive side. The first quarter in the hotel is a labyrinth of dread as you navigate and try to figure out where you’re going all the while being wary of when you’ll get jumped by the next boss creature or potential vampire lurking around the corner. Going through the dark forest can be tense and the city itself breaks out the freaky fog that Silent Hill fans would cream their pants for. Multiple times throughout the game you’ll run into survivors who are in life or death decisions, about to shoot themselves, and mutilated bodies all over the place. The city (or town or whatever) is in chaos and you can tell that it’s the near apocalypse and barely anyone was able to survive. In that style, it can work with being unsettling, but there are also a couple of things working against that horror atmosphere. One example: if I remember correctly the town of Triers takes place in America. I could be wrong, considering the voice actors and character names and all of that; but in a lot of areas there’ll be eastern european language stuff (like the cemetery), or you’ll find the “Lorem Ipsum” gibberish that people copy paste as placeholder text in places that aren’t just small text you’re not supposed to read. The last example I have is more of a personal one, they have a couple of nude or half naked vampires that attack you and I’ll be honest I always laughed, especially because extra emphasis was placed on titty jiggle physics.
Audio Design for the most part is a very small portion at least in terms of music. You’ll hear a little bit of a wind up with strings in certain parts of the game, as well as a safe room theme that does genuinely feel like something straight out of the old RE games. It’s not to say that the music is bad, there’s music and for the most part it’s good. It adds to the atmosphere and gives it some charm, however there isn’t really anything I could say that really pops out at me with the game soundtrack wise. The overall audio design behind it is pretty damn solid though! Guns feel impactful, the sounds of your feet as they walk over the floor have this pattering sound that’s delightful, I honestly don’t think I have anything bad to say about that. In fact, I think that the sound design and the first person perspective is pretty much what attracted me to this game to begin with, though I’ll go out of my way and say that the voice acting hits somewhere between decent and old survival level horrors of funny but I never really took an issue with this to be honest. Even then, it’s not like the voice actors are bad or anything, it’s quite the opposite as the people who voice Hank and Marcus sound like they fit for the part; I just believe that sometimes it might just be the delivery of it.
To summarize, Eternal Evil is one of those games that is sure as hell not perfect. It’s janky, mistranslated and for the most part made me laugh (minus a few jumpscares). But I say this all with the utmost respect for the developer and his work. They’re an Eastern European fellow and while there’s jank in here, there’s a lot of charm that comes along with it, and it’s playable from front to back. Everything felt well for the most part, and streaming this for my friend, we had a lot of fun with this one. The developers also seem to be on a bit of a role here with it, because soon after releasing this game they’ve been working on games in what seems to be a new series called “Survival & Horror”, with entries like Hangman’s Rope, Mortanis Prisoners 1 and The Damned City. Mortanis is in early access while Damned City hasn’t been heard from since but what I’ll say is that even though there was goofy stuff in Eternal Evil, the developer has talent and I’m genuinely interested in seeing them hopefully grow. It takes a lot of work being a game developer or a software developer of any kind and I respect the grind that these guys put in. I’d say if you’re patient and willing to shovel through most of the jank (pretty much all of this guy’s games are Mostly Positive) that there’s a bit of a rough gem underneath. I’d recommend getting this game on sale and maybe sitting down for a couple of days, though don’t be afraid to use a guide and make sure you save often.
Links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EternalEvil
https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/rtqib7/eternal_evil_is_a_re_inspired_game_that_my_friend/
https://showgamer.com/en/prohozhdeniya-igr/974-prohozhdenie-eternal-evil
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=csC-tOR6AuA
https://www.youtube.com/@HonorGamesStudio/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSALdqXTP6k&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGv8MAHE9o&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S32ejPTIlv0&ab_channel=gamemast15r
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot concerns two protagonists: Detective Hank Richards (aka Hank Dicks as me and my friend would call him) and Marcus Black, two former best friends/special forces and takes place in 2001/2002. Hank calls upon Marcus for his help, as something terrible has happened in the town of Trier. What seems to be vampires have seemingly overrun the town and giant spikes pierce out of the ground, all of which falls back to an old police case involving town wide disappearances and an old hotel run by Howard (or Hovard) Cross. Investigating this hotel, Hank learns that Howard has been working with his assistant David and a prostitute named Jane in order to kidnap people and bring them to the basement. He’s doing this in service to Sefar, the giant behemoth vampire man in a trench coat who's using the blood for purposes unknown. Keep in mind, you won’t learn too much about the origins of the vampires here other than bits and pieces, but you will read up on Cross’s origins. See, Cross’s wife died after committing suicide due to a traumatizing sexual assault and while the assailants were arrested, he was left alone with his daughter. THEN his daughter was kidnapped and murdered, which drove Howard to despise humanity and ultimately accept his offer to kickstart the apocalypse. Sefar had also revealed the name of his daughter’s kidnapper/murderer: Hank Dicks himself. Hank calls up his buddy Marcus, who is making his way into the city. Hank tells Marcus to go to the Police Station instead in order to find evidence that Hank wasn’t involved in his daughter’s death, with the whole thing being a frame job.
Along the way you’ll run into more giant scorpions, snakes, spiders, bats and even Sefar once or twice for a boss battle. If you read some of the documents you’ll also learn that the mutated animals exist due to experimentation with vampire blood. Eventually towards the end you’ll run into Jacob Willis, a scientist who was working with Howard Cross on a cure for the vampire contagion in case everything goes wrong, and the first quarter or so of the game ends on a standoff between Hank and one of Sefar’s giant red trench coat wearing counterparts. Here is where I’ll give the game props, the first quarter and the rest of the game occur simultaneously with each other. Playing through with Marcus you’ll hear dialogue repeated to you by Hank, such as the police station dialogue from earlier, and for the rest of the game you’ll be playing as Marcus (along with encountering Sefar as him in the downtime where he’s not trying to kill Hank).
Marcus is making his way through to the city/town of Trier and reminisces on his friendship with Hank. It’s learned that it’s been three years since their “mission” together, and it’s hinted that something went really wrong. He stops at a nearby gas station, and he encounters Liam (one of the survivors at the beginning with Hank), who gives Marcus the rundown before sacrificing himself with a grenade to buy time. Marcus runs through a forest (encountering remains of a vampire cult) and takes over a train (after killing a vampire bear of course) to drive it into the city. Being told by Hank that he believes that Cross thought that he killed his daughter, Marcus makes his way to the nearby police station to find evidence in the case. Through various means, Marcus encounters evidence of the abduction with Cross’s daughter really being committed by Sefar along with a tape that reveals the rift between Hank and Marcus: Hank had disobeyed orders and innocent civilians died during an order to take down terrorists. Marcus is contacted on Hank’s frequency by Cross, who tells him that Hank has been captured and that he’s going to suffer. Marcus tells him however that he wasn’t responsible and that he found proof, so after a bit of convincing Marcus goes out to make his way to the hotel. Sefar throughout the city section has at least tried to murder the cop three separate times, but on the third time Marcus is able to escape and make his way to the other side of the draw bridge where the hotel is at. However for some reason, Sefar spares Marcus BEFORE he gets shot at and proceeds to jump and run away into the hotel. Making his way to the hotel and up into Cross’s office, he shows him the evidence that it was a set up job by the vampires. Here’s another lapse in judgment, Cross said he knew he couldn’t trust them at all but that he didn’t think he would be involved in his daughter’s death? Well why wouldn’t they? I mean I know he’s grieving but they’re fucking vampires and Sefar is kind of a weird manipulative bastard anyways, though I don’t know maybe I’m making something out of nothing. Regardless, Cross gives Marcus a stone and tells him that he needs to prepare something to attack Sefar with and to go see Hank.
Making his way down into the cellar, Marcus finds Hank vampirified and puts him down in a sad display. Cross tries to convince Marcus to take down Sefar and the vampire conspiracy and just runs off to “stop the apocalypse”. Marcus reads Hank’s last words before reading up on Cross’s notes and getting some silver together for gunpowder bullets. He leaves to the hotel lobby only to engage in a debate with Sefar about the state of mankind, free will and all of that before finally seemingly killing Sefar once and for all....in a cutscene. Yeah there’s no final boss battle for that but whatever I guess. Afterwards, Marcus makes his way to the nearby graveyard and finds Cross’s key before entering the catacomb. The final stretch of the game is where they end up dropping the most background lore and getting into some weird dark lord shit. Marcus finds an ancient book and learns of an ancient conflict between Sefar’s master, Saron, and Alukar. It turns out that millenia ago, vampires used to be the master race on Earth who enslaved humanity in order to ensure peace. Alukar was an underling who switched and helped humanity rebel against Saron’s ways and as such, the vampires were buried for a long time (including Alukar who was betrayed by the humans) with no one knowing of their existence presumably. Sefar being the only survivor, has worked in the shadows to resurrect and protect his master; whom you eventually get to meet.
Once you solve the puzzles and make your way to him, Saron wakes up and threatens Marcus’s life, before attempting to conscript him into the vampire cause. Deciding to wake up Alukar instead (as he decides to not kill Marcus immediately and gives him time to ponder death or conversion), a battle between the two vampire lords ensues before Marcus is left to finish the job. Shooting the metal thing on his chest and destroying his healing emitters, Saron is weakened and begs for you to spare him. You’re given two options: spare him and join him on his vampire quest or kill him and end the vampire threat once and for all. Either way however, it’s a bad ending; join Saron and you get your throat slashed, revived with ancient vampire blood and humanity is enslaved once again (though Howard and his assistant Jacob may have found a cure, and if you choose this ending it’s the only wrap up to Cross’s arc). Kill Saron and Alukar converts you into a vampire to stop future threats, and a timeline emerges where humanity ends up destroying each other with no vampire lords to enslave them. Either way you’re doomed, and the game ends with the undead Marcus leaving his pistol on top of Hank’s grave, mourning the death of his friend.
Overall, the plot is an intriguing one with a lot of detailed lore going on in the background. You mostly learn of this lore through in-game notes as well as cutscenes and while it’s occasionally confusing to morph together, once you beat the game you unlock a whole lore option in the menu where it gives you background info on characters and events. The story has themes of weakness versus strength and survival of the fittest and all of that and for the most part I felt like it did those fine. I just kind of wish some of this stuff was pieced together a little bit better, though that also could’ve been due to the fact that I had played it over several weekends and had forgotten some parts. However, I did feel that some things were a little bit confusing and if you didn’t read up on the notes then you’d have no idea what’s going on with certain things. Jacob is a huge example, you only run into him once in the main campaign and you’d be forgiven if you forgot about him because other than notes of “he’s helping to make a cure”, you don’t really see him or know anything about him and he’s kind of considered important to the lore. The too long didn’t read version is that the story for the most part is decent and has interesting tidbits, though I personally would’ve paced it differently and maybe would’ve foreshadowed the dark lord vampire Saron stuff a bit earlier than having it all happen in the last forty five minutes of gameplay.
The gameplay is very much akin to Resident Evil 7 in terms of it’s first person horror influence. You solve puzzles, try to perform headshots on vampires, most people know the general thing with survival horror games. I’ll say my experience with the gameplay for the most part is pretty solid, the most important part being the gunplay. Let me tell you, the actual shooting and gunplay feel pretty damn good considering the one man (or small indie team I keep hearing different things) show the game has going for it. Popping off shots feels immensely satisfying from the weapons, which range from pistols to the shotgun to an AK-47 and other unlockable weapons you can acquire by collecting Euros and buying them in store in the menu. Like getting actual headshots feels great, like you did some damage. The shotgun is the most overpowered thing alive (aside with dealing with boss creatures) and was my favorite gun in the entire game. The only weapon I didn't really like was the grenade launcher, but that was because it often felt off...I don't know how to explain it but it didn't have that "oomph" that it should. Otherwise, most of the weapons feel great and that's one of my favorite parts about the gameplay overall, I can't stress that enough. For the most part, finding ammo and health in your environment feels like the appropriate amount to make you feel powerful but wary of expanding your ammo. Obviously you can’t let enemies get close to you or else they’ll grab you and chomp into you, with the regular enemies morphing into fast crawling vampires that’ll hit harder the next time it chases. I appreciate this little detail, and it kind of reminds me of the Crimson Heads from RE1 Remake, a sort of more threatening upgrade of sorts so they’re not just some shambling corpses.
However, I’ll admit that at least with regular enemies that figuring out animations could sometimes be frustrating. If you were to say play the old RE games, you can kind of tell when a zombie was about to grapple you. Here it was sorta consistent, but there were times where I’d get grabbed and couldn’t tell an animation was going on because the character model on the vampires had no build up. These animations go even if they grab you through a door, and can damage you with swipes or grabs as well, though luckily because of the jank you can kind of headshot them when their head clips through the door as well. Obviously this isn’t intentional, but considering the arms tend to clip through doors anyways, it’s kind of a godsend with certain enemies if you wanted to jank them.
Also keep in mind, a lot of these monsters can come out of nowhere, which for scare purposes it’s excellent. The hotel however is a really claustrophobic place, and you’ll have giant scorpions pop out of nowhere and their running animation has no noise to react to. That was one of the things that had happened to me, running into a room that had a giant scorpion on the bottom floor, and it crawled up and it was dead silent and I got my booty hole smashed in five seconds. I guess that’s a nice way to transition to healing: If they damage you, you can pick up health items too though they only consist of chocolate bars and water bottles for 50% and 100% health refills only. I don’t have an issue with it, though I find it hilarious that the cure for a vampire bite is just to drink some water and you’ll be good. Either way though, th e level design in that regard is usually hit or miss, mostly in how often it likes to give you dead ends and not much room to maneuver in boss fights.
The biggest offender for this is Saron in the final fight, you literally only have a small T shaped walkway and his area of effect attacks tend to damage you real quick, and while it’s offset by the damage not being too bad it’s still kind of annoying to be honest. Another example is fighting the giant scorpion after climbing down the rope from the attic, it’s so big and catches up to you real quick and riding your ass right? Then they put down a chest for you to get ammo and stuff from, but if the scorpion is right on you all the time then why put it there? It probably would’ve been better to have lowered the speed of the scorpion if it’s such a small area in that case.
Bringing it to a different topic really quickly, the unlockables: You won’t be able to unlock everything in the first run, but I was able to unlock probably 75% of everything from infinite ammo, a survival mode (which I tried once and sucked at so didn’t bother trying again), futuristic pistols and machine guns and the ability to spawn weapons in your inventory. There are also weapon upgrades and inventory slots, though they only pop up in special encounters like the hotel in the city (one of only two places where the choice system actually matters…or appears at all) or in the city where finding the codes on dead cops leads you to get weapon upgrades which…I didn’t notice the difference. Most of these require you to solve some sort of puzzle and can be easily missed if you’re not paying attention.
Speaking of, puzzles for me for the most part felt fine, like I was able to figure most of them out by winging it. However, there were definitely a couple of stingers that confused the hell out of me. For example, I really don’t care for chess puzzles. I’m not a chess guy, and while they do have a note which explains certain puzzle solutions or shows hints, I felt like that was a bit much. In fact, most of the time that I was stuck in the game, it was the beginning quarter of the game due to the sheer confusion in figuring out your layout and what you're supposed to do. Some of my least favorite puzzles include the globe puzzle which is like a safe combination, you spin it to certain spots in order for it to open up. The whole knight statue crest thing has so many damn crests that it would’ve been really frustrating if I wasn't looking up a guide. Also, one puzzle solution requires you to open a wallet up for a key, so please keep that in mind and double check to examine your inventory in case you end up missing something.
One of the most frustrating puzzle bits in the later portion of the game is when you’re forced to go into the holding cells and there’s a gas leak. You can’t shoot the vampires or you die instantly, so the solution is to bring your knife. Another problem with that is at least when I played this section, the vampires were a lot more difficult to kill then usual and I died a couple of times just trying to kill them while also exploiting their noclip animations through the bar cells.
Luckily if one sucks at puzzles (though your stuck dealing with the gas), you can collect gray puzzle skulls, which when inputted right next to the puzzle itself will instantly solve it if you so wish for it to be solved, though keep in mind there aren’t that many skulls in the game so you’ll need to save some and be strategic…or just use a guide. Regardless, my summary on the gameplay aspect of the game is that it’s fine for the most part!! It just could’ve used a bit more polish and a couple of changes here and there but other than that, a lot of my complaints feel like nitpicks so who knows, maybe I just suck at games.
Graphically I’ll start out by saying that the game looks pretty good for the most part, except a few bits here and there. Sometimes the character models look phenomenal, but then sometimes they look a bit…strange. Obviously the undead are supposed to look strange and that’s perfectly okay, in fact I feel like the strangeness can work to their favor. But they look strange in a way where they look like strange marionettes more than threatening vampires. Obviously, the game was the work of one developer with the help of others and as such I’m not expecting them to look perfect. I guess it just looks like something is a bit unfinished and therefore kind of adds to the janky but endearing atmosphere that the game delivered to me.
None of this is more apparent once it breaks out the ragdoll physics, where one of the options in game is to pick up objects…as well as dead bodies. There’s been a couple of times where I would kill a vampire or a mutated scorpion and their arms would get caught in the environment in some way and they’d flop around all over the place. The animations with some of the other enemies are also weird, like what I call “The Tickler”, not because he actually tickles you but his running animation is so goofy that I can’t really take it seriously. Like, they run in place right? But they’re floating towards you and they look like Lickers from Resident Evil 2 if they were jacked and running in place. I guess graphically speaking otherwise, the game looks fine; it has the HD textures that look really smooth and I can definitely understand why the game is 30 or so gigabytes. I know I’ve heard mumblings of all of them being Unreal Engine asset flips, I don’t know because I can’t verify that (though I doubt it's the case), but most of the environments look pretty cool and high definition even if it’s imperfect due to the jank nature of the game.
The actual atmosphere itself is definitely on the darker and oppressive side. The first quarter in the hotel is a labyrinth of dread as you navigate and try to figure out where you’re going all the while being wary of when you’ll get jumped by the next boss creature or potential vampire lurking around the corner. Going through the dark forest can be tense and the city itself breaks out the freaky fog that Silent Hill fans would cream their pants for. Multiple times throughout the game you’ll run into survivors who are in life or death decisions, about to shoot themselves, and mutilated bodies all over the place. The city (or town or whatever) is in chaos and you can tell that it’s the near apocalypse and barely anyone was able to survive. In that style, it can work with being unsettling, but there are also a couple of things working against that horror atmosphere. One example: if I remember correctly the town of Triers takes place in America. I could be wrong, considering the voice actors and character names and all of that; but in a lot of areas there’ll be eastern european language stuff (like the cemetery), or you’ll find the “Lorem Ipsum” gibberish that people copy paste as placeholder text in places that aren’t just small text you’re not supposed to read. The last example I have is more of a personal one, they have a couple of nude or half naked vampires that attack you and I’ll be honest I always laughed, especially because extra emphasis was placed on titty jiggle physics.
Audio Design for the most part is a very small portion at least in terms of music. You’ll hear a little bit of a wind up with strings in certain parts of the game, as well as a safe room theme that does genuinely feel like something straight out of the old RE games. It’s not to say that the music is bad, there’s music and for the most part it’s good. It adds to the atmosphere and gives it some charm, however there isn’t really anything I could say that really pops out at me with the game soundtrack wise. The overall audio design behind it is pretty damn solid though! Guns feel impactful, the sounds of your feet as they walk over the floor have this pattering sound that’s delightful, I honestly don’t think I have anything bad to say about that. In fact, I think that the sound design and the first person perspective is pretty much what attracted me to this game to begin with, though I’ll go out of my way and say that the voice acting hits somewhere between decent and old survival level horrors of funny but I never really took an issue with this to be honest. Even then, it’s not like the voice actors are bad or anything, it’s quite the opposite as the people who voice Hank and Marcus sound like they fit for the part; I just believe that sometimes it might just be the delivery of it.
To summarize, Eternal Evil is one of those games that is sure as hell not perfect. It’s janky, mistranslated and for the most part made me laugh (minus a few jumpscares). But I say this all with the utmost respect for the developer and his work. They’re an Eastern European fellow and while there’s jank in here, there’s a lot of charm that comes along with it, and it’s playable from front to back. Everything felt well for the most part, and streaming this for my friend, we had a lot of fun with this one. The developers also seem to be on a bit of a role here with it, because soon after releasing this game they’ve been working on games in what seems to be a new series called “Survival & Horror”, with entries like Hangman’s Rope, Mortanis Prisoners 1 and The Damned City. Mortanis is in early access while Damned City hasn’t been heard from since but what I’ll say is that even though there was goofy stuff in Eternal Evil, the developer has talent and I’m genuinely interested in seeing them hopefully grow. It takes a lot of work being a game developer or a software developer of any kind and I respect the grind that these guys put in. I’d say if you’re patient and willing to shovel through most of the jank (pretty much all of this guy’s games are Mostly Positive) that there’s a bit of a rough gem underneath. I’d recommend getting this game on sale and maybe sitting down for a couple of days, though don’t be afraid to use a guide and make sure you save often.
Links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EternalEvil
https://www.reddit.com/r/residentevil/comments/rtqib7/eternal_evil_is_a_re_inspired_game_that_my_friend/
https://showgamer.com/en/prohozhdeniya-igr/974-prohozhdenie-eternal-evil
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=csC-tOR6AuA
https://www.youtube.com/@HonorGamesStudio/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSALdqXTP6k&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGv8MAHE9o&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S32ejPTIlv0&ab_channel=gamemast15r
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is an open world superhero action game/”demonic alien possession” simulator developed by Insomniac Games, known for previous hits like Ratchet & Clank, the underrated Resistance franchise and Spyro the Dragon. I don’t really have much in the way of history here other than the mention of them not using the Symbiote black suit for the last game due to the story connotations, and a tie-in comic that introduces a villain named The Hood into the universe (link below). However, I can mention how I was watching the stream where they introduced footage of Spider-Man 2 AND Insomniac’s next title: Marvel’s Wolverine. Over the past year or so I’ve looked into footage and kept up to date bit by bit while also playing through my current backlog, before pre-ordering the game because no matter what I’m a weird Playstation exclusive historian even though one should never pre-order any game unless you get something cool physically.
When I played the game for the first time, what I can tell you is this: I felt a combination of “oh Jesus it’s been a while since I played Miles Morales, what the hell am I doing again?” and “this shit’s pretty damn fun!”. Now for me, I’ll be straight up these past couple of months I haven’t been doing great, but what I can say is that this game and my journey to get the platinum trophy for me has been very good at relieving my anxiety, or at least provided a great distraction while I try to navigate the perils of finding my own apartment and not trying to go bankrupt. Fun shit. Regardless, we all know the answer of the ultimate question: Is the game good? No shit, and I’m going to spend the next however many paragraphs I please telling you my thoughts on it, so SPOILERS AHEAD.
The game begins with Miles Morales in school, waiting on a substitute teacher to come in and teach the class. This substitute teacher is Peter Parker, his mentor in being a Spider-Man, and they pretend like they don’t know the other person at all. However, shit gets upended and Sandman goes ballistic (somehow breaking the lore with the vial from the first game, which the developers forgot about admittedly but said screw it) and the two make various excuses to get dressed and take down Sandman. This culminates in being thrown through multiple buildings in a half and hour or so prologue that involves taking him down, and settling through the aftermath with rescuing civilians from the disaster with the help of Ganke and the Spider-Man app from Miles Morales (including JJ Jameson first out of two on screen appearances in game). However, when each of them get back from their expedition, Peter is fired due to “abandoning the students”, and unable to explain what his side gig is, he walks off sad. Meanwhile, a cutscene shows a hunt commencing, and a man thinking that he’s about to get the jump on his target. However, he gets his booty hole curb stomped by a big russian man in cheetah print, the man being Kraven the Hunter. One of his men tells him about a bunch of super powered individuals living in New York City and wanting to experience something far greater, Kraven prepares to depart.
Regardless, he goes back home to his old Aunt May’s house in Queens and meets with Mary Jane. There’s a whole romantic tension thing with her potentially moving in with him, the bills not being paid due to Spider-Man antics and the like that will be built upon much later in the game but for now, you get treated to a surprise of Harry Osborn. Yes he’s back from his hidden wall treatment, and Harry convinces Peter to help him in his old antics of breaking into their old high school like they did years ago. After reliving old memories (involving a Rick Astley rendition and Norman arriving in millionaire style to break the news of his mother’s death) and gaining new ones, Harry surprises Peter with a badge ID, one to the Emily-May Foundation. Harry establishes him as a co-founder and tells him to come by the lab the next day. Meanwhile, Kraven’s capture of Sandman has failed, and the Big K tells his boys to plan a jailbreak from The Raft instead. There’s also a bit of a subplot involving Miles working on his college essay and struggling to figure out what to put down, while also dealing with his Spider-Man activities and his mother Rio starting to date again.
Soon, the two Spider-Man prepare to protect a prisoner transfer from The Raft, with Scorpion and another prisoner being moved due to Sandman’s antics. The other man is Martin Li (aka Mr. Negative from the first game), and his tie-in to the story and Mile’s anger will also build up and tie in later on. However, predictably, a prison break occurs from a group of mysterious hunters and after a bunch of beatdowns, the boat is nearly sunk into the river. Miles goes inside to save people, however he’s ambushed and poisoned by Scorpion. Scorpion escapes, and Miles experiences freaky visions as well as an electrocution that overcharges his Venom (bioelectricity abilities, not the symbiote) to an umph degree after he attempts to save Martin Li (though hesitant due to him killing Mile’s dad). A bunch of fighting, explosions and saving civilians from near death later and with Scorpion presumed captured, Miles fights to stop Martin’s kidnapping. However, Miles' anger almost gets the better of him in the choice between saving civilians and getting Martin Li back but he chooses to save the civilians. Kraven gets away with the villains, but Peter promises that they’ll get the villains back to prison. Afterwards, Miles gets a call from his Uncle Aaron, who just got out of jail after his tenure as The Prowler from the previous game. Telling Miles that he’s reformed and that he wants to change for the better, he asks Miles to go to all of his old hangouts and take the Prowler tech so no one else gets their hands on it. Miles does so and gets some upgrades for himself while he’s at it.
The next day, Peter travels to the Emily-May Foundation and meets up with Harry, who shows him the scientific equivalent to a utopia. Along the way he controls robotic bees, meets Dr. Curtis Connors (aka the former Lizard), learns of a huge particle accelerator, and gene splices some plants before he formally accepts a job at the foundation with his best friend Harry. You get access to EMF Experiments around the city (where you never meet any of the other scientists in person again) and promising to meet up at Coney Island later, Miles tells Peter about tracking the hunters to a nearby bridge, to which Peter tells Miles to focus on his essay and he’ll investigate it. Peter investigates the nearby bridge to learn that they have weird cloaking technology and after taking down a bunch of small outposts, he learns of one of their bigger bases. He sneaks through and learns not only of Scorpion’s death by Kraven in a duel (in found footage) but a giant hitlist against other villains such as Vulture, Mr. Negative and Black Cat. After he discovers giant robot dogs, Peter escapes and messages Miles for help in saving Black Cat. Miles has to skip out on meeting his mom’s potential boyfriend AND writing the college essay to help him out.
Soon however MJ gives Miles a call to let him know that Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Black Cat, needs help and sends him a potential address where she could be at. Scanning the crime scene reveals an ambush between Felicia and some hunters when Miles sees a giant explosion in the background. Going to that crime scene, he scans everything again to reveal that Black Cat was planning on robbing the Sanctum Santorum for a magic wand meant to teleport people to places they wanted to go along with a postcard to Paris. Miles knocks out all the hunters outside and chases Felicia through a series of portals before they team up at a park to beat up the nearby hunters. A cooperative beatdown later and she reveals her motives: she needed to steal the wand to rescue her girlfriend, who was in trouble after being kidnapped and brought to Paris. Miles and Felicia think of Paris while holding the wand and they wish each other well as she teleports across the globe.
Another thing I should mention before I continue is that since Spider-Man 1 and Miles Morales, MJ has come back from Symkaria with Peter and created a book that didn’t sell well. Since then she’s joined up with JJ Jameson at the Bugle, who sold his podcast to buy out his former news place. Throughout the game she struggles with finances and getting an upstart in his career while trying to help/dealing with Peter’s overwhelming Spider-Man obsession. After she writes up to Jameson an article about the Black Cat escapades, Ganke gives Miles a call to head over to Coney Island both for potential date material with Hailey (his sorta love interest from Miles Morales) as well as to check out the former Mysterio’s new attraction. Miles and Ganke head to the attraction but only Miles goes in, and while the whole illusionist thing is cool for a bit reenacting a rhythm minigame, shit escalates really quick. The illusion goes badly and goons try to beat up Miles, only for Miles to tumble out through a portal and get thrown out of the ride. Mysterio (or Quentin Beck), closes it down and after a semi-awkward meet and greet between Miles and Harry Osborn, who arrives with Peter and MJ to have fun, Miles leaves because the ride messed with his head.
The trio have fun around Coney Park and banter with each other, noticing Tombstone working a job with the Go-Karts after getting out of prison. Enjoying the night just the three of them, Peter and MJ have a romantic moment on one of the rides before chaos strikes again. Kraven’s hunters are coming to pick up Tombstone for one of his hunts. Spider-Man and Tombstone fight off the hunters before more lives are put in danger at a nearby roller coaster. However, while trying to save everyone, Harry is revealed to be using black goo to lift nearby debris. Harry figures out quickly that Peter is Spider-Man and after saving everyone, Peter and Harry go to a nearby rooftop. They talk shop about the powers Harry has, and they decide to meet up later at the Emily May Foundation. Later that night, they do exactly that as they test the limits of Harry’s suit cure, before waking up in the morning to Harry’s father Norman. Peter quickly leaves the two alone before heading out and finding a strange spider-bot that has to do with a side quest.
Later on, Black Cat contacts the Spider-Men as a favor for helping her escape and explains that Tombstone might be held by the Hunters at an industrial plant up the road from Coney Island. Peter infiltrates to find him and accidentally gets spotted before Harry arrives in a makeshift black suit to help him save Tombstone, getting sucked into the hero fantasy. After witnessing a suit weakness in the form of loud sound due to metal beams, the two are able to save Tombstone (though only due to accidentally blowing up the plant due to a meltdown) and escape. Reconvening together, Peter and Harry fistbump though something strange happens: a piece of the suit seems to grasp onto Peter and steals his spider sign. They shrug it off and part ways for now and Miles is asked for help by his mom, while also discussing with Peter over the phone the results of the escape and learns himself that Harry has powers.
Miles' help mainly revolves around the theft of goods from a Harlem Musical Heritage museum and opens up another series of side quests but afterwards calls Peter again to call. However, Peter hangs up again due to another call from Harry, the tension growing with Miles feeling ignored by Peter. Switching to Peter, both him and Harry have been waiting for Dr. Connors for a while to help the young Osborn kid with his miracle suit cure, however he’s effectively disappeared. MJ gives a call and is effectively one step ahead, and goes to the doctor’s house only to find hunters looting it. Calling Peter, she tries to give him intel on where Connors is being held before losing her phone. She ends up stowing out in a van and she’s brought to an abandoned zoo in New Jersey. Using her stun gun and stealth techniques, she learns that Vulture was also killed by Kraven and finds the cage that Connors is being held in. After finding the code to the gate (0451, shoutout to Looking Glass Studios baybeeeeeeeey) and attempting to break out Connors, Kraven appears and throws her ass out of the way before injecting the doctor with a serum to turn him back to his former Lizard self. Peter and Harry arrive and a giant brawl ensues, which ends up in Connors turning feral and running off and Peter stabbed in the gut and thrown around by Kraven. Harry goes AWOL and fights Kraven with his powers as MJ rescues Peter, however the suit abandons Harry entirely and crawls its way onto Peter as he’s seemingly dying. Getting a fresh lease on life and a whole lot of rage, Peter goes berserk on nearby hunters who ambush in a violent display of power, wiping out a whole room of them. Kraven watches on in awe, and wants to fight Spider-Man by himself as the three leave. Back in the EMF office, Peter attempts to give Harry back his suit to no avail. Needing to find Connors and fast, they attempt to track the blade that fell off Peter and promise to reconvene soon.
Tracing the blade to a pawn shop in Little Odessa, the pawn shop owner tells Peter that he wants nothing to do with Kraven and that “the fires have been lit”. Swinging nearby he finds several different bonfires which he takes down and computer intel relaying the location of a special party. Infiltrating the party and witnessing several unhinged acts, he infiltrates his office (after distracting his tiger, Dima, with steak that knocks her out) to find chemotherapy medicine and word of a “chapel being prepared”. The symbiote acts on its own here and starts to slowly take over Peter’s being piece by piece, launching a hunter through a window. Peter travels to a nearby church and fights Kraven’s shieldbearer as well as Kraven himself a bit. After a small back and forth, Peter steals the vial of Lizard cure from Kraven’s neck while also getting molested with loud bell noises and escapes. He calls MJ to let her know how everything went and notes that the suit's weakness is loud sound frequencies, before making his way back to the Emily-May Foundation. However, a tracking device is planted on the bottom because of course it is.
The next mission consists of Harry and Peter working together to boost the cure for Dr. Connors involving particle accelerators. Peter continues to slowly act a bit off due to the symbiote’s effects and hunters come down to crash the party. Multiple beatdowns as well as dad jokes later, the cure is secure but the entire building is trashed. Both Harry and Pete get out, and Norman comes out in a helicopter to check in on his son. Miles attempts to call Peter with no answer, but Ganke gives him info on the potential location of Martin Li. This doesn’t really do much except introduce you to another side quest where you chase down robot eagles or something and get info on potential targets of Kraven. However, you do get a call from Harry where you bond over dead parents so that’s pretty solid.
The next mission is the one that plays out during E3, where you play as Peter and you go to Connors house to try to find him and give him the formula. Raiding the place, you find footage of the Lizard transforming again and hunters arrive. Jumping out of the house, Peter wallops the nearby hunter goons before hearing over a nearby radio of the Lizard hunkering down at a nearby fish market. Interrupting Miles’ bonding time with his future girlfriend Hailey at the park, he’s asked by Peter to go to the nearby Harlem Fish Market to find him. There’s also repeated stress over finding Martin Li with Miles over the whole dead dad thing, so keep in mind that’s another plot thread to hold onto. Arriving at the market and experiencing near horror levels of tension, Miles finds shedded lizard skin and meets up with Peter as the former Connors bursts through the floor and out into the wild where they give chase. A whole lot of explosions and close calls with civilians later, Peter and Miles meet up with Kraven and the Lizard getting away. Peter swings off declaring Connors “his” while Miles and Ganke talk about how he’s a bit off. Nothing is as off as declaring Miles a liability in a call to MJ, which is very uncharacteristic of Peter and spirals him even more down the rabbit hole of suit corruption. One thing I like out of this is how Miles lands next to Peter at the end, and Pete replies “He got away from US”. You don’t know if that’s the suit talking or if he’s referring to Miles, and there’s something cool about that little detail.
Crawling through the sewers and arriving at a makeshift lab, you see whiteboard drawings of space stuff hinting at the symbiote’s alien origins before finding a small piece of meteorite that the suit REALLY wants. The Lizard pops up however, and after multiple fights and a chase through New York City back into the sewers again before a pop in the gums later and Connors is back to his old self. However, Peter is really becoming a bastard here as his usual playful taunts and cries of trying to help lead to personal insults against Connors, talking about how he shamed his family and how pathetic he is. The suit is corrupting Peter into the worst version of himself, and Connors explains the origins of the suit: an asteroid landed years ago and the resulting goo latched onto Curt, who was on a mission for Oscorp and the local corporate security squad. His arm gets shot off, and after the flashback is done, Peter realizes he’s wearing an alien being. Urging him to take it off, Peter staunchly refuses and after throwing Connor’s phone disappears into the night.
Calling MJ, Peter goes full dick as he dismisses the destruction caused by the earlier chase as well as shrugging off concerns about the alien latched to him. MJ wants him to read her new article and an argument sort of occurs before she hangs up. Confused but giving space, he later heads back and falls asleep almost immediately without reading the article before hunters show up to capture Pete. Another Mary Jane stealth sequence arrives, and Peter disappears, not intently controlled by the alien that’s basically wearing Peter at this point. This is probably hands down one of the scarier missions in the game, mainly because while you sneak through construction sites you never know when the symbiote will pop up and if they’ll try to go after you. Later on, MJ calls Miles and asks for help getting the symbiote off. Fighting off numerous goons, MJ has Miles trap her in the tunnel that Symbiote Peter ran into so that the Hunters don’t get him. Miles does so successfully and fights a bunch off, however a successful kidnap attempt knocks Miles out and he’s loaded on a helicopter. Meanwhile, MJ finds the Symbiote and he’s knocked out by the sound of a power drill. She decides to wake him up with the stun gun, however it’s a bad idea and the alien suit wearing Peter decides to chase her down and try to kill her. She escapes and after a strange dream involving a meteorite, Peter wakes up on a park bench wondering how he got there but feeling pretty damn good.
Begging for the suit back due to the limited time he has and seeing a hit piece by MJ on Spider-Man’s recent behavior, Peter confronts the two at the Oscorp Penthouse. Realizing Peter doesn’t remember anything, she prepares the stun gun but basically he flips both of them off before checking on Norman Osborn, whose efforts in preparing another cure for Harry fails. He thanks Peter for being Harry’s friend and seeing this makes Harry mad at the apparent betrayal. Miles wakes up in one of Kraven’s prisons and makes his way through numerous goons before he makes his way to an arena where Martin Li is currently. Kraven wants the two to duke it out and after Miles vents his frustrations on how Martin is a real bastard. The fight leads to Martin overpowering Miles and entering his mind and taking him apart with his insecurities. However, Miles reverses it and pulls them both out of the dreamstate after the revelation of who Miles is is made. Deciding in the moment to do the right thing instead of killing Li, Miles throws him to the roof and tells him to get the attention of the other Spider-Man.
In order to do that, Martin Li goes full Mr. Negative near the FEAST Shelter, and Peter shows up to confront him. In a bit of foreshadowing, the suit attempts to attack Li but backs away due to the sheer power he has. He gives Peter the location of Miles to pay off the debt of saving him, and Peter races off to find Kraven. On the way, he goes berzerk mentally about all of his problems like losing his home and MJ’s hit piece, and the voice in the suit tells him to kill Kraven. Fighting his way through the abandoned mansion and escapes a trap from Kraven, before brutally fighting him inside and then later outside of the mansion. Violence continually erupts as Kraven attempts to use a bell to weaken Peter but he’s overwhelmed by the Symbiote. Miles escapes from his trap and attempts to talk sense into Pete to stop him from killing Kraven, but ends up having to beat the sense into him before cheering Peter on to fight against the suit after ringing the bell. The struggle is real, and you have to tap Square to really force the alien suit off of Peter. After trapping the alien in a special science tube, the two Spider-Men make amends for everything that happened and proceed with the plan to destroy the alien once and for all as Kraven disappears again.
Nothing goes as planned however, as his attempt to bring the alien back to Oscorp Tower results in Harry cracking the tube and possessing the alien once again. In a staunchly powerful display, Harry turns into Venom and smacks Peter out of the room. His father attempts to get the suit off of him with the security guards but things go poorly for them and fun for us. In a way to differentiate the gameplay I must say, I didn’t expect the ability to PLAY as Venom but goddamn is it fun. Venom rips and tears his way through Oscorp before escaping and jumping out of the building. Kraven and the hunters set up a trap in Times Square where a lethal battle ensues before Kraven, now satisfied with his final hunt, tells Venom to kill him. He does just as asked before turning back to Harry who is horrified at himself. Running to the gravestone of his mother, the alien symbiote manipulates him by pretending to be his mom and telling him to “Heal the World”, the tagline for the Emily-May Foundation. However, Venom’s version of that is to Symbioteify everyone of course.
New York is now under full DEFCON level Avengers threat shit, but with no one in sight it’s up to the Spider-Men to save the day again. Miles uses his music engineering skills to recreate a frequency to destroy the alien goo while Peter follows the tracker on Harry’s ID to find a symbiote nest where he’s turned normal civilians into creatures. They later find Venom bringing a bunch of civilians into a subway nest and after blowing it up with a noise bomb, they rescue Miles’ mom and Ganke, who were trapped after attempting to find Miles. Peter attempts to call MJ and she gets a call from JJ, loving her hit piece against Spider-Man. Someone knocks on the door and while Peter tells her to stay away from Harry, Harry shows up right at her front door. Going to rescue MJ, Peter and Harry confront each other which ends in Mary being turned to a symbiote named Scream after Peter calls the alien suit “a thing” (that “We are Venom drop is pheww so good). A fight between Peter and Scream leads to Peter profusely apologizing to MJ and telling her to fight off the negative emotions, and later she rips it off of her. They embrace and apologize to each other, with Peter promising to do better for her. JJ calls her and she tells him to fuck off without curse words and tells Peter that Harry is trying to go after a space rock. Miles later hits Peter up and tells him he’s at City Hall and that he needs his help and Pete races off to help Miles.
Attempting to save civilians at City Hall results in Peter being knocked out by a heavy Symbiote goon and transformed by tendrils again. Before Miles and Peter can get overwhelmed, Mr. Negative appears and protects the both. Proposing a temporary alliance out of respect and remorse for his previous actions, Li and Miles go into Peter’s memories with his powers and explore Pete’s past and motives. Apparently with no surprise as to Peter’s identity as Spider-Man, the two movie through hallucinations of The Raft and Aunt May’s house before Li decides to transfer all of his powers into the Symbiote to eliminate it. Realizing this may be the end, the two make peace: Miles won’t forgive but won’t carry the hatred for Li anymore. They purge the symbiote and comfort dream Pete over Aunt May’s death bed before waking up in the real world, having completed this story arc as well as giving Peter the Anti-Venom suit. Joking how he’s never reformed his greatest villain but that Miles has as Li gives himself to the police, there’s a bit of a “after this, you’re Spider-Man” moment I really appreciate before MJ calls with news: she’s given her notice to her landlord and is moving in with Peter.
Dr. Connors also calls, telling him to get to the sewer labs immediately. Venom is there and after confronting Norman about his son’s state of health, he steals the space rock. Attempting to chase after, Connors tells Pete that he’ll probably have to kill Harry to get rid of the alien once and for all, while Norman pleads for Spider-Man to save his son. Back on the surface, it looks like Web of Shadows 2 as the entire city is COVERED in gooey tendrils in a hella cool oppressive atmosphere. The last two missions consist of the Spider-Men attempting to clean up the city but the first of the two focuses mostly on Miles. After he almost gets possessed by tendrils himself, he goes through mental mind games before he uses his bioelectricity to escape, seeing visions of the space rock AND Hailey being attacked. He tells Pete that the rock is under the Harlem Subway Station but to wait up as he has to save Hailey. Peter presses on anyway and Miles saves Hailey before asking her out. Fighting the symbiote goons and attempting to save Harry, Pete is almost overpowered and turned once again before Miles saves him from Venom with the bioelectricity before they escape. MJ calls and tells the two that they need to formulate a plan to get rid of the space rock once and for all.
The final mission culminates with them getting together so that Peter will distract Harry/Venom and lure him away, and Miles will distract the symbiote soldiers while MJ will go to get the rock. The last sequence with MJ in the game sees her getting a sonic boost attached to her stun gun, and she shoots her way to steal the rock. Barely escaping with her life with Miles, it switches over to Peter fighting Venom at their old high school together, which is levitated into the air. Back and forth accusations arise and the fight finishes off with Venom sensing the meteorite being stolen and growing fucking wings! Miles and MJ make it to the EMF building for the second phase: overloading the rock with the Particle Accelerator/Hadron Collider thing he’s got going on. Miles ends up fighting Venom as Pete and MJ try to figure out the accelerator, all while fighting off more symbiotes and stealing the rock from each other. Eventually after some crazy QTEs and fighting in mid-air, Harry comes to his senses finally and asks Pete to kill him. Finally, the accelerator works and Venom is purged from the city, however Harry is basically dead. Using his bioelectricity, Miles brings him back to life but he’s barely clinging on as Norman and his team bring him out for special medical treatment, blaming Spider-Man for his near death. Even when it’s just MJ and Peter, he’s in full rage and calls someone to tell them to “bring out G-Serum”.
There’s some final scenes as well as a post credits one: MJ starts a podcast about keeping hope in NYC, with parallels to COVID; Pete and MJ have Miles, Ganke, Rios (Mile’s mom in case I forgot the mention) and Hailey to have pancakes and there’s an EMF setup in the garage to continue the “Save the World” mission. An alert on the Spider-Man app goes off, but Pete tells Miles to continue on his own as he’s semi-retiring for now so he’ll be the only Spider-Man so he and MJ can make use of their “second chance” together. The two post credits scenes involve Norman Osborn asking his old nemesis Otto Octavius for help but getting brutally rebuffed, and Otto mentions how he is planning “The Final Chapter”. Meanwhile Miles and Hailey are introduced to the new stepdad, Albert Moon, by his mother and also meets his new potential stepsister, Cindy Moon (aka Silk).
How do I feel about the story? I liked it a lot! It was pretty cool, it hit all the story beats well and I generally don’t have much in the way of complaints. I personally feel like it hits a bit less hard than the first one and even Miles Morales emotionally persay, but it more than makes up for it in bombastic spectacle. If you wanted more action and setpieces in the previous games then you’ll get your setpieces now. A lot of people were disappointed in this game, but honestly most sequels are usually a bit on the lower end side as some things tend to be upgraded while others are lost in translation. I think the game however makes use of everything pretty well, especially on it’s themes. The main recurring themes are the usual like “revenge takes you down a bad path” with Miles and “don’t overlook your personal relationships and take them for granted” like MJ, but I think the game is definitely built on “Second Chances” and reformation. A lot of the villains in this game have moved on or try to be better, from Mysterio and Tombstone to Martin Li themselves and they end up living by the end of the game. Most of the other villains who were still alive (like Vulture, Scorpion, Shocker (who also died by Kraven’s hand)) are dead due to their criminal activities making them a target. Pete and MJ’s relationship here continues on their second chance after getting together in the first game, Pete gets a second chance to redeem himself after escaping the suit. There’s a whole lot of fucking “Two” symbolism and it doesn’t escape my grasp and is something I enjoy. It makes me wonder what the plan is for the third one but nonetheless, it’s pretty cool shit if not obvious. There’s also the “Be Greater Together” tagline, not only continuing the togetherness of Two but also continuing the theme of the first game with teamwork being the catalyst of what makes every relationship survive. All of that shit is good, however, there’s only one more thing that I want to kind of trash and then I’ll move onto gameplay.
My opinion on Kraven as a main villain is as follows: I like him as a threat. The whole hunting the black symbiote thing goes back to the comics even, but in this game why does he need a whole ass organization of hunters behind him? He’s one of the greatest hunters of all time? Maybe I should just shut up, but I feel as if the game would’ve been better with him as an omnipresent serial killer threat, with the other gangs and villains going nuts out of fear due to him striking sheer terror in the city. That would’ve been my preference, but other than the organization thing I think he’s a pretty cool villain and I can’t complain about that whole bit.
The gameplay for the most part is similar to the first game: you swing through New York City as Spider-Man, beat up criminals of various groups, get collectibles and do side-quests all while looking cool as hell and throwing out quips. See, what I can tell you about this though is that the game escalates everything that the previous two games did, and makes it feel even better than the original two. In fact, it all starts with the fact that you can play as BOTH Miles Morales AND Peter Parker, both with their own styles of fighting (or at least attack animations) and exclusive dialogue during side-quests. Let’s take one of the side missions, where you meet up with Howard the Pigeon guy from the first Spider-Man game. If you play as Miles like I did, he has his own dialogue where he talks to Howard and it’s sad, but if you play as Peter when you’re with Howard then the dialogue is even more emotional due to Peter’s tone and his experiences helping the old man in the first game. In fact let me just say, the level of detail in this is fucking insane. Not only does it account for which Spider-Man you’re playing as, but it could also account for the fact (potentially, untested on my end) that if you play as Peter the dialogue could change according to if you’re wearing the Symbiote suit or not. Nothing is ever so present as if you were to go to the gravestones of both Aunt May/Uncle Ben as well as Jefferson Davis, whom each Spider-Man has different dialogue for (not that much, and I don’t think there’s anything for Jefferson while wearing the symbiote but who knows). Switching feels seamless between the both of them, and reminds me of GTA V (though in this case both Spider-Men spawn close to each other). A part of me is kind of mixed on this, and I wish there was an option to spawn far away between the both (say switching to Miles who's fighting off crime before switching to Peter whose eating pizza and talking to a guy) but at the same time these are such non issues that who cares, it’s for convenience sake so you can spawn close to whatever you wanted to do as the other Spider-Man.
They also play differently as well: Miles plays basically the same as in his spin-off game but with a little bit more fluidity as far as I’m aware. You’ll have your special venom (in the context of this game, that always gets me confused to be honest) abilities where you can punch people out with your Venom Punch and such. These abilities start out as blue before a story event overcharges Miles and gives him Yellow abilities, which are powerful as hell and feel great in the midst of combat. I don’t really have much in the way of differences between Miles Morales and this game because both games felt great, nor am I sure there is any but he feels great to play and as you unlock your abilities overtime, Miles grows into his own character as Spider-Man at the end of story.
Peter on the other hand changes the most throughout the entire story and that’s due to the obvious: the Symbiote Suit. At first he fights with his usual arsenal: the metal spider-legs he has coming out of his back and such. They fight fine, with the usual stock abilities of a charged punch (or charge attack) and knocking people into the air for some nice juggling. However, after he loses against Kraven at the zoo, he’s bonded with the black suit and that’s when you get your taste of power. Playing with this is how Peter would feel, and in a meta sense Insomniac did a fantastic job giving you the ultimate power fantasy between how hard your punches hit, your special abilites like the Venom Blast clearing the room to the rage mode where Parker just knocks everyone the fuck out in a punch or two. You’ll have the Black Suit for a while until you take it off, after which you’ll get the Anti-Venom suit which is the same thing a bit later so don’t worry if you miss the Symbiote attack trophies because you’ll still have the suit regardless. This is about as much as I can give for nuance in terms of combat, I’m not a fighting expert nor do I know weaknesses and such because they both feel the same for the most part, just with different abilities and quips and I’m not going to complain about it because it feels good.
Now let me address the giant fucking black suited elephant in the room: playing as Venom. By god, it’s so fucking cool and I fanboyed the fuck out. It’s very much a limited moveset and can kind of feel a bit sluggish sometimes due to this and the big stature but oh shit do you feel like a monster playing as Venom. You’ll only get two set pieces to play as him, but wiping out goons and tossing them around, Insomniac made a hell of a choice doing this. Not only does it feel great (minus traversing heights a bit) but it sets a sort of baseline for a potential Venom game that the developers hinted at “providing the fans want it”. The answer is no shit, the fans want it and I want it bad. Take my money dude, I want to eat people and shit out their brains as this kooky fuck in the living suit.
The other elephant (or elephants) in the room is playing as Mary Jane/different side quest changes. Mary Jane’s playtimes are way more fun and overpowered this time, as was intended by the director. For the most part, you’ll have your stealth sequences but it mostly revolves around throwing rocks and using the stun gun. Would I want to play as Mary Jane in her own title with these mechanics? Eh, but they improved on the complaints of the OG and made you feel good doing it all the same. You’ll have to watch out for patrols but stunning them and outthinking the AI, while simple, is a fun time and when it gets to the later portion of the game it feels even better with the abilities to shoot out of this stun gun with the web shooters. They’re short, they don’t get too frustrating and work for the most part. Other times you’ll switch perspectives involve maybe playing as Hailey Cooper (where you hear nothing but take part in graffiti tagging) or maybe Peter Parker riding a bike. They don’t feel as great but vary the gameplay enough to where I didn’t mind any of it either.
Combat overall, while I don’t remember every nook and cranny from the first game feels just as great as the older games did PLUS more. You’ll switch between your special abilities and gadgets, racking up all sorts of combos and choosing to either go stealth or go loud and it all feels amazing. You can still choose between instant takedowns or health boosts and do all of the fun shit and I don’t know how to expand upon it anymore other than it feels amazing. The only other addition I can think of honesty is the ability to parry, which I THINK is new to this game. Certain enemies you can’t attack any other way other than to doge, and parrying requires you to tap L1 twice while an enemies attack is in the red before wailing with powerful punches.
Navigation feels more fantastic then the last game, when I thought they couldn’t improve it even more. My main gripe in this game is how you have to kind of work your way up to get certain abilities back from the past games like using launch points again. However even with that in mind, you’ll get all of these abilities back and THEN some more. One of these is the Web Gliders; they do exactly what they state and whereas I never exactly expected them to pop up in a Spider-Man game, I can’t imagine a future where they don’t appear at all to be honest. They feel fucking amazing, from the momentum you can gain from moving up and down through the wind, to catching wind tunnels that make traversal through New York fun. Other ways you can gain speed is through both specified launchers donated by the Emily-May foundation on rooftops or (something I learned from Youtube) if you have the Web Line you can shoot it between two different buildings and then launch yourself from there.
Fast Travel is something that I used a little bit trying to get all the side objectives but for the most part it’s fun as hell swinging and you don’t really need to use it unless you’re starving for time in the real world. It’s seamless as hell to transition on the Playstation 5, though you’ll only unlock fast travel for certain districts by beating side missions and solving certain crimes. If you were to use Fast Travel then I wouldn’t blame you because the city is a lot bigger now. It’s not just Manhattan, it’s also Brooklyn, Coney Island and Queens on the right side of the map. They’re all decently sized though can be traversed in a smaller amount of time then Manhattan due to the scale of the buildings themselves. One thing that I will say is kind of odd about this is just the invisible walls/game boundaries” thing if you go too far right. This isn’t Insomniac’s fault, I mean you can only have so much scope and realistically the game has a lot going for it already due to geographical locations in real life, but it feels weird having “Can’t go past this point” when you can see the other side so closely.
However speaking of fighting crimes, everything varies depending on how far in the story you are. The most common crimes you’ll be seeing are Hunter crimes and Cult of the Flame crimes but you’ll encounter regular goons as well as Symbiote possessed civilians later in the story. One thing that’s cool as hell when fighting goons is the ability to accidentally run into other heroes. Now these other heroes mainly include Miles/Peter depending on who you play as but you can also run into Wraith (aka Yuri) from the previous games as well as a new one depending on story progress: Harry himself with his makeshift hero suit. They all have their own moveset and Harry disappears once the suit jumps to Peter, but it’s cool to see other heroes fighting in the wild and teaming up to do tag team takedowns. Each one has their own set of interactions with each other at the end too, like Peter and Miles doing the Spider-Man pointing meme at each other, or Peter going for a fist bump with Yuri only to get declined or Miles and Harry talking about the new team name. All of this just escalates the standards for an open world superhero game and I hope in future games I’ll see as an example perhaps Miles fighting Ultron goons with the Incredible Hulk. I don’t know, just an example but it would be pretty cool!
The last thing I want to point out at least in terms of crime structure is that for the most part trophy wise it’s required to get 100 percent of all districts in order to get the platinum. However, luckily you’re not required to get all the bonus objectives with each individual crime type because that shit was a pain in the ass before. It’s mostly boiled down to unlocking special unlockable tokens, skill points or fast travel. The side quests in this game for the most part are fantastic minus a few different things here. You’ll have your combat oriented stuff, your specific story quests and they’re great though if I disliked any of them the most I would say it’s the Mysterio quests. This isn’t for the story structure but some of them include “don’t get hit once” or they’ll be the one up in Harlem where you have to knock out thirty people in under a minute which actually induced rage and made me lower the enemy difficulty just so I could beat this one side quest. It feels kind of unfair in all honesty, and I would’ve rather either had an extra minute or a different structuring of the map or something but I don’t know, maybe it’s just a skill issue. Other ones include racing behind flying metal birds to collect data, finding Spider-Bots (with a canceled Across the Spider-Verse cameo at the finish line) puzzle sequences with gene splicing that are an improvement to the ones in the first game, fighting off Cletus Kassady and his flame cult (with an ending that makes me hyped for the next game) to protecting pockets of fleshes armed with sonic bombs from Symbiotes to get rid of nests. It’s varied and whilst not as memorable as the original game’s side quests, do a good job and make their own unique spin. Some of them are exclusive to certain Spider-Men only, such as again gene splicing with Peter or finding Prowler stashes with Miles, but each add their own bit of lore building or community lessons to the world and are all around a good time.
As for the final paragraph in the gaming section, I’m just going to point out that the level of detail here is insane. You’ll have your easter eggs like playing Miles and doing the Wakanda Forever pose in front of the Wakandan Embassy, interacting with the graves or the special award trophy with Phin at the church from the end of Miles Morales. But there are so many secret interactions (like one involving a porta potty and a crane) and easter eggs around the entire game that it’s amazing and brings me into the lore of this Marvel universe they got even more. I don’t have all the answers (neither did Sway) as to how many and what they are but you could look up all the Easter Eggs on Youtube and there still won’t be enough. I’ll say while I didn’t go too much into accessibility options other than to get one Mysterio side mission done quicker and adding the ability to get hurt web swinging for a trophy but I’m glad these options exist for those who need it because everyone deserves to play this game. Also keep in mind I played it on launch, so it was a bit buggy here and there where I’d have to replay from checkpoint or something but for the most part the game ran fine. If I’m missing anything in terms of gameplay, feel free to let me know as I tried to cover as much as I can but I feel I missed so much nuance to the gameplay because it’s so expansive that it would take me more than a day to write it all down for this one section.
The atmosphere surrounding the game is pretty cool as the city evolves in the story. Certain locations towards the beginning will still be covered in sand due to Sandman’s attack, while the remains of other areas such as destroyed buildings due to story events appear throughout. The most change you’ll find is probably during the end with the Symbiote invasion. For all intents and purposes, this is a Symbiote apocalypse and you’ll find slime and goo connecting through the buildings and looking like a worse version of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. Now that’s amazing, though I also kind of felt playing the game that this invasion didn’t exactly have the “oomph” that the former game did in terms of atmosphere, especially considering once you beat the game it’s mostly all gone, which is great but at the same time doesn’t always hit as much as I wanted it to. In fact, the game kind of straddles the line between a dark and depressing atmosphere and one filled with more hope than we have in the current modern day. While playing with the Symbiote, you’ll experience Peter change to a more nasty version of himself, losing himself to the darkness. All the while, there’s still a lot of talk about advanced science, helping the community, saving people’s lives and such. On one hand, the hope and community stuff feels really nice and wholesome, though somewhat unrealistic to me (though maybe I’m just a depressed piece of shit I don’t know), like an idealized version of what the world SHOULD be. I love it, but it does kind of contrast a bit with how dark things get towards the end though I guess that’s the whole point: always trying to find hope in the darkness, trying to build a better world together no matter what, to always keep fighting and redeeming yourself to become a better person (in the case of multiple Spider-Man villains who pop up in the story). I’m somewhat mixed on the delivery but I love the thematic message and the atmosphere surrounding it and again, the game was very helpful with my anxiety personally, at least distracting me temporarily for a week so I’ll give it a plus.
Graphics wise the game looks fucking phenomenal and I can’t complain. While a part of me will always be iffy about the new Peter Parker reskin, his appearance in the game makes him look a lot better and I’ve kind of settled into his new look now. As for everyone else, everyone looks like a newer glossed up version of the PS4/Remastered games and really proves the PS5’s graphical capabilities. It also continues the seamlessness of the portal technology from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, at least in one instance where Miles is chasing down Black Cat throughout the story and she throws portals across the place. How do they do that technology? I don’t know but it looks cool! Regardless however, I was showing my Mom this game a bit, and while it’s easy to impress older people who don’t play video games with newer stuff because of the “lifelike capabilities”, there were times where I was just as impressed as my mother was just looking at the game. I don’t have much else to add except everything’s good and vibrant, though shoutout to the lights on Coney Island for looking amazing.
As for the audio design, this is probably where I’ll personally have the least amount to say. The soundtrack is either the usual bombastic horns and strings sound that’s in almost every Spider-Man game or the more interesting hip hop-like sounds of Miles Morales (though shoutout to the Wu-Tang Clan shoutout in the game, Wu Tang for life baby!) that play in the background. All of it is to say good, nothing that I would really write home or bump in the whip per say but it’s still good and adds to the ambience of it all. Other than the soundtrack stuff, the most you’ll hear in the city is the Danikast (which can be a little bit too optimistic for me but that’s the nature of the story so I won’t take it personally) or the hilarious JJ Jameson, who is so unhinged in his nature that he’s pretty hilarious, even if some of the things he says can kind of make sense even if it’s taken way out of context and bastardized to fit his own anti-Spider-Man narrative. What I can say is that I did read a story where, to add civilian sounds to the city, they got a bunch of random people to walk in a circle and talk into a mic during capture (I’ll link the article) and I’ll say that I found that shit to be hilarious. You’ll also hear bits and pieces of audio (mostly the symbiote) talking through the controller at times though I don’t remember hearing much of anything coming from the controller that much. Voice acting as usual is great as always between Yuri Lowenthal and Laura Bailey as Peter Parker and Mary Jane, or Nadji Jeter as Miles Morales. Newcomers like Graham Phillips do a good job as Harry (though apparently it’s a different voice actor from Spider-Man’s greenhouse side quests), but I’m going to just sit here and point out the MVP: Tony Todd. I fucking love him in everything he does and while he voices the Symbiote Venom in this game and does a great job, my only complaint is that I wish there were MORE of him. All I want is more Tony Todd, and if they do that Venom spin-off game I keep hearing about then I want Tony Todd to please dear god come back I love that dude he’s awesome!
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is an expansion to an already fantastic formula, and one that I would urge everyone to try even if they aren’t into the Superhero genre much. Whilst it may not hit the emotional high points like the ending of Marvel’s Spider-Man did, the sequel more than makes up for it in bombastic action and spectacle, expanded travel systems, more locations, the fucking black suit; I mean the game is fucking fire. I could probably safely say that this is my favorite game that I’ve experienced on the Playstation 5 thus far, and that includes God of War: Ragnarok (which was my favorite though I have issues with certain gameplay aspects, will go into one day), Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West and Astro’s Playroom. Honestly, I’m curious as to the future that Insomniac will take from here on out though. I’ll say that I’m super excited for Marvel’s Wolverine, which is rumored to have God of War 2018/Ragnarok styled gameplay (though I pray it doesn’t copy the same gear system with all the numbered UI bullshit), the rumors on a potential Venom game (which I would love a fleshed out system of this game and Ultimate Spider-Man), and the craving for a Hulk and a Punisher game makes me hungry to no end.
HOWEVER, I also kind of hope they don’t just become the Marvel guys ya know? I’d love for them to work on bringing their old games to PC like the entire Ratchet & Clank series or again, Resistance. While not always the greatest with quality, Resistance 3 felt like it was only getting to where it needed to go and then it flopped so I wouldn’t mind seeing more to that. A lot of people want Sunset Overdrive too and while I didn’t care for that game, I feel bad for the people who want it because that was a Microsoft game owned by a now Sony company so that’ll be a no-go. I guess my main point is, I hope they do more than just Marvel games, I hope they remaster their old games and work on some other projects too when they can. However, as for the Marvel train I’m interested in where they end up going, and if they make DLC for this game akin to The City Never Sleeps on Spider-Man 1, then you bet your ass I’m going back to play this. Hell, I’ll probably end up doing that anyways because there’s a Playstation Stars collectible for getting the Platinum trophy and I already have it so why not hop on and goof around with some combat. As for potential port stuff, let’s be real, this game will get a port to PC really soon, and I’m excited for PC players to finally get a hold of this game as well. Just prepare a lot of Gigabytes because Jesus H this shit was like 130 GB overall and that was within the first few days of downloading it to my PS5.
Links:
https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/10/19/insomniac-games-marvels-spiderman-2-ps5-tech-interview/
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MarvelsSpiderMan2
https://read.marvel.com/#/book/63125 (Spider-Man 2 tie-in comic)
https://www.gamesradar.com/marvels-spider-man-2-developer-created-the-sounds-of-new-york-city-by-getting-a-bunch-of-people-to-talk-and-walk-around-in-circles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_2_(2023_video_game)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YoUSP__V9vM (Secrets and Easter Eggs)
When I played the game for the first time, what I can tell you is this: I felt a combination of “oh Jesus it’s been a while since I played Miles Morales, what the hell am I doing again?” and “this shit’s pretty damn fun!”. Now for me, I’ll be straight up these past couple of months I haven’t been doing great, but what I can say is that this game and my journey to get the platinum trophy for me has been very good at relieving my anxiety, or at least provided a great distraction while I try to navigate the perils of finding my own apartment and not trying to go bankrupt. Fun shit. Regardless, we all know the answer of the ultimate question: Is the game good? No shit, and I’m going to spend the next however many paragraphs I please telling you my thoughts on it, so SPOILERS AHEAD.
The game begins with Miles Morales in school, waiting on a substitute teacher to come in and teach the class. This substitute teacher is Peter Parker, his mentor in being a Spider-Man, and they pretend like they don’t know the other person at all. However, shit gets upended and Sandman goes ballistic (somehow breaking the lore with the vial from the first game, which the developers forgot about admittedly but said screw it) and the two make various excuses to get dressed and take down Sandman. This culminates in being thrown through multiple buildings in a half and hour or so prologue that involves taking him down, and settling through the aftermath with rescuing civilians from the disaster with the help of Ganke and the Spider-Man app from Miles Morales (including JJ Jameson first out of two on screen appearances in game). However, when each of them get back from their expedition, Peter is fired due to “abandoning the students”, and unable to explain what his side gig is, he walks off sad. Meanwhile, a cutscene shows a hunt commencing, and a man thinking that he’s about to get the jump on his target. However, he gets his booty hole curb stomped by a big russian man in cheetah print, the man being Kraven the Hunter. One of his men tells him about a bunch of super powered individuals living in New York City and wanting to experience something far greater, Kraven prepares to depart.
Regardless, he goes back home to his old Aunt May’s house in Queens and meets with Mary Jane. There’s a whole romantic tension thing with her potentially moving in with him, the bills not being paid due to Spider-Man antics and the like that will be built upon much later in the game but for now, you get treated to a surprise of Harry Osborn. Yes he’s back from his hidden wall treatment, and Harry convinces Peter to help him in his old antics of breaking into their old high school like they did years ago. After reliving old memories (involving a Rick Astley rendition and Norman arriving in millionaire style to break the news of his mother’s death) and gaining new ones, Harry surprises Peter with a badge ID, one to the Emily-May Foundation. Harry establishes him as a co-founder and tells him to come by the lab the next day. Meanwhile, Kraven’s capture of Sandman has failed, and the Big K tells his boys to plan a jailbreak from The Raft instead. There’s also a bit of a subplot involving Miles working on his college essay and struggling to figure out what to put down, while also dealing with his Spider-Man activities and his mother Rio starting to date again.
Soon, the two Spider-Man prepare to protect a prisoner transfer from The Raft, with Scorpion and another prisoner being moved due to Sandman’s antics. The other man is Martin Li (aka Mr. Negative from the first game), and his tie-in to the story and Mile’s anger will also build up and tie in later on. However, predictably, a prison break occurs from a group of mysterious hunters and after a bunch of beatdowns, the boat is nearly sunk into the river. Miles goes inside to save people, however he’s ambushed and poisoned by Scorpion. Scorpion escapes, and Miles experiences freaky visions as well as an electrocution that overcharges his Venom (bioelectricity abilities, not the symbiote) to an umph degree after he attempts to save Martin Li (though hesitant due to him killing Mile’s dad). A bunch of fighting, explosions and saving civilians from near death later and with Scorpion presumed captured, Miles fights to stop Martin’s kidnapping. However, Miles' anger almost gets the better of him in the choice between saving civilians and getting Martin Li back but he chooses to save the civilians. Kraven gets away with the villains, but Peter promises that they’ll get the villains back to prison. Afterwards, Miles gets a call from his Uncle Aaron, who just got out of jail after his tenure as The Prowler from the previous game. Telling Miles that he’s reformed and that he wants to change for the better, he asks Miles to go to all of his old hangouts and take the Prowler tech so no one else gets their hands on it. Miles does so and gets some upgrades for himself while he’s at it.
The next day, Peter travels to the Emily-May Foundation and meets up with Harry, who shows him the scientific equivalent to a utopia. Along the way he controls robotic bees, meets Dr. Curtis Connors (aka the former Lizard), learns of a huge particle accelerator, and gene splices some plants before he formally accepts a job at the foundation with his best friend Harry. You get access to EMF Experiments around the city (where you never meet any of the other scientists in person again) and promising to meet up at Coney Island later, Miles tells Peter about tracking the hunters to a nearby bridge, to which Peter tells Miles to focus on his essay and he’ll investigate it. Peter investigates the nearby bridge to learn that they have weird cloaking technology and after taking down a bunch of small outposts, he learns of one of their bigger bases. He sneaks through and learns not only of Scorpion’s death by Kraven in a duel (in found footage) but a giant hitlist against other villains such as Vulture, Mr. Negative and Black Cat. After he discovers giant robot dogs, Peter escapes and messages Miles for help in saving Black Cat. Miles has to skip out on meeting his mom’s potential boyfriend AND writing the college essay to help him out.
Soon however MJ gives Miles a call to let him know that Peter’s ex-girlfriend, Black Cat, needs help and sends him a potential address where she could be at. Scanning the crime scene reveals an ambush between Felicia and some hunters when Miles sees a giant explosion in the background. Going to that crime scene, he scans everything again to reveal that Black Cat was planning on robbing the Sanctum Santorum for a magic wand meant to teleport people to places they wanted to go along with a postcard to Paris. Miles knocks out all the hunters outside and chases Felicia through a series of portals before they team up at a park to beat up the nearby hunters. A cooperative beatdown later and she reveals her motives: she needed to steal the wand to rescue her girlfriend, who was in trouble after being kidnapped and brought to Paris. Miles and Felicia think of Paris while holding the wand and they wish each other well as she teleports across the globe.
Another thing I should mention before I continue is that since Spider-Man 1 and Miles Morales, MJ has come back from Symkaria with Peter and created a book that didn’t sell well. Since then she’s joined up with JJ Jameson at the Bugle, who sold his podcast to buy out his former news place. Throughout the game she struggles with finances and getting an upstart in his career while trying to help/dealing with Peter’s overwhelming Spider-Man obsession. After she writes up to Jameson an article about the Black Cat escapades, Ganke gives Miles a call to head over to Coney Island both for potential date material with Hailey (his sorta love interest from Miles Morales) as well as to check out the former Mysterio’s new attraction. Miles and Ganke head to the attraction but only Miles goes in, and while the whole illusionist thing is cool for a bit reenacting a rhythm minigame, shit escalates really quick. The illusion goes badly and goons try to beat up Miles, only for Miles to tumble out through a portal and get thrown out of the ride. Mysterio (or Quentin Beck), closes it down and after a semi-awkward meet and greet between Miles and Harry Osborn, who arrives with Peter and MJ to have fun, Miles leaves because the ride messed with his head.
The trio have fun around Coney Park and banter with each other, noticing Tombstone working a job with the Go-Karts after getting out of prison. Enjoying the night just the three of them, Peter and MJ have a romantic moment on one of the rides before chaos strikes again. Kraven’s hunters are coming to pick up Tombstone for one of his hunts. Spider-Man and Tombstone fight off the hunters before more lives are put in danger at a nearby roller coaster. However, while trying to save everyone, Harry is revealed to be using black goo to lift nearby debris. Harry figures out quickly that Peter is Spider-Man and after saving everyone, Peter and Harry go to a nearby rooftop. They talk shop about the powers Harry has, and they decide to meet up later at the Emily May Foundation. Later that night, they do exactly that as they test the limits of Harry’s suit cure, before waking up in the morning to Harry’s father Norman. Peter quickly leaves the two alone before heading out and finding a strange spider-bot that has to do with a side quest.
Later on, Black Cat contacts the Spider-Men as a favor for helping her escape and explains that Tombstone might be held by the Hunters at an industrial plant up the road from Coney Island. Peter infiltrates to find him and accidentally gets spotted before Harry arrives in a makeshift black suit to help him save Tombstone, getting sucked into the hero fantasy. After witnessing a suit weakness in the form of loud sound due to metal beams, the two are able to save Tombstone (though only due to accidentally blowing up the plant due to a meltdown) and escape. Reconvening together, Peter and Harry fistbump though something strange happens: a piece of the suit seems to grasp onto Peter and steals his spider sign. They shrug it off and part ways for now and Miles is asked for help by his mom, while also discussing with Peter over the phone the results of the escape and learns himself that Harry has powers.
Miles' help mainly revolves around the theft of goods from a Harlem Musical Heritage museum and opens up another series of side quests but afterwards calls Peter again to call. However, Peter hangs up again due to another call from Harry, the tension growing with Miles feeling ignored by Peter. Switching to Peter, both him and Harry have been waiting for Dr. Connors for a while to help the young Osborn kid with his miracle suit cure, however he’s effectively disappeared. MJ gives a call and is effectively one step ahead, and goes to the doctor’s house only to find hunters looting it. Calling Peter, she tries to give him intel on where Connors is being held before losing her phone. She ends up stowing out in a van and she’s brought to an abandoned zoo in New Jersey. Using her stun gun and stealth techniques, she learns that Vulture was also killed by Kraven and finds the cage that Connors is being held in. After finding the code to the gate (0451, shoutout to Looking Glass Studios baybeeeeeeeey) and attempting to break out Connors, Kraven appears and throws her ass out of the way before injecting the doctor with a serum to turn him back to his former Lizard self. Peter and Harry arrive and a giant brawl ensues, which ends up in Connors turning feral and running off and Peter stabbed in the gut and thrown around by Kraven. Harry goes AWOL and fights Kraven with his powers as MJ rescues Peter, however the suit abandons Harry entirely and crawls its way onto Peter as he’s seemingly dying. Getting a fresh lease on life and a whole lot of rage, Peter goes berserk on nearby hunters who ambush in a violent display of power, wiping out a whole room of them. Kraven watches on in awe, and wants to fight Spider-Man by himself as the three leave. Back in the EMF office, Peter attempts to give Harry back his suit to no avail. Needing to find Connors and fast, they attempt to track the blade that fell off Peter and promise to reconvene soon.
Tracing the blade to a pawn shop in Little Odessa, the pawn shop owner tells Peter that he wants nothing to do with Kraven and that “the fires have been lit”. Swinging nearby he finds several different bonfires which he takes down and computer intel relaying the location of a special party. Infiltrating the party and witnessing several unhinged acts, he infiltrates his office (after distracting his tiger, Dima, with steak that knocks her out) to find chemotherapy medicine and word of a “chapel being prepared”. The symbiote acts on its own here and starts to slowly take over Peter’s being piece by piece, launching a hunter through a window. Peter travels to a nearby church and fights Kraven’s shieldbearer as well as Kraven himself a bit. After a small back and forth, Peter steals the vial of Lizard cure from Kraven’s neck while also getting molested with loud bell noises and escapes. He calls MJ to let her know how everything went and notes that the suit's weakness is loud sound frequencies, before making his way back to the Emily-May Foundation. However, a tracking device is planted on the bottom because of course it is.
The next mission consists of Harry and Peter working together to boost the cure for Dr. Connors involving particle accelerators. Peter continues to slowly act a bit off due to the symbiote’s effects and hunters come down to crash the party. Multiple beatdowns as well as dad jokes later, the cure is secure but the entire building is trashed. Both Harry and Pete get out, and Norman comes out in a helicopter to check in on his son. Miles attempts to call Peter with no answer, but Ganke gives him info on the potential location of Martin Li. This doesn’t really do much except introduce you to another side quest where you chase down robot eagles or something and get info on potential targets of Kraven. However, you do get a call from Harry where you bond over dead parents so that’s pretty solid.
The next mission is the one that plays out during E3, where you play as Peter and you go to Connors house to try to find him and give him the formula. Raiding the place, you find footage of the Lizard transforming again and hunters arrive. Jumping out of the house, Peter wallops the nearby hunter goons before hearing over a nearby radio of the Lizard hunkering down at a nearby fish market. Interrupting Miles’ bonding time with his future girlfriend Hailey at the park, he’s asked by Peter to go to the nearby Harlem Fish Market to find him. There’s also repeated stress over finding Martin Li with Miles over the whole dead dad thing, so keep in mind that’s another plot thread to hold onto. Arriving at the market and experiencing near horror levels of tension, Miles finds shedded lizard skin and meets up with Peter as the former Connors bursts through the floor and out into the wild where they give chase. A whole lot of explosions and close calls with civilians later, Peter and Miles meet up with Kraven and the Lizard getting away. Peter swings off declaring Connors “his” while Miles and Ganke talk about how he’s a bit off. Nothing is as off as declaring Miles a liability in a call to MJ, which is very uncharacteristic of Peter and spirals him even more down the rabbit hole of suit corruption. One thing I like out of this is how Miles lands next to Peter at the end, and Pete replies “He got away from US”. You don’t know if that’s the suit talking or if he’s referring to Miles, and there’s something cool about that little detail.
Crawling through the sewers and arriving at a makeshift lab, you see whiteboard drawings of space stuff hinting at the symbiote’s alien origins before finding a small piece of meteorite that the suit REALLY wants. The Lizard pops up however, and after multiple fights and a chase through New York City back into the sewers again before a pop in the gums later and Connors is back to his old self. However, Peter is really becoming a bastard here as his usual playful taunts and cries of trying to help lead to personal insults against Connors, talking about how he shamed his family and how pathetic he is. The suit is corrupting Peter into the worst version of himself, and Connors explains the origins of the suit: an asteroid landed years ago and the resulting goo latched onto Curt, who was on a mission for Oscorp and the local corporate security squad. His arm gets shot off, and after the flashback is done, Peter realizes he’s wearing an alien being. Urging him to take it off, Peter staunchly refuses and after throwing Connor’s phone disappears into the night.
Calling MJ, Peter goes full dick as he dismisses the destruction caused by the earlier chase as well as shrugging off concerns about the alien latched to him. MJ wants him to read her new article and an argument sort of occurs before she hangs up. Confused but giving space, he later heads back and falls asleep almost immediately without reading the article before hunters show up to capture Pete. Another Mary Jane stealth sequence arrives, and Peter disappears, not intently controlled by the alien that’s basically wearing Peter at this point. This is probably hands down one of the scarier missions in the game, mainly because while you sneak through construction sites you never know when the symbiote will pop up and if they’ll try to go after you. Later on, MJ calls Miles and asks for help getting the symbiote off. Fighting off numerous goons, MJ has Miles trap her in the tunnel that Symbiote Peter ran into so that the Hunters don’t get him. Miles does so successfully and fights a bunch off, however a successful kidnap attempt knocks Miles out and he’s loaded on a helicopter. Meanwhile, MJ finds the Symbiote and he’s knocked out by the sound of a power drill. She decides to wake him up with the stun gun, however it’s a bad idea and the alien suit wearing Peter decides to chase her down and try to kill her. She escapes and after a strange dream involving a meteorite, Peter wakes up on a park bench wondering how he got there but feeling pretty damn good.
Begging for the suit back due to the limited time he has and seeing a hit piece by MJ on Spider-Man’s recent behavior, Peter confronts the two at the Oscorp Penthouse. Realizing Peter doesn’t remember anything, she prepares the stun gun but basically he flips both of them off before checking on Norman Osborn, whose efforts in preparing another cure for Harry fails. He thanks Peter for being Harry’s friend and seeing this makes Harry mad at the apparent betrayal. Miles wakes up in one of Kraven’s prisons and makes his way through numerous goons before he makes his way to an arena where Martin Li is currently. Kraven wants the two to duke it out and after Miles vents his frustrations on how Martin is a real bastard. The fight leads to Martin overpowering Miles and entering his mind and taking him apart with his insecurities. However, Miles reverses it and pulls them both out of the dreamstate after the revelation of who Miles is is made. Deciding in the moment to do the right thing instead of killing Li, Miles throws him to the roof and tells him to get the attention of the other Spider-Man.
In order to do that, Martin Li goes full Mr. Negative near the FEAST Shelter, and Peter shows up to confront him. In a bit of foreshadowing, the suit attempts to attack Li but backs away due to the sheer power he has. He gives Peter the location of Miles to pay off the debt of saving him, and Peter races off to find Kraven. On the way, he goes berzerk mentally about all of his problems like losing his home and MJ’s hit piece, and the voice in the suit tells him to kill Kraven. Fighting his way through the abandoned mansion and escapes a trap from Kraven, before brutally fighting him inside and then later outside of the mansion. Violence continually erupts as Kraven attempts to use a bell to weaken Peter but he’s overwhelmed by the Symbiote. Miles escapes from his trap and attempts to talk sense into Pete to stop him from killing Kraven, but ends up having to beat the sense into him before cheering Peter on to fight against the suit after ringing the bell. The struggle is real, and you have to tap Square to really force the alien suit off of Peter. After trapping the alien in a special science tube, the two Spider-Men make amends for everything that happened and proceed with the plan to destroy the alien once and for all as Kraven disappears again.
Nothing goes as planned however, as his attempt to bring the alien back to Oscorp Tower results in Harry cracking the tube and possessing the alien once again. In a staunchly powerful display, Harry turns into Venom and smacks Peter out of the room. His father attempts to get the suit off of him with the security guards but things go poorly for them and fun for us. In a way to differentiate the gameplay I must say, I didn’t expect the ability to PLAY as Venom but goddamn is it fun. Venom rips and tears his way through Oscorp before escaping and jumping out of the building. Kraven and the hunters set up a trap in Times Square where a lethal battle ensues before Kraven, now satisfied with his final hunt, tells Venom to kill him. He does just as asked before turning back to Harry who is horrified at himself. Running to the gravestone of his mother, the alien symbiote manipulates him by pretending to be his mom and telling him to “Heal the World”, the tagline for the Emily-May Foundation. However, Venom’s version of that is to Symbioteify everyone of course.
New York is now under full DEFCON level Avengers threat shit, but with no one in sight it’s up to the Spider-Men to save the day again. Miles uses his music engineering skills to recreate a frequency to destroy the alien goo while Peter follows the tracker on Harry’s ID to find a symbiote nest where he’s turned normal civilians into creatures. They later find Venom bringing a bunch of civilians into a subway nest and after blowing it up with a noise bomb, they rescue Miles’ mom and Ganke, who were trapped after attempting to find Miles. Peter attempts to call MJ and she gets a call from JJ, loving her hit piece against Spider-Man. Someone knocks on the door and while Peter tells her to stay away from Harry, Harry shows up right at her front door. Going to rescue MJ, Peter and Harry confront each other which ends in Mary being turned to a symbiote named Scream after Peter calls the alien suit “a thing” (that “We are Venom drop is pheww so good). A fight between Peter and Scream leads to Peter profusely apologizing to MJ and telling her to fight off the negative emotions, and later she rips it off of her. They embrace and apologize to each other, with Peter promising to do better for her. JJ calls her and she tells him to fuck off without curse words and tells Peter that Harry is trying to go after a space rock. Miles later hits Peter up and tells him he’s at City Hall and that he needs his help and Pete races off to help Miles.
Attempting to save civilians at City Hall results in Peter being knocked out by a heavy Symbiote goon and transformed by tendrils again. Before Miles and Peter can get overwhelmed, Mr. Negative appears and protects the both. Proposing a temporary alliance out of respect and remorse for his previous actions, Li and Miles go into Peter’s memories with his powers and explore Pete’s past and motives. Apparently with no surprise as to Peter’s identity as Spider-Man, the two movie through hallucinations of The Raft and Aunt May’s house before Li decides to transfer all of his powers into the Symbiote to eliminate it. Realizing this may be the end, the two make peace: Miles won’t forgive but won’t carry the hatred for Li anymore. They purge the symbiote and comfort dream Pete over Aunt May’s death bed before waking up in the real world, having completed this story arc as well as giving Peter the Anti-Venom suit. Joking how he’s never reformed his greatest villain but that Miles has as Li gives himself to the police, there’s a bit of a “after this, you’re Spider-Man” moment I really appreciate before MJ calls with news: she’s given her notice to her landlord and is moving in with Peter.
Dr. Connors also calls, telling him to get to the sewer labs immediately. Venom is there and after confronting Norman about his son’s state of health, he steals the space rock. Attempting to chase after, Connors tells Pete that he’ll probably have to kill Harry to get rid of the alien once and for all, while Norman pleads for Spider-Man to save his son. Back on the surface, it looks like Web of Shadows 2 as the entire city is COVERED in gooey tendrils in a hella cool oppressive atmosphere. The last two missions consist of the Spider-Men attempting to clean up the city but the first of the two focuses mostly on Miles. After he almost gets possessed by tendrils himself, he goes through mental mind games before he uses his bioelectricity to escape, seeing visions of the space rock AND Hailey being attacked. He tells Pete that the rock is under the Harlem Subway Station but to wait up as he has to save Hailey. Peter presses on anyway and Miles saves Hailey before asking her out. Fighting the symbiote goons and attempting to save Harry, Pete is almost overpowered and turned once again before Miles saves him from Venom with the bioelectricity before they escape. MJ calls and tells the two that they need to formulate a plan to get rid of the space rock once and for all.
The final mission culminates with them getting together so that Peter will distract Harry/Venom and lure him away, and Miles will distract the symbiote soldiers while MJ will go to get the rock. The last sequence with MJ in the game sees her getting a sonic boost attached to her stun gun, and she shoots her way to steal the rock. Barely escaping with her life with Miles, it switches over to Peter fighting Venom at their old high school together, which is levitated into the air. Back and forth accusations arise and the fight finishes off with Venom sensing the meteorite being stolen and growing fucking wings! Miles and MJ make it to the EMF building for the second phase: overloading the rock with the Particle Accelerator/Hadron Collider thing he’s got going on. Miles ends up fighting Venom as Pete and MJ try to figure out the accelerator, all while fighting off more symbiotes and stealing the rock from each other. Eventually after some crazy QTEs and fighting in mid-air, Harry comes to his senses finally and asks Pete to kill him. Finally, the accelerator works and Venom is purged from the city, however Harry is basically dead. Using his bioelectricity, Miles brings him back to life but he’s barely clinging on as Norman and his team bring him out for special medical treatment, blaming Spider-Man for his near death. Even when it’s just MJ and Peter, he’s in full rage and calls someone to tell them to “bring out G-Serum”.
There’s some final scenes as well as a post credits one: MJ starts a podcast about keeping hope in NYC, with parallels to COVID; Pete and MJ have Miles, Ganke, Rios (Mile’s mom in case I forgot the mention) and Hailey to have pancakes and there’s an EMF setup in the garage to continue the “Save the World” mission. An alert on the Spider-Man app goes off, but Pete tells Miles to continue on his own as he’s semi-retiring for now so he’ll be the only Spider-Man so he and MJ can make use of their “second chance” together. The two post credits scenes involve Norman Osborn asking his old nemesis Otto Octavius for help but getting brutally rebuffed, and Otto mentions how he is planning “The Final Chapter”. Meanwhile Miles and Hailey are introduced to the new stepdad, Albert Moon, by his mother and also meets his new potential stepsister, Cindy Moon (aka Silk).
How do I feel about the story? I liked it a lot! It was pretty cool, it hit all the story beats well and I generally don’t have much in the way of complaints. I personally feel like it hits a bit less hard than the first one and even Miles Morales emotionally persay, but it more than makes up for it in bombastic spectacle. If you wanted more action and setpieces in the previous games then you’ll get your setpieces now. A lot of people were disappointed in this game, but honestly most sequels are usually a bit on the lower end side as some things tend to be upgraded while others are lost in translation. I think the game however makes use of everything pretty well, especially on it’s themes. The main recurring themes are the usual like “revenge takes you down a bad path” with Miles and “don’t overlook your personal relationships and take them for granted” like MJ, but I think the game is definitely built on “Second Chances” and reformation. A lot of the villains in this game have moved on or try to be better, from Mysterio and Tombstone to Martin Li themselves and they end up living by the end of the game. Most of the other villains who were still alive (like Vulture, Scorpion, Shocker (who also died by Kraven’s hand)) are dead due to their criminal activities making them a target. Pete and MJ’s relationship here continues on their second chance after getting together in the first game, Pete gets a second chance to redeem himself after escaping the suit. There’s a whole lot of fucking “Two” symbolism and it doesn’t escape my grasp and is something I enjoy. It makes me wonder what the plan is for the third one but nonetheless, it’s pretty cool shit if not obvious. There’s also the “Be Greater Together” tagline, not only continuing the togetherness of Two but also continuing the theme of the first game with teamwork being the catalyst of what makes every relationship survive. All of that shit is good, however, there’s only one more thing that I want to kind of trash and then I’ll move onto gameplay.
My opinion on Kraven as a main villain is as follows: I like him as a threat. The whole hunting the black symbiote thing goes back to the comics even, but in this game why does he need a whole ass organization of hunters behind him? He’s one of the greatest hunters of all time? Maybe I should just shut up, but I feel as if the game would’ve been better with him as an omnipresent serial killer threat, with the other gangs and villains going nuts out of fear due to him striking sheer terror in the city. That would’ve been my preference, but other than the organization thing I think he’s a pretty cool villain and I can’t complain about that whole bit.
The gameplay for the most part is similar to the first game: you swing through New York City as Spider-Man, beat up criminals of various groups, get collectibles and do side-quests all while looking cool as hell and throwing out quips. See, what I can tell you about this though is that the game escalates everything that the previous two games did, and makes it feel even better than the original two. In fact, it all starts with the fact that you can play as BOTH Miles Morales AND Peter Parker, both with their own styles of fighting (or at least attack animations) and exclusive dialogue during side-quests. Let’s take one of the side missions, where you meet up with Howard the Pigeon guy from the first Spider-Man game. If you play as Miles like I did, he has his own dialogue where he talks to Howard and it’s sad, but if you play as Peter when you’re with Howard then the dialogue is even more emotional due to Peter’s tone and his experiences helping the old man in the first game. In fact let me just say, the level of detail in this is fucking insane. Not only does it account for which Spider-Man you’re playing as, but it could also account for the fact (potentially, untested on my end) that if you play as Peter the dialogue could change according to if you’re wearing the Symbiote suit or not. Nothing is ever so present as if you were to go to the gravestones of both Aunt May/Uncle Ben as well as Jefferson Davis, whom each Spider-Man has different dialogue for (not that much, and I don’t think there’s anything for Jefferson while wearing the symbiote but who knows). Switching feels seamless between the both of them, and reminds me of GTA V (though in this case both Spider-Men spawn close to each other). A part of me is kind of mixed on this, and I wish there was an option to spawn far away between the both (say switching to Miles who's fighting off crime before switching to Peter whose eating pizza and talking to a guy) but at the same time these are such non issues that who cares, it’s for convenience sake so you can spawn close to whatever you wanted to do as the other Spider-Man.
They also play differently as well: Miles plays basically the same as in his spin-off game but with a little bit more fluidity as far as I’m aware. You’ll have your special venom (in the context of this game, that always gets me confused to be honest) abilities where you can punch people out with your Venom Punch and such. These abilities start out as blue before a story event overcharges Miles and gives him Yellow abilities, which are powerful as hell and feel great in the midst of combat. I don’t really have much in the way of differences between Miles Morales and this game because both games felt great, nor am I sure there is any but he feels great to play and as you unlock your abilities overtime, Miles grows into his own character as Spider-Man at the end of story.
Peter on the other hand changes the most throughout the entire story and that’s due to the obvious: the Symbiote Suit. At first he fights with his usual arsenal: the metal spider-legs he has coming out of his back and such. They fight fine, with the usual stock abilities of a charged punch (or charge attack) and knocking people into the air for some nice juggling. However, after he loses against Kraven at the zoo, he’s bonded with the black suit and that’s when you get your taste of power. Playing with this is how Peter would feel, and in a meta sense Insomniac did a fantastic job giving you the ultimate power fantasy between how hard your punches hit, your special abilites like the Venom Blast clearing the room to the rage mode where Parker just knocks everyone the fuck out in a punch or two. You’ll have the Black Suit for a while until you take it off, after which you’ll get the Anti-Venom suit which is the same thing a bit later so don’t worry if you miss the Symbiote attack trophies because you’ll still have the suit regardless. This is about as much as I can give for nuance in terms of combat, I’m not a fighting expert nor do I know weaknesses and such because they both feel the same for the most part, just with different abilities and quips and I’m not going to complain about it because it feels good.
Now let me address the giant fucking black suited elephant in the room: playing as Venom. By god, it’s so fucking cool and I fanboyed the fuck out. It’s very much a limited moveset and can kind of feel a bit sluggish sometimes due to this and the big stature but oh shit do you feel like a monster playing as Venom. You’ll only get two set pieces to play as him, but wiping out goons and tossing them around, Insomniac made a hell of a choice doing this. Not only does it feel great (minus traversing heights a bit) but it sets a sort of baseline for a potential Venom game that the developers hinted at “providing the fans want it”. The answer is no shit, the fans want it and I want it bad. Take my money dude, I want to eat people and shit out their brains as this kooky fuck in the living suit.
The other elephant (or elephants) in the room is playing as Mary Jane/different side quest changes. Mary Jane’s playtimes are way more fun and overpowered this time, as was intended by the director. For the most part, you’ll have your stealth sequences but it mostly revolves around throwing rocks and using the stun gun. Would I want to play as Mary Jane in her own title with these mechanics? Eh, but they improved on the complaints of the OG and made you feel good doing it all the same. You’ll have to watch out for patrols but stunning them and outthinking the AI, while simple, is a fun time and when it gets to the later portion of the game it feels even better with the abilities to shoot out of this stun gun with the web shooters. They’re short, they don’t get too frustrating and work for the most part. Other times you’ll switch perspectives involve maybe playing as Hailey Cooper (where you hear nothing but take part in graffiti tagging) or maybe Peter Parker riding a bike. They don’t feel as great but vary the gameplay enough to where I didn’t mind any of it either.
Combat overall, while I don’t remember every nook and cranny from the first game feels just as great as the older games did PLUS more. You’ll switch between your special abilities and gadgets, racking up all sorts of combos and choosing to either go stealth or go loud and it all feels amazing. You can still choose between instant takedowns or health boosts and do all of the fun shit and I don’t know how to expand upon it anymore other than it feels amazing. The only other addition I can think of honesty is the ability to parry, which I THINK is new to this game. Certain enemies you can’t attack any other way other than to doge, and parrying requires you to tap L1 twice while an enemies attack is in the red before wailing with powerful punches.
Navigation feels more fantastic then the last game, when I thought they couldn’t improve it even more. My main gripe in this game is how you have to kind of work your way up to get certain abilities back from the past games like using launch points again. However even with that in mind, you’ll get all of these abilities back and THEN some more. One of these is the Web Gliders; they do exactly what they state and whereas I never exactly expected them to pop up in a Spider-Man game, I can’t imagine a future where they don’t appear at all to be honest. They feel fucking amazing, from the momentum you can gain from moving up and down through the wind, to catching wind tunnels that make traversal through New York fun. Other ways you can gain speed is through both specified launchers donated by the Emily-May foundation on rooftops or (something I learned from Youtube) if you have the Web Line you can shoot it between two different buildings and then launch yourself from there.
Fast Travel is something that I used a little bit trying to get all the side objectives but for the most part it’s fun as hell swinging and you don’t really need to use it unless you’re starving for time in the real world. It’s seamless as hell to transition on the Playstation 5, though you’ll only unlock fast travel for certain districts by beating side missions and solving certain crimes. If you were to use Fast Travel then I wouldn’t blame you because the city is a lot bigger now. It’s not just Manhattan, it’s also Brooklyn, Coney Island and Queens on the right side of the map. They’re all decently sized though can be traversed in a smaller amount of time then Manhattan due to the scale of the buildings themselves. One thing that I will say is kind of odd about this is just the invisible walls/game boundaries” thing if you go too far right. This isn’t Insomniac’s fault, I mean you can only have so much scope and realistically the game has a lot going for it already due to geographical locations in real life, but it feels weird having “Can’t go past this point” when you can see the other side so closely.
However speaking of fighting crimes, everything varies depending on how far in the story you are. The most common crimes you’ll be seeing are Hunter crimes and Cult of the Flame crimes but you’ll encounter regular goons as well as Symbiote possessed civilians later in the story. One thing that’s cool as hell when fighting goons is the ability to accidentally run into other heroes. Now these other heroes mainly include Miles/Peter depending on who you play as but you can also run into Wraith (aka Yuri) from the previous games as well as a new one depending on story progress: Harry himself with his makeshift hero suit. They all have their own moveset and Harry disappears once the suit jumps to Peter, but it’s cool to see other heroes fighting in the wild and teaming up to do tag team takedowns. Each one has their own set of interactions with each other at the end too, like Peter and Miles doing the Spider-Man pointing meme at each other, or Peter going for a fist bump with Yuri only to get declined or Miles and Harry talking about the new team name. All of this just escalates the standards for an open world superhero game and I hope in future games I’ll see as an example perhaps Miles fighting Ultron goons with the Incredible Hulk. I don’t know, just an example but it would be pretty cool!
The last thing I want to point out at least in terms of crime structure is that for the most part trophy wise it’s required to get 100 percent of all districts in order to get the platinum. However, luckily you’re not required to get all the bonus objectives with each individual crime type because that shit was a pain in the ass before. It’s mostly boiled down to unlocking special unlockable tokens, skill points or fast travel. The side quests in this game for the most part are fantastic minus a few different things here. You’ll have your combat oriented stuff, your specific story quests and they’re great though if I disliked any of them the most I would say it’s the Mysterio quests. This isn’t for the story structure but some of them include “don’t get hit once” or they’ll be the one up in Harlem where you have to knock out thirty people in under a minute which actually induced rage and made me lower the enemy difficulty just so I could beat this one side quest. It feels kind of unfair in all honesty, and I would’ve rather either had an extra minute or a different structuring of the map or something but I don’t know, maybe it’s just a skill issue. Other ones include racing behind flying metal birds to collect data, finding Spider-Bots (with a canceled Across the Spider-Verse cameo at the finish line) puzzle sequences with gene splicing that are an improvement to the ones in the first game, fighting off Cletus Kassady and his flame cult (with an ending that makes me hyped for the next game) to protecting pockets of fleshes armed with sonic bombs from Symbiotes to get rid of nests. It’s varied and whilst not as memorable as the original game’s side quests, do a good job and make their own unique spin. Some of them are exclusive to certain Spider-Men only, such as again gene splicing with Peter or finding Prowler stashes with Miles, but each add their own bit of lore building or community lessons to the world and are all around a good time.
As for the final paragraph in the gaming section, I’m just going to point out that the level of detail here is insane. You’ll have your easter eggs like playing Miles and doing the Wakanda Forever pose in front of the Wakandan Embassy, interacting with the graves or the special award trophy with Phin at the church from the end of Miles Morales. But there are so many secret interactions (like one involving a porta potty and a crane) and easter eggs around the entire game that it’s amazing and brings me into the lore of this Marvel universe they got even more. I don’t have all the answers (neither did Sway) as to how many and what they are but you could look up all the Easter Eggs on Youtube and there still won’t be enough. I’ll say while I didn’t go too much into accessibility options other than to get one Mysterio side mission done quicker and adding the ability to get hurt web swinging for a trophy but I’m glad these options exist for those who need it because everyone deserves to play this game. Also keep in mind I played it on launch, so it was a bit buggy here and there where I’d have to replay from checkpoint or something but for the most part the game ran fine. If I’m missing anything in terms of gameplay, feel free to let me know as I tried to cover as much as I can but I feel I missed so much nuance to the gameplay because it’s so expansive that it would take me more than a day to write it all down for this one section.
The atmosphere surrounding the game is pretty cool as the city evolves in the story. Certain locations towards the beginning will still be covered in sand due to Sandman’s attack, while the remains of other areas such as destroyed buildings due to story events appear throughout. The most change you’ll find is probably during the end with the Symbiote invasion. For all intents and purposes, this is a Symbiote apocalypse and you’ll find slime and goo connecting through the buildings and looking like a worse version of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. Now that’s amazing, though I also kind of felt playing the game that this invasion didn’t exactly have the “oomph” that the former game did in terms of atmosphere, especially considering once you beat the game it’s mostly all gone, which is great but at the same time doesn’t always hit as much as I wanted it to. In fact, the game kind of straddles the line between a dark and depressing atmosphere and one filled with more hope than we have in the current modern day. While playing with the Symbiote, you’ll experience Peter change to a more nasty version of himself, losing himself to the darkness. All the while, there’s still a lot of talk about advanced science, helping the community, saving people’s lives and such. On one hand, the hope and community stuff feels really nice and wholesome, though somewhat unrealistic to me (though maybe I’m just a depressed piece of shit I don’t know), like an idealized version of what the world SHOULD be. I love it, but it does kind of contrast a bit with how dark things get towards the end though I guess that’s the whole point: always trying to find hope in the darkness, trying to build a better world together no matter what, to always keep fighting and redeeming yourself to become a better person (in the case of multiple Spider-Man villains who pop up in the story). I’m somewhat mixed on the delivery but I love the thematic message and the atmosphere surrounding it and again, the game was very helpful with my anxiety personally, at least distracting me temporarily for a week so I’ll give it a plus.
Graphics wise the game looks fucking phenomenal and I can’t complain. While a part of me will always be iffy about the new Peter Parker reskin, his appearance in the game makes him look a lot better and I’ve kind of settled into his new look now. As for everyone else, everyone looks like a newer glossed up version of the PS4/Remastered games and really proves the PS5’s graphical capabilities. It also continues the seamlessness of the portal technology from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, at least in one instance where Miles is chasing down Black Cat throughout the story and she throws portals across the place. How do they do that technology? I don’t know but it looks cool! Regardless however, I was showing my Mom this game a bit, and while it’s easy to impress older people who don’t play video games with newer stuff because of the “lifelike capabilities”, there were times where I was just as impressed as my mother was just looking at the game. I don’t have much else to add except everything’s good and vibrant, though shoutout to the lights on Coney Island for looking amazing.
As for the audio design, this is probably where I’ll personally have the least amount to say. The soundtrack is either the usual bombastic horns and strings sound that’s in almost every Spider-Man game or the more interesting hip hop-like sounds of Miles Morales (though shoutout to the Wu-Tang Clan shoutout in the game, Wu Tang for life baby!) that play in the background. All of it is to say good, nothing that I would really write home or bump in the whip per say but it’s still good and adds to the ambience of it all. Other than the soundtrack stuff, the most you’ll hear in the city is the Danikast (which can be a little bit too optimistic for me but that’s the nature of the story so I won’t take it personally) or the hilarious JJ Jameson, who is so unhinged in his nature that he’s pretty hilarious, even if some of the things he says can kind of make sense even if it’s taken way out of context and bastardized to fit his own anti-Spider-Man narrative. What I can say is that I did read a story where, to add civilian sounds to the city, they got a bunch of random people to walk in a circle and talk into a mic during capture (I’ll link the article) and I’ll say that I found that shit to be hilarious. You’ll also hear bits and pieces of audio (mostly the symbiote) talking through the controller at times though I don’t remember hearing much of anything coming from the controller that much. Voice acting as usual is great as always between Yuri Lowenthal and Laura Bailey as Peter Parker and Mary Jane, or Nadji Jeter as Miles Morales. Newcomers like Graham Phillips do a good job as Harry (though apparently it’s a different voice actor from Spider-Man’s greenhouse side quests), but I’m going to just sit here and point out the MVP: Tony Todd. I fucking love him in everything he does and while he voices the Symbiote Venom in this game and does a great job, my only complaint is that I wish there were MORE of him. All I want is more Tony Todd, and if they do that Venom spin-off game I keep hearing about then I want Tony Todd to please dear god come back I love that dude he’s awesome!
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is an expansion to an already fantastic formula, and one that I would urge everyone to try even if they aren’t into the Superhero genre much. Whilst it may not hit the emotional high points like the ending of Marvel’s Spider-Man did, the sequel more than makes up for it in bombastic action and spectacle, expanded travel systems, more locations, the fucking black suit; I mean the game is fucking fire. I could probably safely say that this is my favorite game that I’ve experienced on the Playstation 5 thus far, and that includes God of War: Ragnarok (which was my favorite though I have issues with certain gameplay aspects, will go into one day), Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West and Astro’s Playroom. Honestly, I’m curious as to the future that Insomniac will take from here on out though. I’ll say that I’m super excited for Marvel’s Wolverine, which is rumored to have God of War 2018/Ragnarok styled gameplay (though I pray it doesn’t copy the same gear system with all the numbered UI bullshit), the rumors on a potential Venom game (which I would love a fleshed out system of this game and Ultimate Spider-Man), and the craving for a Hulk and a Punisher game makes me hungry to no end.
HOWEVER, I also kind of hope they don’t just become the Marvel guys ya know? I’d love for them to work on bringing their old games to PC like the entire Ratchet & Clank series or again, Resistance. While not always the greatest with quality, Resistance 3 felt like it was only getting to where it needed to go and then it flopped so I wouldn’t mind seeing more to that. A lot of people want Sunset Overdrive too and while I didn’t care for that game, I feel bad for the people who want it because that was a Microsoft game owned by a now Sony company so that’ll be a no-go. I guess my main point is, I hope they do more than just Marvel games, I hope they remaster their old games and work on some other projects too when they can. However, as for the Marvel train I’m interested in where they end up going, and if they make DLC for this game akin to The City Never Sleeps on Spider-Man 1, then you bet your ass I’m going back to play this. Hell, I’ll probably end up doing that anyways because there’s a Playstation Stars collectible for getting the Platinum trophy and I already have it so why not hop on and goof around with some combat. As for potential port stuff, let’s be real, this game will get a port to PC really soon, and I’m excited for PC players to finally get a hold of this game as well. Just prepare a lot of Gigabytes because Jesus H this shit was like 130 GB overall and that was within the first few days of downloading it to my PS5.
Links:
https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/10/19/insomniac-games-marvels-spiderman-2-ps5-tech-interview/
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MarvelsSpiderMan2
https://read.marvel.com/#/book/63125 (Spider-Man 2 tie-in comic)
https://www.gamesradar.com/marvels-spider-man-2-developer-created-the-sounds-of-new-york-city-by-getting-a-bunch-of-people-to-talk-and-walk-around-in-circles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_2_(2023_video_game)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YoUSP__V9vM (Secrets and Easter Eggs)
This review contains spoilers
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a “parody of a parody” simulator and third person cover shooter developed by Vicious Cycle Software for the Xbox 360 and PS3 generations. Now from what the Wikipeeds has told me, the marketing for the game involved websites being made and “Behind the Music” styled interviews being released, and D3 had a whole gimmick of pretending that Matt Hazard always existed and would be returning. Can I prove any of this? Not really. Seems like I can’t find any sources for this other than two interviews which I’ll post down here, if you find some sources feel free to lemme know and I’ll post them in the review. I just don’t have the energy for that shit right now. My only other exposure to the game would be seeing it in some gaming magazines being teased but I completely forgot about it until recent days. The reason why I started playing the game mainly revolves around two separate things. The first involves the game Dead Head Fred, which I played as my PSP Exclusive game of the year I decided to play and write up a review on in my never ending quest to knock out my gaming backlog, which I thought was great aesthetically but the gameplay felt obnoxious and frustrating. The second part of the equation is Nick, one of my buddies whom every Tuesday we try to get together to play games on the hardest difficulty both for trophies and for entertainment purposes. Nick decided to bring this in as a sick joke and ironically enough after doing some research, I learned that the same developers made this game as well. How did they go from frustrating to worse? I don’t know but the dip in quality between both titles is fascinating, and is one that sadly I’m going to have to go over considering we not only beat the damn game, but I wrapped up the trophies for the Platinum.
The story starts off with this: Matt Hazard is an aging video game star who used to have it made back in the day with popular game after popular game from the 8-Bit era to the old school FPS era before eventually making it to the PS2 era of gaming. However, Matt Hazard attempted to over-expand into markets that aren’t meant for him, including kid friendly racing games and water gun shooters only for his company, Marathon, to nearly go bankrupt. A CEO pops in however and makes Matt Hazard into the star of a new shooter as a detective. However, going through the game scenario for the first level, in which Matt Hazard goes against the triads, reveals a deadly twist: he was actually a false protagonist for the game and was supposed to be killed off so the game’s real star, Sting Sniperscope, could take over instead. However, time is frozen and a mysterious hologram comes out. She reveals herself to be named QA, and relays that all of Matt’s save files have been mysteriously deleted from the game so when Sting was supposed to kill you, that means Matt would’ve stayed dead. Confused but wanting to find out what’s going on, he goes along with QA after one punching Sting Sniperscope in a quicktime fight.
The second level involves Matt being dropped into a level from his old game, “A Fistful of Hazzard” after some awkward flirting with QA because she needs time to figure out what’s going on, so with some programming technobabble bullshit you’re told that if you continue to play the game as Sting then it’ll take a while before anyone catches on. However, fighting your way through reveals a strange blend of the western game and those old enemies raid the club programmed into the game’s objectives. Following those guides, it’s learned that Matt’s old ex-girlfriend Kitty runs the club. However, he’s a cheating piece of shit and she rightfully slaps him before soviet soldiers raid the club to kill everyone. However, Matt shoots his way through the entire game before taking out his old nemesis, General Neutronov. It’s revealed that the Soviets were there to kill Kitty, and that someone is targeting all of Matt’s old friends. The next target is revealed to be a guy named “Bill the Wizard”, and Matt goes into whatever world he’s in to save his life.
The third level mostly revolves moving forward through a boring warehouse, sometimes protecting Bill the Wizard but honestly Bill doesn’t even make much of an appearance for the most part to really warrant much to the section. After shooting your way through tons of goons and avoiding an enemy helicopter that’s kind of frustrating, you end up at the finale of the stage. Sting Sniperscope Mark II is here and he’s going to try to murder you…again. You shoot through all of his guys and avoid the bullets, before running up to Sniper and beating him up in ANOTHER quicktime event before throwing his ass over a railing. In the real world it’s revealed that the CEO, Wallace Wellesley wants him mucho deado. Problem is, he can’t get rid of him because the previous owner signed him to a lifetime contract which states that unless he’s killed in a game that he can’t get rid of him at all. It’s revealed his dad owns Zappland, a huge arcade chain. Basically Wallace got pissy because he couldn’t beat any of Matt Hazard’s games due to difficulty, so he decided to use daddy’s money to buy Marathon games to try to kill off Matt out of petty anger. They decide to use the rest of his buddies as bait after stealing his assistant’s idea to do it, deciding to keep him busy while setting up a trap.
The fourth level involves Matt going into his old partner Dexter Dare’s games, with Dexter being the former co-star of the “Matt and Dexter” games. Matt drops down into Dexter’s old mansion to rescue him from Wallace’s henchmen. However, Dexter betrays him because of an offer from Wellesley to have his own set of games, appealing to both Dexter’s dislike of Matt as well as his burgeoning ego. However, that’s dashed when after a beatdown Matt saves his life from a malfunctioning robot called “Dexter’s Darlings”. Grateful, an apology is made before Matt makes his way back to the beginning of the game. However, some malfunctions and QA can’t save him while zombies surround the entire mansion. Then all the sudden a red version of QA comes in and suddenly moves him into a giant yacht of sorts. Totally not a trap at all.
The fifth level consists of Matt roaming through a yacht and shooting more goons and saving an old buddy, a Halo parody named “Master Chef” from space marines. However, she’s been acting strange and surprised that both he’s alive while also sorta flirting with him a bit. Either way Matt is all confused and shoots his way through more of the level. Both versions of QA pop up, the original blue and the evil twin red version; mainly getting rid of the red version because she’s too plainly obvious in her overt attempts at an ambush, before the evil QA forces Matt to fight for his life against the Kraken on a ship in one of the most frustrating fights in the entire game. Killing the Kraken and blowing the ship up, Wallace gets angry and recaps the last two levels in the game and that they don’t know if Matt is dead because the level is wiped from the servers.
The sixth level has Matt teleported to the Fraggme warehouses, a “part of the game’s server infrastructure”. Mario parody Captain Carpenter has Matt held up in his warehouse as a safety precaution and after an attack, Matt goes to save another old buddy from being murdered. Shooting through more goons, it’s learned that the warehouse is home to the props that are made for all of Marathon’s games. Deciding to go back home to his wife and to wait for everything to blow over, Captain Carpenter jumps into a block and down a green pipe and in a funny bit, Matt tells him to “say Hi to Karen for me”, Karen being his wife. Anyone with the name Karen just makes me giggle now to be honest. However, in the basement Matt uncovers Altos Tratus, a JRPG parody of all the spikey haired fucks with big swords who only talks with text prompts. This bit was actually kind of funny, and made me giggle a whole lot but Altos insists on killing you out of respect for his master and dies just the same as everyone else. They find a paper containing a shipment being sent to the final level of the Sting Sniperscope game and Matt proceeds to go to the last level. Wallace is given bad news of his escape and tells his assistant to get the programmers to throw everything they have in the final level.
The seventh level is at some docks, and consists of Matt shooting his way through an entire shipping yard full of goons and defeats Sting Sniperscope for the third and very last time after a boss battle involving a giant laser. After a bit of fake flirting, the fake ending credits roll for the game and Matt is teleported to the final level: a virtual world of the Marathon Megasoft building.
The final level has Matt fight his way to the top while going through pretty much every enemy in the game, before Wallace becomes desperate and deploys his own staff to use their virtual avatars in an attempt to kill Hazard himself. After shots are fired at Duke Nukem (in a cardboard cutout named “Nuke Winter” with the pose looking exactly like Duke), Matt fires actual shots at all the programmers and makes his way to Doogie Hauser’s office. Matt fights the guy from “How I Met Your Mother” in his virtual office while QA kills the fake QA. However, old QA is killed by Wallace and the final and second most frustrating boss battle commences. Matt makes his way to Wallace and Dexter pops by to help him out with the fight. Wallace is defeated and QA is revealed to be a guy named Quentin A. Myers, one of the lead programmers of his old games. However, Quentin takes over the company after he bought 49% of all the stock after he learned Wallace was going to buy the game. I guess a tease at the evil QA coming back is revealed and Wallace is back working at his dad’s old game store, where he rages after seeing Matt Hazard come back with a brand new game titled “Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard”.
Overall, the game is a goofy and dumb game. That’s the whole point, being a sort of parody of not only video games in general but definitely a sort of parallel to Duke Nukem and his infamous “Duke Nukem Forever” development hell cycle. As for the plot, I’m not surprised that the game is like this because it’s a comedy game so it’s going to take the piss out of everything. However, the comedy isn’t really that funny, at least to me. While I’m not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, I expect the game to at least make me laugh. It made me giggle once or twice at some of the gags, mainly the physical ones and some of the loading screen tips like literally describing out what a tip is in context to restaurants. However, I wouldn’t really consider playing this game again. It’s lowbrow, and while I’m certainly ok with lowbrow considering most of my joke repertoire consists of cracking gags about blowing people's dads, if you’re aiming to be a commercial product of some sorts you have to know your audience and what they like. Maybe I’m just not the audience, I don’t know but other than that it’s harmless and mindless. The only thing I could say is harmful is the next section: gameplay.
The gameplay is again one of the worst factors of the entire thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s playable, you can play it; but enjoying it is hit or miss for me. For the most part you go from Point A to Point B, shooting any and everything that gets in your way while taking cover behind environmental pieces. How does it fare in this regard? Honestly, it feels mediocre; between the actual movement feeling awkward to shooting being so-so from the power of the weapons to attempting to maneuver cover feel sluggish. Don’t get me wrong, it’s manageable and in some case you’ll feel like you’re actually doing decent enough but I never got the feeling that I was mastering the game or even navigating it when I was playing it on any difficulty. In fact, the higher the difficulty the more a lot of these problems are compounded due to the sheer chokehold some of these arenas have in game. I’m also not too much of a level design guy, but I don’t really feel like a lot of these maps are great for level design either. Take the final boss for example right? You have to take cover behind a bunch of small boxes while taking down enemies wave by wave. This is the penultimate moment in the game where you use the strategies you learned to fight against waves of opponents. Cover is a bit small, enemies kinda pop out from everywhere and they decide to use the worst enemies of the game: the Dexter Darling bots, which don’t die unless you melee attack them to finish them off. Melee Combat is often detrimental and the takedowns are slow and usually require three hits for damage (though thankfully for the Darling bots it’s just one giant fist ramming into the ass, though I guess I understand how I feel while playing this game). The fighting animations look weak and most of the time honestly, they feel weak and that’s another thing I don’t like. In correlation to the final boss, you’ll have to finish these guys off while trying not to get murked immediately all while dealing with small cover, getting clipped by invisible walls and praying that the robot doesn’t heal from her animations AND that her besties are too busy running in circles.
That’s another thing, the actual AI aren’t really great or smart; they just kind of wander around (except the zombies which shamble, note here by the way avoid them on the hardest difficulty it’s a one hit kill), pop their head out of cover and try to flush you out of yours by approaching. One might say “isn’t that what most enemy AI are supposed to do?” and I’d say “Yeah I suppose, but the flaws in the gameplay just make it more apparent than it should be”. I’ve played cover shooters that do all of this stuff before, like Spec Ops: The Line which is an average cover shooter. But even despite the averageness of Spec Ops’s gameplay and even ignoring the stellar presentation, it was at least competent enough not to make it feel like a slog. At least in other games like that you’re allowed to throw grenades, unlike this game. You’ll get a grenade launcher sure but that’s at the end of the game. One thing in gaming that kind of irritates me is if it’s a third person or third person shooter, if someone is using a weapon then I want to be able to use it too. They throw grenades? Let me pick them up. Well, you can’t and while I don’t remember seeing the grenades often, when my buddy played I remember him getting absolutely pelted a couple of times and getting irritated really quick. If I’m wrong and grenades aren’t used in game, my apologies maybe I’m mistaking it for the grenade launcher and my memory is shit but it’s still kind of frustrating not being able to at least use grenades for certain encounters.
So one’s probably thinking then, what weapons are there since you keep bringing up how weak they are and such? There’s the pistol (the .45 and 9MM which are replaced by the Hazard Pistol later on), the Submachine Gun (which can be dual wielded), the awesome revolver, the water gun, AKs, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser pistols and a couple others that seem to be in every single game like this. There isn’t anything really unique other than say the Water Pistol and SMG, which are funny and actually do damage even if it feels weak and it’s a bit of a gag weapon. However, you also have power ups that are placed in certain parts of the map. One of them is the Maximum Hazard power up, which increases your damage with guns and your fists. The other one is the Shield, which makes you look like the Silver Surfer as you’re basically invincible to take out groups of enemies before time makes it disappear. You’re more likely to see Maximum Hazard than the shield in the game and it’s kind of a shame because it would’ve made this game less of a slog. The last thing gun wise I want to bring up are special ammo types; these come about as you slowly kill enemies over the course of the game and it builds up a sort of special meter. When it’s full, depending on what stage of the game you’re at you can choose between Ice and Fire Ammo. Ice was always my to-go choice as it freezes enemies in place and if you can get a good headshot then it’s an instant kill, while Fire is okay but deals damage over time and to me I always felt like I didn’t want to wait to kill these guys if I could do it as soon as possible.
The final thing I’ll bring up are the boss battles before I move onto the graphics and audio. Most of the boss fights consist of two things: arena shooting or a QTE fight. The QTE fights are laughably easy and consist of pressing buttons in an order for Matt to knock someone down. Most of these look poor and sloppy and are obviously on purpose with some comedic timing, my favorite being one of the only things to give me a chuckle: Dexter’s QTE. You just kind of manhandle the guy and smash his face into the hood of his sports car repeatedly and there’s something about how the camera is positioned to where it honestly gave me quite the giggle. Other than that, you’ll see these fights as early as the first level with Sonny Tang and for the most part it’s a giggle. The only three fights I can remember that were arena shooting are the Kraken which involve dodging tentacles with one hit kill powers in Maximum Hazard difficulty and let me tell you this fucking blows. There’s another fight involving moving into small buildings to trick Sting Sniperscope into blowing up his own generators that took me a bit to realize what the strategy was but was actually somewhat decent other than the laser being OP and dodging enemies. The last one is Alto Tratus, the Final Fantasy expy guy whom you shoot repeatedly in a room full of enemies who provides the funniest gag in the game yet is still forgettable all the same. I guess the point for these boss battles is that they either range from “Decently okay” to “meh” to “did these really need to exist?” and nothing really pops out like it should.
The graphics/art direction is in my opinion kind of a mixed bag? I mean obviously being stuck in various video game worlds it’s going to be a strange mishmash of different genres such as wild west, soviet cold war, and the such. That’s great, except for the most part the art design just mainly seems to be dull and boring, from gray warehouses to more cold warehouses. Again, when it has something different like a hallway dedicated to a Wolfenstein 3D parody then it’s great, and I suppose if everything were to be a mismatch of different environments then it would get stale, but I’d appreciate the variety more than the usual warehouse/shipping yard stuff when you have so much at your disposal as a video game parody. Usually in these types of games I at least like to see a bit of variety in the differences between different worlds, almost as if it’s like a bit of an amusement park ride in the vein of “oh wow, this is a parody of Mario because XYZ” and again they have some of it but not enough to hit anything that truly boggles my mind.
The graphics for the most part are okayish, models and textures are around 2008-ish looking but for the most part it’s kind of samey as everything else that came out around that era and nothing really popped out to me environment wise. See if I were to continue on with talking about the models of weapons and characters then it would be a continuation of the same sentence, mostly going with “this is okay, this is alright '' and most of it passes. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way, if anything I consider graphical fidelity to be the least important because the truth is what really matters is the depth and value of the game and its relation to you. Nothing however really pops out here, other than Matt Hazard himself looking like a fish person with no jawline with an outfit that looks like an oversized tire on a bad Mad Max parody. Also, the futuristic 80s grid line Tron/Scooby-Doo Cyberchase movie look they have going on with the virtual world sometimes is kinda cool in here too.. Overall, It’s okay and nothing to write home about.
The audio design for certain weapons are surprisingly amazing, varying from the magnum sound seemingly coming straight out of Dirty Harry to the Pistol sounding like maybe it could come out of New Vegas. The other weapons on the other hand kind of vary in quality like the laser pistol, while honestly accurate and a must have for the later game, it doesn’t sound great. Most of the game varied like this to me, especially on the weapons side. The environmental side sounds consistent and a bit better, for example on the last level when you’re walking outside on the patio, the footsteps sounds are amazing. It’s one of those sounds that sort of tickles some sweet spot in my brain where I’m like “alright, dis shit pretty good”. Other environmental sounds are good for the most part but don’t pop out and I’m okay with that.
The voice acting is alright for the most part, none of them take it seriously and that’s for the better to be honest considering the subject matter of it being the equivalent of one of those mid-2000s parody movies. Will Arnett plays Matt Hazard himself in one of those cheesy action hero roles and for the most part he does okay, he didn’t really get me any laughs with his performance but at the same time I’m not so sure that’s on him as much as it is the script. Neil Patrick Harris definitely hams it up with his role as “Cut the crust off my sandwich Mom, I live in your basement” CEO/spoiled brat Wallace Wellesley. He just gives zero fucks and goes on constant rants about “why Matt Hazard isn’t dead” and while the subject matter is repetitive I can appreciate how easy to hate this guy is. Olivia Hack does a good job playing the “Hacked in” (heh) AI sent to help Matt Hazard, nicknamed QA. Overall, the voice acting is fine, does perfectly well with its job and has for the most part the right comedic voice acting to do a decent job. The last thing I could add here is that I wish they would add fucking subtitles but that’s just me I guess.
If I were to give a bit of a criticism in the audio design I would just say it’s the soundtrack. Not that the soundtrack is bad, in fact I can appreciate its variation. From the fight with Sonny Tang and the blaxploitation-esque tune to “Exploring Hazardland” sounding straight out of a 007 Goldeneye pause screen menu, I felt like this did a decent job at delivering appropriate sounds related to the genre it’s trying to parody. However, even though I don’t remember the track (though I think it’s Maximum Hazard), I specifically remember one being looped over and over again to the point where it lost most of the traction for me in its placement. Most of it just consists of thrashing air guitars which I get bored of quickly, though I’ll give Master Chef a bit of props for breaking out the string section and attempting to parody Halo with it’s main theme. Overall, it’s okay even if the most you’ll hear is one or two tracks (or at least multiple air guitar tracks that tend to loop and blend in with each other).
Matt Hazard to me is one of my least favorite games that I’ve ever played this year besides the snooze-fest Too Human. It’s not the worst game, but even as a parody (in which oftentimes you can expect lower quality) it’s dull in its performance. It almost feels as if it’s a parody of itself more than an actual commentary on the gaming industry. You have your usual cracks at Halo and Duke Nukem, action hero quips and the like but without what seems to be a soul or at least gameplay that aspires to be somewhat decent. It feels like a worse version of Kane & Lynch, and while I understand that it’s clearly on a budget with how it operates, I don’t feel like it made a good use of it’s budget. It’s a painfully average game that wallows in itself and makes itself worse without actually trying to improve. The results of this culminated in the release of the game, which landed with a clear thud and with everyone forgetting about it. Nowadays you’ll see Youtube videos with the titles of “This game is the weirdest parody game ever”, or “A Bizarre comedy shooter from 2009”. I can’t really tell you what happened after that except everyone forgot about it, but what I can say is that the developers later released a side scroller “Downloadable Store” game only titled “Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond”. What is this game like? Hell if I know, but apparently the metacritic score is 65 and since then Matt Hazard’s career hasn’t made another comeback in the slightest and honestly? Some things are better left untouched, though if you want to play this game then you better get on your 360 or PS3 digital store and buy them quick cause eventually these games are going to disappear when the storefront goes down.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/02/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-walkthroughguide-958346
https://thevideogamedatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Eat_Lead:_The_Return_of_Matt_Hazard
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1437207/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hazard:_Blood_Bath_and_Beyond
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-original-videogame-soundtrack-2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ZRlrBHiLc&ab_channel=IGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2UXUGY164U&ab_channel=TheEscapist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EatLeadTheReturnOfMattHazard
The story starts off with this: Matt Hazard is an aging video game star who used to have it made back in the day with popular game after popular game from the 8-Bit era to the old school FPS era before eventually making it to the PS2 era of gaming. However, Matt Hazard attempted to over-expand into markets that aren’t meant for him, including kid friendly racing games and water gun shooters only for his company, Marathon, to nearly go bankrupt. A CEO pops in however and makes Matt Hazard into the star of a new shooter as a detective. However, going through the game scenario for the first level, in which Matt Hazard goes against the triads, reveals a deadly twist: he was actually a false protagonist for the game and was supposed to be killed off so the game’s real star, Sting Sniperscope, could take over instead. However, time is frozen and a mysterious hologram comes out. She reveals herself to be named QA, and relays that all of Matt’s save files have been mysteriously deleted from the game so when Sting was supposed to kill you, that means Matt would’ve stayed dead. Confused but wanting to find out what’s going on, he goes along with QA after one punching Sting Sniperscope in a quicktime fight.
The second level involves Matt being dropped into a level from his old game, “A Fistful of Hazzard” after some awkward flirting with QA because she needs time to figure out what’s going on, so with some programming technobabble bullshit you’re told that if you continue to play the game as Sting then it’ll take a while before anyone catches on. However, fighting your way through reveals a strange blend of the western game and those old enemies raid the club programmed into the game’s objectives. Following those guides, it’s learned that Matt’s old ex-girlfriend Kitty runs the club. However, he’s a cheating piece of shit and she rightfully slaps him before soviet soldiers raid the club to kill everyone. However, Matt shoots his way through the entire game before taking out his old nemesis, General Neutronov. It’s revealed that the Soviets were there to kill Kitty, and that someone is targeting all of Matt’s old friends. The next target is revealed to be a guy named “Bill the Wizard”, and Matt goes into whatever world he’s in to save his life.
The third level mostly revolves moving forward through a boring warehouse, sometimes protecting Bill the Wizard but honestly Bill doesn’t even make much of an appearance for the most part to really warrant much to the section. After shooting your way through tons of goons and avoiding an enemy helicopter that’s kind of frustrating, you end up at the finale of the stage. Sting Sniperscope Mark II is here and he’s going to try to murder you…again. You shoot through all of his guys and avoid the bullets, before running up to Sniper and beating him up in ANOTHER quicktime event before throwing his ass over a railing. In the real world it’s revealed that the CEO, Wallace Wellesley wants him mucho deado. Problem is, he can’t get rid of him because the previous owner signed him to a lifetime contract which states that unless he’s killed in a game that he can’t get rid of him at all. It’s revealed his dad owns Zappland, a huge arcade chain. Basically Wallace got pissy because he couldn’t beat any of Matt Hazard’s games due to difficulty, so he decided to use daddy’s money to buy Marathon games to try to kill off Matt out of petty anger. They decide to use the rest of his buddies as bait after stealing his assistant’s idea to do it, deciding to keep him busy while setting up a trap.
The fourth level involves Matt going into his old partner Dexter Dare’s games, with Dexter being the former co-star of the “Matt and Dexter” games. Matt drops down into Dexter’s old mansion to rescue him from Wallace’s henchmen. However, Dexter betrays him because of an offer from Wellesley to have his own set of games, appealing to both Dexter’s dislike of Matt as well as his burgeoning ego. However, that’s dashed when after a beatdown Matt saves his life from a malfunctioning robot called “Dexter’s Darlings”. Grateful, an apology is made before Matt makes his way back to the beginning of the game. However, some malfunctions and QA can’t save him while zombies surround the entire mansion. Then all the sudden a red version of QA comes in and suddenly moves him into a giant yacht of sorts. Totally not a trap at all.
The fifth level consists of Matt roaming through a yacht and shooting more goons and saving an old buddy, a Halo parody named “Master Chef” from space marines. However, she’s been acting strange and surprised that both he’s alive while also sorta flirting with him a bit. Either way Matt is all confused and shoots his way through more of the level. Both versions of QA pop up, the original blue and the evil twin red version; mainly getting rid of the red version because she’s too plainly obvious in her overt attempts at an ambush, before the evil QA forces Matt to fight for his life against the Kraken on a ship in one of the most frustrating fights in the entire game. Killing the Kraken and blowing the ship up, Wallace gets angry and recaps the last two levels in the game and that they don’t know if Matt is dead because the level is wiped from the servers.
The sixth level has Matt teleported to the Fraggme warehouses, a “part of the game’s server infrastructure”. Mario parody Captain Carpenter has Matt held up in his warehouse as a safety precaution and after an attack, Matt goes to save another old buddy from being murdered. Shooting through more goons, it’s learned that the warehouse is home to the props that are made for all of Marathon’s games. Deciding to go back home to his wife and to wait for everything to blow over, Captain Carpenter jumps into a block and down a green pipe and in a funny bit, Matt tells him to “say Hi to Karen for me”, Karen being his wife. Anyone with the name Karen just makes me giggle now to be honest. However, in the basement Matt uncovers Altos Tratus, a JRPG parody of all the spikey haired fucks with big swords who only talks with text prompts. This bit was actually kind of funny, and made me giggle a whole lot but Altos insists on killing you out of respect for his master and dies just the same as everyone else. They find a paper containing a shipment being sent to the final level of the Sting Sniperscope game and Matt proceeds to go to the last level. Wallace is given bad news of his escape and tells his assistant to get the programmers to throw everything they have in the final level.
The seventh level is at some docks, and consists of Matt shooting his way through an entire shipping yard full of goons and defeats Sting Sniperscope for the third and very last time after a boss battle involving a giant laser. After a bit of fake flirting, the fake ending credits roll for the game and Matt is teleported to the final level: a virtual world of the Marathon Megasoft building.
The final level has Matt fight his way to the top while going through pretty much every enemy in the game, before Wallace becomes desperate and deploys his own staff to use their virtual avatars in an attempt to kill Hazard himself. After shots are fired at Duke Nukem (in a cardboard cutout named “Nuke Winter” with the pose looking exactly like Duke), Matt fires actual shots at all the programmers and makes his way to Doogie Hauser’s office. Matt fights the guy from “How I Met Your Mother” in his virtual office while QA kills the fake QA. However, old QA is killed by Wallace and the final and second most frustrating boss battle commences. Matt makes his way to Wallace and Dexter pops by to help him out with the fight. Wallace is defeated and QA is revealed to be a guy named Quentin A. Myers, one of the lead programmers of his old games. However, Quentin takes over the company after he bought 49% of all the stock after he learned Wallace was going to buy the game. I guess a tease at the evil QA coming back is revealed and Wallace is back working at his dad’s old game store, where he rages after seeing Matt Hazard come back with a brand new game titled “Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard”.
Overall, the game is a goofy and dumb game. That’s the whole point, being a sort of parody of not only video games in general but definitely a sort of parallel to Duke Nukem and his infamous “Duke Nukem Forever” development hell cycle. As for the plot, I’m not surprised that the game is like this because it’s a comedy game so it’s going to take the piss out of everything. However, the comedy isn’t really that funny, at least to me. While I’m not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, I expect the game to at least make me laugh. It made me giggle once or twice at some of the gags, mainly the physical ones and some of the loading screen tips like literally describing out what a tip is in context to restaurants. However, I wouldn’t really consider playing this game again. It’s lowbrow, and while I’m certainly ok with lowbrow considering most of my joke repertoire consists of cracking gags about blowing people's dads, if you’re aiming to be a commercial product of some sorts you have to know your audience and what they like. Maybe I’m just not the audience, I don’t know but other than that it’s harmless and mindless. The only thing I could say is harmful is the next section: gameplay.
The gameplay is again one of the worst factors of the entire thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s playable, you can play it; but enjoying it is hit or miss for me. For the most part you go from Point A to Point B, shooting any and everything that gets in your way while taking cover behind environmental pieces. How does it fare in this regard? Honestly, it feels mediocre; between the actual movement feeling awkward to shooting being so-so from the power of the weapons to attempting to maneuver cover feel sluggish. Don’t get me wrong, it’s manageable and in some case you’ll feel like you’re actually doing decent enough but I never got the feeling that I was mastering the game or even navigating it when I was playing it on any difficulty. In fact, the higher the difficulty the more a lot of these problems are compounded due to the sheer chokehold some of these arenas have in game. I’m also not too much of a level design guy, but I don’t really feel like a lot of these maps are great for level design either. Take the final boss for example right? You have to take cover behind a bunch of small boxes while taking down enemies wave by wave. This is the penultimate moment in the game where you use the strategies you learned to fight against waves of opponents. Cover is a bit small, enemies kinda pop out from everywhere and they decide to use the worst enemies of the game: the Dexter Darling bots, which don’t die unless you melee attack them to finish them off. Melee Combat is often detrimental and the takedowns are slow and usually require three hits for damage (though thankfully for the Darling bots it’s just one giant fist ramming into the ass, though I guess I understand how I feel while playing this game). The fighting animations look weak and most of the time honestly, they feel weak and that’s another thing I don’t like. In correlation to the final boss, you’ll have to finish these guys off while trying not to get murked immediately all while dealing with small cover, getting clipped by invisible walls and praying that the robot doesn’t heal from her animations AND that her besties are too busy running in circles.
That’s another thing, the actual AI aren’t really great or smart; they just kind of wander around (except the zombies which shamble, note here by the way avoid them on the hardest difficulty it’s a one hit kill), pop their head out of cover and try to flush you out of yours by approaching. One might say “isn’t that what most enemy AI are supposed to do?” and I’d say “Yeah I suppose, but the flaws in the gameplay just make it more apparent than it should be”. I’ve played cover shooters that do all of this stuff before, like Spec Ops: The Line which is an average cover shooter. But even despite the averageness of Spec Ops’s gameplay and even ignoring the stellar presentation, it was at least competent enough not to make it feel like a slog. At least in other games like that you’re allowed to throw grenades, unlike this game. You’ll get a grenade launcher sure but that’s at the end of the game. One thing in gaming that kind of irritates me is if it’s a third person or third person shooter, if someone is using a weapon then I want to be able to use it too. They throw grenades? Let me pick them up. Well, you can’t and while I don’t remember seeing the grenades often, when my buddy played I remember him getting absolutely pelted a couple of times and getting irritated really quick. If I’m wrong and grenades aren’t used in game, my apologies maybe I’m mistaking it for the grenade launcher and my memory is shit but it’s still kind of frustrating not being able to at least use grenades for certain encounters.
So one’s probably thinking then, what weapons are there since you keep bringing up how weak they are and such? There’s the pistol (the .45 and 9MM which are replaced by the Hazard Pistol later on), the Submachine Gun (which can be dual wielded), the awesome revolver, the water gun, AKs, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser pistols and a couple others that seem to be in every single game like this. There isn’t anything really unique other than say the Water Pistol and SMG, which are funny and actually do damage even if it feels weak and it’s a bit of a gag weapon. However, you also have power ups that are placed in certain parts of the map. One of them is the Maximum Hazard power up, which increases your damage with guns and your fists. The other one is the Shield, which makes you look like the Silver Surfer as you’re basically invincible to take out groups of enemies before time makes it disappear. You’re more likely to see Maximum Hazard than the shield in the game and it’s kind of a shame because it would’ve made this game less of a slog. The last thing gun wise I want to bring up are special ammo types; these come about as you slowly kill enemies over the course of the game and it builds up a sort of special meter. When it’s full, depending on what stage of the game you’re at you can choose between Ice and Fire Ammo. Ice was always my to-go choice as it freezes enemies in place and if you can get a good headshot then it’s an instant kill, while Fire is okay but deals damage over time and to me I always felt like I didn’t want to wait to kill these guys if I could do it as soon as possible.
The final thing I’ll bring up are the boss battles before I move onto the graphics and audio. Most of the boss fights consist of two things: arena shooting or a QTE fight. The QTE fights are laughably easy and consist of pressing buttons in an order for Matt to knock someone down. Most of these look poor and sloppy and are obviously on purpose with some comedic timing, my favorite being one of the only things to give me a chuckle: Dexter’s QTE. You just kind of manhandle the guy and smash his face into the hood of his sports car repeatedly and there’s something about how the camera is positioned to where it honestly gave me quite the giggle. Other than that, you’ll see these fights as early as the first level with Sonny Tang and for the most part it’s a giggle. The only three fights I can remember that were arena shooting are the Kraken which involve dodging tentacles with one hit kill powers in Maximum Hazard difficulty and let me tell you this fucking blows. There’s another fight involving moving into small buildings to trick Sting Sniperscope into blowing up his own generators that took me a bit to realize what the strategy was but was actually somewhat decent other than the laser being OP and dodging enemies. The last one is Alto Tratus, the Final Fantasy expy guy whom you shoot repeatedly in a room full of enemies who provides the funniest gag in the game yet is still forgettable all the same. I guess the point for these boss battles is that they either range from “Decently okay” to “meh” to “did these really need to exist?” and nothing really pops out like it should.
The graphics/art direction is in my opinion kind of a mixed bag? I mean obviously being stuck in various video game worlds it’s going to be a strange mishmash of different genres such as wild west, soviet cold war, and the such. That’s great, except for the most part the art design just mainly seems to be dull and boring, from gray warehouses to more cold warehouses. Again, when it has something different like a hallway dedicated to a Wolfenstein 3D parody then it’s great, and I suppose if everything were to be a mismatch of different environments then it would get stale, but I’d appreciate the variety more than the usual warehouse/shipping yard stuff when you have so much at your disposal as a video game parody. Usually in these types of games I at least like to see a bit of variety in the differences between different worlds, almost as if it’s like a bit of an amusement park ride in the vein of “oh wow, this is a parody of Mario because XYZ” and again they have some of it but not enough to hit anything that truly boggles my mind.
The graphics for the most part are okayish, models and textures are around 2008-ish looking but for the most part it’s kind of samey as everything else that came out around that era and nothing really popped out to me environment wise. See if I were to continue on with talking about the models of weapons and characters then it would be a continuation of the same sentence, mostly going with “this is okay, this is alright '' and most of it passes. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way, if anything I consider graphical fidelity to be the least important because the truth is what really matters is the depth and value of the game and its relation to you. Nothing however really pops out here, other than Matt Hazard himself looking like a fish person with no jawline with an outfit that looks like an oversized tire on a bad Mad Max parody. Also, the futuristic 80s grid line Tron/Scooby-Doo Cyberchase movie look they have going on with the virtual world sometimes is kinda cool in here too.. Overall, It’s okay and nothing to write home about.
The audio design for certain weapons are surprisingly amazing, varying from the magnum sound seemingly coming straight out of Dirty Harry to the Pistol sounding like maybe it could come out of New Vegas. The other weapons on the other hand kind of vary in quality like the laser pistol, while honestly accurate and a must have for the later game, it doesn’t sound great. Most of the game varied like this to me, especially on the weapons side. The environmental side sounds consistent and a bit better, for example on the last level when you’re walking outside on the patio, the footsteps sounds are amazing. It’s one of those sounds that sort of tickles some sweet spot in my brain where I’m like “alright, dis shit pretty good”. Other environmental sounds are good for the most part but don’t pop out and I’m okay with that.
The voice acting is alright for the most part, none of them take it seriously and that’s for the better to be honest considering the subject matter of it being the equivalent of one of those mid-2000s parody movies. Will Arnett plays Matt Hazard himself in one of those cheesy action hero roles and for the most part he does okay, he didn’t really get me any laughs with his performance but at the same time I’m not so sure that’s on him as much as it is the script. Neil Patrick Harris definitely hams it up with his role as “Cut the crust off my sandwich Mom, I live in your basement” CEO/spoiled brat Wallace Wellesley. He just gives zero fucks and goes on constant rants about “why Matt Hazard isn’t dead” and while the subject matter is repetitive I can appreciate how easy to hate this guy is. Olivia Hack does a good job playing the “Hacked in” (heh) AI sent to help Matt Hazard, nicknamed QA. Overall, the voice acting is fine, does perfectly well with its job and has for the most part the right comedic voice acting to do a decent job. The last thing I could add here is that I wish they would add fucking subtitles but that’s just me I guess.
If I were to give a bit of a criticism in the audio design I would just say it’s the soundtrack. Not that the soundtrack is bad, in fact I can appreciate its variation. From the fight with Sonny Tang and the blaxploitation-esque tune to “Exploring Hazardland” sounding straight out of a 007 Goldeneye pause screen menu, I felt like this did a decent job at delivering appropriate sounds related to the genre it’s trying to parody. However, even though I don’t remember the track (though I think it’s Maximum Hazard), I specifically remember one being looped over and over again to the point where it lost most of the traction for me in its placement. Most of it just consists of thrashing air guitars which I get bored of quickly, though I’ll give Master Chef a bit of props for breaking out the string section and attempting to parody Halo with it’s main theme. Overall, it’s okay even if the most you’ll hear is one or two tracks (or at least multiple air guitar tracks that tend to loop and blend in with each other).
Matt Hazard to me is one of my least favorite games that I’ve ever played this year besides the snooze-fest Too Human. It’s not the worst game, but even as a parody (in which oftentimes you can expect lower quality) it’s dull in its performance. It almost feels as if it’s a parody of itself more than an actual commentary on the gaming industry. You have your usual cracks at Halo and Duke Nukem, action hero quips and the like but without what seems to be a soul or at least gameplay that aspires to be somewhat decent. It feels like a worse version of Kane & Lynch, and while I understand that it’s clearly on a budget with how it operates, I don’t feel like it made a good use of it’s budget. It’s a painfully average game that wallows in itself and makes itself worse without actually trying to improve. The results of this culminated in the release of the game, which landed with a clear thud and with everyone forgetting about it. Nowadays you’ll see Youtube videos with the titles of “This game is the weirdest parody game ever”, or “A Bizarre comedy shooter from 2009”. I can’t really tell you what happened after that except everyone forgot about it, but what I can say is that the developers later released a side scroller “Downloadable Store” game only titled “Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond”. What is this game like? Hell if I know, but apparently the metacritic score is 65 and since then Matt Hazard’s career hasn’t made another comeback in the slightest and honestly? Some things are better left untouched, though if you want to play this game then you better get on your 360 or PS3 digital store and buy them quick cause eventually these games are going to disappear when the storefront goes down.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/02/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-walkthroughguide-958346
https://thevideogamedatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Eat_Lead:_The_Return_of_Matt_Hazard
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1437207/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hazard:_Blood_Bath_and_Beyond
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-original-videogame-soundtrack-2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ZRlrBHiLc&ab_channel=IGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2UXUGY164U&ab_channel=TheEscapist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EatLeadTheReturnOfMattHazard
1999
This review contains spoilers
Shadow Man for the Nintendo 64 is a “Metroidvania '' styled action adventure horror flavor game developed by Acclaim Studios Teeside, whose only other games that I’m seeing were NBA Jam titles and the N64 Port of Forsaken. According to Wikipedia (yeah I know, can’t really trust it to be honest), the studio went about creating the engine first before being pitched by their parent company around eight different comic book series to adapt. This one was chosen, and I’d say that’s a pretty damn good choice considering how cool and gothic it is. The only other tidbit I found in terms of development was around six million dollars or more was the approximate budget. Granted if you compare it to games like Shenmue with that cool 70 million it’s merely a drop in the bucket but six million was considered a lot in terms of the general ballpark budget of that era.
My introduction to this game was rather unknown to be honest, but I remember being hyper fascinated (still am to this day) with exclusive games and I think I might have looked up a list of games to buy on the N64 and thought “oh shit this looks cool let's add it to the list” without looking into whether or not it was an actual exclusive? Since then I picked it up at some point at the local retro gaming store for about 10 dollars and it was one of my first N64 games ever. However, I didn’t touch it due to the fact that getting the N64 to run on an HDTV with an HDMI thing was next to near impossible and that’s how I would’ve preferred to have played it. I ended up buying an old CRTV from my buddy Elliot for 40 dollars and that’s how I managed to play it, with crunchy pixels and all; while playing the Gamecube looks like shit on it, the good ol’ 64 didn’t. There’s also the fact that I’ve been trying to hit up at least one game per console this year and this is the main one that I could “play through” and actually beat other than Super Mario 64. As such, playing this on the console was an experience to say the least…not always a great one however.
The gameplay is something that could be described as a “3D Metroidvania” according to Wikipedia and whoever else. That certainly is what the game is like, as you’re engaging in exploring the labyrinthian styled maze throughout Deadside from the gates into it, to the Cathedral to all of the areas inside the cathedral. Every single area is confusing as hell but after finding your way through the maze you’ll start to memorize little bits and pieces. In this case, I’ll admit to using a combination of a written guide (posted below) and a youtube playthrough of the remaster in case the written guide is confusing as hell (which it often is, considering it’s written by a unique personality in 2001 lol), mainly because if I didn’t use it then I would be stuck playing this game for hundreds of hours because I’m a bit on the slow side sometimes.
Each of these areas have other little areas connecting to other little areas via portals that need to be unlocked by collecting Dark Souls or through fleshy bridges that connect you via realms. The Dark Souls are basically the main collectibles of the game, one that helps you activate certain paths but also power your Shadow Gun, arguably your main form of defense throughout the game due to its unlimited ammo and the fact you get health when you take an enemy out. That’s not to say that there aren’t other weapons: through your journey you’ll be picking up other puzzle pieces that moonlight as weapons such as the Baton, which is a melee weapon that shoots flames while opening little gates to the Enseigne, which you can use as a shield of sorts to even weapons only usable in the Liveside (around halfway through the game?) such as the shotgun or the machine gun. None however is as powerful as the Violator, which certainly lives up to its name eviscerating enemies, and if you get all of the Dark Souls and open the gate behind your spawn point in the beginning of the game on top of a Waterfall then you can get a second one.
Before I move on from the weapons, the other collectible of choice to pick up are the Cadeaux, of which there are hundreds of them. If you’re able to collect 500 or so and bring them back to the Temple of Life then you can trade them for health upgrades. I was only able to get to level 9 of 10 before I gave up but you can technically survive without getting any of them, even if it is a bit on the difficult side. The only other pickups available other than ammo, Cadeaux and Dark Souls are orange energy orbs (for the special weapons like the Enseigne) and health orbs. Now keep in mind, you’ll never be able to pick everything up immediately, the game is hellbent on making you explore every nook and cranny and as such you’ll need to get certain abilities in order to come back to earlier areas and unlock new pathways that you weren’t able to unlock before. This’ll help you unlock even more keys or weapons to unlock even more pathways to the future.
The ultimate goal of the game is again to get all the Dark Souls and defeat Legion and all of his minions. In this goal, you’ll eventually run into the Cathedral of Pain where there will be multiple pathways to different gates that lead to Legion’s enforcers, known as the Five. Now keep in mind, you’ll need to get the three pieces of L’Eclipsque in order to have the Liveside turn to night time so Shadow Man can use his powers in Liveside against the Five. Once you do, you can enter their domains though you’ll need to find Retractors in order to do so, which helps open up the other flesh gates that help you get to other locations. Now luckily three of these five minions are located in the prison, but you’ll also go to an abandoned hotel in New York and through the sewers and subway tunnels of London, England to get another. Most of these bosses and even general combat encounters can be done by walking backwards with one of your many guns and (along with strafing), just unloading everything you got. However, with the bosses make sure that when they’re down to finish them off with the Shadow Gun or else you’ll just be wasting ammo and they’ll get back up. This leads into my main criticism for the game, a thing that Shadow Man can’t exactly control the best so I can’t totally blame it.
If I were to criticize one aspect that’s mainly on the N64 would be the controller support. Now most of it you can get by with just fine if you know what you’re doing. You can lock on aim with R, shoot your weapon with B (though fun fact, you can dual wield weapons by going to one in your inventory and pressing the back Z button. I didn’t know this till’ VERY late in the game so have fun controlling both), A to jump, and the left C button is for opening doors and such. You’ll use these buttons mainly but please keep in mind that the platforming in the game isn’t great with the camera angles, a lot of which requires you to jump backwards in order to do stuff. Now you’ll still probably fail doing this until you master distance, but the other C buttons control the camera angles going left and right which I didn’t know until much later in the game so use this to your advantage. Keep in mind, controlling the camera is cumbersome not only in parkour but sometimes in combat. Some enemies charge up to you really quick, and sometimes with the smaller rooms and stuff cluttering these small rooms, mixed with the one thumbstick and the lock on, sometimes slipping through it gets painful to navigate combat situations quickly. With this final point in mind, checkpoints are also few and far between so if you’re in say, London, as an example then you better know where you’re going with the maze-like locations because it’s hell getting back to where you were. This is coming from someone who only just started playing the N64 however, so I’m sure the N64 veterans are looking at me and spitting down on me from wherever they are. For the most part however, with enough practice you’ll get used to all of the systems enough to make it besides a few frustrating parts here and there.
One thing to note is unlockables: there are certain unlockables that you can obtain from called the Book of Shadows. However, beyond each port of the game it seems to work differently; in the N64 version you’re able to get cheat codes from entering certain areas, mostly skins of enemies (or Bloodshot from Valiant Comics apparently though I don’t think I saw that one) while the others just seem to unlock concept art. Other than that, I think I have everything covered that I wanted to cover with Shadow Man. Again I know there’s a lot more to this game, but the truth is that the structure makes it so complex that I’m sure I’ll miss some stuff anyways. My main feeling about it is that I’m not really into the Metroidvania genre, and I respect it so I can’t dock points based on that, nor will I dock points based on a structure controlled by the warped machinations of the N64 controller anyways lol. However, I’m simply not a fan of the camera, and some of the strange jumps asked of me and a lot of that led to me putting the game off numerous times between the two months I started playing this game.
The plot of the game is as follows: you play as Michael LeRoi, one of many in a long line of Shadow Men, voodoo priests blessed with supernatural warriors who are assigned to defend the Earth from any dark and evil threats. Of course your handler/lover, Mama Nettie, has a prophetic dream about an army of serial killers named “The Five”, who are planning on bringing forth the Apocalypse to the world via a giant army hidden inside of a cathedral located in “The Deadside”, the supernatural plane of existence. All of these are under one evil force: Legion; who have given these serial killers corrupting powers in exchange for their allegiance. Of course, Legion also plans to steal the Dark Souls, evil souls of corrupting power for use in their plans too. Nettie wants Michael to take them all, and after giving him files on all of the serial killers (written by Thomas Deacon, later seen in the sequel), sends him off to Deadside to meet up with Jaunty, a sarcastic irish skull snake demon thing. More briefing from there, and you’re off to see the wizard to collect the dark souls, take down the serial killers and bring an end to Legion’s reign.
Now here’s the main thing of the game: it’s open nature almost ensures that you’ll be missing out on some things. For example, the next two plot points that I remember playing it involve encountering the ghost of your brother, Luke, inside the heart of the asylum before he disappears and runs away. That, and after finding all three parts of L’Eclipse and bringing it back to Mama Nettie, she uses her powers to force the world into nighttime so your Shadowman powers are effective to go against the killers in their place of home, putting her into a permanent coma until it’s done. With this in mind, you’ll find bits and pieces of lore here and there by going back after finding certain places and collecting things to Jaunty and Nettie where you’ll either discuss your findings or get chided to go back and do the job. Otherwise everything’s part of a puzzle and you’re kind of left to your own devices to figure that out.
The final parts I can remember to bring up involve taking down all five serial killers in three different locations. After traveling to New York, London and a prison in Texas to take down The Five as well as shut down some of the machinery, the ghost of your brother Luke gathers your attention again, and Michael chases him down only to encounter him on a throne. SURPRISE, it’s Legion and he’s influenced countless generations and kickstarted the prophecy that Nettie has seen in the first place, only to get you to bring all of the Dark Souls to him so he can use it to take over the world. However, Michael is powerful as hell and after putting all the bullets in him you can, you take him down and escape from the Asylum while the Earth is saved. A simple plot, one that I’m sure is missing a lot of details. Truth be told, while you can play this game on it’s own terms, it’s a bit better to sit down and do some research into the backstory of Michael LeRoi. I don’t read the comics, however what I understand from IMDB is that this game is partially based on a Garth Ennis run? I’ll just post the wiki page for Michael down below if you’d like to look into it yourself.
Audio Design for the most part is pretty solid, keep in mind I played it on a CRTV so it’s going to sound crunchy regardless. The music is pretty atmospheric and stripped down for the most part, with some electronic sounding stuff mixed within it. The main tracks I remember hearing were Deadside and the Main Theme at the menu. I felt that Tim Haywood did a pretty good job for the most part, and helped make Shadow Man’s world its own unique and breathing creature. The sound effects are great too from the guns (especially the Shadow Gun) feeling punchy and powerful, to the footsteps to the horrific groans of all the creatures dwelling to basically murder you. The voice acting and dialogue for this game is something I can say is a bit schlocky sometimes but it’s charming and a lot of fun in its own right. Redd Pepper voices Mike LeRoi here and oftentimes he plays the effective but clueless hero well, turning up the ham at certain points in the game to great effect. Lani Minella does well with Aunt Nettie though I’ll always enjoy Barry Meade as Jaunty, the sarcastic and snide tapeworm looking bastard. He’s a funny dude and always delivers his lines well, in a game that’s kind of hit or miss sometimes whether or not it’s a bit stilted. Still though, I don’t have any complaints otherwise because I felt the voice cast did a good job immersing me in that world.
The art direction and atmosphere for this game are pretty damn cool and are probably the highlight of the game for me. It’s straight up horror themed, and Deadside looks phenomenal in its direction. Every location that you travel looks unique and interesting, overwhelming in its confusion but purposeful all the same. Pretentious bullshit aside, it looks pretty damn good and I’m not going to complain. The highlights for me are the outside of the Cathedral itself, a giant monolith of space that makes it look intimidating as if it was a prison of sorts. In fact, I’ll even go out on a limb here and say I’m genuinely surprised that the N64 was able to make such a monolithic location like this but maybe I’m just underestimating the console. Some locations look like a barren wasteland, and some look fleshy and disgusting, and some just look like they come out of a steampunk hellscape fantasy. It depends on where you go but they all look pretty good and blend in seamlessly. The monster designs are also pretty creepy, whether they’re two headed creatures with no legs crawling at you with their hands or those annoying pterodactyl dinosaur looking fucks, or even the butcher hook people in the asylum that made me shit my pants trying to avoid their attacks. Again, they all do a pretty solid job making it all blend in together so I can’t have anything bad to say about much of it except for a few things.
Shadowman for the Nintendo 64 is one of those games that I can say is a bit of a flawed gem in my eyes. I wouldn’t ever want to play this game again but I can respect its place in video game cult classic history. The world is immaculate, oppressive, maze-like, hellish like the Deadside would be, but by the end my soul would also be dead on the inside. However, I also feel like this isn’t necessarily the game’s fault persay, but on the consoles that it was put on. The N64 controller isn’t the best, neither was the Dreamcast controller at the time. The two consoles that could probably host this the best were the PC version (which I haven’t played yet) and the Playstation 1 version, which according to the reviews were ass and barely playable on the hardware. However, in the years of this game’s release I felt like Shadow Man (at least in the gaming world) became arguably more renowned and rightfully so for the world and atmosphere surrounding it. Out of all of the Valiant Comics characters, arguably Shadow Man and Bloodshot are the most popular, though I’m kind of sad that the game’s success didn’t translate to further games of any sorts.
Regardless however, The cult classic nature of this game is a success story of sorts, one which led to a sequel on the Playstation 2 (lost to time sadly), a movie adaptation pitch with Ice Cube that didn’t end up happening (WESTSYYYYYYYDE), as well as a remaster of this game released by our heroes Nightdive Studios. I got a copy of the remaster a couple of years ago by a buddy of mine on Steam (shoutout to DarkRaptor) so ONE day I will play the remaster, but probably years from now when I have this game flushed out of my system. I hope one day that Nightdive will take the time perhaps to remaster the second game, but in other news with Shadowman: a new Shadowman game featuring Jack Boniface called Shadow Man: Darque Legacy, which is apparently a single player Souls-like game which I have mixed feelings about but nonetheless it’s there.
Links:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/198601-shadow-man/faqs/11447 (Guide)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IdlK1Z0YA0 (Other Youtube Channel I used as guide)
https://www.neoseeker.com/shadowman/cheats/n64/ (N64 Cheats)
https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649 (Comparative game budgets)
https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday/93946368/
https://variety.com/1999/film/news/artisan-warms-up-to-ice-cube-1117756828/ (Film Sources)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Man_(Michael_LeRoi)
https://shadowman.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_LeRoi (Backstory Sources)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ShadowMan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y27O551VOJ0&ab_channel=ORDOVIZIUMVIDEOGAME-OSTCHANNEL (Soundtrack)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292231/
https://manuall.co.uk/nintendo-n64-shadow-man/
My introduction to this game was rather unknown to be honest, but I remember being hyper fascinated (still am to this day) with exclusive games and I think I might have looked up a list of games to buy on the N64 and thought “oh shit this looks cool let's add it to the list” without looking into whether or not it was an actual exclusive? Since then I picked it up at some point at the local retro gaming store for about 10 dollars and it was one of my first N64 games ever. However, I didn’t touch it due to the fact that getting the N64 to run on an HDTV with an HDMI thing was next to near impossible and that’s how I would’ve preferred to have played it. I ended up buying an old CRTV from my buddy Elliot for 40 dollars and that’s how I managed to play it, with crunchy pixels and all; while playing the Gamecube looks like shit on it, the good ol’ 64 didn’t. There’s also the fact that I’ve been trying to hit up at least one game per console this year and this is the main one that I could “play through” and actually beat other than Super Mario 64. As such, playing this on the console was an experience to say the least…not always a great one however.
The gameplay is something that could be described as a “3D Metroidvania” according to Wikipedia and whoever else. That certainly is what the game is like, as you’re engaging in exploring the labyrinthian styled maze throughout Deadside from the gates into it, to the Cathedral to all of the areas inside the cathedral. Every single area is confusing as hell but after finding your way through the maze you’ll start to memorize little bits and pieces. In this case, I’ll admit to using a combination of a written guide (posted below) and a youtube playthrough of the remaster in case the written guide is confusing as hell (which it often is, considering it’s written by a unique personality in 2001 lol), mainly because if I didn’t use it then I would be stuck playing this game for hundreds of hours because I’m a bit on the slow side sometimes.
Each of these areas have other little areas connecting to other little areas via portals that need to be unlocked by collecting Dark Souls or through fleshy bridges that connect you via realms. The Dark Souls are basically the main collectibles of the game, one that helps you activate certain paths but also power your Shadow Gun, arguably your main form of defense throughout the game due to its unlimited ammo and the fact you get health when you take an enemy out. That’s not to say that there aren’t other weapons: through your journey you’ll be picking up other puzzle pieces that moonlight as weapons such as the Baton, which is a melee weapon that shoots flames while opening little gates to the Enseigne, which you can use as a shield of sorts to even weapons only usable in the Liveside (around halfway through the game?) such as the shotgun or the machine gun. None however is as powerful as the Violator, which certainly lives up to its name eviscerating enemies, and if you get all of the Dark Souls and open the gate behind your spawn point in the beginning of the game on top of a Waterfall then you can get a second one.
Before I move on from the weapons, the other collectible of choice to pick up are the Cadeaux, of which there are hundreds of them. If you’re able to collect 500 or so and bring them back to the Temple of Life then you can trade them for health upgrades. I was only able to get to level 9 of 10 before I gave up but you can technically survive without getting any of them, even if it is a bit on the difficult side. The only other pickups available other than ammo, Cadeaux and Dark Souls are orange energy orbs (for the special weapons like the Enseigne) and health orbs. Now keep in mind, you’ll never be able to pick everything up immediately, the game is hellbent on making you explore every nook and cranny and as such you’ll need to get certain abilities in order to come back to earlier areas and unlock new pathways that you weren’t able to unlock before. This’ll help you unlock even more keys or weapons to unlock even more pathways to the future.
The ultimate goal of the game is again to get all the Dark Souls and defeat Legion and all of his minions. In this goal, you’ll eventually run into the Cathedral of Pain where there will be multiple pathways to different gates that lead to Legion’s enforcers, known as the Five. Now keep in mind, you’ll need to get the three pieces of L’Eclipsque in order to have the Liveside turn to night time so Shadow Man can use his powers in Liveside against the Five. Once you do, you can enter their domains though you’ll need to find Retractors in order to do so, which helps open up the other flesh gates that help you get to other locations. Now luckily three of these five minions are located in the prison, but you’ll also go to an abandoned hotel in New York and through the sewers and subway tunnels of London, England to get another. Most of these bosses and even general combat encounters can be done by walking backwards with one of your many guns and (along with strafing), just unloading everything you got. However, with the bosses make sure that when they’re down to finish them off with the Shadow Gun or else you’ll just be wasting ammo and they’ll get back up. This leads into my main criticism for the game, a thing that Shadow Man can’t exactly control the best so I can’t totally blame it.
If I were to criticize one aspect that’s mainly on the N64 would be the controller support. Now most of it you can get by with just fine if you know what you’re doing. You can lock on aim with R, shoot your weapon with B (though fun fact, you can dual wield weapons by going to one in your inventory and pressing the back Z button. I didn’t know this till’ VERY late in the game so have fun controlling both), A to jump, and the left C button is for opening doors and such. You’ll use these buttons mainly but please keep in mind that the platforming in the game isn’t great with the camera angles, a lot of which requires you to jump backwards in order to do stuff. Now you’ll still probably fail doing this until you master distance, but the other C buttons control the camera angles going left and right which I didn’t know until much later in the game so use this to your advantage. Keep in mind, controlling the camera is cumbersome not only in parkour but sometimes in combat. Some enemies charge up to you really quick, and sometimes with the smaller rooms and stuff cluttering these small rooms, mixed with the one thumbstick and the lock on, sometimes slipping through it gets painful to navigate combat situations quickly. With this final point in mind, checkpoints are also few and far between so if you’re in say, London, as an example then you better know where you’re going with the maze-like locations because it’s hell getting back to where you were. This is coming from someone who only just started playing the N64 however, so I’m sure the N64 veterans are looking at me and spitting down on me from wherever they are. For the most part however, with enough practice you’ll get used to all of the systems enough to make it besides a few frustrating parts here and there.
One thing to note is unlockables: there are certain unlockables that you can obtain from called the Book of Shadows. However, beyond each port of the game it seems to work differently; in the N64 version you’re able to get cheat codes from entering certain areas, mostly skins of enemies (or Bloodshot from Valiant Comics apparently though I don’t think I saw that one) while the others just seem to unlock concept art. Other than that, I think I have everything covered that I wanted to cover with Shadow Man. Again I know there’s a lot more to this game, but the truth is that the structure makes it so complex that I’m sure I’ll miss some stuff anyways. My main feeling about it is that I’m not really into the Metroidvania genre, and I respect it so I can’t dock points based on that, nor will I dock points based on a structure controlled by the warped machinations of the N64 controller anyways lol. However, I’m simply not a fan of the camera, and some of the strange jumps asked of me and a lot of that led to me putting the game off numerous times between the two months I started playing this game.
The plot of the game is as follows: you play as Michael LeRoi, one of many in a long line of Shadow Men, voodoo priests blessed with supernatural warriors who are assigned to defend the Earth from any dark and evil threats. Of course your handler/lover, Mama Nettie, has a prophetic dream about an army of serial killers named “The Five”, who are planning on bringing forth the Apocalypse to the world via a giant army hidden inside of a cathedral located in “The Deadside”, the supernatural plane of existence. All of these are under one evil force: Legion; who have given these serial killers corrupting powers in exchange for their allegiance. Of course, Legion also plans to steal the Dark Souls, evil souls of corrupting power for use in their plans too. Nettie wants Michael to take them all, and after giving him files on all of the serial killers (written by Thomas Deacon, later seen in the sequel), sends him off to Deadside to meet up with Jaunty, a sarcastic irish skull snake demon thing. More briefing from there, and you’re off to see the wizard to collect the dark souls, take down the serial killers and bring an end to Legion’s reign.
Now here’s the main thing of the game: it’s open nature almost ensures that you’ll be missing out on some things. For example, the next two plot points that I remember playing it involve encountering the ghost of your brother, Luke, inside the heart of the asylum before he disappears and runs away. That, and after finding all three parts of L’Eclipse and bringing it back to Mama Nettie, she uses her powers to force the world into nighttime so your Shadowman powers are effective to go against the killers in their place of home, putting her into a permanent coma until it’s done. With this in mind, you’ll find bits and pieces of lore here and there by going back after finding certain places and collecting things to Jaunty and Nettie where you’ll either discuss your findings or get chided to go back and do the job. Otherwise everything’s part of a puzzle and you’re kind of left to your own devices to figure that out.
The final parts I can remember to bring up involve taking down all five serial killers in three different locations. After traveling to New York, London and a prison in Texas to take down The Five as well as shut down some of the machinery, the ghost of your brother Luke gathers your attention again, and Michael chases him down only to encounter him on a throne. SURPRISE, it’s Legion and he’s influenced countless generations and kickstarted the prophecy that Nettie has seen in the first place, only to get you to bring all of the Dark Souls to him so he can use it to take over the world. However, Michael is powerful as hell and after putting all the bullets in him you can, you take him down and escape from the Asylum while the Earth is saved. A simple plot, one that I’m sure is missing a lot of details. Truth be told, while you can play this game on it’s own terms, it’s a bit better to sit down and do some research into the backstory of Michael LeRoi. I don’t read the comics, however what I understand from IMDB is that this game is partially based on a Garth Ennis run? I’ll just post the wiki page for Michael down below if you’d like to look into it yourself.
Audio Design for the most part is pretty solid, keep in mind I played it on a CRTV so it’s going to sound crunchy regardless. The music is pretty atmospheric and stripped down for the most part, with some electronic sounding stuff mixed within it. The main tracks I remember hearing were Deadside and the Main Theme at the menu. I felt that Tim Haywood did a pretty good job for the most part, and helped make Shadow Man’s world its own unique and breathing creature. The sound effects are great too from the guns (especially the Shadow Gun) feeling punchy and powerful, to the footsteps to the horrific groans of all the creatures dwelling to basically murder you. The voice acting and dialogue for this game is something I can say is a bit schlocky sometimes but it’s charming and a lot of fun in its own right. Redd Pepper voices Mike LeRoi here and oftentimes he plays the effective but clueless hero well, turning up the ham at certain points in the game to great effect. Lani Minella does well with Aunt Nettie though I’ll always enjoy Barry Meade as Jaunty, the sarcastic and snide tapeworm looking bastard. He’s a funny dude and always delivers his lines well, in a game that’s kind of hit or miss sometimes whether or not it’s a bit stilted. Still though, I don’t have any complaints otherwise because I felt the voice cast did a good job immersing me in that world.
The art direction and atmosphere for this game are pretty damn cool and are probably the highlight of the game for me. It’s straight up horror themed, and Deadside looks phenomenal in its direction. Every location that you travel looks unique and interesting, overwhelming in its confusion but purposeful all the same. Pretentious bullshit aside, it looks pretty damn good and I’m not going to complain. The highlights for me are the outside of the Cathedral itself, a giant monolith of space that makes it look intimidating as if it was a prison of sorts. In fact, I’ll even go out on a limb here and say I’m genuinely surprised that the N64 was able to make such a monolithic location like this but maybe I’m just underestimating the console. Some locations look like a barren wasteland, and some look fleshy and disgusting, and some just look like they come out of a steampunk hellscape fantasy. It depends on where you go but they all look pretty good and blend in seamlessly. The monster designs are also pretty creepy, whether they’re two headed creatures with no legs crawling at you with their hands or those annoying pterodactyl dinosaur looking fucks, or even the butcher hook people in the asylum that made me shit my pants trying to avoid their attacks. Again, they all do a pretty solid job making it all blend in together so I can’t have anything bad to say about much of it except for a few things.
Shadowman for the Nintendo 64 is one of those games that I can say is a bit of a flawed gem in my eyes. I wouldn’t ever want to play this game again but I can respect its place in video game cult classic history. The world is immaculate, oppressive, maze-like, hellish like the Deadside would be, but by the end my soul would also be dead on the inside. However, I also feel like this isn’t necessarily the game’s fault persay, but on the consoles that it was put on. The N64 controller isn’t the best, neither was the Dreamcast controller at the time. The two consoles that could probably host this the best were the PC version (which I haven’t played yet) and the Playstation 1 version, which according to the reviews were ass and barely playable on the hardware. However, in the years of this game’s release I felt like Shadow Man (at least in the gaming world) became arguably more renowned and rightfully so for the world and atmosphere surrounding it. Out of all of the Valiant Comics characters, arguably Shadow Man and Bloodshot are the most popular, though I’m kind of sad that the game’s success didn’t translate to further games of any sorts.
Regardless however, The cult classic nature of this game is a success story of sorts, one which led to a sequel on the Playstation 2 (lost to time sadly), a movie adaptation pitch with Ice Cube that didn’t end up happening (WESTSYYYYYYYDE), as well as a remaster of this game released by our heroes Nightdive Studios. I got a copy of the remaster a couple of years ago by a buddy of mine on Steam (shoutout to DarkRaptor) so ONE day I will play the remaster, but probably years from now when I have this game flushed out of my system. I hope one day that Nightdive will take the time perhaps to remaster the second game, but in other news with Shadowman: a new Shadowman game featuring Jack Boniface called Shadow Man: Darque Legacy, which is apparently a single player Souls-like game which I have mixed feelings about but nonetheless it’s there.
Links:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/n64/198601-shadow-man/faqs/11447 (Guide)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IdlK1Z0YA0 (Other Youtube Channel I used as guide)
https://www.neoseeker.com/shadowman/cheats/n64/ (N64 Cheats)
https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649 (Comparative game budgets)
https://www.newspapers.com/article/newsday/93946368/
https://variety.com/1999/film/news/artisan-warms-up-to-ice-cube-1117756828/ (Film Sources)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Man_(Michael_LeRoi)
https://shadowman.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_LeRoi (Backstory Sources)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ShadowMan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y27O551VOJ0&ab_channel=ORDOVIZIUMVIDEOGAME-OSTCHANNEL (Soundtrack)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292231/
https://manuall.co.uk/nintendo-n64-shadow-man/
2023
This review contains spoilers
Keep the Lights On is a side scroller atmospheric horror game developed by Light the Lantern Studios, not to apparently be confused with Lantern Light Studios of “The King’s Feast” fame apparently. Like many small indie horror game studios, the origins of how this game came to be and fascinating studio history isn’t around yet. Like many of the short horror games that I’ve been playing for free recently, I believe I originally found this title via AlphaBetaGamer and I saw the low-res pixelated look mixed with the horror themes and figured I’d eventually give it a shot. That shot didn’t come around until this month, where I was streaming some games for a friend of mine in a build up of sorts to Halloween (along with The Complex: Found Footage, He Needs His Medicine and Unsorted Horror).
The plot is as follows: you are Edmund Rosenthal, an alcoholic private detective whose wife Helen recently passed away from a disease. You’re in shambles emotionally and financially, and for Edmund the future is looking bleak. However, a letter arrives from Vivan Newport, a woman whose estate holds an old convent with a history of disappearances. She wants you to investigate this so she can move on from the past history and renovate it into a home after 200 years of it just sitting there. Without any work, Edmund goes out to the estate to investigate only to find supernatural forces and proceeds to find out what happened here. One moment that made me really feel something was the part where you encounter the ghost of your dead wife Helen on the Bell Tower, who urges you to move on from the past and heal instead of hanging onto her. Of course, you can refuse and there’s a bad ending/achievement for this, but in order to progress the game you have to help Eddie move on. While I don’t remember all the lines much, and as tropey as it kinda was I’m weak for emotional themes and that was really nice.
As for the conflict in the story, the background plot follows a nun named Beatrice, whose child had recently died of unknown complications. In her grief, she made contact with Salvinus, a snake demon who promised her that she would see her child again if she were to worship him. Now of course, one never trusts a snake demon with all the “Garden of Eden” bulls h i t but it’s because of this that the convent has been haunted. There’s a bit of a parallel about how both Edmund and Beatrice deal with their grief, with the themes that hanging onto it will only lead you into desperation and misery and that it’s okay to move on; along with themes of forgiveness. I won’t reveal more because it’s short, but you’ll find incidental pieces of lore surrounding the events from spots in the convent you’ll come across, mostly old letters/dialogue with ghosts. The ending of course results in Edmund fighting off the possessed ghost of Beatrice with holy water and Beatrice being reunited in heaven with her child. Overall while the story has been done before, the execution of it was nice and I enjoyed my time with it.
The gameplay aspects could be a tad bit better; it’s a side scroller where you choose to go into different rooms and solve puzzles while also engaging in combat with evil spirits. The combat isn’t great, and revolves around picking up holy water to throw at ghosts. Problem is, the holy water takes a bit to get rid of and these ghosts charge fast, so you’ll most likely accrue damage anyways. Luckily you can just get an infinite amount of this water by entering and exiting locations where they’ll be at, but it’s still kind of a pain in the ass to even deal with this system and it’s better to just leave any ammo for the final boss. The best recommendation is to jump, and as long as you time it right you can jump over most of these ghosts just fine though I did have trouble with their hitboxes every now and then. Most of the game's puzzles are for the most part fine, though trying to get one of the solutions for the secret developer room involved me opening a locked desk by, get this, climbing to the attic and jumping repeatedly in a spot until I crashed through the floor. They did give a blurb about this when you first came up but it took me ages as well as a Youtube walkthrough before I did it, and the only thing that popped in my head was “what the hell is this s h i t?”. Sometimes you can figure it out like that, sometimes it feels like a bit of a mixed bag though what I can say is that I suck at puzzles anyways so maybe it’s just me? Also unless you want to get stuck, if you go to the bell tower area, don’t pick up the ladder and drop it on the ledge before jumping into the hole. I did that once, and while it’s not smart and I did just reload to a previous save it’s kind of a pain to have something that could make you reset your entire game if you decided to jump into the hole without any way to get out. My solution would be to provide a box or two so one could get out realistically, but yeah don’t jump down without the ladder because the ladder is needed for puzzle stuff later on. The final thing I can share with this is that if you have F12 as your screenshot button then be careful, as pressing it in game will bring out the DevTools Chrome Extension in game, and that was confusing to see pop up.
The atmosphere/sound design is pretty solid too, the rain and water sounds when you’re outside towards the bridge sound amazing. Creaky doors and the pattering of footsteps add to the atmospheric part of the horror, as does the instrumental music in the background which is very lowkey but conveys the mood well. There isn’t any voice acting so most of the sounds you’ll hear with dialogue are the sounds of what seems to be typewriters going off as the text appears on screen. As for the atmosphere and graphics, graphically this is definitely more in the line of those 8-16 bit titles of old but with that distinct indie flair that feels like an adaptation that one can tell the difference but not describe it well. It’s dark and moody, and screams gothic horror with barely any light sources that could come straight out of an old eighties horror flick.
My thoughts on this game are as follows: for a free title the game’s pretty good! It’s not mind blowing persay, and there are some things that I would consider to be issues but as a first stepping stone for the developers I’d say they did a pretty good job here. The game has a creepy atmosphere and an interesting concept with some heartfelt themes that I can plainly say works out. I don’t really know what the next move for these guys are, but considering that the game came out around June 30th of this year I’d say that they’re still doing work and are probably working on their next project hopefully. There’s potential, and hopefully whatever they have going will help Keep the Lights On at home (look please don’t shoot me, I know it’s a bad dad joke). Overall, it’s worth your time and again it’s free; with Halloween coming up if you’re interested in something to help spook up your season then I’d say why not give the game a shot if you’re on a tight budget and/or looking to try out some new stuff from upcoming indie devs.
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007028229 (Achievement Guide)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMI1ekdJbG4&ab_channel=AlphaBetaGamer (Playthrough)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot is as follows: you are Edmund Rosenthal, an alcoholic private detective whose wife Helen recently passed away from a disease. You’re in shambles emotionally and financially, and for Edmund the future is looking bleak. However, a letter arrives from Vivan Newport, a woman whose estate holds an old convent with a history of disappearances. She wants you to investigate this so she can move on from the past history and renovate it into a home after 200 years of it just sitting there. Without any work, Edmund goes out to the estate to investigate only to find supernatural forces and proceeds to find out what happened here. One moment that made me really feel something was the part where you encounter the ghost of your dead wife Helen on the Bell Tower, who urges you to move on from the past and heal instead of hanging onto her. Of course, you can refuse and there’s a bad ending/achievement for this, but in order to progress the game you have to help Eddie move on. While I don’t remember all the lines much, and as tropey as it kinda was I’m weak for emotional themes and that was really nice.
As for the conflict in the story, the background plot follows a nun named Beatrice, whose child had recently died of unknown complications. In her grief, she made contact with Salvinus, a snake demon who promised her that she would see her child again if she were to worship him. Now of course, one never trusts a snake demon with all the “Garden of Eden” bulls h i t but it’s because of this that the convent has been haunted. There’s a bit of a parallel about how both Edmund and Beatrice deal with their grief, with the themes that hanging onto it will only lead you into desperation and misery and that it’s okay to move on; along with themes of forgiveness. I won’t reveal more because it’s short, but you’ll find incidental pieces of lore surrounding the events from spots in the convent you’ll come across, mostly old letters/dialogue with ghosts. The ending of course results in Edmund fighting off the possessed ghost of Beatrice with holy water and Beatrice being reunited in heaven with her child. Overall while the story has been done before, the execution of it was nice and I enjoyed my time with it.
The gameplay aspects could be a tad bit better; it’s a side scroller where you choose to go into different rooms and solve puzzles while also engaging in combat with evil spirits. The combat isn’t great, and revolves around picking up holy water to throw at ghosts. Problem is, the holy water takes a bit to get rid of and these ghosts charge fast, so you’ll most likely accrue damage anyways. Luckily you can just get an infinite amount of this water by entering and exiting locations where they’ll be at, but it’s still kind of a pain in the ass to even deal with this system and it’s better to just leave any ammo for the final boss. The best recommendation is to jump, and as long as you time it right you can jump over most of these ghosts just fine though I did have trouble with their hitboxes every now and then. Most of the game's puzzles are for the most part fine, though trying to get one of the solutions for the secret developer room involved me opening a locked desk by, get this, climbing to the attic and jumping repeatedly in a spot until I crashed through the floor. They did give a blurb about this when you first came up but it took me ages as well as a Youtube walkthrough before I did it, and the only thing that popped in my head was “what the hell is this s h i t?”. Sometimes you can figure it out like that, sometimes it feels like a bit of a mixed bag though what I can say is that I suck at puzzles anyways so maybe it’s just me? Also unless you want to get stuck, if you go to the bell tower area, don’t pick up the ladder and drop it on the ledge before jumping into the hole. I did that once, and while it’s not smart and I did just reload to a previous save it’s kind of a pain to have something that could make you reset your entire game if you decided to jump into the hole without any way to get out. My solution would be to provide a box or two so one could get out realistically, but yeah don’t jump down without the ladder because the ladder is needed for puzzle stuff later on. The final thing I can share with this is that if you have F12 as your screenshot button then be careful, as pressing it in game will bring out the DevTools Chrome Extension in game, and that was confusing to see pop up.
The atmosphere/sound design is pretty solid too, the rain and water sounds when you’re outside towards the bridge sound amazing. Creaky doors and the pattering of footsteps add to the atmospheric part of the horror, as does the instrumental music in the background which is very lowkey but conveys the mood well. There isn’t any voice acting so most of the sounds you’ll hear with dialogue are the sounds of what seems to be typewriters going off as the text appears on screen. As for the atmosphere and graphics, graphically this is definitely more in the line of those 8-16 bit titles of old but with that distinct indie flair that feels like an adaptation that one can tell the difference but not describe it well. It’s dark and moody, and screams gothic horror with barely any light sources that could come straight out of an old eighties horror flick.
My thoughts on this game are as follows: for a free title the game’s pretty good! It’s not mind blowing persay, and there are some things that I would consider to be issues but as a first stepping stone for the developers I’d say they did a pretty good job here. The game has a creepy atmosphere and an interesting concept with some heartfelt themes that I can plainly say works out. I don’t really know what the next move for these guys are, but considering that the game came out around June 30th of this year I’d say that they’re still doing work and are probably working on their next project hopefully. There’s potential, and hopefully whatever they have going will help Keep the Lights On at home (look please don’t shoot me, I know it’s a bad dad joke). Overall, it’s worth your time and again it’s free; with Halloween coming up if you’re interested in something to help spook up your season then I’d say why not give the game a shot if you’re on a tight budget and/or looking to try out some new stuff from upcoming indie devs.
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007028229 (Achievement Guide)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMI1ekdJbG4&ab_channel=AlphaBetaGamer (Playthrough)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
He Needs His Medicine is a “Armed cop somehow has a science degree” simulator and side scholar horror game developed by the Euphoric Brothers, whose game Flesh Water I had previously covered. For those not in the know (like me), some of their other games included Garten of Banban, Egghead Gumpty and Human Apocalypse previously. I don’t really know much about this game other than what I covered in Flesh Water but I originally found out about this game by my dude Bad Ghosts, who did a small playthrough on his second channel (link down below), and as someone who likes to try out free horror games every now and then I figured I’d give this a spin as well.
The gameplay and story are both short and simple for better or worse. The game starts with you playing as an unnamed police officer as he walks between a couple of rooms with his gun loaded out. What are in these rooms you may ask? Strange ingredients you can somehow pick up like Bleach, a Torn Shoe, Glue and Old Cheese (dad?). You can’t move forward in the plot/go to the last room without getting these ingredients because you have to mix two of them together in a syringe for the experiment in the final room. What is this experiment? Well, there’s a Albert Wesker sounding a s s scientist named “He” who's obsessed with birds and the “next stage of evolution”, obsessed enough that he eventually decides he wants to turn into one with the help of his exasperated assistant, who thinks that he’s frankly insane and has had enough of it.
You find this out in letters scattered about the couple of rooms, and after you mix the ingredients (though I’m curious how someone would go about combining a torn shoe and glue into a syringe LOL) you make your way to the final room, where you’ll see the assistant sitting right outside. Once you go inside with any number of combinations for your syringe, you’ll be treated to something indefinitely unnerving: a giant skinned Sesame Street lookin’ Big Bird fucker. See, whatever experiments he’s been doing has apparently been working and is ONE step away from ultimately completing the final goal. Whatever is in this syringe will lie the route of one of six or so endings, none of which I’ll spoil here. What I can say is that for the most part as a short game (one I completed in 19 minutes), the endings mostly just made me shrug for the most part. I don’t want to judge it too much as it’s both free and feels more like a vertical slice of something but the scariest thing IS the scientist and as such I wish I could say the game did more for me in this regard.
Graphically the game lies on the same path as Flesh Water with its minimalist and pixelated production but there were times where I thought the game was way too blurry while playing it. You can see everything just fine but it’s like smearing Vaseline or something along those lines and it kind of stuck out. As for the sound design, you won’t get much in the way of sounds except eerie silence or air blowing, though Ty Coker, who voiced the scientist according to IMDB, is pretty creepy in his role. As a build up, this isn’t a bad idea as I’d prefer not to have a loud orchestra screeching in my ear but nothing really did anything for me here sadly. The most freaky thing about it again was the flayed bird guy with the elongated neck but in all honesty the game feels a lot more tongue in cheek then scary, at least with the endings it just didn’t hit me as much as I would’ve liked.
So the final question is, is this game worth a recommendation? With Halloween coming up, if you’re in the mood for a small game and some jump scares or something does it hold up? To me, it’s alright. I’d say you’ll get much more time and interest out of Flesh Water in all honesty but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played. Again it’s short, you could get all the endings in under half an hour if you wanted to and it certainly has some value even if it didn’t always hit for me as I would’ve liked. So yeah, it’s worth your time a bit considering it’s free, I guess just hold your expectations back a bit.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbR4asB3o8&ab_channel=ASecondaryGhost (Plugging my buddy’s channel)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457549943 (Guide to all the endings/achievements)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The gameplay and story are both short and simple for better or worse. The game starts with you playing as an unnamed police officer as he walks between a couple of rooms with his gun loaded out. What are in these rooms you may ask? Strange ingredients you can somehow pick up like Bleach, a Torn Shoe, Glue and Old Cheese (dad?). You can’t move forward in the plot/go to the last room without getting these ingredients because you have to mix two of them together in a syringe for the experiment in the final room. What is this experiment? Well, there’s a Albert Wesker sounding a s s scientist named “He” who's obsessed with birds and the “next stage of evolution”, obsessed enough that he eventually decides he wants to turn into one with the help of his exasperated assistant, who thinks that he’s frankly insane and has had enough of it.
You find this out in letters scattered about the couple of rooms, and after you mix the ingredients (though I’m curious how someone would go about combining a torn shoe and glue into a syringe LOL) you make your way to the final room, where you’ll see the assistant sitting right outside. Once you go inside with any number of combinations for your syringe, you’ll be treated to something indefinitely unnerving: a giant skinned Sesame Street lookin’ Big Bird fucker. See, whatever experiments he’s been doing has apparently been working and is ONE step away from ultimately completing the final goal. Whatever is in this syringe will lie the route of one of six or so endings, none of which I’ll spoil here. What I can say is that for the most part as a short game (one I completed in 19 minutes), the endings mostly just made me shrug for the most part. I don’t want to judge it too much as it’s both free and feels more like a vertical slice of something but the scariest thing IS the scientist and as such I wish I could say the game did more for me in this regard.
Graphically the game lies on the same path as Flesh Water with its minimalist and pixelated production but there were times where I thought the game was way too blurry while playing it. You can see everything just fine but it’s like smearing Vaseline or something along those lines and it kind of stuck out. As for the sound design, you won’t get much in the way of sounds except eerie silence or air blowing, though Ty Coker, who voiced the scientist according to IMDB, is pretty creepy in his role. As a build up, this isn’t a bad idea as I’d prefer not to have a loud orchestra screeching in my ear but nothing really did anything for me here sadly. The most freaky thing about it again was the flayed bird guy with the elongated neck but in all honesty the game feels a lot more tongue in cheek then scary, at least with the endings it just didn’t hit me as much as I would’ve liked.
So the final question is, is this game worth a recommendation? With Halloween coming up, if you’re in the mood for a small game and some jump scares or something does it hold up? To me, it’s alright. I’d say you’ll get much more time and interest out of Flesh Water in all honesty but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played. Again it’s short, you could get all the endings in under half an hour if you wanted to and it certainly has some value even if it didn’t always hit for me as I would’ve liked. So yeah, it’s worth your time a bit considering it’s free, I guess just hold your expectations back a bit.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbR4asB3o8&ab_channel=ASecondaryGhost (Plugging my buddy’s channel)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457549943 (Guide to all the endings/achievements)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2021
This review contains spoilers
Forgive Me Father is a “Punch out your throat and s h i t down your neck” simulator/Retraux First Person Shooter developed by Byte Barrel and published by Fulqrum (who's taken to publishing other FPS throwbacks like Hyperviolent and Dread Templar). The origins of this game are unknown, like most Lovecraftian creatures (for those not in the know, Lovecraft’s schtick is the unnameable horrors that when you see them, you go mad. Look him up, really fun stuff.) but what I am able to find on the origins of this game involve the actual animation stuff (which I’ll put in graphics and art direction later) so I’m kind of unsure at the moment. What I can tell you is that anyone who knows me, knows I’m a HUGE sucker for H.P. Lovecraft and his horror, the idea that anything can drive you mad just by looking at it to me is the most visceral form that one could really deal with. While I appreciate the ideas behind it, sometimes I just wanna shoot s h i t as well, and this game was advertised…somewhere and it somehow got my attention enough to wishlist the hell out of it. If I were to make a guess, I’d say it would be AlphaBetaGamer again, because they usually find the good stuff that makes me wanna snort it up my nose and into my veins to get my video game indie fix. I had gotten this game myself from a buddy of mine, Bad Ghosts (link down below) for my birthday I believe during Early Access and so I went about giving it a try before waiting to finish the final game around April of 2022? I had recently just gave it a shot again with a buddy of mine to wrap up the achievements for Halloween and this is my review.
The graphics/Art direction for this game is astounding with its comic book inspired design along with the 2.5D perspective the actual gameplay takes place in. Most objects will do the thing where it rotates depending on the direction you look at it from while the actual environments in the background stay static where it is. I love it, but according to the developers it came with certain challenges like hand drawing the animations to fluidity (while lowering the amount of frames) and matching the lighting to fit the perspective while also keeping it 3D around the model (at least I think, I suck at Dev lingo sometimes). What I can say is by god, it’s amazing how many screenshots I could have and have taken in the time that I’ve played this game. The game looks beautiful from its artistic gothic streets all the way to the non-euclidianesque design of the final chapter. The lighting and color scheme of everything is different and varied from bright purple to murky light blue to even going black and white during the final boss. Speaking of, the creature and boss designs in the actual game itself (especially the Liquidators oooooh boy they look phenomenal) are freaky and intimidating and I love it. I love everything about this, they pulled these designs either straight from Lovecraft or mixed and matched their own vibes and while it’s ominous, with you and your weapons in your hand you it reeks of a good action horror experience. Speaking of the weapons, going to gameplay next but I’ll say that the weapon animations are also great for what they’re working with and the extra flair of the upgrades once you buy them add a sort of different aesthetic design that while is over the top and extra, doesn’t feel out of place for this game’s world. You’ll find your fair share of easter eggs out in the wild as well from references to The Shining, to Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, amongst others that you’ll experience. To finish off with audio stuff, The voice acting is pretty decent, you’ll only really hear voice lines from the Preacher and Journalist as well as the narrator and everyone does a solid job for the most part in the delivery of their lines. The environment sounds are amazing (the guns especially) and the soundtrack consists of banging metal riffs that get the job done in making you feel hyped.
The gameplay for the most part is simple fare: it’s a first person shooter. You’ll get guns that range from pistols, to Tommy Guns to Shotguns to whatever while ripping and tearing through enemies and collecting different colored keys for different colored doors. HOWEVER, it does SOME things that are different: mostly this has to do with the upgrade system as well as the two different characters in relation to their classes. As said before, you can upgrade your weapons in different ways that have different abilities (like having the Tommy Gun turn into a straight up laser cannon if I remember correctly as an example) and it allows for different variations and class choices in your run through the game. Either way, the weapons feel punchy as hell and amazing; so it doesn’t feel JUST like you're shooting a pea shooter even if it’s a weak weapon. The game also gives you reset skills as well after each act if you ever want to reset some of these skill trees to something different. You can also choose between the Priest and the Journalist, both of whom apparently have different skills according to the game? I can’t tell you about the Journalist except some guides say that she’s more of a crowd control person, I didn’t notice as my buddy played through it on Very Easy with cheats on for New Game Plus (which there is one if you want to play again with stuff unlocked) so I’ll post a guide but what I can say is that for the most part I didn’t really use the abilities? Half the time I even forgot what they did, but then again I played as the Priest like a year or two ago so I’m not too surprised in the slightest to be honest. The only other thing I can mention is that while I got confused sometimes, most of the levels were intuitive while the bosses can be a difficult HELL to get through and all require different strategies (I’m talking to you King in Yellow, and “Big Ugly Fish” you f u c kers) but feel satisfying to get through once it’s done.
The story is a simple one, either as the Priest or the Journalist you get a letter from your cousin Louis about strange happenings in the small town of Pestisville. However, once there the main character gets a VERY unfriendly welcome as you try to meet up with your cousin. An ambush happens with the undead and the main character gets rolling to shoot up the creatures of the unknown. That’s the most part of the story I could catch, there are documents scattered around that give flavor text but other than some references and vague stuff you don’t get much to go on. Between the boss battles you find Dr. Sullivan (Louis’s friend) who reveals a Cthulhu cult (later revealed to be led by the mayor of the town) and eventually you make your way to a ship and you hear a call from the Late Dreamer itself. After fighting your way through, you manage to kill Cthulhu…or did you? Was the whole game a figment of your imagination? Did you kill Louis? Is the cult keeping you trapped? Who knows but the ending fits the Lovecraftian tropes and I’m all for it and even though it's minimalist it does a good job conveying atmosphere.
So what’s the verdict? Do you need a small four to five hour retro FPS game to shoot s h i t for Halloween? My answer is yes, the game is worth your time and your money, if you want to get it on sale then that would probably be smart? My 10 ½ hours or so came from time in Early Access as well as my playthroughs with it but If I didn’t get it for my birthday, I would’ve gotten it on sale most likely. Either way, it’s a solid fun time and it’s sequel just got released on Early Access either today or yesterday so I’m a bit late but yeah, play the game it’s good!
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2791989992
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ForgiveMeFather
https://www.youtube.com/@BadGhosts
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272250/Forgive_Me_Father_2/
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The graphics/Art direction for this game is astounding with its comic book inspired design along with the 2.5D perspective the actual gameplay takes place in. Most objects will do the thing where it rotates depending on the direction you look at it from while the actual environments in the background stay static where it is. I love it, but according to the developers it came with certain challenges like hand drawing the animations to fluidity (while lowering the amount of frames) and matching the lighting to fit the perspective while also keeping it 3D around the model (at least I think, I suck at Dev lingo sometimes). What I can say is by god, it’s amazing how many screenshots I could have and have taken in the time that I’ve played this game. The game looks beautiful from its artistic gothic streets all the way to the non-euclidianesque design of the final chapter. The lighting and color scheme of everything is different and varied from bright purple to murky light blue to even going black and white during the final boss. Speaking of, the creature and boss designs in the actual game itself (especially the Liquidators oooooh boy they look phenomenal) are freaky and intimidating and I love it. I love everything about this, they pulled these designs either straight from Lovecraft or mixed and matched their own vibes and while it’s ominous, with you and your weapons in your hand you it reeks of a good action horror experience. Speaking of the weapons, going to gameplay next but I’ll say that the weapon animations are also great for what they’re working with and the extra flair of the upgrades once you buy them add a sort of different aesthetic design that while is over the top and extra, doesn’t feel out of place for this game’s world. You’ll find your fair share of easter eggs out in the wild as well from references to The Shining, to Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, amongst others that you’ll experience. To finish off with audio stuff, The voice acting is pretty decent, you’ll only really hear voice lines from the Preacher and Journalist as well as the narrator and everyone does a solid job for the most part in the delivery of their lines. The environment sounds are amazing (the guns especially) and the soundtrack consists of banging metal riffs that get the job done in making you feel hyped.
The gameplay for the most part is simple fare: it’s a first person shooter. You’ll get guns that range from pistols, to Tommy Guns to Shotguns to whatever while ripping and tearing through enemies and collecting different colored keys for different colored doors. HOWEVER, it does SOME things that are different: mostly this has to do with the upgrade system as well as the two different characters in relation to their classes. As said before, you can upgrade your weapons in different ways that have different abilities (like having the Tommy Gun turn into a straight up laser cannon if I remember correctly as an example) and it allows for different variations and class choices in your run through the game. Either way, the weapons feel punchy as hell and amazing; so it doesn’t feel JUST like you're shooting a pea shooter even if it’s a weak weapon. The game also gives you reset skills as well after each act if you ever want to reset some of these skill trees to something different. You can also choose between the Priest and the Journalist, both of whom apparently have different skills according to the game? I can’t tell you about the Journalist except some guides say that she’s more of a crowd control person, I didn’t notice as my buddy played through it on Very Easy with cheats on for New Game Plus (which there is one if you want to play again with stuff unlocked) so I’ll post a guide but what I can say is that for the most part I didn’t really use the abilities? Half the time I even forgot what they did, but then again I played as the Priest like a year or two ago so I’m not too surprised in the slightest to be honest. The only other thing I can mention is that while I got confused sometimes, most of the levels were intuitive while the bosses can be a difficult HELL to get through and all require different strategies (I’m talking to you King in Yellow, and “Big Ugly Fish” you f u c kers) but feel satisfying to get through once it’s done.
The story is a simple one, either as the Priest or the Journalist you get a letter from your cousin Louis about strange happenings in the small town of Pestisville. However, once there the main character gets a VERY unfriendly welcome as you try to meet up with your cousin. An ambush happens with the undead and the main character gets rolling to shoot up the creatures of the unknown. That’s the most part of the story I could catch, there are documents scattered around that give flavor text but other than some references and vague stuff you don’t get much to go on. Between the boss battles you find Dr. Sullivan (Louis’s friend) who reveals a Cthulhu cult (later revealed to be led by the mayor of the town) and eventually you make your way to a ship and you hear a call from the Late Dreamer itself. After fighting your way through, you manage to kill Cthulhu…or did you? Was the whole game a figment of your imagination? Did you kill Louis? Is the cult keeping you trapped? Who knows but the ending fits the Lovecraftian tropes and I’m all for it and even though it's minimalist it does a good job conveying atmosphere.
So what’s the verdict? Do you need a small four to five hour retro FPS game to shoot s h i t for Halloween? My answer is yes, the game is worth your time and your money, if you want to get it on sale then that would probably be smart? My 10 ½ hours or so came from time in Early Access as well as my playthroughs with it but If I didn’t get it for my birthday, I would’ve gotten it on sale most likely. Either way, it’s a solid fun time and it’s sequel just got released on Early Access either today or yesterday so I’m a bit late but yeah, play the game it’s good!
Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2791989992
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ForgiveMeFather
https://www.youtube.com/@BadGhosts
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272250/Forgive_Me_Father_2/
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2021
This review contains spoilers
It Takes Two is a “divorce simulator” and wholesome action adventure co-op game developed by Hazelight, the developers of the previous cooperative hit under EA Originals, A Way Out. All I know of this game is my history with it as opposed to development stuff, which proved to be smooth sailing. I originally played this cooperatively with someone on Playstation 4, and I went into it blind. Not being in the “wholesome video game” camp, I was actively surprised how much I ended up enjoying the game and had built up an affinity for it. Eventually, I was seeking to replay the game again for personal reasons, and had decided to buy it and coop with a friend. They weren’t available so again I got it for ANOTHER friend, whom I actually played with on Steam so shout out to the big pimp Wrathne for playing the game with me, couldn’t have done it out you figuratively and literally as it’s co-op only.
Cooperative multiplayer only is a recurring phrase seemingly with Hazelight, at least in terms of A Way Out (though Josef Fare’s previous title, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was good from what I heard). Everything is based around completing story objectives, competing in minigames around the map and generally just having a fun time with your partner. Each chapter has a bit of a different gameplay gimmick; for example the first chapter you’re stuck in a tool shed and you’re shooting nails to create poles to swing from while another chapter later on in the game takes the form of a top down dungeon crawler-styled game between two different classes. It’s varied enough in it’s gameplay and it’s teamwork to where you don’t do the same thing all the time for very long. I’m going to combine this with the plot because they both form the main core of this game: Teamwork.
The plot follows parents Cody and May, who are on the verge of getting a divorce until their daughter decides to summon an increasingly frustrating talking book named Hakim who shrinks them down and forces them to work together to get back to their daughter. The game isn’t exactly about the plot, there’s no crazy twists or turns. It’s about the journey, the respect that the main characters rediscover for each other, and the bonding time both between the main leads as well as the players controlling them. If I were to point out a time that the game was particularly dark, then I would say it’s the part with the Elephant (those who know will know of course lol). This is probably the only dark moment, but according to an interview it was made to show how callous the main leads are in their journey. The ending is predictable, sure, but the work that it took to get there was astounding and watching the characters grow felt like I was growing a bit myself (dad?). However, there apparently was a different ending (shoutout to TV Tropes for the find) which involved a completely different take but I’m glad they cut that and went for the simplified version because I felt that was what worked the most in context with the story.
This title is a wholesome one, one that made me feel things, lots of good and warm things and maybe even gave me goosebumps and made me tear up a little at the end. One thing I can say is that as someone who consumes mainly dark media, the game is one of those titles that made me open to more wholesome styled experiences and one that I can see myself playing in the future. Everything works in favor of the good vibes, from the graphics being great but not photorealistic to the fun and goofy nature of the art direction as you roam from place to place on the property while the main leads as well as Hakim are all excellently voiced and don’t take me out of the moment in the slightest. In the words of Todd Howard, everything just works.
It Takes Two was one of those games that when I played it, it meant a lot to me at that moment and hit me emotionally in a way that sort of resonated. While this game is about divorce, it’s also a game about love and respect, that we are all flawed human beings and that any relationship whether platonic or romantic takes work and cooperation on both sides. It was this sort of wholesome cacophony that really warmed my heart a bit and won the game the critical success that it frankly deserved, even getting Game of the Year awards. I’m not sure what’s going on for Hazelight’s future games but apparently It Takes Two is going to get adapted for television and the big screen? I have no clue if that’ll ever happen, mainly because everyone’s game seems to get adaptations that don’t end up going anywhere at all. However, the games that the developers have been delivering seem to have just been getting better and better with each one, and truth be told I’m curious as to what they’ll do next. Regardless, if you have a co-op player then this game is a hell of a time and definitely worth the money full price, and if you can’t do that then DEFINITELY get it on sale. Shout Out again to the homie Wrathne again, you’re awesome and I appreciate your existence, though if you could let me out of the basement and stop throwing sticks at my head so I could get some water then I’d appreciate it LOL.
Links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ItTakesTwo2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_Two_(video_game)
https://www.hazelight.se/games/it-takes-two/
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/04/exclusive_josef_fares_discusses_the_infamous_elephant_scene_in_it_takes_two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si0hUWSivWo&ab_channel=Bariskit
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Cooperative multiplayer only is a recurring phrase seemingly with Hazelight, at least in terms of A Way Out (though Josef Fare’s previous title, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, was good from what I heard). Everything is based around completing story objectives, competing in minigames around the map and generally just having a fun time with your partner. Each chapter has a bit of a different gameplay gimmick; for example the first chapter you’re stuck in a tool shed and you’re shooting nails to create poles to swing from while another chapter later on in the game takes the form of a top down dungeon crawler-styled game between two different classes. It’s varied enough in it’s gameplay and it’s teamwork to where you don’t do the same thing all the time for very long. I’m going to combine this with the plot because they both form the main core of this game: Teamwork.
The plot follows parents Cody and May, who are on the verge of getting a divorce until their daughter decides to summon an increasingly frustrating talking book named Hakim who shrinks them down and forces them to work together to get back to their daughter. The game isn’t exactly about the plot, there’s no crazy twists or turns. It’s about the journey, the respect that the main characters rediscover for each other, and the bonding time both between the main leads as well as the players controlling them. If I were to point out a time that the game was particularly dark, then I would say it’s the part with the Elephant (those who know will know of course lol). This is probably the only dark moment, but according to an interview it was made to show how callous the main leads are in their journey. The ending is predictable, sure, but the work that it took to get there was astounding and watching the characters grow felt like I was growing a bit myself (dad?). However, there apparently was a different ending (shoutout to TV Tropes for the find) which involved a completely different take but I’m glad they cut that and went for the simplified version because I felt that was what worked the most in context with the story.
This title is a wholesome one, one that made me feel things, lots of good and warm things and maybe even gave me goosebumps and made me tear up a little at the end. One thing I can say is that as someone who consumes mainly dark media, the game is one of those titles that made me open to more wholesome styled experiences and one that I can see myself playing in the future. Everything works in favor of the good vibes, from the graphics being great but not photorealistic to the fun and goofy nature of the art direction as you roam from place to place on the property while the main leads as well as Hakim are all excellently voiced and don’t take me out of the moment in the slightest. In the words of Todd Howard, everything just works.
It Takes Two was one of those games that when I played it, it meant a lot to me at that moment and hit me emotionally in a way that sort of resonated. While this game is about divorce, it’s also a game about love and respect, that we are all flawed human beings and that any relationship whether platonic or romantic takes work and cooperation on both sides. It was this sort of wholesome cacophony that really warmed my heart a bit and won the game the critical success that it frankly deserved, even getting Game of the Year awards. I’m not sure what’s going on for Hazelight’s future games but apparently It Takes Two is going to get adapted for television and the big screen? I have no clue if that’ll ever happen, mainly because everyone’s game seems to get adaptations that don’t end up going anywhere at all. However, the games that the developers have been delivering seem to have just been getting better and better with each one, and truth be told I’m curious as to what they’ll do next. Regardless, if you have a co-op player then this game is a hell of a time and definitely worth the money full price, and if you can’t do that then DEFINITELY get it on sale. Shout Out again to the homie Wrathne again, you’re awesome and I appreciate your existence, though if you could let me out of the basement and stop throwing sticks at my head so I could get some water then I’d appreciate it LOL.
Links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/ItTakesTwo2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_Two_(video_game)
https://www.hazelight.se/games/it-takes-two/
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/04/exclusive_josef_fares_discusses_the_infamous_elephant_scene_in_it_takes_two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si0hUWSivWo&ab_channel=Bariskit
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2023
Unsorted Horror is an anthology of short, low poly horror games developed by Mike Klubnika and originally released on Itch.io before released on Steam for free. I don’t know this guy much except from what I’ve seen before on AlphaBetaGamer to know that he makes some uncomfortable feeling/looking stuff with short concepts that are great with tension. I’m going to go into the games more than the overall stuff and give my feelings based on that. I probably picked it up because of a Twitter recommendation or something but I don’t regret it as it certainly left an impact.
The Other Side is probably the most tense as well as the most memorable one to me. The plot is that you’re trapped in a sort of fallout shelter due to an apocalyptic event and that you get tired of it and decide to break out and reach freedom from an oppressive regime. To do that, you have a giant drill along with nearby components and a computer that helps diagnose the drill’s health. The game is split into two parts: the first run where you learn what each of these parts are, what tools to use and how to do it and the part where the real tension begins: the five minute time limit. This is the one that probably made me almost s h i t myself the most trying to actively scramble to pick up the drill, place it down in the vice and go to town on all manners of parts. The drill will break down constantly, and you have to be on your A-Game to replace batteries, drill bits, put the fuel and cooler in, close it all together. If you’re looking for the one that’ll make you the most tense, than this is the game for you.
Control Room Alpha is a decent experiment though a little underdeveloped in my opinion. I love Mike’s use of simple concepts and reworking them in an interesting way, and in this game’s case it presents itself as a sort of Claw Machine type of experience. The plot is that you’re an underground crane operator in a science facility trying to collect samples from down inside a hole filled with giant spiders. It’s okay as a vertical slice, but for the most part you only ever really break out the claw machine once or twice before it hits you with a twist ending. For short horror, I feel like it needs to be paced properly and if there’s a scale between too short and too long then this is in the too short range and could’ve used a bit more polish. However, if you’re deathly scared of skittery fast spiders then I’d give this one a pass. Other than that, it’s the shortest one in the collection and it’s okay.
Carbon Steel is the most intricate of them all and probably the longest and with the most endings. You play as a scientist arriving at a mysterious lab via tram ala Half Life in order to conduct unethical experiments on vague monsters for your mysterious employers. The gameplay is more like The Other Side, where you balance doing a bunch of stuff at once like cross referencing lab info, floppy discs, data tables and chemicals. It’s good, though a bit on the complex side and confusing trying to start and figure out. I had to look up some Youtube stuff in order to figure out what I was doing but once I did I kinda smoothed my way into it all for the most part. With each passing experiment they’ll add more onto you, like a device where you cross lines in order to classify what monster types they are and eventually introducing a pod repair gun which increases the tension as it slowly breaks due to smashing from within. I’m not sure where the multiple endings come in, it seems as if there are only two and I did everything correctly as far as I’m aware so I guess I got the good ending where you escape. The problem is for me, I got confused as to what I did to get it because there’s a floppy disc which tells you in order to escape you need to find something with an X label on it and I didn’t do it so I don’t know. I feel like there’s more to this than I personally can understand, but overall it’s pretty solid.
Concrete Tremor is probably the bleakest in the entire collection; the game takes place in a Soviet-bloc world of gray as you learn that everyone is stuck inside a series of apartments inside of some facility. You don’t know what it’s about or what’s going on EXCEPT one thing: remember what I said about the simple concept in Control Room Alpha? This one is like that except done better with a game of Battleship. You and your opponent take turns guessing where the other apartment blocks are as your actions cause a direct impact on the lives of other people. That’s right, you’re blowing up actual people inside these apartments in a sort of messed up, war is hell mind game against your opponent. It’s essentially a guessing game, and if you miss all your shots then your opponent gets to call your apartment blocks for a free turn but also vice versa. You can win the game from what I’ve seen, but it essentially leads to the same ending and honestly gives me the message of how no one really wins the war because regardless our actions caused people to die. A must play recommendation if you’re willing to stomach the concepts.
The Tartarus Engine is probably the second weakest in my opinion? You play as an engineer tasked with going down multiple layers into some sort of prison to repair some stuff because of malfunctions. The problem is that time works differently down there, seconds on Earth take years down in this prison. As a concept this sounds like it should be longer but I don’t feel like it translated well? Other than walking there’s a little bit of micromanaging with no explanation on what to do, but it mostly consists of taking a panel apart and using a small trolley with a latch system. There’s also a twist ending that I didn’t really understand because of the confusing nature of the story but equates to “this is torture”. I don’t know, didn’t vibe as well with this as I did the others.
Overall, it’s a solid anthology recommendation of free games that one should definitely take if you’re interested in small Itch.io games, chunky low poly graphics and character models, and a nasty tense industrial score coming straight out of the Silent Hill otherworld. Most of the games except Tartarus started as free Itch.io titles, with the former being exclusive to this game only. The guy knows how to build oppressive worlds that make me feel overwhelmed and want to take twelve showers afterwards so shout out to Mike and Jabbu for the experimental gameplay as well as the soundtracks because damn you two did an excellent job. I streamed this for a friend yesterday along with The Complex: Found Footage and it’s a sort of irony of “Comfy/Uncomfy horror” with this game definitely being the latter. If you’re looking to play something for Halloween, then I’d suggest giving this a try and I’m interested in future projects.
Links:
https://mikeklubnika.itch.io/
https://www.youtube.com/@mikeklubnika/videos
https://twitter.com/mikeklubnika?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The Other Side is probably the most tense as well as the most memorable one to me. The plot is that you’re trapped in a sort of fallout shelter due to an apocalyptic event and that you get tired of it and decide to break out and reach freedom from an oppressive regime. To do that, you have a giant drill along with nearby components and a computer that helps diagnose the drill’s health. The game is split into two parts: the first run where you learn what each of these parts are, what tools to use and how to do it and the part where the real tension begins: the five minute time limit. This is the one that probably made me almost s h i t myself the most trying to actively scramble to pick up the drill, place it down in the vice and go to town on all manners of parts. The drill will break down constantly, and you have to be on your A-Game to replace batteries, drill bits, put the fuel and cooler in, close it all together. If you’re looking for the one that’ll make you the most tense, than this is the game for you.
Control Room Alpha is a decent experiment though a little underdeveloped in my opinion. I love Mike’s use of simple concepts and reworking them in an interesting way, and in this game’s case it presents itself as a sort of Claw Machine type of experience. The plot is that you’re an underground crane operator in a science facility trying to collect samples from down inside a hole filled with giant spiders. It’s okay as a vertical slice, but for the most part you only ever really break out the claw machine once or twice before it hits you with a twist ending. For short horror, I feel like it needs to be paced properly and if there’s a scale between too short and too long then this is in the too short range and could’ve used a bit more polish. However, if you’re deathly scared of skittery fast spiders then I’d give this one a pass. Other than that, it’s the shortest one in the collection and it’s okay.
Carbon Steel is the most intricate of them all and probably the longest and with the most endings. You play as a scientist arriving at a mysterious lab via tram ala Half Life in order to conduct unethical experiments on vague monsters for your mysterious employers. The gameplay is more like The Other Side, where you balance doing a bunch of stuff at once like cross referencing lab info, floppy discs, data tables and chemicals. It’s good, though a bit on the complex side and confusing trying to start and figure out. I had to look up some Youtube stuff in order to figure out what I was doing but once I did I kinda smoothed my way into it all for the most part. With each passing experiment they’ll add more onto you, like a device where you cross lines in order to classify what monster types they are and eventually introducing a pod repair gun which increases the tension as it slowly breaks due to smashing from within. I’m not sure where the multiple endings come in, it seems as if there are only two and I did everything correctly as far as I’m aware so I guess I got the good ending where you escape. The problem is for me, I got confused as to what I did to get it because there’s a floppy disc which tells you in order to escape you need to find something with an X label on it and I didn’t do it so I don’t know. I feel like there’s more to this than I personally can understand, but overall it’s pretty solid.
Concrete Tremor is probably the bleakest in the entire collection; the game takes place in a Soviet-bloc world of gray as you learn that everyone is stuck inside a series of apartments inside of some facility. You don’t know what it’s about or what’s going on EXCEPT one thing: remember what I said about the simple concept in Control Room Alpha? This one is like that except done better with a game of Battleship. You and your opponent take turns guessing where the other apartment blocks are as your actions cause a direct impact on the lives of other people. That’s right, you’re blowing up actual people inside these apartments in a sort of messed up, war is hell mind game against your opponent. It’s essentially a guessing game, and if you miss all your shots then your opponent gets to call your apartment blocks for a free turn but also vice versa. You can win the game from what I’ve seen, but it essentially leads to the same ending and honestly gives me the message of how no one really wins the war because regardless our actions caused people to die. A must play recommendation if you’re willing to stomach the concepts.
The Tartarus Engine is probably the second weakest in my opinion? You play as an engineer tasked with going down multiple layers into some sort of prison to repair some stuff because of malfunctions. The problem is that time works differently down there, seconds on Earth take years down in this prison. As a concept this sounds like it should be longer but I don’t feel like it translated well? Other than walking there’s a little bit of micromanaging with no explanation on what to do, but it mostly consists of taking a panel apart and using a small trolley with a latch system. There’s also a twist ending that I didn’t really understand because of the confusing nature of the story but equates to “this is torture”. I don’t know, didn’t vibe as well with this as I did the others.
Overall, it’s a solid anthology recommendation of free games that one should definitely take if you’re interested in small Itch.io games, chunky low poly graphics and character models, and a nasty tense industrial score coming straight out of the Silent Hill otherworld. Most of the games except Tartarus started as free Itch.io titles, with the former being exclusive to this game only. The guy knows how to build oppressive worlds that make me feel overwhelmed and want to take twelve showers afterwards so shout out to Mike and Jabbu for the experimental gameplay as well as the soundtracks because damn you two did an excellent job. I streamed this for a friend yesterday along with The Complex: Found Footage and it’s a sort of irony of “Comfy/Uncomfy horror” with this game definitely being the latter. If you’re looking to play something for Halloween, then I’d suggest giving this a try and I’m interested in future projects.
Links:
https://mikeklubnika.itch.io/
https://www.youtube.com/@mikeklubnika/videos
https://twitter.com/mikeklubnika?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The Complex: Found Footage is a first person “where the hell am I and how did I get here?” walking simulator developed by pgWave set in the notorious Backrooms, an internet phenomenon that’s only grown more and more on Youtube based on the concept of “What if we noclip out of reality?” and “Where would we go?”. The answer would be a place filled with transforming shapes, piss flavored wallpaper and liminal spaces which have a lonely and comfy yet startling creepy flavor to it. I don’t really know much about the developer (other than their Youtube saying their name is Isar Leo and that they’re 17 which damn this dude’s talented) or what they’ve done besides this game but on their Youtube they posted a couple videos promoting this game, a war game of sorts named “Operation Bagration” which I’ve yet to see and teasers for their newest Backrooms title: “The Complex: Expedition”. Found Footage takes huge inspiration from the ongoing Kane Pixel’s series of the same name, but doesn’t really go along with the lore according to the steam page, which reads: “This game has its own story and is not connected with any previously established Backrooms lore.” So what is the story about exactly?
Hell if I know that too. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t really much of anything aside from a few bits and pieces. The game is more of a “walk for the vibes game” so I’ll be combining the gameplay and story aspects in the review. The game is a walking simulator, one whose controls only use WASD, Shift for sprinting around and Ctrl to crouch under small spaces. You won’t get much more than that and truth be told that’s all you need. The game is small in length and as such the most you’ll be doing is exploring the titular Backrooms pretty much, though with a caveat. It’s not really a huge game by any means as it seems monolithic in design, but it’s mostly linear. Even if you go left, you’ll eventually find that a lot of it leads to dead ends, or Easter Eggs of other Backroom famous areas such as “Plaza with multiple windows” on the first floor. Even with everything looping back in itself, there are actually two elevators that I’m aware of on the first floor you wake up on, though they go to the same place anyways so it’s not necessarily a huge change. To summarize the gameplay: Walk the environment, find specific places that stick out and eventually you’ll go to where you’re going. As for the story, it’s also based more in the background. You’ll find tape on the floor where people mark their way back to the entrance, you’ll find radios playing music and other strange things to signify that people have been there before. The only time I was ever taken out of the vibe was the last level has an invisible wall sadly but that’s about it. This also isn’t a jumpscare game, and I only ever spotted something creepy once (a bunch of fingers coming from behind a wall) which I assume was the notorious tentacle looking thing but it was never pronounced and was more of a blink and miss type of deal. And as for the ending, it’s not really much of anything and is more of a teaser so it’s not really worth it throwing here cause if you play the game you’ll get to it in an hour or less. My first run was probably 40 minutes and my second run was 20 trying to explore everything.
What I can definitely say is a positive is the graphics and environment. By god, the developers used Unreal Engine 5 perfectly to catch the Lo-fi aesthetic of the Youtube series. You’ll walk around and such using a camera to zoom in and zoom out if need be but with how the vibe presents itself in game it feels like I could be there. Everything feels surreal and static-like yet feels like you could reach out and touch it. I don’t know how to explain it other than that but it’s phenomenal and surprisingly ran well on my PC which I bought in 2017 so I think for the most part people should be able to run the game? Don’t quote me on that but the presentation of all the environments just clicked in as if KanePixel’s himself actually created it. The soundtrack and audio design are also phenomenally crunchy lo-fi feels, most of the time it's a sort of droning that fades into the background but works at creating a creep factor. Sometimes you’ll find a radio that plays a bop or two by artist “farside lore” but it wasn’t that often. Walking through the Poolrooms is just perfection as the sound of walking through water just sounds like actual water to me. Overall, I can’t complain about any of it, in fact the aesthetics just help boost what would otherwise be a vertical slice walking simulator that, although lifted straight from the Youtube scene, have been translated perfectly.
Overall what’s the recommendation? Well it’s free so why the f u c k wouldn’t you play it, especially if you’re in the short indie horror scene and you’re either interested in or curious about The Backrooms? It’s a pretty solid title that’s both free and short, and to me that’s perfectly cool with me. I don’t remember how I ended up picking it up but I’ll either assume it was from AlphaBetaGamer or one of my friends wishlisted it. I ended up streaming this for a friend of mine last night along with another game, Unsorted Horror, which ironically provides two different feelings of horror. This is the “comfortable” one (strange considering horror is the antithesis of comfortable but still) compared to that one so who knows. Just keep in mind some things: it ran on my 2017 PC but it’s recommended to not play on Lower End specs and there’s no multiplayer despite the tags that say otherwise. Not a bad choice for a small Halloween game for those interested in trying out something smaller.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@pgWave./videos (Developer Youtube)
https://twitter.com/pgWave_ (Developer Twitter)
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=23359502 (Developer Patreon)
https://farsidelore.bandcamp.com/album/the-complex-found-footage-original-game-soundtrack (Soundtrack)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Hell if I know that too. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t really much of anything aside from a few bits and pieces. The game is more of a “walk for the vibes game” so I’ll be combining the gameplay and story aspects in the review. The game is a walking simulator, one whose controls only use WASD, Shift for sprinting around and Ctrl to crouch under small spaces. You won’t get much more than that and truth be told that’s all you need. The game is small in length and as such the most you’ll be doing is exploring the titular Backrooms pretty much, though with a caveat. It’s not really a huge game by any means as it seems monolithic in design, but it’s mostly linear. Even if you go left, you’ll eventually find that a lot of it leads to dead ends, or Easter Eggs of other Backroom famous areas such as “Plaza with multiple windows” on the first floor. Even with everything looping back in itself, there are actually two elevators that I’m aware of on the first floor you wake up on, though they go to the same place anyways so it’s not necessarily a huge change. To summarize the gameplay: Walk the environment, find specific places that stick out and eventually you’ll go to where you’re going. As for the story, it’s also based more in the background. You’ll find tape on the floor where people mark their way back to the entrance, you’ll find radios playing music and other strange things to signify that people have been there before. The only time I was ever taken out of the vibe was the last level has an invisible wall sadly but that’s about it. This also isn’t a jumpscare game, and I only ever spotted something creepy once (a bunch of fingers coming from behind a wall) which I assume was the notorious tentacle looking thing but it was never pronounced and was more of a blink and miss type of deal. And as for the ending, it’s not really much of anything and is more of a teaser so it’s not really worth it throwing here cause if you play the game you’ll get to it in an hour or less. My first run was probably 40 minutes and my second run was 20 trying to explore everything.
What I can definitely say is a positive is the graphics and environment. By god, the developers used Unreal Engine 5 perfectly to catch the Lo-fi aesthetic of the Youtube series. You’ll walk around and such using a camera to zoom in and zoom out if need be but with how the vibe presents itself in game it feels like I could be there. Everything feels surreal and static-like yet feels like you could reach out and touch it. I don’t know how to explain it other than that but it’s phenomenal and surprisingly ran well on my PC which I bought in 2017 so I think for the most part people should be able to run the game? Don’t quote me on that but the presentation of all the environments just clicked in as if KanePixel’s himself actually created it. The soundtrack and audio design are also phenomenally crunchy lo-fi feels, most of the time it's a sort of droning that fades into the background but works at creating a creep factor. Sometimes you’ll find a radio that plays a bop or two by artist “farside lore” but it wasn’t that often. Walking through the Poolrooms is just perfection as the sound of walking through water just sounds like actual water to me. Overall, I can’t complain about any of it, in fact the aesthetics just help boost what would otherwise be a vertical slice walking simulator that, although lifted straight from the Youtube scene, have been translated perfectly.
Overall what’s the recommendation? Well it’s free so why the f u c k wouldn’t you play it, especially if you’re in the short indie horror scene and you’re either interested in or curious about The Backrooms? It’s a pretty solid title that’s both free and short, and to me that’s perfectly cool with me. I don’t remember how I ended up picking it up but I’ll either assume it was from AlphaBetaGamer or one of my friends wishlisted it. I ended up streaming this for a friend of mine last night along with another game, Unsorted Horror, which ironically provides two different feelings of horror. This is the “comfortable” one (strange considering horror is the antithesis of comfortable but still) compared to that one so who knows. Just keep in mind some things: it ran on my 2017 PC but it’s recommended to not play on Lower End specs and there’s no multiplayer despite the tags that say otherwise. Not a bad choice for a small Halloween game for those interested in trying out something smaller.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/@pgWave./videos (Developer Youtube)
https://twitter.com/pgWave_ (Developer Twitter)
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=23359502 (Developer Patreon)
https://farsidelore.bandcamp.com/album/the-complex-found-footage-original-game-soundtrack (Soundtrack)
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2019
This review contains spoilers
Daymare 1998, a survival horror game developed by the indie italian game studio Invader Studios. This is a game that I’ve had a decent bit of history with, a game that came out years ago but had even more years in the oven. It originally started as a fan made Resident Evil 2 remake, something that made me excited back in the day. I’ve always been a fan of survival horror, even if I sucked at it completely due to its mechanics, and the idea that someone was remaking RE2 in the third person had me a bit excited. Back then and even now, I tend to dwell into the indie scene of unknown and rising star video games, videos often made by Youtubers who have only a couple hundred to a couple of thousand subscribers. I’m not sure how I saw this, but I saw footage of this remake and got excited. However a little bit after that, the mod was shut down and everything surrounding it seemed to be wiped.
I don’t really know what had happened, but I figured it was a case of copyright infringement. All I remember was that the Resident Evil 2 remake rumors had popped off, and having followed Invader Studios for a bit I had learned of a Kickstarter campaign that I contributed to, whose link I’ll post down below. In this campaign, I had learned that Capcom had invited the group to their offices to show off their work on the actual RE2 Remake while also imploring them to cancel their remake and use their work to create their own property. This was the result of that, with the support of numerous gaming industry veterans like Kazuhiro Aoyama (the director of Resident Evil 3 OG and now Production Associate), Satoshi Nikai (a Code Veronica enemy designer now working as an enemy designer for Daymare) and Kenichi Iwao (a writer on Resident Evil OG as well as the director of Parasite Eve 2) among others. Features potentially promised for this game on the website revealed a fixed camera system, a telephone book with names of backers next to save points, special outfits and more. However the Kickstarter failed meaning not a lot of it (as far as I’m aware), didn’t make the cut. I had gotten the 14 dollar “Life Was Cheaper 1998” tier, which included a credit, a special outfit and a digital copy.
Since it failed however, they kept working on it to the point where it actually got teased and released in September 2019 for Windows and console ports for Playstation 4 and Xbox One in April of next year. However, I didn’t really pick it up and play it when it came out. Surprisingly, I had forgotten about it and had just moved on, only remembering it when someone brought it up here and there. It sat in my wishlist for a while, until eventually GOG came out and gave it for free to people for a short period of time. I removed it from Steam for that reason and sort of bided my time. However, this year I had a goal: beat one game for each console/platform that I own. By the time of writing this review, the only ones I haven’t done were Shadowman for N64 (which I’m working on), and trying to find a Gamecube game to play; that and having been streaming games for a friend and having failed to have fixed/played The Suffering on GOG (because the port fucking sucks), I decided to give this game a spin. I played around 10 hours of the game, and here is how I felt playing it.
The plot opens to a group of masked special forces flying to a secret base named Aegis Laboratory. This group is a part of an organization named H.A.D.E.S. (or Hexacore Advanced Division for Extraction and Search), a private military section in the Hexacore Biotechnology Corporation. What is their mission? Why to rescue samples of biological weapons named “Castor” and “Pollux” from their lab whilst also eliminating all traces of Hexacore involvement. Right off the bat I like this idea, I love the old survival horror games but sometimes I want to play the evil bastard and right off the bat it gets the vibe right. This is the first chapter, and you play as HADES member Liev, a real douchebag of a soldier who doesn’t hesitate in killing all witnesses and following through with his corporate overlord’s wishes, or so it seems. While here if you pick up and read certain documents, you also learn of the origins of these viruses. It goes that it was originally founded or created during World War 2, specifically by the Japanese military as a weapon (named “Shujin”) against the United States. However, the dawn of the war had led to the Japanese losing, and as a last ditch effort by the Emperor led to a group of soldiers grabbing the virus and committing themselves to spreading it across U.S. soil, hoping to wipe them out in revenge. However, something went awry and the submarine carrying the virus crashed off the coast. Eventually, Jellyfish got into the sub and experienced enhanced healing properties before the biological agent spread into a nearby fishing town. Having heard of a strange outbreak, Hexacore (or the military) sectioned it off and a cover-up was ensued, and experiments were done in a Hexacore/U.S. Military collaboration to create…drum roll please…super soldiers!! However the result was obviously the zombies, and though it was explained in a way that was actually really interesting and unique to me (through these super soldiers needing to feed on human hormones in order to survive), the wiki doesn’t have much in the way of information on this to really help other than “This was a biological weapon”.
Regardless, Liev does his job diligently and manages to acquire the viruses as well as finding out certain bits of information. The outbreak at this lab originally happened not because of an accident, but that an outside party named “K” had bought out one of the researchers to sabotage the entire facility and steal the Castor samples in exchange for money. Of course with this in mind, Liev assassinates the technician who told him this and escapes with everything, including the sample of Pollux and the chemical canisters containing the “Castor” gas. However, things don’t go well on the ride back. See, Liev’s characteristics are that he’s a really convincing douchebag, and through a series of camera angles and long winded threats, a fight breaks out on the helicopter and someone ends up shot. What we see is Liev holding the pilot and squad leader, Sandman, hostage and a dead body right next to him. The implication is that Liev has decided to betray the company, and that the vial of Pollux was smashed into Sandman’s face. Liev goes off on a long tangent about Sandman and his hatred and it’s hinted that this tension was going on for a while due to mentions of “Groom Lake”. Sandman gets shot repeatedly, the co-pilot Raven gets thrown by Liev from the helicopter, Castor gets dropped onto the streets below and the helicopter proceeds to crash. Their location to head back to was Keen Sight, a town firmly under the grasp of their employers Hexacore. Liev survives the helicopter crash and crawls out of the water to find that the town of Keen Sight, Idaho has already been overwhelmed by the Castor gas, of which he fights through. Having escaped into a warehouse, Liev proceeds to call up HQ to presumably frame Sandman for bungling the mission (you’ll see why I say presumably).
The second chapter revolves around forest ranger Samuel Walker, who is taking a shift guarding one of the many towers in the Vermillion Forest. However, the helicopter flying overhead of his tower makes his medication fall off the tower and down below into the forest. Sam proceeds to contact his wife Sarah to let her know what had happened, and after an argument of sorts goes to sleep. However, waking up everything goes wrong literally as well as mentally. See, Sam has a condition called “Daymare Syndrome” (which will be explained later), where he experiences hallucinations (in a reddish hue of course) and migraines amongst many other symptoms. Having made it back home after realizing his replacement didn’t wake him up, he goes to greet his wife in his cabin in the woods only to find her without an arm and a mutated and very much angry Major Sandman choking her to death. Sandman knocks Sam out of a window and escapes, and having taken off after hearing Liev contacting HQ through their D.I.D. device (their radio/inventory management device), Sam resolves to take down the bastard that killed his wife. Why did Sandman kill Sam’s wife? My guess was that Pollux made him bloodthirsty for the chemicals inside of her blood but there are other things that lead into this, and other theories I read were that she was actually a zombie and that Sandman put her out of her misery. Regardless, things don’t look good as Sandman stole his car and after overhearing that he’s going to a nearby hospital (where Liev escaped to call for a helicopter), Sam goes after him through the forest (after comically telling his dead wife to stay put, even though she’s dead Sam where the hell is she going to go?) and onto a cable car sending him to the city. Having gotten there, Sam witnesses Sandman murder Liev after Liev’s big mouth leads to his downfall, as well as having his arm chewed off and fed upon. Both Sam and Sandman escape into the hospital; however Sandman has been captured by a doctor in a facility having drugged Sandman and uses Sam for favors. In exchange for revenge on Sandman, the doctor sends Sam on numerous errands throughout the hospital, mostly destroying evidence on Hexacore’s experiments on the town of Keen Sight. Sam discovers that he’s been a part of these experiments in the hospital, having been born and raised in Keen Sight and that the company is responsible for Sam’s Daymare syndrome, named the “Truman Project”. Throughout the games there have been hints to all sorts of experiments from water supply tampering to mentions of an MKUltra successor named MKNaomi. They’re both experiments in real life from our fabulous government, and in all honesty they’re fascinating to read up on so if you don’t know about them then read up. Regardless I like how the real life conspiracies tie up into the game’s plot, it definitely gives a bit of a 90s atmosphere to it.
In fact, before moving on with the plot, I want to mention how this game is a series of nonstop references to 90s culture. The first survivor that you kill as Liev in Chapter 1 is a black guy named Al Powell, a reference to Die Hard. You’ll find numerous X-Files “I Want to Believe” posters everywhere. Posters parodying and referencing movies from Tremors to Die Hard will pop up everywhere in town, and certain files will reveal names like C. Ryback (a reference to Steven Segal’s character in Under Siege). Numerous advertisements show a parody of Windows 98 named…Doors 98? I don’t know, it’s a strange thing but regardless the whole game is a whole fucking tribute to that era, though as much as I respect a good homage or two I do feel like at some point it does get a bit stale. It’s a whole pastiche that while I can’t always explain it properly due to the fact that the wiki isn’t updated properly and going in game and re-reading everything would be time consuming and painful, it makes for a unique sort of vibe. Regardless however, Sam gets back to the doctor only to learn that the doctor is dead and that Sandman escaped out of the hospital. Sam resolves to kill Sandman yet again and walks off.
Chapter 3 starts as Raven, who surprisingly survived his fall and landed straight into Keen Sight ...into Invader Studios’s office building and no radio signal. That’s right, another meta reference of sorts. Regardless, Raven’s wondering what the hell is going on and fights through Keen Sight and the numerous undead with the goal of making his way to the crash sight to find out if Major Sandman died while also cursing Liev. He makes his way through the town and even through the sewers (yay, a sewer level…), where he learns that a lot of the people who disappeared investigating Hexacore ended up dissolved in acid barrels and dumped in the sewers mafia-style. Regardless, he makes his way through and eventually finds the remains of the helicopter, which alas he learns that Sandman is in fact, not dead. However, he does fight off two boss creatures named Castor Hades. It’s later learned throughout the game through documents and later exposition that Castor Hades is a special strain that infects members of the HADES division only, due to the fact that members of the division mess about with H-Additives (a special booster of sorts) and that genetically tampers with them enough to make them extremely resilient. After the fight, Raven fights his way to the nearby Keen Sight Dam in order to make contact with Sandman, which he does and they agree to meet up there and get a helicopter to make their way out of there.
Chapter 4 consists of Sam overhearing their conversation on his D.I.D. (which he stole off of Liev’s corpse) and fighting to make his way over to the Dam. Honestly that’s literally it as the final two chapters are also the shortest, but you do learn that Hexacore had a system for cutting Keen Sight off from the rest of civilization, as well as working with the government to suppress evidence as well as take down all the undead by force which didn’t work out for anyone involved. The final chapter however contains the most revelations even if it is short. Raven can discover an email from Sarah Carmichael, Sam’s wife, that reveals that she was heavily involved in Hexacore experiments as well as the fact that she was potentially planning on exposing one of her closest friend’s acts of potential terrorism to the Hexacore HR department. However this is only a draft, and she didn’t go through with it. The name of this friend isn’t revealed however, and Raven makes his way through the labs where he’s ambushed by a mutated tentacle creature who I can only describe as this game’s B.O.W. (Resident Evil’s version of a special creature intent to kill you). After a boss battle involving trapping this creature in a cage of electricity, it’s revealed that this creature is a mutated Liev and he’s very intent on not dying. Raven meets up with Dr. Mason in the room above, where Mason reveals that in certain individuals that Castor and Pollux flourished together into a new abomination entirely. Raven makes his way to nearby elevators as Mason starts a self destruction process, but runs into mutated Liev and nearly dies making his way to the elevator. A final boss battle against mutated Liev leads to Sandman brutalizing his old nemesis offscreen before being injected by Raven with something called “Golden Fleece”, an antiviral agent that I forget where Raven picked it up from. Regardless, they’re both okay until Sam arrives and holds them both by gunpoint. Sam demands retribution for his dead wife while also suffering hallucinations from her, while Sandman tries to explain that he was friends with his wife and tells him to “fight off the hallucination”. The tense encounter leads to everyone holding each other hostage and a bullet going off before a fade to black.
That is until the final epilogue, where a mysterious man goes over the plot entirely in chess terms. What I forgot to mention was that in between the chapters that this mysterious man is hinted at playing everyone from the beginning to start this incident as a plan to destroy Hexacore from the very beginning. The identity isn’t revealed, however several things are. One of those things is that Sandman was the traitor and that he originally started the shootout on the helicopter by shooting the other guy before Liev hit him in the face. See Liev was a bastard but he was actually following orders, and I actually liked this little misdirection as you’d never really think that Sandman was the one who planned to do everything due to Liev’s behavior. Whether others think that’s a good twist? Who knows, but I enjoyed it so I guess I can’t complain. Another reveal is that Sandman became the traitor because his daughter was dying from a deadly disease, and that his employers at Hexacore wouldn’t pay for the experimental treatment. However, “K” (aka Kuronusu Enterprises) promised that they would help save his daughter’s life and from then on, Sandman worked under them secretly. However, having developed a friendship with Sarah, he warns her to leave Keen Sight with her husband and escape the outbreak that’s going to happen. Another piece of evidence that pops up is a recording from Sarah to her husband, who reveals that while she was truly in love with him, that she was placed in charge of Sam as his handler to report back all the data of the Daymare experiments to the company and that they’ve been experimenting on everyone since the 40s and that hundreds of people have this disease. Finally, there’s Sarah’s I.D. as well as a bunch of diary entries that reveal that she was a willing participant in refining the Truman Project. She also fell for both Sam and Sandman at the same time but chose to focus on Sam after he proposed to her, and that Sandman’s daughter seemed to have died and having thought to have given up on his plan and caring for her friend, she didn’t sell him out to HR. However, after this man (named “The Cleaner” on the Wiki) wipes out all the evidence and permanently framing Hexacore for the tragedy, a little girl appears in a liquid container behind the computer showing that Sandman’s daughter is actually still alive.
I like the plot here a lot, the 90s conspiracy collaboration between the pharmaceutical companies and the government, pretty much everything I do like. There are some plot holes, like if Sandman’s daughter supposedly died then why did he continue with his plan anyways? That could’ve been a result of him willingly giving them over to Kuronusu but who knows. I love the origin being a Japanese bio-weapon that they don’t explain at all, and the fact that Keen Sight is under the complete control of the company. It all makes for a fascinating lore, one of which I’m interested in seeing further. HOWEVER, I do feel like sometimes it’s not delivered in the best ways, specifically the whole website intel thing but I’ll go on to gameplay for that. The misdirection with Sandman and Liev is cool, though I can understand if people don’t like it due to the fact that Liev is comically an asshole. However, this does get frustrating when Liev could’ve just as easily had told Raven on the helicopter that Sandman attacked everyone; however whether or not he would've been believed due to his demeanor, who knows? It’s also interesting how many differences there were between the Kickstarter campaign and the final product with cut points like Sam and Sarah having a kid being one of the more prominent differences that I wonder what could’ve been. Regardless however, I just know I came out of this enjoying the plot they had gone with here, it’s not perfect but I’m interested and I want more.
The gameplay has the usual survival horror stuff: conserving ammo, limited inventory space, third person over the shoulder stuff, etcetera and the like. If you’ve played any other survival horror game that’s third person over the shoulder then a lot of stuff will be familiar. However, Daymare has some stuff in it that’s different, sometimes to its own detriment. Starting out on the main campaign, the game doesn’t have an overall hub world with different paths but functions more as a Chapter structure. The first chapter honestly feels like the perfect pace, introducing Liev as he heads into a secret base to steal a virus. It’s not overly long, it helps introduce mechanics and brings the rest of the conflict ahead. The playtimes for the next couple of chapters are a little different though. Chapter 2 feels a bit longer but plays well enough, while Chapter 3 is the full course meal with the entire chapter taking a couple of hours for me to play on the first try. Chapter 4 and 5 on the other hand feels shorter and more to the point, and the truth is I don’t know how to feel about this in relation to the chapter structure. Instead of feeling precise, it kind of feels stretched out a little bit and it makes me wish it took on a structure more like the original games where things loop back in on itself. It never feels like safe rooms are put in accessible places because the game’s structure naturally feels like a constant state of moving forward, so to me it always felt like a drag running all the way back to certain safe room stuff (of which I never felt like there were enough anyways) that eventually I just stopped running certain items back and just dropped them for the most part. Some of these safe rooms are secret Hexacore operative shelters hidden behind walls in public spaces, only able to be found due to the D.I.D. on your wrist beeping near them and some of them you kind of have to go out of your way to find. The safe room issue isn’t helped by the auto save system, which is great for the most part to have but it kind of feels like it relies on it as a sort of crutch kind of? I say kind of because if you have an auto save, I feel like you should have the checkpoints be semi regularly and sometimes it didn’t really spread it out for me though I only noticed it in Chapter 1.
Another thing I’ll add to the differences is the healing/crafting system. You don’t craft your own ammo as far as I’m aware, though there is a sort of mixing feature they put in for health and other benefits. In order to do this however, you have to find a needle called an H Additive and you have to mix it with different items like energy drinks or mental drops. Different effects you can have are the obvious health boost (which you can also take the energy drink by itself or eat an energy bar for small increases), a boost where you can have infinite stamina for a short period of time, or a “mental” boost, which I assume helps you aim more precisely. I didn’t really end up using or mixing anything with the latter two and I ended up being able to just play the game only using the health stuff. Some of these injections can be found in your surroundings, and very rarely they’ll be mixed together to provide some combination of both attributes. You can also trade in certain ingredients at the save room computer in exchange for items, though I don’t personally feel like you get enough to actually make that worth your time. However, ironically enough, if you play the game in the usual survival horror way, you’ll be flushed with ammo and health stuff for the most part. It’s a strange mix, I’ll never complain about the game letting me off easy myself, but the disparity between the amount of stuff you get and the trade-in system not feeling balanced is a strange one so I ended up ignoring it entirely next to using the mental drops or the stamina boost. They also have a system where you can “overdose” if you use too much of any injections but truth be told I never overdosed once, and you kind of have to try to overdose on purpose to actually do it.
The puzzles for the most part are pretty solid and simple, with the answers that you need for the most part existing within the area that the puzzle takes place in. Chapter 1 had at least two that were so simple that I looked back while struggling on them and actively face palmed. Chapter 4 had one which had me turn valves, the answer of which was right above the valves themselves on a diagram. You’ll also find hidden lockers around the city which require a combination of sorts (which can be a bit more difficult, requiring some collectible stuff and backtracking) for items or alternatively you’ll need some hacking tools (which are kind of finite and is required to get it right on the first try) to break into some lockers. The hacking pretty much just has you clicking one bar onto another bar while they both move, and while I make it sound more confusing than it actually should, once you know what you’re doing you can get the hang of it and get it right for the most part on the first try. The only puzzle I can genuinely say I can’t get the hang of is one at the end of Chapter 4 that involves some sort of morse code tapping bullshit, and I hate these because I personally never understand how the fuck I’m supposed to find out what the hell to look for so I just looked up a guide answer. Not saying that anyone else can’t do it of course, maybe I’m just a simpleton but I also had issues in Penumbra doing the morse code puzzle.
Collectibles consist of three different kinds: there are deer bobbleheads that you can shoot throughout the game hidden in certain places that reference certain horror and action movies and even a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure reference (one which I didn’t understand until the person I was streaming for explained it to me). As far as I’m aware, you don’t really get anything for shooting these bobbleheads other than a trophy so for that I just followed the guide I linked down below for help on that. Now comes one of my main problems: most of the collectibles you find have a website link (which I’ll post below) and a password to the corresponding collectible. In order to read certain bits of intel, you have to actively get on your computer or phone, go to this website (which says it’s “Not Secure” on my PC by the way) and type in the password for each individual document. I’ll be honest, I respect the whole metanarrative thing they’re going with but this fucking blows. I’m not interested in logging onto my real life device to look this stuff up when I’d rather be playing the game. Some of the documents you do get that you can read in game on your arm tablet, and while that’s fine I would’ve rather had them bring back the original document pop up then read small print on the in game phone. There’s a similar thing they do with the dog tag collectibles, only found in HADES Dead End (which is PC exclusive apparently) and is basically this game’s Mercenaries mode from what I understand. I say from what I understand because I didn’t play it, nor am I going to right now, but I’m glad they have that mode for players who like the game and want more.
Another thing I want to follow up on is Sam, who has Daymare syndrome whose characteristics include hallucinations. This also factors into gameplay and I like the idea of how they integrate his condition in game. The main way they do it is by having certain zombies be hallucinations within the game itself, such as attacking zombies. Not every zombie is a hallucination of course, but some of them are and when they grapple you they don’t do any damage. I like the idea of having to tell the difference between both of them and choosing whether to spend ammo on something that’s potentially not real, though I wish they gave a more telltale sign (even if small that I’d have to keep a lookout for) that something IS a mirage, especially considering that Sam points out something that’s one hundred percent a hallucination (though that one was kind of obvious). Other than that, it’s an interesting feature that makes for some tense scares during gameplay.
To bring up one more difference that I can remember, there are two different modes (other than difficulty). There’s Old School and there’s Modern Day. I played on Old School, and I’ll say that to me I personally think that it’s the best way to play the game. You can’t skip puzzles (which are easy for the most part), and you have to balance your weapon ammunition more. For example, there are two reload types: Fast and Slow. Slow switches out your current magazine for another one with current ammo while fast is mostly used for on the move against the undead and drops your current magazine on the ground which you’ll have to pick up later or possibly permanently lose it if you forget about it. You’ll have to reload it all in your inventory screen manually, which makes encounters tense and you can potentially flub up if you don’t know what you’re doing. The modern take mode you don’t have to worry about most of that stuff and you can skip puzzles, which if that’s what you prefer is a perfectly valid way to play the game if that’s what you want to do. I’ll put a wiki link that could explain it better than I do, but overall I like the tension of the old school system and I feel it’s the way that this game should be played. This only counts towards pistols though, so you won’t have to worry about shotguns. In fact, if there is one thing I’d love to mention is that I wish there were more variations of weapons like they promised in the Kickstarter. The most you get is different pistol types like a Beretta, a revolver, a desert eagle, and a shotgun just to name a few. There aren’t any assault rifles, grenade launchers or anything big or crazy and it’s kind of sad but understandable I suppose. Only other piece of advice I have for this is that for the magnum in chapter 3, collect as much ammo as you can and get the magazine for it around the gas station. Trust me, you’ll need it for the boss and it’s one of the only places to get it in the game and you could potentially fuck yourself if not done right.
Overall though, I want to add that while I have my criticisms towards certain aspects of the game and how it does stuff, I like the fact that they tried some new things while also keeping a lot of the old survival horror aspects together. I want to emphasize that they didn’t do a bad job here, in fact that’s where I feel like the game excels in for the most part despite a few ups and downs. I had played the game on Old School normal difficulty and didn’t die once except for a late game boss fuckup, in which I exited and reloaded the manual save and still got the GOG achievement for it anyways. There is the “Daymare” difficulty, which is the highest you can possibly go if you’re a masochist but I’m also a scared little bitch boy so there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that.
The sound design is pretty solid for the game too: the weapons feel like they have impact, footsteps sound good, doors creak creepily, I mean everything that you think that the game should do right, I feel they did right. I felt like the environmental sound design could’ve come straight out of Resident Evil 2 so that’s pretty solid. What helps add to everything with the actual sound design is the soundtrack as well. While it’s not the most unique, it does have some tunes that I could remember being decently catchy. The main theme song has a sort of dramatic and dark string vibe that’s tragic and ominous both, while “Safe Place” harkens back to the safe room themes of old survival horror. I’m not sure of the track that plays during infected Liev’s boss battles in Chapter 5 but they’re mad stressful and do a good job and put tension out there. For the most part, expect to hear your dramatic strings and some electronic stuff here and there. The composer was Alessandro Galdieri and if I can say one thing that I felt he did a good job here is capturing the survival horror essence, again it specifically feels like it could’ve came out of the other Resident Evil remakes and seeing as this is definitely a homage game, it hits the mark perfectly.
The voice acting however, is something that could’ve been a tad bit better? Truth be told, I’d say this is more of a translation/subtitle issue than something really on the voice actors. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a homage to old Resident Evil’s campy style of dialogue, but I didn’t take it as such especially considering that the subtitles are sometimes straight up false. Sometimes the Apple Blossom Fair is mistaken for the Cherry Blossom Feast, one line delivery from Sam had him awkwardly saying “He’s going there…then he’ll be there..” in a line that straight up made me cackle and brought me out of the moment. There was one part where one of the characters is ambushed by a guy with a wrench, but is told by the other character to “Drop your gun”. Subtitles are misspelled sometimes or awkwardly phrased, and while I wasn’t really bothered with that because the developers were Italian and cross translation is hard work, it did sadly pull me out at some moments.
The graphics of this game looks pretty decent for the most part; the environment work is stunning with the town of Keen Sight being an interesting and lively place with a history dating back to the Lewis and Clark days. Keen Sight as a town looks phenomenal, though while it’s a town ruined and destitute by undead, conveys a familiar and homely yet abandoned town at the same time. I would say that walking through the town is where the game shines the most from its pride in its history with their monuments, taking shortcuts through back alleys and into buildings with tight claustrophobic spaces. It feels like a real place, a sort of maze that truth be told I wish was the whole game. That being said, I don’t hate that the game has secret government labs or forest sections or whatever but they pale in comparison to the town itself. I would even dare say that this town, to me, feels like it belongs up in the pantheon with the most interesting settings next to Willamette, Colorado or Raccoon City, ironically both being Capcom games. I don’t really have much criticism to give with the environmental stuff other than they look how they would in a Resident Evil game otherwise, and that’s what the developers were looking for I feel, so mission accomplished there.
If I were to give any criticism in regards to graphical fidelity, then I would say it’s the models themselves. I know it’s an obvious indie budget thing, and I’m not going to disrespect the effort put into making these. However, there are a lot of models (at least the human ones) that feel sort of…artificial. Like I can tell these were made with a limited budget, it reminds me of the Friday the 13th counselor models. That’s not to say they’re inherently bad, though I’d say that sometimes they don’t really look…human? Especially in the animation department because by god, the lip syncing isn’t great and the facial movements could be a lot less stiff with the human characters. Maybe it was a sort of budget thing with them being an inexperienced indie game studio however, and with that in mind I don’t want to judge too harshly because it does add to a sort of campy charm, even if it’s inadvertently so. To finish off, the only other things I can really point out are that there were points where if I wasn’t following the story that I would get Liev and Raven mixed up, looking nearly identical wise and being bald as hell so they could’ve differentiated them a bit there. That, and while streaming me and my friend noticed that Sam’s got a pretty nice bulge LOL. Ironically enough however, the enemy models such as the zombies and special infected look pretty damn creepy and look the part in playing a foreboding atmosphere for the game. Between the “Hunters”, the Melted Men, Castor Hades or even the regular zombies, they all look all sorts of fucked up with jaws missing, looking skinned alive or severely deformed that they’re pretty damn effective in the intimidate department.
In short, I came out of this game pleasantly surprised and kind of ashamed that I forgot about this. It was a bit janky in some places, sure; but I had really enjoyed my time playing this title. Invader Studios didn’t create a perfect game, but I felt they had made a fun one and sometimes that's all that really matters. There were only a few places where I truly rolled my eyes out of dislike, and that was mostly towards the second to final boss in the game running towards the elevator and the website intel system. Otherwise, if you’re willing to put aside some of the more imperfect aspects and you’re really itching for a survival horror homage filled love letter then I would suggest trying this title out. In fact, there’s a part of me that questions why this has so many mixed reviews, although logically in the back of my mind I KNOW the reasons why. However, since the release of Daymare: 1998 they had also released a prequel to the game: Daymare 1994: Sandcastle, on August 30th which I also didn’t know about and/or forgot about. Maybe it’s a recurring theme of sorts? Who knows. Maybe I’ll give the prequel a go here someday soon and be hopefully pleasantly surprised again with potential quality, though the reviews aren’t looking that great either, but time will only tell.
Links:
https://www.neoseeker.com/daymare-1998/walkthrough (Guide I used)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pJ1g7MElpg&ab_channel=GamesSoundtracksOST (Soundtrack)
http://hexacorebiogenetics.com/intranet/mission-reports-archive/ (Intel Website)
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_play_guide_for_Daymare:_1998#Gameplay_modes (Certain Gameplay Aspects)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/invaderstudios/daymare-1998tm-bringing-back-the-survival-horror (Old Kickstarter Page)
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/Collectibles_in_Daymare:_1998 (Passwords included for the Hexacore Website)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Daymare1998
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/Daymare:_1998
https://invaderstudiosofficial.com/site/
I don’t really know what had happened, but I figured it was a case of copyright infringement. All I remember was that the Resident Evil 2 remake rumors had popped off, and having followed Invader Studios for a bit I had learned of a Kickstarter campaign that I contributed to, whose link I’ll post down below. In this campaign, I had learned that Capcom had invited the group to their offices to show off their work on the actual RE2 Remake while also imploring them to cancel their remake and use their work to create their own property. This was the result of that, with the support of numerous gaming industry veterans like Kazuhiro Aoyama (the director of Resident Evil 3 OG and now Production Associate), Satoshi Nikai (a Code Veronica enemy designer now working as an enemy designer for Daymare) and Kenichi Iwao (a writer on Resident Evil OG as well as the director of Parasite Eve 2) among others. Features potentially promised for this game on the website revealed a fixed camera system, a telephone book with names of backers next to save points, special outfits and more. However the Kickstarter failed meaning not a lot of it (as far as I’m aware), didn’t make the cut. I had gotten the 14 dollar “Life Was Cheaper 1998” tier, which included a credit, a special outfit and a digital copy.
Since it failed however, they kept working on it to the point where it actually got teased and released in September 2019 for Windows and console ports for Playstation 4 and Xbox One in April of next year. However, I didn’t really pick it up and play it when it came out. Surprisingly, I had forgotten about it and had just moved on, only remembering it when someone brought it up here and there. It sat in my wishlist for a while, until eventually GOG came out and gave it for free to people for a short period of time. I removed it from Steam for that reason and sort of bided my time. However, this year I had a goal: beat one game for each console/platform that I own. By the time of writing this review, the only ones I haven’t done were Shadowman for N64 (which I’m working on), and trying to find a Gamecube game to play; that and having been streaming games for a friend and having failed to have fixed/played The Suffering on GOG (because the port fucking sucks), I decided to give this game a spin. I played around 10 hours of the game, and here is how I felt playing it.
The plot opens to a group of masked special forces flying to a secret base named Aegis Laboratory. This group is a part of an organization named H.A.D.E.S. (or Hexacore Advanced Division for Extraction and Search), a private military section in the Hexacore Biotechnology Corporation. What is their mission? Why to rescue samples of biological weapons named “Castor” and “Pollux” from their lab whilst also eliminating all traces of Hexacore involvement. Right off the bat I like this idea, I love the old survival horror games but sometimes I want to play the evil bastard and right off the bat it gets the vibe right. This is the first chapter, and you play as HADES member Liev, a real douchebag of a soldier who doesn’t hesitate in killing all witnesses and following through with his corporate overlord’s wishes, or so it seems. While here if you pick up and read certain documents, you also learn of the origins of these viruses. It goes that it was originally founded or created during World War 2, specifically by the Japanese military as a weapon (named “Shujin”) against the United States. However, the dawn of the war had led to the Japanese losing, and as a last ditch effort by the Emperor led to a group of soldiers grabbing the virus and committing themselves to spreading it across U.S. soil, hoping to wipe them out in revenge. However, something went awry and the submarine carrying the virus crashed off the coast. Eventually, Jellyfish got into the sub and experienced enhanced healing properties before the biological agent spread into a nearby fishing town. Having heard of a strange outbreak, Hexacore (or the military) sectioned it off and a cover-up was ensued, and experiments were done in a Hexacore/U.S. Military collaboration to create…drum roll please…super soldiers!! However the result was obviously the zombies, and though it was explained in a way that was actually really interesting and unique to me (through these super soldiers needing to feed on human hormones in order to survive), the wiki doesn’t have much in the way of information on this to really help other than “This was a biological weapon”.
Regardless, Liev does his job diligently and manages to acquire the viruses as well as finding out certain bits of information. The outbreak at this lab originally happened not because of an accident, but that an outside party named “K” had bought out one of the researchers to sabotage the entire facility and steal the Castor samples in exchange for money. Of course with this in mind, Liev assassinates the technician who told him this and escapes with everything, including the sample of Pollux and the chemical canisters containing the “Castor” gas. However, things don’t go well on the ride back. See, Liev’s characteristics are that he’s a really convincing douchebag, and through a series of camera angles and long winded threats, a fight breaks out on the helicopter and someone ends up shot. What we see is Liev holding the pilot and squad leader, Sandman, hostage and a dead body right next to him. The implication is that Liev has decided to betray the company, and that the vial of Pollux was smashed into Sandman’s face. Liev goes off on a long tangent about Sandman and his hatred and it’s hinted that this tension was going on for a while due to mentions of “Groom Lake”. Sandman gets shot repeatedly, the co-pilot Raven gets thrown by Liev from the helicopter, Castor gets dropped onto the streets below and the helicopter proceeds to crash. Their location to head back to was Keen Sight, a town firmly under the grasp of their employers Hexacore. Liev survives the helicopter crash and crawls out of the water to find that the town of Keen Sight, Idaho has already been overwhelmed by the Castor gas, of which he fights through. Having escaped into a warehouse, Liev proceeds to call up HQ to presumably frame Sandman for bungling the mission (you’ll see why I say presumably).
The second chapter revolves around forest ranger Samuel Walker, who is taking a shift guarding one of the many towers in the Vermillion Forest. However, the helicopter flying overhead of his tower makes his medication fall off the tower and down below into the forest. Sam proceeds to contact his wife Sarah to let her know what had happened, and after an argument of sorts goes to sleep. However, waking up everything goes wrong literally as well as mentally. See, Sam has a condition called “Daymare Syndrome” (which will be explained later), where he experiences hallucinations (in a reddish hue of course) and migraines amongst many other symptoms. Having made it back home after realizing his replacement didn’t wake him up, he goes to greet his wife in his cabin in the woods only to find her without an arm and a mutated and very much angry Major Sandman choking her to death. Sandman knocks Sam out of a window and escapes, and having taken off after hearing Liev contacting HQ through their D.I.D. device (their radio/inventory management device), Sam resolves to take down the bastard that killed his wife. Why did Sandman kill Sam’s wife? My guess was that Pollux made him bloodthirsty for the chemicals inside of her blood but there are other things that lead into this, and other theories I read were that she was actually a zombie and that Sandman put her out of her misery. Regardless, things don’t look good as Sandman stole his car and after overhearing that he’s going to a nearby hospital (where Liev escaped to call for a helicopter), Sam goes after him through the forest (after comically telling his dead wife to stay put, even though she’s dead Sam where the hell is she going to go?) and onto a cable car sending him to the city. Having gotten there, Sam witnesses Sandman murder Liev after Liev’s big mouth leads to his downfall, as well as having his arm chewed off and fed upon. Both Sam and Sandman escape into the hospital; however Sandman has been captured by a doctor in a facility having drugged Sandman and uses Sam for favors. In exchange for revenge on Sandman, the doctor sends Sam on numerous errands throughout the hospital, mostly destroying evidence on Hexacore’s experiments on the town of Keen Sight. Sam discovers that he’s been a part of these experiments in the hospital, having been born and raised in Keen Sight and that the company is responsible for Sam’s Daymare syndrome, named the “Truman Project”. Throughout the games there have been hints to all sorts of experiments from water supply tampering to mentions of an MKUltra successor named MKNaomi. They’re both experiments in real life from our fabulous government, and in all honesty they’re fascinating to read up on so if you don’t know about them then read up. Regardless I like how the real life conspiracies tie up into the game’s plot, it definitely gives a bit of a 90s atmosphere to it.
In fact, before moving on with the plot, I want to mention how this game is a series of nonstop references to 90s culture. The first survivor that you kill as Liev in Chapter 1 is a black guy named Al Powell, a reference to Die Hard. You’ll find numerous X-Files “I Want to Believe” posters everywhere. Posters parodying and referencing movies from Tremors to Die Hard will pop up everywhere in town, and certain files will reveal names like C. Ryback (a reference to Steven Segal’s character in Under Siege). Numerous advertisements show a parody of Windows 98 named…Doors 98? I don’t know, it’s a strange thing but regardless the whole game is a whole fucking tribute to that era, though as much as I respect a good homage or two I do feel like at some point it does get a bit stale. It’s a whole pastiche that while I can’t always explain it properly due to the fact that the wiki isn’t updated properly and going in game and re-reading everything would be time consuming and painful, it makes for a unique sort of vibe. Regardless however, Sam gets back to the doctor only to learn that the doctor is dead and that Sandman escaped out of the hospital. Sam resolves to kill Sandman yet again and walks off.
Chapter 3 starts as Raven, who surprisingly survived his fall and landed straight into Keen Sight ...into Invader Studios’s office building and no radio signal. That’s right, another meta reference of sorts. Regardless, Raven’s wondering what the hell is going on and fights through Keen Sight and the numerous undead with the goal of making his way to the crash sight to find out if Major Sandman died while also cursing Liev. He makes his way through the town and even through the sewers (yay, a sewer level…), where he learns that a lot of the people who disappeared investigating Hexacore ended up dissolved in acid barrels and dumped in the sewers mafia-style. Regardless, he makes his way through and eventually finds the remains of the helicopter, which alas he learns that Sandman is in fact, not dead. However, he does fight off two boss creatures named Castor Hades. It’s later learned throughout the game through documents and later exposition that Castor Hades is a special strain that infects members of the HADES division only, due to the fact that members of the division mess about with H-Additives (a special booster of sorts) and that genetically tampers with them enough to make them extremely resilient. After the fight, Raven fights his way to the nearby Keen Sight Dam in order to make contact with Sandman, which he does and they agree to meet up there and get a helicopter to make their way out of there.
Chapter 4 consists of Sam overhearing their conversation on his D.I.D. (which he stole off of Liev’s corpse) and fighting to make his way over to the Dam. Honestly that’s literally it as the final two chapters are also the shortest, but you do learn that Hexacore had a system for cutting Keen Sight off from the rest of civilization, as well as working with the government to suppress evidence as well as take down all the undead by force which didn’t work out for anyone involved. The final chapter however contains the most revelations even if it is short. Raven can discover an email from Sarah Carmichael, Sam’s wife, that reveals that she was heavily involved in Hexacore experiments as well as the fact that she was potentially planning on exposing one of her closest friend’s acts of potential terrorism to the Hexacore HR department. However this is only a draft, and she didn’t go through with it. The name of this friend isn’t revealed however, and Raven makes his way through the labs where he’s ambushed by a mutated tentacle creature who I can only describe as this game’s B.O.W. (Resident Evil’s version of a special creature intent to kill you). After a boss battle involving trapping this creature in a cage of electricity, it’s revealed that this creature is a mutated Liev and he’s very intent on not dying. Raven meets up with Dr. Mason in the room above, where Mason reveals that in certain individuals that Castor and Pollux flourished together into a new abomination entirely. Raven makes his way to nearby elevators as Mason starts a self destruction process, but runs into mutated Liev and nearly dies making his way to the elevator. A final boss battle against mutated Liev leads to Sandman brutalizing his old nemesis offscreen before being injected by Raven with something called “Golden Fleece”, an antiviral agent that I forget where Raven picked it up from. Regardless, they’re both okay until Sam arrives and holds them both by gunpoint. Sam demands retribution for his dead wife while also suffering hallucinations from her, while Sandman tries to explain that he was friends with his wife and tells him to “fight off the hallucination”. The tense encounter leads to everyone holding each other hostage and a bullet going off before a fade to black.
That is until the final epilogue, where a mysterious man goes over the plot entirely in chess terms. What I forgot to mention was that in between the chapters that this mysterious man is hinted at playing everyone from the beginning to start this incident as a plan to destroy Hexacore from the very beginning. The identity isn’t revealed, however several things are. One of those things is that Sandman was the traitor and that he originally started the shootout on the helicopter by shooting the other guy before Liev hit him in the face. See Liev was a bastard but he was actually following orders, and I actually liked this little misdirection as you’d never really think that Sandman was the one who planned to do everything due to Liev’s behavior. Whether others think that’s a good twist? Who knows, but I enjoyed it so I guess I can’t complain. Another reveal is that Sandman became the traitor because his daughter was dying from a deadly disease, and that his employers at Hexacore wouldn’t pay for the experimental treatment. However, “K” (aka Kuronusu Enterprises) promised that they would help save his daughter’s life and from then on, Sandman worked under them secretly. However, having developed a friendship with Sarah, he warns her to leave Keen Sight with her husband and escape the outbreak that’s going to happen. Another piece of evidence that pops up is a recording from Sarah to her husband, who reveals that while she was truly in love with him, that she was placed in charge of Sam as his handler to report back all the data of the Daymare experiments to the company and that they’ve been experimenting on everyone since the 40s and that hundreds of people have this disease. Finally, there’s Sarah’s I.D. as well as a bunch of diary entries that reveal that she was a willing participant in refining the Truman Project. She also fell for both Sam and Sandman at the same time but chose to focus on Sam after he proposed to her, and that Sandman’s daughter seemed to have died and having thought to have given up on his plan and caring for her friend, she didn’t sell him out to HR. However, after this man (named “The Cleaner” on the Wiki) wipes out all the evidence and permanently framing Hexacore for the tragedy, a little girl appears in a liquid container behind the computer showing that Sandman’s daughter is actually still alive.
I like the plot here a lot, the 90s conspiracy collaboration between the pharmaceutical companies and the government, pretty much everything I do like. There are some plot holes, like if Sandman’s daughter supposedly died then why did he continue with his plan anyways? That could’ve been a result of him willingly giving them over to Kuronusu but who knows. I love the origin being a Japanese bio-weapon that they don’t explain at all, and the fact that Keen Sight is under the complete control of the company. It all makes for a fascinating lore, one of which I’m interested in seeing further. HOWEVER, I do feel like sometimes it’s not delivered in the best ways, specifically the whole website intel thing but I’ll go on to gameplay for that. The misdirection with Sandman and Liev is cool, though I can understand if people don’t like it due to the fact that Liev is comically an asshole. However, this does get frustrating when Liev could’ve just as easily had told Raven on the helicopter that Sandman attacked everyone; however whether or not he would've been believed due to his demeanor, who knows? It’s also interesting how many differences there were between the Kickstarter campaign and the final product with cut points like Sam and Sarah having a kid being one of the more prominent differences that I wonder what could’ve been. Regardless however, I just know I came out of this enjoying the plot they had gone with here, it’s not perfect but I’m interested and I want more.
The gameplay has the usual survival horror stuff: conserving ammo, limited inventory space, third person over the shoulder stuff, etcetera and the like. If you’ve played any other survival horror game that’s third person over the shoulder then a lot of stuff will be familiar. However, Daymare has some stuff in it that’s different, sometimes to its own detriment. Starting out on the main campaign, the game doesn’t have an overall hub world with different paths but functions more as a Chapter structure. The first chapter honestly feels like the perfect pace, introducing Liev as he heads into a secret base to steal a virus. It’s not overly long, it helps introduce mechanics and brings the rest of the conflict ahead. The playtimes for the next couple of chapters are a little different though. Chapter 2 feels a bit longer but plays well enough, while Chapter 3 is the full course meal with the entire chapter taking a couple of hours for me to play on the first try. Chapter 4 and 5 on the other hand feels shorter and more to the point, and the truth is I don’t know how to feel about this in relation to the chapter structure. Instead of feeling precise, it kind of feels stretched out a little bit and it makes me wish it took on a structure more like the original games where things loop back in on itself. It never feels like safe rooms are put in accessible places because the game’s structure naturally feels like a constant state of moving forward, so to me it always felt like a drag running all the way back to certain safe room stuff (of which I never felt like there were enough anyways) that eventually I just stopped running certain items back and just dropped them for the most part. Some of these safe rooms are secret Hexacore operative shelters hidden behind walls in public spaces, only able to be found due to the D.I.D. on your wrist beeping near them and some of them you kind of have to go out of your way to find. The safe room issue isn’t helped by the auto save system, which is great for the most part to have but it kind of feels like it relies on it as a sort of crutch kind of? I say kind of because if you have an auto save, I feel like you should have the checkpoints be semi regularly and sometimes it didn’t really spread it out for me though I only noticed it in Chapter 1.
Another thing I’ll add to the differences is the healing/crafting system. You don’t craft your own ammo as far as I’m aware, though there is a sort of mixing feature they put in for health and other benefits. In order to do this however, you have to find a needle called an H Additive and you have to mix it with different items like energy drinks or mental drops. Different effects you can have are the obvious health boost (which you can also take the energy drink by itself or eat an energy bar for small increases), a boost where you can have infinite stamina for a short period of time, or a “mental” boost, which I assume helps you aim more precisely. I didn’t really end up using or mixing anything with the latter two and I ended up being able to just play the game only using the health stuff. Some of these injections can be found in your surroundings, and very rarely they’ll be mixed together to provide some combination of both attributes. You can also trade in certain ingredients at the save room computer in exchange for items, though I don’t personally feel like you get enough to actually make that worth your time. However, ironically enough, if you play the game in the usual survival horror way, you’ll be flushed with ammo and health stuff for the most part. It’s a strange mix, I’ll never complain about the game letting me off easy myself, but the disparity between the amount of stuff you get and the trade-in system not feeling balanced is a strange one so I ended up ignoring it entirely next to using the mental drops or the stamina boost. They also have a system where you can “overdose” if you use too much of any injections but truth be told I never overdosed once, and you kind of have to try to overdose on purpose to actually do it.
The puzzles for the most part are pretty solid and simple, with the answers that you need for the most part existing within the area that the puzzle takes place in. Chapter 1 had at least two that were so simple that I looked back while struggling on them and actively face palmed. Chapter 4 had one which had me turn valves, the answer of which was right above the valves themselves on a diagram. You’ll also find hidden lockers around the city which require a combination of sorts (which can be a bit more difficult, requiring some collectible stuff and backtracking) for items or alternatively you’ll need some hacking tools (which are kind of finite and is required to get it right on the first try) to break into some lockers. The hacking pretty much just has you clicking one bar onto another bar while they both move, and while I make it sound more confusing than it actually should, once you know what you’re doing you can get the hang of it and get it right for the most part on the first try. The only puzzle I can genuinely say I can’t get the hang of is one at the end of Chapter 4 that involves some sort of morse code tapping bullshit, and I hate these because I personally never understand how the fuck I’m supposed to find out what the hell to look for so I just looked up a guide answer. Not saying that anyone else can’t do it of course, maybe I’m just a simpleton but I also had issues in Penumbra doing the morse code puzzle.
Collectibles consist of three different kinds: there are deer bobbleheads that you can shoot throughout the game hidden in certain places that reference certain horror and action movies and even a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure reference (one which I didn’t understand until the person I was streaming for explained it to me). As far as I’m aware, you don’t really get anything for shooting these bobbleheads other than a trophy so for that I just followed the guide I linked down below for help on that. Now comes one of my main problems: most of the collectibles you find have a website link (which I’ll post below) and a password to the corresponding collectible. In order to read certain bits of intel, you have to actively get on your computer or phone, go to this website (which says it’s “Not Secure” on my PC by the way) and type in the password for each individual document. I’ll be honest, I respect the whole metanarrative thing they’re going with but this fucking blows. I’m not interested in logging onto my real life device to look this stuff up when I’d rather be playing the game. Some of the documents you do get that you can read in game on your arm tablet, and while that’s fine I would’ve rather had them bring back the original document pop up then read small print on the in game phone. There’s a similar thing they do with the dog tag collectibles, only found in HADES Dead End (which is PC exclusive apparently) and is basically this game’s Mercenaries mode from what I understand. I say from what I understand because I didn’t play it, nor am I going to right now, but I’m glad they have that mode for players who like the game and want more.
Another thing I want to follow up on is Sam, who has Daymare syndrome whose characteristics include hallucinations. This also factors into gameplay and I like the idea of how they integrate his condition in game. The main way they do it is by having certain zombies be hallucinations within the game itself, such as attacking zombies. Not every zombie is a hallucination of course, but some of them are and when they grapple you they don’t do any damage. I like the idea of having to tell the difference between both of them and choosing whether to spend ammo on something that’s potentially not real, though I wish they gave a more telltale sign (even if small that I’d have to keep a lookout for) that something IS a mirage, especially considering that Sam points out something that’s one hundred percent a hallucination (though that one was kind of obvious). Other than that, it’s an interesting feature that makes for some tense scares during gameplay.
To bring up one more difference that I can remember, there are two different modes (other than difficulty). There’s Old School and there’s Modern Day. I played on Old School, and I’ll say that to me I personally think that it’s the best way to play the game. You can’t skip puzzles (which are easy for the most part), and you have to balance your weapon ammunition more. For example, there are two reload types: Fast and Slow. Slow switches out your current magazine for another one with current ammo while fast is mostly used for on the move against the undead and drops your current magazine on the ground which you’ll have to pick up later or possibly permanently lose it if you forget about it. You’ll have to reload it all in your inventory screen manually, which makes encounters tense and you can potentially flub up if you don’t know what you’re doing. The modern take mode you don’t have to worry about most of that stuff and you can skip puzzles, which if that’s what you prefer is a perfectly valid way to play the game if that’s what you want to do. I’ll put a wiki link that could explain it better than I do, but overall I like the tension of the old school system and I feel it’s the way that this game should be played. This only counts towards pistols though, so you won’t have to worry about shotguns. In fact, if there is one thing I’d love to mention is that I wish there were more variations of weapons like they promised in the Kickstarter. The most you get is different pistol types like a Beretta, a revolver, a desert eagle, and a shotgun just to name a few. There aren’t any assault rifles, grenade launchers or anything big or crazy and it’s kind of sad but understandable I suppose. Only other piece of advice I have for this is that for the magnum in chapter 3, collect as much ammo as you can and get the magazine for it around the gas station. Trust me, you’ll need it for the boss and it’s one of the only places to get it in the game and you could potentially fuck yourself if not done right.
Overall though, I want to add that while I have my criticisms towards certain aspects of the game and how it does stuff, I like the fact that they tried some new things while also keeping a lot of the old survival horror aspects together. I want to emphasize that they didn’t do a bad job here, in fact that’s where I feel like the game excels in for the most part despite a few ups and downs. I had played the game on Old School normal difficulty and didn’t die once except for a late game boss fuckup, in which I exited and reloaded the manual save and still got the GOG achievement for it anyways. There is the “Daymare” difficulty, which is the highest you can possibly go if you’re a masochist but I’m also a scared little bitch boy so there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that.
The sound design is pretty solid for the game too: the weapons feel like they have impact, footsteps sound good, doors creak creepily, I mean everything that you think that the game should do right, I feel they did right. I felt like the environmental sound design could’ve come straight out of Resident Evil 2 so that’s pretty solid. What helps add to everything with the actual sound design is the soundtrack as well. While it’s not the most unique, it does have some tunes that I could remember being decently catchy. The main theme song has a sort of dramatic and dark string vibe that’s tragic and ominous both, while “Safe Place” harkens back to the safe room themes of old survival horror. I’m not sure of the track that plays during infected Liev’s boss battles in Chapter 5 but they’re mad stressful and do a good job and put tension out there. For the most part, expect to hear your dramatic strings and some electronic stuff here and there. The composer was Alessandro Galdieri and if I can say one thing that I felt he did a good job here is capturing the survival horror essence, again it specifically feels like it could’ve came out of the other Resident Evil remakes and seeing as this is definitely a homage game, it hits the mark perfectly.
The voice acting however, is something that could’ve been a tad bit better? Truth be told, I’d say this is more of a translation/subtitle issue than something really on the voice actors. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a homage to old Resident Evil’s campy style of dialogue, but I didn’t take it as such especially considering that the subtitles are sometimes straight up false. Sometimes the Apple Blossom Fair is mistaken for the Cherry Blossom Feast, one line delivery from Sam had him awkwardly saying “He’s going there…then he’ll be there..” in a line that straight up made me cackle and brought me out of the moment. There was one part where one of the characters is ambushed by a guy with a wrench, but is told by the other character to “Drop your gun”. Subtitles are misspelled sometimes or awkwardly phrased, and while I wasn’t really bothered with that because the developers were Italian and cross translation is hard work, it did sadly pull me out at some moments.
The graphics of this game looks pretty decent for the most part; the environment work is stunning with the town of Keen Sight being an interesting and lively place with a history dating back to the Lewis and Clark days. Keen Sight as a town looks phenomenal, though while it’s a town ruined and destitute by undead, conveys a familiar and homely yet abandoned town at the same time. I would say that walking through the town is where the game shines the most from its pride in its history with their monuments, taking shortcuts through back alleys and into buildings with tight claustrophobic spaces. It feels like a real place, a sort of maze that truth be told I wish was the whole game. That being said, I don’t hate that the game has secret government labs or forest sections or whatever but they pale in comparison to the town itself. I would even dare say that this town, to me, feels like it belongs up in the pantheon with the most interesting settings next to Willamette, Colorado or Raccoon City, ironically both being Capcom games. I don’t really have much criticism to give with the environmental stuff other than they look how they would in a Resident Evil game otherwise, and that’s what the developers were looking for I feel, so mission accomplished there.
If I were to give any criticism in regards to graphical fidelity, then I would say it’s the models themselves. I know it’s an obvious indie budget thing, and I’m not going to disrespect the effort put into making these. However, there are a lot of models (at least the human ones) that feel sort of…artificial. Like I can tell these were made with a limited budget, it reminds me of the Friday the 13th counselor models. That’s not to say they’re inherently bad, though I’d say that sometimes they don’t really look…human? Especially in the animation department because by god, the lip syncing isn’t great and the facial movements could be a lot less stiff with the human characters. Maybe it was a sort of budget thing with them being an inexperienced indie game studio however, and with that in mind I don’t want to judge too harshly because it does add to a sort of campy charm, even if it’s inadvertently so. To finish off, the only other things I can really point out are that there were points where if I wasn’t following the story that I would get Liev and Raven mixed up, looking nearly identical wise and being bald as hell so they could’ve differentiated them a bit there. That, and while streaming me and my friend noticed that Sam’s got a pretty nice bulge LOL. Ironically enough however, the enemy models such as the zombies and special infected look pretty damn creepy and look the part in playing a foreboding atmosphere for the game. Between the “Hunters”, the Melted Men, Castor Hades or even the regular zombies, they all look all sorts of fucked up with jaws missing, looking skinned alive or severely deformed that they’re pretty damn effective in the intimidate department.
In short, I came out of this game pleasantly surprised and kind of ashamed that I forgot about this. It was a bit janky in some places, sure; but I had really enjoyed my time playing this title. Invader Studios didn’t create a perfect game, but I felt they had made a fun one and sometimes that's all that really matters. There were only a few places where I truly rolled my eyes out of dislike, and that was mostly towards the second to final boss in the game running towards the elevator and the website intel system. Otherwise, if you’re willing to put aside some of the more imperfect aspects and you’re really itching for a survival horror homage filled love letter then I would suggest trying this title out. In fact, there’s a part of me that questions why this has so many mixed reviews, although logically in the back of my mind I KNOW the reasons why. However, since the release of Daymare: 1998 they had also released a prequel to the game: Daymare 1994: Sandcastle, on August 30th which I also didn’t know about and/or forgot about. Maybe it’s a recurring theme of sorts? Who knows. Maybe I’ll give the prequel a go here someday soon and be hopefully pleasantly surprised again with potential quality, though the reviews aren’t looking that great either, but time will only tell.
Links:
https://www.neoseeker.com/daymare-1998/walkthrough (Guide I used)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pJ1g7MElpg&ab_channel=GamesSoundtracksOST (Soundtrack)
http://hexacorebiogenetics.com/intranet/mission-reports-archive/ (Intel Website)
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_play_guide_for_Daymare:_1998#Gameplay_modes (Certain Gameplay Aspects)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/invaderstudios/daymare-1998tm-bringing-back-the-survival-horror (Old Kickstarter Page)
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/Collectibles_in_Daymare:_1998 (Passwords included for the Hexacore Website)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Daymare1998
https://daymare1998.fandom.com/wiki/Daymare:_1998
https://invaderstudiosofficial.com/site/
This review contains spoilers
Fallout: New Vegas is a post apocalyptic roleplaying game developed by Obsidian Entertainment as a spin-off for the Fallout series. While Bethesda was creating Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, they negotiated with Obsidian to develop a sort of “expansion” to Fallout 3, which later turned into this game. What followed was a 10-18 month dev period at Obsidian that took ideas from previous canceled titles in the series, like Van Buren (the old CRPG version of Fallout 3). I’m surprised that the game is as great as it is considering the low dev time with crunch, Bethesda’s buggy Creation Engine, and cut content ranging from post-game to playable ghouls and super mutants. While I’m never okay with crunch in game development, what came about is not only a much better game then most Bethesda titles, but one of the best RPGs of all time. I don’t remember how I got into this game, but I remember playing this all through my Xbox 360 days and having a blast as one of the games I would come back to often just to chill out. Unlike Fallout 3, I didn’t complete every achievement but I came damn close and I’ve always marveled at the improvements made between 3 and New Vegas. For PC, I bought this game long ago but I never really sat down to play it until my boy BFD Survivor went out of his way to mod the entire game because I suck at that, so without him this playthrough wouldn’t be possible.
The plot is going to be small because it’s intricate and based on player choices: You play as Courier Six, a courier who was ambushed and shot by a guy in a checkered suit (with a checkered past) along with a couple of Great Khans. However, you’re not dead and you’re saved by Goodsprings doctor Doc Mitchell, who heals you and sends you out on your way. The whole goal from here is to find Benny, and on the way you’ll run into various factions and quests, ranging from the New California Republic (from Fallout 1 and 2) who run a tight military with its own U.S. style political system to the barbaric slaver group Caesar’s Legion. You’ll find more groups, but those two and a mysterious billionaire named Mr. House are all fighting over New Vegas, a conflict which you’ll get wrapped up into fairly quickly. You can also choose a fourth route for Independence, and to do that you’ll need to look into Benny and his motivations. That’s about it for the explicit plot, but I just want to say that the writing here is fantastic in every way, cohesive and philosophical in its design as well as reactive depending on your choices.
The reactivity of these choices are amazing in how far they span, based on what skills/perks you have in what conversations as well. I don’t know how to explain it because of scale, but I’ll include a link here below as an example. Keep in mind the route that most take, you end up in Nipton first and you’ll witness Vulpes crucify the entire town in a lottery. If you skip this and confront Benny, then go back to Nipton you’ll get an acknowledgement from Vulpes that this is your second encounter. Otherwise, gameplay is solid and casual; combat is pretty simple and improved as well, with an aim down sights added as well as the ability to add weapon mods. Everything is a breeze with VATS, a lock on system and aim at certain spots on a character and for the most part it's overpowered as hell. Only thing I can really bring up as a criticism is you can recruit companions, which are awesome for the most part. However, I feel like in the quest to be casual, the game sacrifices actual faction balance to prefer an NCR playthrough. I hate the Legion, but I would’ve preferred at least one more pro-Legion guy to make it well rounded. The ideal playthrough pivots towards NCR to me, mainly because Boone is former NCR and Arcade hates the Legion, and while the others are kind of hit or miss there’s nobody really on the Legion’s side. There was Ulysses, a cut companion retrofitted into the DLCs but story wise sometimes it feels like there are certain sides you’re encouraged to join more than others. That’s my hot take though, and it doesn’t stop you from joining Mr. House or Yes Man and backstabbing the NCR later like I did. I hope I explained that well enough.
The graphics for New Vegas are the same as Fallout 3, maybe touched up a bit but for the most part it’s the same. What made me is atmosphere: whether you’re out in the desert dodging radscorpions, or murdering squads of Legion, one thing that you’ll have to get used to is the color brown. It’ll never NOT feel comfortable to me because of the warm vibe, and this mixed in with the ease of the combat I’ve never felt stressed or tense other than bugs. I’m okay with this, though I miss the gray and oppressive feeling I got from Fallout 3. The environments are for the most part mixed up enough to make it unique but cohesively blended. The factions are unique and interesting, with Caesar’s Legion sticking out like a sore thumb due to their Roman-like attire. Everything else in the game feels appropriate with a fifties/Mad Max aesthetic. One of the most unique and endearing factions for me have to be The Kings, which basically impersonate Elvis after a gang raided a school for Elvis Impersonators and I adore them heavily with their slickback hair.
The voice acting for the most part is probably voiced by the same couple of actors though there’ll be a couple of familiar faces: Ron Perlman is back as the narrator, Matthew Perry does pretty well with the obnoxious mafioso Benny, and I recognized Danny Trejo as companion Raul. There are others as well, Zachary Levi of Shazam plays Arcade Gannon and Kris Kristofferson plays Chief Hanlon but if I didn’t look that up on IMDB then I wouldn’t have noticed. Overall, the voice acting is solid, I didn’t really notice anything bad though I question if my standards are low because I hear people rip into Matthew Perry even though I didn’t think he did bad at all. Now the SOUNDTRACK! The main menu theme will always be recognizable but the credits that plays during the finale is just sad, the epitome of “You won, but at what cost?” and I wouldn’t be surprised if people have cried over this at some point. Most of it is new stuff by a guy named Inon Zur, but you’ll hear old tracks from Fallout 1 & 2 by Mark Morgan played as well. The licensed tracks are memorable with tracks like Johnny Guitar by Peggy Lee, Big Iron by Marty Robbins, and Ain’t That a Kick in the Head by Dean Martin. It all fits the atmosphere as a dangerous yet comfortable joyride into the apocalypse.
To wrap up the plainly obvious: buy/play New Vegas and DLC. Play it on Vanilla first then delve into modding. I won’t play this often due to my backlog, but if there's an endgame for me on gaming, modding New Vegas is it. I had forgotten my love for Fallout, and had chalked up its personality to “Post Apocalyptic Family Guy” with the constant references. I was dumb, and this game helped me rediscover my love again. For those who wonder if it’s accessible for casuals? Yes, even as a child while I didn’t understand all the nuance, I understood the content/subject matter while also feeling effective with combat. The only thing I can say is with modding New Vegas: prepare to have a lot of time on your hands as the Engine isn’t exactly stable. I used Nexus Mod Manager and had help from my buddy and I still had issues. What happened to everyone right after the release? Bethesda released Skyrim (another personal classic) and Fallout 4, Obsidian would go on to create Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds before both were bought by Microsoft later.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVoSHcscGo8&t=404s&ab_channel=Mr.RichieRich
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_soundtrack
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706601/
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot is going to be small because it’s intricate and based on player choices: You play as Courier Six, a courier who was ambushed and shot by a guy in a checkered suit (with a checkered past) along with a couple of Great Khans. However, you’re not dead and you’re saved by Goodsprings doctor Doc Mitchell, who heals you and sends you out on your way. The whole goal from here is to find Benny, and on the way you’ll run into various factions and quests, ranging from the New California Republic (from Fallout 1 and 2) who run a tight military with its own U.S. style political system to the barbaric slaver group Caesar’s Legion. You’ll find more groups, but those two and a mysterious billionaire named Mr. House are all fighting over New Vegas, a conflict which you’ll get wrapped up into fairly quickly. You can also choose a fourth route for Independence, and to do that you’ll need to look into Benny and his motivations. That’s about it for the explicit plot, but I just want to say that the writing here is fantastic in every way, cohesive and philosophical in its design as well as reactive depending on your choices.
The reactivity of these choices are amazing in how far they span, based on what skills/perks you have in what conversations as well. I don’t know how to explain it because of scale, but I’ll include a link here below as an example. Keep in mind the route that most take, you end up in Nipton first and you’ll witness Vulpes crucify the entire town in a lottery. If you skip this and confront Benny, then go back to Nipton you’ll get an acknowledgement from Vulpes that this is your second encounter. Otherwise, gameplay is solid and casual; combat is pretty simple and improved as well, with an aim down sights added as well as the ability to add weapon mods. Everything is a breeze with VATS, a lock on system and aim at certain spots on a character and for the most part it's overpowered as hell. Only thing I can really bring up as a criticism is you can recruit companions, which are awesome for the most part. However, I feel like in the quest to be casual, the game sacrifices actual faction balance to prefer an NCR playthrough. I hate the Legion, but I would’ve preferred at least one more pro-Legion guy to make it well rounded. The ideal playthrough pivots towards NCR to me, mainly because Boone is former NCR and Arcade hates the Legion, and while the others are kind of hit or miss there’s nobody really on the Legion’s side. There was Ulysses, a cut companion retrofitted into the DLCs but story wise sometimes it feels like there are certain sides you’re encouraged to join more than others. That’s my hot take though, and it doesn’t stop you from joining Mr. House or Yes Man and backstabbing the NCR later like I did. I hope I explained that well enough.
The graphics for New Vegas are the same as Fallout 3, maybe touched up a bit but for the most part it’s the same. What made me is atmosphere: whether you’re out in the desert dodging radscorpions, or murdering squads of Legion, one thing that you’ll have to get used to is the color brown. It’ll never NOT feel comfortable to me because of the warm vibe, and this mixed in with the ease of the combat I’ve never felt stressed or tense other than bugs. I’m okay with this, though I miss the gray and oppressive feeling I got from Fallout 3. The environments are for the most part mixed up enough to make it unique but cohesively blended. The factions are unique and interesting, with Caesar’s Legion sticking out like a sore thumb due to their Roman-like attire. Everything else in the game feels appropriate with a fifties/Mad Max aesthetic. One of the most unique and endearing factions for me have to be The Kings, which basically impersonate Elvis after a gang raided a school for Elvis Impersonators and I adore them heavily with their slickback hair.
The voice acting for the most part is probably voiced by the same couple of actors though there’ll be a couple of familiar faces: Ron Perlman is back as the narrator, Matthew Perry does pretty well with the obnoxious mafioso Benny, and I recognized Danny Trejo as companion Raul. There are others as well, Zachary Levi of Shazam plays Arcade Gannon and Kris Kristofferson plays Chief Hanlon but if I didn’t look that up on IMDB then I wouldn’t have noticed. Overall, the voice acting is solid, I didn’t really notice anything bad though I question if my standards are low because I hear people rip into Matthew Perry even though I didn’t think he did bad at all. Now the SOUNDTRACK! The main menu theme will always be recognizable but the credits that plays during the finale is just sad, the epitome of “You won, but at what cost?” and I wouldn’t be surprised if people have cried over this at some point. Most of it is new stuff by a guy named Inon Zur, but you’ll hear old tracks from Fallout 1 & 2 by Mark Morgan played as well. The licensed tracks are memorable with tracks like Johnny Guitar by Peggy Lee, Big Iron by Marty Robbins, and Ain’t That a Kick in the Head by Dean Martin. It all fits the atmosphere as a dangerous yet comfortable joyride into the apocalypse.
To wrap up the plainly obvious: buy/play New Vegas and DLC. Play it on Vanilla first then delve into modding. I won’t play this often due to my backlog, but if there's an endgame for me on gaming, modding New Vegas is it. I had forgotten my love for Fallout, and had chalked up its personality to “Post Apocalyptic Family Guy” with the constant references. I was dumb, and this game helped me rediscover my love again. For those who wonder if it’s accessible for casuals? Yes, even as a child while I didn’t understand all the nuance, I understood the content/subject matter while also feeling effective with combat. The only thing I can say is with modding New Vegas: prepare to have a lot of time on your hands as the Engine isn’t exactly stable. I used Nexus Mod Manager and had help from my buddy and I still had issues. What happened to everyone right after the release? Bethesda released Skyrim (another personal classic) and Fallout 4, Obsidian would go on to create Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds before both were bought by Microsoft later.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVoSHcscGo8&t=404s&ab_channel=Mr.RichieRich
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_soundtrack
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706601/
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Call of Duty: World at War is a “war is hell but feels good to play” World War 2 first person shooter developed by Treyarch under Activision. For the most part, I believe everyone and their grandmother knows what this game is and what it’s like. I also can’t really go into too much for development as with a lot of games there doesn’t seem to be much of any note, except some anecdotes I read up on years ago from the Call of Duty wiki. Anecdotes such as learning of a hidden morale system in the Soviet campaign (for not killing surrendering Germans), to a cut campaign for the British that took place in Holland, to the Easter Eggs in Zombies are one of many things I used to do heavy research into as a young lad obsessed with the franchise at a young age. That all started while watching two of my cousins playing the zombies map Der Riese in their basement as I just watched with pure fascination. I never knew what this game was, but somehow years later I found out again (probably on Youtube) and got hooked on the series ever since. Along with Call of Duty 3, I’ve always held an affinity for World at War as the best in the entire series. Nowadays I’m very lukewarm with the series in general, but I think when we’re kids we idealize the things we love and the magic of that time period. That’s not to say that things can’t still hold up, but over the years that I’ve played each game before eventually dropping off, I honestly say the game still holds up. Like many games I’ve played that are old childhood games, I don’t feel like I’m able to write a review that does it justice, at least one that fits into Steam Characters (or unless it’s a five hour essay) but recently I had buddies in here beating the game twice recently, and I’ve beaten the game enough to know my feelings on it.
The plot to the game is simple, like most of the ones in the past: You follow two soldiers in two separate campaigns; one is Miller with the Americans against the Japanese from Okinawa to Shuri Castle and one is Dimitri Peterenko for the Soviet Armed Forces against Hitler’s reign. Aside from Reznov and Dimitri making appearances in an official story in Black Ops, the game doesn’t focus on an overarching narrative as much as it focuses on the hell of military battle and the feelings (or lack thereof) involved with the game. Before I go onto the gameplay portion of this, I wanna throw out a general vibe I’ve heard about the Call of Duty games in general. I’ve heard a lot of people say that Call of Duty is a “military recruitment tool”, propaganda and such. Whilst it may be like that for the rest of the series in a lot of instances, I never really got the vibe here. The USA is under constant threat of enemy ambushes and surprise attacks from every direction, and although sometimes they play triumphant music, I’ve always taken the American Campaign as a fight for survival. With the Soviet Campaign it’s the inverse, while at first being hunted down and attacked, eventually it turns into a full on display on how far people will go to take revenge on the massacre of their fellow countrymen. The hidden morality system is here, and while it’s not super deep (or deep at all), following Reznov and killing surrendering German soldiers will draw the ire of at least one journal writing comrade. While the Americans are just looking to get through and go home, the Russians (except Chernov) are satiating with blood and repeating patriotic quotes that delude themselves into thinking going so far into the abyss is the morally correct thing to do. Of course, this is how I just view it and I’m probably looking too deeply into it as I saw one person say that the game glorifies their behavior; If that’s what you believe of course, everyone has their own take and I respect it but I took Reznov especially as kind of a sociopath in the grand scheme.
In fact, speaking of Reznov, most of the characters in this game aren’t really fleshed out or even memorable but for the most part play the set dressing well enough to where it’s not a distraction. The most memorable characters for me are Viktor Reznov and Roebuck, mostly because of their position as squad leader (as well as Reznov’s constant need for German blood) as well as their voice acting which I’ll discuss later. The main point being, I feel that if this game is “military propaganda”, then it’s shitty because seeing all of my squadmates die in a fiery blaze, or getting blown to pieces doesn’t really scream “FOLLOW MY TWITCH ESPORTS LEAGUE” unless you’re a sociopath or something. Effects on military recruitment aside, to me the game has always been more about the atmosphere instead of plot devices or character moments, and I believe that the game did a damn fine job with that.
Where the game excels at the best to me is everything else: the art, the atmosphere, the music, and even the graphics.Graphics wise the game looks like late 2000s Call of Duty, a look that for the most part is fine and holds up but isn’t some graphical monster or an art style that stands out. Again though, the terror of everyone dying around you feels visceral if not empty and lonely. As said before, you’ll see men on both sides of the fence get blown up, lit on fire, dismembered and the graphics engine was updated to reflect that with body parts detaching, large pools of blood spilling out, the insides of soldiers show and different models showing realistic looking burns. This game would definitely tick off some marks on the War Crimes list and for the time was kind of a unique thing for a game in the mainstream, especially one that came off the heels of Modern Warfare. The atmosphere, other than bloody and ruthless, has a unique palette between the two campaigns, though I’ll always deem the Soviet campaign as the more oppressive of the two due to the constant grays and smoke. This, combined with the music, does a solid job at helping reinforce the pillars that while small, add up for me in the end.
Sean Murray created the soundtrack for psychological paranoia in war, and it’s a unique and grimy sound that I haven’t seen in a Call of Duty title, let alone in any game SINCE it got released. I don’t really know what I can say but listening to this soundtrack is the centerpiece of the violence. The American tracks scream "sneaking through enemy lines while trying not to get killed" while the marching chorus of the Soviet tracks have a sort of dramatic "throw yourself at the enemy until you die or you get the job done" kind of vibe. The one that’ll always strike me the most will ALWAYS be that fucking singing lady, the one in the main menu whose chants I swear to god could be both calming and haunt my nightmares at the same time. Certain maps in the environment have a creepy vibe to them, as even after wiping out all the enemies while moving on you can hear miscellaneous sounds like screams that sound like they can come from ghosts, whispers in the distance. The guns also both feel and sound great, so there's no feelings of pea shooters here. It’s immaculate as hell, and helps stand World at War out from the other titles in the series. As for the voice acting, it’s all solid and blends in well with each other. The two standouts are A-Listers Gary Oldman and Kiefer Sutherland as Reznov and Roebuck; who both do a very good job establishing their characters, ESPECIALLY Oldman. Oldman sounds like a military approved serial killer deluding himself as a patriot, and he eats up the role to perfection and I enjoy him chewing on the scenery screaming about soviet patriotism. Sutherland moreso plays the stoic squad leader, though truth be told I can spot Kiefer’s smooth voice anywhere and he doesn’t have much in the way of personality otherwise.
As for the general gameplay of the campaign: it’s painfully simple and that’s not a bad thing. You go from Point A to Point B as you kill either the Germans or Japanese militaries as you follow orders from either your superior or the game itself in scripted setpieces (with some open endedness) as you work with various soldiers whose memorability is centered around the fact that I played this as a kid. It’s such a simple concept that for the most part, there’s nothing really for me to expound upon as anyone could play this game easily. There aren’t any hidden mechanics other than some collectibles and easter eggs; you can collect playing cards in various missions to unlock cheat codes for later replay sessions and in mission three you can acquire a Ray Gun by jumping from crater to crater like my dad used to. Again, you’ll go through scripted action set pieces that range from storming Japanese beaches, raiding trenches with flamethrowers, hunting down Germans in abandoned asylums or driving a tank and taking down other tanks. My favorites would personally be the sniper fight in Stalingrad or Black Cat, which involves saving marines while hopping between guns on a plane-boat. The campaign also has cooperative play, one which I played on Veteran with some buddies years ago and somehow barely got through that. Shoutout to my buddy Elliot though for beating the game on Xbox One with Veteran with ease, dude’s crazy as hell and I got some achievement score out of it so again I can’t complain as it was entertaining. The final recent playthrough was my buddy Nick playing through the game on Recruit because my progress on the Co-op campaign didn’t count, so I’ve gotten more than my fair share of World at War recently. However, to leave it on a final note here, if you play this game on Veteran you WILL be tested. The only one I’ve ever seen go through this game on Veteran without too much in the way of struggle is my buddy Elliot; how he managed to get past the constant chucking of grenades (way more so than the other games) I don’t know but he’s the real war hero here.
The other game mode is the Zombies Mode, and truthfully the main reason why I bought it on PC. This game has mod support, and though I’ve never really acted on modding the game due to life taking its course, from what I understand World at War and Black Ops 3 are the easiest games to have custom zombies maps for. I remember as a kid watching all sorts of custom maps for the game on Youtube, following people who would create entirely new weapons and seemingly game modes inside of Zombies with Modern Warfare themes or goofy Super Mario shit if you so wanted. It’s amazing what people can do, and if I were to have only a couple of games to play forever, then this game would be one strictly for the mod support. Now some people would ask, what is Zombies mode? Well funny enough, I’ll start out with the fact that the mode started with one map: Nacht Der Untoten.
It was originally supposed to just be a one off survival map where you buy weapons from off the wall or from the Mystery Box, trying to survive for as long as you can while you kill zombies for points to get more ammo to kill more zombies. However, due to the popularity of the mode, it’s expanded to probably the most acclaimed the series has ever done (other than Warzone). Even this mode has a strange start, if I remember correctly it started from the motion capture guys getting footage of people shambling after being lit on fire or something and when someone pointed out that they looked like zombies, one of the devs ran with it and then that’s how it was made. It seems that there’s a bunch of origins for it, though I’m not sure which one I’ll make sure to post some articles down below. Regardless, it’s because of this game that zombies even exist and it’s bled into other games like Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: World War 2 to even making it into the new Modern Warfare III reboot, as well as being ported for the likes of the IPhone (which I’ve played and I’ll say is A LOT easier than it is on consoles).
Thankfully in the PC version, all the maps come with the game and I was able to play the rest of them. I forget if you unlock this from the start or if you have to beat the campaign first in order to unlock it on PC but out of all the stupid shit Activision has done, I’m glad they didn’t wall off all the maps behind pay like they did on consoles (though it didn’t stop them from doing it with future games). The whole plot is a bit of a puzzle, one that’s been added onto and solved over the many years with future installments but when it was just this game, the community ran with it in terms of excitement while trying to figure out connections between Nazi experiments, Element 115, who are the characters in Nacht Der Untoten and Verruckt compared to Shi No Numa and Der Riese. I’m a bit mixed on how that lore has turned out over time as it’s become a bit of a convoluted mess, but in its infancy it was the perfect starting palette and I loved it.
The gameplay for it is simple: you start out with a pistol, and you kill zombies for points. You use those points to unlock other parts of the map as well as weapons off the wall to help defend against more zombies which get more difficult to kill with each round. For those not in the know, when you first start out the best you can do is shoot a zombie five to six times before knifing it to max the amount of early points to get. The maps start off basic with Nacht but with each new one adds new features that later become standard, like electric traps and perk cola machines and eventually piling off with the Pack O’ Punch in Der Riese, which upgrades your weapons to make them shoot special ammo and kill later round zombies more quickly.
To sum up the atmospheric stuff in this game: It’s all just as haunting like the campaign if not worse due to the explicit undead horror. You’ll still hear the creepy ambience, as well as some great alternative rock/metalcore tracks that you can find if you do certain easter eggs. Kevin Sherwood and Elisa Siegman did a great job, and while I personally don’t listen to rock or metalcore like that, it feels like a reward on it’s own just to find them. To go on about the atmosphere would be redundant, as it all smoothly fits hand in hand with the campaign’s so I don’t want to be too repetitive.
The last mode is multiplayer, which for the most part I can't say much except that it's either abandoned or hacked to hell by people who either want to steal your info, become invincible or cause chaos. Not recommended to play, if you wanted to play it you could try the console Xbox and PS3 versions but even then it's kind of hit or miss whether there's people or not.
Call of Duty is a bit of an interesting historical point for me and the gaming industry in general: since the game launch, the period of 2007-2012 (from Modern Warfare to Black Ops 2) have been considered the best time in the series, a sort of golden age for sweaty gamers who both live in their mom’s basement and the ones who actually go outside and touch grass. It’s a strange feeling nowadays that I’d go out of my way to write a positive essay about this game, as most people already know it’s good and due to the fact that I’m not really a Call of Duty guy much anymore and prefer other genres. However, World at War is special to me and helps solve that “War is Hell” in video games itch that I’ve been kind of scrambling for since playing games like Spec Ops: The Line and such. It’s an easy pick up and play game with simple yet addictive mechanics and it came out in that golden age so I inevitably will have a sort of bias towards it. However, that detached and cold atmosphere is what keeps me coming back as my favorite in the series, and one day I’d like to fulfill that promise I made when I was 18 to mod this game and play through the zombies (both original and custom) with buddies. Before the release of Modern Warfare 2 the next year, which REALLY shook up the industry, there were also ports released for the Playstation 2 (which I want to play one day and apparently has a British Campaign), the Nintendo DS (with its own Zombies mode) and even the Wii apparently which no clue if I’ll play.
The final verdict is that even if you don’t care for the usual “alpha tango bravo delta charlie” bullshit that most of these games deliver as if you’re some sort of action hero even though in real life you’d get shot; the game would be the one out of everyone in the series I’d recommend to pick up. The PC version has its technical flaws, and from what I understand nowadays it’s kind of hit or miss with online safety due to Activision’s own incompetence, taking down mods that help support independent servers for the game. If you don’t buy to support Activision or because it’s technically kind of a mess (at least for me) then I understand, but if you can look past that you’ll find a game that while it may not be a groundbreaking masterpiece, but comes very close and I argue is THE best game and my personal favorite in the series. I’m not really a huge Call of Duty guy anymore even though I used to be, but it's nice to re-experience a childhood piece again.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VDD5oIYWKM&ab_channel=Ludwig
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut_Content/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War (Cut Content)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CODZombies/comments/djh6ju/how_did_cod_zombies_came_to_be_in_terms_of_its/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxW6QbnblSs&t=291s&ab_channel=GameSpot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObGcUye7Rdw&t=18s&ab_channel=PlayStation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iisQ5dOBVFQ&t=289s&ab_channel=Variety
https://www.jessesnyder.org/trenches/?p=42&cpage=4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wujwTdJz_vM&ab_channel=10minGameplay
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/CallOfDutyWorldAtWar
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot to the game is simple, like most of the ones in the past: You follow two soldiers in two separate campaigns; one is Miller with the Americans against the Japanese from Okinawa to Shuri Castle and one is Dimitri Peterenko for the Soviet Armed Forces against Hitler’s reign. Aside from Reznov and Dimitri making appearances in an official story in Black Ops, the game doesn’t focus on an overarching narrative as much as it focuses on the hell of military battle and the feelings (or lack thereof) involved with the game. Before I go onto the gameplay portion of this, I wanna throw out a general vibe I’ve heard about the Call of Duty games in general. I’ve heard a lot of people say that Call of Duty is a “military recruitment tool”, propaganda and such. Whilst it may be like that for the rest of the series in a lot of instances, I never really got the vibe here. The USA is under constant threat of enemy ambushes and surprise attacks from every direction, and although sometimes they play triumphant music, I’ve always taken the American Campaign as a fight for survival. With the Soviet Campaign it’s the inverse, while at first being hunted down and attacked, eventually it turns into a full on display on how far people will go to take revenge on the massacre of their fellow countrymen. The hidden morality system is here, and while it’s not super deep (or deep at all), following Reznov and killing surrendering German soldiers will draw the ire of at least one journal writing comrade. While the Americans are just looking to get through and go home, the Russians (except Chernov) are satiating with blood and repeating patriotic quotes that delude themselves into thinking going so far into the abyss is the morally correct thing to do. Of course, this is how I just view it and I’m probably looking too deeply into it as I saw one person say that the game glorifies their behavior; If that’s what you believe of course, everyone has their own take and I respect it but I took Reznov especially as kind of a sociopath in the grand scheme.
In fact, speaking of Reznov, most of the characters in this game aren’t really fleshed out or even memorable but for the most part play the set dressing well enough to where it’s not a distraction. The most memorable characters for me are Viktor Reznov and Roebuck, mostly because of their position as squad leader (as well as Reznov’s constant need for German blood) as well as their voice acting which I’ll discuss later. The main point being, I feel that if this game is “military propaganda”, then it’s shitty because seeing all of my squadmates die in a fiery blaze, or getting blown to pieces doesn’t really scream “FOLLOW MY TWITCH ESPORTS LEAGUE” unless you’re a sociopath or something. Effects on military recruitment aside, to me the game has always been more about the atmosphere instead of plot devices or character moments, and I believe that the game did a damn fine job with that.
Where the game excels at the best to me is everything else: the art, the atmosphere, the music, and even the graphics.Graphics wise the game looks like late 2000s Call of Duty, a look that for the most part is fine and holds up but isn’t some graphical monster or an art style that stands out. Again though, the terror of everyone dying around you feels visceral if not empty and lonely. As said before, you’ll see men on both sides of the fence get blown up, lit on fire, dismembered and the graphics engine was updated to reflect that with body parts detaching, large pools of blood spilling out, the insides of soldiers show and different models showing realistic looking burns. This game would definitely tick off some marks on the War Crimes list and for the time was kind of a unique thing for a game in the mainstream, especially one that came off the heels of Modern Warfare. The atmosphere, other than bloody and ruthless, has a unique palette between the two campaigns, though I’ll always deem the Soviet campaign as the more oppressive of the two due to the constant grays and smoke. This, combined with the music, does a solid job at helping reinforce the pillars that while small, add up for me in the end.
Sean Murray created the soundtrack for psychological paranoia in war, and it’s a unique and grimy sound that I haven’t seen in a Call of Duty title, let alone in any game SINCE it got released. I don’t really know what I can say but listening to this soundtrack is the centerpiece of the violence. The American tracks scream "sneaking through enemy lines while trying not to get killed" while the marching chorus of the Soviet tracks have a sort of dramatic "throw yourself at the enemy until you die or you get the job done" kind of vibe. The one that’ll always strike me the most will ALWAYS be that fucking singing lady, the one in the main menu whose chants I swear to god could be both calming and haunt my nightmares at the same time. Certain maps in the environment have a creepy vibe to them, as even after wiping out all the enemies while moving on you can hear miscellaneous sounds like screams that sound like they can come from ghosts, whispers in the distance. The guns also both feel and sound great, so there's no feelings of pea shooters here. It’s immaculate as hell, and helps stand World at War out from the other titles in the series. As for the voice acting, it’s all solid and blends in well with each other. The two standouts are A-Listers Gary Oldman and Kiefer Sutherland as Reznov and Roebuck; who both do a very good job establishing their characters, ESPECIALLY Oldman. Oldman sounds like a military approved serial killer deluding himself as a patriot, and he eats up the role to perfection and I enjoy him chewing on the scenery screaming about soviet patriotism. Sutherland moreso plays the stoic squad leader, though truth be told I can spot Kiefer’s smooth voice anywhere and he doesn’t have much in the way of personality otherwise.
As for the general gameplay of the campaign: it’s painfully simple and that’s not a bad thing. You go from Point A to Point B as you kill either the Germans or Japanese militaries as you follow orders from either your superior or the game itself in scripted setpieces (with some open endedness) as you work with various soldiers whose memorability is centered around the fact that I played this as a kid. It’s such a simple concept that for the most part, there’s nothing really for me to expound upon as anyone could play this game easily. There aren’t any hidden mechanics other than some collectibles and easter eggs; you can collect playing cards in various missions to unlock cheat codes for later replay sessions and in mission three you can acquire a Ray Gun by jumping from crater to crater like my dad used to. Again, you’ll go through scripted action set pieces that range from storming Japanese beaches, raiding trenches with flamethrowers, hunting down Germans in abandoned asylums or driving a tank and taking down other tanks. My favorites would personally be the sniper fight in Stalingrad or Black Cat, which involves saving marines while hopping between guns on a plane-boat. The campaign also has cooperative play, one which I played on Veteran with some buddies years ago and somehow barely got through that. Shoutout to my buddy Elliot though for beating the game on Xbox One with Veteran with ease, dude’s crazy as hell and I got some achievement score out of it so again I can’t complain as it was entertaining. The final recent playthrough was my buddy Nick playing through the game on Recruit because my progress on the Co-op campaign didn’t count, so I’ve gotten more than my fair share of World at War recently. However, to leave it on a final note here, if you play this game on Veteran you WILL be tested. The only one I’ve ever seen go through this game on Veteran without too much in the way of struggle is my buddy Elliot; how he managed to get past the constant chucking of grenades (way more so than the other games) I don’t know but he’s the real war hero here.
The other game mode is the Zombies Mode, and truthfully the main reason why I bought it on PC. This game has mod support, and though I’ve never really acted on modding the game due to life taking its course, from what I understand World at War and Black Ops 3 are the easiest games to have custom zombies maps for. I remember as a kid watching all sorts of custom maps for the game on Youtube, following people who would create entirely new weapons and seemingly game modes inside of Zombies with Modern Warfare themes or goofy Super Mario shit if you so wanted. It’s amazing what people can do, and if I were to have only a couple of games to play forever, then this game would be one strictly for the mod support. Now some people would ask, what is Zombies mode? Well funny enough, I’ll start out with the fact that the mode started with one map: Nacht Der Untoten.
It was originally supposed to just be a one off survival map where you buy weapons from off the wall or from the Mystery Box, trying to survive for as long as you can while you kill zombies for points to get more ammo to kill more zombies. However, due to the popularity of the mode, it’s expanded to probably the most acclaimed the series has ever done (other than Warzone). Even this mode has a strange start, if I remember correctly it started from the motion capture guys getting footage of people shambling after being lit on fire or something and when someone pointed out that they looked like zombies, one of the devs ran with it and then that’s how it was made. It seems that there’s a bunch of origins for it, though I’m not sure which one I’ll make sure to post some articles down below. Regardless, it’s because of this game that zombies even exist and it’s bled into other games like Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: World War 2 to even making it into the new Modern Warfare III reboot, as well as being ported for the likes of the IPhone (which I’ve played and I’ll say is A LOT easier than it is on consoles).
Thankfully in the PC version, all the maps come with the game and I was able to play the rest of them. I forget if you unlock this from the start or if you have to beat the campaign first in order to unlock it on PC but out of all the stupid shit Activision has done, I’m glad they didn’t wall off all the maps behind pay like they did on consoles (though it didn’t stop them from doing it with future games). The whole plot is a bit of a puzzle, one that’s been added onto and solved over the many years with future installments but when it was just this game, the community ran with it in terms of excitement while trying to figure out connections between Nazi experiments, Element 115, who are the characters in Nacht Der Untoten and Verruckt compared to Shi No Numa and Der Riese. I’m a bit mixed on how that lore has turned out over time as it’s become a bit of a convoluted mess, but in its infancy it was the perfect starting palette and I loved it.
The gameplay for it is simple: you start out with a pistol, and you kill zombies for points. You use those points to unlock other parts of the map as well as weapons off the wall to help defend against more zombies which get more difficult to kill with each round. For those not in the know, when you first start out the best you can do is shoot a zombie five to six times before knifing it to max the amount of early points to get. The maps start off basic with Nacht but with each new one adds new features that later become standard, like electric traps and perk cola machines and eventually piling off with the Pack O’ Punch in Der Riese, which upgrades your weapons to make them shoot special ammo and kill later round zombies more quickly.
To sum up the atmospheric stuff in this game: It’s all just as haunting like the campaign if not worse due to the explicit undead horror. You’ll still hear the creepy ambience, as well as some great alternative rock/metalcore tracks that you can find if you do certain easter eggs. Kevin Sherwood and Elisa Siegman did a great job, and while I personally don’t listen to rock or metalcore like that, it feels like a reward on it’s own just to find them. To go on about the atmosphere would be redundant, as it all smoothly fits hand in hand with the campaign’s so I don’t want to be too repetitive.
The last mode is multiplayer, which for the most part I can't say much except that it's either abandoned or hacked to hell by people who either want to steal your info, become invincible or cause chaos. Not recommended to play, if you wanted to play it you could try the console Xbox and PS3 versions but even then it's kind of hit or miss whether there's people or not.
Call of Duty is a bit of an interesting historical point for me and the gaming industry in general: since the game launch, the period of 2007-2012 (from Modern Warfare to Black Ops 2) have been considered the best time in the series, a sort of golden age for sweaty gamers who both live in their mom’s basement and the ones who actually go outside and touch grass. It’s a strange feeling nowadays that I’d go out of my way to write a positive essay about this game, as most people already know it’s good and due to the fact that I’m not really a Call of Duty guy much anymore and prefer other genres. However, World at War is special to me and helps solve that “War is Hell” in video games itch that I’ve been kind of scrambling for since playing games like Spec Ops: The Line and such. It’s an easy pick up and play game with simple yet addictive mechanics and it came out in that golden age so I inevitably will have a sort of bias towards it. However, that detached and cold atmosphere is what keeps me coming back as my favorite in the series, and one day I’d like to fulfill that promise I made when I was 18 to mod this game and play through the zombies (both original and custom) with buddies. Before the release of Modern Warfare 2 the next year, which REALLY shook up the industry, there were also ports released for the Playstation 2 (which I want to play one day and apparently has a British Campaign), the Nintendo DS (with its own Zombies mode) and even the Wii apparently which no clue if I’ll play.
The final verdict is that even if you don’t care for the usual “alpha tango bravo delta charlie” bullshit that most of these games deliver as if you’re some sort of action hero even though in real life you’d get shot; the game would be the one out of everyone in the series I’d recommend to pick up. The PC version has its technical flaws, and from what I understand nowadays it’s kind of hit or miss with online safety due to Activision’s own incompetence, taking down mods that help support independent servers for the game. If you don’t buy to support Activision or because it’s technically kind of a mess (at least for me) then I understand, but if you can look past that you’ll find a game that while it may not be a groundbreaking masterpiece, but comes very close and I argue is THE best game and my personal favorite in the series. I’m not really a huge Call of Duty guy anymore even though I used to be, but it's nice to re-experience a childhood piece again.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VDD5oIYWKM&ab_channel=Ludwig
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Cut_Content/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War (Cut Content)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CODZombies/comments/djh6ju/how_did_cod_zombies_came_to_be_in_terms_of_its/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxW6QbnblSs&t=291s&ab_channel=GameSpot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObGcUye7Rdw&t=18s&ab_channel=PlayStation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iisQ5dOBVFQ&t=289s&ab_channel=Variety
https://www.jessesnyder.org/trenches/?p=42&cpage=4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_World_at_War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wujwTdJz_vM&ab_channel=10minGameplay
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/CallOfDutyWorldAtWar
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/