gamemast15r
2019
This review contains spoilers
Amid Evil is a FPS “Boomer Slasher” game developed Indefatigable and published by boomer shooter gods New Blood Interactive for PC and apparently the Switch. I can’t really say too much on the origins of this game, other than the Wikipeeds said that the two devs were childhood friends and they were involved in the development of the Rise of the Triad remake in 2013, a game that I played for a bit before I stopped due to personal issues. However, this mod apparently started as a DOOM mod before evolving into what it is today, and takes A LOT of inspiration from the likes of Hexen and Heretic, old FPS games with more magical and fantasy based demon murder. How I found this game was simple, I saw DUSK and when the same guys said we’re publishing this game I got it on a whim during early access cause I’m weak for boomer shooters.
The plot is short and simple: you play as a champion summoned to purge the “Evil Force” from sacred lands; and that’s basically what you do. There’s no real plot other than going into strange arcane places and murdering demonic creatures, though at the end you ascend to the “Haven of the Ancients”, a special realm for worthy champions that has a pool of prophecy which shows everything on fire which is nice. It’s more of a sequel thing and that’s fine, not everything needs to have this big expounding of lore and history (though like other old FPS games you can find hints written on the walls if you want to follow along with it). There’s not much to go on unless you go to the Wiki but for the most part like a lot of old school first person shooters it’s minimalistic.
The Sound/Art Design is pretty fantastic; I’ll start with the art design and graphics because this game hits one of my weak spots: retro graphics. It’s not like say DOOM engine or BuildEngine, it’s Unreal Engine 4.27 apparently so it’s like high definition retro graphics? Or maybe it’s not, I’m not sure because from when I played it, it had some pixelation but not enough to be looking like the older games or even like DUSK, which looks more like Quake than anything else; one steam review I read had it say “The grass in Amid Evil is somehow both 2D and the thickest, lushest grass I’ve seen in a long time” which is pretty accurate considering the style that it’s going for, some unique combination of old and new looking that I can’t complain about and I’m sure looks even better with all the high res settings and such. The environmental designs surrounding the graphics look amazing, each place is unique on its own with places ranging from mountain caves with lakes to floating libraries in space to desert looking gladiatorial to my favorite: The Void being the final episode. TV Tropes described it as a combo of MC Esher and Salvador Dali on drugs, I don’t know art but what I can say is the first thing that popped in my mind, even if impossible, is Non-Euclidean Geometry, which is basically space and shapes unable to be seen by the human eye. Now that’s not realistic to gameplay but it’s such a strange labyrinthian structure that I can’t help but marvel at its aesthetic design. The soundtrack is decent too, varying from what sounds like gregorian chants with aggressive strings to synthwave sounding stuff composed by Andrew Hushult. Overall, everything on this end is pretty solid and can’t complain either.
The gameplay is the standard FPS old school affair, you go from place to place unlocking certain doors with keys while using the standard weapon types (the rocket launcher replacement is cool as hell as it’s a planet launcher, which is hilarious cause there’s a little detail where you can actually shoot Earth and blow it up, though it doesn’t do anything in game obviously) to fight a variation of enemies on the map (whose AI are actually pretty good and don’t just sit in place and will actively follow and try to kill you, forcing you to think tactically) and also finding secrets (like secret dev rooms, messages, an in-joke within New Blood about Big John and Dopefish, etc.). If there was one thing that I could say really pops out is that there’s a decent bit of detail, like using the Axe and the special soul power (unlocked by killing multiple enemies and stealing their souls) underwater will shoot you off like a propeller even if it’s moreso just a quicker way of gibbing enemies. Again you have sprinkles of lore around scattered on walls for those that are interested, there’s a decent bit. Also connecting all of these levels is a hub called “The Gateway of the Ancients) which is a bit on the bigger side and leads to all seven episodes; one thing I will say can be a bit on the frustrating side (which I’m used to) is that for the most part the levels are big, and you can find your way through them but the size can also lead to confusion on where you’re supposed to go sometimes. Overall, not much I can say about this other than if you like old school first person shooters you’ll get more of the same from here, but it also feels pretty damn good.
This review is a shorty for a couple of reasons, one I played it last year so it’s been a while and two, there’s not a lot I feel I can say about retro fps games other than, “I like them a lot”, when done right. This game is done really well and I can’t really say much else other than if you’re looking for a 7 ½ to 8 hour FPS retro game that you should get it, 20 dollars isn’t a bad price for it either. I decided I’d write up a little review recommending this as August 18th marks the release of its DLC, the Black Labyrinth and I’m definitely looking forward to it!! Ya know, when I can afford to pay it after I take care of rent and such. Of course other things they’ve released in the meantime is a VR port, and a free DLC called Ancient Alphas which is just a couple of old alpha maps you can try if you like.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm-lJK4yqRE&ab_channel=AndrewHulshult (Soundtrack)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AmidEvil
https://amidevil.fandom.com/wiki/AMID_EVIL_Wiki
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot is short and simple: you play as a champion summoned to purge the “Evil Force” from sacred lands; and that’s basically what you do. There’s no real plot other than going into strange arcane places and murdering demonic creatures, though at the end you ascend to the “Haven of the Ancients”, a special realm for worthy champions that has a pool of prophecy which shows everything on fire which is nice. It’s more of a sequel thing and that’s fine, not everything needs to have this big expounding of lore and history (though like other old FPS games you can find hints written on the walls if you want to follow along with it). There’s not much to go on unless you go to the Wiki but for the most part like a lot of old school first person shooters it’s minimalistic.
The Sound/Art Design is pretty fantastic; I’ll start with the art design and graphics because this game hits one of my weak spots: retro graphics. It’s not like say DOOM engine or BuildEngine, it’s Unreal Engine 4.27 apparently so it’s like high definition retro graphics? Or maybe it’s not, I’m not sure because from when I played it, it had some pixelation but not enough to be looking like the older games or even like DUSK, which looks more like Quake than anything else; one steam review I read had it say “The grass in Amid Evil is somehow both 2D and the thickest, lushest grass I’ve seen in a long time” which is pretty accurate considering the style that it’s going for, some unique combination of old and new looking that I can’t complain about and I’m sure looks even better with all the high res settings and such. The environmental designs surrounding the graphics look amazing, each place is unique on its own with places ranging from mountain caves with lakes to floating libraries in space to desert looking gladiatorial to my favorite: The Void being the final episode. TV Tropes described it as a combo of MC Esher and Salvador Dali on drugs, I don’t know art but what I can say is the first thing that popped in my mind, even if impossible, is Non-Euclidean Geometry, which is basically space and shapes unable to be seen by the human eye. Now that’s not realistic to gameplay but it’s such a strange labyrinthian structure that I can’t help but marvel at its aesthetic design. The soundtrack is decent too, varying from what sounds like gregorian chants with aggressive strings to synthwave sounding stuff composed by Andrew Hushult. Overall, everything on this end is pretty solid and can’t complain either.
The gameplay is the standard FPS old school affair, you go from place to place unlocking certain doors with keys while using the standard weapon types (the rocket launcher replacement is cool as hell as it’s a planet launcher, which is hilarious cause there’s a little detail where you can actually shoot Earth and blow it up, though it doesn’t do anything in game obviously) to fight a variation of enemies on the map (whose AI are actually pretty good and don’t just sit in place and will actively follow and try to kill you, forcing you to think tactically) and also finding secrets (like secret dev rooms, messages, an in-joke within New Blood about Big John and Dopefish, etc.). If there was one thing that I could say really pops out is that there’s a decent bit of detail, like using the Axe and the special soul power (unlocked by killing multiple enemies and stealing their souls) underwater will shoot you off like a propeller even if it’s moreso just a quicker way of gibbing enemies. Again you have sprinkles of lore around scattered on walls for those that are interested, there’s a decent bit. Also connecting all of these levels is a hub called “The Gateway of the Ancients) which is a bit on the bigger side and leads to all seven episodes; one thing I will say can be a bit on the frustrating side (which I’m used to) is that for the most part the levels are big, and you can find your way through them but the size can also lead to confusion on where you’re supposed to go sometimes. Overall, not much I can say about this other than if you like old school first person shooters you’ll get more of the same from here, but it also feels pretty damn good.
This review is a shorty for a couple of reasons, one I played it last year so it’s been a while and two, there’s not a lot I feel I can say about retro fps games other than, “I like them a lot”, when done right. This game is done really well and I can’t really say much else other than if you’re looking for a 7 ½ to 8 hour FPS retro game that you should get it, 20 dollars isn’t a bad price for it either. I decided I’d write up a little review recommending this as August 18th marks the release of its DLC, the Black Labyrinth and I’m definitely looking forward to it!! Ya know, when I can afford to pay it after I take care of rent and such. Of course other things they’ve released in the meantime is a VR port, and a free DLC called Ancient Alphas which is just a couple of old alpha maps you can try if you like.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm-lJK4yqRE&ab_channel=AndrewHulshult (Soundtrack)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AmidEvil
https://amidevil.fandom.com/wiki/AMID_EVIL_Wiki
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an open world “Fuck me in my asshole, I’m actually going to shit if I get instant killed one more time” fantasy game developed by Nintendo both as a Wii-U console exclusive as well as later on ported to the Nintendo Switch. This is one of those games I feel most everyone knows about, but I’ll throw out some info tidbits I found online and summarize my experience leading up to playing this game. Development for this game started straight after Skyward Sword was released for both the Nintendo Wii and the Wii U (and later re-released as an HD Port for the Switch itself) and apparently took inspirations from Shadow of the Colossus and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, of which I could only confirm from Wikipedia so no clue if it’s totally reliable but if so, I could also see it. I could also see influences from Dark Souls in my opinion (though I’ll relate why later on). However, according to both the ‘Pedia (take with a grain of salt perhaps) and the Wiki, along with the fact I’m always unsure if my sources are incorrect, that this game was meant to shake up the franchise in its entirety, wanting to include more non-linearity after getting positive reception on stuff like A Link Between Worlds as well as the idea to use physics puzzles and removing a Spider-Man like grapple shot (which I would’ve LOVED to have seen in this game). The scale grew bigger and bigger, and what was supposed to be a 2015 release turned into 2016 and then finally released in 2017 to magnanimous approval from everybody and their grandmother.
The Legend of Zelda series is a series that’s well known to pretty much everyone as one of the most famous IPs ever, if you haven’t ever played the games you’ll sure as fuck remember the theme song; but the truth is I’ve always had this nostalgic love for the series though I’ve only ever played the very beginning of Wind Waker on Gamecube loads of times because I didn’t know what else I was doing. Fast Forward I still haven’t played Wind Waker even though I own a copy of that and Skyward Sword for the Wii, when my sister eventually gets a Nintendo Switch for christmas with a bunch of games around the 2017-2018 mark I believe? One of those includes Breath of the Wild, and having heard it was god’s gift to Earth and one of the best video games of all time, and after being badgered to get a switch so I could play games with her, I pick myself up a switch too with Smash Bros Ultimate and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Though I would play some games every now and then, I didn’t really pick up the Switch much due to my main consoles being the PC and the PS consoles; throughout the years I’d beat Deadly Premonition: Origins and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (two switch games that I still have to write up a review about) along with get a couple of others but I never touched this one because “big open world game, don’t have time”. However, I wanted to knock off at least one game per console this year, and so I decided that this year I would beat this game with the DLC, and it even strengthened further when everybody I knew (including my sister) got Tears of the Kingdom and raved about it. Starting it off was difficult but eventually one of my friends (shoutout to the pimp Wrathne, thank you for your help) backseat gamed my ass and helped me along before I eventually took a trip overseas and finished it in their living room funny enough (didn’t take the trip cause of the game, just something I wanted to do anyways to be honest, though that's why I wasn't able to review it immediately).
So how do I feel about this game? Truth is, very mixed; I like certain aspects of the game and I respect a lot of what it does, and I’ll admit that when it works I end up liking it a bit. However, there’s a lot here that I don’t like, specifically the combat and the gameplay. When you first start off in the Great Plateau, it feels fine. You get used to cooking food, weapons that can break instantly, doing shrines, using your Sheikah slate, climbing your environment, etc. What I can say is that I can certainly see the Shadow of the Colossus stuff with this game, the loneliness as you ride your horse in this big open world that is almost empty save for pockets of survivors and try to survive the post-post apocalypse? Can’t even say at this rate, but for the most part a lot of the stuff works. Cooking and combining ingredients trying to find the best recipe to tackle your next objective is great and these ingredients are in abundance throughout the entirety of Hyrule, shrines for the most part are inoffensive but because I suck at puzzles I break out the guides, I don’t care for the stamina bar (as if you run out of it, whether it’s from flying or swimming you’ll get fucked up and probably die and it feels artificial as hell) while I’m trying to climb towers (which like Far Cry and other games reveals portions of the map) much. However, in this case I’ll say that with both the shrines/towers that one thing I like about this game is that despite these sort of holdbacks, it’s fascinating to see using your tools available that you can conquer them with a bit of ingenuity (for example, I barely upgraded my stamina and got all the towers due to experimentation from climbing nearby mountains in big chunks while taking breaks before gliding down) so it’s nice to see a game that can feel a bit like an immersive sim in regards (don’t shoot me for throwing the term out there please) in the amount of ways you can figure out a solution. However, speaking of the shrines, if you’re not a god in this game already you’re going to need to go out of your way to grind out these puzzle shrines as they not only give you extra loot but they give spirit orbs, and if you get four of these spirit orbs and bring them to a Goddess statue you can choose to upgrade your health or your stamina bar. This will feel like a necessity considering the difficulty curb of the game’s combat and obstacles.
As said earlier, it feels fine when starting off in the tutorial area but once you get the paraglider and fly down? You WILL get fucked up as the difficulty soars in a way that I don’t really like or feels fair. A lot of these enemies can fuck you up, some of them in even one hit due to an arbitrary number next to weapon. Hell in a lot of cases even with these weapons, if you hit them with it, a lot of times it doesn’t feel like they die, like it’s kind of spongy. I don’t really like this practice in a lot of games, as it feels cheap and inconsistent though unlike games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Borderlands it at least doesn’t throw a bunch of stats and arbitrary numbers in your face via UI (other examples of this is comparing gear ala Horizon or the newest God of Wars) and at least keeps that simple. Regardless though I fucking hate it, not only do I hate this sort of combat style, I actively think it brings the game down in quality. Remember that Dark Souls comparison from earlier? I don’t mean it in the sense that “Ohh game is difficult compare to Dark Souls hahaha” but like it feels like it could be straight out of it from the lock on, to the boss meters, I don’t know how to explain it because I’m a plebian but it feels like it’s there, and whilst I play the Soulsborne games and love them, I’m not interested in a Zelda Souls game (though obviously I’m ok with there being strategies to actually fight these guys/weaknesses and such, I just don’t like their damage output). Regardless though it’s here, and you can find yourself getting outnumbered and outgunned pretty quickly so upgrading your health/stamina feels like a necessity in order to even stand a chance at the beginning of the game. This leads into another personal thing I don’t always really care for, I don’t care for grinding and I don’t feel like it should be a necessity to actually get anything done; this will be the majority of your game time as you go around and grind out these shrines or ingredients (which aren’t just needed for cooking, but if you want to stand a chance in the Volcano, Desert or Cold regions you will need to upgrade certain outfits as the divine beasts are in these areas and your health will plummet really fast if you don’t get these outfits or eat large portions of food every couple of seconds). You can also do side quests for rewards (like rupees), but I found the majority that I saw of these are basic fetch quests with no real substance to them so I avoided them (though I like that you don’t need to do them at all for some arbitrary level up bullshit so again, thank you Nintendo for not being like Ubisoft and their recent output). However, I decided to take the easy route and instead just grind out Snowball Bowling, which you get 300 rupees for every strike and let me tell you something, grinding this out isn’t fun either though I can’t really blame anyone but myself I suppose for wanting to get quick cash to buy outfits needed to survive and by the end of it I really wanted to curb stomp Pondo for his what should be legalized gambling scheme.
To upgrade these outfits (which by the way I only found out they exist from my buddy Wrathne, shoutout to you for backseat gaming and making my experience actually playable and less frustrating), you’ll need to find and unlock all four fairy fountains, which not only provide you with instant revives in case you die (collecting the fairies surrounding the fountain I mean) but also unlocking these shrines can have them upgrade the stats of your armor so you stand more of a chance of not dying. Again, it’s a lot of grinding and frustrating, arbitrary steps that I feel that I shouldn’t need to take just to survive. For some people, this loop is great and I respect that; however it’s not something I enjoy. I’m going to post links to some grinding stuff that I found, as well as outfit locations down below but my final thought on this is how the fuck was I supposed to know these things exist without getting help? That actually frustrated me, I understand it’s an open world, but either I missed out on the clues for these outfits entirely or there is nothing and other than potentially wasting hundreds of hours figuring out the solution (of which I don’t have the time), I’d prefer if somehow someone just gave a vague hint of “oh you’ll need something to wear in order to survive up in certain climates, maybe this place has something?”, or maybe I’m just dumb and I need handholding or something but again if I didn’t have a backseat gamer I would’ve been stuck and frustrated.
The next thing I want to point out that I don’t care for are the Divine Beasts, especially the one in Gerudo Town (the one I surprisingly did first, also the most difficult) due to their overly complicated puzzle nature that I can’t figure out in the slightest but other ten year olds can (which I’m not hating, I think it’s amazing that kids can beat this stuff to be honest). For me, Gerudo one was just a giant cluster fuck of dislike from me, from the annoying sand seal chase to the puzzle to the actual final boss; for the chase it feels like a frustrating balancing act in which I either overshoot the circle going too fast or I’m not fast enough and it’s a pain in the ass balancing this and aiming for the beast’s legs. Keep in mind, I’m also an old man shouting at the clouds I guess so if you like it that’s ok, but these are all kind of annoying to deal with though the others are easier in scale. So what are Divine Beasts used for? Well, if you complete all four then you lower the final boss’s health down to half and make the final fight in the game a lot easier to manage, and that’s another point I’ll give the game credit for.
You don’t have to put in all this work, you can get booty stomped on the way out sure but you can literally go straight from the tutorial to the final boss of the game at Hyrule Castle and duke it out if you really know what you’re doing. It’s a strange thing, I don’t care about the gameplay for the most part but as much as I roll my eyes at “Expansive open worlds” the amount of freedom in this is insane, as well as the amount of details that I both know as well as know that I missed. In fact, the level of detail can be frustrating sometimes, like lightning effects while there’s rain can destroy you if you wear anything metal from weapons/shields (which I only discovered defending myself from a Yiga assassin in a lightning storm..) to trying to use a bomb arrow in the volcano region will just result in you blowing yourself up instantly due to the hostile temperatures. In fact, for this note I specifically wrote down “Fuck the lightning shit, that can suck my dick”, because it got rather frustrating sometimes. In fact, trying to remember each and every little thing to write up this review is impossible, so I want to apologize in advance for missing both probably basic shit that I will miss, because this game is so massive in scope that it’s baffling. In fact, before I finish on my DLC thoughts, my feelings on weapon degradation? I didn’t hate it in Far Cry 2, and generally I don’t have a problem with it like other people though if you do, that’s perfectly ok. I also missed out talking about the horses and the Amiibo functionality; horses you can find in the wild and if you sneak up on them and tame them, then bring it back to a nearby stable you can name it and bond with it as well as call them nearby, and if you have the right Amiibo functionality (or if you’re like Wrathne and just bought cards) then you can use them once per day to unlock anything from extra food/materials to overpowered weapons and armor (helping you but kinda breaking the game but fuck it, I don’t care) to special outfits I’m not sure you can unlock in game to being able to summon Epona and Wolf Link (though Wolf Link disappears if you fast travel, RIP sadly). Also collecting Korok Seeds and bringing them to a certain NPC will expand your inventory to include more Bows, Shields and weapon slots but if you attempt to bring the guy EVERY seed on the map you will get…special Korok poop as a gag reward? There’s lots of rewards for doing every shrine or certain collectible tasks so keep an eye out for that I suppose.
To finally finish this section, I’m going to bring up the DLC gameplay wise and ask the question: Is it worth the money? Well it really depends. Most of it is just DLC outfits (IGN guide link below) that may or may not give certain benefits cosmetic wise but sure as hell look cool and require going through steps to get some of them, referencing the past like Dark Link, having the titular mask from Majora’s Mask, etc. Overall, this stuff wasn’t bad, and felt decent enough for the most part collecting, with even the tie in quest to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 delivering some gear if that’s really your thing. However, the two main DLC quests are the Champion Ballads and the Master Sword Trials; I’ll start by saying that the Champion Ballads, whilst difficult, is doable and I actually managed to finish it twice, once for me and once for my home E, Wrathne. Honestly the most difficult parts in this DLC, only playable after getting all the divine beasts, are the first area with the instant kill but you can instantly die section, fighting the Molduga for one of the Gerudo trials, and the final Divine Beast. Overall however, it’s really just more puzzle trials and in exchange you get the ability to use your Divine Powers (unlocked from beating the Divine Beasts in the first place) and when you beat the final boss, you get ... a motorcycle? I mean I won’t complain, it’s a lot faster than your horse but in order to fuel it you have to feed it monster parts or something which is cool. The master sword trials on the other hand? If you had made your way through the Lost Woods next to the volcano region, and solved your way into the forest, while also having thirteen hearts or more to pull the Master Sword out of the ground (which in itself is a good weapon to have as with the weapon destruction, most will disappear but this one only goes temporarily once used up and comes back later) then you’ll unlock this trial. Put it back into the slot and you’ll be asked to go through 50 or so rooms of combat with absolutely nothing but what you can scrape up out of the rooms, and let me tell you this. Fuck no, I tried once but if you’re into everything being difficult then you’ll love this because you cannot save except every once in a while according to the guides and if you die? Game over, start from the very beginning and lose all your progress. What’s the reward for this? Your master sword apparently goes from 30 damage to 60 damage. Cool, but not worth my time in my opinion; but if you’re resilient enough and want to try it out god bless.
The plot is a rather simple one, but complex in the background. In the Zelda timeline, which has been hypothesized by fans around the world as to what game takes place in what timeline and how/when (which was later ironed out and released by Nintendo into an official timeline between three separate ones), this game takes place after all three of them merge. In fact, this game takes place millenia after those three timelines, longer than 10,000 years or so and long enough that machinery like Guardians (made by some race called the Sheikah) used to roam the kingdom apparently so if you’re wondering if you really need to know the older games to know this one, you don’t. Little mentions will pop up as an “Ayy I know this” moment here and there but it’s not at all a big forefront which is good for me because I hate trying to catch up sometimes.
Regardless, again you play as Link as you wake up in an area called the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau, a floating piece of land around 100 years after a mysterious event named “The Calamity” brushed through the kingdom. Link wakes up not knowing what the hell is going on, and kind of roams around until an old hunter gives him tips and tells him to unlock some shrines in exchange for a glider to get out of the area. However, after you do all of this a part of the backstory is revealed: This old hunter is actually the former king of Hyrule, King Rhoam, also Zelda’s father who reveals that this Calamity (or Calamity Ganon) was prophesied to come back and in preparation, the Kingdom brought about four champions (from the Zora, Rito, Gorons and Gerudo races), as well as unlocking some magical force within his daughter and hiring you to protect her at all times in order to help seal away this great evil. However, bad shit happens and Calamity Ganon wakes up real early causing some apocalyptic event; all the champions get slayed, Link nearly gets murked and Zelda stays within Hyrule Castle to fight against Ganon’s influence for the next hundred or so years. Rhoam tells you to meet up with Impa, a Sheikah elder who is supposed to give you the next clue on what to do, and if you follow this, then she’ll tell you that you need to salvage the Divine Beasts from their corruption and use it to weakon Ganon in its state. Truthfully that’s kind of it for the basic plot, you could choose to go straight to Ganon and fight or you can put in the effort to weaken him (getting involved in hijinks like cross dressing to infiltrate Gerudo Town, a place known for its aversion to males as Ganon always comes back as a Gerudo), and if you follow the Captured Memories you can get a post credits scene which I’ll describe here in a bit.
Before going into the final section, I would highly recommend going after the Captured Memories, as they not only unlock more of the backstory but they really flesh everyone out and feel impactful as a result, specifically in the relationship between Zelda and Link. They are fucking adorable here, and even though Link is a silent protagonist I can actually feel how their fondness for each other grows, how they take care of each other, and how Zelda is a likeable doofus who not only has self doubts about her importance in the fight against Ganon but also how she tries to get Link to eat a frog. I’m not sure if there’s a lot of ways I can truly describe everything but the characters in this game are charming and have their own unique personalities, I personally believe that this is Zelda’s story of not only overcoming adversity but becoming more than just what other people tell you that you should be.
Regardless you can go to the Lost Forest and take the Master Sword, but after potentially activating the Divine Beasts back, Link goes to confront Ganon once and for all in the ruins of Hyrule castle surrounded by corrupted guardians and weird goblin looking bodyguards. After Ganon is defeated, he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and races out of the castle to try to destroy everything. However, Zelda gives him “The Bow of Light” or something and after hitting Ganon in certain spots, the evil is vanquished and the spirits of the King/the Champions disperse, leaving Zelda and Link to rebuild the future of Hyrule.
If you did the Captured Memories, you get a post credits scene not only showing Zelda declaring the rebuilding of the kingdom, and the presence of the rare blue flower, the Silent Princess shows up in a field, one that Zelda has been trying to preserve for the longest time. I only noticed this little detail after Wrathne pointed it out as another character building moment, one that I interpreted as Zelda finally coming to grips with her future, her place in it, as well as confidence in herself to fulfill her goals. Again I’m not an intellectual, so I’m sure I could’ve said it a lot better or in a much more cohesive way, and if someone describes it in a way that’s better I might update this section, or I might not. Either way, to finish off the story section, I like it a lot; there’s a lot of emotional vulnerability in its simplicity, there’s no complicated web of lies or conspiracies or whatever but it’s a journey about overcoming your obstacles and it goes to show how simplicity can really work in a game’s favor. There’s a lot of heart, and truth be told the plot and the remaining atmosphere were the main reasons that I stuck to the game, even if it sort of blended in meta narratively with the gameplay (which I felt was way too much of a struggle sometimes).
The shortest section, as always, will be the Art Direction/Soundtrack/everything else involved in the game. The art direction is great, Hyrule is varied in it’s landscapes from it’s beautiful and windy grasslands, to it’s hostile and cold mountains (my favorite being the creepy Lost Woods and that freaky fucking tree), everything in this world is unique in its design and its effect on it’s gameplay and while I don’t want to break out fancy terms like “IT FEELS LIKE A LIVEABLE AND BREATHABLE WORLD” and whatever nonsensical shit everyone likes to throw out there it does make it memorable, which when mixed in with the Shadow of the Colossus-like atmosphere it’s pretty good. Keep in mind that’s not for everyone, one of my coworkers thought it was a worse version of Shadow of the Colossus but I didn’t truly mind this aspect as it kind of fit, though the emptyish open world can be kind of lacking sometimes. I’m not sure how to describe my feelings there, but I’d say it’s mostly positive; however when you do see people it’s quite hilarious because according to a Twitter post (or X post? I don’t fucking know anymore) from someone, every NPC in the game is built off of custom Mii’s, which is hilarious and I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out after hacking Tears of the Kingdom (which uses a lot of the same systems that this game does). Also to finish off this section, having played the series fully for the first time, I didn’t know races like the Rito or the Zora were in the other games but without knowing that each one provides their own interesting culture pieces that make them unique and interesting.
So overall, the art direction and world design are pretty solid on my end, though I kind of flutter around on the NPC scarcity sometimes but I feel in due time I’ll probably forget about that entirely, the sound design is where I feel like I have the most issues. Not with the voice acting or lack thereof, not in the actual weapon sounds, not in the soundtrack or even most things; as always the sound design is amazing but my actual issue with it is that I wish there was more of it. Granted you don’t need to constantly repeat the same Zelda theme over and over again, but by god I wish there was more music other than two memorable ones (other than the Zelda theme is the Revali theme, which I only heard sampled by a guy named JuneJissle as a beat remix, will post in links). I’m not Anthony Fantano so I can’t really sit here and describe to you the music stuff and the instruments, nor am I some fucking Picasso artsy guy, but if you’re worried this game won’t have interesting stuff in this regard than you won’t have to worry about this section. It’s not going to be some hyper realistic graphical set piece but it’s unique in its own design in a way that only Legend of Zelda can do and for the most part that’s all you really need. As such, the composers Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai did a great job making their ambient piano pieces for the game.
So to wrap up on what happened after the game got released/final thoughts; Breath of the Wild was one of those games that shook the world when it first released, and influenced everything from Genshin Impact to Elden Ring, bringing the whole “Dark Souls for Kids” thing back to full circle. This game is the one game I personally believe blew the switch up, and after this game was released there were spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (a hack and slash prequel game) to Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (a remake of a 2D gameboy Zelda game) and more to fill in the Zelda gap left between this game and the development of it’s sequel, Tears of the Kingdom (which originally started out as a DLC ala Saints Row 4 before it’s scope demanded it become a sequel). This game would for years to come be one of the greatest games of all time to most everyone; however I’ll state my obvious feelings here. I don’t like this game like everyone else, in fact I feel like this game is just further reinforcing the change in the landscape of gaming in general. It’s not a game for me, I’m an old man shouting at the clouds, I suck at this game and no matter how much I tried to meet the game to its level it just didn’t do it for me. That being said, it’s ok and if you view this game as a 10/10 that’s a totally valid feeling and I’ll respect it, it sits with The Witcher 3 in my regard with this feeling: I can see it but I don’t feel it. However, I will admit that even with this, the game now runs concurrently with a positive memory in my head now: I went overseas to a different country to visit a bunch of my friends and having beaten this game in my friend’s living room I’ll always associate that with my positive memories; however I also tried the sequel in the same friend’s living room and it’s safe to say that whilst I won’t be buying Tears of the Kingdom for a decent amount of time, that it feels a lot better gameplay wise to this game in every way and that I would deem it superior in this regard and would rather recommend that game over this game. I doubt I’ll ever play this game again, maybe I will who knows, but I’m glad that I did give it a try because though the grinding sucks and nowadays it feels like standard open world cookie cutter stuff to a certain degree, I have a strange appreciation for this game, one of respect but general mid feelings for. However, I also heard that this format is how the main series will be going forward for a long time, and if that is the case then I probably won’t be too invested long term because regardless of my Tears of the Kingdom feelings, I haven’t played it long enough to beat it or gain a true opinion on it and the older I get, the less time I have and I don’t want to play more of Breath of the Wild-style gameplay in this way. I don’t know, I guess I’m just having some weird old people mid life crisis at the ripe age of 25 lol. To finalize my thoughts, even though there's a lot of positives, the review was going to be a straight three out of five, but I feel like everything else surrounding the gameplay and even pieces of the gameplay brought it up to a 3 1/2. There will be times where I kind of bounce back and forth mentally between a 3 and a 3 1/2 mark but keep in mind that regardless of my review, again I respect how other people love this game. I guess I'm just an old man screaming at the clouds and this game isn't for me. Who knows maybe I'll like Tears of the Kingdom more, though regardless because of this game I wanna hit up and cover Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on Gamecube as my game of the year for that console just to see how a lot of things differ. So in the meantime, I guess sorry for the paragraphs and I'll see ya later, also final shoutout to Wrathne again for the help you cool as fuck playa.
Links (no pun intended):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189707-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/75175050 (Farming White Chuchu)
https://gamerant.com/botw-fireproof-lizards/ (Farming Fireproof lizards)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Smotherwing_Butterfly (Farming Smotherwing Butterfly)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Great_Fairy_Fountains (Fairy Fountain Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOIQv5lWok (Chuchu Farming Location)
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-guide-walkthrough/2017/6/1/15723316/botw-shrine-map-location (Shrine Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7P2Lk5A-c64 (Hidden Shrine thing)
https://www.gosunoob.com/zelda-breath-of-wild/heat-lava-resistance-armor/ (Flamebreaker Armor to survive in Volcano Region)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVVcvs1WGlM&ab_channel=OnehandedMan (How to get into Gerudo Town)
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Gerudo_Secret_Club (Follow this for the Desert Voe outfit, though it’s apparently in Tarrey Town too)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkw9oQeRlE (Hidden Mechanics Video)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Snowball_Bowling (Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zCam0cZcU18 (More Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=clNEiG3zsqE&pp=ygUZYm90dyBzbm93IGJvd2xpbmcgZmFybWluZw%3D%3D (Even more Snowball Bowling)
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-walkthrough/hyrule-castle/#c14_5 (Hyrule Castle Walkthrough)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/DLC_Side_Quests (DLC Side Quests)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXvQpKBj7Y (Details and Easter Eggs)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6DMevgbyw (More Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.thegamer.com/legend-zelda-breath-wild-easter-eggs/#lurelin-village-outset-island (Even more Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NezKA3r8XFA (JuneJissle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf8rQjFSd4&ab_channel=junejissle (More JuneJissle)
https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/5/22215263/breath-of-the-wild-npcs-are-miis-nintendo-legend-of-zelda-switch (Mii NPCs)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild (For potential stuff I missed)
The Legend of Zelda series is a series that’s well known to pretty much everyone as one of the most famous IPs ever, if you haven’t ever played the games you’ll sure as fuck remember the theme song; but the truth is I’ve always had this nostalgic love for the series though I’ve only ever played the very beginning of Wind Waker on Gamecube loads of times because I didn’t know what else I was doing. Fast Forward I still haven’t played Wind Waker even though I own a copy of that and Skyward Sword for the Wii, when my sister eventually gets a Nintendo Switch for christmas with a bunch of games around the 2017-2018 mark I believe? One of those includes Breath of the Wild, and having heard it was god’s gift to Earth and one of the best video games of all time, and after being badgered to get a switch so I could play games with her, I pick myself up a switch too with Smash Bros Ultimate and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Though I would play some games every now and then, I didn’t really pick up the Switch much due to my main consoles being the PC and the PS consoles; throughout the years I’d beat Deadly Premonition: Origins and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (two switch games that I still have to write up a review about) along with get a couple of others but I never touched this one because “big open world game, don’t have time”. However, I wanted to knock off at least one game per console this year, and so I decided that this year I would beat this game with the DLC, and it even strengthened further when everybody I knew (including my sister) got Tears of the Kingdom and raved about it. Starting it off was difficult but eventually one of my friends (shoutout to the pimp Wrathne, thank you for your help) backseat gamed my ass and helped me along before I eventually took a trip overseas and finished it in their living room funny enough (didn’t take the trip cause of the game, just something I wanted to do anyways to be honest, though that's why I wasn't able to review it immediately).
So how do I feel about this game? Truth is, very mixed; I like certain aspects of the game and I respect a lot of what it does, and I’ll admit that when it works I end up liking it a bit. However, there’s a lot here that I don’t like, specifically the combat and the gameplay. When you first start off in the Great Plateau, it feels fine. You get used to cooking food, weapons that can break instantly, doing shrines, using your Sheikah slate, climbing your environment, etc. What I can say is that I can certainly see the Shadow of the Colossus stuff with this game, the loneliness as you ride your horse in this big open world that is almost empty save for pockets of survivors and try to survive the post-post apocalypse? Can’t even say at this rate, but for the most part a lot of the stuff works. Cooking and combining ingredients trying to find the best recipe to tackle your next objective is great and these ingredients are in abundance throughout the entirety of Hyrule, shrines for the most part are inoffensive but because I suck at puzzles I break out the guides, I don’t care for the stamina bar (as if you run out of it, whether it’s from flying or swimming you’ll get fucked up and probably die and it feels artificial as hell) while I’m trying to climb towers (which like Far Cry and other games reveals portions of the map) much. However, in this case I’ll say that with both the shrines/towers that one thing I like about this game is that despite these sort of holdbacks, it’s fascinating to see using your tools available that you can conquer them with a bit of ingenuity (for example, I barely upgraded my stamina and got all the towers due to experimentation from climbing nearby mountains in big chunks while taking breaks before gliding down) so it’s nice to see a game that can feel a bit like an immersive sim in regards (don’t shoot me for throwing the term out there please) in the amount of ways you can figure out a solution. However, speaking of the shrines, if you’re not a god in this game already you’re going to need to go out of your way to grind out these puzzle shrines as they not only give you extra loot but they give spirit orbs, and if you get four of these spirit orbs and bring them to a Goddess statue you can choose to upgrade your health or your stamina bar. This will feel like a necessity considering the difficulty curb of the game’s combat and obstacles.
As said earlier, it feels fine when starting off in the tutorial area but once you get the paraglider and fly down? You WILL get fucked up as the difficulty soars in a way that I don’t really like or feels fair. A lot of these enemies can fuck you up, some of them in even one hit due to an arbitrary number next to weapon. Hell in a lot of cases even with these weapons, if you hit them with it, a lot of times it doesn’t feel like they die, like it’s kind of spongy. I don’t really like this practice in a lot of games, as it feels cheap and inconsistent though unlike games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Borderlands it at least doesn’t throw a bunch of stats and arbitrary numbers in your face via UI (other examples of this is comparing gear ala Horizon or the newest God of Wars) and at least keeps that simple. Regardless though I fucking hate it, not only do I hate this sort of combat style, I actively think it brings the game down in quality. Remember that Dark Souls comparison from earlier? I don’t mean it in the sense that “Ohh game is difficult compare to Dark Souls hahaha” but like it feels like it could be straight out of it from the lock on, to the boss meters, I don’t know how to explain it because I’m a plebian but it feels like it’s there, and whilst I play the Soulsborne games and love them, I’m not interested in a Zelda Souls game (though obviously I’m ok with there being strategies to actually fight these guys/weaknesses and such, I just don’t like their damage output). Regardless though it’s here, and you can find yourself getting outnumbered and outgunned pretty quickly so upgrading your health/stamina feels like a necessity in order to even stand a chance at the beginning of the game. This leads into another personal thing I don’t always really care for, I don’t care for grinding and I don’t feel like it should be a necessity to actually get anything done; this will be the majority of your game time as you go around and grind out these shrines or ingredients (which aren’t just needed for cooking, but if you want to stand a chance in the Volcano, Desert or Cold regions you will need to upgrade certain outfits as the divine beasts are in these areas and your health will plummet really fast if you don’t get these outfits or eat large portions of food every couple of seconds). You can also do side quests for rewards (like rupees), but I found the majority that I saw of these are basic fetch quests with no real substance to them so I avoided them (though I like that you don’t need to do them at all for some arbitrary level up bullshit so again, thank you Nintendo for not being like Ubisoft and their recent output). However, I decided to take the easy route and instead just grind out Snowball Bowling, which you get 300 rupees for every strike and let me tell you something, grinding this out isn’t fun either though I can’t really blame anyone but myself I suppose for wanting to get quick cash to buy outfits needed to survive and by the end of it I really wanted to curb stomp Pondo for his what should be legalized gambling scheme.
To upgrade these outfits (which by the way I only found out they exist from my buddy Wrathne, shoutout to you for backseat gaming and making my experience actually playable and less frustrating), you’ll need to find and unlock all four fairy fountains, which not only provide you with instant revives in case you die (collecting the fairies surrounding the fountain I mean) but also unlocking these shrines can have them upgrade the stats of your armor so you stand more of a chance of not dying. Again, it’s a lot of grinding and frustrating, arbitrary steps that I feel that I shouldn’t need to take just to survive. For some people, this loop is great and I respect that; however it’s not something I enjoy. I’m going to post links to some grinding stuff that I found, as well as outfit locations down below but my final thought on this is how the fuck was I supposed to know these things exist without getting help? That actually frustrated me, I understand it’s an open world, but either I missed out on the clues for these outfits entirely or there is nothing and other than potentially wasting hundreds of hours figuring out the solution (of which I don’t have the time), I’d prefer if somehow someone just gave a vague hint of “oh you’ll need something to wear in order to survive up in certain climates, maybe this place has something?”, or maybe I’m just dumb and I need handholding or something but again if I didn’t have a backseat gamer I would’ve been stuck and frustrated.
The next thing I want to point out that I don’t care for are the Divine Beasts, especially the one in Gerudo Town (the one I surprisingly did first, also the most difficult) due to their overly complicated puzzle nature that I can’t figure out in the slightest but other ten year olds can (which I’m not hating, I think it’s amazing that kids can beat this stuff to be honest). For me, Gerudo one was just a giant cluster fuck of dislike from me, from the annoying sand seal chase to the puzzle to the actual final boss; for the chase it feels like a frustrating balancing act in which I either overshoot the circle going too fast or I’m not fast enough and it’s a pain in the ass balancing this and aiming for the beast’s legs. Keep in mind, I’m also an old man shouting at the clouds I guess so if you like it that’s ok, but these are all kind of annoying to deal with though the others are easier in scale. So what are Divine Beasts used for? Well, if you complete all four then you lower the final boss’s health down to half and make the final fight in the game a lot easier to manage, and that’s another point I’ll give the game credit for.
You don’t have to put in all this work, you can get booty stomped on the way out sure but you can literally go straight from the tutorial to the final boss of the game at Hyrule Castle and duke it out if you really know what you’re doing. It’s a strange thing, I don’t care about the gameplay for the most part but as much as I roll my eyes at “Expansive open worlds” the amount of freedom in this is insane, as well as the amount of details that I both know as well as know that I missed. In fact, the level of detail can be frustrating sometimes, like lightning effects while there’s rain can destroy you if you wear anything metal from weapons/shields (which I only discovered defending myself from a Yiga assassin in a lightning storm..) to trying to use a bomb arrow in the volcano region will just result in you blowing yourself up instantly due to the hostile temperatures. In fact, for this note I specifically wrote down “Fuck the lightning shit, that can suck my dick”, because it got rather frustrating sometimes. In fact, trying to remember each and every little thing to write up this review is impossible, so I want to apologize in advance for missing both probably basic shit that I will miss, because this game is so massive in scope that it’s baffling. In fact, before I finish on my DLC thoughts, my feelings on weapon degradation? I didn’t hate it in Far Cry 2, and generally I don’t have a problem with it like other people though if you do, that’s perfectly ok. I also missed out talking about the horses and the Amiibo functionality; horses you can find in the wild and if you sneak up on them and tame them, then bring it back to a nearby stable you can name it and bond with it as well as call them nearby, and if you have the right Amiibo functionality (or if you’re like Wrathne and just bought cards) then you can use them once per day to unlock anything from extra food/materials to overpowered weapons and armor (helping you but kinda breaking the game but fuck it, I don’t care) to special outfits I’m not sure you can unlock in game to being able to summon Epona and Wolf Link (though Wolf Link disappears if you fast travel, RIP sadly). Also collecting Korok Seeds and bringing them to a certain NPC will expand your inventory to include more Bows, Shields and weapon slots but if you attempt to bring the guy EVERY seed on the map you will get…special Korok poop as a gag reward? There’s lots of rewards for doing every shrine or certain collectible tasks so keep an eye out for that I suppose.
To finally finish this section, I’m going to bring up the DLC gameplay wise and ask the question: Is it worth the money? Well it really depends. Most of it is just DLC outfits (IGN guide link below) that may or may not give certain benefits cosmetic wise but sure as hell look cool and require going through steps to get some of them, referencing the past like Dark Link, having the titular mask from Majora’s Mask, etc. Overall, this stuff wasn’t bad, and felt decent enough for the most part collecting, with even the tie in quest to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 delivering some gear if that’s really your thing. However, the two main DLC quests are the Champion Ballads and the Master Sword Trials; I’ll start by saying that the Champion Ballads, whilst difficult, is doable and I actually managed to finish it twice, once for me and once for my home E, Wrathne. Honestly the most difficult parts in this DLC, only playable after getting all the divine beasts, are the first area with the instant kill but you can instantly die section, fighting the Molduga for one of the Gerudo trials, and the final Divine Beast. Overall however, it’s really just more puzzle trials and in exchange you get the ability to use your Divine Powers (unlocked from beating the Divine Beasts in the first place) and when you beat the final boss, you get ... a motorcycle? I mean I won’t complain, it’s a lot faster than your horse but in order to fuel it you have to feed it monster parts or something which is cool. The master sword trials on the other hand? If you had made your way through the Lost Woods next to the volcano region, and solved your way into the forest, while also having thirteen hearts or more to pull the Master Sword out of the ground (which in itself is a good weapon to have as with the weapon destruction, most will disappear but this one only goes temporarily once used up and comes back later) then you’ll unlock this trial. Put it back into the slot and you’ll be asked to go through 50 or so rooms of combat with absolutely nothing but what you can scrape up out of the rooms, and let me tell you this. Fuck no, I tried once but if you’re into everything being difficult then you’ll love this because you cannot save except every once in a while according to the guides and if you die? Game over, start from the very beginning and lose all your progress. What’s the reward for this? Your master sword apparently goes from 30 damage to 60 damage. Cool, but not worth my time in my opinion; but if you’re resilient enough and want to try it out god bless.
The plot is a rather simple one, but complex in the background. In the Zelda timeline, which has been hypothesized by fans around the world as to what game takes place in what timeline and how/when (which was later ironed out and released by Nintendo into an official timeline between three separate ones), this game takes place after all three of them merge. In fact, this game takes place millenia after those three timelines, longer than 10,000 years or so and long enough that machinery like Guardians (made by some race called the Sheikah) used to roam the kingdom apparently so if you’re wondering if you really need to know the older games to know this one, you don’t. Little mentions will pop up as an “Ayy I know this” moment here and there but it’s not at all a big forefront which is good for me because I hate trying to catch up sometimes.
Regardless, again you play as Link as you wake up in an area called the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau, a floating piece of land around 100 years after a mysterious event named “The Calamity” brushed through the kingdom. Link wakes up not knowing what the hell is going on, and kind of roams around until an old hunter gives him tips and tells him to unlock some shrines in exchange for a glider to get out of the area. However, after you do all of this a part of the backstory is revealed: This old hunter is actually the former king of Hyrule, King Rhoam, also Zelda’s father who reveals that this Calamity (or Calamity Ganon) was prophesied to come back and in preparation, the Kingdom brought about four champions (from the Zora, Rito, Gorons and Gerudo races), as well as unlocking some magical force within his daughter and hiring you to protect her at all times in order to help seal away this great evil. However, bad shit happens and Calamity Ganon wakes up real early causing some apocalyptic event; all the champions get slayed, Link nearly gets murked and Zelda stays within Hyrule Castle to fight against Ganon’s influence for the next hundred or so years. Rhoam tells you to meet up with Impa, a Sheikah elder who is supposed to give you the next clue on what to do, and if you follow this, then she’ll tell you that you need to salvage the Divine Beasts from their corruption and use it to weakon Ganon in its state. Truthfully that’s kind of it for the basic plot, you could choose to go straight to Ganon and fight or you can put in the effort to weaken him (getting involved in hijinks like cross dressing to infiltrate Gerudo Town, a place known for its aversion to males as Ganon always comes back as a Gerudo), and if you follow the Captured Memories you can get a post credits scene which I’ll describe here in a bit.
Before going into the final section, I would highly recommend going after the Captured Memories, as they not only unlock more of the backstory but they really flesh everyone out and feel impactful as a result, specifically in the relationship between Zelda and Link. They are fucking adorable here, and even though Link is a silent protagonist I can actually feel how their fondness for each other grows, how they take care of each other, and how Zelda is a likeable doofus who not only has self doubts about her importance in the fight against Ganon but also how she tries to get Link to eat a frog. I’m not sure if there’s a lot of ways I can truly describe everything but the characters in this game are charming and have their own unique personalities, I personally believe that this is Zelda’s story of not only overcoming adversity but becoming more than just what other people tell you that you should be.
Regardless you can go to the Lost Forest and take the Master Sword, but after potentially activating the Divine Beasts back, Link goes to confront Ganon once and for all in the ruins of Hyrule castle surrounded by corrupted guardians and weird goblin looking bodyguards. After Ganon is defeated, he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and races out of the castle to try to destroy everything. However, Zelda gives him “The Bow of Light” or something and after hitting Ganon in certain spots, the evil is vanquished and the spirits of the King/the Champions disperse, leaving Zelda and Link to rebuild the future of Hyrule.
If you did the Captured Memories, you get a post credits scene not only showing Zelda declaring the rebuilding of the kingdom, and the presence of the rare blue flower, the Silent Princess shows up in a field, one that Zelda has been trying to preserve for the longest time. I only noticed this little detail after Wrathne pointed it out as another character building moment, one that I interpreted as Zelda finally coming to grips with her future, her place in it, as well as confidence in herself to fulfill her goals. Again I’m not an intellectual, so I’m sure I could’ve said it a lot better or in a much more cohesive way, and if someone describes it in a way that’s better I might update this section, or I might not. Either way, to finish off the story section, I like it a lot; there’s a lot of emotional vulnerability in its simplicity, there’s no complicated web of lies or conspiracies or whatever but it’s a journey about overcoming your obstacles and it goes to show how simplicity can really work in a game’s favor. There’s a lot of heart, and truth be told the plot and the remaining atmosphere were the main reasons that I stuck to the game, even if it sort of blended in meta narratively with the gameplay (which I felt was way too much of a struggle sometimes).
The shortest section, as always, will be the Art Direction/Soundtrack/everything else involved in the game. The art direction is great, Hyrule is varied in it’s landscapes from it’s beautiful and windy grasslands, to it’s hostile and cold mountains (my favorite being the creepy Lost Woods and that freaky fucking tree), everything in this world is unique in its design and its effect on it’s gameplay and while I don’t want to break out fancy terms like “IT FEELS LIKE A LIVEABLE AND BREATHABLE WORLD” and whatever nonsensical shit everyone likes to throw out there it does make it memorable, which when mixed in with the Shadow of the Colossus-like atmosphere it’s pretty good. Keep in mind that’s not for everyone, one of my coworkers thought it was a worse version of Shadow of the Colossus but I didn’t truly mind this aspect as it kind of fit, though the emptyish open world can be kind of lacking sometimes. I’m not sure how to describe my feelings there, but I’d say it’s mostly positive; however when you do see people it’s quite hilarious because according to a Twitter post (or X post? I don’t fucking know anymore) from someone, every NPC in the game is built off of custom Mii’s, which is hilarious and I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out after hacking Tears of the Kingdom (which uses a lot of the same systems that this game does). Also to finish off this section, having played the series fully for the first time, I didn’t know races like the Rito or the Zora were in the other games but without knowing that each one provides their own interesting culture pieces that make them unique and interesting.
So overall, the art direction and world design are pretty solid on my end, though I kind of flutter around on the NPC scarcity sometimes but I feel in due time I’ll probably forget about that entirely, the sound design is where I feel like I have the most issues. Not with the voice acting or lack thereof, not in the actual weapon sounds, not in the soundtrack or even most things; as always the sound design is amazing but my actual issue with it is that I wish there was more of it. Granted you don’t need to constantly repeat the same Zelda theme over and over again, but by god I wish there was more music other than two memorable ones (other than the Zelda theme is the Revali theme, which I only heard sampled by a guy named JuneJissle as a beat remix, will post in links). I’m not Anthony Fantano so I can’t really sit here and describe to you the music stuff and the instruments, nor am I some fucking Picasso artsy guy, but if you’re worried this game won’t have interesting stuff in this regard than you won’t have to worry about this section. It’s not going to be some hyper realistic graphical set piece but it’s unique in its own design in a way that only Legend of Zelda can do and for the most part that’s all you really need. As such, the composers Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai did a great job making their ambient piano pieces for the game.
So to wrap up on what happened after the game got released/final thoughts; Breath of the Wild was one of those games that shook the world when it first released, and influenced everything from Genshin Impact to Elden Ring, bringing the whole “Dark Souls for Kids” thing back to full circle. This game is the one game I personally believe blew the switch up, and after this game was released there were spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (a hack and slash prequel game) to Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (a remake of a 2D gameboy Zelda game) and more to fill in the Zelda gap left between this game and the development of it’s sequel, Tears of the Kingdom (which originally started out as a DLC ala Saints Row 4 before it’s scope demanded it become a sequel). This game would for years to come be one of the greatest games of all time to most everyone; however I’ll state my obvious feelings here. I don’t like this game like everyone else, in fact I feel like this game is just further reinforcing the change in the landscape of gaming in general. It’s not a game for me, I’m an old man shouting at the clouds, I suck at this game and no matter how much I tried to meet the game to its level it just didn’t do it for me. That being said, it’s ok and if you view this game as a 10/10 that’s a totally valid feeling and I’ll respect it, it sits with The Witcher 3 in my regard with this feeling: I can see it but I don’t feel it. However, I will admit that even with this, the game now runs concurrently with a positive memory in my head now: I went overseas to a different country to visit a bunch of my friends and having beaten this game in my friend’s living room I’ll always associate that with my positive memories; however I also tried the sequel in the same friend’s living room and it’s safe to say that whilst I won’t be buying Tears of the Kingdom for a decent amount of time, that it feels a lot better gameplay wise to this game in every way and that I would deem it superior in this regard and would rather recommend that game over this game. I doubt I’ll ever play this game again, maybe I will who knows, but I’m glad that I did give it a try because though the grinding sucks and nowadays it feels like standard open world cookie cutter stuff to a certain degree, I have a strange appreciation for this game, one of respect but general mid feelings for. However, I also heard that this format is how the main series will be going forward for a long time, and if that is the case then I probably won’t be too invested long term because regardless of my Tears of the Kingdom feelings, I haven’t played it long enough to beat it or gain a true opinion on it and the older I get, the less time I have and I don’t want to play more of Breath of the Wild-style gameplay in this way. I don’t know, I guess I’m just having some weird old people mid life crisis at the ripe age of 25 lol. To finalize my thoughts, even though there's a lot of positives, the review was going to be a straight three out of five, but I feel like everything else surrounding the gameplay and even pieces of the gameplay brought it up to a 3 1/2. There will be times where I kind of bounce back and forth mentally between a 3 and a 3 1/2 mark but keep in mind that regardless of my review, again I respect how other people love this game. I guess I'm just an old man screaming at the clouds and this game isn't for me. Who knows maybe I'll like Tears of the Kingdom more, though regardless because of this game I wanna hit up and cover Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on Gamecube as my game of the year for that console just to see how a lot of things differ. So in the meantime, I guess sorry for the paragraphs and I'll see ya later, also final shoutout to Wrathne again for the help you cool as fuck playa.
Links (no pun intended):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189707-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/75175050 (Farming White Chuchu)
https://gamerant.com/botw-fireproof-lizards/ (Farming Fireproof lizards)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Smotherwing_Butterfly (Farming Smotherwing Butterfly)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Great_Fairy_Fountains (Fairy Fountain Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOIQv5lWok (Chuchu Farming Location)
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-guide-walkthrough/2017/6/1/15723316/botw-shrine-map-location (Shrine Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7P2Lk5A-c64 (Hidden Shrine thing)
https://www.gosunoob.com/zelda-breath-of-wild/heat-lava-resistance-armor/ (Flamebreaker Armor to survive in Volcano Region)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVVcvs1WGlM&ab_channel=OnehandedMan (How to get into Gerudo Town)
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Gerudo_Secret_Club (Follow this for the Desert Voe outfit, though it’s apparently in Tarrey Town too)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkw9oQeRlE (Hidden Mechanics Video)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Snowball_Bowling (Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zCam0cZcU18 (More Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=clNEiG3zsqE&pp=ygUZYm90dyBzbm93IGJvd2xpbmcgZmFybWluZw%3D%3D (Even more Snowball Bowling)
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-walkthrough/hyrule-castle/#c14_5 (Hyrule Castle Walkthrough)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/DLC_Side_Quests (DLC Side Quests)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXvQpKBj7Y (Details and Easter Eggs)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6DMevgbyw (More Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.thegamer.com/legend-zelda-breath-wild-easter-eggs/#lurelin-village-outset-island (Even more Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NezKA3r8XFA (JuneJissle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf8rQjFSd4&ab_channel=junejissle (More JuneJissle)
https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/5/22215263/breath-of-the-wild-npcs-are-miis-nintendo-legend-of-zelda-switch (Mii NPCs)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild (For potential stuff I missed)
This review contains spoilers
Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a prequel developed by Bend Studio as a Playstation Vita exclusive released in early 2012, showcasing an adventure that happened before the first Uncharted game. Now I don’t know too much about this game except a couple of things: it was directed by John Garvin (of Days Gone fame), it contains the most PS Vita motion controls of all the exclusives (that I’m aware) and that it remains an exclusive to the PS Vita after Bluepoint apparently left it out of The Nathan Drake Collection due to the lack of narrative connection to the original Uncharted trilogy. I’m not 100 percent sure how true that is but AGAIN it’s a goddamn shame, as the game deserves better as it’s actually a pretty decent title despite all of the Vita gimmicks. Again, the game needs to be remastered or ported, or if everyone and their grandmother is going to go on about remakes, why not remake this so that the gimmick controls (of which there are many) aren’t hard to map on the PS4/5 controllers. I’m gonna head straight to the gameplay here, because it’s the most jarring part of the entire game.
Where the gameplay section of the review is going to begin is the constant PS Vita mechanic tie in. Dear god, the amount of interactivity is insane and in a lot of cases are both annoying as fuck and pretty ingenius. For example, some of the ones I don’t like: in Chapter 11, you end up sliding down a river and in order to dodge the rocks you have to move your actual PS Vita left and right which can be a pain in the ass depending on your difficulty and your reaction time; it doesn’t really feel great to do and only gets worse the higher the difficulty is as you could die instantly and restart from the top of the river again. Trying to aim your guns and your camera can also be annoying to do as you’ll try to aim for an enemy (or take a picture with the camera for the collectible stuff) and you PS Vita actually moves the motion controls in game which I always found to be annoying even if it was only a tad bit and I would constantly have to fiddle around to make sure I got the shot just right. Try to pick up certain weapons or collectibles and you touch the screen in the wrong area and you’ll end up jumping upon a nearby ledge or something. Another thing I don’t appreciate is that the higher the difficulty the harder it is to do the onscreen QTEs, which get especially annoying during the final two boss battles against the main antagonists. However, that being said I don’t really hate the Vita gimmicks, I understand as a console launch for the game that you kind of have to show what the Vita is made of and Uncharted is a popular franchise to get people to play it; it’s just there are times where it can get annoying. However, there are interesting ways in how it does its stuff; I appreciate how easy it can be to do the climbing now as you can flick your finger across the screen to certain parts and Nathan will just automatically move and jump to where you want. It’s not always perfect mind you, but it’s nice for those who feel the Vita console is a bit stocky in terms of holding and you don’t wanna press the buttons all the time. I also appreciate how with certain clues/collectibles you use your fingers to solve the puzzles or clean off certain artifacts; and in another strange way I also like how during one of the cutscene chapters you need to hold your Vita underneath a light source in order to illuminate a puzzle. That being said though, I feel like while this is cool and all it can be kind of eye rolling after a while, a bit much and in the idea of a future port (which I doubt will ever come about) for the game will be a bit of a problem unless they just edit or cut out certain parts or alternatively remake it possibly.
As for the actual gameplay itself minus the Vita gimmicks? It’s not bad, it’s basically the same as all the other Uncharted games; you pick up weapons, shoot goons and race for treasure (which they all tie into some sort of card game app called Uncharted: Fight for Fortune….which I’m pretty sure is dead or canceled so don’t even worry about that, though if you could earn these cards IN those games I wouldn’t even suggest it) as you pick stuff up (optionally with a really cheap treasure map DLC which tells you the approximate location of every treasure or just go the smart/cheap route and use a Youtube guide) and exchange witty banter. The controls (minus the gimmicks) are straight up like the Uncharted games on console, which is a good thing, especially when pared down on a small console which can feel sort of weird but I think Golden Abyss manages to pull that off well. Only issue I really had was that I had to turn up the actual turn speed for myself a bit because I couldn’t aim for people fast enough at first, though it was later turned down a tad bit. For the trophies, grinding out the treasures by killing people on the hardest difficulty was kind of a pain in the ass though mostly in Chapters 2-3 as you could only really get those treasures by killing armed goons and there aren’t much in the way of goons so I had to grind for them when I first met Chase. Other notable things I want to mention is that in certain places I’ll try to climb up and it’ll kick me back down to the ledge I was at so I had to climb back up again as a sort of strange glitch, but that was kind of a rarity I didn’t experience in my second playthrough on Crushing. That’s another thing, though there are parts where I wanted to call the game a stupid asshole for their enemy placements, the harder difficulties in this game aren’t actually THAT bad minus a few things so I feel the Crushing trophy if that’s what you’re going for is for the most part obtainable. One of the worst spots I’ve had to deal with however was in Chapter 26, after Sully breaks his leg he decides to be the biggest fucking moron and just charge the enemies, which is a problem considering you’re in a small area and they have weapons/grenades that’ll eviscerate you AND you have to protect him. It’s only a small section but I still loathed going into that small section more than the QTE boss fights. Also, in Chapter 29 there’s a glitch where enemies can despawn in front of your eyes if you run back to get ammo instead of pushing forward, breaking that section because enemies spawn behind a bridge and you need them in order for the bridge to fall down so keep that in mind. Lastly, to finish it off before transferring to the story mode: this is the first and only Uncharted game that I’ve seen Nathan Drake be able to pick up a fucking minigun and it’s hilarious as hell to see this guy pick up something that not even five bodybuilders could wield like that.
The plot follows Nathan Drake before the event of the first Uncharted game, taking on a job for one Jason Dante to investigate some old ruins next to a Uranium mining company site with his partner, Marisa Chase. At the site, they find evidence of Spanish travelers who have been searching for an ancient city: Quivera, the city of gold. Partnering up with Chase after things go haywire due to Dante’s dealings with revolutionary general and former dictator Roberto Guerro, which later involves being kidnapped and brought to Guerro’s prison camp before they escape. After a bit of bonding, Chase reveals to Nathan that her grandfather spent his life researching the ancient city and the Quiveran civilization, and they escape from the camp with a betrayal from Dante. They use both the amulet and Chase’s grandfather’s research and are able to find a Sete Cidades (an old christian sect dedicated to finding these cities of gold) retreat in a different old tomb. Climbing through, they find the Sword of Stephen (which has a series of pieces that Nathan charcoal rubs onto some paper) as well as the corpse of Chase’s grandfather, originally held by the guide to the group with evidence that the leader, De Niza, misled spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado. Dante shows up to take this sword, only for Guerro to betray him while kidnapping Chase. After chasing them through the tomb, they get away with Chase, while Nathan and Dante argue over Dante’s greed and tell Nathan to “run back to Sully”. Nathan does indeed run back to Sully for help, and they find the location of a temple believed to hold the ancient city of Quivera; and they both shoot through loads of Guerro’s men along with mercenaries that Dante hired. Soon, Nathan infiltrates the ancient city and rescues Chase from Guerro’s men before delving deeper into the city to find the frightening corpses of old Quiverans. Thinking it might be a birth defect at first, they go further into the city only to learn that the city of gold was build next to a Uranium deposit, actively making it radioactive and untouchable, with De Niza having turned out to kill Esteban (his guide) and the others and misled Coronado so that no one could get their hands on this “cursed gold”. Dante arrives, intending on following his greed and selling the gold regardless of who dies and after a painful QTE, he’s left behind in the city to get sealed in. Marisa and Nathan go to activate explosives right outside the city and proceed to bring down nearly the entire cavern and after fighting through more goons, Nathan brings down Guerro in another QTE before saving Chase from death and then being saved themselves by Sully before Nathan/Chase consummate their relationship and move on from the adventure.
So far, the story feels to be standard fare but I still find it to be more interesting both character and plot wise than Drake’s Fortune would be. It’s not the greatest, it’s kind of average but it still has some stuff that compelled me; the first thing that popped into my mind is the radioactive gold city, which I felt was pretty good foreshadowing on the game’s end with all the uranium mining subplot. A lot of the lore you can also find in the background with the collectibles, which unlike the other Uncharted games are actually a lot better because they give contextual clues to the actual mystery at hand if you’re looking for extra story to connect pieces together. I also enjoyed that piece of twist because it wasn’t like what the other three games in the original trilogy did, which was mainly just mixing supernatural creatures into the mix and instead providing something a bit more grounded in reality, and with a twist I didn’t expect. There’s interesting character development for Nathan too who goes from a standard “treasure hunter loot guy” to someone who actually cares about the historical finds and such which is in turn spurred on by Chase. This segways into my feelings about the supporting cast: Chase is actually pretty decent and I liked her for the most part, though it’s obvious she’s a stand-in for Elena that won’t ever be brought up again (aside from a sticky note reference in Uncharted 4) and since this is a prequel I preemptively knew that she wasn’t really gonna pop back up ever again after this game. The two main antagonists are entertaining and memorable enough, they’re not Lazarevic from Uncharted 2 or Rafe from Uncharted 4 but they’re decent for who they are: stereotypes. Guerro of course plays the dictator general who's trying to gather funds for another revolution (love the military angle though, reminds me of Uncharted: Lost Legacy with that), and he’s overall a basic dick in his goals. The other antagonist is Jason Dante, Nathan’s old buddy who is a stereotypical greedy fucker with an italian accent who wants to gold all to himself and cares only for profit. Of course, Sully is Sully so we’ll always remember him and at the end of the day he’s still going to be entertaining and the banter will be amusing. Other things that come to mind playing this is that there are two memorable gags: one involves “Cutting the ropes'' which Guerro’s men always seems to be fond of doing through most of the game and a gag that plays on Crushing Difficulty, where when you investigate Esteban’s corpse they pop out and jump scare Chase’s actress, who gives everyone shit for being in on it. I’ll post a link down there if you want to see it yourself, but overall again while it’s not the most memorable story I think it’s a lot better than people gave it for despite it’s spin-off nature and some of its plot points.
The graphics for the game looks pretty good, the backgrounds are beautiful and I feel that Bend really tried their best to hone in and make something special for this game. The models looks good, weapon sounds are great (though the Moss 12 fucking sucks to be honest) and overall it’s a package I can’t complain about. The soundtrack is pretty tight even if I swore I heard these tracks from the other earlier Uncharted games (and possibly some new ones), so the whole Uncharted atmosphere is there. Richard McGonaggle and Nolan North are back as Sully and Drake so that’s always nice, and the rest of the cast do their job portraying their characters with Jason Spisak being the outlier here are a hilariously weasel-like Jason Dante, though often times he’s a stereotype of what a Jersey Italian could even be like (he also voiced Marty in Mafia 2 and the punchable Skizzo in Days Gone, another Bend Game, if you’ve heard his voice before). Overall, not too much to complain about in this department, as always.
Final thoughts, is this game good and worth your time? I’d say yes, it is good despite some of its flaws with gameplay motion gimmicks and such, I had a lot of fun with it despite it’s frustrations in certain parts and while I felt coming into it that I was going to be miserable due to the fact I suck at playing handheld game systems without a Switch-style game dock or an actual console port, it’s actually one of the easier games to get into the series for. HOWEVER, actually getting this game nowadays will be expensive; I got my Vita for 250 or so dollars and the game itself for a whopping 50-60 dollars a couple of years ago during COVID when I learned that they were going to be shutting the PS stores for both Vita and PS3, and while that hasn’t happened yet more than likely it will at some point. If you have it in you to pay lots of money for the Vita and the game itself (don’t forget the memory cards for the Vita, which in itself is a good chunk of cash as well), it’s not a bad title and could be considered one of the best Vita exclusives along with Killzone: Mercenary (frustrations with corrupted saves aside). That being said however, I’m going to HARP on this hard: this game needs a remaster or a remake or something. I don’t care that it’s just a spin-off, media like this should be able to be experienced by as many people as possible, even if it’s just a PC release (which by the way where’s the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection release on Steam you fucks?) or a PS Digital release (though physical copies are preferred). So the Tl;dr answer is yes, yes it is worth your time though you’ll need to sink a decent bit of money in order to be able to play this game so unless you had disposable income like I did at the time or it eventually gets ported/remade or there’s an emulator on PC where you can play this for free, good luck with that.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncharted:_Golden_Abyss
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/UnchartedGoldenAbyss
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NIWJHO-cto8 (Behind the scenes motion capture)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mLHgAEb_Vn4 (Blooper)
Where the gameplay section of the review is going to begin is the constant PS Vita mechanic tie in. Dear god, the amount of interactivity is insane and in a lot of cases are both annoying as fuck and pretty ingenius. For example, some of the ones I don’t like: in Chapter 11, you end up sliding down a river and in order to dodge the rocks you have to move your actual PS Vita left and right which can be a pain in the ass depending on your difficulty and your reaction time; it doesn’t really feel great to do and only gets worse the higher the difficulty is as you could die instantly and restart from the top of the river again. Trying to aim your guns and your camera can also be annoying to do as you’ll try to aim for an enemy (or take a picture with the camera for the collectible stuff) and you PS Vita actually moves the motion controls in game which I always found to be annoying even if it was only a tad bit and I would constantly have to fiddle around to make sure I got the shot just right. Try to pick up certain weapons or collectibles and you touch the screen in the wrong area and you’ll end up jumping upon a nearby ledge or something. Another thing I don’t appreciate is that the higher the difficulty the harder it is to do the onscreen QTEs, which get especially annoying during the final two boss battles against the main antagonists. However, that being said I don’t really hate the Vita gimmicks, I understand as a console launch for the game that you kind of have to show what the Vita is made of and Uncharted is a popular franchise to get people to play it; it’s just there are times where it can get annoying. However, there are interesting ways in how it does its stuff; I appreciate how easy it can be to do the climbing now as you can flick your finger across the screen to certain parts and Nathan will just automatically move and jump to where you want. It’s not always perfect mind you, but it’s nice for those who feel the Vita console is a bit stocky in terms of holding and you don’t wanna press the buttons all the time. I also appreciate how with certain clues/collectibles you use your fingers to solve the puzzles or clean off certain artifacts; and in another strange way I also like how during one of the cutscene chapters you need to hold your Vita underneath a light source in order to illuminate a puzzle. That being said though, I feel like while this is cool and all it can be kind of eye rolling after a while, a bit much and in the idea of a future port (which I doubt will ever come about) for the game will be a bit of a problem unless they just edit or cut out certain parts or alternatively remake it possibly.
As for the actual gameplay itself minus the Vita gimmicks? It’s not bad, it’s basically the same as all the other Uncharted games; you pick up weapons, shoot goons and race for treasure (which they all tie into some sort of card game app called Uncharted: Fight for Fortune….which I’m pretty sure is dead or canceled so don’t even worry about that, though if you could earn these cards IN those games I wouldn’t even suggest it) as you pick stuff up (optionally with a really cheap treasure map DLC which tells you the approximate location of every treasure or just go the smart/cheap route and use a Youtube guide) and exchange witty banter. The controls (minus the gimmicks) are straight up like the Uncharted games on console, which is a good thing, especially when pared down on a small console which can feel sort of weird but I think Golden Abyss manages to pull that off well. Only issue I really had was that I had to turn up the actual turn speed for myself a bit because I couldn’t aim for people fast enough at first, though it was later turned down a tad bit. For the trophies, grinding out the treasures by killing people on the hardest difficulty was kind of a pain in the ass though mostly in Chapters 2-3 as you could only really get those treasures by killing armed goons and there aren’t much in the way of goons so I had to grind for them when I first met Chase. Other notable things I want to mention is that in certain places I’ll try to climb up and it’ll kick me back down to the ledge I was at so I had to climb back up again as a sort of strange glitch, but that was kind of a rarity I didn’t experience in my second playthrough on Crushing. That’s another thing, though there are parts where I wanted to call the game a stupid asshole for their enemy placements, the harder difficulties in this game aren’t actually THAT bad minus a few things so I feel the Crushing trophy if that’s what you’re going for is for the most part obtainable. One of the worst spots I’ve had to deal with however was in Chapter 26, after Sully breaks his leg he decides to be the biggest fucking moron and just charge the enemies, which is a problem considering you’re in a small area and they have weapons/grenades that’ll eviscerate you AND you have to protect him. It’s only a small section but I still loathed going into that small section more than the QTE boss fights. Also, in Chapter 29 there’s a glitch where enemies can despawn in front of your eyes if you run back to get ammo instead of pushing forward, breaking that section because enemies spawn behind a bridge and you need them in order for the bridge to fall down so keep that in mind. Lastly, to finish it off before transferring to the story mode: this is the first and only Uncharted game that I’ve seen Nathan Drake be able to pick up a fucking minigun and it’s hilarious as hell to see this guy pick up something that not even five bodybuilders could wield like that.
The plot follows Nathan Drake before the event of the first Uncharted game, taking on a job for one Jason Dante to investigate some old ruins next to a Uranium mining company site with his partner, Marisa Chase. At the site, they find evidence of Spanish travelers who have been searching for an ancient city: Quivera, the city of gold. Partnering up with Chase after things go haywire due to Dante’s dealings with revolutionary general and former dictator Roberto Guerro, which later involves being kidnapped and brought to Guerro’s prison camp before they escape. After a bit of bonding, Chase reveals to Nathan that her grandfather spent his life researching the ancient city and the Quiveran civilization, and they escape from the camp with a betrayal from Dante. They use both the amulet and Chase’s grandfather’s research and are able to find a Sete Cidades (an old christian sect dedicated to finding these cities of gold) retreat in a different old tomb. Climbing through, they find the Sword of Stephen (which has a series of pieces that Nathan charcoal rubs onto some paper) as well as the corpse of Chase’s grandfather, originally held by the guide to the group with evidence that the leader, De Niza, misled spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado. Dante shows up to take this sword, only for Guerro to betray him while kidnapping Chase. After chasing them through the tomb, they get away with Chase, while Nathan and Dante argue over Dante’s greed and tell Nathan to “run back to Sully”. Nathan does indeed run back to Sully for help, and they find the location of a temple believed to hold the ancient city of Quivera; and they both shoot through loads of Guerro’s men along with mercenaries that Dante hired. Soon, Nathan infiltrates the ancient city and rescues Chase from Guerro’s men before delving deeper into the city to find the frightening corpses of old Quiverans. Thinking it might be a birth defect at first, they go further into the city only to learn that the city of gold was build next to a Uranium deposit, actively making it radioactive and untouchable, with De Niza having turned out to kill Esteban (his guide) and the others and misled Coronado so that no one could get their hands on this “cursed gold”. Dante arrives, intending on following his greed and selling the gold regardless of who dies and after a painful QTE, he’s left behind in the city to get sealed in. Marisa and Nathan go to activate explosives right outside the city and proceed to bring down nearly the entire cavern and after fighting through more goons, Nathan brings down Guerro in another QTE before saving Chase from death and then being saved themselves by Sully before Nathan/Chase consummate their relationship and move on from the adventure.
So far, the story feels to be standard fare but I still find it to be more interesting both character and plot wise than Drake’s Fortune would be. It’s not the greatest, it’s kind of average but it still has some stuff that compelled me; the first thing that popped into my mind is the radioactive gold city, which I felt was pretty good foreshadowing on the game’s end with all the uranium mining subplot. A lot of the lore you can also find in the background with the collectibles, which unlike the other Uncharted games are actually a lot better because they give contextual clues to the actual mystery at hand if you’re looking for extra story to connect pieces together. I also enjoyed that piece of twist because it wasn’t like what the other three games in the original trilogy did, which was mainly just mixing supernatural creatures into the mix and instead providing something a bit more grounded in reality, and with a twist I didn’t expect. There’s interesting character development for Nathan too who goes from a standard “treasure hunter loot guy” to someone who actually cares about the historical finds and such which is in turn spurred on by Chase. This segways into my feelings about the supporting cast: Chase is actually pretty decent and I liked her for the most part, though it’s obvious she’s a stand-in for Elena that won’t ever be brought up again (aside from a sticky note reference in Uncharted 4) and since this is a prequel I preemptively knew that she wasn’t really gonna pop back up ever again after this game. The two main antagonists are entertaining and memorable enough, they’re not Lazarevic from Uncharted 2 or Rafe from Uncharted 4 but they’re decent for who they are: stereotypes. Guerro of course plays the dictator general who's trying to gather funds for another revolution (love the military angle though, reminds me of Uncharted: Lost Legacy with that), and he’s overall a basic dick in his goals. The other antagonist is Jason Dante, Nathan’s old buddy who is a stereotypical greedy fucker with an italian accent who wants to gold all to himself and cares only for profit. Of course, Sully is Sully so we’ll always remember him and at the end of the day he’s still going to be entertaining and the banter will be amusing. Other things that come to mind playing this is that there are two memorable gags: one involves “Cutting the ropes'' which Guerro’s men always seems to be fond of doing through most of the game and a gag that plays on Crushing Difficulty, where when you investigate Esteban’s corpse they pop out and jump scare Chase’s actress, who gives everyone shit for being in on it. I’ll post a link down there if you want to see it yourself, but overall again while it’s not the most memorable story I think it’s a lot better than people gave it for despite it’s spin-off nature and some of its plot points.
The graphics for the game looks pretty good, the backgrounds are beautiful and I feel that Bend really tried their best to hone in and make something special for this game. The models looks good, weapon sounds are great (though the Moss 12 fucking sucks to be honest) and overall it’s a package I can’t complain about. The soundtrack is pretty tight even if I swore I heard these tracks from the other earlier Uncharted games (and possibly some new ones), so the whole Uncharted atmosphere is there. Richard McGonaggle and Nolan North are back as Sully and Drake so that’s always nice, and the rest of the cast do their job portraying their characters with Jason Spisak being the outlier here are a hilariously weasel-like Jason Dante, though often times he’s a stereotype of what a Jersey Italian could even be like (he also voiced Marty in Mafia 2 and the punchable Skizzo in Days Gone, another Bend Game, if you’ve heard his voice before). Overall, not too much to complain about in this department, as always.
Final thoughts, is this game good and worth your time? I’d say yes, it is good despite some of its flaws with gameplay motion gimmicks and such, I had a lot of fun with it despite it’s frustrations in certain parts and while I felt coming into it that I was going to be miserable due to the fact I suck at playing handheld game systems without a Switch-style game dock or an actual console port, it’s actually one of the easier games to get into the series for. HOWEVER, actually getting this game nowadays will be expensive; I got my Vita for 250 or so dollars and the game itself for a whopping 50-60 dollars a couple of years ago during COVID when I learned that they were going to be shutting the PS stores for both Vita and PS3, and while that hasn’t happened yet more than likely it will at some point. If you have it in you to pay lots of money for the Vita and the game itself (don’t forget the memory cards for the Vita, which in itself is a good chunk of cash as well), it’s not a bad title and could be considered one of the best Vita exclusives along with Killzone: Mercenary (frustrations with corrupted saves aside). That being said however, I’m going to HARP on this hard: this game needs a remaster or a remake or something. I don’t care that it’s just a spin-off, media like this should be able to be experienced by as many people as possible, even if it’s just a PC release (which by the way where’s the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection release on Steam you fucks?) or a PS Digital release (though physical copies are preferred). So the Tl;dr answer is yes, yes it is worth your time though you’ll need to sink a decent bit of money in order to be able to play this game so unless you had disposable income like I did at the time or it eventually gets ported/remade or there’s an emulator on PC where you can play this for free, good luck with that.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncharted:_Golden_Abyss
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/UnchartedGoldenAbyss
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NIWJHO-cto8 (Behind the scenes motion capture)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mLHgAEb_Vn4 (Blooper)
2016
This review contains spoilers
Downfall is a "Where’s my wife?" point and click horror game developed by Harvester Games, the same dev who developed The Cat Lady previously, a game I viewed as an art piece that deals with mental health/depression. In my research, Downfall originally started as a 2009 indie game, before it was retooled into an entry in the “Devil Came Through Here” trilogy released after Cat Lady. If you were curious about the original, the steam version also comes with the 2009 version of the game, though I didn’t touch it this time (though maybe one day).
I’ll start off with the story: you play as a man named Joe Davis (for those who remember he makes a cameo in Cat Lady as the neighbor towards the end as well as a huge Stephen King fan) who goes to the small hotel of Quiet Haven with his wife Ivy for a quick getaway. However, after a rather gut wrenching argument (after being given different beds as a sort of symbolic gesture of growing apart), you wake up to find that she disappeared, and Joe resolves to find her. The game clearly has reverence for Silent Hill (specifically the second one) from a reference to their “special place”, to the name Quiet Haven sounding flipped for Silent Hill and even the finding wife part, the developers we’re an obvious fan of the game (as are most of us) and it clearly influenced the game’s direction.
Before the hotel though, there’s a prologue where you play as Joe when he was a kid where he first met Ivy (with foreshadowing of her illness of course) on the same day where his younger brother Robbie died opening up a random cache of grenades hidden in a construction site, dying in an extremely graphic yet strangely funny tone (only due to the circumstance of random grenades). Flash forward and Joe meets Ivy in the future where they get married before the relationship takes a rocky road and this romantic getaway trip was supposed to be a rekindling of sorts. After the disappearance comb through the hotel, dealing with all sorts of gore as you’re told you have to kill off a “monster” named Sophie, or more specifically four different versions of her, each of which are symbolic of Ivy herself and her various characteristics and insecurities, which later come ahead as it’s revealed that she has extreme self conscious issues and an eating disorder, none of which we’re truly explained persay during the game or given much depth as far as I’m aware but not everything needs that I suppose.
Going throughout the hotel and its various floors you’ll find characters such as The Manageress (a seductive woman with eyes for Joe), Dr. Z (a mad scientist who’s trying to revive a corpse Frankenstein style), Agnes (the corpse who later comes to life and you play as her a couple of times), as you seek to kill each of the Sophies and rescue your wife. There are also two returning characters from Cat Lady: Susan Ashworth (towards the last five minutes or so) and The Queen of Maggots, the overarching main antagonist of the trilogy.
With this in mind, a lot of things are revealed: since Joe’s brother died, his mom killed herself and the dad blamed Joe for the entire mess; this mixed with Ivy’s anorexia sent him spiraling into madness. In real life, Joe was actually “The Sixth Parasite”, and had gone insane trying to help his wife. The getaway trip wasn’t real, Dr. Z (who was a nazi in the original version) is his therapist (only learned from Cat Lady), and that he had actually been killing people as the Axeman murderer (who was chasing Joe through the game). The ending depends on certain dialogue you choose throughout the game (which are tallied in skulls, 27 in all. If you have all 27 it’s the best, between 0-27 it’s normal and 0 is the bad ending) and for the most part while most of the dialogue feels stressful and like you make the wrong choices each time, I ended up getting the good ending with the help of a guide (also in general just be a decent human being and you should be ok I think).
How does it feel in the grand scheme of things? For me personally, it’s unsure because while I haven’t played the original game it felt like that game could’ve been a sort of fan homage project which then got lots of stuff sort of retro-fitted in. That being said, it works for the most part but I feel like there’s a couple of times where you could tell it was sort of Frankensteined (the irony of it with Dr. Z of course) together with semi-obvious symbolism, with the interconnected Cat Lady stuff being the most jarring stuff. The characters for the most part are ok, Agnes being a standout for her bubbly personality (though my friend who I streamed for hated her at first). The coffin sequence is also a standout for how dark it gets though the appearance of a certain actor’s history did take me out of it a bit once I learned what they did in real life but I can’t say that’s the dev’s fault.
Here is where I’ll go into gameplay style and the rest of it, as it’s rather short; it’s mostly just the point and click fare, with numerous dialogue options to determine the ending later on; you collect objects for later puzzles, which are a tad bit randomized on each playthrough but are simple enough to solve. Basically if you liked Cat Lady’s gameplay, there’s more of it. Graphically the game has the same sort of style that The Cat Lady does, lot’s of dark and shadowy imagery, maybe with a tad bit wider range of colors as well as surreal looking 3D animations as you walk to and from certain areas in the game. The voice acting ranges from person to person with most of the voice cast being Youtubers or friends of the main dev, so it may not be the best and most immersive as the mic quality tends to change too (with the childhood voice acting being one of the stranger parts to me). However, this didn’t detract at all from the game’s quality and strangely enhanced the surrealist nature of it all to be honest. The music also, like The Cat Lady, slaps though can be used in the strangest locations leading to an uneven tone that confused me more than unnerved and sounded like it should’ve been in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines instead.
Overall, how do I feel about Downfall? After having this for years along with The Cat Lady, I could say that compared to the former that I like this a tad bit less. Whilst not a lot of things could live up to the former, as its own thing I feel like it’s kind of mashed together and doesn’t have the same impact that it should emotionally or thematically. I could see glimpses of heartwarming stuff I REALLY liked (the emotional scenes between Joe and Ivy of course) but some moments are kind of distracting, derivative or unintentionally funny (like kitchen cooking with out of place music) and overall it's hard for me to describe my feelings for this game other than mildly positive, even setting aside the original quality of The Cat Lady along with steam characters are limited as usual. However, that being said I still like this game and think that it’s worth a play, even if only to at least get the general gist of how you feel about it's thematic handling, and it was also a lot shorter for me so that helped (just keep in mind it’s definitely violent, has a lot of depressing themes and could have some triggers). One day I’ll sit down and try to record behind the scenes stuff and post the links but for now here are some things to look into.
https://www.walkthroughking.com/text/downfallredux.aspx
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Downfall2009
https://devilcamethroughhere.fandom.com/wiki/Downfall:_Redux
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
I’ll start off with the story: you play as a man named Joe Davis (for those who remember he makes a cameo in Cat Lady as the neighbor towards the end as well as a huge Stephen King fan) who goes to the small hotel of Quiet Haven with his wife Ivy for a quick getaway. However, after a rather gut wrenching argument (after being given different beds as a sort of symbolic gesture of growing apart), you wake up to find that she disappeared, and Joe resolves to find her. The game clearly has reverence for Silent Hill (specifically the second one) from a reference to their “special place”, to the name Quiet Haven sounding flipped for Silent Hill and even the finding wife part, the developers we’re an obvious fan of the game (as are most of us) and it clearly influenced the game’s direction.
Before the hotel though, there’s a prologue where you play as Joe when he was a kid where he first met Ivy (with foreshadowing of her illness of course) on the same day where his younger brother Robbie died opening up a random cache of grenades hidden in a construction site, dying in an extremely graphic yet strangely funny tone (only due to the circumstance of random grenades). Flash forward and Joe meets Ivy in the future where they get married before the relationship takes a rocky road and this romantic getaway trip was supposed to be a rekindling of sorts. After the disappearance comb through the hotel, dealing with all sorts of gore as you’re told you have to kill off a “monster” named Sophie, or more specifically four different versions of her, each of which are symbolic of Ivy herself and her various characteristics and insecurities, which later come ahead as it’s revealed that she has extreme self conscious issues and an eating disorder, none of which we’re truly explained persay during the game or given much depth as far as I’m aware but not everything needs that I suppose.
Going throughout the hotel and its various floors you’ll find characters such as The Manageress (a seductive woman with eyes for Joe), Dr. Z (a mad scientist who’s trying to revive a corpse Frankenstein style), Agnes (the corpse who later comes to life and you play as her a couple of times), as you seek to kill each of the Sophies and rescue your wife. There are also two returning characters from Cat Lady: Susan Ashworth (towards the last five minutes or so) and The Queen of Maggots, the overarching main antagonist of the trilogy.
With this in mind, a lot of things are revealed: since Joe’s brother died, his mom killed herself and the dad blamed Joe for the entire mess; this mixed with Ivy’s anorexia sent him spiraling into madness. In real life, Joe was actually “The Sixth Parasite”, and had gone insane trying to help his wife. The getaway trip wasn’t real, Dr. Z (who was a nazi in the original version) is his therapist (only learned from Cat Lady), and that he had actually been killing people as the Axeman murderer (who was chasing Joe through the game). The ending depends on certain dialogue you choose throughout the game (which are tallied in skulls, 27 in all. If you have all 27 it’s the best, between 0-27 it’s normal and 0 is the bad ending) and for the most part while most of the dialogue feels stressful and like you make the wrong choices each time, I ended up getting the good ending with the help of a guide (also in general just be a decent human being and you should be ok I think).
How does it feel in the grand scheme of things? For me personally, it’s unsure because while I haven’t played the original game it felt like that game could’ve been a sort of fan homage project which then got lots of stuff sort of retro-fitted in. That being said, it works for the most part but I feel like there’s a couple of times where you could tell it was sort of Frankensteined (the irony of it with Dr. Z of course) together with semi-obvious symbolism, with the interconnected Cat Lady stuff being the most jarring stuff. The characters for the most part are ok, Agnes being a standout for her bubbly personality (though my friend who I streamed for hated her at first). The coffin sequence is also a standout for how dark it gets though the appearance of a certain actor’s history did take me out of it a bit once I learned what they did in real life but I can’t say that’s the dev’s fault.
Here is where I’ll go into gameplay style and the rest of it, as it’s rather short; it’s mostly just the point and click fare, with numerous dialogue options to determine the ending later on; you collect objects for later puzzles, which are a tad bit randomized on each playthrough but are simple enough to solve. Basically if you liked Cat Lady’s gameplay, there’s more of it. Graphically the game has the same sort of style that The Cat Lady does, lot’s of dark and shadowy imagery, maybe with a tad bit wider range of colors as well as surreal looking 3D animations as you walk to and from certain areas in the game. The voice acting ranges from person to person with most of the voice cast being Youtubers or friends of the main dev, so it may not be the best and most immersive as the mic quality tends to change too (with the childhood voice acting being one of the stranger parts to me). However, this didn’t detract at all from the game’s quality and strangely enhanced the surrealist nature of it all to be honest. The music also, like The Cat Lady, slaps though can be used in the strangest locations leading to an uneven tone that confused me more than unnerved and sounded like it should’ve been in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines instead.
Overall, how do I feel about Downfall? After having this for years along with The Cat Lady, I could say that compared to the former that I like this a tad bit less. Whilst not a lot of things could live up to the former, as its own thing I feel like it’s kind of mashed together and doesn’t have the same impact that it should emotionally or thematically. I could see glimpses of heartwarming stuff I REALLY liked (the emotional scenes between Joe and Ivy of course) but some moments are kind of distracting, derivative or unintentionally funny (like kitchen cooking with out of place music) and overall it's hard for me to describe my feelings for this game other than mildly positive, even setting aside the original quality of The Cat Lady along with steam characters are limited as usual. However, that being said I still like this game and think that it’s worth a play, even if only to at least get the general gist of how you feel about it's thematic handling, and it was also a lot shorter for me so that helped (just keep in mind it’s definitely violent, has a lot of depressing themes and could have some triggers). One day I’ll sit down and try to record behind the scenes stuff and post the links but for now here are some things to look into.
https://www.walkthroughking.com/text/downfallredux.aspx
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Downfall2009
https://devilcamethroughhere.fandom.com/wiki/Downfall:_Redux
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2009
This review contains spoilers
Infamous is an open world action adventure “mid 2000s edgy superhero simulator” developed exclusively for the Playstation 3 by developers Sucker Punch studios, known previously for games series such as the Sly Cooper franchise before and afterwards Ghosts of Tsushima, which is apparently poised to become the developer’s next hit franchise if it’s to be believed. From what’s to be believed about the development history, it was created to be a huge change of pace from Sly Cooper, which was traditionally a more child friendly heist game to something new and fresh, pitching numerous games before settling on something they called “True Hero”. This was supposed to be an Animal Crossing styled game where you could make choices that affect the world around you; this morphed into something that took heavy influences from comics such as DMZ and Batman: No Man’s Land as well as The Dark Knight Trilogy for it’s dark and gritty aesthetic, morphing the series to what it’s known today. My personal experience with this game is that I played it once at a Gamestop in one of those kiosks they lock the PS3 in, and this was one of the only games that looked interesting. Trying out a mission that they had, I was extremely impressed with how you could grind on the rails, the environment around you, and how I felt the Reapers as a gang looked cool as hell. From then on I was a fan even as an Xbox 360 kid, from watching playthroughs to even buying the damn walkthrough and reading it sometimes when I was bored because I was lonely and had no friends as a kid. Finally one day on a whim, I decided that I would pick up a PS3 and whereas I don’t remember all the games I had when I first got it, I remember getting PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, Yakuza 3 and this game.
Infamous starts out with a “shock” (bad pun intended); you see a normal, New York City styled location named Empire City in the thralls of a normal day, that is at least until you press the start button. The power goes out throughout the city and as a normal civilian you see a giant electric dome encompassing an entire city block while a voice checks someone for their pulse, ending it with “Lookin’ good, Cole”. From here you wake up as Cole himself, burnt to a crisp and waking up right in the center of the explosion with everything having gone to hell around you. Your best friend Zeke calls you worried sick, explaining that “terrorists” have exploded stuff all around the city, however you know something is up when you get zapped with electricity and feel absolutely no pain, and in another instance lightning starts striking around you, killing police in the vicinity. You run across the bridge nearby falling unconscious as your nurse girlfriend, Trish, comes to your aid. This tragedy has taken the lives of a lot of people, including Trish’s sister, and that’ll later come back into play. A plague later struck and chaos emerged, with crime getting worse and the military establishing a quarantine on the entire city when his power emerges and he's able to be controlled at least two weeks later and he’s able to control it. I love this introduction, it’s a great way of establishing the setting at hand, and leaving a little bit of mystery as to what’s going on, while leaving a couple of hints that it’s deeper than it seems to those that aren’t fully aware of what’s happening in the plot.
From here, the next mission is made to establish one of the main features in Infamous: the karma. A man proclaiming himself to be “The Voice of Survival” pops up on the TV after hacking the signal and says that food is going to be airdropped into the district square. Cole and Zeke pop over, and Trish plans to meet you there. After climbing up a nearby statue and cutting down the food, the Reapers, a local gang consisting of people in red hoodies with skulls on them, attack and plan to steal it for themselves. Cole uses his powers to fight them off when you’re presented with your first choice: you could either zap a few people and make them run away and leave you with the food (which is the Bad Choice) or you could let the people take some (which is the Good choice). However yet again, The Voice of Survival pops up on a nearby billboard and throws the responsibility for the outbreak on you; regardless Trish leaves Cole, heartbroken over her sister’s death and everyone around him except Zeke starts an active mob against him. Cole doesn’t remember much about the explosion, except that he was running around trying to deliver something for someone as a courier but that’ll soon become clear. Zeke decides you two need to escape through the bridge at the bottom of the city, and when you two meet up and attempt to break through quarantine it ends up with almost every civilian dead except Cole and Zeke again and Cole meets someone new: an FBI agent named Moya, who recruits Cole for a job: her husband, a fellow agent named John White, had attempted to infiltrate an organization named the First Sons, a group working on a project known as the “Ray Sphere”. If he finds John and the Ray Sphere, she clears his name and gets him out of the quarantine; while not exactly trustworthy he has no choice if he wants to get out of the city alive.
Basically from here is where I quickly summarize plot points to make it to the end quick; from here you end up attempting to reconcile with Trish by helping her save people, take back the city from their respective gangs by doing side missions, attempting to assist Zeke in getting laid and helping Moya find traces of her husband via dead drops (leading to story bits once you collect all of them) and through covert activities. Eventually you restore the Neon District’s power supply and fight Sasha, the leader of the Reapers, who has taunted Cole about his former girlfriend Trish and is claiming that he loves him. You’ll also at one point (before the Sasha fight) run into a strange man in a white robe named Kessler, who shoves his hands onto your head in an ambush to show you horrible visions before disappearing entirely; this’ll all work out in the end to a twist I actually really like, and all of this’ll also all come to ahead later so bear with me, but after a battle with her she gets kidnapped by the shadowy First Sons and you land in the Warren District, controlled by the homeless vagrant Alden.
You continue through various missions until Cole, Zeke and the police end up capturing Alden; though before or after this mission depending on your Karma you either finally reconcile with Trish or she ultimately rejects you for being a bastard. Nonetheless, after the mission where Cole, Zeke and the Police try to protect Alden from being reclaimed by his Dust Men brethren (the Dust Men being a group of heavily armed homeless men with guns and suicide bombs), you’ll begin to truly notice Zeke’s arc if you haven’t before. Zeke’s arc once you get into the Warren consists of jealousy, stupidity, and greed; he got captured once before because he wanted to be a hero like you and tried to sneak into a place to find info for you, and in this mission he abandons protecting Alden to play hero outside in the courtyard, which somehow leads to his escape. Though in this case I’ll defend Zeke’s actions here, though for the wrong reasons. Everyone guarding Alden is a trained cop, and if he hadn’t abandoned his post he probably would’ve been killed alongside everyone else, especially for his lack of training so even if it was for the wrong reasons it’s still understood (though I could’ve misread things here). I’ll even point out that though I love the story and the environment, some of the characters are kind of trope-y. To me, Zeke is a caricature of what a nuanced character should’ve been, someone with flaws who instead kind of comes off as a douchebag who throws a temper tantrum over his jealousy of Cole’s powers instead of recognizing the situation he’s in. I’m not saying that there aren’t people like him, it’s just that the way he feels characterized personally in the game is just one I don’t really care for. A lesser offender is Trish, who stereotypically treats you like trash a bit but can be reconciled with the fact that her sister died and she’s still trying to deal with the reality that even though you were the love of her life, it doesn’t help the fact that you are technically the reasons she died. Regardless though, Zeke is the main offender and when you two attempt to take control of the Ray Sphere in his possession, he eventually betrays you for this game’s main bad guy: Kessler, who promises him that he will be able to give him the powers that he’s been seeking after Zeke attempts to activate the Ray Sphere and kills thousands of more people only for it not to work; again it’s kind of a “fucking seriously?” moment and doesn’t make him feel redeemable in the slightest. After he betrays you to Kessler, you escape Alden’s giant tower before learning of the oncoming gang war between the Dust Men and the First Sons over Alden’s “birthright”. You fight Alden in a boss battle on the bridge and after you defeat him you learn that his “birthright” was that his father used to lead the First Sons, and that he was destined to be the heir until Kessler came out of nowhere and overthrew him, leaving Alden homeless and on the streets as a child.
Fighting through the Historic District is the most poignant and memorable part of the game to me, with each act having it’s strengths but with this final act being the most significant of them all; you work with John White (who turns out to be NSA, not FBI) and learn that Moya isn’t his wife and that he doesn’t even know her, Cole has been being used this entire time while trying to search for the Ray Sphere. Of course this was predictable for me as well, Moya’s demeanor has never really been anything other than that of someone using her plaything to do what she wants so that was also kind of predictable. While you fight the First Sons and Kessler, he kidnaps Trish and kills her in a karma choice gambit, with your karma determining whether or not she’s proud of you or disowns you entirely; and all the while he contacts you a bit about your progress as a person, with ominous premonitions on “preparing you” for something, with Trish being only one test. Zeke attempts to contact Cole as well to apologize but rightfully gets the cold shoulder for being a selfish bastard and after cutting Moya off, John and Cole finally find the Ray Sphere as it’s about to be brought out to sea. From here you get one of, if not the most important choices in the game: activate the Ray Sphere one last time or destroy it; activating it gets you more power and more people die while destroying gives you nothing, but either way John dies in the Ray Sphere blast and the entire dock goes into the ocean. With this, Kesslar challenges you to a final battle at the original site of the blast and several things are learned after defeating him, with the attempted help of Zeke who wants to redeem himself but gets thrown across the crater.
If you had followed some of the foreshadowing hinted throughout the game (ex. Sasha calling you Kessler and telling you she loves you, Alden comparing you and Kessler as “one in the same” which could be mistaken for a comparison, the John White Dead Drops, and some other clues I didn’t catch thanks to TV tropes) everything went down like this. Kessler was the one who hired you to bring the Ray Sphere to a certain location to “open the package”, leading to the events of the game. Sasha and Alden are connected to Kessler because Sasha used to date him and Alden used to be the heir of the First Sons and we’re eventually planning on overthrowing him together before Sasha got thrown out and turned to drugs (where her toxin is later used out of torture as another test of Cole’s character), the Dead Drops hinting at “Kessler” activating the Ray Sphere and “some kid” was located next to it, the strange visions and even the “Voice of Survival” being killed on live tv after fulfilling his purpose (which was to turn everyone against Cole). Kessler is actually Cole MacGrath from the future, a future where instead of fighting a world ending being known as The Beast, decides to run away with his family, having married Trish with Zeke as his best man. However, by the time he wanted to fight back it was too late, everyone died and the world was near the end after the Beast had chased Kessler across the planet. With one goal in mind, Kessler traveled to the past in order to change several moments: turning people against you in quarantine, killing Trish, showing you these visions, scolding and taunting you; these were all to prepare you for an even greater threat looming in the horizon. After Kessler dies, Cole comes to reckoning with his powers and prepares for what’s ahead, with the final ending (either Cole ruining the city and making it worse or helping Empire City heal) determined by your karma (shoutout to the evil version being corrupted with toxic veins covering your body), with Cole finally lamenting that he’ll probably always be alone in his path as almost everyone close to him has betrayed him or died, and that anyone can turn on him at the drop of the hat if he makes one mistake.
Overall what do I think of this story? I liked it a lot; there was some weak mischaracterization on some people, with only one character I didn’t really feel fit much (that being Zeke), and while not everyone was super fleshed out, I actually thought most of them we’re interesting and I wanted to know more about them. I liked Cole as a character, his gravelly voice mixed in with his frustration at the situation and the love he has for his friends make him a flawed but memorable character and thought Kessler was memorable and that twist with the foreshadowing was fantastic. I enjoyed Sasha’s toxin power being sort of a parallel to her being a toxic person (with her relationship with Kessler being hinted as toxic), and the plot dealing with the hunt for the Ray Sphere was compelling. I’ve heard arguments on whether or not the Karma system was good or not, with arguments against it saying that it wasn’t “nuanced” enough. I don’t necessarily mind, I see where they’re coming from but sometimes I prefer it to be blatantly obvious good or evil, as I don’t always want to have to constantly think about every possible unknown factor in a game to get the ending I want. Even then, depending on what you plan on doing if you’re going for a Good playthrough you’ll have to balance combat with the environment around you making sure you don’t get hurt anyways, which leads into the next section: the gameplay.
The gameplay consists of what is usual in an open world action game of this type; you go around and fight gang members and/or police, obtain collectibles, complete missions along with side quests, and generally climb around the city to your heart's content. What I’ll start with here is your main power/transportation: your main power is electricity, which means shooting lightning bolts out of your hands along with other powers which include a force field, healing people or leaching the life out of them for a energy refill, a sort of force push, amongst other powers that you unlock over time with story moments and experience point unlocks. Your powers won’t last for long however if you use anything other than the default lightning bolts so you’ll have to recharge through numerous environmental elements such as neon signs, circuit breakers, destroyed cars, light posts and pretty much anything that contains electricity which actually feels really good and ties into the environment neatly. There’s also a bit of a strategic element to this factor, as draining these elements bring your health back up in a jam if you need it from the damage you take, and can actually be kind of stressful in a strategic kind of way if you’re retreating. Keep in mind that your health comes back naturally over time, but it’s a lot quicker to just drain something though after you drain it, depending on what it is it either takes a while to come back to full power or it doesn’t come back at all. The powers are varied enough that it feels pretty solid for whichever approach you take, and feels pretty powerful eviscerating an area full of goons trying to wipe you out.
Another aspect of this is parkour; Cole has been free running and climbing and as such that is your main and only way around the environment. There is no fast travel and no vehicles, it’s only you and your movement. In spirit it’s a great concept, and when pulled off properly it works great; with this in mind there are upsides and downsides. The main upside is that it’s not really restrictive like the Assassin’s Creed games were at the time, you move by tapping X and continuously tapping it as you climb the buildings and you move the directions that for the most part feel pretty fluid. However the parkour in this game is very…particular as well; you’ll sometimes try to climb certain places and miss your mark entirely because Cole decides to go a different direction, and sometimes Cole just refuses to walk into a small area a particular way because there’s an invisible wall that pushes him back and so you have to kind of finagle yourself into the area via jumping over it or running around it which pretty much works the problem out though sometimes trying to get certain blast shards leads to dying if it’s near the water (because water and electricity equals death).
Then there’s the environment mixed with the combat; the amount of times I died because I was beating some guy up next to a car from full health is strange, same with killing a guy who morphs into an empty barrel which somehow kicks me in the head and kills me instantly it’s pretty frustrating in an unintentional way (though it could be explained due to a smaller team and budget). Also grinding the rails and across telephone lines feels pretty solid, though it takes time to truly master hopping from wire to wire as the physics of motion can really make you overshoot or miss entirely if you don’t do it early enough or if you don’t slow down. Overall this aspect is pretty solid for the most part, everything kind of fits together minus the strange parkour sometimes but it can be done pretty well, surprisingly so even on the hardest difficulty (which I did for the plat of course) which wasn’t really frustrating due to the open ended nature of the game compared to something like Uncharted’s difficulty. However, the hard mode also gives you less XP which means you’ll have to hit up some spots to grind out enemies for a long time or knock everything out in one go and go into certain missions underpowered. This can be especially frustrating considering what powers were upgraded beforehand to fight against some of the special enemies (or the deadliest enemy in the game: Turrets).
Each gang has their own special gang members, or conduits, that set themselves apart from the normal run and gun soldiers. The Reapers have giant white hoodie fuckers that teleport everywhere and can be a general nuisance, whilst the Dust Men have guys who shoot out little garbage crabs and also wield a rocket launcher to the First Sons having guys who can grow a bit taller and stomp you out. However with this in mind, I like the variation of each gang and how it makes them unique, and truth be told outside of side missions I wish I could see these guys try to stomp each other out more. Speaking of which, feeding into the XP thing: Missions/Side Missions. Other than the main forty story missions, the world mostly consist of you going around on side errands, some of which are unique to the mission and have karma moments and some repeat; like draining listening devices off of buildings or escorting certain NPCs and shocking them when they try to escape to just killing them off. What I can say is that if you’re trying to go for all the powers, especially on Hard, you won’t be able to get enough XP to unlock all the upgrades unless you grind enemies for a while; and when you beat these missions they both barely give you XP as a reward and on top of that they remove most of the gang influence from the territory making it so that it’s harder to find these gang members to grind. It’s kind of a frustrating process to deal with and as such if you’re going for the platinum you have to keep an eye out for that sort of thing, however if you’re a casual player then it’s not a really big deal.
Collectibles such as the Blast Shards don’t give you much XP either, with 350 overall to collect and I believe around 5 XP with each one you’ll get about 1,750 XP for all of them, and that’s not really enough to cover much in the way of upgrades. However they are useful for two things: upgrading your power meter so you can use more and for when you play Infamous 2; if you collect half the blast shards then you get a whopping TWO extra blast cores. Overall, this side it’s not too bad; it feels good to use the powers and strategy to fight and when you do it really well it feels amazing, it’s just some of the other things that can be kind of iffy to deal with. Also, there isn’t much in the way of replayability after these missions and extra objectives (including stunts, which require you to perform certain tricks for XP as well as a trophy) so it’s a bit of an empty world otherwise and I wish there was something more substantial but for what we got I guess I can’t complain too much here.
The atmosphere/soundtrack/sound design/art design are pretty top notch for the most part if I were to say myself. The atmosphere is as said earlier inspired by gritty superhero comics and movies; and you could blatantly tell due to a lot of the main colors being gray and black, a hostile environment that is basically drained of its life, which made me feel uneasy playing it (especially in areas where I haven’t unlocked the power yet. Empire City to me is definitely a living and breathing character on its own (with some of the details such as walking through small puddles shocking the area around it and maybe killing someone if they walk on the same puddle as you being a cool detail), though more of a shell or a husk of one that is slowly fading into oblivion. Though plenty of games feature cities that are gritty and near collapse, I can still remember pretty much almost every part of the game’s map, mixed in with the sky being either pitch black, blue or red depending on your level of karma at the end of the game. The art design of the characters really fits with me as well, with everyone struggling to survive and looking mostly tattered (though Zeke just looks like Elvis so I don’t know how I feel there), and the gangs? Oh god the gangs in this game look great, from the flashy Reapers gang wearing those red hoods to the camouflage the Dust Men have hiding within the trashy environment of the slums to the militarized First Sons organization that looks straight out of a post apocalypse movie. The comic book aesthetic in the cutscenes really play to that strength as well, with pretty much every cutscene being straight out of a graphic novel which when mixed with the voice acting is pretty solid. Compared to Infamous 2’s version of Cole, I happen to like Jason Cottle’s version of Cole MacGrath a lot more due to it’s deep and gravelly voice; he also does his role as Alden Tate pretty well too in comparison that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two roles and thought it was different altogether. Other standouts include Caleb Moody as Zeke, October Moore as Trish and one of my favorites: Phil Lamar as John White. Everyone does a pretty solid job voicing their roles and not once was I brought out of the moment playing the game by strange voice acting choices. Sound Design is also fantastic, with the lightning effects making your attacks really sound punchy, noises all sound like what they’re supposed to be, and truthfully I can’t really complain about anything sound wise. To finish it off, the soundtrack is pretty solid too, nothing that I’d listen to on the way to work but it’s pretty good at bringing you into the moment and not letting go, with a lot of dark ambience mixed with fast paced drums, which was made using environmental object sounds and using them with other, more traditional instruments. I feel that all of these things kind of line up with each other in a way that really makes it unique, if not in general than at least to me.
To finally answer the questions. Is it good and is it worth playing? Yeah, I personally think so. It has a couple of flaws here and there, some mix ups that could’ve been done better but overall I liked it a lot when I first played it and I still feel the same way I did all those years ago when I first played this on the Gamestop Kiosk for the first mission and down to playing it for real as my first Playstation 3 game ever. Following the first title there were sequels, comic book tie ins and a movie that was announced before nothing ever came of it ever again; still though this game, whilst not perfect, lives on in my heart as something that may be a tad flawed here and there but fills me with a time full of nostalgia every time I sit down and play it. I think if anything, the only true downside to this game is that, yet again, it hasn’t been ported to PC and is currently stuck on the Playstation 3 platform or on PS Plus if you really feel like paying all that money out the ass to stream the game. I’m glad I was able to sit down and finally wrap up the platinum after so many years from starting it as my first PS3 game, and eventually I plan to sit down and platinum Infamous 2 before writing up retrospectives on the other games in the series. And as for what happened a bit before/after the game was released? A rivalry with Prototype, a similar open world action game featuring a dark and gritty storyline that apparently had a challenge involving drawing the opposition's main character in lingerie after a challenge by Yahtzee which…interesting. That and more Infamous sequels, 1 of which was great, and the other one not so great, but that’s just the way things work sometimes, along with spin-off games and even comic books, which inspired the series to begin with along with a place in games such as Playstation All Stars Battle Royale and even the PS3 version of Street Fighter X Tekken. I doubt they’ll come out with another Infamous game anytime soon but truth be told I miss this series, and hope that they at least decide to re-release these games on Next Gen/PC ports (even the mixed feeling Second Son arc as I’d call it) because these games had something, a lightning in a bottle (no pun intended this time) feeling that not a lot of titles can really bring back for me.
Links;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1AHs6-cfE&ab_channel=F4m1LyGuy10
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/InFAMOUS
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous#Behind_the_scenes
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458923/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous:_Post_Blast
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous_(comics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_(video_game)
https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/05/22/the-origins-of-infamous.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_Punch_Productions
Infamous starts out with a “shock” (bad pun intended); you see a normal, New York City styled location named Empire City in the thralls of a normal day, that is at least until you press the start button. The power goes out throughout the city and as a normal civilian you see a giant electric dome encompassing an entire city block while a voice checks someone for their pulse, ending it with “Lookin’ good, Cole”. From here you wake up as Cole himself, burnt to a crisp and waking up right in the center of the explosion with everything having gone to hell around you. Your best friend Zeke calls you worried sick, explaining that “terrorists” have exploded stuff all around the city, however you know something is up when you get zapped with electricity and feel absolutely no pain, and in another instance lightning starts striking around you, killing police in the vicinity. You run across the bridge nearby falling unconscious as your nurse girlfriend, Trish, comes to your aid. This tragedy has taken the lives of a lot of people, including Trish’s sister, and that’ll later come back into play. A plague later struck and chaos emerged, with crime getting worse and the military establishing a quarantine on the entire city when his power emerges and he's able to be controlled at least two weeks later and he’s able to control it. I love this introduction, it’s a great way of establishing the setting at hand, and leaving a little bit of mystery as to what’s going on, while leaving a couple of hints that it’s deeper than it seems to those that aren’t fully aware of what’s happening in the plot.
From here, the next mission is made to establish one of the main features in Infamous: the karma. A man proclaiming himself to be “The Voice of Survival” pops up on the TV after hacking the signal and says that food is going to be airdropped into the district square. Cole and Zeke pop over, and Trish plans to meet you there. After climbing up a nearby statue and cutting down the food, the Reapers, a local gang consisting of people in red hoodies with skulls on them, attack and plan to steal it for themselves. Cole uses his powers to fight them off when you’re presented with your first choice: you could either zap a few people and make them run away and leave you with the food (which is the Bad Choice) or you could let the people take some (which is the Good choice). However yet again, The Voice of Survival pops up on a nearby billboard and throws the responsibility for the outbreak on you; regardless Trish leaves Cole, heartbroken over her sister’s death and everyone around him except Zeke starts an active mob against him. Cole doesn’t remember much about the explosion, except that he was running around trying to deliver something for someone as a courier but that’ll soon become clear. Zeke decides you two need to escape through the bridge at the bottom of the city, and when you two meet up and attempt to break through quarantine it ends up with almost every civilian dead except Cole and Zeke again and Cole meets someone new: an FBI agent named Moya, who recruits Cole for a job: her husband, a fellow agent named John White, had attempted to infiltrate an organization named the First Sons, a group working on a project known as the “Ray Sphere”. If he finds John and the Ray Sphere, she clears his name and gets him out of the quarantine; while not exactly trustworthy he has no choice if he wants to get out of the city alive.
Basically from here is where I quickly summarize plot points to make it to the end quick; from here you end up attempting to reconcile with Trish by helping her save people, take back the city from their respective gangs by doing side missions, attempting to assist Zeke in getting laid and helping Moya find traces of her husband via dead drops (leading to story bits once you collect all of them) and through covert activities. Eventually you restore the Neon District’s power supply and fight Sasha, the leader of the Reapers, who has taunted Cole about his former girlfriend Trish and is claiming that he loves him. You’ll also at one point (before the Sasha fight) run into a strange man in a white robe named Kessler, who shoves his hands onto your head in an ambush to show you horrible visions before disappearing entirely; this’ll all work out in the end to a twist I actually really like, and all of this’ll also all come to ahead later so bear with me, but after a battle with her she gets kidnapped by the shadowy First Sons and you land in the Warren District, controlled by the homeless vagrant Alden.
You continue through various missions until Cole, Zeke and the police end up capturing Alden; though before or after this mission depending on your Karma you either finally reconcile with Trish or she ultimately rejects you for being a bastard. Nonetheless, after the mission where Cole, Zeke and the Police try to protect Alden from being reclaimed by his Dust Men brethren (the Dust Men being a group of heavily armed homeless men with guns and suicide bombs), you’ll begin to truly notice Zeke’s arc if you haven’t before. Zeke’s arc once you get into the Warren consists of jealousy, stupidity, and greed; he got captured once before because he wanted to be a hero like you and tried to sneak into a place to find info for you, and in this mission he abandons protecting Alden to play hero outside in the courtyard, which somehow leads to his escape. Though in this case I’ll defend Zeke’s actions here, though for the wrong reasons. Everyone guarding Alden is a trained cop, and if he hadn’t abandoned his post he probably would’ve been killed alongside everyone else, especially for his lack of training so even if it was for the wrong reasons it’s still understood (though I could’ve misread things here). I’ll even point out that though I love the story and the environment, some of the characters are kind of trope-y. To me, Zeke is a caricature of what a nuanced character should’ve been, someone with flaws who instead kind of comes off as a douchebag who throws a temper tantrum over his jealousy of Cole’s powers instead of recognizing the situation he’s in. I’m not saying that there aren’t people like him, it’s just that the way he feels characterized personally in the game is just one I don’t really care for. A lesser offender is Trish, who stereotypically treats you like trash a bit but can be reconciled with the fact that her sister died and she’s still trying to deal with the reality that even though you were the love of her life, it doesn’t help the fact that you are technically the reasons she died. Regardless though, Zeke is the main offender and when you two attempt to take control of the Ray Sphere in his possession, he eventually betrays you for this game’s main bad guy: Kessler, who promises him that he will be able to give him the powers that he’s been seeking after Zeke attempts to activate the Ray Sphere and kills thousands of more people only for it not to work; again it’s kind of a “fucking seriously?” moment and doesn’t make him feel redeemable in the slightest. After he betrays you to Kessler, you escape Alden’s giant tower before learning of the oncoming gang war between the Dust Men and the First Sons over Alden’s “birthright”. You fight Alden in a boss battle on the bridge and after you defeat him you learn that his “birthright” was that his father used to lead the First Sons, and that he was destined to be the heir until Kessler came out of nowhere and overthrew him, leaving Alden homeless and on the streets as a child.
Fighting through the Historic District is the most poignant and memorable part of the game to me, with each act having it’s strengths but with this final act being the most significant of them all; you work with John White (who turns out to be NSA, not FBI) and learn that Moya isn’t his wife and that he doesn’t even know her, Cole has been being used this entire time while trying to search for the Ray Sphere. Of course this was predictable for me as well, Moya’s demeanor has never really been anything other than that of someone using her plaything to do what she wants so that was also kind of predictable. While you fight the First Sons and Kessler, he kidnaps Trish and kills her in a karma choice gambit, with your karma determining whether or not she’s proud of you or disowns you entirely; and all the while he contacts you a bit about your progress as a person, with ominous premonitions on “preparing you” for something, with Trish being only one test. Zeke attempts to contact Cole as well to apologize but rightfully gets the cold shoulder for being a selfish bastard and after cutting Moya off, John and Cole finally find the Ray Sphere as it’s about to be brought out to sea. From here you get one of, if not the most important choices in the game: activate the Ray Sphere one last time or destroy it; activating it gets you more power and more people die while destroying gives you nothing, but either way John dies in the Ray Sphere blast and the entire dock goes into the ocean. With this, Kesslar challenges you to a final battle at the original site of the blast and several things are learned after defeating him, with the attempted help of Zeke who wants to redeem himself but gets thrown across the crater.
If you had followed some of the foreshadowing hinted throughout the game (ex. Sasha calling you Kessler and telling you she loves you, Alden comparing you and Kessler as “one in the same” which could be mistaken for a comparison, the John White Dead Drops, and some other clues I didn’t catch thanks to TV tropes) everything went down like this. Kessler was the one who hired you to bring the Ray Sphere to a certain location to “open the package”, leading to the events of the game. Sasha and Alden are connected to Kessler because Sasha used to date him and Alden used to be the heir of the First Sons and we’re eventually planning on overthrowing him together before Sasha got thrown out and turned to drugs (where her toxin is later used out of torture as another test of Cole’s character), the Dead Drops hinting at “Kessler” activating the Ray Sphere and “some kid” was located next to it, the strange visions and even the “Voice of Survival” being killed on live tv after fulfilling his purpose (which was to turn everyone against Cole). Kessler is actually Cole MacGrath from the future, a future where instead of fighting a world ending being known as The Beast, decides to run away with his family, having married Trish with Zeke as his best man. However, by the time he wanted to fight back it was too late, everyone died and the world was near the end after the Beast had chased Kessler across the planet. With one goal in mind, Kessler traveled to the past in order to change several moments: turning people against you in quarantine, killing Trish, showing you these visions, scolding and taunting you; these were all to prepare you for an even greater threat looming in the horizon. After Kessler dies, Cole comes to reckoning with his powers and prepares for what’s ahead, with the final ending (either Cole ruining the city and making it worse or helping Empire City heal) determined by your karma (shoutout to the evil version being corrupted with toxic veins covering your body), with Cole finally lamenting that he’ll probably always be alone in his path as almost everyone close to him has betrayed him or died, and that anyone can turn on him at the drop of the hat if he makes one mistake.
Overall what do I think of this story? I liked it a lot; there was some weak mischaracterization on some people, with only one character I didn’t really feel fit much (that being Zeke), and while not everyone was super fleshed out, I actually thought most of them we’re interesting and I wanted to know more about them. I liked Cole as a character, his gravelly voice mixed in with his frustration at the situation and the love he has for his friends make him a flawed but memorable character and thought Kessler was memorable and that twist with the foreshadowing was fantastic. I enjoyed Sasha’s toxin power being sort of a parallel to her being a toxic person (with her relationship with Kessler being hinted as toxic), and the plot dealing with the hunt for the Ray Sphere was compelling. I’ve heard arguments on whether or not the Karma system was good or not, with arguments against it saying that it wasn’t “nuanced” enough. I don’t necessarily mind, I see where they’re coming from but sometimes I prefer it to be blatantly obvious good or evil, as I don’t always want to have to constantly think about every possible unknown factor in a game to get the ending I want. Even then, depending on what you plan on doing if you’re going for a Good playthrough you’ll have to balance combat with the environment around you making sure you don’t get hurt anyways, which leads into the next section: the gameplay.
The gameplay consists of what is usual in an open world action game of this type; you go around and fight gang members and/or police, obtain collectibles, complete missions along with side quests, and generally climb around the city to your heart's content. What I’ll start with here is your main power/transportation: your main power is electricity, which means shooting lightning bolts out of your hands along with other powers which include a force field, healing people or leaching the life out of them for a energy refill, a sort of force push, amongst other powers that you unlock over time with story moments and experience point unlocks. Your powers won’t last for long however if you use anything other than the default lightning bolts so you’ll have to recharge through numerous environmental elements such as neon signs, circuit breakers, destroyed cars, light posts and pretty much anything that contains electricity which actually feels really good and ties into the environment neatly. There’s also a bit of a strategic element to this factor, as draining these elements bring your health back up in a jam if you need it from the damage you take, and can actually be kind of stressful in a strategic kind of way if you’re retreating. Keep in mind that your health comes back naturally over time, but it’s a lot quicker to just drain something though after you drain it, depending on what it is it either takes a while to come back to full power or it doesn’t come back at all. The powers are varied enough that it feels pretty solid for whichever approach you take, and feels pretty powerful eviscerating an area full of goons trying to wipe you out.
Another aspect of this is parkour; Cole has been free running and climbing and as such that is your main and only way around the environment. There is no fast travel and no vehicles, it’s only you and your movement. In spirit it’s a great concept, and when pulled off properly it works great; with this in mind there are upsides and downsides. The main upside is that it’s not really restrictive like the Assassin’s Creed games were at the time, you move by tapping X and continuously tapping it as you climb the buildings and you move the directions that for the most part feel pretty fluid. However the parkour in this game is very…particular as well; you’ll sometimes try to climb certain places and miss your mark entirely because Cole decides to go a different direction, and sometimes Cole just refuses to walk into a small area a particular way because there’s an invisible wall that pushes him back and so you have to kind of finagle yourself into the area via jumping over it or running around it which pretty much works the problem out though sometimes trying to get certain blast shards leads to dying if it’s near the water (because water and electricity equals death).
Then there’s the environment mixed with the combat; the amount of times I died because I was beating some guy up next to a car from full health is strange, same with killing a guy who morphs into an empty barrel which somehow kicks me in the head and kills me instantly it’s pretty frustrating in an unintentional way (though it could be explained due to a smaller team and budget). Also grinding the rails and across telephone lines feels pretty solid, though it takes time to truly master hopping from wire to wire as the physics of motion can really make you overshoot or miss entirely if you don’t do it early enough or if you don’t slow down. Overall this aspect is pretty solid for the most part, everything kind of fits together minus the strange parkour sometimes but it can be done pretty well, surprisingly so even on the hardest difficulty (which I did for the plat of course) which wasn’t really frustrating due to the open ended nature of the game compared to something like Uncharted’s difficulty. However, the hard mode also gives you less XP which means you’ll have to hit up some spots to grind out enemies for a long time or knock everything out in one go and go into certain missions underpowered. This can be especially frustrating considering what powers were upgraded beforehand to fight against some of the special enemies (or the deadliest enemy in the game: Turrets).
Each gang has their own special gang members, or conduits, that set themselves apart from the normal run and gun soldiers. The Reapers have giant white hoodie fuckers that teleport everywhere and can be a general nuisance, whilst the Dust Men have guys who shoot out little garbage crabs and also wield a rocket launcher to the First Sons having guys who can grow a bit taller and stomp you out. However with this in mind, I like the variation of each gang and how it makes them unique, and truth be told outside of side missions I wish I could see these guys try to stomp each other out more. Speaking of which, feeding into the XP thing: Missions/Side Missions. Other than the main forty story missions, the world mostly consist of you going around on side errands, some of which are unique to the mission and have karma moments and some repeat; like draining listening devices off of buildings or escorting certain NPCs and shocking them when they try to escape to just killing them off. What I can say is that if you’re trying to go for all the powers, especially on Hard, you won’t be able to get enough XP to unlock all the upgrades unless you grind enemies for a while; and when you beat these missions they both barely give you XP as a reward and on top of that they remove most of the gang influence from the territory making it so that it’s harder to find these gang members to grind. It’s kind of a frustrating process to deal with and as such if you’re going for the platinum you have to keep an eye out for that sort of thing, however if you’re a casual player then it’s not a really big deal.
Collectibles such as the Blast Shards don’t give you much XP either, with 350 overall to collect and I believe around 5 XP with each one you’ll get about 1,750 XP for all of them, and that’s not really enough to cover much in the way of upgrades. However they are useful for two things: upgrading your power meter so you can use more and for when you play Infamous 2; if you collect half the blast shards then you get a whopping TWO extra blast cores. Overall, this side it’s not too bad; it feels good to use the powers and strategy to fight and when you do it really well it feels amazing, it’s just some of the other things that can be kind of iffy to deal with. Also, there isn’t much in the way of replayability after these missions and extra objectives (including stunts, which require you to perform certain tricks for XP as well as a trophy) so it’s a bit of an empty world otherwise and I wish there was something more substantial but for what we got I guess I can’t complain too much here.
The atmosphere/soundtrack/sound design/art design are pretty top notch for the most part if I were to say myself. The atmosphere is as said earlier inspired by gritty superhero comics and movies; and you could blatantly tell due to a lot of the main colors being gray and black, a hostile environment that is basically drained of its life, which made me feel uneasy playing it (especially in areas where I haven’t unlocked the power yet. Empire City to me is definitely a living and breathing character on its own (with some of the details such as walking through small puddles shocking the area around it and maybe killing someone if they walk on the same puddle as you being a cool detail), though more of a shell or a husk of one that is slowly fading into oblivion. Though plenty of games feature cities that are gritty and near collapse, I can still remember pretty much almost every part of the game’s map, mixed in with the sky being either pitch black, blue or red depending on your level of karma at the end of the game. The art design of the characters really fits with me as well, with everyone struggling to survive and looking mostly tattered (though Zeke just looks like Elvis so I don’t know how I feel there), and the gangs? Oh god the gangs in this game look great, from the flashy Reapers gang wearing those red hoods to the camouflage the Dust Men have hiding within the trashy environment of the slums to the militarized First Sons organization that looks straight out of a post apocalypse movie. The comic book aesthetic in the cutscenes really play to that strength as well, with pretty much every cutscene being straight out of a graphic novel which when mixed with the voice acting is pretty solid. Compared to Infamous 2’s version of Cole, I happen to like Jason Cottle’s version of Cole MacGrath a lot more due to it’s deep and gravelly voice; he also does his role as Alden Tate pretty well too in comparison that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two roles and thought it was different altogether. Other standouts include Caleb Moody as Zeke, October Moore as Trish and one of my favorites: Phil Lamar as John White. Everyone does a pretty solid job voicing their roles and not once was I brought out of the moment playing the game by strange voice acting choices. Sound Design is also fantastic, with the lightning effects making your attacks really sound punchy, noises all sound like what they’re supposed to be, and truthfully I can’t really complain about anything sound wise. To finish it off, the soundtrack is pretty solid too, nothing that I’d listen to on the way to work but it’s pretty good at bringing you into the moment and not letting go, with a lot of dark ambience mixed with fast paced drums, which was made using environmental object sounds and using them with other, more traditional instruments. I feel that all of these things kind of line up with each other in a way that really makes it unique, if not in general than at least to me.
To finally answer the questions. Is it good and is it worth playing? Yeah, I personally think so. It has a couple of flaws here and there, some mix ups that could’ve been done better but overall I liked it a lot when I first played it and I still feel the same way I did all those years ago when I first played this on the Gamestop Kiosk for the first mission and down to playing it for real as my first Playstation 3 game ever. Following the first title there were sequels, comic book tie ins and a movie that was announced before nothing ever came of it ever again; still though this game, whilst not perfect, lives on in my heart as something that may be a tad flawed here and there but fills me with a time full of nostalgia every time I sit down and play it. I think if anything, the only true downside to this game is that, yet again, it hasn’t been ported to PC and is currently stuck on the Playstation 3 platform or on PS Plus if you really feel like paying all that money out the ass to stream the game. I’m glad I was able to sit down and finally wrap up the platinum after so many years from starting it as my first PS3 game, and eventually I plan to sit down and platinum Infamous 2 before writing up retrospectives on the other games in the series. And as for what happened a bit before/after the game was released? A rivalry with Prototype, a similar open world action game featuring a dark and gritty storyline that apparently had a challenge involving drawing the opposition's main character in lingerie after a challenge by Yahtzee which…interesting. That and more Infamous sequels, 1 of which was great, and the other one not so great, but that’s just the way things work sometimes, along with spin-off games and even comic books, which inspired the series to begin with along with a place in games such as Playstation All Stars Battle Royale and even the PS3 version of Street Fighter X Tekken. I doubt they’ll come out with another Infamous game anytime soon but truth be told I miss this series, and hope that they at least decide to re-release these games on Next Gen/PC ports (even the mixed feeling Second Son arc as I’d call it) because these games had something, a lightning in a bottle (no pun intended this time) feeling that not a lot of titles can really bring back for me.
Links;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1AHs6-cfE&ab_channel=F4m1LyGuy10
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/InFAMOUS
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous#Behind_the_scenes
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458923/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous:_Post_Blast
https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous_(comics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_(video_game)
https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/05/22/the-origins-of-infamous.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_Punch_Productions
1996
This review contains spoilers
Harvester is a point and click game developed by DigiFX Interactive and published on Steam by Nightdive Studios. DigiFX was originally known as FutureVision, Inc. and developed games The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki and Command Adventures: Starship before development began on this game. I don’t know much about its history other than writer Gilbert P. Austin pitched this to the company in an attempt to be able to “compete” with the giants. I’ll throw a couple links down at the bottom if I can about the dev history but I wanna go into my personal history. I wasn’t really familiar with this game before reviewer Grimbeard made a vid on this but I remember looking into it and buying it on a whim because I enjoy old point and clicks even if I don’t play them because I suck at puzzles, then watching his vid and realizing “wow, I DO have this game.” and not playing it until streaming it for a friend recently.
The gameplay is as said, a point and click game, and it has logic puzzles if that’s your thing. Now I can’t pretend like I completed it all by myself with my thinking and brain power because one, I was streaming for someone so I wanted to keep the pace going well and two I would get stuck anyways because I suck so I used a guide. However with that in mind, I can’t necessarily talk about that as much as I can talk about other things I’ve noticed. Everything in the town of Harvester is warped with its own sort of bridge logic, and as such so are the people; the first ½ to ¾ of the game you’ll be walking around, picking up items, talking to the townsfolk, and using these tools to solve certain steps just to get into “The Lodge”. There’s a lot more depth to the game than you think so I’d recommend not just using the guide but also going out of your way and exploring more. You can get extra flavor by showing people certain objects; for example if you steal the sheriff’s checkbook he uses for a blackmail scheme, photocopy it and show it to people around the town, they all have their own reactions; and you can even bring it to the sheriff himself for an extra “Get out of Jail Free” card later. This is useful if you want to do some murdering or you get caught doing something by accident as if you get arrested three times then you fail and have to reload a save, and this will give you another chance. Do certain things then come back later and talk to people to get their thoughts on it and if you type out certain text phrases to certain people, you’ll get certain dialogue trees that wouldn’t be accessible otherwise. From here I’m gonna combine the atmosphere and other stuff categories because these dialogue options are warped and morbid (for example, type F u c k to your mother for…results). Certain places aren’t even relevant but lead to fun moments, like talking to the guy at the nuke base leads to a bit of cold war paranoia. Other notables include Mr. Pottsdam’s creepy obsession with his daughter and meat, as well as the TV host who goes on a diatribe about TV violence, and the Sheriff is a comedic genius with his timing. There’s a lot of funny moments and truth be told if I wasn’t streaming I would’ve spent half the time trying to find all the dialogue.
Once you get into the Lodge though, that's when things go downhill; it has its interesting moments and baffling humor but this is when it forces you into combat. I’ll start by saying rotate your saves as the combat is shoddy and there isn’t really a way to “master” it persay as it’s kind of just a matter of luck and a bit of timing. In order to equip/fight, right click on your persons and then right click again on certain weapons to pull them out, then hold the arrow keys and press Ctrl to swing/shoot. Also a pro-tip, definitely use the guide here. I don’t know if you can skip the shotgun but you will NEED it later, scrounge all the shells you can and then try not to use any of it because you will need it for certain encounters with projectile wielders. Herein lies a problem; you’re not really used to doing this stuff except if you decided to experiment a bit with murder in town so doing this is just jarring as hell, mixed with the limited ammo and health pickups there’s a good chance that you might screw yourself over here. I understand that in a game like this, combat feels like a thematic necessity with the violence but it moreso just feels annoying with how it pans out and you WILL get damaged fighting. If I were to give any other tips I would say when you’re in the third level, don’t have s e x with the prostitute or you’ll get an STD and have to find an antidote or you will die, just trust me.
As for the plot, there’s so much here that I’m not even sure where to begin but I know I won’t go through a beat for beat basis as I’ll violate the review limits. Instead I’m going to throw out that this game is a painfully obvious satire on violence as it’s portrayed in the media as well as the hypocrisy behind people outcrying against violence. Everyone one way or another contributes in some way to this satire, especially in the Lodge portion but ultimately the plot is this: Steve wakes up to learn he’s about to get married, remembers nothing and is told to “join the lodge”, run by the Order of the Harvest Moon. You’ll get some flavor as you play but you’ll eventually run through five different trials of different scales, a lot of which leads to death before your fiance, Steph, disappears and you enter the lodge to rescue. When you finally beat the game you’re left with the twist: You are in a simulation meant to desensitize you to violence and breed serial killers before you’re left with two endings: Live in Harvest and marry Steph, which leads to you dying in the real world or kill her and live on, becoming a killer before it cuts to the final scene of you playing Harvester while Steve’s mom gives him hell on how “Playing violent video games will turn you violent”. I don’t usually care for “it was all a dream” twists, neither did my friend who I streamed it to but I actually didn’t hate it and felt that it made sense considering the warped tone this game has; with even the Lodge having different trials based on religious parody, gladiator fights, BDSM dungeons, a really warped one involving childbirth and how parasitic it can feel; like it certain tries to hit all the nails in the head even if it's not the most highbrow and intellectual but then again I like Postal 2 so I don't care lol.
So what happened after the game was made? Nothing. All I know about it was that it was shut down and everyone moved on. All I know personally is that in an ironic twist I didn’t see coming, the actor who plays Steve, Kurt Kistler, was arrested for CP (in flannel no less) which…ewww. The actress who plays Karin, Rheagan Wallace, was in stuff like Agents of SHIELD and Hellraiser: Judgment. So is it worth playing? I would say yes, but play this game with a lot of patience, and both a guide at hand and a willingness to deviate a bit; definitely have an open sense of humor and a fondness for point and click logic is definitely recommended. I wish I could go into it more but there's so much I want to say that I'd need a whole essay to cover everything; it's a lowbrow yet hilarious romp on modern day morality that's better explained by professionals, though if you want to stop once you get into the Lodge it's understandable, and according to one person you can input the code BRUCE for invincibility though I'm unsure of even how to do that. Also Alt+Enter is how to fullscreen in case you window it by mistake.
https://archive.org/details/grimbeardharvester (Good Vid)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Harvester
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=248246741 (Guide)
https://www.gog.com/forum/harvester/harvester_secrets_easter_eggs_etc_spoilers
https://archive.org/details/harvester-the-script/mode/2up
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The gameplay is as said, a point and click game, and it has logic puzzles if that’s your thing. Now I can’t pretend like I completed it all by myself with my thinking and brain power because one, I was streaming for someone so I wanted to keep the pace going well and two I would get stuck anyways because I suck so I used a guide. However with that in mind, I can’t necessarily talk about that as much as I can talk about other things I’ve noticed. Everything in the town of Harvester is warped with its own sort of bridge logic, and as such so are the people; the first ½ to ¾ of the game you’ll be walking around, picking up items, talking to the townsfolk, and using these tools to solve certain steps just to get into “The Lodge”. There’s a lot more depth to the game than you think so I’d recommend not just using the guide but also going out of your way and exploring more. You can get extra flavor by showing people certain objects; for example if you steal the sheriff’s checkbook he uses for a blackmail scheme, photocopy it and show it to people around the town, they all have their own reactions; and you can even bring it to the sheriff himself for an extra “Get out of Jail Free” card later. This is useful if you want to do some murdering or you get caught doing something by accident as if you get arrested three times then you fail and have to reload a save, and this will give you another chance. Do certain things then come back later and talk to people to get their thoughts on it and if you type out certain text phrases to certain people, you’ll get certain dialogue trees that wouldn’t be accessible otherwise. From here I’m gonna combine the atmosphere and other stuff categories because these dialogue options are warped and morbid (for example, type F u c k to your mother for…results). Certain places aren’t even relevant but lead to fun moments, like talking to the guy at the nuke base leads to a bit of cold war paranoia. Other notables include Mr. Pottsdam’s creepy obsession with his daughter and meat, as well as the TV host who goes on a diatribe about TV violence, and the Sheriff is a comedic genius with his timing. There’s a lot of funny moments and truth be told if I wasn’t streaming I would’ve spent half the time trying to find all the dialogue.
Once you get into the Lodge though, that's when things go downhill; it has its interesting moments and baffling humor but this is when it forces you into combat. I’ll start by saying rotate your saves as the combat is shoddy and there isn’t really a way to “master” it persay as it’s kind of just a matter of luck and a bit of timing. In order to equip/fight, right click on your persons and then right click again on certain weapons to pull them out, then hold the arrow keys and press Ctrl to swing/shoot. Also a pro-tip, definitely use the guide here. I don’t know if you can skip the shotgun but you will NEED it later, scrounge all the shells you can and then try not to use any of it because you will need it for certain encounters with projectile wielders. Herein lies a problem; you’re not really used to doing this stuff except if you decided to experiment a bit with murder in town so doing this is just jarring as hell, mixed with the limited ammo and health pickups there’s a good chance that you might screw yourself over here. I understand that in a game like this, combat feels like a thematic necessity with the violence but it moreso just feels annoying with how it pans out and you WILL get damaged fighting. If I were to give any other tips I would say when you’re in the third level, don’t have s e x with the prostitute or you’ll get an STD and have to find an antidote or you will die, just trust me.
As for the plot, there’s so much here that I’m not even sure where to begin but I know I won’t go through a beat for beat basis as I’ll violate the review limits. Instead I’m going to throw out that this game is a painfully obvious satire on violence as it’s portrayed in the media as well as the hypocrisy behind people outcrying against violence. Everyone one way or another contributes in some way to this satire, especially in the Lodge portion but ultimately the plot is this: Steve wakes up to learn he’s about to get married, remembers nothing and is told to “join the lodge”, run by the Order of the Harvest Moon. You’ll get some flavor as you play but you’ll eventually run through five different trials of different scales, a lot of which leads to death before your fiance, Steph, disappears and you enter the lodge to rescue. When you finally beat the game you’re left with the twist: You are in a simulation meant to desensitize you to violence and breed serial killers before you’re left with two endings: Live in Harvest and marry Steph, which leads to you dying in the real world or kill her and live on, becoming a killer before it cuts to the final scene of you playing Harvester while Steve’s mom gives him hell on how “Playing violent video games will turn you violent”. I don’t usually care for “it was all a dream” twists, neither did my friend who I streamed it to but I actually didn’t hate it and felt that it made sense considering the warped tone this game has; with even the Lodge having different trials based on religious parody, gladiator fights, BDSM dungeons, a really warped one involving childbirth and how parasitic it can feel; like it certain tries to hit all the nails in the head even if it's not the most highbrow and intellectual but then again I like Postal 2 so I don't care lol.
So what happened after the game was made? Nothing. All I know about it was that it was shut down and everyone moved on. All I know personally is that in an ironic twist I didn’t see coming, the actor who plays Steve, Kurt Kistler, was arrested for CP (in flannel no less) which…ewww. The actress who plays Karin, Rheagan Wallace, was in stuff like Agents of SHIELD and Hellraiser: Judgment. So is it worth playing? I would say yes, but play this game with a lot of patience, and both a guide at hand and a willingness to deviate a bit; definitely have an open sense of humor and a fondness for point and click logic is definitely recommended. I wish I could go into it more but there's so much I want to say that I'd need a whole essay to cover everything; it's a lowbrow yet hilarious romp on modern day morality that's better explained by professionals, though if you want to stop once you get into the Lodge it's understandable, and according to one person you can input the code BRUCE for invincibility though I'm unsure of even how to do that. Also Alt+Enter is how to fullscreen in case you window it by mistake.
https://archive.org/details/grimbeardharvester (Good Vid)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Harvester
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=248246741 (Guide)
https://www.gog.com/forum/harvester/harvester_secrets_easter_eggs_etc_spoilers
https://archive.org/details/harvester-the-script/mode/2up
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2010
This review contains spoilers
Dead Rising 2 is a game developed at the time by Blue Castle Games, aka the defunct Capcom Vancouver. Before Dead Rising 2, Blue Castle was mostly known because of their baseball titles like The Bigs and MLB: Front Office Manager. Now I’m unsure how exactly they got hired by Capcom to make the game, but according to a Dead Rising wiki page they were chosen because they had an emulator that made more zombies appear on screen. Before they released this however, they released a sort of DLC prologue called Case Zero, set after an outbreak in Vegas starring Chuck and his daughter that was only released on Xbox Live Arcade (which not putting the DLCs on PC is an L move by Capcom to be honest) but had a neat feature where you could reach level 5 and transfer that progress into this game. A prequel comic was released later called Road to Fortune, explaining the events between 1 and 2 chronicling the Vegas outbreak. Overall, it’s better in some ways and worse in others, so let me get started with the gameplay.
The gameplay has been overhauled from the first's; mostly with the new combo feature, where you can combine certain parts to make over-the-top weapons to kill the undead. This is marked with a blue wrench icon next to the items that blink when next to another that you can at a workbench. These weapons are unlocked via combo cards, which could either be found by rescuing survivors, completing certain events or finding posters hidden throughout Fortune City. Alternatively you could also just create them yourselves but without that official unlock you’ll be missing special moves; in Universe it’s explained because Chuck Greene is a motocross racer, so he’d have the knowhow to actually create these tools, and whilst I love the original Dead Rising, this was a big step that they needed to expand. It was so good in fact it became a crutch for the rest of the series, even with Frank who has no mechanics experience at all. Certain features are still here like the ability to change into clothes around the map, rescue survivors to bring back to the safe room for points to level up; obtain money through minigames, quests and other ways to buy weapons, zombrex and car keys and more. Psychopaths return and are memorable, though a bit less so for me (highlights being Chef Antwon and the Sheriff psycho). The hordes are even bigger in the more open spaces, and just like the last game more deadly once you hit nighttime, and even more difficult once the military arrives if you’ve been following the story. The story cases are mandatory if you’re going for the best ending, though you could always just mess about like the first game, there’s no official sandbox mode; just a Terror Is Reality mode where you compete against online players for prizes to unlock in the story which of course…is pretty dead. If I were to pinpoint detractions, it’s that the pace of the game, while thankful the timer is more forgiving, feels slower compared to the first one and less impactful. Going to throw this out too, this game should’ve had decent controller support if it was on consoles as well instead of just being lazily thrown together. After a few mishaps, I found a program that worked Controller Companion. I had to mess about in Steam Big Picture as well but it worked, here are some links.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=675145506&searchtext=Dead+Rising
The plot follows Chuck Greene, a motocross racer/father of Katey, a bite victim whose mother died in the previous outbreak in Vegas. Chuck is determined to get Katey her meds by any means necessary, which includes signing up for Tyrone King’s (or TK) show, Terror is Reality to kill zombies. Things go awry however as one of the gates holding the zombies is blown up by an unknown person and an outbreak occurs. Chuck rescues Katey and runs to a nearby safe house led by security guard Sullivan. There he meets Stacey, a leading member in CURE and via a news report by Rebecca Chang, it’s said that Chuck himself set up the outbreak in a terrorist attack as retaliation for his wife’s death. He’s being set up and goes out into the city not only to find Katey her meds but also find out the truth. What I’ll say is that every set amount of hours you have to find zombrex and bring it back to Katey, making time management difficult if you’re going for survivors, and makes it annoying as hell regardless of Chuck’s love for Katey. I understand Chuck is a good dude/great father but most people don’t make the connection to WANT to help so that makes bringing Zombrex (her meds) back a chore as well as ironically making the players disconnect.
You run into one of my faves, Rebecca Chang, a reporter determined like Frank West to find the scoop, and was given tapes by her source framing Chuck. Eventually you learn that this source is TK’s female cohorts, Amber and Crystal, a pair of deadly twins with a penchant for swords. He learns that TK helped start the outbreak so he could rob Fortune City and after you finally take down his helicopter on top of a hotel. Later, hope arrives in the form of the military, before they're crushed as gas shoots out from the tunnels below. Chuck investigates to find out that Phenotrans, the company creating Zombrex, started the outbreak/bribed TK so they could harvest a ton of Queens for the meds (the queens being a plot point carried from the first DR) so they can continue to make profit. Bringing the evidence, Rebecca gets shot as Sullivan escapes with the intel, revealing that he framed you and works for Phenotrans. Chuck chases Sullivan to the roof of a casino, and it’s learned that Phenotrans started Vegas as well, enraging Chuck and leading to Sullivan’s death. Chuck then contacts Rebecca’s news station asking for evac in exchange for the story. If you go Overtime and give TK zombrex, he ends up kidnapping Stacey/Katey and you have to do a fetch quest before killing him/rescuing the two. It’s not a bad plot, but it has some issues; the main one is Sullivan's reveal is boring and so has less impact than OFR’s twist with Stacey being the main villain, which arguably makes more sense. Chuck has some of the same dad jokes that Frank would have but it also feels a bit flat, same with banter between him and Rebecca; it feels like something Frank would do more than Chuck would considering his vibes making it feel like a bit jarring and out of character. I just don’t find him to be interesting and as such the characters around him are more memorable.
The atmosphere/soundtrack is solid; Fortune City is vibrant in its colors as an expy of Las Vegas and as such while it's in Nevada, you can tell it’s in the desert even if you don’t see it yourself. The sound design for the weapons are punchy, and the actors/actresses do a great job at delivering the sort of campy/semi-serious plot; Benita Ha as Rebecca Chang is my favorite with the sarcastic delivery but Darren Herbert as Tyrone King eats up the screen and goes full ham in comedic form which I love. The soundtrack, while not delivering as many memorable tracks as the first one has some interesting ones, my favorite is VIP Lounge. Graphically it’s an improvement too, with new details especially on character models.
Overall, here are my thoughts; it’s a decent game and improves in most ways from the OG Dead Rising. However there are certain things that are lacking and just miss the soul you know? I don’t hate this game but I’d say it’s probably one of my least favorite Dead Rising titles. If I were to compare this with OTR I would say it's less interesting but also more functional than OTR’s PC Port. They would release another DLC only available to Xbox called Case West; and the series sorta went downhill. Personally, I like Off the Record more because of all the added content but if you prefer a functional vanilla game then this is it.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The gameplay has been overhauled from the first's; mostly with the new combo feature, where you can combine certain parts to make over-the-top weapons to kill the undead. This is marked with a blue wrench icon next to the items that blink when next to another that you can at a workbench. These weapons are unlocked via combo cards, which could either be found by rescuing survivors, completing certain events or finding posters hidden throughout Fortune City. Alternatively you could also just create them yourselves but without that official unlock you’ll be missing special moves; in Universe it’s explained because Chuck Greene is a motocross racer, so he’d have the knowhow to actually create these tools, and whilst I love the original Dead Rising, this was a big step that they needed to expand. It was so good in fact it became a crutch for the rest of the series, even with Frank who has no mechanics experience at all. Certain features are still here like the ability to change into clothes around the map, rescue survivors to bring back to the safe room for points to level up; obtain money through minigames, quests and other ways to buy weapons, zombrex and car keys and more. Psychopaths return and are memorable, though a bit less so for me (highlights being Chef Antwon and the Sheriff psycho). The hordes are even bigger in the more open spaces, and just like the last game more deadly once you hit nighttime, and even more difficult once the military arrives if you’ve been following the story. The story cases are mandatory if you’re going for the best ending, though you could always just mess about like the first game, there’s no official sandbox mode; just a Terror Is Reality mode where you compete against online players for prizes to unlock in the story which of course…is pretty dead. If I were to pinpoint detractions, it’s that the pace of the game, while thankful the timer is more forgiving, feels slower compared to the first one and less impactful. Going to throw this out too, this game should’ve had decent controller support if it was on consoles as well instead of just being lazily thrown together. After a few mishaps, I found a program that worked Controller Companion. I had to mess about in Steam Big Picture as well but it worked, here are some links.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=675145506&searchtext=Dead+Rising
The plot follows Chuck Greene, a motocross racer/father of Katey, a bite victim whose mother died in the previous outbreak in Vegas. Chuck is determined to get Katey her meds by any means necessary, which includes signing up for Tyrone King’s (or TK) show, Terror is Reality to kill zombies. Things go awry however as one of the gates holding the zombies is blown up by an unknown person and an outbreak occurs. Chuck rescues Katey and runs to a nearby safe house led by security guard Sullivan. There he meets Stacey, a leading member in CURE and via a news report by Rebecca Chang, it’s said that Chuck himself set up the outbreak in a terrorist attack as retaliation for his wife’s death. He’s being set up and goes out into the city not only to find Katey her meds but also find out the truth. What I’ll say is that every set amount of hours you have to find zombrex and bring it back to Katey, making time management difficult if you’re going for survivors, and makes it annoying as hell regardless of Chuck’s love for Katey. I understand Chuck is a good dude/great father but most people don’t make the connection to WANT to help so that makes bringing Zombrex (her meds) back a chore as well as ironically making the players disconnect.
You run into one of my faves, Rebecca Chang, a reporter determined like Frank West to find the scoop, and was given tapes by her source framing Chuck. Eventually you learn that this source is TK’s female cohorts, Amber and Crystal, a pair of deadly twins with a penchant for swords. He learns that TK helped start the outbreak so he could rob Fortune City and after you finally take down his helicopter on top of a hotel. Later, hope arrives in the form of the military, before they're crushed as gas shoots out from the tunnels below. Chuck investigates to find out that Phenotrans, the company creating Zombrex, started the outbreak/bribed TK so they could harvest a ton of Queens for the meds (the queens being a plot point carried from the first DR) so they can continue to make profit. Bringing the evidence, Rebecca gets shot as Sullivan escapes with the intel, revealing that he framed you and works for Phenotrans. Chuck chases Sullivan to the roof of a casino, and it’s learned that Phenotrans started Vegas as well, enraging Chuck and leading to Sullivan’s death. Chuck then contacts Rebecca’s news station asking for evac in exchange for the story. If you go Overtime and give TK zombrex, he ends up kidnapping Stacey/Katey and you have to do a fetch quest before killing him/rescuing the two. It’s not a bad plot, but it has some issues; the main one is Sullivan's reveal is boring and so has less impact than OFR’s twist with Stacey being the main villain, which arguably makes more sense. Chuck has some of the same dad jokes that Frank would have but it also feels a bit flat, same with banter between him and Rebecca; it feels like something Frank would do more than Chuck would considering his vibes making it feel like a bit jarring and out of character. I just don’t find him to be interesting and as such the characters around him are more memorable.
The atmosphere/soundtrack is solid; Fortune City is vibrant in its colors as an expy of Las Vegas and as such while it's in Nevada, you can tell it’s in the desert even if you don’t see it yourself. The sound design for the weapons are punchy, and the actors/actresses do a great job at delivering the sort of campy/semi-serious plot; Benita Ha as Rebecca Chang is my favorite with the sarcastic delivery but Darren Herbert as Tyrone King eats up the screen and goes full ham in comedic form which I love. The soundtrack, while not delivering as many memorable tracks as the first one has some interesting ones, my favorite is VIP Lounge. Graphically it’s an improvement too, with new details especially on character models.
Overall, here are my thoughts; it’s a decent game and improves in most ways from the OG Dead Rising. However there are certain things that are lacking and just miss the soul you know? I don’t hate this game but I’d say it’s probably one of my least favorite Dead Rising titles. If I were to compare this with OTR I would say it's less interesting but also more functional than OTR’s PC Port. They would release another DLC only available to Xbox called Case West; and the series sorta went downhill. Personally, I like Off the Record more because of all the added content but if you prefer a functional vanilla game then this is it.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is an open-world zombie sandbox game developed by the defunct Capcom Vancouver as a sort of expansion pack/game remix of the original Dead Rising 2. What does this mean? It’s largely the same game as Dead Rising 2 but with more content (new combo weapons, a new area in Fortune City, two new psychopaths, etc) and a returning protagonist: Frank West from the first game. To sum up: it’s just more Dead Rising 2 except for certain changes (as it is considered a non canon spin-off) so I need to write up a review for the previous game here soon. But what I can tell you is that this is my second favorite Dead Rising game next to the original. It took me a while to pick this up but I finally did when a friend bought me the game (shoutout to Whodunit) a while back and I haven’t been able to try it until I played it coop with a buddy. Here’s my experience with the PC port of the game:
The gameplay remains mostly unchanged from Dead Rising 2; you’ll still be able to kill zombies in the strange ways, create combo weapons out of parts to annihilate the undead in unrealistic ways, rescue survivors and fight psychopaths who’ve gone insane from the outbreak in Fortune City while following cases and figuring out who/what is behind the current outbreak, often against a time limit. However a lot of stuff is again remixed, with certain survivors showing up in different areas than before with new requests before joining, or not showing up at all and replaced with all new survivors. Psychopaths are maneuvered around too with two new ones added and the new area is named Uranus Zone, an amusement park with an alien theme that adds a lot of new flavor, from being able to activate rides to kill zombies, driving a clown car (can hold 8 survivors), new weapons, etc. Any Zombrex you need to get as part of a timer you also thankfully don’t have to bring back to your daughter in the safe house and instead can be used to inject yourself on the go as Frank got infected after the first game. Of course Frank’s most noted feature, taking pictures, is back as well as the numerous ways you can get PP points by taking really good photos. To me this is Dead Rising 2, but way better; though there are caveats to this. Play the console ports and compare it with the PC port, it’s a bit of a fucking mess. Capcom is beloved for its quality, yes, and I understand that a now defunct studio developed this game, but the port was released in a mixed state. It’s playable front to back but my experience has been marred with glitches ranging from harmless (zombies merging into solid background elements such as casino tables), to rage levels of frustration. Some of these moments include random disconnects from online coop, with one point where me and my coop partner couldn’t connect at all and had to reload from a previous save that was thirty minutes before, losing progress. Other times my partner would reload a save and it would remove me, but still say that he was in my game and running towards a wall or standing still, requiring another invite to get back into his game. Other things I loathed were the facts that Capcom couldn’t even be arsed to make the DLC costumes in the store functioning, so they just decided to remove the ability to buy them from the store entirely while the console versions worked fine (which is sad, just fix your damn DLC or pay someone to do it). Speaking of the consoles, I’m sorry but if you have a game that was on consoles first then do me a favor, add decent (or any) controller support. Dead Rising 1 and 3 had it so I’m not sure why they skipped 2 and Off the Record. What I had to use was Controller Companion, a dope app that I used to fix up the controls for Curse: The Eye of Isis and will continue to use for other games that either won’t have them at all or will barely work.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493967497&searchtext=Dead+Rising (Downloads for the companion workshop, if it doesn’t work I’ll add in my own link later)
Because of this, there were numerous times where I got pissed off, which makes me sad because this game is great. Besides the point though, I’m also easy to annoy with tech stuff so if you don’t mind all that it works fine otherwise. I also don’t remember this game being more difficult than the second one but I haven’t played since the 360 days so I’m probably just a scrub. Also to finish the gameplay section off, they have a Sandbox Mode that has progress transfers into the story mode so you can grind levels and get money to use in the campaign, and it’s basically an infinite free mode as well as an improvement from what they offered in the first Dead Rising. Not being able to have a sandbox mode and instead a masochist 7 Day mode where your health is always falling isn’t fun so I’m glad they just added sandbox, with all the time in the world.
The plot is largely the same as well but remixed; this time you return to the series as Frank West for the first time since the original Dead Rising and the DLC for the second, Case West. Since the first game, Frank has become a star for his deeds in exposing the outbreak in Willamette and after a couple of years he’s become washed up and in need of some extra cash to get by. In comes TK, host of game show Terror Is Reality and you get paid to kill zombies on camera. You’ll go through a tutorial where you photograph Brandon, the optional CURE psycho in the DR2, take money from TK to plant a bomb near a zombie cage and start the outbreak. You’ll still meet up with Rebecca to find leads, and follow the trail to find out TK was behind the outbreak, learning that Phenotrans (a pharmaceutical co.) was behind the incident because they needed to collect more queens for their zombie drug, Zombrex, what you’ve been needing to take to survive. However things have changed, arguably for the better. The mole is now Stacey, the head of CURE who helped Chuck and now Frank, as a Phenotrans double agent instead of Sullivan, who is just some security guard in the second game. You also get to fight her in a kind of difficult boss fight at the end of the game…piloting a giant mech crab. After you beat her much is the same, except you rescue Rebecca Chang from TK during overtime if you follow all the main story cases. To me it makes more sense for the double agent to be Stacey due to her position in CURE as the leader and the company’s need to set CURE up to be framed to be a patsy, it just fits. I also loved Frank West as the protagonist in the first DR, so having more Frank with all the dad jokes just makes me love it even more (which is made even better due to Frank now being allowed to speak certain dialogue in game, instead of just text). To finish new changes, they replaced Leon (the motorcycle psycho) from DR2 with Chuck in a homage that makes a lot of sense in the new context (with it being even more weird if you have a coop player, because they’re playing as Chuck with all of his moves, essentially fighting himself which a reference is made via in game dialogue) as well as a psycho with Evan, a smaller clown on stilts who coincidentally turns out to be the brother of one of the most infamous bosses in Dead Rising, Adam the Clown. Knowing who you are, he doesn’t like you and will try to stomp with his goofy stilts. Overall, the game’s plot feels better than the second one; mainly due to the twists making more sense and a protagonist who doesn’t feel boring.
So finally the answer to the question: is it worth buying? Yes, but with caveats. A lot of it is the same game as Dead Rising 2, so it’ll be repetitive and for the most part unchanged from the base game; so my advice: either get this on sale or just get this instead of Dead Rising 2. It’s not an overhaul, just a slightly improved version of the second game but for what it is honestly I can’t complain.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The gameplay remains mostly unchanged from Dead Rising 2; you’ll still be able to kill zombies in the strange ways, create combo weapons out of parts to annihilate the undead in unrealistic ways, rescue survivors and fight psychopaths who’ve gone insane from the outbreak in Fortune City while following cases and figuring out who/what is behind the current outbreak, often against a time limit. However a lot of stuff is again remixed, with certain survivors showing up in different areas than before with new requests before joining, or not showing up at all and replaced with all new survivors. Psychopaths are maneuvered around too with two new ones added and the new area is named Uranus Zone, an amusement park with an alien theme that adds a lot of new flavor, from being able to activate rides to kill zombies, driving a clown car (can hold 8 survivors), new weapons, etc. Any Zombrex you need to get as part of a timer you also thankfully don’t have to bring back to your daughter in the safe house and instead can be used to inject yourself on the go as Frank got infected after the first game. Of course Frank’s most noted feature, taking pictures, is back as well as the numerous ways you can get PP points by taking really good photos. To me this is Dead Rising 2, but way better; though there are caveats to this. Play the console ports and compare it with the PC port, it’s a bit of a fucking mess. Capcom is beloved for its quality, yes, and I understand that a now defunct studio developed this game, but the port was released in a mixed state. It’s playable front to back but my experience has been marred with glitches ranging from harmless (zombies merging into solid background elements such as casino tables), to rage levels of frustration. Some of these moments include random disconnects from online coop, with one point where me and my coop partner couldn’t connect at all and had to reload from a previous save that was thirty minutes before, losing progress. Other times my partner would reload a save and it would remove me, but still say that he was in my game and running towards a wall or standing still, requiring another invite to get back into his game. Other things I loathed were the facts that Capcom couldn’t even be arsed to make the DLC costumes in the store functioning, so they just decided to remove the ability to buy them from the store entirely while the console versions worked fine (which is sad, just fix your damn DLC or pay someone to do it). Speaking of the consoles, I’m sorry but if you have a game that was on consoles first then do me a favor, add decent (or any) controller support. Dead Rising 1 and 3 had it so I’m not sure why they skipped 2 and Off the Record. What I had to use was Controller Companion, a dope app that I used to fix up the controls for Curse: The Eye of Isis and will continue to use for other games that either won’t have them at all or will barely work.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493967497&searchtext=Dead+Rising (Downloads for the companion workshop, if it doesn’t work I’ll add in my own link later)
Because of this, there were numerous times where I got pissed off, which makes me sad because this game is great. Besides the point though, I’m also easy to annoy with tech stuff so if you don’t mind all that it works fine otherwise. I also don’t remember this game being more difficult than the second one but I haven’t played since the 360 days so I’m probably just a scrub. Also to finish the gameplay section off, they have a Sandbox Mode that has progress transfers into the story mode so you can grind levels and get money to use in the campaign, and it’s basically an infinite free mode as well as an improvement from what they offered in the first Dead Rising. Not being able to have a sandbox mode and instead a masochist 7 Day mode where your health is always falling isn’t fun so I’m glad they just added sandbox, with all the time in the world.
The plot is largely the same as well but remixed; this time you return to the series as Frank West for the first time since the original Dead Rising and the DLC for the second, Case West. Since the first game, Frank has become a star for his deeds in exposing the outbreak in Willamette and after a couple of years he’s become washed up and in need of some extra cash to get by. In comes TK, host of game show Terror Is Reality and you get paid to kill zombies on camera. You’ll go through a tutorial where you photograph Brandon, the optional CURE psycho in the DR2, take money from TK to plant a bomb near a zombie cage and start the outbreak. You’ll still meet up with Rebecca to find leads, and follow the trail to find out TK was behind the outbreak, learning that Phenotrans (a pharmaceutical co.) was behind the incident because they needed to collect more queens for their zombie drug, Zombrex, what you’ve been needing to take to survive. However things have changed, arguably for the better. The mole is now Stacey, the head of CURE who helped Chuck and now Frank, as a Phenotrans double agent instead of Sullivan, who is just some security guard in the second game. You also get to fight her in a kind of difficult boss fight at the end of the game…piloting a giant mech crab. After you beat her much is the same, except you rescue Rebecca Chang from TK during overtime if you follow all the main story cases. To me it makes more sense for the double agent to be Stacey due to her position in CURE as the leader and the company’s need to set CURE up to be framed to be a patsy, it just fits. I also loved Frank West as the protagonist in the first DR, so having more Frank with all the dad jokes just makes me love it even more (which is made even better due to Frank now being allowed to speak certain dialogue in game, instead of just text). To finish new changes, they replaced Leon (the motorcycle psycho) from DR2 with Chuck in a homage that makes a lot of sense in the new context (with it being even more weird if you have a coop player, because they’re playing as Chuck with all of his moves, essentially fighting himself which a reference is made via in game dialogue) as well as a psycho with Evan, a smaller clown on stilts who coincidentally turns out to be the brother of one of the most infamous bosses in Dead Rising, Adam the Clown. Knowing who you are, he doesn’t like you and will try to stomp with his goofy stilts. Overall, the game’s plot feels better than the second one; mainly due to the twists making more sense and a protagonist who doesn’t feel boring.
So finally the answer to the question: is it worth buying? Yes, but with caveats. A lot of it is the same game as Dead Rising 2, so it’ll be repetitive and for the most part unchanged from the base game; so my advice: either get this on sale or just get this instead of Dead Rising 2. It’s not an overhaul, just a slightly improved version of the second game but for what it is honestly I can’t complain.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
1995
This review contains spoilers
Twisted Metal is a game developed by SingleTrac for Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 1 console, the first in a franchise of long running exclusive games as well as being one of my personal favorite franchises ever. I won’t go too long into this game’s development (as I’ll post the documentary found on Twisted Metal: Head On - Extra Twisted Edition for the PS2), but the basic gist is that David Jaffe (one of the designers of the game as well as the creator I believe of the God of War series) pissed off a lot of people and was told to make a game with these guys or else that’s kind of the end of the line. They originally came up with the concept after imagining blowing up a highway full of vehicles after being stuck in traffic. It originally went under other names like Urban Assault and High Octane (of which whose name can still be seen in the first arena in the beginning of the game) before settling on Twisted Metal and developed this game alongside another title, Warhawk, while also dealing with technical limitations as well as with budgetary ones: one “blunder” included live action endings, which were supposed to be in and we’re directed by David Jaffe but were dismissed due to poor quality and “offensive content”, which to be honest I wish they were included as they contributed to the campy tone, but we’re instead replaced with text scrawls which is less interesting. It was released to mixed-to positive reviews and sold enough to land on the Playstation’s Greatest Hits. My history with the series mainly started due to me hearing about it on Youtube and picking up Twisted Metal: Head On - Extra Twisted Edition and loving that, when I got older I bought each game in the series one by one but I haven’t sat down and really played them much but decided to hunker down and try this game out for a couple of days, and these are the thoughts I pulled out of it.
The plot of this game is a rather simple and short one: an enigmatic and mysterious burn victim named Calypso who lives underneath the streets in the city of Los Angeles is hosting a competition called Twisted Metal, which is hosting its 10th annual contest in the city above. According to the game manual, each contestant got an email from Calypso asking them in a simple, flashing red message: WILL YOU DRIVE? The main goal of this competition is for everyone to destroy one another, in which the final one standing will get any wish of their desire, no matter how big or small it is (though often times, moreso in Twisted Metal 2 and on he will attempt to twist the wish back onto the winner to screw them over in some way). You’ll have characters like Specter, who just wants to come back to life in the flesh after being killed by “a serial killer clown at a carnival”; Outlaw, a cop who wants to take Calypso down and save lives (a far cry from what modern day police do lol), and you’ll get evil characters like Sweet Tooth, a serial killer clown who joined the competition to “find his best friend” which in a humorous twist at his ending ends up being a paper bag named Harold the Wacky Lunch Sack or some shit. As you could probably tell due to the clown on the cover, Sweet Tooth (aka Needles Kane) IS the mascot for the franchise, the main draw if you will. In every single game he’s one of if not the main feature and the contestant connected the most to the other contestants in some way, mostly through his serial murder sprees and sheer evil brutality. The only thing I can really mention in this section is that I appreciate the pictures of each contestant are strapped to the walls of the first level in the game, a small arena in which you fight one other person; another tip is if you play the game on Hard difficulty and destroy the glass roof you can get a secret level: this first level arena but you fight against five other contestants. It’s really difficult however and you don’t get anything from winning it so whether that matters or not is up to you.
The gameplay is basically this: you play as one of twelve vehicles, each driven by a contestant and your job is to pick up weapons on the battlefield and become the last man standing. As such you’ll be able to pick up weapons such as your machine gun (which has infinite ammo but is on a cooldown) weak fire missiles (which can aim a little bit but won’t always home in), powerful Homing (which are the most accurate) and Power missiles (which are the best kind of weapons but have no homing capability whatsoever, making accuracy important; mines, rear missiles and rear flamethrower in order to damage opponents who are on your ass, tire spikes which is supposed to slow down these opponents when ran over, oil slicks which make them spin out. I feel that the freeze missile is the biggest pain in the ass, but it’s useful for holding an enemy down in place while you can get a free hit off of a different weapon. You can also pick up turbo markers (which get you super speed, and you press the Triangle button to start it up) as well as the catapults which launch you or your enemy into the air if you’re looking to throw your opponent off balance or jump to a different area. You can also run around to certain areas of the minimap (which also detect which enemies are nearby due to a colored dot, though it’s painfully simple with no streets shown on this map) and drive up to health stations (marked as a plus sign on the minimap), which can be used only sparingly as well as by other contestants so you have to kind of think strategically in that regard. Now keep in mind, this game is difficult in both actual game ways and also kind of general jank; to address some of the gameplay difficulty stuff first I’ll start by saying that the controls can get some getting used to. Mix that in with a camera that stays on your back more than shit on stink, sometimes moving around can be difficult; sometimes you’ll be able to drift really well, and sometimes you’ll end up smacking into walls repeatedly, while backing up isn’t exactly smooth either and requires you to hold down on the D-Pad, either pressing the circle button.
There are no analog controls (which I’m not sure was around back then), and any movement you make will be with the D-Pad which can make the driving feel really stiff, leaving you open to enemy attacks if you really don’t know what you’re doing, It gets a bit better the more you play but I don’t think that I ever really got used to it enough where I got comfortable, though I did get used to drifting. If you want a general control scheme for the game (of which you can change to three or so different control schemes if you want something different, though you can’t change buttons), I’ll put some stuff down here now:
X button is to drift
Circle is to stop/reverse
Triangle is to activate turbo
Start is to change angle (like first person driving, or zooming in right behind the car; though if you activate the helicopter view cheat in certain areas you can see your vehicle from a camera angle above the map; cool but impractical)
Select button is pause
L1/R1 is to switch weapons
R2 is to shoot machine guns
L2 is to shoot off your weapon of choice
With this in mind, if you’re going to start up a character I would recommend either Roadkill, Outlaw or Thumper; they’re pretty reliable with their mobility while other vehicles like Hammerhead and Darkside are heavier and more powerful but the handling isn’t the best. I would also say DO NOT choose Sweet Tooth as your first vehicle, he’s the most popular but jumping into Sweet Tooth as your first run isn’t recommended as he also doesn’t have the greatest handling. On top of that however, the enemies felt like they kind of banded together to gang up on me sometimes, which mixed in with the controls felt kind of frustrating unless I threw on cheat codes beforehand; and keep in mind not only are your opponents trying to kill you but you’ll also have random people (Called Refs in the game’s manual) shoot at you with machine guns and missiles from the ground as well. Now, thankfully for the most part you can kill them with ease but they can also hit you when you’re not paying attention and let me tell you health is precious in this game; though what I will mention is that you can run over innocent civilians as well littered about the stages (though thankfully not the dog located in River Park Rumble). The final boss, Minion, can also be a bitch and a half as the final boss as an armored up tank who has the specials of almost everyone in the game; now it is doable if you can get it just right and keep your distance BUT luckily there is a bit of a cheese for this game if need be towards the end. However, I had some difficulty locating weapon respawns sometimes when playing this game, especially on the final level which takes place on a series of rooftops and that can be frustrating as well with only one health recharge and three enemies beforehand. Another thing is that in this game, your progress relies on two things: it has a life system (in which you can die three times or else you fail) as well as a password system. Now this password system not only dictates the gameplay cheats (like invincibility/infinite ammo), but also a level system as well (with the beginning of each level putting down their own code which you could either write down or use a guide on the internet for later use) so you can get back to these points but it doesn’t rely on a save system but it’s a system of the old days so it can be kind of archaic in certain points. Other things to mention non difficulty wise is that the physics can sometimes be fucky, for example you can blow up another vehicle and crash right into them and you’ll kind of be thrown everywhere. Getting stuck on another vehicle or thrown around can be a death sentence, especially if there are other vehicles nearby. It can be really easy to flip over, get stuck on car wrecks and acquire damage because of this as well so it’s important to be both patient as well as aware of your environment constantly at all times. With enough practice and if you decide to play through the game legitimately it can work out if you have a lot of patience, but also if you decide to play with cheats, I don’t really blame you as they’re readily available and I did after a while.
The only other gameplay feature that I can think of but forgot about is the two player duel stuff; playing the game by myself I didn’t really have anyone to play it with so I didn’t bother trying but my guess is that it’s a split screen experience with just you and your couch buddy with no NPCs. However I could be wrong about the NPCs, it was a common inclusion at the time and makes sense considering the time; maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.
The soundtrack/graphics/atmosphere/art design is as follows here: as always the PS1 graphics are a weak point for me that I can’t help but love. It was 1995 when the game debuted and as the studio’s first title with this ambitious concept, it’s not necessarily a surprise that you can tell that it’s a bit on the cheap side due to similar effects like the explosion/fire effect looking like it came straight out of an FMV film. Keep in mind, it’s no complaint as they had to do what they could for the time and as someone from the future looking back on how this game feels it really fits right in with the wacky sort of tone they had going for it. If there was a downside it’s that sometimes the environment looks a bit choppy, like seeing black lines connecting certain pieces of the environment, the draw distance being poor and pop in only appearing when you’re right next to a different area in the map and yet again the frame rate being a bit on the lower end so if you’re a stickler for 60 FPS then you’re going to HATE this game. Oftentimes you’ll drive by a wall (or hop over) and see underneath the map as well as building textures; which again I’m not complaining about as it adds a sort of throwback charm to games of the old age like that. The tone of the game is one that’s goofy, and not to be taken seriously however; the contestants themselves are eccentric looking; with Sweet Tooth is of course a creepy clown with his clothes drooping about and Calypso himself, who is supposed to be a burn victim, looks like really weird face paint due to low budget constraints. If one were to watch the lost FMV videos (which I’ll put in the links below), it was definitely a low budget thing, which again adds to the charm of it all. The soundtrack is a sort of old rock feel that legitimately slaps and adds to the whole atmosphere of the game as well, and really helps make this game more memorable amongst the other titles as one of the better soundtracks in the series.
Finally, we’re at the finish line with one last question: Is it worth playing? Honestly, I don’t really know, I guess it’s down to perspective. I decided to pick this game up because of a couple reasons: to knock out the backlog and get my one game per console thing done (with this being my PS1 of the year though I’ll play others), to get footage for a friend of mine who might do a video in the future, and also because the Twisted Metal series on Peacock is coming out soon (and it doesn’t really look that good from that one clip I saw). With all of that in mind, I genuinely like this game not only for its atmosphere and endearing jank but due to the fact that it’s the first in one of my favorite video game series of all time. However, I can acknowledge that I’m also looking at it through rose tinted glasses; it’s a very jank game that doesn’t have too much in the way of features, proper endings, the lack of destruction compared to the other entries in the series, it can be kind of difficult sometimes due to the game’s balancing (or lack thereof), again lots of different issues. I’ll say I do recommend it, with the caveat that it’s a game that is noticeably old and came out the next year after the Playstation 1 came out in December of 1994. Put it on maybe for some nostalgia, have a giggle, maybe have a couch co-op session and play with some friends; it deserves respect for its place but I don’t see myself coming back to it except for the casual aspect or to collect footage again. But in the end that’s ok, I had myself some fun and that’s all I can ask for in a game sometimes, but it’s been done better in the subsequent sequels; if you want to try to play the game now you could either try to get it on the PS3 digital store for between 5-10 dollars, get a PS1 copy for around 20-60 dollars approximately depending on the edition, or if you’re on PC you could download the Abandonware copy that came from Japan. If I’m missing anything as well, I’ll try my best to update the review later at a different point to fill in any missing information, but I'm basing my review on my time completing all twelve character's stories.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phm0uvThtk&ab_channel=PolandBizkit (Soundtrack)
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/twisted-metal-bf2 (Abandonware PC Port)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY2tSSblO94&ab_channel=TacticalBaconProductions (Minion Cheese, start from 25:28)
https://www.liveabout.com/twisted-metal-cheats-3409267 (Cheat Codes)
https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Twisted_Metal_Manual_PS_EN.pdf (Manual PDF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u47jyl07fDU&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal: The Dark Past Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tu-m5SlIw4&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal 1 Lost Endings/Text Endings)
The plot of this game is a rather simple and short one: an enigmatic and mysterious burn victim named Calypso who lives underneath the streets in the city of Los Angeles is hosting a competition called Twisted Metal, which is hosting its 10th annual contest in the city above. According to the game manual, each contestant got an email from Calypso asking them in a simple, flashing red message: WILL YOU DRIVE? The main goal of this competition is for everyone to destroy one another, in which the final one standing will get any wish of their desire, no matter how big or small it is (though often times, moreso in Twisted Metal 2 and on he will attempt to twist the wish back onto the winner to screw them over in some way). You’ll have characters like Specter, who just wants to come back to life in the flesh after being killed by “a serial killer clown at a carnival”; Outlaw, a cop who wants to take Calypso down and save lives (a far cry from what modern day police do lol), and you’ll get evil characters like Sweet Tooth, a serial killer clown who joined the competition to “find his best friend” which in a humorous twist at his ending ends up being a paper bag named Harold the Wacky Lunch Sack or some shit. As you could probably tell due to the clown on the cover, Sweet Tooth (aka Needles Kane) IS the mascot for the franchise, the main draw if you will. In every single game he’s one of if not the main feature and the contestant connected the most to the other contestants in some way, mostly through his serial murder sprees and sheer evil brutality. The only thing I can really mention in this section is that I appreciate the pictures of each contestant are strapped to the walls of the first level in the game, a small arena in which you fight one other person; another tip is if you play the game on Hard difficulty and destroy the glass roof you can get a secret level: this first level arena but you fight against five other contestants. It’s really difficult however and you don’t get anything from winning it so whether that matters or not is up to you.
The gameplay is basically this: you play as one of twelve vehicles, each driven by a contestant and your job is to pick up weapons on the battlefield and become the last man standing. As such you’ll be able to pick up weapons such as your machine gun (which has infinite ammo but is on a cooldown) weak fire missiles (which can aim a little bit but won’t always home in), powerful Homing (which are the most accurate) and Power missiles (which are the best kind of weapons but have no homing capability whatsoever, making accuracy important; mines, rear missiles and rear flamethrower in order to damage opponents who are on your ass, tire spikes which is supposed to slow down these opponents when ran over, oil slicks which make them spin out. I feel that the freeze missile is the biggest pain in the ass, but it’s useful for holding an enemy down in place while you can get a free hit off of a different weapon. You can also pick up turbo markers (which get you super speed, and you press the Triangle button to start it up) as well as the catapults which launch you or your enemy into the air if you’re looking to throw your opponent off balance or jump to a different area. You can also run around to certain areas of the minimap (which also detect which enemies are nearby due to a colored dot, though it’s painfully simple with no streets shown on this map) and drive up to health stations (marked as a plus sign on the minimap), which can be used only sparingly as well as by other contestants so you have to kind of think strategically in that regard. Now keep in mind, this game is difficult in both actual game ways and also kind of general jank; to address some of the gameplay difficulty stuff first I’ll start by saying that the controls can get some getting used to. Mix that in with a camera that stays on your back more than shit on stink, sometimes moving around can be difficult; sometimes you’ll be able to drift really well, and sometimes you’ll end up smacking into walls repeatedly, while backing up isn’t exactly smooth either and requires you to hold down on the D-Pad, either pressing the circle button.
There are no analog controls (which I’m not sure was around back then), and any movement you make will be with the D-Pad which can make the driving feel really stiff, leaving you open to enemy attacks if you really don’t know what you’re doing, It gets a bit better the more you play but I don’t think that I ever really got used to it enough where I got comfortable, though I did get used to drifting. If you want a general control scheme for the game (of which you can change to three or so different control schemes if you want something different, though you can’t change buttons), I’ll put some stuff down here now:
X button is to drift
Circle is to stop/reverse
Triangle is to activate turbo
Start is to change angle (like first person driving, or zooming in right behind the car; though if you activate the helicopter view cheat in certain areas you can see your vehicle from a camera angle above the map; cool but impractical)
Select button is pause
L1/R1 is to switch weapons
R2 is to shoot machine guns
L2 is to shoot off your weapon of choice
With this in mind, if you’re going to start up a character I would recommend either Roadkill, Outlaw or Thumper; they’re pretty reliable with their mobility while other vehicles like Hammerhead and Darkside are heavier and more powerful but the handling isn’t the best. I would also say DO NOT choose Sweet Tooth as your first vehicle, he’s the most popular but jumping into Sweet Tooth as your first run isn’t recommended as he also doesn’t have the greatest handling. On top of that however, the enemies felt like they kind of banded together to gang up on me sometimes, which mixed in with the controls felt kind of frustrating unless I threw on cheat codes beforehand; and keep in mind not only are your opponents trying to kill you but you’ll also have random people (Called Refs in the game’s manual) shoot at you with machine guns and missiles from the ground as well. Now, thankfully for the most part you can kill them with ease but they can also hit you when you’re not paying attention and let me tell you health is precious in this game; though what I will mention is that you can run over innocent civilians as well littered about the stages (though thankfully not the dog located in River Park Rumble). The final boss, Minion, can also be a bitch and a half as the final boss as an armored up tank who has the specials of almost everyone in the game; now it is doable if you can get it just right and keep your distance BUT luckily there is a bit of a cheese for this game if need be towards the end. However, I had some difficulty locating weapon respawns sometimes when playing this game, especially on the final level which takes place on a series of rooftops and that can be frustrating as well with only one health recharge and three enemies beforehand. Another thing is that in this game, your progress relies on two things: it has a life system (in which you can die three times or else you fail) as well as a password system. Now this password system not only dictates the gameplay cheats (like invincibility/infinite ammo), but also a level system as well (with the beginning of each level putting down their own code which you could either write down or use a guide on the internet for later use) so you can get back to these points but it doesn’t rely on a save system but it’s a system of the old days so it can be kind of archaic in certain points. Other things to mention non difficulty wise is that the physics can sometimes be fucky, for example you can blow up another vehicle and crash right into them and you’ll kind of be thrown everywhere. Getting stuck on another vehicle or thrown around can be a death sentence, especially if there are other vehicles nearby. It can be really easy to flip over, get stuck on car wrecks and acquire damage because of this as well so it’s important to be both patient as well as aware of your environment constantly at all times. With enough practice and if you decide to play through the game legitimately it can work out if you have a lot of patience, but also if you decide to play with cheats, I don’t really blame you as they’re readily available and I did after a while.
The only other gameplay feature that I can think of but forgot about is the two player duel stuff; playing the game by myself I didn’t really have anyone to play it with so I didn’t bother trying but my guess is that it’s a split screen experience with just you and your couch buddy with no NPCs. However I could be wrong about the NPCs, it was a common inclusion at the time and makes sense considering the time; maybe one day I’ll give it a shot.
The soundtrack/graphics/atmosphere/art design is as follows here: as always the PS1 graphics are a weak point for me that I can’t help but love. It was 1995 when the game debuted and as the studio’s first title with this ambitious concept, it’s not necessarily a surprise that you can tell that it’s a bit on the cheap side due to similar effects like the explosion/fire effect looking like it came straight out of an FMV film. Keep in mind, it’s no complaint as they had to do what they could for the time and as someone from the future looking back on how this game feels it really fits right in with the wacky sort of tone they had going for it. If there was a downside it’s that sometimes the environment looks a bit choppy, like seeing black lines connecting certain pieces of the environment, the draw distance being poor and pop in only appearing when you’re right next to a different area in the map and yet again the frame rate being a bit on the lower end so if you’re a stickler for 60 FPS then you’re going to HATE this game. Oftentimes you’ll drive by a wall (or hop over) and see underneath the map as well as building textures; which again I’m not complaining about as it adds a sort of throwback charm to games of the old age like that. The tone of the game is one that’s goofy, and not to be taken seriously however; the contestants themselves are eccentric looking; with Sweet Tooth is of course a creepy clown with his clothes drooping about and Calypso himself, who is supposed to be a burn victim, looks like really weird face paint due to low budget constraints. If one were to watch the lost FMV videos (which I’ll put in the links below), it was definitely a low budget thing, which again adds to the charm of it all. The soundtrack is a sort of old rock feel that legitimately slaps and adds to the whole atmosphere of the game as well, and really helps make this game more memorable amongst the other titles as one of the better soundtracks in the series.
Finally, we’re at the finish line with one last question: Is it worth playing? Honestly, I don’t really know, I guess it’s down to perspective. I decided to pick this game up because of a couple reasons: to knock out the backlog and get my one game per console thing done (with this being my PS1 of the year though I’ll play others), to get footage for a friend of mine who might do a video in the future, and also because the Twisted Metal series on Peacock is coming out soon (and it doesn’t really look that good from that one clip I saw). With all of that in mind, I genuinely like this game not only for its atmosphere and endearing jank but due to the fact that it’s the first in one of my favorite video game series of all time. However, I can acknowledge that I’m also looking at it through rose tinted glasses; it’s a very jank game that doesn’t have too much in the way of features, proper endings, the lack of destruction compared to the other entries in the series, it can be kind of difficult sometimes due to the game’s balancing (or lack thereof), again lots of different issues. I’ll say I do recommend it, with the caveat that it’s a game that is noticeably old and came out the next year after the Playstation 1 came out in December of 1994. Put it on maybe for some nostalgia, have a giggle, maybe have a couch co-op session and play with some friends; it deserves respect for its place but I don’t see myself coming back to it except for the casual aspect or to collect footage again. But in the end that’s ok, I had myself some fun and that’s all I can ask for in a game sometimes, but it’s been done better in the subsequent sequels; if you want to try to play the game now you could either try to get it on the PS3 digital store for between 5-10 dollars, get a PS1 copy for around 20-60 dollars approximately depending on the edition, or if you’re on PC you could download the Abandonware copy that came from Japan. If I’m missing anything as well, I’ll try my best to update the review later at a different point to fill in any missing information, but I'm basing my review on my time completing all twelve character's stories.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phm0uvThtk&ab_channel=PolandBizkit (Soundtrack)
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/twisted-metal-bf2 (Abandonware PC Port)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY2tSSblO94&ab_channel=TacticalBaconProductions (Minion Cheese, start from 25:28)
https://www.liveabout.com/twisted-metal-cheats-3409267 (Cheat Codes)
https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Twisted_Metal_Manual_PS_EN.pdf (Manual PDF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u47jyl07fDU&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal: The Dark Past Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tu-m5SlIw4&ab_channel=bdcool213 (Twisted Metal 1 Lost Endings/Text Endings)
2020
This review contains spoilers
Cyberpunk 2077 is an action open world RPG developed by CD Projekt Red of the Witcher series fame and based on the tabletop RPG of the same series by Mike Pondsmith, as well as being the main developers of the GOG storefront, known for being able to host games for purchase without digital rights management issues (love the site btw). Now my history with this game before the Keanu Reeves E3 trailer drop was non existent, apparently they dropped a trailer YEARS ago, before even Witcher 3 came out which I'm gonna be honest is an awful long time to start teasing a game, and truth is that kind of showed in how the game debuted on launch. Everyone and their grandmother knows about it, or should know about it as it kind of put the "Release the game unfinished, get money from pre-orders and first day sales than patch it later" scheme that Projekt's investors pulled (as well as the painful working conditions no one should ever go through) to the forefront of people's attention in the industry. Now I wasn't one of the people who ordered this game, but I knew many people who have and though I figured it would be kind of a dumpster fire on launch I was still morbidly curious about it to give it a try later on after all the s h i t got fixed. So is it worth it to play it today? I'd say yes, so here are my thoughts.
Going to start on story here; I like the game's plot a lot as you essentially start your character (a mercenary named V) from one of three different lifepaths (which is a cool little tie-in to it's RPG roots), which each both offer different tutorial missions, certain dialogue choices and an occasional exclusive side quest here and there. From there you meet Jackie Welles, whom you meet in the tutorial and get into a sort of hijinks. I like Jackie a lot as a character, and even though he eventually dies, you actually grow to like him in the short amount of time leading up to the finale of Act 1 (of which there are I believe 3 acts) after pulling off a heist on Arasaka for a high ranked fixer named Dexter which eventually leads to betrayals, and everyone except you dying; the only reason you survived is because the target of the heist was a sort of memory chip that hosted "Engrams", or a person's artificial personality put onto a piece of technology and fitted into your brain. This was mainly used by rich people to live forever but now you have a limited amount of time to live as you have Johnny Silverhand stuck in your head (played by the well beloved internet god Keanu Reeves). The one thing I'll say is that even though the next couple of acts vary from random quest to quest (of which the culmination I don't want to spoil for those interested, also character limits), the game does a FANTASTIC job at making you like and dislike the characters around you you're meant to feel for. There are romance options (of which I went Panam all the way can't convince me otherwise), everyone has their own grounded personality, and mixed in with the vibe of the city made me really feel invested in the story and it's themes; there are multiple interesting side quests that are highlights (my favorite being the conspiracy one with Jefferson Peralez conspiracy quest (which fun fact, keep an eye out for the Blue Eyed Man at the end, as well as in one of the main endings if you're going for it, gives Deus Ex vibes) and the Crucifixion quest, which to me felt like a tale of forgiveness, how far one would go to obtain it and trying to forgive yourself which resonated with me in some ways) that each have their own tie ins to your character's journey, often bantering back and forth with Johnny Silverhand and other characters from the Cyberpunk universe. After hacking into the interwebs and figuring out how and IF you can separate yourself and Johnny, and eventually raiding Arasaka HQ and fighting universe boogeyman Adam Smasher, I eventually decided to live out the remainder of my days in peace, traveling with the Nomads with Panam by my side in a really cathartic and beautiful feeling ending (of which there are multiple of course). Not enough can be said about this but I should move onto the gameplay.
This one I'm a tad bit more mixed on, it's not bad. In fact if you have the right build you'll be a god, being able to tackle any mission whether you decide to do stealthy or loud (of which I've seen compilations and oh damn dude). Now I can't say much for combat and skill trees because I didn't like the Witcher 3's combat, so I feared playing it without cheats on combat because I didn't want to deal with sponge combat. However as far as I'm aware, there's a little bit but not much, which in lore could be hand waved with "Cybernetics" or something. Most of the open world also kind of feels a bit dull sometimes, you have your multiple markers where you can go do sidequests for fixers, buy cars and apartments, kill gang members to clean up the streets, engage in races, the usual stuff. I'd say it's normal for the most part. The character customization is great however (nice idea being able to mess with pe n is size LOL). However, there are still a couple of glitches from the last time I played, mainly little ones like car tires sinking into the streets. Also cars kind of feel like a ss at times but other than that, it's not the worst thing and often times I couldn't really find much fault with the gameplay on my end though just try to experiment and get a good build going.
The soundtrack is immaculate; Marcin Przybyłowicz, Paul Leonard-Morgan and P.T. Adamczyk did a great job with their score (the main theme for V gives me goosebumps every time) and the in game radio soundtrack is good for the most part though not the most memorable. The sound design is pretty solid, the voice acting is fantastic (say what you want about Keanu's one note acting sometimes, he does great here), and your character has an actual personality and feelings (one thing I didn't like about Geralt from Witcher 3, sorry but not sorry). Graphics are good too, next gen stuff though sometimes there are the occasional glitches which I believe are now popped out. Art design is fantastic too, though not really that much different from any other cyberpunk media though I'm alright with this for the most part.
So is it worth playing? I would say yes it is, it's definitely in a lot better shape and has surprisingly been supported well by CD Projekt since the initial failures. Patches kept coming, an anime netflix series I haven't watched yet (with tie-in game quests) was released and they're releasing a story expansion in the next months which I'm cautiously optimistic for. For those who were put off by this game and don't want to play it, I don't blame you. This game shouldn't have been released in the form that it was, nor should any game for any reason, which is becoming more real in the current industry. But I loved my time with it, it has a lot of personality and if you ever think about giving it another chance and ignoring the bugs I'd say do it. Also there's a good mod market, gonna post some links below for some stuff I found. I'm definitely coming back for Phantom Liberty at some point, and I hope enjoy my time with that just like I did with this. By the way, there's no Ciri tie-in cameo from Witcher 3 other than a magazine in the Corporate lifepath in the beginning sadly, I hope that changes cause it would be cool to see a crossover of sorts).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs&ab_channel=Cyberpunk2077
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UVl6p0cdZLg
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jXfohmkmclQ
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iKV7QyYylZA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PgiiL41XXYs
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JuGwiZIbi_4
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/10Kf_2itIZE
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s-wf06yaRp8 (dude's builds are crazy)
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG9ahw-5tj8&ab_channel=OriginalSoundtrack
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Going to start on story here; I like the game's plot a lot as you essentially start your character (a mercenary named V) from one of three different lifepaths (which is a cool little tie-in to it's RPG roots), which each both offer different tutorial missions, certain dialogue choices and an occasional exclusive side quest here and there. From there you meet Jackie Welles, whom you meet in the tutorial and get into a sort of hijinks. I like Jackie a lot as a character, and even though he eventually dies, you actually grow to like him in the short amount of time leading up to the finale of Act 1 (of which there are I believe 3 acts) after pulling off a heist on Arasaka for a high ranked fixer named Dexter which eventually leads to betrayals, and everyone except you dying; the only reason you survived is because the target of the heist was a sort of memory chip that hosted "Engrams", or a person's artificial personality put onto a piece of technology and fitted into your brain. This was mainly used by rich people to live forever but now you have a limited amount of time to live as you have Johnny Silverhand stuck in your head (played by the well beloved internet god Keanu Reeves). The one thing I'll say is that even though the next couple of acts vary from random quest to quest (of which the culmination I don't want to spoil for those interested, also character limits), the game does a FANTASTIC job at making you like and dislike the characters around you you're meant to feel for. There are romance options (of which I went Panam all the way can't convince me otherwise), everyone has their own grounded personality, and mixed in with the vibe of the city made me really feel invested in the story and it's themes; there are multiple interesting side quests that are highlights (my favorite being the conspiracy one with Jefferson Peralez conspiracy quest (which fun fact, keep an eye out for the Blue Eyed Man at the end, as well as in one of the main endings if you're going for it, gives Deus Ex vibes) and the Crucifixion quest, which to me felt like a tale of forgiveness, how far one would go to obtain it and trying to forgive yourself which resonated with me in some ways) that each have their own tie ins to your character's journey, often bantering back and forth with Johnny Silverhand and other characters from the Cyberpunk universe. After hacking into the interwebs and figuring out how and IF you can separate yourself and Johnny, and eventually raiding Arasaka HQ and fighting universe boogeyman Adam Smasher, I eventually decided to live out the remainder of my days in peace, traveling with the Nomads with Panam by my side in a really cathartic and beautiful feeling ending (of which there are multiple of course). Not enough can be said about this but I should move onto the gameplay.
This one I'm a tad bit more mixed on, it's not bad. In fact if you have the right build you'll be a god, being able to tackle any mission whether you decide to do stealthy or loud (of which I've seen compilations and oh damn dude). Now I can't say much for combat and skill trees because I didn't like the Witcher 3's combat, so I feared playing it without cheats on combat because I didn't want to deal with sponge combat. However as far as I'm aware, there's a little bit but not much, which in lore could be hand waved with "Cybernetics" or something. Most of the open world also kind of feels a bit dull sometimes, you have your multiple markers where you can go do sidequests for fixers, buy cars and apartments, kill gang members to clean up the streets, engage in races, the usual stuff. I'd say it's normal for the most part. The character customization is great however (nice idea being able to mess with pe n is size LOL). However, there are still a couple of glitches from the last time I played, mainly little ones like car tires sinking into the streets. Also cars kind of feel like a ss at times but other than that, it's not the worst thing and often times I couldn't really find much fault with the gameplay on my end though just try to experiment and get a good build going.
The soundtrack is immaculate; Marcin Przybyłowicz, Paul Leonard-Morgan and P.T. Adamczyk did a great job with their score (the main theme for V gives me goosebumps every time) and the in game radio soundtrack is good for the most part though not the most memorable. The sound design is pretty solid, the voice acting is fantastic (say what you want about Keanu's one note acting sometimes, he does great here), and your character has an actual personality and feelings (one thing I didn't like about Geralt from Witcher 3, sorry but not sorry). Graphics are good too, next gen stuff though sometimes there are the occasional glitches which I believe are now popped out. Art design is fantastic too, though not really that much different from any other cyberpunk media though I'm alright with this for the most part.
So is it worth playing? I would say yes it is, it's definitely in a lot better shape and has surprisingly been supported well by CD Projekt since the initial failures. Patches kept coming, an anime netflix series I haven't watched yet (with tie-in game quests) was released and they're releasing a story expansion in the next months which I'm cautiously optimistic for. For those who were put off by this game and don't want to play it, I don't blame you. This game shouldn't have been released in the form that it was, nor should any game for any reason, which is becoming more real in the current industry. But I loved my time with it, it has a lot of personality and if you ever think about giving it another chance and ignoring the bugs I'd say do it. Also there's a good mod market, gonna post some links below for some stuff I found. I'm definitely coming back for Phantom Liberty at some point, and I hope enjoy my time with that just like I did with this. By the way, there's no Ciri tie-in cameo from Witcher 3 other than a magazine in the Corporate lifepath in the beginning sadly, I hope that changes cause it would be cool to see a crossover of sorts).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs&ab_channel=Cyberpunk2077
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UVl6p0cdZLg
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jXfohmkmclQ
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iKV7QyYylZA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PgiiL41XXYs
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JuGwiZIbi_4
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/10Kf_2itIZE
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s-wf06yaRp8 (dude's builds are crazy)
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG9ahw-5tj8&ab_channel=OriginalSoundtrack
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Killzone: Shadowfall is a game developed by Guerilla Games and the last title in the entire Killzone series, released for Playstation 4 as a launch title (including the likes of Knack, and thatgamecompany’s Flower). The game ended up getting a mixed reception and effectively killed the franchise, with Guerilla later moving onto the hit Horizon series of third person action RPGs (one of which was a VERY impressive transition). My feeling on the series have kind of been mixed so far, the first Killzone, while decent, had its fair share of jank and frustration; while Liberation is something that I’d rather fucking shoot myself then ever play again in my life. Killzone 2 was a mass improvement in most ways though the story/characters were less interesting; Killzone 3 kept the improvements in, added more stuff, but also had some glitches that made it less stable than 2. Mercenary was fantastic (from what I played) though attempting to get the platinum pissed me off when the Vita corrupted my save file (from what I don’t know) so I’m not even going to attempt to review/platinum that game until next year; so I was expecting this to be as others would call “The worst of the worst” in the franchise. It’s not, it has its issues but I argue it’s actually one of the better titles for what it’s worth.
So the story is one that I feel is the most polarizing part; and I totally understand where people are coming from. My experience was this: I really liked the first half, and where it was leading up to, but the second half is where the game falters a bit. The game takes place decades after the ending of Killzone 3, an event now called “The Terracide” which wiped out the entirety of the Helghast Race off of Helghan. Since then, Vekta has immigrated as many Helghans as possible to their planet and split the entire planet; Vekta is still Vekta but the other half is New Helghan. In a parallel to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, the Vektans (under the VSA, Vekta Security Agency) and the Helghast perform covert operations so they can one up each other, and this is where the game starts. You play as Lucas Kellan, who (in the first mission) as a kid had his father die while they tried to escape to Vekta City, with Shadow Marshall Augustus Sinclair rescuing him and raising him to be a shadow marshall as well. I don’t hate this introduction but I feel the whole slideshow way of showing him through the years is cheap and doesn’t help build character development between you or Sinclair. In fact, I’m going to throw this out there now, most of the characters are kind of one note in their appearance: your main protagonist is generic white guy number 9 and you have no real personality. Other characters are like this too (another good example is future antagonist Vladko Tyran, a terrorist for the “Black Hand” who basically is the stereotypical “crazy” terrorist who reminds me of the base template for this kind of character: Vaas from Far Cry 3, again boring as hell). Regardless you undertake several missions through the game that seem unrelated at first but involve a biological weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar, an extremely hateable scientist who believes in “racial purity” who I really wanted to put a fuckin hole in her skull; both the Helghast and the VSA are fighting over her as this biological virus is to be weaponized to wipe out the other race by each side, and you also meet up again with a Helghast operative named Echo (whom you see in the end of Mission 1 during a prisoner swap).
This goes on while pressure is mounted against the VSA by the Black Hand terrorist group, led by Vladko Tyran with numerous terrorist attacks, and after attempting to capture and then assassinate him he ends up escaping to New Helghan. Kellen infiltrates New Helghan to assassinate Tyran and after finding him and blowing up his house (with his boss revealed to be Jorhan Stahl from Killzone 3, in a breathing machine and strapped to a chair, sadly not played by Malcolm McDowell but he sounds decently close) he gets captured by Helghast forces, after which Echo breaks him out of this prison and gets him over the wall in exchange for him trying to convince Sinclair to stop this battle as this war will lead to everyone dying. Tensions flare up as Kellan is unable to convince Sinclair to stand down and he is accused of being a traitor before sending him again to a mining vessel in space to capture Massar after she defected to the Helghast regime. This goes awry, it’s learned that Stahl has the biological weapon and Echo arrives to murder Massar, in which is a success. Echo and Kellan team up to go to the ruins of planet Helghan to find and stop Stahl. Here you explore these ruins to find more facilities and you learn that Tyran is actually alive…for a little bit before you kill him with Echo. The ISA then invade as well, and Echo/Kellan invade Stahl’s base. Kellan confronts Stahl in his breathing machine before Sinclair comes and not only kills Stahl but you as well. You then play as Echo in the final mission as you sneak your way through a populated mall area before sniping Sinclair and ending his threat once and for all.
So here are my thoughts on the story overall: I think that the set pieces are cool and that this game kind of operated more from set piece to set piece than actually having something really cohesive. The story and characters take a backseat for the most part, some are more prominent than others while some just kind of appear and then are never seen again. One example is Helghast commander Anton Saric, a guy whose name I only know due to the Killzone Wiki but plenty of other things are learned, such as Echo being a half Vektan/half Helghast as well as the daughter of Hera Visari, the heir to the Visari throne. Kellan as I said is boring as hell, while Echo has some interesting ideas I could roll with, and Sinclair is cool I guess. You can also learn about bits and pieces of the Killzone lore through collectibles, of which it’s learned that Rico and Sev from the previous games have gone MIA, and the Helghast want them dead for the Terracide. I remember watching a review a long time ago by a guy named Jarekthegamingdragon, and he made an interesting point: the story ends in a thud and doesn’t mean anything in the greater universe. I agree for the most part, though the extent is something I’m not sure but I guess it’s kind of the point considering it’s inspired by the Cold War so I suppose having a status quo would make sense, but if that’s the case also why have the game to begin with if nothing changes? Again, this is a game about set pieces; of which my favorites are in Mission 2, Mission 5 and the last mission; of which I will tell you why in the next paragraph.
The gameplay as were most of the other games except Liberation, were first person shooters. The huge difference this time is that compared to Killzone 2 and 3, it feels WAY better; the gunplay almost feels Call of Duty-like and say whatever you want but Call of Duty at least FEELS good. Shooting feels punchy for the most part, as does melee (which by god feels fucking great, I swear I’m normal lol) and for the most part it all feels great. You even have a drone that you can use during the game which can stun enemies, shoot a grapple line to traverse the environment, shoot soldiers (though this wasn’t as useful because it was kind of spongy and only worked for a bit), and put a shield in front of you (which I didn’t really use that much if at all) as well as hack certain terminals and the most important feature: Reviving you if you die which is fucking fantastic cause it makes the “Don’t die throughout the game once” trophy a lot easier to deal with. I guess the only thing I can really criticize about the gunplay is that the minigun sometimes feels a bit unreliable due to the swaying time though I guess because it’s a giant bulky minigun that’s not too much of a surprise. Also the jumping is fuckin awkward and I don’t like how it feels, like every gap I jump across I’m always about to fall off
The level design in the missions above are a lot more open ended too, feeling almost like Far Cry in a sense with how open it is and how you can tackle certain objectives in numerous ways; for example in Mission 2 you land in a forest after ziplining from a Dam to find multiple objectives for finding survivors, turning off the alarm, etc. and there’s also a stealth system for the game. It’s the same for Mission 5, where you infiltrate New Helghan in an open area as you can either choose to go loud, stay stealthy and choose your way to do objectives (and optional objectives sometimes that doesn’t really change the story in any way and you can choose whether to do them or not) as well as Mission 10, which is a little bit more limited as you have to do certain objectives to perform an assassination but same thing, but with different abilities such as the one to go invisible to sneak past enemies. I feel like this is the natural evolution the series could take before it could become stale from the usual Call of Duty shooting gallery formula and the truth be told, while it doesn’t TOTALLY follow the Far Cry open world formula it shows potential. Other highlights that really pop out to talk about is that in Mission 3, you sneak aboard a space station and towards the end you can shoot nearby windows to burn Helghast soldiers and Mission 6 you can have Echo snipe enemies so you can sneak your way through certain areas. If there were any frustrating moments I’d say there were three: Mission 4 has you turning off bombs at a train station and there were a couple of times I’d have to reload the section due to the “Don’t die” trophy because of moving trains, but I could pass it off as “it is what it is”. The worst parts however happen sequentially in the beginnings of Mission 7 and 8: in Mission 7 you have to jump down a giant hole and maneuver past giant rotors before landing in a SPECIFIC spot which was kind of annoying, and one where I died multiple times trying to figure it all out. If you want a tip, I’d say fall towards one of the rotors, they’re all going a certain direction and if you move towards the rotors you will end up going through the holes (heh) instead of hitting the blade. I have no tips for Mission 8, in which you glide through Old Helghan ruins as you make your way through the ruined city, the controls are fuckin weird, overshoot and often times I’d die because I couldn’t figure out how to move in a way that made sense; it doesn’t feel good and I just wanted this section to end.
Final section to mention is multiplayer: I can’t say much about it but when I learned that the servers for this and Mercenary would be shutting down in August of 2022, I decided to get cranking out the multiplayer trophies. Now while this was a grind, and working to get these trophies sometimes felt monotonous especially since I was racing against the clock (I still feel that there should either be no multiplayer trophies or that they should be on a separate list or better yet just auto unlock them for people who actually want to get the platinum later on) what I can say is that the game’s multiplayer in its last leg was actually kind of fun. It’s the usual affair, the usual CoD styled game modes but it was a nice bit of fun and sometimes I go and play the Botzone if I feel like doing something with it.
Now what can I say about the other stuff; meaning the sound design, voice acting, art design, music, etc? Well for starters, again graphically Guerilla like always has outdone itself; in fact I’d say that this is their number one strength as a game studio is that they know how to make their games look fucking beautiful and top everything else; for example Mission 2, The Shadow, the forest is looks amazing with it’s use of lighting and forest textures. Vekta City is beautiful as a cyberpunk-like dystopia, with light colors contrasting New Helghan’s darker and more oppressive atmosphere; the Decima is an amazing engine and there’s no wonder it’s been used in all of Guerilla’s titles, Until Dawn and Death Stranding (along with it’s in development sequel). Legitimately, you could mistake this for a Playstation 5 title sometimes and if you were to play this on Playstation 5 you’d probably agree. The voice acting is decent for the most part; David Harewood does a decent job playing Sinclair (side note: The dude looks like Sylen’s (Horizon series) voice actor Lance Reddick, rest in peace) but there aren’t really too many standouts here, but sometimes that’s ok as they all fit in the game and make it sound believable. The sound design is good for the most part, and it fits almost everything that it intends to (though some of the guns, I forget which one could be a little more punchy). Last thing I can mention is the soundtrack; done by Tyler Bates (who did God of War: Ascension and later Far Cry: New Dawn) along with Lorn (whose contributed tracks to the likes of Sleeping Dogs, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Gran Turismo 5); the music can sound a bit tense sometimes in it’s moments and honestly, sort of slaps. Granted I don’t remember much of anything in the way of actual tracks but it works well with its purpose. As with most things in the Killzone franchise, they don’t have much in the way of standout stuff but they’re good at making stuff immersive for the most part and as long as it doesn’t sound misplaced or awful (like Resident Evil 1’s Mansion Basement), for the most part I’m satisfied or won’t bat an eye to it.
So what exactly are my thoughts on Killzone: Shadowfall? I understand why people feel like it’s average. It isn’t exactly pulled off the best plot wise, almost everyone is forgettable in terms of characters, and the truth is it does end on a thud. And to be honest, I’m kind of sad about that; because the truth is between Killzone and Horizon, I feel like Killzone even in shoulder shrugging genericness has a lot of potential for more than what it had. It had a lot of cool ideas, I really liked the more open ended level design, the improvements to the combat compared to the previous Killzone games, it’s just a lot of things around it weren’t pulled off the best and with how it ended it didn’t feel like a satisfying finish to the series. In essence it reminds me of The Order: 1886, another game I got the platinum trophy for; not pulled off the best but it has a lot of things around it that really boost it up for me.
For my final bit on this, here me out; I know Guerilla has moved onto Horizon. But I feel like with the natural progression of Shadow Fall’s game design that there could be something in the way of one last game I feel they should do to end the series off on a good note. Have it be an open world RPG (minus the Ubisoft formula), since the Killzone series has its stuff parallel to real world events and so if Sinclair’s assassination is the parallel to JFK’s assassination then I feel like the next (and last) game should be set in their version of Vietnam. Have it be an entirely different planet, the VSA are invading to re-establish a dictatorship while the Helghast are using the opportunity to fund guerillas while having seedy intentions, pull aspects from Killzone: Mercenary in terms of doing mercenary work for everyone, don’t have the world be this super huge thing as much as it is dense and full of stuff to do, make it dynamic; like there’s a lot of stuff you could do with an open world Killzone, a lot of thematic “War is Hell'' stuff you could do and say with it. Hell I have so many ideas that if I was able to do graphic design work, I’d write up my own PDF and release it just so y'all would know what I’m talking about. Alas though, like many others, the series has kind of stagnated and fell behind in importance for Playstation history, and understandably so. But there’s no reason you can’t end things off on a good note. Oh, and again I’m going to be annoying here: PORT THE GAMES TO PC. In fact, port all the old games to PC, and make them good please (no one wants a repeat of The Last of Us Part I’s port).
So the story is one that I feel is the most polarizing part; and I totally understand where people are coming from. My experience was this: I really liked the first half, and where it was leading up to, but the second half is where the game falters a bit. The game takes place decades after the ending of Killzone 3, an event now called “The Terracide” which wiped out the entirety of the Helghast Race off of Helghan. Since then, Vekta has immigrated as many Helghans as possible to their planet and split the entire planet; Vekta is still Vekta but the other half is New Helghan. In a parallel to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, the Vektans (under the VSA, Vekta Security Agency) and the Helghast perform covert operations so they can one up each other, and this is where the game starts. You play as Lucas Kellan, who (in the first mission) as a kid had his father die while they tried to escape to Vekta City, with Shadow Marshall Augustus Sinclair rescuing him and raising him to be a shadow marshall as well. I don’t hate this introduction but I feel the whole slideshow way of showing him through the years is cheap and doesn’t help build character development between you or Sinclair. In fact, I’m going to throw this out there now, most of the characters are kind of one note in their appearance: your main protagonist is generic white guy number 9 and you have no real personality. Other characters are like this too (another good example is future antagonist Vladko Tyran, a terrorist for the “Black Hand” who basically is the stereotypical “crazy” terrorist who reminds me of the base template for this kind of character: Vaas from Far Cry 3, again boring as hell). Regardless you undertake several missions through the game that seem unrelated at first but involve a biological weapon created by Dr. Hillary Massar, an extremely hateable scientist who believes in “racial purity” who I really wanted to put a fuckin hole in her skull; both the Helghast and the VSA are fighting over her as this biological virus is to be weaponized to wipe out the other race by each side, and you also meet up again with a Helghast operative named Echo (whom you see in the end of Mission 1 during a prisoner swap).
This goes on while pressure is mounted against the VSA by the Black Hand terrorist group, led by Vladko Tyran with numerous terrorist attacks, and after attempting to capture and then assassinate him he ends up escaping to New Helghan. Kellen infiltrates New Helghan to assassinate Tyran and after finding him and blowing up his house (with his boss revealed to be Jorhan Stahl from Killzone 3, in a breathing machine and strapped to a chair, sadly not played by Malcolm McDowell but he sounds decently close) he gets captured by Helghast forces, after which Echo breaks him out of this prison and gets him over the wall in exchange for him trying to convince Sinclair to stop this battle as this war will lead to everyone dying. Tensions flare up as Kellan is unable to convince Sinclair to stand down and he is accused of being a traitor before sending him again to a mining vessel in space to capture Massar after she defected to the Helghast regime. This goes awry, it’s learned that Stahl has the biological weapon and Echo arrives to murder Massar, in which is a success. Echo and Kellan team up to go to the ruins of planet Helghan to find and stop Stahl. Here you explore these ruins to find more facilities and you learn that Tyran is actually alive…for a little bit before you kill him with Echo. The ISA then invade as well, and Echo/Kellan invade Stahl’s base. Kellan confronts Stahl in his breathing machine before Sinclair comes and not only kills Stahl but you as well. You then play as Echo in the final mission as you sneak your way through a populated mall area before sniping Sinclair and ending his threat once and for all.
So here are my thoughts on the story overall: I think that the set pieces are cool and that this game kind of operated more from set piece to set piece than actually having something really cohesive. The story and characters take a backseat for the most part, some are more prominent than others while some just kind of appear and then are never seen again. One example is Helghast commander Anton Saric, a guy whose name I only know due to the Killzone Wiki but plenty of other things are learned, such as Echo being a half Vektan/half Helghast as well as the daughter of Hera Visari, the heir to the Visari throne. Kellan as I said is boring as hell, while Echo has some interesting ideas I could roll with, and Sinclair is cool I guess. You can also learn about bits and pieces of the Killzone lore through collectibles, of which it’s learned that Rico and Sev from the previous games have gone MIA, and the Helghast want them dead for the Terracide. I remember watching a review a long time ago by a guy named Jarekthegamingdragon, and he made an interesting point: the story ends in a thud and doesn’t mean anything in the greater universe. I agree for the most part, though the extent is something I’m not sure but I guess it’s kind of the point considering it’s inspired by the Cold War so I suppose having a status quo would make sense, but if that’s the case also why have the game to begin with if nothing changes? Again, this is a game about set pieces; of which my favorites are in Mission 2, Mission 5 and the last mission; of which I will tell you why in the next paragraph.
The gameplay as were most of the other games except Liberation, were first person shooters. The huge difference this time is that compared to Killzone 2 and 3, it feels WAY better; the gunplay almost feels Call of Duty-like and say whatever you want but Call of Duty at least FEELS good. Shooting feels punchy for the most part, as does melee (which by god feels fucking great, I swear I’m normal lol) and for the most part it all feels great. You even have a drone that you can use during the game which can stun enemies, shoot a grapple line to traverse the environment, shoot soldiers (though this wasn’t as useful because it was kind of spongy and only worked for a bit), and put a shield in front of you (which I didn’t really use that much if at all) as well as hack certain terminals and the most important feature: Reviving you if you die which is fucking fantastic cause it makes the “Don’t die throughout the game once” trophy a lot easier to deal with. I guess the only thing I can really criticize about the gunplay is that the minigun sometimes feels a bit unreliable due to the swaying time though I guess because it’s a giant bulky minigun that’s not too much of a surprise. Also the jumping is fuckin awkward and I don’t like how it feels, like every gap I jump across I’m always about to fall off
The level design in the missions above are a lot more open ended too, feeling almost like Far Cry in a sense with how open it is and how you can tackle certain objectives in numerous ways; for example in Mission 2 you land in a forest after ziplining from a Dam to find multiple objectives for finding survivors, turning off the alarm, etc. and there’s also a stealth system for the game. It’s the same for Mission 5, where you infiltrate New Helghan in an open area as you can either choose to go loud, stay stealthy and choose your way to do objectives (and optional objectives sometimes that doesn’t really change the story in any way and you can choose whether to do them or not) as well as Mission 10, which is a little bit more limited as you have to do certain objectives to perform an assassination but same thing, but with different abilities such as the one to go invisible to sneak past enemies. I feel like this is the natural evolution the series could take before it could become stale from the usual Call of Duty shooting gallery formula and the truth be told, while it doesn’t TOTALLY follow the Far Cry open world formula it shows potential. Other highlights that really pop out to talk about is that in Mission 3, you sneak aboard a space station and towards the end you can shoot nearby windows to burn Helghast soldiers and Mission 6 you can have Echo snipe enemies so you can sneak your way through certain areas. If there were any frustrating moments I’d say there were three: Mission 4 has you turning off bombs at a train station and there were a couple of times I’d have to reload the section due to the “Don’t die” trophy because of moving trains, but I could pass it off as “it is what it is”. The worst parts however happen sequentially in the beginnings of Mission 7 and 8: in Mission 7 you have to jump down a giant hole and maneuver past giant rotors before landing in a SPECIFIC spot which was kind of annoying, and one where I died multiple times trying to figure it all out. If you want a tip, I’d say fall towards one of the rotors, they’re all going a certain direction and if you move towards the rotors you will end up going through the holes (heh) instead of hitting the blade. I have no tips for Mission 8, in which you glide through Old Helghan ruins as you make your way through the ruined city, the controls are fuckin weird, overshoot and often times I’d die because I couldn’t figure out how to move in a way that made sense; it doesn’t feel good and I just wanted this section to end.
Final section to mention is multiplayer: I can’t say much about it but when I learned that the servers for this and Mercenary would be shutting down in August of 2022, I decided to get cranking out the multiplayer trophies. Now while this was a grind, and working to get these trophies sometimes felt monotonous especially since I was racing against the clock (I still feel that there should either be no multiplayer trophies or that they should be on a separate list or better yet just auto unlock them for people who actually want to get the platinum later on) what I can say is that the game’s multiplayer in its last leg was actually kind of fun. It’s the usual affair, the usual CoD styled game modes but it was a nice bit of fun and sometimes I go and play the Botzone if I feel like doing something with it.
Now what can I say about the other stuff; meaning the sound design, voice acting, art design, music, etc? Well for starters, again graphically Guerilla like always has outdone itself; in fact I’d say that this is their number one strength as a game studio is that they know how to make their games look fucking beautiful and top everything else; for example Mission 2, The Shadow, the forest is looks amazing with it’s use of lighting and forest textures. Vekta City is beautiful as a cyberpunk-like dystopia, with light colors contrasting New Helghan’s darker and more oppressive atmosphere; the Decima is an amazing engine and there’s no wonder it’s been used in all of Guerilla’s titles, Until Dawn and Death Stranding (along with it’s in development sequel). Legitimately, you could mistake this for a Playstation 5 title sometimes and if you were to play this on Playstation 5 you’d probably agree. The voice acting is decent for the most part; David Harewood does a decent job playing Sinclair (side note: The dude looks like Sylen’s (Horizon series) voice actor Lance Reddick, rest in peace) but there aren’t really too many standouts here, but sometimes that’s ok as they all fit in the game and make it sound believable. The sound design is good for the most part, and it fits almost everything that it intends to (though some of the guns, I forget which one could be a little more punchy). Last thing I can mention is the soundtrack; done by Tyler Bates (who did God of War: Ascension and later Far Cry: New Dawn) along with Lorn (whose contributed tracks to the likes of Sleeping Dogs, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Gran Turismo 5); the music can sound a bit tense sometimes in it’s moments and honestly, sort of slaps. Granted I don’t remember much of anything in the way of actual tracks but it works well with its purpose. As with most things in the Killzone franchise, they don’t have much in the way of standout stuff but they’re good at making stuff immersive for the most part and as long as it doesn’t sound misplaced or awful (like Resident Evil 1’s Mansion Basement), for the most part I’m satisfied or won’t bat an eye to it.
So what exactly are my thoughts on Killzone: Shadowfall? I understand why people feel like it’s average. It isn’t exactly pulled off the best plot wise, almost everyone is forgettable in terms of characters, and the truth is it does end on a thud. And to be honest, I’m kind of sad about that; because the truth is between Killzone and Horizon, I feel like Killzone even in shoulder shrugging genericness has a lot of potential for more than what it had. It had a lot of cool ideas, I really liked the more open ended level design, the improvements to the combat compared to the previous Killzone games, it’s just a lot of things around it weren’t pulled off the best and with how it ended it didn’t feel like a satisfying finish to the series. In essence it reminds me of The Order: 1886, another game I got the platinum trophy for; not pulled off the best but it has a lot of things around it that really boost it up for me.
For my final bit on this, here me out; I know Guerilla has moved onto Horizon. But I feel like with the natural progression of Shadow Fall’s game design that there could be something in the way of one last game I feel they should do to end the series off on a good note. Have it be an open world RPG (minus the Ubisoft formula), since the Killzone series has its stuff parallel to real world events and so if Sinclair’s assassination is the parallel to JFK’s assassination then I feel like the next (and last) game should be set in their version of Vietnam. Have it be an entirely different planet, the VSA are invading to re-establish a dictatorship while the Helghast are using the opportunity to fund guerillas while having seedy intentions, pull aspects from Killzone: Mercenary in terms of doing mercenary work for everyone, don’t have the world be this super huge thing as much as it is dense and full of stuff to do, make it dynamic; like there’s a lot of stuff you could do with an open world Killzone, a lot of thematic “War is Hell'' stuff you could do and say with it. Hell I have so many ideas that if I was able to do graphic design work, I’d write up my own PDF and release it just so y'all would know what I’m talking about. Alas though, like many others, the series has kind of stagnated and fell behind in importance for Playstation history, and understandably so. But there’s no reason you can’t end things off on a good note. Oh, and again I’m going to be annoying here: PORT THE GAMES TO PC. In fact, port all the old games to PC, and make them good please (no one wants a repeat of The Last of Us Part I’s port).
2013
This review contains spoilers
Grand Theft Auto V is an open world "Run over pedestrians, bang hookers and then kill them to get your money back" simulator game developed by Rockstar Games; everyone knows this game by now, what it's about, and what it's like. I'll start by saying this, I'm going to give this a positive rating because it's a functioning game, it plays really well, the style is nice, like there's a lot to love here gameplay wise. Hell I remember when I first started playing this game, I had gotten a new Xbox 360 hard drive and when I started this game I WOULD NOT stop for years, finishing the story more times then I could count and playing through the multiplayer for so long I fooled myself that I was actually "Good" at it. Overall, I had a lot of fun times with my friends, times that I could never really get rid of and I even created some Machinimas that while they were of varying quality, I had a lot of fun making (due to the Rockstar Movie Editor they installed on both the Xbox One/PS4 versions as well as PC). However, the longer I played, the more I fell out of love with this game and the more I could see the cracks of it; and here's how I'll explain it, starting with the multiplayer.
The multiplayer was great at first, lots of promise of potential roleplay mechanics where we could run our own criminal organizations and crews. Hell I used to be a GTA Crew leader that was somewhat active, and I'd get on Rockstar Social Club everyday. Here's my issue with it, for the longest time it was a buggy mess which I was able to ignore. However after losing good internet I couldn't even CONNECT to multiplayer because of my internet service provider and so I stuck to single player games, slowly rediscovering my love for them. When I came back, I had noticed how grindy everything was, how I'd have to replay missions over and over or join a friend's heist and repeat those in order to make any modicum of money to buy an apartment or vehicle or whatever facility was needed for the next heist and new updates, rinse and repeat. However, Rockstar provided a solution that has since become a crutch for them: Shark Cards. Why get paid decently when you can grind out the hours to coerce certain players to pay REAL money to get fictional in game cash, and it worked with them getting hundreds of millions of dollars and more than recouping their investment. It became so much of a crutch that their reasons for not doing GTA Story expansions were: Multiplayer content, Next-Gen ports and Red Dead 2; not bad reasons in itself, it's normal to want to keep a healthy multiplayer going, but there's a balance between profit and creativity that should be struck and I felt that Rockstar went into the deep end, especially considering the game became more focused on Fast and Furious styled flying motorcycles with missile launchers and grieving focused that it no longer became fun.
For the story I have less to say, it's a lot better than multiplayer and it appeals more to my tastes but it also has a lot left to be desired. Compared to the other GTA games and even other open world crime games it lacks something; personality and soul. The characters don't really go through any character arcs that have much of a feel to them (which compared to Niko from GTA 4 is a crime in my opinion), everything while on purpose is a parody of modern day culture has become a parody of itself even (which I mean look at Michael's family, they're all painfully annoying as characters and while it may be a satire on materialism and deadbeat fathers or whatever, I don't enjoy being around any of them which makes their family reuniting arc over one therapy session to feel rushed with no impact, and the game's main draw: the heists? Only the first and last one have any significance in terms of value as the others just feel like padding due to the game's story; which in itself I can summarize as "Michael destroys a house, does a heist to repay a crime lord and then everything unravels" between all the characters and it's all a culmination of that. I guess if I were to summarize it a bit, you play as former bank robber Michael De Santa, Grove Street gangster Franklin Clinton and psychopath drug dealer Trevor Phillips; their fates are intertwined in various ways through strange means and have their own quirks, you have your own special abilities as well (like Franklin can slow down while driving) and you guys go through the ringer as you deal with corrupt police departments manipulating you into doing their dirty work. There are surprising twists (Rest in peace to Johnny Klebitz from GTA IV), I actually do like the main characters to an extent (However, again they don't really have character arcs other than certain events and a hand wave) though some of the endings feel pointless: it's either Kill this person, that person or kill the main bad guys; which why would anyone want to choose one of the first two if the third option will always be there? Why not just stick to the final mission or choosing to kill one of the three protagonists? I mean once you beat the story on the third ending, there's no reason to even play as Michael anymore since he's now retired and a movie producer.
My apologies for the strange rambling as it isn't my usual format; I can say without a doubt that the gameplay is a lot of fun, you'll still have lots of side activities, friends in game (hopefully so in MP lol but I mean SP) and little details that still wow you, but for me this game is as unfocused as this review kind of feels for me. And since then it hasn't really gotten any better, most of my time was spent trying to mod the single player so I can create machinima, which I gave up after Take Two tried to shut down OpenIV, which was the original reason for my bad review and made it a reason why I wouldn't bother playing it afterwards. I didn't bother playing through the single player (for the third time) on PC so I just downloaded a save file from the internet and counted it as completed; but that being said there is good stuff with this game (the secret Epsilon missions are amongst my favorites), I mean it's one of the most well sold and received games ever created. I just think it's a shame that it didn't have much soul, and truth be told for me only exists to either play multiplayer when my friends want me to or one day hop in and crack out some modded content for me to morph the game into a game I'm more interested in. To finish up, while I'm always happy to congratulate on success, I'm also sad that RDR2 basically got ignored (especially multiplayer, though that MP in itself has it's issues) because this ten year old game sold's microtransactions sold really well (also just heard about that Subscription based GTA+ service, like this game isn't monetized enough as it is lol). I'm sorta interested in GTA 6 but I'm also hesitant and I hope it continues to have the feeling more of Red Dead 2 than what GTA V had to offer. Here are some links for modding, make sure to follow a tutorial to do it properly AND don't go online if you do (unless you're doing server based roleplay) as you'll get banned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b469Yr6BWA4&ab_channel=Abuzz
https://www.gta5-mods.com/
https://openiv.com/ (Down at the moment, try to find a good copy from a friend or reliable source)
https://www.dev-c.com/gtav/scripthookv/
Now it's been a while since I downloaded mods so when you look it up please be careful for shady links, apologies again for the unfocused review (though if you get it for Steam know that the single player is worth your time though multiplayer is up in the air).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/10/23/rockstar-finally-says-outright-why-gta-5-never-got-single-player-dlc/?sh=5d61213325a4
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The multiplayer was great at first, lots of promise of potential roleplay mechanics where we could run our own criminal organizations and crews. Hell I used to be a GTA Crew leader that was somewhat active, and I'd get on Rockstar Social Club everyday. Here's my issue with it, for the longest time it was a buggy mess which I was able to ignore. However after losing good internet I couldn't even CONNECT to multiplayer because of my internet service provider and so I stuck to single player games, slowly rediscovering my love for them. When I came back, I had noticed how grindy everything was, how I'd have to replay missions over and over or join a friend's heist and repeat those in order to make any modicum of money to buy an apartment or vehicle or whatever facility was needed for the next heist and new updates, rinse and repeat. However, Rockstar provided a solution that has since become a crutch for them: Shark Cards. Why get paid decently when you can grind out the hours to coerce certain players to pay REAL money to get fictional in game cash, and it worked with them getting hundreds of millions of dollars and more than recouping their investment. It became so much of a crutch that their reasons for not doing GTA Story expansions were: Multiplayer content, Next-Gen ports and Red Dead 2; not bad reasons in itself, it's normal to want to keep a healthy multiplayer going, but there's a balance between profit and creativity that should be struck and I felt that Rockstar went into the deep end, especially considering the game became more focused on Fast and Furious styled flying motorcycles with missile launchers and grieving focused that it no longer became fun.
For the story I have less to say, it's a lot better than multiplayer and it appeals more to my tastes but it also has a lot left to be desired. Compared to the other GTA games and even other open world crime games it lacks something; personality and soul. The characters don't really go through any character arcs that have much of a feel to them (which compared to Niko from GTA 4 is a crime in my opinion), everything while on purpose is a parody of modern day culture has become a parody of itself even (which I mean look at Michael's family, they're all painfully annoying as characters and while it may be a satire on materialism and deadbeat fathers or whatever, I don't enjoy being around any of them which makes their family reuniting arc over one therapy session to feel rushed with no impact, and the game's main draw: the heists? Only the first and last one have any significance in terms of value as the others just feel like padding due to the game's story; which in itself I can summarize as "Michael destroys a house, does a heist to repay a crime lord and then everything unravels" between all the characters and it's all a culmination of that. I guess if I were to summarize it a bit, you play as former bank robber Michael De Santa, Grove Street gangster Franklin Clinton and psychopath drug dealer Trevor Phillips; their fates are intertwined in various ways through strange means and have their own quirks, you have your own special abilities as well (like Franklin can slow down while driving) and you guys go through the ringer as you deal with corrupt police departments manipulating you into doing their dirty work. There are surprising twists (Rest in peace to Johnny Klebitz from GTA IV), I actually do like the main characters to an extent (However, again they don't really have character arcs other than certain events and a hand wave) though some of the endings feel pointless: it's either Kill this person, that person or kill the main bad guys; which why would anyone want to choose one of the first two if the third option will always be there? Why not just stick to the final mission or choosing to kill one of the three protagonists? I mean once you beat the story on the third ending, there's no reason to even play as Michael anymore since he's now retired and a movie producer.
My apologies for the strange rambling as it isn't my usual format; I can say without a doubt that the gameplay is a lot of fun, you'll still have lots of side activities, friends in game (hopefully so in MP lol but I mean SP) and little details that still wow you, but for me this game is as unfocused as this review kind of feels for me. And since then it hasn't really gotten any better, most of my time was spent trying to mod the single player so I can create machinima, which I gave up after Take Two tried to shut down OpenIV, which was the original reason for my bad review and made it a reason why I wouldn't bother playing it afterwards. I didn't bother playing through the single player (for the third time) on PC so I just downloaded a save file from the internet and counted it as completed; but that being said there is good stuff with this game (the secret Epsilon missions are amongst my favorites), I mean it's one of the most well sold and received games ever created. I just think it's a shame that it didn't have much soul, and truth be told for me only exists to either play multiplayer when my friends want me to or one day hop in and crack out some modded content for me to morph the game into a game I'm more interested in. To finish up, while I'm always happy to congratulate on success, I'm also sad that RDR2 basically got ignored (especially multiplayer, though that MP in itself has it's issues) because this ten year old game sold's microtransactions sold really well (also just heard about that Subscription based GTA+ service, like this game isn't monetized enough as it is lol). I'm sorta interested in GTA 6 but I'm also hesitant and I hope it continues to have the feeling more of Red Dead 2 than what GTA V had to offer. Here are some links for modding, make sure to follow a tutorial to do it properly AND don't go online if you do (unless you're doing server based roleplay) as you'll get banned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b469Yr6BWA4&ab_channel=Abuzz
https://www.gta5-mods.com/
https://openiv.com/ (Down at the moment, try to find a good copy from a friend or reliable source)
https://www.dev-c.com/gtav/scripthookv/
Now it's been a while since I downloaded mods so when you look it up please be careful for shady links, apologies again for the unfocused review (though if you get it for Steam know that the single player is worth your time though multiplayer is up in the air).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/10/23/rockstar-finally-says-outright-why-gta-5-never-got-single-player-dlc/?sh=5d61213325a4
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Friday the 13th is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game developed by Illfonic and developed by Gun Media; where you can either choose to play as Jason Voorhees or the numerous camp counselors looking to run away from him as you fight to survive or in Jason's case, try to murder everyone in pure style. I'm gonna start out by saying that this won't necessarily be a full in depth review as I hadn't played it in so long, nor am I a huge multiplayer guy anymore (however this is my most played game on Steam by far). Here's what I can tell you though, this game was one of the most fun multiplayer games I've ever had fun with; I backed the kickstarter when they announced it, I got a gaming PC just to play this game, and through this game I met some of the coolest people in my life (and some of the worst) but it was an experience to say the least. It had some toxic and horrible people but some of the best people as well; I remember dudes would go out of their way to kill me because I had pre-ordered the Savini Jason Skin (mainly because I like new Jason ideas helped me imagine the potential for future movies) but other times everyone would just meet up in the center and goof around, sometimes Jason would roleplay and play loud a s s music in the mic while trolling people, or sometimes he'd just be a dude who'd just go for a jog with you, say their pleasantries before putting you in a sleeping bag and smack you against a tree.
There is no real story (other than collectible tapes which both provide some sort of backstory to certain events while also making references to other horror media like Nightmare on Elm Street, Shocker, Halloween, etc) because the truth is that obviously it wasn't really built for one. And that's fine, the gameplay was for the most part the real center stage piece of it.
The gameplay follows as stated above, but with different mechanics: play as Jason and you're basically invincible but capable of being stunned, slowed down by certain traps, etc. Maybe I'm just a biased Jason fan but I know a lot of people at the time we're complaining about Jason being overpowered, but that's what Jason is in the movies so I didn't really complain. But you could choose from a number of Jason skins from the the second movie onwards (though no Pamela, no Jason X or further due to rights issues), who all had different buffs and cons, and truth be told it was a delight to see them all play out. The counselors also had different buffs and cons, and you had different objectives such as escape via boat, car, survive til' the end, or the most difficult of all: Kill Jason which required a number of steps that for the most part could only be completed due to extreme team work, luck and maybe even Jason's help if he's feeling generous. Honestly, even though at times it could be janky, the gameplay was a lot of fun, even if you didn't take anything seriously and just wanted to goof around and talk to people in chat. However it's been a while since I last played, and when I last played that social aspect was gone due to the fact I can't understand Eastern European or Asian Languages, but I respect that people we're still able to play it even after it's absence. The worst part I could say the game had an issue with at the time was sometimes toxic people (not as bad as Overwatch's fan base though to be honest) and just the disconnection to the servers sometimes were AWFUL; the game came out as a broken mess but due to the fact I loved the series I stuck by it and enjoyed it for what it was.
For graphics/art and music, and everything else; I'll start by saying before the legal issues set it up for failure, I know when I reviewed the game I said it could've done with more maps but by the time the game was shelved it had maps from Part 1-5 and really accurate representations from the movies. I didn't expect fifty maps that are huge as they were going based on the movies and I respect that but they made it look fantastic even if graphically the game wasn't the greatest with graphics as it had a lot of goofy models, facial structure, and the likes of lots of goofy but noticeable glitches. The music, created by Harry Manfredi stood out however as always and was fantastic and everyone did a great job in replicating the old movies in terms of atmosphere and the likes.
Since then, what has happened? Well due to issues on who owned the franchise between writer of the OG Victor Miller and the owner of the series Sean Cunningham this game was forced to shelve all future content (which included the likes of Jason X). I appreciated the amount of content it did get though (like a homage to NES Jason was priceless) and all the times I had with it, though sadly the game will be closed down soon; sales will stop in December 31st of 2023 and be shut down in the years following, probably including it's offline NPC mode (which I didn't try but it probably didn't work much anyways). However, there is hope for a potential future as new movies/series are being made as well as a new game apparently. To finish it off, I miss this game and back in the day there was a bit of a rivalry between this and Dead by Daylight; to me DBD was scarier but F13 was a lot more fun, however we all know who won the longevity game. Regardless it's just sad how this game went out with a whimper, I wish things could've been different, though if you wanna try it out and play now's your chance.
https://twitter.com/Friday13thGame/status/1666811485811806210
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/613356213/friday-the-13th-the-game
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-new-friday-the-13th-game-is-in-development-with-composer-harry-manfredini/1100-6514935/
https://fridaythe13ththegame.fandom.com/wiki/Collectibles
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FridayThe13thTheGame
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
There is no real story (other than collectible tapes which both provide some sort of backstory to certain events while also making references to other horror media like Nightmare on Elm Street, Shocker, Halloween, etc) because the truth is that obviously it wasn't really built for one. And that's fine, the gameplay was for the most part the real center stage piece of it.
The gameplay follows as stated above, but with different mechanics: play as Jason and you're basically invincible but capable of being stunned, slowed down by certain traps, etc. Maybe I'm just a biased Jason fan but I know a lot of people at the time we're complaining about Jason being overpowered, but that's what Jason is in the movies so I didn't really complain. But you could choose from a number of Jason skins from the the second movie onwards (though no Pamela, no Jason X or further due to rights issues), who all had different buffs and cons, and truth be told it was a delight to see them all play out. The counselors also had different buffs and cons, and you had different objectives such as escape via boat, car, survive til' the end, or the most difficult of all: Kill Jason which required a number of steps that for the most part could only be completed due to extreme team work, luck and maybe even Jason's help if he's feeling generous. Honestly, even though at times it could be janky, the gameplay was a lot of fun, even if you didn't take anything seriously and just wanted to goof around and talk to people in chat. However it's been a while since I last played, and when I last played that social aspect was gone due to the fact I can't understand Eastern European or Asian Languages, but I respect that people we're still able to play it even after it's absence. The worst part I could say the game had an issue with at the time was sometimes toxic people (not as bad as Overwatch's fan base though to be honest) and just the disconnection to the servers sometimes were AWFUL; the game came out as a broken mess but due to the fact I loved the series I stuck by it and enjoyed it for what it was.
For graphics/art and music, and everything else; I'll start by saying before the legal issues set it up for failure, I know when I reviewed the game I said it could've done with more maps but by the time the game was shelved it had maps from Part 1-5 and really accurate representations from the movies. I didn't expect fifty maps that are huge as they were going based on the movies and I respect that but they made it look fantastic even if graphically the game wasn't the greatest with graphics as it had a lot of goofy models, facial structure, and the likes of lots of goofy but noticeable glitches. The music, created by Harry Manfredi stood out however as always and was fantastic and everyone did a great job in replicating the old movies in terms of atmosphere and the likes.
Since then, what has happened? Well due to issues on who owned the franchise between writer of the OG Victor Miller and the owner of the series Sean Cunningham this game was forced to shelve all future content (which included the likes of Jason X). I appreciated the amount of content it did get though (like a homage to NES Jason was priceless) and all the times I had with it, though sadly the game will be closed down soon; sales will stop in December 31st of 2023 and be shut down in the years following, probably including it's offline NPC mode (which I didn't try but it probably didn't work much anyways). However, there is hope for a potential future as new movies/series are being made as well as a new game apparently. To finish it off, I miss this game and back in the day there was a bit of a rivalry between this and Dead by Daylight; to me DBD was scarier but F13 was a lot more fun, however we all know who won the longevity game. Regardless it's just sad how this game went out with a whimper, I wish things could've been different, though if you wanna try it out and play now's your chance.
https://twitter.com/Friday13thGame/status/1666811485811806210
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/613356213/friday-the-13th-the-game
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-new-friday-the-13th-game-is-in-development-with-composer-harry-manfredini/1100-6514935/
https://fridaythe13ththegame.fandom.com/wiki/Collectibles
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FridayThe13thTheGame
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
This review contains spoilers
Drug Dealer Simulator is a quite literal “drug dealer simulator” about being, well, a drug dealer; developed by Byterunners Game Studios, it’s kind of self explanatory and I’m not sure what else to put here in terms of developer context. However what I can say is this: I originally got this game a month and a half after the game came out in Early Access around April of 2020 (shoutout to my dude BFD Survivor for the immaculate pick) because not only had I shown interest in it due to my fascination for criminal fiction/nonfiction but also my constant jokes about actually selling and taking drugs, so I’ve been playing this on and off for the past couple of years and I’ll just start out by saying that it has its flaws but as a game I really enjoy my time with it, both due to my imagination but also due to the fact that once you get the rhythm going that the gameplay loop to me personally becomes addicting.
In fact, I’m gonna start with the gameplay; you’re here to sell drugs (of which can vary from weed to meth to the motherload of cocaine), you can mix them together with other materials like baking soda, fentanyl, acetone, whatever you can find in game to make it more potent/addicting. The more addicting, the more customers you bring/the faster you can get them addicted; however there’s a high price to pay if people overdose. The cops will show up more often, a lot less people will go to you for product and eventually you might get raided by DEA and if you get that then it’s game over. To this end, this game essentially promotes both time and monetary management skills; you have to buy the drugs from Eddie (your dealer) whom you distribute drugs to other customers so you can get money of course. However with this, keep in mind you have to pay Eddie as well or you won’t get any drugs; of course you can grow some in the future (and later end up going independent due to story events, of which you have to start up drug labs in certain safehouse spots). The early game can be hellish in terms of actually making profit considering the first area you don’t really get too cash. But saving money is the key, you get money and stash some away, maybe buy a safehouse or two in case you need a place to fall back on (they also give you benefits like extra money per sale and lower reputation degradation), invest in new equipment; there’s a lot that I can’t describe here but it does have some sort of benefit to the overall experience. Of course you can only get this stuff (as well as End Game features) by leveling up to 36 so it’s going to be a grind, and whereas I do enjoy this stuff and the RPG-like mechanics with perks, grinding in almost any case can be boring if there isn’t MORE to it other than the core gameplay loop, which I like a lot but still. Again, you can kind of tell that the feature creep really got to ‘em considering the debut trailer had guns in it (and I believe the dev promised them? Don’t quote me I don’t remember). You can also apparently get high on your own supply (which I didn’t, because never do that though it apparently gives benefits) and there’s a lot of smuggling going on with inventory management; any money you get you have to carry in your backpack (which reminds me you can launder that money later and slowly get it trickled back down to you for legit purchases such as late game villas, safehouses, furniture, etc.) and the smuggling kept me on my toes between buying lockpicks and trying to cross into the other districts via sewers or choosing between paying 350 dollars to a construction worker to take a tunnel or throwing your bag over the wall (which I’ll be honest is kind of easier said than done, at least with me) and going through the police checkpoint. All of these make for a very interesting loop which I’ve enjoyed non stop; I wish I could describe every feature but I can’t because time; however if I were to describe any issues it would definitely be the grind can be boring and the police themselves. The police were strange with their AI in my play through, most of the time they worked fine but sometimes they could see me from 15 miles away and ask to search and other times I can sprint right past and they wouldn’t care; I don’t remember if that was perks or if it’s just a game thing but as much as it keeps you on your toes they definitely become annoying. If you want a tip for this, if you ever get into a chase and you have a heavy load then drop it and just book it or you’ll get zapped and arrested; overall for me the loop works and trying to balance doing all the math to get your product correct while running all over the place, trying to avoid cops, it genuinely works and it’s a tense but rewarding process. However, do yourself a favor and save often just in case, gonna move onto the story quickly.
The story is you play as a dude working under a guy named Eddie, who works for The Cartel; you sell drugs and do general crime while your inner conscience talks to you in a 90s skater voice about how doing crime is awesome while sometimes making fourth wall breaking joke instructions or pop culture references; play your cards right and eventually you team up with either drug lord La Ballena or Kenji who ask for varying amounts of drug orders in exchange for huge profits, you team up with a Psychedelics gang, get a money launderer and then you go to the end game: The Cartel and the Colombians go to war, and through a series of events Eddie ends up leaving and you grow to be an independent drug dealer with the entire area under your control. That’s it, no in depth plot or anything, it’s serviceable but for a simulation game like this it’s kind of what I expect.
To move onto graphics/art & sound design; I’ll just start with the graphics. The graphics aren’t great, they feel really cheap, like low quality flipped assets (mostly on the civilians of course) and the world definitely gives the feeling that it’s abandoned (I mean christ, you’re working around what I believe to be the border and it’s a HORRIBLE crime infested hell hole), most likely it’s not a purposeful world design but it gives off the vibe of such especially considering throughout the game you’re stuck in a town trapped by overzealous police officers who love to oppress the people anyways. Now there are people, but most of the buildings while they don’t need to have a purpose, feels like they were supposed to have one but got cut due to budget reasons. Truth be told, I don’t think the graphics really delivered because of the budget stuff, what I can say is that the graffiti looks cool. Also commonly when getting into conversations you’ll see misspelling, punctuation that’s off, like it’s a finished game but it needs more polish and that’s probably due to the fact that the developers are from Poland I believe (no pun intended). In this section however, the sound design is where the game shines; the music selections are a great sort of underground mix, the title theme slaps to hell, like there are songs in this game that I STILL listen to even when I take months off from playing this game (mostly songs by Thonio or Vic Sage).
Overall, the game has a lot of jank, a lot of stuff that feels strange and unfinished; but again the gameplay loop really works for me and I like what this game has to offer despite the jank (also wanna point out a glitch, working on my villa and tried putting some doors down but accidentally painted the nearby walls and so now I can’t give my villa front or back doors, which is strange but whatever) and general grind of the game. Is it worth the price? To me yes it is, I got my hours/enjoyment out of the game and every now and then I’ll go back and play for fun; BUT you kind of have to look past all the imperfections and meet the game on it’s own terms to do so. It’s not perfect but I find it enjoyable and will probably continue to play it; I know at the moment the studio is gearing up for DDS2, of which I’ll put the links below.
Wanted to post this in the review but I'm tired and Steam Character limits, however here are some guides and reference material I looked into.
https://www.chaptercheats.com/cheat/pc/436459/Drug-Dealer-Simulator/hint/155297/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2065932078
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885790535
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXd86rUabl8
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2D00LMHvPxxvlllGQUAx7XqX-iBzlfTM
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4d5eN1HopWyRm3xF6DGCyc
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708850/Drug_Dealer_Simulator_2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBLCU-T5rvs&ab_channel=GameTrailers
https://www.nexusmods.com/drugdealersimulator
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
In fact, I’m gonna start with the gameplay; you’re here to sell drugs (of which can vary from weed to meth to the motherload of cocaine), you can mix them together with other materials like baking soda, fentanyl, acetone, whatever you can find in game to make it more potent/addicting. The more addicting, the more customers you bring/the faster you can get them addicted; however there’s a high price to pay if people overdose. The cops will show up more often, a lot less people will go to you for product and eventually you might get raided by DEA and if you get that then it’s game over. To this end, this game essentially promotes both time and monetary management skills; you have to buy the drugs from Eddie (your dealer) whom you distribute drugs to other customers so you can get money of course. However with this, keep in mind you have to pay Eddie as well or you won’t get any drugs; of course you can grow some in the future (and later end up going independent due to story events, of which you have to start up drug labs in certain safehouse spots). The early game can be hellish in terms of actually making profit considering the first area you don’t really get too cash. But saving money is the key, you get money and stash some away, maybe buy a safehouse or two in case you need a place to fall back on (they also give you benefits like extra money per sale and lower reputation degradation), invest in new equipment; there’s a lot that I can’t describe here but it does have some sort of benefit to the overall experience. Of course you can only get this stuff (as well as End Game features) by leveling up to 36 so it’s going to be a grind, and whereas I do enjoy this stuff and the RPG-like mechanics with perks, grinding in almost any case can be boring if there isn’t MORE to it other than the core gameplay loop, which I like a lot but still. Again, you can kind of tell that the feature creep really got to ‘em considering the debut trailer had guns in it (and I believe the dev promised them? Don’t quote me I don’t remember). You can also apparently get high on your own supply (which I didn’t, because never do that though it apparently gives benefits) and there’s a lot of smuggling going on with inventory management; any money you get you have to carry in your backpack (which reminds me you can launder that money later and slowly get it trickled back down to you for legit purchases such as late game villas, safehouses, furniture, etc.) and the smuggling kept me on my toes between buying lockpicks and trying to cross into the other districts via sewers or choosing between paying 350 dollars to a construction worker to take a tunnel or throwing your bag over the wall (which I’ll be honest is kind of easier said than done, at least with me) and going through the police checkpoint. All of these make for a very interesting loop which I’ve enjoyed non stop; I wish I could describe every feature but I can’t because time; however if I were to describe any issues it would definitely be the grind can be boring and the police themselves. The police were strange with their AI in my play through, most of the time they worked fine but sometimes they could see me from 15 miles away and ask to search and other times I can sprint right past and they wouldn’t care; I don’t remember if that was perks or if it’s just a game thing but as much as it keeps you on your toes they definitely become annoying. If you want a tip for this, if you ever get into a chase and you have a heavy load then drop it and just book it or you’ll get zapped and arrested; overall for me the loop works and trying to balance doing all the math to get your product correct while running all over the place, trying to avoid cops, it genuinely works and it’s a tense but rewarding process. However, do yourself a favor and save often just in case, gonna move onto the story quickly.
The story is you play as a dude working under a guy named Eddie, who works for The Cartel; you sell drugs and do general crime while your inner conscience talks to you in a 90s skater voice about how doing crime is awesome while sometimes making fourth wall breaking joke instructions or pop culture references; play your cards right and eventually you team up with either drug lord La Ballena or Kenji who ask for varying amounts of drug orders in exchange for huge profits, you team up with a Psychedelics gang, get a money launderer and then you go to the end game: The Cartel and the Colombians go to war, and through a series of events Eddie ends up leaving and you grow to be an independent drug dealer with the entire area under your control. That’s it, no in depth plot or anything, it’s serviceable but for a simulation game like this it’s kind of what I expect.
To move onto graphics/art & sound design; I’ll just start with the graphics. The graphics aren’t great, they feel really cheap, like low quality flipped assets (mostly on the civilians of course) and the world definitely gives the feeling that it’s abandoned (I mean christ, you’re working around what I believe to be the border and it’s a HORRIBLE crime infested hell hole), most likely it’s not a purposeful world design but it gives off the vibe of such especially considering throughout the game you’re stuck in a town trapped by overzealous police officers who love to oppress the people anyways. Now there are people, but most of the buildings while they don’t need to have a purpose, feels like they were supposed to have one but got cut due to budget reasons. Truth be told, I don’t think the graphics really delivered because of the budget stuff, what I can say is that the graffiti looks cool. Also commonly when getting into conversations you’ll see misspelling, punctuation that’s off, like it’s a finished game but it needs more polish and that’s probably due to the fact that the developers are from Poland I believe (no pun intended). In this section however, the sound design is where the game shines; the music selections are a great sort of underground mix, the title theme slaps to hell, like there are songs in this game that I STILL listen to even when I take months off from playing this game (mostly songs by Thonio or Vic Sage).
Overall, the game has a lot of jank, a lot of stuff that feels strange and unfinished; but again the gameplay loop really works for me and I like what this game has to offer despite the jank (also wanna point out a glitch, working on my villa and tried putting some doors down but accidentally painted the nearby walls and so now I can’t give my villa front or back doors, which is strange but whatever) and general grind of the game. Is it worth the price? To me yes it is, I got my hours/enjoyment out of the game and every now and then I’ll go back and play for fun; BUT you kind of have to look past all the imperfections and meet the game on it’s own terms to do so. It’s not perfect but I find it enjoyable and will probably continue to play it; I know at the moment the studio is gearing up for DDS2, of which I’ll put the links below.
Wanted to post this in the review but I'm tired and Steam Character limits, however here are some guides and reference material I looked into.
https://www.chaptercheats.com/cheat/pc/436459/Drug-Dealer-Simulator/hint/155297/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2065932078
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885790535
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXd86rUabl8
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2D00LMHvPxxvlllGQUAx7XqX-iBzlfTM
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4d5eN1HopWyRm3xF6DGCyc
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708850/Drug_Dealer_Simulator_2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBLCU-T5rvs&ab_channel=GameTrailers
https://www.nexusmods.com/drugdealersimulator
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
2003
This review contains spoilers
Siren (or known as Forbidden Siren in the Europe/Asia markets) is a game developed by Japan Studio under the banner of Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 2 console. This game is a fascination to me, in fact it’s been a fascination to me I believe since I watched NitroRad’s video on it (link below) though the truth is I’ve known about it for a bit longer than that due to the fact I’m a weird Sony exclusive historian guy so I’ve always gone out of my way to collect these. However, I originally bought it on PS4 for ten dollars or so due to Nitro’s video on it; and that’s basically the console I played it on because the game is expensive (though I’d love to collect to own it in the future) due to the fact that the game didn’t exactly sell well due to it’s gameplay concepts, of which I will discuss here in a bit. This is due to the fact that the game’s director, Keiichiro Toyama (originally of Silent Hill 1 fame), wanted to create something unique with the series, something that hadn’t been done before. Though I can’t confirm this because writing this review is off the cuff, apparently he wanted this game to be a sort of puzzle that players would have to put together with other people, preferably on the internet. Again, I don't remember the source other than a few offhand bits of info I heard from Youtubists (which could be wrong), but this stuff is kind of rare in concept (the only other example I heard being like this was Kojima’s P.T.; which in a sudden twist of fate was a Silent Hill game but that’s a whole nother bag of shit to get into) and even more rare in the fact that this game came out in 2003, so not a lot of people we’re really doing that as far as I’m aware, at least not like it is now. Because of this, the game didn’t exactly sell well, garnering two more games (the second which only sold in Europe and Japan with no way to play other than region locked PS2 consoles from those versions or alternatively emulating via PC, as well as a “Reimagining” of the first game which I heard was not so great), as well as some movie adaptations in Japan and some manga comics. Truth be told, with how this game plays out, I’m not surprised that more people didn’t play this game, and whereas I’m disappointed and sad, I also can’t really fault anyone. It took me 10 hours to beat based on in game stats but it doesn’t count the constant retrying of deaths so it was more like 15 I would make a guess, which factors into the gameplay which is up next.
So here’s the basic concept of the gameplay: you start out as one of ten characters (which range from main character Kyoya Suda, professor Tamon Takeuchi, Priest Kei Makino, his twin brother Shiro Miyata, Risa Onda (a woman who is also looking for her twin sister, who was dating Shiro), teacher Reiko Takato, student/child Harumi Yomoda, celebrity/70s sitcom mom looking Naoko Mihama, old badass/poopy diaper grandpa (as a friend called him lol) Akira Shimura and finally Tomoko Maeda, a student who ran away from home after her parents read her diary. You get placed in a random section of a map and you’re often told to do an objective, and for the first couple of loops you can do those objectives while also completing secret secondary objectives (which are basically kept secret unless you’re following a guide, look to the bottom of the page) so other people in different missions down the line can do other objectives needed in order to pass. After you beat a bunch of these missions, you’ll unlock the “Link Navigator”, which helps you choose which missions you wanna do as well as tell you which missions haven’t gotten their secondary objectives done. However, sometimes these objectives don’t even pop up properly unless you do a bunch of other missions first and get the prerequisites done, even if you already unlocked certain missions previously. For example, there’s this mission where you play as Akira Shimura and you have to protect Tamon Takeuchi’s student, Yoriko Anno, as she’s attacked by Shibito (the main enemy fodder, they’re reanimated villagers who are kind of like zombies except a whole lot more human and can be armed with anything from shovels to big ass rifles) and one of the prerequisites for a later mission (spoiler) is to “Remember Akira”. To do that, you need to tell Yoriko to hide in an area around some houses, however if you hadn’t completed some other missions (which I have no clue what missions are needed and if they even tie into anything) she won’t find a picture of Akira lying on the ground which won’t be used later by Tamon to remember Akira after he’s been Shibitofied and plugs him with some bullets. Another example, you play as Kei Makino as you have to escort Tomoko through a cliffside village area, once you get to the end and split up you’re supposed to (as a secondary objective), go back to the nearby temple, sightjack (give me a second) and watch as a nearby Shibito puts in a code to unlock the temple door so you can grab something and leave; problem is the fucker doesn’t spawn until you do a bunch of other missions beforehand.
This, while I enjoy the meta concept to the whole “Time Loop” concept that the game has (which will be explored in the story section), and whilst I understand that it plays into the “Cooperate with other players to figure out how to continue the game”, nobody was doing that shit back then that I’m aware of so it came off more frustrating than most, unless of course you use a guide which I’m gonna be honest with you, in order to understand what’s going on YOU WILL NEED A GUIDE. Trust me on this, I suck at puzzles cause I’m a dummy idiot simpleton fuck who can’t solve most puzzle games without one, but dude I doubt anyone could sit through this game and intuitively think “Wow, this game is really cohesive with what it wants me to do and I’ll snap to it like that”, it’s unique don’t get me wrong but it’s obtuse as hell, especially for it’s time period which was 2003. This is I think one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, but again also a strength with how it ties into the metanarrative it’s got going, a strange catch-22 of sorts because while I like it a lot for it, it’s really confusing and I guarantee you because of this (as well as some of the controls), not a lot of people got passed the first mission, as for some people the first impression is the only impression you get.
Hell, I’ve been kind of afraid to touch it, having wanted to but knowing I would get way too frustrated on my own, I’ve been streaming it once or twice every week for a friend as a sort of excuse to delve head first into it, and having gotten to the end and beaten it I’m glad, but I also understand. Bringing it back to the controls for a second, this game is a bit of a confusing mish mash; it’s a third person over the shoulder survival horror, except it doesn’t play all in one go. You play a mission at a time, with maybe a checkpoint here and there dependent on how long the stage is but because of these short, segmented stages you won’t get much in the way of guns and ammo, sometimes you’ll get a melee weapon and sometimes you just won’t get shit at all and have to survive only using your wits. This can actually lead to some tense moments (and frustrating moments). The more frustrating side tends to come when the Shibito have guns, specifically long rifles, if you are seen it’s a death sentence; for example there’s a mission with Kyoya where you have to escort Yoriko through a giant nest of buildings with armed guards patrolling the place, of which I was only able to get through with the IGN guide as well as a Youtube channel whose moves I replicated (thanks to P.B. Horror Gaming, link on the bottom). With this in mind, another thing I want to bring up; if I wasn’t streaming the game I would’ve gotten really pissed at this game as it’s very much trial and error; you will die A LOT in order to figure out a pattern to complete the objective and it can really try your patience so make sure to have A LOT of that as well as the guide because sometimes it’s not explained properly.
My scariest moment was playing as Harumi trapped in a house, defenseless against three other Shibito (all of them being Tomoko and her family); the only tool you have is the Sightjack ability, which you use to close your eyes and moving the left thumbstick around can sort of “tune in” to different Shibito, seeing from their eyes as they move around the area. This is both useful in the sense that you can figure out their patterns and learn to avoid or confront them and scary as fuck cause if one of those guys sees you while you’re sightjacking? Run. It’s a unique game mechanic I haven’t seen pretty much ever except one game, Atama (which takes inspiration from Siren anyways) on Steam (Link below). Other than the sightjacking, you have combat which if you can you should probably avoid unless absolutely necessary. Ranged combat should only be used for people you need to knock out in a jam (they don’t die, they WILL get back up so shoot wisely) or for certain objectives (mainly involving the Onda twin shibitos) because you could both run out of bullets quickly. Melee combat isn’t bad but can be a bit funky, if you get too close you have a good chance of getting grabbed which means you lose health and there aren’t any health packs in the slightest and you can die really quickly without button mashing; of which I don’t know which button to press whether it’s X or Square (EDIT: Just learned it was the left thumb stick, I’m an idiot my apologies). Also, for melee you have the light attack by tapping X and the strong attack by holding X; learn the timing for the strong attack not only because it knocks em’ out faster but if you’re in a shorter area like a tight hallway, the light attack is useless as your range is stopped by nearby walls, trust me on this. Along with the fact that the more the game progresses, the tougher the Shibito get: spider shibito are fast and can get in your ass quick while climbing around and fly shibito are basically mobile sentries that usually have a revolver and can blast your ass quick, along with other forms. I should also bring up the controls really quick:
Controls:
Square is the flashlight
X is to open doors, and interact with stuff in the environment like collectibles
Circle is to crouch
Triangle is to open up the interaction menu, which allows you to: Call/tell people to wait, shout at enemies to lure them to you, interaction with certain objectives, etc.
L1 is to strafe and you move left or right
L2 is to Sightjack, with the left thumbstick helping you channel to different enemies
R1 is to aim, if you have a rifle like Akira, it’s zoomed in and you move the right thumb sticks though keep in mind it’s kind of awkward
R2 is to go into First Person mode, where you can move but very slowly
Start (or right on the PS4 face pad) is to open up the main menu
Select (or left on the PS4 face pad) is to open up a map (you won’t be told where you are so you kind of have to triangulate yourself and figure it out)
As far as I know clicking the thumbsticks does nothing, but moving the right thumb stick quickly moves your camera a tad but doesn’t exactly move your character in a way that’s normal as it’s still a survival horror game. Any movement you do will be primarily the left stick, which I’ll give you some advice: the tight maneuvering (as well as the longer animations sometimes) can lead to Shibito gaining on you if you’re running away, so if you’re in an open space it’s fine to run but if you have a tight corner, slow down then move to the desired direction because I ran into so many walls and it takes a bit for your character to get out of it. Also goes for jumping off of or climbing stuff, the animations are slow and if you get hit you’re back to square one, so you have to gauge the distance/pray the shibito miss if they have a gun. It gets especially frustrating when trying to help people up whatever cliffside, as it takes a while to do so. I don’t think I have much else to put out there in the way of gameplay, except three things: as Kyoya you’ll be escorting a blind girl named Miyako sometimes, don’t run too far ahead of her or else she won’t be able to sightjack through you (because she’s blind of course) and it helps her orientation if you’re looking at her. Another thing to note is that you can get into vehicles sometimes, but when you do you’ll be first person and each section will be its own thing you have to press Triangle on to figure out what does what (mainly throwing this out there for the first mission as Kyoya), the third is to take your time with it’s game and get comfortable with repetition as if you’re trying to do the collectibles/secret objectives and you die after getting some progress done, if you’re not restarted at the beginning stage then there’s this glitch where certain things don’t actually count towards your progress and they get erased so either you’ll have to go get this stuff again or alternatively restart. Keep in mind, though a lot of it is clunky and definitely frustrating, once you get the hang of it, it all sort of clicks and there were times where I felt REALLY good playing the game. If there’s something I’m missing, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it in. I’m gonna go onto the story here because there’s a lot to unpack for me personally.
The story starts out relatively simple but gets complicated and rather confusing and convoluted quickly. You start out as Kyoya Suda, traveling to a remote village in the Japanese mountains called Hanuda, investigating a massacre that happened decades ago along with the paranormal side effects (which I didn’t even catch this, shoutout to the wiki). Of course, like all horror games, there’s a cult that is trying to sacrifice a blind girl named Miyako in a ritual, Kyoya’s presence lets her escape and the ritual is foiled, leading to the entire area to go to hell really quickly. After escaping a drunk cop (not officially a Shibito as he hasn’t died yet but drunk cops shooting at civilians? Why does that sound familiar?) and getting shot he lands in a red river and wakes up next to a village with a priestess named Hisako Yao, who helps him get his bearings. Along the way you’ll discover the motives of other people involved: Tamon was originally from Hanuda and his parents died in a mysterious landslide in 1977, Kei Makino is a priest in the local religion (called the Mana Religion) but is apparently a really nice guy and a bit of a wimp while his twin, Shiro is a bit of a sociopath who murdered his girlfriend Mina Onda, a nurse who worked with him, for telling him that she’s pregnant with his baby, and after the Shibito outbreak guess who pops out of her grave. Meanwhile her sister Risa Onda is looking to find her, like keep in mind there are so many plot details and intricacies that I can’t really put it all in this review as it would just be blatant copy paste wiki articles at this point.
What I can say is this: everything is happening because of an event centuries ago: a famine happened long ago in the late 7th century, and the people of Hanuda was suffering through a drought that really hurt their ability to consume; they perform a ritual rite calling for rain and all the sudden a decade later a creature comes falling down on a comet where it’s mistaken for a fish and is eaten; it doesn’t exactly like that so it screams and brings about a curse, specifically on Hisako Yao; that’s right the priestess is immortal and has erected this Mana Religion in this creature’s honor, named Datatsushi as everyone else dies a painful death. She’s also pregnant apparently and starts the Kajiro family bloodline, known in Hanuda as royalty and is shown to have gained the sightjacking ability as a sort of miracle and having been cursed to resurrect Datatsushi, forgets her duty. With this in mind, she interrupted another ritual in 1976/7, which sunk another part of Hanuda into a landslide (which Tamon’s parents died in) and sending that piece into an alternate dimension, or as the game would say “The dimension that’s between life and death” or something along those lines. After that she regains her memories to revive her god, and has since been determined to appease it yet again, so sacrifices Miyako in 2003. Kyoya fucks it up of course and everything goes to hell; what I liked out of the game is the interconnectivity between the characters and the plot, for example Akira’s son was apparently 1976 Miyako’s boyfriend and that’s led to a long line of depression and hatred for the local cult; Shiro has always been jealous of his brother Kei’s upbringing and has longed to become him, he’s also a bit of a mad scientist as he conducts experiments on the Shibito to learn their secrets; however he disappears after Day 2 because he grabs the Uryen (a plot macguffin that helps both harm the undead as well as representing Yin and Yang (which little note here, symbolically is represented multiple times between Shiro/Kei as well as Risa and her twin Mina Onda)) and from then on you just play as Kei Makino. But wait, his voice sounds familiar right? Well if you play one of Harumi’s alternate missions in Day 3 you learn why, out of sheer jealousy (as well as due to the fact that Kei’s stepfather gifted the entire control of the religion to him in his will) murders his own brother and dons the garb, with Shiro finally becoming the person he wanted to be all along: his brother. I love this twist, and it’s the little details like that even when out of order, if it’s brought back together correctly it makes for a fantastic twist. Again, there are so many details that sort of loop back into itself that even logically speaking make sense, like something that I got from Nitro’s video was that Miyako had a dog (until her adoptive brother killed the pup and attempted to kidnap Miyako back before getting wacked in the head with a stick), and since she’s blind and sees through sightjacking, they’re a literal seeing eye dog. Another thing I enjoy is Harumi’s bond with her teacher, Ms. Takato who takes a motherly bond with her and refers to Harumi as her daughter, and goes out protecting her in a fantastic send off involving explosives. Another detail I like, Naoko is career obsessed and worries about her beauty so a remark from Akira (in a negative light) about being immortal due to the red water (final bit here before I explain the red water and wrap up the plot) leads to her getting the idea that she can get eternal youth and beauty by bathing in the red water; that’s not the case and it leads to her transforming into a shibito. In fact, anyone who gets in contact with the red water will eventually become a Shibito, with Kyoya being the only difference due to a blood transfusion between him and Miyako, and she’s immune due to her bloodline. The titular siren the game talks about is the call of Datatsushi, which leads shibito to bathe in the red water so they can transform into more fucked up versions of themselves (which is a reason why spider shibito and fly shibito exist).
The game finally starts to close when Miyako is sacrifice and Datatsushi sort of reincarnates; shit gets even worse as the fates of Shiro/Kei and Tamon are revealed; Shiro sacrifices himself to kill off all the remaining Shibito I believe with the Uryen (of which there are two, one which he gives to Kyoya, and also he floods the shibito nest by opening up the dam) while Tamon gets a tragic ending and ends up finding his parents, to him they look the same but he’s had contact with the red water so to others they’re not. In fact, barely anyone gets out alive save (thank fuck) for Harumi, who is rescued via helicopter from the ruins of the town which were revealed to be, shock, “a landslide”, repeating the same events from the 70s (of which since it’s the same dimension both the 2003 timeline and 1970s timeline kind of merge in this one dimension). Kyoya however confronts Hisako Yao and her underling, Miyako’s brother (and piece of shit dog killer Jun Kajiro) in a difficult sniper battle that ends up in a final confrontation with Datatsushi itself; however you have someone who could help you: Miyako in spirit. After picking up the Homuranagi (an ancient sword of which only really works to decapitate if you knocked down four separate stone markers as four separate people before playing as Reiko Takato and knocking down four other stone markers in one mission in a specific order) and killing Datatsushi (of which if you sightjack the praying mantis/wasp elder god looking fucker you can see Miyako point to a nearby pyramid which will help you reveal the location/distance of Datatsushi, or alternatively you could just run a bit, do a 180 and either activate the Uryen immediately or wait between 3-6 seconds to stab it with a sword) the fate of the remaining characters are revealed: Hisako Yao grows old and falls through a time vortex with the fallen god’s head, later giving it to her past self so the time loop continues and Kyoya Suda is now trapped in the underworld with Miyako’s blood in his veins. However he proceeds to roam the dimension armed with both the Uryen, the Homuranagi and a rifle he picked up along the way, and proceeds to annihilate the shibito.
Overall, to wrap this story up; I don’t usually care for stories that make you get all the collectibles in order to understand ANYTHING about what’s going on (talking about you Outlast 2), but this game does it in a way where I LOVE it and how it goes together. It’s a fascinating take on time loops, yin and yang, good and evil; there’s a lot of stuff in there to unpack and on top of it I consider this game to be Lovecraftian horror and in that sense it’s fucking amazing too. The only complaint I have is that a couple different times when you follow certain mission paths and go from mission to mission they’ll bring you to the final cutscene out of context: Kyoya murdering Shibito while loud rock music plays (bringing his loop full circle as he was up in Hanuda investigating a massacre from the 1930s, which he’s doing right now though I don’t know where the 1930s part comes in? I’ll have to look it up), which is tonally inconsistent and funny as fuck when just viewed out of nowhere. Me and my one friend nearly shat ourselves (more me of course) trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. In fact, that’s kind of the whole game in a nutshell; it’s confusing as hell and you’re trying to unravel everything and figure out what the hell is going on and truth be told I can’t believe I’m saying this: in the words of Todd Howard? “It Just Works”. Because the more you play the more invested you get, and the more you kind of connect the dots together. I’m gonna quickly move onto the other stuff before wrapping up here:
The graphics are PS2 era but are laden with uncanny valley facial movement as the game used a strange early version of motion capture; it looks unsettling as hell in the way it moves as if it’s as NitroRad said, an actual face being projected onto the face of a mannequin. I feel like that’s a huge part of what gives the horror the unique identity it does along with everything else; on PS4 it’s upscaled so it all looks good there. The soundtrack is creepy as hell (though funny in the final cutscene); the track “Hoshingoeika” (created by composer Hitomi Shimizu) does a fantastic and unique job at bringing about all the old creepy cult chants together in a way that helps form the atmosphere, it’s not Akira Yamaoka with Silent Hill but that’s not the vibe it’s going for in the slightest. It’s honestly a lot MORE creepy whereas Yamaoka’s soundtrack is godly and can be creepy but a lot of his stuff his more melancholic and sad (again I LOVE IT) but it contrasts to what this game is trying to do. Speaking of sounds, the environmental sounds are creepy as hell; yeah the Shibito are creepy as fuck with their grey skin and bleeding eyes but dear god when you sightjack them and hear them breathing? That’s the stuff of nightmares and definitely made me feel uneasy as I went through the game. The only thing I could consider a downside is that the voice acting isn’t great; you get used to it after a while but I really wish they had a Japanese dub/English subs thing because the british voice acting is more hilarious than anything else, though it can help add levity to the game even though it wasn’t quite meant to originally. I think my favorite is when Harumi calls out “MRS. TAKATO”, mainly because it sounds like an old H3H3 bit where Ethan would get into that weird high pitched voice and say something messed up after coughing violently. Basically the VA ranges from “somewhat ok and not noticeable, to unintentionally hilarious/kind of bad.
To finish up here, I actually really love this game; however I’m giving it a 4 instead of a 4.5 or a 5 for a number of reasons; it has a lot of confusing fridge logic and jank, the VA isn’t that great, some of the enemy placements feel really unfair sometimes and it’s based in trial and error, and for some people the whole “look at collectibles to understand what’s going on” can 100 percent be frustrating. In fact I’ll even say, if I wasn’t streaming this for a friend over a period of two months once or twice every week I’d probably want to smash my head into a wall as I’m not really the patient type and I'm unsure as to whether or not I would really play this ever again. However beneath all of the dirt and grime there’s a real solid gem here, something beautiful and special that I feel deserves way more credit than it gets, even if it understandably doesn’t get a lot of points with people over it’s confusing direction and design. It makes it even worse that Siren 2 wasn’t even ported or released in the U.S. and that Siren: Blood Curse got a digital only copy (though the physical copy which I bought for 80 dollars cause I’m a collector) only released on the PSN Store. Since the release of Siren, he worked on both sequel games as well as another series I platinumed last year: Gravity Rush (of which one day I will come back and review both of these games because I have thoughts about them too). After these games he left Sony to start up his own studio: Bokeh Game Studio, which is in the process of developing a game called Slitterhead. Now I’m VERY interested in this game, however I’ll admit I still miss Siren. As always, I wish Siren had a PC port, I wish Forbidden Siren 2 had both a PS5 AND a PC port, and Siren: Blood Curse I think you can play through PSN Plus but don’t quote that but even if it’s not the best game apparently it deserves the same amount of treatment. However, as our capitalist system would incline: money talks and fuck everything else, which is sad that even for preservations sake doesn’t get more. Also I’d really like them to make a Siren 3, and if I had a choice I’d say do it with the old PS2 styled graphics and Mocap, it really seals in the unease. I’m also gonna leave some links down below for those who want to watch or listen to some stuff or read up on some of the guides I used or wiki pages I read to refresh my memory on certain things and if I ever think of something else to add to this review then I will. Thank you for reading if you did and if you would rather a single sentence summarization, look below.
tl;dr good but jank, no normal person would ever play this.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/31/siren-walkthrough-508738
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114Ygup5-x4&ab_channel=NitroRad
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2019840/Atama/
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Siren/Controls
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hanuda_Village#History:
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hisako_Yao
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Homuranagi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_(video_game)#Playable_characters
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Datatsushi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Harumi_Yomoda?so=search#Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Water
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Uryen?so=search#The_Uryen_in_Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Kei_Makino#Story
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Miyata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6EgutJLqA&t=18s&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rEyCVRelds&list=PLEE2727EDFDE65968&index=1&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoLtWQ1Pnc&list=PLd4jZRAzc5n8R0gE9U90SsUqJt4V04PHe&ab_channel=P.B.HorrorGaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZI968UaZw&ab_channel=Fakan
https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/275063-siren-trophy-guide-amp-roadmap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkG3DH6IZw0&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZcsWN_KBc&ab_channel=BoulderPunch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2wj65MimUc
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Siren
UPDATE:
Found some more sources for stuff if you want to look into it, just be careful with security of the site.
http://siren.kakurezato.com/
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/siren-arg.1636588/
Didn't know there was an ARG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYdxGjgSrA&ab_channel=InfiniteRetry
https://web.archive.org/web/20040110033312/http://www.occultland.com/
So here’s the basic concept of the gameplay: you start out as one of ten characters (which range from main character Kyoya Suda, professor Tamon Takeuchi, Priest Kei Makino, his twin brother Shiro Miyata, Risa Onda (a woman who is also looking for her twin sister, who was dating Shiro), teacher Reiko Takato, student/child Harumi Yomoda, celebrity/70s sitcom mom looking Naoko Mihama, old badass/poopy diaper grandpa (as a friend called him lol) Akira Shimura and finally Tomoko Maeda, a student who ran away from home after her parents read her diary. You get placed in a random section of a map and you’re often told to do an objective, and for the first couple of loops you can do those objectives while also completing secret secondary objectives (which are basically kept secret unless you’re following a guide, look to the bottom of the page) so other people in different missions down the line can do other objectives needed in order to pass. After you beat a bunch of these missions, you’ll unlock the “Link Navigator”, which helps you choose which missions you wanna do as well as tell you which missions haven’t gotten their secondary objectives done. However, sometimes these objectives don’t even pop up properly unless you do a bunch of other missions first and get the prerequisites done, even if you already unlocked certain missions previously. For example, there’s this mission where you play as Akira Shimura and you have to protect Tamon Takeuchi’s student, Yoriko Anno, as she’s attacked by Shibito (the main enemy fodder, they’re reanimated villagers who are kind of like zombies except a whole lot more human and can be armed with anything from shovels to big ass rifles) and one of the prerequisites for a later mission (spoiler) is to “Remember Akira”. To do that, you need to tell Yoriko to hide in an area around some houses, however if you hadn’t completed some other missions (which I have no clue what missions are needed and if they even tie into anything) she won’t find a picture of Akira lying on the ground which won’t be used later by Tamon to remember Akira after he’s been Shibitofied and plugs him with some bullets. Another example, you play as Kei Makino as you have to escort Tomoko through a cliffside village area, once you get to the end and split up you’re supposed to (as a secondary objective), go back to the nearby temple, sightjack (give me a second) and watch as a nearby Shibito puts in a code to unlock the temple door so you can grab something and leave; problem is the fucker doesn’t spawn until you do a bunch of other missions beforehand.
This, while I enjoy the meta concept to the whole “Time Loop” concept that the game has (which will be explored in the story section), and whilst I understand that it plays into the “Cooperate with other players to figure out how to continue the game”, nobody was doing that shit back then that I’m aware of so it came off more frustrating than most, unless of course you use a guide which I’m gonna be honest with you, in order to understand what’s going on YOU WILL NEED A GUIDE. Trust me on this, I suck at puzzles cause I’m a dummy idiot simpleton fuck who can’t solve most puzzle games without one, but dude I doubt anyone could sit through this game and intuitively think “Wow, this game is really cohesive with what it wants me to do and I’ll snap to it like that”, it’s unique don’t get me wrong but it’s obtuse as hell, especially for it’s time period which was 2003. This is I think one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, but again also a strength with how it ties into the metanarrative it’s got going, a strange catch-22 of sorts because while I like it a lot for it, it’s really confusing and I guarantee you because of this (as well as some of the controls), not a lot of people got passed the first mission, as for some people the first impression is the only impression you get.
Hell, I’ve been kind of afraid to touch it, having wanted to but knowing I would get way too frustrated on my own, I’ve been streaming it once or twice every week for a friend as a sort of excuse to delve head first into it, and having gotten to the end and beaten it I’m glad, but I also understand. Bringing it back to the controls for a second, this game is a bit of a confusing mish mash; it’s a third person over the shoulder survival horror, except it doesn’t play all in one go. You play a mission at a time, with maybe a checkpoint here and there dependent on how long the stage is but because of these short, segmented stages you won’t get much in the way of guns and ammo, sometimes you’ll get a melee weapon and sometimes you just won’t get shit at all and have to survive only using your wits. This can actually lead to some tense moments (and frustrating moments). The more frustrating side tends to come when the Shibito have guns, specifically long rifles, if you are seen it’s a death sentence; for example there’s a mission with Kyoya where you have to escort Yoriko through a giant nest of buildings with armed guards patrolling the place, of which I was only able to get through with the IGN guide as well as a Youtube channel whose moves I replicated (thanks to P.B. Horror Gaming, link on the bottom). With this in mind, another thing I want to bring up; if I wasn’t streaming the game I would’ve gotten really pissed at this game as it’s very much trial and error; you will die A LOT in order to figure out a pattern to complete the objective and it can really try your patience so make sure to have A LOT of that as well as the guide because sometimes it’s not explained properly.
My scariest moment was playing as Harumi trapped in a house, defenseless against three other Shibito (all of them being Tomoko and her family); the only tool you have is the Sightjack ability, which you use to close your eyes and moving the left thumbstick around can sort of “tune in” to different Shibito, seeing from their eyes as they move around the area. This is both useful in the sense that you can figure out their patterns and learn to avoid or confront them and scary as fuck cause if one of those guys sees you while you’re sightjacking? Run. It’s a unique game mechanic I haven’t seen pretty much ever except one game, Atama (which takes inspiration from Siren anyways) on Steam (Link below). Other than the sightjacking, you have combat which if you can you should probably avoid unless absolutely necessary. Ranged combat should only be used for people you need to knock out in a jam (they don’t die, they WILL get back up so shoot wisely) or for certain objectives (mainly involving the Onda twin shibitos) because you could both run out of bullets quickly. Melee combat isn’t bad but can be a bit funky, if you get too close you have a good chance of getting grabbed which means you lose health and there aren’t any health packs in the slightest and you can die really quickly without button mashing; of which I don’t know which button to press whether it’s X or Square (EDIT: Just learned it was the left thumb stick, I’m an idiot my apologies). Also, for melee you have the light attack by tapping X and the strong attack by holding X; learn the timing for the strong attack not only because it knocks em’ out faster but if you’re in a shorter area like a tight hallway, the light attack is useless as your range is stopped by nearby walls, trust me on this. Along with the fact that the more the game progresses, the tougher the Shibito get: spider shibito are fast and can get in your ass quick while climbing around and fly shibito are basically mobile sentries that usually have a revolver and can blast your ass quick, along with other forms. I should also bring up the controls really quick:
Controls:
Square is the flashlight
X is to open doors, and interact with stuff in the environment like collectibles
Circle is to crouch
Triangle is to open up the interaction menu, which allows you to: Call/tell people to wait, shout at enemies to lure them to you, interaction with certain objectives, etc.
L1 is to strafe and you move left or right
L2 is to Sightjack, with the left thumbstick helping you channel to different enemies
R1 is to aim, if you have a rifle like Akira, it’s zoomed in and you move the right thumb sticks though keep in mind it’s kind of awkward
R2 is to go into First Person mode, where you can move but very slowly
Start (or right on the PS4 face pad) is to open up the main menu
Select (or left on the PS4 face pad) is to open up a map (you won’t be told where you are so you kind of have to triangulate yourself and figure it out)
As far as I know clicking the thumbsticks does nothing, but moving the right thumb stick quickly moves your camera a tad but doesn’t exactly move your character in a way that’s normal as it’s still a survival horror game. Any movement you do will be primarily the left stick, which I’ll give you some advice: the tight maneuvering (as well as the longer animations sometimes) can lead to Shibito gaining on you if you’re running away, so if you’re in an open space it’s fine to run but if you have a tight corner, slow down then move to the desired direction because I ran into so many walls and it takes a bit for your character to get out of it. Also goes for jumping off of or climbing stuff, the animations are slow and if you get hit you’re back to square one, so you have to gauge the distance/pray the shibito miss if they have a gun. It gets especially frustrating when trying to help people up whatever cliffside, as it takes a while to do so. I don’t think I have much else to put out there in the way of gameplay, except three things: as Kyoya you’ll be escorting a blind girl named Miyako sometimes, don’t run too far ahead of her or else she won’t be able to sightjack through you (because she’s blind of course) and it helps her orientation if you’re looking at her. Another thing to note is that you can get into vehicles sometimes, but when you do you’ll be first person and each section will be its own thing you have to press Triangle on to figure out what does what (mainly throwing this out there for the first mission as Kyoya), the third is to take your time with it’s game and get comfortable with repetition as if you’re trying to do the collectibles/secret objectives and you die after getting some progress done, if you’re not restarted at the beginning stage then there’s this glitch where certain things don’t actually count towards your progress and they get erased so either you’ll have to go get this stuff again or alternatively restart. Keep in mind, though a lot of it is clunky and definitely frustrating, once you get the hang of it, it all sort of clicks and there were times where I felt REALLY good playing the game. If there’s something I’m missing, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it in. I’m gonna go onto the story here because there’s a lot to unpack for me personally.
The story starts out relatively simple but gets complicated and rather confusing and convoluted quickly. You start out as Kyoya Suda, traveling to a remote village in the Japanese mountains called Hanuda, investigating a massacre that happened decades ago along with the paranormal side effects (which I didn’t even catch this, shoutout to the wiki). Of course, like all horror games, there’s a cult that is trying to sacrifice a blind girl named Miyako in a ritual, Kyoya’s presence lets her escape and the ritual is foiled, leading to the entire area to go to hell really quickly. After escaping a drunk cop (not officially a Shibito as he hasn’t died yet but drunk cops shooting at civilians? Why does that sound familiar?) and getting shot he lands in a red river and wakes up next to a village with a priestess named Hisako Yao, who helps him get his bearings. Along the way you’ll discover the motives of other people involved: Tamon was originally from Hanuda and his parents died in a mysterious landslide in 1977, Kei Makino is a priest in the local religion (called the Mana Religion) but is apparently a really nice guy and a bit of a wimp while his twin, Shiro is a bit of a sociopath who murdered his girlfriend Mina Onda, a nurse who worked with him, for telling him that she’s pregnant with his baby, and after the Shibito outbreak guess who pops out of her grave. Meanwhile her sister Risa Onda is looking to find her, like keep in mind there are so many plot details and intricacies that I can’t really put it all in this review as it would just be blatant copy paste wiki articles at this point.
What I can say is this: everything is happening because of an event centuries ago: a famine happened long ago in the late 7th century, and the people of Hanuda was suffering through a drought that really hurt their ability to consume; they perform a ritual rite calling for rain and all the sudden a decade later a creature comes falling down on a comet where it’s mistaken for a fish and is eaten; it doesn’t exactly like that so it screams and brings about a curse, specifically on Hisako Yao; that’s right the priestess is immortal and has erected this Mana Religion in this creature’s honor, named Datatsushi as everyone else dies a painful death. She’s also pregnant apparently and starts the Kajiro family bloodline, known in Hanuda as royalty and is shown to have gained the sightjacking ability as a sort of miracle and having been cursed to resurrect Datatsushi, forgets her duty. With this in mind, she interrupted another ritual in 1976/7, which sunk another part of Hanuda into a landslide (which Tamon’s parents died in) and sending that piece into an alternate dimension, or as the game would say “The dimension that’s between life and death” or something along those lines. After that she regains her memories to revive her god, and has since been determined to appease it yet again, so sacrifices Miyako in 2003. Kyoya fucks it up of course and everything goes to hell; what I liked out of the game is the interconnectivity between the characters and the plot, for example Akira’s son was apparently 1976 Miyako’s boyfriend and that’s led to a long line of depression and hatred for the local cult; Shiro has always been jealous of his brother Kei’s upbringing and has longed to become him, he’s also a bit of a mad scientist as he conducts experiments on the Shibito to learn their secrets; however he disappears after Day 2 because he grabs the Uryen (a plot macguffin that helps both harm the undead as well as representing Yin and Yang (which little note here, symbolically is represented multiple times between Shiro/Kei as well as Risa and her twin Mina Onda)) and from then on you just play as Kei Makino. But wait, his voice sounds familiar right? Well if you play one of Harumi’s alternate missions in Day 3 you learn why, out of sheer jealousy (as well as due to the fact that Kei’s stepfather gifted the entire control of the religion to him in his will) murders his own brother and dons the garb, with Shiro finally becoming the person he wanted to be all along: his brother. I love this twist, and it’s the little details like that even when out of order, if it’s brought back together correctly it makes for a fantastic twist. Again, there are so many details that sort of loop back into itself that even logically speaking make sense, like something that I got from Nitro’s video was that Miyako had a dog (until her adoptive brother killed the pup and attempted to kidnap Miyako back before getting wacked in the head with a stick), and since she’s blind and sees through sightjacking, they’re a literal seeing eye dog. Another thing I enjoy is Harumi’s bond with her teacher, Ms. Takato who takes a motherly bond with her and refers to Harumi as her daughter, and goes out protecting her in a fantastic send off involving explosives. Another detail I like, Naoko is career obsessed and worries about her beauty so a remark from Akira (in a negative light) about being immortal due to the red water (final bit here before I explain the red water and wrap up the plot) leads to her getting the idea that she can get eternal youth and beauty by bathing in the red water; that’s not the case and it leads to her transforming into a shibito. In fact, anyone who gets in contact with the red water will eventually become a Shibito, with Kyoya being the only difference due to a blood transfusion between him and Miyako, and she’s immune due to her bloodline. The titular siren the game talks about is the call of Datatsushi, which leads shibito to bathe in the red water so they can transform into more fucked up versions of themselves (which is a reason why spider shibito and fly shibito exist).
The game finally starts to close when Miyako is sacrifice and Datatsushi sort of reincarnates; shit gets even worse as the fates of Shiro/Kei and Tamon are revealed; Shiro sacrifices himself to kill off all the remaining Shibito I believe with the Uryen (of which there are two, one which he gives to Kyoya, and also he floods the shibito nest by opening up the dam) while Tamon gets a tragic ending and ends up finding his parents, to him they look the same but he’s had contact with the red water so to others they’re not. In fact, barely anyone gets out alive save (thank fuck) for Harumi, who is rescued via helicopter from the ruins of the town which were revealed to be, shock, “a landslide”, repeating the same events from the 70s (of which since it’s the same dimension both the 2003 timeline and 1970s timeline kind of merge in this one dimension). Kyoya however confronts Hisako Yao and her underling, Miyako’s brother (and piece of shit dog killer Jun Kajiro) in a difficult sniper battle that ends up in a final confrontation with Datatsushi itself; however you have someone who could help you: Miyako in spirit. After picking up the Homuranagi (an ancient sword of which only really works to decapitate if you knocked down four separate stone markers as four separate people before playing as Reiko Takato and knocking down four other stone markers in one mission in a specific order) and killing Datatsushi (of which if you sightjack the praying mantis/wasp elder god looking fucker you can see Miyako point to a nearby pyramid which will help you reveal the location/distance of Datatsushi, or alternatively you could just run a bit, do a 180 and either activate the Uryen immediately or wait between 3-6 seconds to stab it with a sword) the fate of the remaining characters are revealed: Hisako Yao grows old and falls through a time vortex with the fallen god’s head, later giving it to her past self so the time loop continues and Kyoya Suda is now trapped in the underworld with Miyako’s blood in his veins. However he proceeds to roam the dimension armed with both the Uryen, the Homuranagi and a rifle he picked up along the way, and proceeds to annihilate the shibito.
Overall, to wrap this story up; I don’t usually care for stories that make you get all the collectibles in order to understand ANYTHING about what’s going on (talking about you Outlast 2), but this game does it in a way where I LOVE it and how it goes together. It’s a fascinating take on time loops, yin and yang, good and evil; there’s a lot of stuff in there to unpack and on top of it I consider this game to be Lovecraftian horror and in that sense it’s fucking amazing too. The only complaint I have is that a couple different times when you follow certain mission paths and go from mission to mission they’ll bring you to the final cutscene out of context: Kyoya murdering Shibito while loud rock music plays (bringing his loop full circle as he was up in Hanuda investigating a massacre from the 1930s, which he’s doing right now though I don’t know where the 1930s part comes in? I’ll have to look it up), which is tonally inconsistent and funny as fuck when just viewed out of nowhere. Me and my one friend nearly shat ourselves (more me of course) trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. In fact, that’s kind of the whole game in a nutshell; it’s confusing as hell and you’re trying to unravel everything and figure out what the hell is going on and truth be told I can’t believe I’m saying this: in the words of Todd Howard? “It Just Works”. Because the more you play the more invested you get, and the more you kind of connect the dots together. I’m gonna quickly move onto the other stuff before wrapping up here:
The graphics are PS2 era but are laden with uncanny valley facial movement as the game used a strange early version of motion capture; it looks unsettling as hell in the way it moves as if it’s as NitroRad said, an actual face being projected onto the face of a mannequin. I feel like that’s a huge part of what gives the horror the unique identity it does along with everything else; on PS4 it’s upscaled so it all looks good there. The soundtrack is creepy as hell (though funny in the final cutscene); the track “Hoshingoeika” (created by composer Hitomi Shimizu) does a fantastic and unique job at bringing about all the old creepy cult chants together in a way that helps form the atmosphere, it’s not Akira Yamaoka with Silent Hill but that’s not the vibe it’s going for in the slightest. It’s honestly a lot MORE creepy whereas Yamaoka’s soundtrack is godly and can be creepy but a lot of his stuff his more melancholic and sad (again I LOVE IT) but it contrasts to what this game is trying to do. Speaking of sounds, the environmental sounds are creepy as hell; yeah the Shibito are creepy as fuck with their grey skin and bleeding eyes but dear god when you sightjack them and hear them breathing? That’s the stuff of nightmares and definitely made me feel uneasy as I went through the game. The only thing I could consider a downside is that the voice acting isn’t great; you get used to it after a while but I really wish they had a Japanese dub/English subs thing because the british voice acting is more hilarious than anything else, though it can help add levity to the game even though it wasn’t quite meant to originally. I think my favorite is when Harumi calls out “MRS. TAKATO”, mainly because it sounds like an old H3H3 bit where Ethan would get into that weird high pitched voice and say something messed up after coughing violently. Basically the VA ranges from “somewhat ok and not noticeable, to unintentionally hilarious/kind of bad.
To finish up here, I actually really love this game; however I’m giving it a 4 instead of a 4.5 or a 5 for a number of reasons; it has a lot of confusing fridge logic and jank, the VA isn’t that great, some of the enemy placements feel really unfair sometimes and it’s based in trial and error, and for some people the whole “look at collectibles to understand what’s going on” can 100 percent be frustrating. In fact I’ll even say, if I wasn’t streaming this for a friend over a period of two months once or twice every week I’d probably want to smash my head into a wall as I’m not really the patient type and I'm unsure as to whether or not I would really play this ever again. However beneath all of the dirt and grime there’s a real solid gem here, something beautiful and special that I feel deserves way more credit than it gets, even if it understandably doesn’t get a lot of points with people over it’s confusing direction and design. It makes it even worse that Siren 2 wasn’t even ported or released in the U.S. and that Siren: Blood Curse got a digital only copy (though the physical copy which I bought for 80 dollars cause I’m a collector) only released on the PSN Store. Since the release of Siren, he worked on both sequel games as well as another series I platinumed last year: Gravity Rush (of which one day I will come back and review both of these games because I have thoughts about them too). After these games he left Sony to start up his own studio: Bokeh Game Studio, which is in the process of developing a game called Slitterhead. Now I’m VERY interested in this game, however I’ll admit I still miss Siren. As always, I wish Siren had a PC port, I wish Forbidden Siren 2 had both a PS5 AND a PC port, and Siren: Blood Curse I think you can play through PSN Plus but don’t quote that but even if it’s not the best game apparently it deserves the same amount of treatment. However, as our capitalist system would incline: money talks and fuck everything else, which is sad that even for preservations sake doesn’t get more. Also I’d really like them to make a Siren 3, and if I had a choice I’d say do it with the old PS2 styled graphics and Mocap, it really seals in the unease. I’m also gonna leave some links down below for those who want to watch or listen to some stuff or read up on some of the guides I used or wiki pages I read to refresh my memory on certain things and if I ever think of something else to add to this review then I will. Thank you for reading if you did and if you would rather a single sentence summarization, look below.
tl;dr good but jank, no normal person would ever play this.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/31/siren-walkthrough-508738
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114Ygup5-x4&ab_channel=NitroRad
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2019840/Atama/
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Siren/Controls
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hanuda_Village#History:
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Hisako_Yao
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Homuranagi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_(video_game)#Playable_characters
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Datatsushi
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Harumi_Yomoda?so=search#Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Water
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Uryen?so=search#The_Uryen_in_Forbidden_Siren
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Kei_Makino#Story
https://forbiddensiren.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Miyata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6EgutJLqA&t=18s&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rEyCVRelds&list=PLEE2727EDFDE65968&index=1&ab_channel=Wiiplaya1234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoLtWQ1Pnc&list=PLd4jZRAzc5n8R0gE9U90SsUqJt4V04PHe&ab_channel=P.B.HorrorGaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZZI968UaZw&ab_channel=Fakan
https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/275063-siren-trophy-guide-amp-roadmap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkG3DH6IZw0&ab_channel=NeoGamer-TheVideoGameArchive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ZcsWN_KBc&ab_channel=BoulderPunch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2wj65MimUc
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Siren
UPDATE:
Found some more sources for stuff if you want to look into it, just be careful with security of the site.
http://siren.kakurezato.com/
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/siren-arg.1636588/
Didn't know there was an ARG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYdxGjgSrA&ab_channel=InfiniteRetry
https://web.archive.org/web/20040110033312/http://www.occultland.com/