goodchicken
This review contains spoilers
a frankly ridiculous game whose contribution to the FF7 ethos is undeniable. the backstory we didnt necessarily need of zack fair, and how he came to die before giving cloud the buster sword.
There is so much nonsense in this games plot. i think a simpler, more poignant version of this game, wouldve had all of the jenova cells nonsense cut from it, and instead focused on zack learning that a "hero" isnt necessarily a military grade officer, but rather someone who does the right thing because its good. There could have been cameos from sephiroth, or discussions how he inspired zack. i think zack shouldve had a friend go on a journey like him, who DID choose the more corporate law-abiding type, who shouldve been the villain. the genesis stuff, hollander, angelwings and LOVELESS is all just nonsense. None of it is good, none of it makes sense, it doesnt even MATTER to zack or his story particularly. the dates he has with aerith are good in theory but the script is so bad that their dates are incredibly awkward, nd they spend upwards of an hour together before aerith decides to write him 89 letters??? I like the idea they only had a blossoming romance, that was cut short by zack's murder. There is a version of this story that is just as tragjc without being typical tetsuya nomura bollocks, and i say that az someone who LIKES final fantasy 13!
Combat in this game is actually surprisingly fun, the way materia works feels really smooth and in a normal encounter the game is just good fun. It gets stale fast however when you do the same fucking sidequest 1 million times! The sidequests are tedious, grindy, repetetive, and downright bad. There are a couple of funny lore bits, like yuffie's emails being automatically forwarded to spam, and zack's annual leave being constantly interrupted by monsters and having to use an umbrella is good fun. There just needed to ve more mission variety and maps, and about half the missions. Also the game needed go be less fucking bullshit too tbh, enemies with instant death skills or stun AND stop skills can fuck right off. That shit was infuriating eventually
costly punch forever, however, as i did 2 shot the final boss
There is so much nonsense in this games plot. i think a simpler, more poignant version of this game, wouldve had all of the jenova cells nonsense cut from it, and instead focused on zack learning that a "hero" isnt necessarily a military grade officer, but rather someone who does the right thing because its good. There could have been cameos from sephiroth, or discussions how he inspired zack. i think zack shouldve had a friend go on a journey like him, who DID choose the more corporate law-abiding type, who shouldve been the villain. the genesis stuff, hollander, angelwings and LOVELESS is all just nonsense. None of it is good, none of it makes sense, it doesnt even MATTER to zack or his story particularly. the dates he has with aerith are good in theory but the script is so bad that their dates are incredibly awkward, nd they spend upwards of an hour together before aerith decides to write him 89 letters??? I like the idea they only had a blossoming romance, that was cut short by zack's murder. There is a version of this story that is just as tragjc without being typical tetsuya nomura bollocks, and i say that az someone who LIKES final fantasy 13!
Combat in this game is actually surprisingly fun, the way materia works feels really smooth and in a normal encounter the game is just good fun. It gets stale fast however when you do the same fucking sidequest 1 million times! The sidequests are tedious, grindy, repetetive, and downright bad. There are a couple of funny lore bits, like yuffie's emails being automatically forwarded to spam, and zack's annual leave being constantly interrupted by monsters and having to use an umbrella is good fun. There just needed to ve more mission variety and maps, and about half the missions. Also the game needed go be less fucking bullshit too tbh, enemies with instant death skills or stun AND stop skills can fuck right off. That shit was infuriating eventually
costly punch forever, however, as i did 2 shot the final boss
This review contains spoilers
there is a version of this game that is my absolute favourite thing in the world! there are so many moments within this that show me the creators truly understand what made the original FF7's world so charming. it's not JUST cloud's backstory, and his beef with sephiroth, its all the weird and goofy shit. it's squatting in the gym, its crossdressing, its fighting a giant house. this game even introduces new bits, like darts! seeing i could play darts made me over the moon happy! combat is similar and dissimilar enough to feel fresh while also making sense; materia works in the same way, ATB is still there, i think the did a really good job at modernising the way it worked back in 1997. the characters are spot on, and with more thought to its localisation each character gets more flavour, aerith in particular, feels infinitely more alive than she ever has. when she says "I'm not some princess who needs to be coddled, y'know... shit!" I fell in love with her. graphically its stunning of course, and midgar is so amazingly realised too! each slum town feels rich and deep, wallmarket in particular as this home of debauchery and vice, i love it. i love what they did to midgar so much. the original music and revised music is all great; Underneath the Rotting Pizza is and incredible rearangement and yet Collapsed Expressway is an amazing original piece! there is so much here to love, SO much. fighting big bosses feels great most of the time, airbuster is awesome, the Turks are great, and each character's unique style makes them fun and exciting. the weapon system itself is cool, allowing for customisation thats more interesting and exciting that the original game. being able to play the whole game with the Buster Sword if you want, but also having the variety! wow!
but nothing is perfect, especially if tetsuya nomura has had his grubby little mitts on it. i'm not saying the man can't write a good story, and for as bizarre as some of his stuff comes across, he does have rules for his stories. but i don't think this story needed destiny, or arbiters of fate, and while i appreciate we delete destiny at teh end of the game, we certainly dont need to add in extra plot twists like Zack and Biggs surviving; it just isnt necessary. i think its all red herring material personall,y, i think by the end of the trilogy both Zack and Aerith will have died, regardless of how its looking. we'll see! i could be wrong! also barret shouldnt have sunglasses, they suck. another bad thing is the filler, or at least some of it. i get that they wanted midgar to be its own game, and i even agree with that decision if the result is a midgar this fleshed out, but there are filler chapters that are genuinely awful. every side quest chapter is worthless, boring, unoriginal drivle. there isnt a single good sidequest in this game. do better next time, please. also, leslie and the sewer sequence feels tacked on and bad. i think they couldve done SOMETHING better than that too. there could have been a bit more on the plate i feel like, like on the way to the shinra building maybe we have another chapter, like chapter 2, where we're going through the streets of the plate to get to the tower, and so on. Hojo's lab is absolutely awful. i love a secret lab for the lore implications, but the story is nonexistent at that point and the manouvering is frustrating and weird. do better!
looking forward to part 2 :)
but nothing is perfect, especially if tetsuya nomura has had his grubby little mitts on it. i'm not saying the man can't write a good story, and for as bizarre as some of his stuff comes across, he does have rules for his stories. but i don't think this story needed destiny, or arbiters of fate, and while i appreciate we delete destiny at teh end of the game, we certainly dont need to add in extra plot twists like Zack and Biggs surviving; it just isnt necessary. i think its all red herring material personall,y, i think by the end of the trilogy both Zack and Aerith will have died, regardless of how its looking. we'll see! i could be wrong! also barret shouldnt have sunglasses, they suck. another bad thing is the filler, or at least some of it. i get that they wanted midgar to be its own game, and i even agree with that decision if the result is a midgar this fleshed out, but there are filler chapters that are genuinely awful. every side quest chapter is worthless, boring, unoriginal drivle. there isnt a single good sidequest in this game. do better next time, please. also, leslie and the sewer sequence feels tacked on and bad. i think they couldve done SOMETHING better than that too. there could have been a bit more on the plate i feel like, like on the way to the shinra building maybe we have another chapter, like chapter 2, where we're going through the streets of the plate to get to the tower, and so on. Hojo's lab is absolutely awful. i love a secret lab for the lore implications, but the story is nonexistent at that point and the manouvering is frustrating and weird. do better!
looking forward to part 2 :)
its alright! its like hollow knight but worse in basically evert way except for movement? The enemies are uninspiring and while the art style is lovely it gets quite boring eventually what with not having many setpieces. also the glowy effects and flowy branches and platforms get quite distracting and misleading at points. most of the bosses are not that fun, although RUNNING from them is fantastic. The "story" bored me to tears, and i groaned out loud when the narrator was revealed to be a character in the story. the snow bit was my favourite! going to trade it in now x
i love old world blues. even years after beating it and knowing its jokes and humour off by heart, i still find it really funny and charming. the script here is just so good, so realised, so charming. it's delightfully fun, both in its comedy and its worldbuilding. i think the thing that slightly lets OWB done is that its actual moment to moment quests are unfortunately a little dull at points, and also you can finish it real fast. it offers a lot more optional content than the other DLCs and that is really cool of it, but i wish there had been a little more of that main story quest. also, going into this with no gear and trying a MGS-style "procure of site" made this WAY harder than i expected. like, way WAY harder. man. still great though!
I lovr castlevania
1) remake Jonathan so he has multiple weapons
2) buff Alucard's spells and abilities
3) buff Shanoa
4) fix the Symphony of the Night level so its not half a stage
5) PORT TO STEAM PLEEEAAAAASSSEEE
1) remake Jonathan so he has multiple weapons
2) buff Alucard's spells and abilities
3) buff Shanoa
4) fix the Symphony of the Night level so its not half a stage
5) PORT TO STEAM PLEEEAAAAASSSEEE
Perfect gsme except for tje greyscale, easy, flat surfaces
2008
never cared a whit for versus or the competition that arises from it but the campaigns are so good. such good characterisation of its small cast so fast, each likable with dialogue that makes them bounce off each other easily, and good visual design too. the levels are, for the most part, well designed and interesting to go through. i think some of these levels blend it together quite a lot which is a shame as it takes away from some of the personality, but thats a pretty minor complaint. dead air is just like, amazing, even the individual levels within that campaign are good. the three special infected are all distinct and interesting, always fun to deal with. good great fun! playing this online and forking around will never not be funny
fun to go back to L4D2 after this and see the formula just improved upon with more item variety and special infected. gravy
fun to go back to L4D2 after this and see the formula just improved upon with more item variety and special infected. gravy
This review contains spoilers
this review is going to have spoilers for Twin Peaks, Persona 4, and Deadly Premonition.
lets get the obvious stuff out of the way first. the gameplay sucks. even fans of this game recognise that there isnt a single piece of this that works on a gameplay level. navigating greenvale is a nightmare because of the moving mini-map, but even the whole town map rotates without having an explicit north point. the most you can zoom out of the map shows you less than 1/8 of it, so its borderline impossible to work out where you're supposed to go using it. worst map in a game? might be! game shat the bed on nintendo switch too. driving through any of the populated areas plummeted the framerate to like 10fps at best, which is funny because despite them being the "populated" areas, theres absolutely no one there. the levels and combat encounters were incredibly boring. lame combat that doesnt evolve or do anything more interesting than literally the first time you get there. endless ugly corridors with the same pointless zombie enemies doing nothing. melee weapons break too often, guns are slow and clunky and have no weight too them, getting hit by an enemy takes so long to recover from. there are items galore that dont make managing the stats of hunger and sleep anymore interesting, theyre just tedious and dont contribute to any sense of atmosphere or vibe. they just clog up your tiny inventory. driving is slow and boring because there's nothing in town worth looking at, so the town isnt fun to explore in the car. theres no actual collision mechanics either so you can slam into another car at 90mph and nothing happens? its just boring! whatever, i think we're all in agreement of the gameplay being ass. unfortunately, the story is too, and here's where the real review begins...
we're looking at a story inspired by twin peaks, silent hill, and resident evil here i think. a murder mystery in a quaint but scary town, with gun action on the side. (thats the resident evil influence on the side). for most of my time playing the game i was actually complimentary of how it took twin peaks as an influence because i felt like it wasnt just lifting the black lodge and lynchian aesthetic the way that soul eater and gravity falls have. i felt like it was trying to understand the relationship because the quaint and the creepy, and trying to paint its own path to that. by the end of the game i changed my mind on this. for one, greenvale never succeeds to be quaint. twin peaks the town is charming and fun because of its colour pallette, because it's like a soap opera. we spend time with lots of characters, even outside of the detective's perspective. those characters and their lives and their oddities become intimate to us. in greenvale, theres no real sense of location because the town is absolutely huge and none of the areas outside actually stand out at all. furthermore, these areas arent populated, so our experiences there dont do anything for us. greenvales roads are eerily quiet, its street void of life. for a game that wanted to be about the quaint and familiar life of small countryside life, it felt incredibly lonely, something which i felt never went away. secondly, the horror of twin peaks works because we understand what the evil is. in short, BOB is the evil that men do, and the lodge entities represent aspects of human cruelty. almost all of the horror imagery in deadly premonition ends up being shallow and pointless.
both of these problems contribute to my problems with the plot. i'll admit i didn't necessarily think george was going to be the killer, but it doesnt work at all! for one, the main cast is actually incredibly small. it has george, thomas, emily, forrest, nick briefly, and diane briefly. its quite clear that its not nick who's the killer, so it only really leaves thomas and george left from the photos? forrest's involvement is abaundantely clear if you have eyes and brain because he's literally carrying around the red plant that seems to be found with evey crime? but george is the problem, not kaysen. the town is filled with lots of characters, but almost all of them are relegated to side content. what that means is if you only do the main story you know the characters who are and aren't going to be involved in the main plot. makes the whole thing fall apart when you realised that none of the other suspects actually turn up in the story whatsoever. again, the town is lonely and small, and our cast of suspects is too narrow to create a compelling mystery. secondly, george fails to have a motive. the george we spend most the of the game talking to isnt the same man that we have a (horrible) boss encounter with. is this inherently bad? kind of. in persona 4, the killer (or at least, man responsible for everything happening in inaba) is adachi, the goofy cop sidekick. its surprising because the time we spend with him he seems so nice, so this reveal that he's an evil nasty man makes him seem like he was faking it all along... but the fact is, he wasnt! if you spent time in persona 4 getting to know adachi, then you realised he was actually kind of a fucked up dude with some twisted beliefs on people. its clever subtle writing that makes you feel slightly weird about him. then when its revealed he's the killer, those worldviews he showed you suddenly make more sense. the character is consistent in his inconsistency, and a whole picture can be understood. the same is true of leland as the killer in twin peaks. even after its revealed he killed laura and maddie, or when cooper speaks to him in the prison, its clear that the leland we saw grieving or dancing was still the same man as the killer. its consistent in its inconsistency! george in deadly premonition doesnt fit this. it just falls into the same tired trap that people who were abused as children turn into fucked up killers. his world view about him being some kind of silly chosen one because of magic seeds isnt present in his character writing anywhere. his desire to sacrifice people has absolutely no meaning or merit outside of the plot needing there to be murder victims. he just kind of says to york "and then i decided to kill anna" and thats it for his motive i guess? it doesnt even make sense that he's the raincoat killer. the first time we encounter the killer in gameplay york says "he's here!" which implies the killer is actually in the building with you... but almost always when these sections happen, we know that george is outside with emily. the game essentially just lies to you about whats happening when the raincoat killer is chasing us. also, why does york run from the killer? he's literally pursuing him, and fighting all these zombies. why is he suddenly scared of a guy with an axe? theres a story/gameplay disconnect that that i found quite frustrating. at the start of the game i almost enjoyed this supernatural facet of wherever the killer was could conjure these hallucinogenic worlds of zombies for york, but then it becomes clear that they are artificial padding to keep the game lasting longer, and they have no meaningful impact on the story whatsoever. when i was fighting them in harry's mansion that's when i realised they were totally pointless. i liked kaysen more as a villain i think because his performance was good, but again in terms of motivation he's just like "Yeah i'm evil i guess" and it just doesnt mean anything at all! horror aesthetic for no reason. these are not characters you can get invested in. this is a story with no flavour beyond the immediate feeling its trying to provoke, and it doesnt do anything to justify wondering about what has happened or what will happen. it all just feels so pointless and hollow.
the only thing i'll give the game credit for is some of the music (limited as it was) and York. his performance is so good that it does really endear the player to him. i like that he gets everyones back up at first because he is just an insane man. spoilers, he is literally insane and that's why he talks to someone called zach! further spoilers, the reveal about who zach is literally changes nothing abuot the game. its genuinely a pointless bit of drama. i dont think i minded it too much because i already liked york, but i do think its ultimately meaningless. york is a charming protagnosit because of how confident he is in everything. its just a shame that literally everything surrounding him is superficial and doesnt work on basically any level.
sorry eveyone! thought i was going to have some fun with this one, but it just isnt good.
lets get the obvious stuff out of the way first. the gameplay sucks. even fans of this game recognise that there isnt a single piece of this that works on a gameplay level. navigating greenvale is a nightmare because of the moving mini-map, but even the whole town map rotates without having an explicit north point. the most you can zoom out of the map shows you less than 1/8 of it, so its borderline impossible to work out where you're supposed to go using it. worst map in a game? might be! game shat the bed on nintendo switch too. driving through any of the populated areas plummeted the framerate to like 10fps at best, which is funny because despite them being the "populated" areas, theres absolutely no one there. the levels and combat encounters were incredibly boring. lame combat that doesnt evolve or do anything more interesting than literally the first time you get there. endless ugly corridors with the same pointless zombie enemies doing nothing. melee weapons break too often, guns are slow and clunky and have no weight too them, getting hit by an enemy takes so long to recover from. there are items galore that dont make managing the stats of hunger and sleep anymore interesting, theyre just tedious and dont contribute to any sense of atmosphere or vibe. they just clog up your tiny inventory. driving is slow and boring because there's nothing in town worth looking at, so the town isnt fun to explore in the car. theres no actual collision mechanics either so you can slam into another car at 90mph and nothing happens? its just boring! whatever, i think we're all in agreement of the gameplay being ass. unfortunately, the story is too, and here's where the real review begins...
we're looking at a story inspired by twin peaks, silent hill, and resident evil here i think. a murder mystery in a quaint but scary town, with gun action on the side. (thats the resident evil influence on the side). for most of my time playing the game i was actually complimentary of how it took twin peaks as an influence because i felt like it wasnt just lifting the black lodge and lynchian aesthetic the way that soul eater and gravity falls have. i felt like it was trying to understand the relationship because the quaint and the creepy, and trying to paint its own path to that. by the end of the game i changed my mind on this. for one, greenvale never succeeds to be quaint. twin peaks the town is charming and fun because of its colour pallette, because it's like a soap opera. we spend time with lots of characters, even outside of the detective's perspective. those characters and their lives and their oddities become intimate to us. in greenvale, theres no real sense of location because the town is absolutely huge and none of the areas outside actually stand out at all. furthermore, these areas arent populated, so our experiences there dont do anything for us. greenvales roads are eerily quiet, its street void of life. for a game that wanted to be about the quaint and familiar life of small countryside life, it felt incredibly lonely, something which i felt never went away. secondly, the horror of twin peaks works because we understand what the evil is. in short, BOB is the evil that men do, and the lodge entities represent aspects of human cruelty. almost all of the horror imagery in deadly premonition ends up being shallow and pointless.
both of these problems contribute to my problems with the plot. i'll admit i didn't necessarily think george was going to be the killer, but it doesnt work at all! for one, the main cast is actually incredibly small. it has george, thomas, emily, forrest, nick briefly, and diane briefly. its quite clear that its not nick who's the killer, so it only really leaves thomas and george left from the photos? forrest's involvement is abaundantely clear if you have eyes and brain because he's literally carrying around the red plant that seems to be found with evey crime? but george is the problem, not kaysen. the town is filled with lots of characters, but almost all of them are relegated to side content. what that means is if you only do the main story you know the characters who are and aren't going to be involved in the main plot. makes the whole thing fall apart when you realised that none of the other suspects actually turn up in the story whatsoever. again, the town is lonely and small, and our cast of suspects is too narrow to create a compelling mystery. secondly, george fails to have a motive. the george we spend most the of the game talking to isnt the same man that we have a (horrible) boss encounter with. is this inherently bad? kind of. in persona 4, the killer (or at least, man responsible for everything happening in inaba) is adachi, the goofy cop sidekick. its surprising because the time we spend with him he seems so nice, so this reveal that he's an evil nasty man makes him seem like he was faking it all along... but the fact is, he wasnt! if you spent time in persona 4 getting to know adachi, then you realised he was actually kind of a fucked up dude with some twisted beliefs on people. its clever subtle writing that makes you feel slightly weird about him. then when its revealed he's the killer, those worldviews he showed you suddenly make more sense. the character is consistent in his inconsistency, and a whole picture can be understood. the same is true of leland as the killer in twin peaks. even after its revealed he killed laura and maddie, or when cooper speaks to him in the prison, its clear that the leland we saw grieving or dancing was still the same man as the killer. its consistent in its inconsistency! george in deadly premonition doesnt fit this. it just falls into the same tired trap that people who were abused as children turn into fucked up killers. his world view about him being some kind of silly chosen one because of magic seeds isnt present in his character writing anywhere. his desire to sacrifice people has absolutely no meaning or merit outside of the plot needing there to be murder victims. he just kind of says to york "and then i decided to kill anna" and thats it for his motive i guess? it doesnt even make sense that he's the raincoat killer. the first time we encounter the killer in gameplay york says "he's here!" which implies the killer is actually in the building with you... but almost always when these sections happen, we know that george is outside with emily. the game essentially just lies to you about whats happening when the raincoat killer is chasing us. also, why does york run from the killer? he's literally pursuing him, and fighting all these zombies. why is he suddenly scared of a guy with an axe? theres a story/gameplay disconnect that that i found quite frustrating. at the start of the game i almost enjoyed this supernatural facet of wherever the killer was could conjure these hallucinogenic worlds of zombies for york, but then it becomes clear that they are artificial padding to keep the game lasting longer, and they have no meaningful impact on the story whatsoever. when i was fighting them in harry's mansion that's when i realised they were totally pointless. i liked kaysen more as a villain i think because his performance was good, but again in terms of motivation he's just like "Yeah i'm evil i guess" and it just doesnt mean anything at all! horror aesthetic for no reason. these are not characters you can get invested in. this is a story with no flavour beyond the immediate feeling its trying to provoke, and it doesnt do anything to justify wondering about what has happened or what will happen. it all just feels so pointless and hollow.
the only thing i'll give the game credit for is some of the music (limited as it was) and York. his performance is so good that it does really endear the player to him. i like that he gets everyones back up at first because he is just an insane man. spoilers, he is literally insane and that's why he talks to someone called zach! further spoilers, the reveal about who zach is literally changes nothing abuot the game. its genuinely a pointless bit of drama. i dont think i minded it too much because i already liked york, but i do think its ultimately meaningless. york is a charming protagnosit because of how confident he is in everything. its just a shame that literally everything surrounding him is superficial and doesnt work on basically any level.
sorry eveyone! thought i was going to have some fun with this one, but it just isnt good.
2006
first of all what do you MEAN this game came out in 2006? i remember turning ten, and i remember playing this game, which must have been years later? what is THAT all about? i dont know!!!
anyway. missing a lot of the charm from nightmare in dreamland and amazing mirror! i feel like the levels are just missing something? maybe it has something to do with the fact that in Nightmare in Dreamland's levels are picked by walking into doors. aside from picking the menu at the start, all gameplay is navigated by kirby. meant that each level was like, a place in the world you were in, as opposed to cirlces of a bland and lifeless map. i also think the chests in this game are just... i dont know, frustrating? it's hard to put into words why i dont feel like they work. Nightmare in Dreamland also had secrets in its levels, but they were fun! didnt feel like you had to go back and actively look for them all the time, and if you did, it felt rewarding bc of it? just didnt vibe with it
good gameplay things here include the sprays, and being able to mirge fire and sword, as well as upgrading abilities. otherwise ends up being a little disappointing... oh well!
anyway. missing a lot of the charm from nightmare in dreamland and amazing mirror! i feel like the levels are just missing something? maybe it has something to do with the fact that in Nightmare in Dreamland's levels are picked by walking into doors. aside from picking the menu at the start, all gameplay is navigated by kirby. meant that each level was like, a place in the world you were in, as opposed to cirlces of a bland and lifeless map. i also think the chests in this game are just... i dont know, frustrating? it's hard to put into words why i dont feel like they work. Nightmare in Dreamland also had secrets in its levels, but they were fun! didnt feel like you had to go back and actively look for them all the time, and if you did, it felt rewarding bc of it? just didnt vibe with it
good gameplay things here include the sprays, and being able to mirge fire and sword, as well as upgrading abilities. otherwise ends up being a little disappointing... oh well!
2001
not too much to say! i like it! i think that this game has some of the best sprite art ever, like all of the main cast look great, the levels look fantastic, the music is also amazing
sonic has a weird philosophical problem in that, what is a sonic game supposed to look like? going fast is when it is at its best, but a 2d platformer needs obstacles. how you do add obstacles without the annoying seemingly random spikes or enemies that feel impossible to avoid? whats the solution? i dont know!
egg rocket zone is the most exciting level but i dont know if its the most FUN one? its conceptually great and the music is great. the boss absolutely SUCKS however, and is significantly harder than the final boss!
oh well!!!! will probably come back to this relatively soon :)
sonic has a weird philosophical problem in that, what is a sonic game supposed to look like? going fast is when it is at its best, but a 2d platformer needs obstacles. how you do add obstacles without the annoying seemingly random spikes or enemies that feel impossible to avoid? whats the solution? i dont know!
egg rocket zone is the most exciting level but i dont know if its the most FUN one? its conceptually great and the music is great. the boss absolutely SUCKS however, and is significantly harder than the final boss!
oh well!!!! will probably come back to this relatively soon :)
This review contains spoilers
from the moment you start the game and your clan can be decided by answering a personality test i knew vampire: the masquerade - bloodlines had flavour. it is so flavourful. it is dripping with wonderful lovely juices of flavour!
here we have a game shining from so many angles - not all of them admittedly - but so many. it's an old 2004 PC RPG that was rushed in development and by god it shows. it is buggy as hell, the AI is jank and mad, and the balancing... well, there is no balancing. if you go to fight the sherieff and haven't levelled up guns i don't know what to say to you chief, you're just doomed! there are oblitagory sneak missions which therefore require you to level up sneak as a skill, and the dungeons are sometimes so labrynthian and mazelike you genuinely might want to draw yourself a map of where to go.
and yet, all of that being said, this game still owns. the writing is genuinely amazing, this game a microcosm of the larger politics being explored in white wolf's world, but each actor stands out as someone unique with a storied history and specific perspective. and also, the dialogue is just good! each character's voice is unique, and their voice actors do a great job! and the dialogue the protagnoist has back is great too! compare it to the milktoast dialogue of games like Skyrim, Fallout 4 and the like, you'll be shocked they let you get away with a protagonist as yappy and rude as the fledglign! it's both politically tense, has some good mythos (abou caine and the antedilluvians for example) as well as some genuinely hilarious stuff. i was dubious to play VTMB because neo-gothic isnt normally my jam, but from the fact that the moment you start the game you can an email about making your penis bigger i was in. made me laugh out loud multiple times. also, the music is absolutely incredible. so many perfect vibes just totally work, although sometimes the game does randomly switch them out to creepy mumbojumbo for no reason.
aside from wishing the actual gameplay was tider (much tidier in fact) the only other thing i'd ask for is that the important and fun NPCs we meet aren't just irrelevant after we've done their quests? none of the Hollywood NPCs, or even Santa Monica, actually matter once you've finished their storyline. also cops suck and I didn't go Cammy, but the game would've benefitted from the Camarilla and Kei Juin having more of an argument in their favour! LaCroix is so obviously the villain that you have to REALLY be a brown noise to side with him... although at least the game punishes you for it if you do hahaha!
here we have a game shining from so many angles - not all of them admittedly - but so many. it's an old 2004 PC RPG that was rushed in development and by god it shows. it is buggy as hell, the AI is jank and mad, and the balancing... well, there is no balancing. if you go to fight the sherieff and haven't levelled up guns i don't know what to say to you chief, you're just doomed! there are oblitagory sneak missions which therefore require you to level up sneak as a skill, and the dungeons are sometimes so labrynthian and mazelike you genuinely might want to draw yourself a map of where to go.
and yet, all of that being said, this game still owns. the writing is genuinely amazing, this game a microcosm of the larger politics being explored in white wolf's world, but each actor stands out as someone unique with a storied history and specific perspective. and also, the dialogue is just good! each character's voice is unique, and their voice actors do a great job! and the dialogue the protagnoist has back is great too! compare it to the milktoast dialogue of games like Skyrim, Fallout 4 and the like, you'll be shocked they let you get away with a protagonist as yappy and rude as the fledglign! it's both politically tense, has some good mythos (abou caine and the antedilluvians for example) as well as some genuinely hilarious stuff. i was dubious to play VTMB because neo-gothic isnt normally my jam, but from the fact that the moment you start the game you can an email about making your penis bigger i was in. made me laugh out loud multiple times. also, the music is absolutely incredible. so many perfect vibes just totally work, although sometimes the game does randomly switch them out to creepy mumbojumbo for no reason.
aside from wishing the actual gameplay was tider (much tidier in fact) the only other thing i'd ask for is that the important and fun NPCs we meet aren't just irrelevant after we've done their quests? none of the Hollywood NPCs, or even Santa Monica, actually matter once you've finished their storyline. also cops suck and I didn't go Cammy, but the game would've benefitted from the Camarilla and Kei Juin having more of an argument in their favour! LaCroix is so obviously the villain that you have to REALLY be a brown noise to side with him... although at least the game punishes you for it if you do hahaha!
honest hearts is fine. it offers up an interesting concept with a two important characters, both of whom are very interesting in their own right, but not much else. joshua and daniel are differing takes on christian missionaries, and the various problems they present when we start thinking we know better than tribal peoples. neither of these perspectives are "bad" but regigious missionary work is a form of colonialism, and it kind of sucks that you don't have an option to back out of helping either of them without actively working against them or just not playing the DLC. still, i like these characters and i think they're interesting. i wish they each got a bit more, and it's kind of evidenced that they never interract with each other, when it would've been call to have a 3 person discussion. shame new vegas never got that!
the gameplay is pretty disappointing here. zion itself is beautiful, if a bit one note, with its caves being quite dull and samey. the quests are SUPER dull, every main story quest being fetch-questy and not related to the central conflict. the white legs are uninspiring targets who feel more annoying than anything else.
the best thing about Honest Hearts is The Father in the Caves, and reading all of his entries. beautiful, incredibly well written stuff, very Oryx and Crake. good loot, good hidden traps, and amazing lore. my girlfriend listened to me read out all of the Survivalist's diary entries, and we both really enjoyed how cowardly, caring, and vengeful his entries are. good good shit.
the gameplay is pretty disappointing here. zion itself is beautiful, if a bit one note, with its caves being quite dull and samey. the quests are SUPER dull, every main story quest being fetch-questy and not related to the central conflict. the white legs are uninspiring targets who feel more annoying than anything else.
the best thing about Honest Hearts is The Father in the Caves, and reading all of his entries. beautiful, incredibly well written stuff, very Oryx and Crake. good loot, good hidden traps, and amazing lore. my girlfriend listened to me read out all of the Survivalist's diary entries, and we both really enjoyed how cowardly, caring, and vengeful his entries are. good good shit.
1995
not everyone who knows me well knows how much i love soul blade. or soul edge? i dont know what this game is called. i think the north american version was soul edge, which makes more sense than soul blade, considering the sword in question is called soul edge, but whatever. i digress!!!
i am not a fighting games guy. i know how to play smash brothers at a decent casual level, and thats assuming you're happy for me to call smash brothers a fighting game, which you're probably not happy about! soul blade is the one for me though. and to be explicitally clear, soul blade is the one i love. i LIKE soul calibur, i think it can be quite fun, but you have to understand that there is a world of difference between blade and calibur. the three main differences in combat are the reasons i prefer blade to calibur too. to start with, jumping. this is the smallest one, but in blade you have bouncy shoes which means you can jump about 10 feet high with quite a lot of horizontal direction. that means you can easily jump over your opponent. in calibur, your jumps are short hops, meant only for jumping over low attacks. second difference is the ease of movement on the axis. in blade to go down on the axis you double tap down, and to go up you tap down then up quickly (or you can buttonmap L2 to go up which is what a smart person would do). moving axis is not smooth and it doesn't feel like taking a step; rather it feels like shifting onto a different angle to face your opponent. it's a much more considered decision than in calibur. because jumping is more important in blade, you have to be able to jump easily, so up is jump. in calibur this is less true, so up moves you up the axis. moving axis is therefore easier, and in fact smoother. it's less considered and has less of an impact on gameplay. this makes a huge difference in whether you go for a horizontal attack or a vertical one because the axis is more committed and jumps are higher! the difference between attacks ends up mattering a whole bunch. to be clear about calibur, this shit matters too in calibur, just i feel the movement in blade compliments the horizontal/vertical question far better than calibur does. the last difference between blade and calibur's combat is more of a personal thing, and i respect that i probably only prefer it because i'm 1) not that good at fighting games and 2) blinded by nostalgia. basically soul blade's combos have a hard ending to them that essentially resets the combatants positions to neutrals. you can combo someone onto the ground, punish them once, maybe twice if you predict their roll, but you can't really juggle. there's no rush down in soul blade the same way there is in calibur, or any fighting game really. for me that makes it far more inviting because it's SO much slower. not that it is slow necessarily, but actions are more deliberate nad it's easier to see exactly what each character can do, what they will or might do, and how they respond. despite blade and calibur's combat maybe looking really similar on the surface, they are completely different games.
that's not even talking about the tone and story either. the first thing to understand is that soul blade is a mid 90s japanese fighting game whose story was written for the playstation port. it was practically non-existant in the arcade version. soul blade has this thing about "the war age" and the feeling of these fighters travelling the world on their own personal quests, which i find really delightful. despite being set in a historical period in the real world, it feels like this exciting fantasy world. there's a lot of colour to the stages, and a lot of colour to the outfits. the music is similarily epic, something calibur also wants to do. the supernatural hovers on the horizon in blade: it's the thing we have been chasing throughout our journey. we travel the whole world looking for this legendary cursed sword, and when we find it we get the hardest boss of the game, cervantes de leon, as well as souledge (or inferno) itself. the mechanical difficulty of these two bosses compliments the fiction that soul edge is all powerful, and the supernatural has no place in the world. caliburs story is much more anime and explicitally fantasy; not necessarily a bad thing but it is different. the way the world is understood is so different. you have motherfuckers like zasalamel, lizardman, astaroth, and tira, all of whom scream fantasy and the supernatural. it's no longer something on the periphary, it's the here and now. the fantasy of the world is the thing that's important, not the historical context. in SC4 Siegfried is this giant crystalised knight who wields the crystalline version of the sword Soul Calibur. in blade, where the historical fiction matters more, he is not a fantasy character, but a man whose motivations come from ego. the blonde germanic and handsome young knight is actually one of the villains in soul blade, which feels fantastic! his hair is short and trim, denoting his age, and his voicelines are cocky and egotistical. when siegfried embraces the supernatural it only ends badly for him. i love that the canon ending for a character you just beat arcade mode with is that he turns into a fucking monster. it's delightfully tragic. i love the siegfried of blade SO much, because he becomes the biggest wet blanket in the world from SC1 onwards.
blade's storymode has these book like segments that are entirely unique to each character. they're pretty simple, and not always written in the best prose, but i always loved the start of them, which sets the historical setpieces up. it's not just "mitsurugi is the son of a farmer who goes to war", it's "he's the son of a farmer who joins the seto inland pirates" who were real pirates around that period! siegfried's castle stage isn't just some fantasy castle, it's a castle for a feudal lord at war with a nearby marquis. it's populated with terbuchets and we see crumbling towers in the background. this world feels real and lived in despite the small writing.
it's all nostalgia to me i know i know i know, i KNOW that this game probably isn't as good as SC2 or SC6 (better than SC5 though lol) but i do think it's really special. it has two completely unique soundtracks, the default arcade one and a second called the Khan Super Session which is better than literally any of the soul calibur soundtracks. they go insanely hard, 5 minute long tracks for fights that will barely last two minutes at a push. the voiceacting is cheesy and fun, and it's sweet that the european characters speak english but the asian ones speak japanese (although it would have been better if they all genuinely spoke their own languages) but nonetheless, it's neat
i acknowledge that there are some problems! edge master mode, as conceptually fun as it is and as much as i like the story, is bullshit at points. the win conditions for some of those fights are absolutely ridiculous. playing hwang's mode and having to win three fights in a row where you can only damage the enemy WHILE THEY'RE IN THE AIR and the second fight has the enemy regaining health passively? or mitsurugi having to beat 5 enemies in a row in the colosseum, or beat voldo with the critical edge move? it's genuinely infuriating! like any fighting game, playing with your friends is infinitely more fun than fighting the arcade mode or edge master mode. the game WILL read your inputs. it'll know that you're hitting high then low and it'll match it and it'll make you feel like shit. despicable. also, the weapon gague system is a good idea but by the time you break your opponent's weapon in a fight, it often makes very little difference to the fight because of how much health is left/time on the clock. i'm kind of glad it was scrapped, although i do think a fist-fighting mode would've been a good laugh. on the topic of weapons, i LOVE that blade has all these fun weapons for you to play with. although it would've been neat to be able to pick one without applying the stats for it so you can pick the one you like and fight your pals like that. isn't it also crazy that each character in this game has three different costumes, two of them having two pallettes, so there are 5 variants for each character? that's more than SC6!
maybe this review doesn't quite explain why this is in my favourite games. after all i didn't even give it 5 or 4.5 stars, it only got 4. i appreciate it has problems! but this game is truly special. it's such a weird little unique thing that not many people know about. because soul calibur changed its format so dramatically blade never got a proper sequel, and it's never been ported to anything, so you either need the PS1 disc or you need to emulate it these days. what i'd do for an updated, patched version with online and bonus features! i love this game so much. it is special and truly delightful, and it is, really, the only fighting game for me.
anyway, now go and listen to The Edge of the Soul, the main theme for this game.
i am not a fighting games guy. i know how to play smash brothers at a decent casual level, and thats assuming you're happy for me to call smash brothers a fighting game, which you're probably not happy about! soul blade is the one for me though. and to be explicitally clear, soul blade is the one i love. i LIKE soul calibur, i think it can be quite fun, but you have to understand that there is a world of difference between blade and calibur. the three main differences in combat are the reasons i prefer blade to calibur too. to start with, jumping. this is the smallest one, but in blade you have bouncy shoes which means you can jump about 10 feet high with quite a lot of horizontal direction. that means you can easily jump over your opponent. in calibur, your jumps are short hops, meant only for jumping over low attacks. second difference is the ease of movement on the axis. in blade to go down on the axis you double tap down, and to go up you tap down then up quickly (or you can buttonmap L2 to go up which is what a smart person would do). moving axis is not smooth and it doesn't feel like taking a step; rather it feels like shifting onto a different angle to face your opponent. it's a much more considered decision than in calibur. because jumping is more important in blade, you have to be able to jump easily, so up is jump. in calibur this is less true, so up moves you up the axis. moving axis is therefore easier, and in fact smoother. it's less considered and has less of an impact on gameplay. this makes a huge difference in whether you go for a horizontal attack or a vertical one because the axis is more committed and jumps are higher! the difference between attacks ends up mattering a whole bunch. to be clear about calibur, this shit matters too in calibur, just i feel the movement in blade compliments the horizontal/vertical question far better than calibur does. the last difference between blade and calibur's combat is more of a personal thing, and i respect that i probably only prefer it because i'm 1) not that good at fighting games and 2) blinded by nostalgia. basically soul blade's combos have a hard ending to them that essentially resets the combatants positions to neutrals. you can combo someone onto the ground, punish them once, maybe twice if you predict their roll, but you can't really juggle. there's no rush down in soul blade the same way there is in calibur, or any fighting game really. for me that makes it far more inviting because it's SO much slower. not that it is slow necessarily, but actions are more deliberate nad it's easier to see exactly what each character can do, what they will or might do, and how they respond. despite blade and calibur's combat maybe looking really similar on the surface, they are completely different games.
that's not even talking about the tone and story either. the first thing to understand is that soul blade is a mid 90s japanese fighting game whose story was written for the playstation port. it was practically non-existant in the arcade version. soul blade has this thing about "the war age" and the feeling of these fighters travelling the world on their own personal quests, which i find really delightful. despite being set in a historical period in the real world, it feels like this exciting fantasy world. there's a lot of colour to the stages, and a lot of colour to the outfits. the music is similarily epic, something calibur also wants to do. the supernatural hovers on the horizon in blade: it's the thing we have been chasing throughout our journey. we travel the whole world looking for this legendary cursed sword, and when we find it we get the hardest boss of the game, cervantes de leon, as well as souledge (or inferno) itself. the mechanical difficulty of these two bosses compliments the fiction that soul edge is all powerful, and the supernatural has no place in the world. caliburs story is much more anime and explicitally fantasy; not necessarily a bad thing but it is different. the way the world is understood is so different. you have motherfuckers like zasalamel, lizardman, astaroth, and tira, all of whom scream fantasy and the supernatural. it's no longer something on the periphary, it's the here and now. the fantasy of the world is the thing that's important, not the historical context. in SC4 Siegfried is this giant crystalised knight who wields the crystalline version of the sword Soul Calibur. in blade, where the historical fiction matters more, he is not a fantasy character, but a man whose motivations come from ego. the blonde germanic and handsome young knight is actually one of the villains in soul blade, which feels fantastic! his hair is short and trim, denoting his age, and his voicelines are cocky and egotistical. when siegfried embraces the supernatural it only ends badly for him. i love that the canon ending for a character you just beat arcade mode with is that he turns into a fucking monster. it's delightfully tragic. i love the siegfried of blade SO much, because he becomes the biggest wet blanket in the world from SC1 onwards.
blade's storymode has these book like segments that are entirely unique to each character. they're pretty simple, and not always written in the best prose, but i always loved the start of them, which sets the historical setpieces up. it's not just "mitsurugi is the son of a farmer who goes to war", it's "he's the son of a farmer who joins the seto inland pirates" who were real pirates around that period! siegfried's castle stage isn't just some fantasy castle, it's a castle for a feudal lord at war with a nearby marquis. it's populated with terbuchets and we see crumbling towers in the background. this world feels real and lived in despite the small writing.
it's all nostalgia to me i know i know i know, i KNOW that this game probably isn't as good as SC2 or SC6 (better than SC5 though lol) but i do think it's really special. it has two completely unique soundtracks, the default arcade one and a second called the Khan Super Session which is better than literally any of the soul calibur soundtracks. they go insanely hard, 5 minute long tracks for fights that will barely last two minutes at a push. the voiceacting is cheesy and fun, and it's sweet that the european characters speak english but the asian ones speak japanese (although it would have been better if they all genuinely spoke their own languages) but nonetheless, it's neat
i acknowledge that there are some problems! edge master mode, as conceptually fun as it is and as much as i like the story, is bullshit at points. the win conditions for some of those fights are absolutely ridiculous. playing hwang's mode and having to win three fights in a row where you can only damage the enemy WHILE THEY'RE IN THE AIR and the second fight has the enemy regaining health passively? or mitsurugi having to beat 5 enemies in a row in the colosseum, or beat voldo with the critical edge move? it's genuinely infuriating! like any fighting game, playing with your friends is infinitely more fun than fighting the arcade mode or edge master mode. the game WILL read your inputs. it'll know that you're hitting high then low and it'll match it and it'll make you feel like shit. despicable. also, the weapon gague system is a good idea but by the time you break your opponent's weapon in a fight, it often makes very little difference to the fight because of how much health is left/time on the clock. i'm kind of glad it was scrapped, although i do think a fist-fighting mode would've been a good laugh. on the topic of weapons, i LOVE that blade has all these fun weapons for you to play with. although it would've been neat to be able to pick one without applying the stats for it so you can pick the one you like and fight your pals like that. isn't it also crazy that each character in this game has three different costumes, two of them having two pallettes, so there are 5 variants for each character? that's more than SC6!
maybe this review doesn't quite explain why this is in my favourite games. after all i didn't even give it 5 or 4.5 stars, it only got 4. i appreciate it has problems! but this game is truly special. it's such a weird little unique thing that not many people know about. because soul calibur changed its format so dramatically blade never got a proper sequel, and it's never been ported to anything, so you either need the PS1 disc or you need to emulate it these days. what i'd do for an updated, patched version with online and bonus features! i love this game so much. it is special and truly delightful, and it is, really, the only fighting game for me.
anyway, now go and listen to The Edge of the Soul, the main theme for this game.
1998
This review contains spoilers
listen. i love MGS as a series, but this one has aged like dog shit. the gameplay is so frustrating. from needing to always have the keycard equipped to open doors, to there being mines placed in random locations, to turrets that shoot you before you can see them... there's so much shit in this game that is needlessly annoying. when you get spotted by the last guy in the room and it makes another game spawn slightly out of frame to run in and shoot you, despite the fact that the place he spawned was a dead end? all of the annoying bullshit in this game is fixed in the sequel at least. i can appreciate that being seen in MGS2 means that the Attack Squad come in from one of the doors around the room, meaning you realistically hide knowing where extra support is coming from. the lack of being able to shoot down turrets too makes snake feel powerless despite the fiction telling me he's otherwise this incredible super soldier who can take down tanks, harriers, and a metal gear all on his jack. the nuclear stoage room and laser room before it activating a slowly killing gas while locking you in - why? why not just instantly kill me or do the usual with guards who teleport in? why gararuntee my death there in that moment? its so frustrating! that on top of the northward momentum of shadow moses means that backtracking this island is excruciatingly painful. you don't really get much stronger so going back to the beginning isn't necessarily a cakewalk the way it would be in other games. that's not a bad thing by itself but the fact is you have to do the laborious walk back and forth from all of these areas so many times and its boring and not fun!!! maybe one of the worst paced moments in a videogame is after meryl gets shot by sniper wolf and i have to walk alllll the way back to the tank hangar to get the PSG-1 to then walk alllll the way back to fight sniper wolf. i mean where's the urgency? she's bleeding to death on the floor and i have to take an elevator twice and crawl over some landmines and all kinds of shit!! SOME of the bossfights are okay. i like fighting ocelot, mantis is quite fun, and it goes without saying that the memory card and controller stuff is great (although admittedly much better played on an actual PS1, but i appreciate the new collection allowing you to select what data is on your "memory card". i picked castlevania, obviously, because i'm basic). but then you get to fighting REX which is a bit annoying by itself, with an unskillable cutscene in the middle of Gray Fox yammering about some bullshit!! the gameplay isnt the worst in the world but its genuinely just not fun to play anymore, and every iteration of MGS after this improves upon the formula.
but its not really the gameplay people play MGS for. we're talking solid snake baby in his most famous adventure! and here it is in its campy, james bond-esq style. it's okay? it's incredibly cheesey. maybe it's because we've seen so much stuff after MGS1 but for me, most of the emotional beats particularly work. these characters are all expanded upon and made much more interesting in later games (MGS2 specifically!) but here the characters are pretty uninteresting. snake is pretty void of personality actually. he's kind of james bond-like in that he's a legend and a bit of a womaniser, but doesnt have much reaction of feeling to stuff. you'd almost think he's kind of stupid because so much of his dialogue is responding to peoples statements with questions. you know, "metal gear, huh?" but he's not really. he's a musher, and the way he talks about animals shows he knows what he's talking about. i wish there was a bit more of the gentle man that snake was in it. meryl is just bad, literally has the scene where she goes "I'm not like other girls!" admittedly that is broken down a bit by the end of the game but it's still cringe and he "romance" with snake doesnt feel earned at all - again, its very james bond. gray fox feels like he was shoehorned into this game. doesn't really have anything interesting to add to the game beyond just kind of being there. it's kind of not really a beginner friendly game because of the references to MG1 and MG2 what with outer heaven, zanzibar land, grey fox and big boss for that reason. all of FOXHOUND basically suck. mantis is fun but is badly written outside of that, having gone crazy because he looked at a serial killers mind too much? cmon. sniper wolf and vulcan raven are like "You Are A Good Opponent In Battle So We Must Fight," snore!!! i'll give credit to ocelot who is most consistent here to how he is in later entries, as a conniving trickster who double crosses everyone all the time for everything. liquid is charming and cool, possibly just because of how good cam clarke's performance is, but a lot of what he says is nonsense and doesn't really have much dramatic weight behind it. i also do like naomi hunter, although her motive for disliking snake is boring. i think the subtly of her betrayal is done well, and especially as it's master miller (or liquid) who tells you it makes the reveal that miller was liquid all along all the stronger. it makes snake alone to know that colonel, master, and naomi have all betrayed him. it's practically only otacon who's a good guy and on his side. and otacon in this game is fine. he's a weeb loser who says some great shit. "can love bloom on the battlefield" is fine i guess. but again, where he puts his bigboy pants on in MGS2 he becomes so much more endearing, especially as he and snake realise that they're in love with each other. which is also why the canon ending of snake and meryl leaving together feels like such horseshit!
anyway, i played this as part of the re-releases that happened recently, so now i can not play MGS1 for many many years if i ever choose to again. sorry, it's bad!
but its not really the gameplay people play MGS for. we're talking solid snake baby in his most famous adventure! and here it is in its campy, james bond-esq style. it's okay? it's incredibly cheesey. maybe it's because we've seen so much stuff after MGS1 but for me, most of the emotional beats particularly work. these characters are all expanded upon and made much more interesting in later games (MGS2 specifically!) but here the characters are pretty uninteresting. snake is pretty void of personality actually. he's kind of james bond-like in that he's a legend and a bit of a womaniser, but doesnt have much reaction of feeling to stuff. you'd almost think he's kind of stupid because so much of his dialogue is responding to peoples statements with questions. you know, "metal gear, huh?" but he's not really. he's a musher, and the way he talks about animals shows he knows what he's talking about. i wish there was a bit more of the gentle man that snake was in it. meryl is just bad, literally has the scene where she goes "I'm not like other girls!" admittedly that is broken down a bit by the end of the game but it's still cringe and he "romance" with snake doesnt feel earned at all - again, its very james bond. gray fox feels like he was shoehorned into this game. doesn't really have anything interesting to add to the game beyond just kind of being there. it's kind of not really a beginner friendly game because of the references to MG1 and MG2 what with outer heaven, zanzibar land, grey fox and big boss for that reason. all of FOXHOUND basically suck. mantis is fun but is badly written outside of that, having gone crazy because he looked at a serial killers mind too much? cmon. sniper wolf and vulcan raven are like "You Are A Good Opponent In Battle So We Must Fight," snore!!! i'll give credit to ocelot who is most consistent here to how he is in later entries, as a conniving trickster who double crosses everyone all the time for everything. liquid is charming and cool, possibly just because of how good cam clarke's performance is, but a lot of what he says is nonsense and doesn't really have much dramatic weight behind it. i also do like naomi hunter, although her motive for disliking snake is boring. i think the subtly of her betrayal is done well, and especially as it's master miller (or liquid) who tells you it makes the reveal that miller was liquid all along all the stronger. it makes snake alone to know that colonel, master, and naomi have all betrayed him. it's practically only otacon who's a good guy and on his side. and otacon in this game is fine. he's a weeb loser who says some great shit. "can love bloom on the battlefield" is fine i guess. but again, where he puts his bigboy pants on in MGS2 he becomes so much more endearing, especially as he and snake realise that they're in love with each other. which is also why the canon ending of snake and meryl leaving together feels like such horseshit!
anyway, i played this as part of the re-releases that happened recently, so now i can not play MGS1 for many many years if i ever choose to again. sorry, it's bad!
2012
This review contains spoilers
pretty good game! i'm not a stealth head by any means but i think this game doesnt require you to be a genius of sneaking and stealthing, and it also doesn't necessarily want you to have bucket loads of patience either to get stuff done. like for sure if you want the perfect, most quiet playthrough it would require lots of patience and smart thinking, but for my purposes of beating the game on a low chaos ending, i was able to fumble and goof my way through it.
the level design is good! i enjoyed how many little open windows and rooms there are and how everything connects to everything else. it has well designed maps all over it, if a little too "video-gamey" at times, the amount of ventilation shafts on the sides of buildings you can climb up was quite comical and took me out of it a little bit. a lot of the abilities in this game have so much utility, blink, seeing through walls, and stop time are king. because i tried to kill as few people as possible however i didnt end up using like, half my toolkit? no gun, no crossbow, no grenade, no razortraps, half of the magic abilities like rats and shadow kill i didnt use. i didnt money for anything other than upgrading my crossbow ammo amount to max and buying sleepdarts so i just ended up with loads of money and nothing to spend it on! that felt kinda weird! i havent played enough stealth games to say this with confidence (MGS almost doesnt count) but i think once you get the confidence to know what's going on in a game like this it does get kind of easier? you know that can kinda do stuff in front of someone as long as that person is like, kinda facing away, or like, 15 meters away? it's not very punishing. daud's assassins were definitely more challenging because they can teleport, and daud himself being immune to stop time was also very funny "Nice try, Corvo" although i wish some characters were more surprised at seeing me.
speaking of characters and story, they're alright! game definitely should've had british voice actors, i constantly struggled to invest in this london/glasgow world when everyone sounds like that. the repeated NPC lines got very tedious by the end of the game too, and the gangbangers who when you start combat with them immediately breathe fire in your face are not fun at all, they are just annoying lmao! i already knew when this game came out that havelock betrayed you so i can't talk about if it's a good twist or not, I guess I just didn't super care about it? I did like Samuel and Emily though which was nice! and the last, most important character in some ways, the outsider. i'll be real with you chief. i think the outsider sucks lmao. i hate dudes who show up and go "maybe you're doing this for evil reasons? or maybe for justice? who knows" like bro why are you even sying this to me? makes me think of when you fight daud and he goes "what do you fight for?" like shut up? what a boring ass question lmao
yeah game's alright
the level design is good! i enjoyed how many little open windows and rooms there are and how everything connects to everything else. it has well designed maps all over it, if a little too "video-gamey" at times, the amount of ventilation shafts on the sides of buildings you can climb up was quite comical and took me out of it a little bit. a lot of the abilities in this game have so much utility, blink, seeing through walls, and stop time are king. because i tried to kill as few people as possible however i didnt end up using like, half my toolkit? no gun, no crossbow, no grenade, no razortraps, half of the magic abilities like rats and shadow kill i didnt use. i didnt money for anything other than upgrading my crossbow ammo amount to max and buying sleepdarts so i just ended up with loads of money and nothing to spend it on! that felt kinda weird! i havent played enough stealth games to say this with confidence (MGS almost doesnt count) but i think once you get the confidence to know what's going on in a game like this it does get kind of easier? you know that can kinda do stuff in front of someone as long as that person is like, kinda facing away, or like, 15 meters away? it's not very punishing. daud's assassins were definitely more challenging because they can teleport, and daud himself being immune to stop time was also very funny "Nice try, Corvo" although i wish some characters were more surprised at seeing me.
speaking of characters and story, they're alright! game definitely should've had british voice actors, i constantly struggled to invest in this london/glasgow world when everyone sounds like that. the repeated NPC lines got very tedious by the end of the game too, and the gangbangers who when you start combat with them immediately breathe fire in your face are not fun at all, they are just annoying lmao! i already knew when this game came out that havelock betrayed you so i can't talk about if it's a good twist or not, I guess I just didn't super care about it? I did like Samuel and Emily though which was nice! and the last, most important character in some ways, the outsider. i'll be real with you chief. i think the outsider sucks lmao. i hate dudes who show up and go "maybe you're doing this for evil reasons? or maybe for justice? who knows" like bro why are you even sying this to me? makes me think of when you fight daud and he goes "what do you fight for?" like shut up? what a boring ass question lmao
yeah game's alright