phenomenal, still holds up on all grounds.

its simplitic art style is charming, colourful, and fun. the animations for attacks are great, and its unique character sprites stand out as imposing an interesting. a good example of a game whose sprites inspire your imagination. joy mutants look silly but the dark, thick lines of their twisted skin inspires fear and caution.

the music is goofy and weird, often looping badly or ruining its own songs with unnecessary changes or interruptions. its so perfectly LISA that a song like Summer Love can be as relaxing as it is but have those big drums in them. that a song like the Beehive can be so mysterious and then so beautiful, or a theme like Die Die Die! can be so slimey and then so intense. its tunes are memorable and strange and funny, and totally heartbreaking

its gameplay is fire. exploring the world is fun and punishing, the upgrade from walking to cycling feels so earned and smooth, and the world is clearly expertly designed around that. the humour that comes from traversing to a new screen and falling off a cliff to your death or massive damage is brilliant. the battles too are fantastic, almost every enemy being unique, with quirky names and abilities. SP and TP mirror each other delightful and the characters having button inputs like a fighting game works so well. the vast number of party members allows for a huge amount of replayability, although i'll always use terry

the humour in this game is so dark, so silly! from accidentally pouring gasoline on children to Timmy Carrots and Percy Peas saying goodbye to each other, this game made me laugh out loud constantly. it juxtaposes true silliness with heartrending drama , being able to ramp up your emotions with humour to strike it all with drama. we love to see what olathe has to throw at us next because its always stupid. its stupid, silly little sprites with their dumb soundeffects, dumb music, and bright pink nipples. I dont think there's a joke in this game that didnt land for me

but all of that aside we talk about LISA because we talk about its story and its world. olathe is fucking horrible and so is this game. it covers themes like abuse, rape, suicide, trauma, drug addiction, and complicity. where does all of it start and where does it end? the apocalypse in this game is secondary to the story that is interesting; which is brad's journey to find and capture buddy. brad is neither hero nor villain, he is simply a selfish man doing what he thinks is right... or what he wants to be right. brad proves time and again he is capable of selfless heroism, sacrificing his limbs for his comrades and defeating gangs or bandits. he also proves they are secondary to his own desires, throwing them to the wolves if need be. he is so interesting, one of the best examples of a character whose history is so storied it cannot be fully comprehended by the individual living that life. all of brad's life is wordlessly mushed into his spirit and they make the broken man we see at the end of the game. we love brad, we root for him. we hate brad, we know he is a selfish murderer. we know he must be beaten, but we don't want him to. his companions feel the same.

for a long time, i felt complicated about the fact that his companions betray him to save buddy at the end, but the definitive edition made me like it more, specifically because of the campfire scene with Terry Hintz and Mad Dog. brad is not a stupid man, he is aware that he is in the wrong but he cannot act otherwise. furthermore, his sense of guilt urges him to reach out to Terry for comfort. and Terry does comfort him, reassures him that Brad is a good man for the way he makes him feel! Terry, in his ignorance, does not know brad truly. he says to Brad "Promise me one thing. That you won't become a monster like the rest." It's Mad Dog who recognises what Brad is really, sees the violence for what it is.

"A dog
in a dog
in a dog
in a dog."

When Terry turns on Brad with the gang to defeat him, it's because Brad failed in his promise. He became a monster. he couldn't get away from it

all for nothing

like most video games, combat is your main way of interacting with the world. unlikely most Final Fantasy titles, in this one its without menus, but as an action game! fun note: I have never really properly played an action game before this. I’ve never touched a soulsborne, didn’t get on with monster hunter, and only got about 20% of the way into MGS: R, so this is my first real exposure to the genre. it was good! I didn’t feel like it was impossible to learn what to do or how to get used to my toolkit which was nice! there's enough customisation of eikon powers to feel like you could do different playthroughs of the game with different styles each time, and its satisfying finding the setup that works for you. quick sidenote, I think Torgal should always have been auto controlled, because trying to control him manually feels clunky and difficult. I'm sure it's probably better to manually control him but by God, I couldn't work it out and relinquishing him control of his own life made the game simpler. the game's reliance of dodging is great fun but reads more like FF14 fights than it does Bloodborne. it's less tells and more AOEs that you're avoiding, but there are still tells to deal with. the berserker’s ring made for great gameplay as it rewards a perfect dodge with extra, fast, hard-hitting damage. that and a perfectly timed mega flare with stammer and limit break? feels good. when you can make this game's combat work it feels so rewarding. seeing 179000 damage come up in a stagger window feels incredible.

the game's item economy is terrible. gil is practically worthless as you always have enough to buy your gear and craft stuff, and the actual materials for crafting are always either already in your inventory or specific boss drops you'll get from the MSQ, so just playing the game casually is basically enough. opening a treasure chest and getting bones or hides feels weird, and it’s the games way of leaning into the action elements as opposed to the RPG ones. I love classic JRPGs, so this was a bit of a bummer for the fact that exploring the world just isn’t worth it. there is Never anything to find that is worth it, just useless crafting materials that all blend in together.

the game will tell you there are party members, but they're more decoration than anything else and their effect on combat is hardly noticeable. they're fun to have around but if you're fighting alone or with others you'll hardly notice. furthermore the "world" is smaller too. you have these teleportation stones you can use to fast travel around the world which is appreciated. they make it feel like the world you’re exploring is just a part of the country you're in, but based on the obelisk locations you quickly gather that you are exploring the entire country, and it’s made up of two cities and four villages at most. it makes the world feel small which isn't a great thing.

that kind of brings me to discussing the story, which is the big one.

I believe it was Tim Rogers of ACTION BUTTON fame who once said that "every Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy VII has been a proto remake of Final Fantasy VII" or something along those lines. we are at a point where the FF7 remake now exists, but also, this game did begin its development before the remake came out, in 2015. it’s clear that FF16 did not necessarily fully know what the FF7 remake was going to look that, and that lofty philosophical nightmare inspired this title, as it probably will future entries. this game was also very clearly inspired by Game of Thrones, which was premiering its fourth season when development began. rumour has it that a Blu-ray of the show at that time was bought, and everyone in the development team was made to watch the whole show! now this game is not a rip off of Game of Thrones by any means, but its setting is massively influences 16. decisions like British VAs over American ones may be attributed to Game of Thrones even, and its emphasis on noble families and medieval warfare as opposed to the high fantasy/science fiction borderline that we've experience for the previous 9 titles. Structurally we can see how this game has been developed alongside FF14's expansions Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker as well, with that game's director being this game's producer, Naoki Yoshida. if we understand that Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XIV, and Game of Thrones were three key pieces of influential work for this game, we might begin to understand where the world that was produced came from, for better and for worse.

where to even really start with the writing? perhaps with the inciting incident, which was also the demo. I love this game's opening; I love the way you can see Ned Stark is Elwin Rosfield, and Clive Rosfield is clearly Jon Snow. he's also Cloud Strife, but we'll get to that. we establish some of our main cast and move to the tragedy. tonally we're in for a darker, more graphic game with a world that is harsher than previous entries. the first use of "fuck" in a Final Fantasy game, gore and decapitations. it fucks, and the music absolutely owns. perfectly paced with things that are set up that we, the engaged audience, are hopeful will pay off later. the game changes tracks 13 years later and Clive is a slave soldier being used for his magic for the imperials who murdered his father. this is an important backstory event for Clive! or rather, it should be. the problem comes from the fact that 13 years of Clive's life have been spent fighting in proxy wars and killing people he didn’t know for another, all as a slave. Clive's intimate knowledge of the Empire and its systems never come up. he has no opinions on the secret bearer squad of assassins, nor does he have any feelings about Prince Dion or the Emperor. Even the bearer assassin squad never gets mentioned again, which is shocking because those bearers are super interesting characters! highly competent bearer warriors who wield magic, essentially willingly, for their slave masters! and it doesn't come up at all. Clive's trauma as a teenager does come up which is good, but his treatment as a slave hardly matters. the fact that he's been a slave for well over a decade doesn’t even seem to impact his decision to try to free the slaves - he doesn't really care about the plight of bearers at that time (despite being shown to be sympathetic to their cause) because he just wants vengeance. it's not until Cid properly convinces him why he's fighting that Clive dons the mantle. but we do get there, we get that Clive is fighting to essentially emancipate all bearers across the world, as well as humanity in general. a pretty unambiguously morally good stance to take I think slavery is bad and humans should have a right to live how they want. this arc of Clive's come to a head when you fight Ultima for the first time, in Stonehyrr, near the end of the game. Clive is trapped in a vision of Ultima's making where facsimiles of his companions try to convince Clive to give up as it's too late for him to atone for his crimes. His crimes of... what, exactly? killing people when he was a slave? from murdering slave masters and establishing systemic change across a continent so that slaves can have their own lives? what, exactly, is Clive atoning for? Clive Rosfield is not a morally ambiguous character. he's not even depicted as one. Clive is a pleasant, happy man with good intentions and an unwavering determination to do good and change the world with revolutionary tactics. he essentially gets forced into having this one scene that just doesn’t make sense, and it’s seen as a culmination of sorts of his story, but it’s totally unearned. a lot of the writing in this game is unearned. The moment with Clive and Jill on the beach where they first confess their love for one another is also problematic in this respect. Jill gives Clive the eikon of Shiva and has to help convince Clive that he’s not a “monster” which he identifies with. But again, his stance on freeing all slaves and wiping out slavery is not a morally complex one. Compare this to Barret Wallace’s arc in FF7, about being an eco-terrorist. Yes, Barret’s goal of saving the planet from an energy company is a good one, but as a terrorist whose actions leave multiple civilians dead or people in poverty or the slums, his arc is one about learning the method by which to change the world. Secondly, the scene where Tifa and Cloud are in the life stream mirrors Clive and Jill on the beach. In both cases, the magic pixie dream girl helps our big sword wielding C-named protagonist with their identity problems. Cloud’s story works because we’ve seen how his perspective and narrative don’t fit the truth and make him fall apart. Clive is lacking any of this complex feeling. The history is there to make him interesting but not the reason. Clive is just a nice, good guy, who knows what he’s about, and tells you that he has an identity problem. But it’s not believable and these scenes feel unearned.

Jill Warrick is another character whose entire storyline is unearned. Its not that the events that transpire in it aren’t interesting, but nothing actually happens with them! We see Jill a normal girl as a child, but really, its Game of Thrones influence in place, she is actually a ward of the Rosfields. She is Theon to the Starks, or Sansa to the Lannisters. Where Theon’s treatment under the Starks was kind, the novels and show still understand that despite their kindness, Theon is still a hostage. This complexity never comes up with Jill. It is mentioned, once? Maybe twice? It has no bearing on how Jill feels about Clive, Joshua, Elwin, or even Annabella. Jill never talks about this time or her feelings on it. She never really talks about anything other than to advance the plot. Her character and personality are never made clear. She never has casual dialogue that shows us what she is like! She never jokes or quips or reacts. She’s just there. When Jill joins us for the first time, she tells Clive that she has to go to Phoenix Gate with him to “get answers”. But nothing at Phoenix Gate directly has an impact on her personality or perspective. It’s not an event she was present for. The answers that Clive gets don’t make a lick of difference to Jill or her feelings on the situation. She says to Clive afterwards that she has her own motive now, and that’s to kill the high priest of her slaves. That’s because Jill was also made a slave soldier! But she is a Dominant, meaning they used her like a walking nuclear bomb. She would’ve committed huge war crimes for many years as a Dominant, and while powerful enough to escape, other hostages meant she stayed. This is a HUGE and very compelling story that explains why someone would stay and commit evil acts. If Jill had considered herself a monster, I might have understood it more, seeing as the devastating power of Shiva would have meant she took far more lives than Clive ever did. But Jill never speaks about this time beyond the story mandated reason to go and get the mothercrystal and take this vengeance. Her desire for vengeance has never once been explored or displayed. She simply tells us one day that she wants it, then she gets her vengeance, and never mentions it again. She continues to live on the fringes of writing, just saying things to be a person. I love her design and her VA does a good job, but Jill Warrick is unfortunately a husk of a character. While the same cannot be said for the other main women of the game, there are unfortunately few female characters even worth talking about.

They are primarily Benedikta Harmenn, Annabella Rosfield, and Mid Telamon. the first is the first dominant we fight and defeat. A fun femme fatale who has chemistry with Cid, Hugo Kupka, and Barnabas Tharmr, whose death before we even have Clive’s main outfit robs the narrative of a potentially fun rival whose complex relationships could’ve been further explored on screen. It’s made clear she is using Hugo for Waloed’s purposes and possibly also Cid, but there is such a short time with her, and her death ends up being more of an important moment for Hugo than for herself. Benedikta is fun, and then quickly forgotten.

The other character is Annabella Rosfield, Clive and Joshua’s mother. She is, of course, Cersei Lannister. Her role in the story is less on screen and more that she, like Rebecca de Winter, haunts the narrative by being the powerful, cunning and manipulative figure that caused our downfall, and whose wit knows no end. Her death is satisfying and gruesome when it occurs, but she seemed to lack much of a plan for actually what was going on. As a villain she is compelling and fun, but probably should’ve been in the narrative more presently, perhaps actively attempting to thwart Clive, Dion, and Joshua more.

Mid is Cid’s adopted daughter, a silly joke referencing Mid, the grandson of Cid from Final Fantasy V. Much like her father she is an inventor who is witty and sarcastic but very well meaning. She has little to no arc beyond being the person to invent things that advance the plot. There is a brief mention of her thinking that airships shouldn’t be invented for the possibility they have on modern warfare, but it feels unearned as none of her creations have been used that way before. Otherwise, quite forgettable

There is a slurry of other important characters who are worth talking about. I particularly like Cid, Gav, Byron, and Dion. This game’s Cid is probably the best one that we have. Ralph Inneson’s performance is amazing, and the character is witty, interesting, and believable. He immediately strikes us a hero whose death will come too early. From his coughing a bit too much and the evidence petrification he is undergoing due to his magic, we know Cid is not long for the world. His death is necessary for the purpose of Clive’s autonomy as leader of the outlaws. The problem is when, I think, and how. Cid dies in a duel saving Clive’s life against a large, otherworldly monster, and then bleeds out. Why foreshadow his weakened state if he’s going to die from a grievous wound? I would have, instead, had him survive this encounter, but slowly die of the next story events. Having several more scenes of him infirm in bed, helping Clive take agency. It would’ve been sadder and more tragic, and much more hammered home the fact that overusing one’s magic abilities as Dominant, or bearer has terrible consequences for the wielder. I think possibly up to the defeat of Hugo Kupka could Cid have survived, wasting away slowly in bed until he was no more. I would’ve also deleted the five-year time skip year for this reason, as it feels otherwise totally pointless.

Gav and Byron both are side characters who are fun, large comedy characters who have a surprising amount of pathos. Both characters are lacking in magic but are clearly competent and well loved. Their charm may have something to do with the fact that both have great performances behind them. Neither has a particularly exciting arc, but they fit into the story in such a way that they don’t need them. They’re just good, fun honest boy, and I am happy that they both get to survive.

Dion is a more complicated matter. He is a character who is mentioned and discussed throughout many of the events of the game. We essentially watch his storyline happening in cutscenes from the side with literally no involvement ourselves. Clive doesn’t actually meet and speak to Dion until very shortly before the final events of the game. Never does Dion actually join us as a party member, which feels sorely missed (although we do get one quick time cinematic clash as Bahumat in the final battle) as he has been in the narrative for so long. But even his arc is unearned. He feels guilt about the destruction that Bahumat caused in the dominion, but Ultima had literally controlled him at that time, so his actions were not his own. This massive point completely undermines Dion’s guilt, and makes his death feel pointless. Which is a shame, because as he is our first explicitly gay Final Fantasy main character, if anyone deserved a happy ending, it was him.

Surprisingly I don’t have too much to say about Joshua, other than that I like him, and the writers were clearly trying to make G’raha Tia from FF14 your brother instead of your boyfriend. And you know what? It works! I am of the theory that Joshua does survive the events of the game because of Clive’s actions.

I’d like to talk about villains and evil intentions now, because I feel the Game of Thrones influence and previous Final Fantasy influences get their wires crossed. Clearly there is love for Game of Thrones and its interesting, complex characters. Annabella would not exist without Cersei, and Clive as the jaded son who does years of hard labour would not exist without Jon Snow. But what of Ultima? Where does that leave the ultimate villain? And Barnabas? Game of Thrones’ villains are interesting because they are explicitly human beings with motives that are derived from their experiences in life, and the people they have loved and lived with. Ultima is an otherworldly creature, he's more Night King than Ramsay Bolton. As such, his perspective is unknowable to us. We cannot empathise or understand or even rationalise with Ultima’s motives because they come from a place that human beings cannot go to. This is fine, I don’t care for it but it’s how a lot of world ending monsters are perceived. The problem here grows from the fact that Ultima doesn’t stop fucking talking! (Side note, I wish they hadn’t called him Ultima. Feels like he should have had a unique name, because Ultima is a series staple and now its delegated as the villain of this game. I don’t know, I find it hard to find the words to describe exactly what my issue is here, but every Final Fantasy needs a villain, so to name the one we know we’re going to encounter something like this, feels like it takes away from their identity? I just don’t like it). Ultima has so many scenes where he just goes on about how the greatest sin humanity ever made was waking up. First of all, you have failed in your comparison to Paradise Lost, because the first sin was using free will to disobey God, and then they became aware of their nakedness. Simply having free will was not a sin in the Bible, it was how they used it. Secondly, the obvious hypocrisy that Joshua and Clive themselves mentions makes Ultima so easy to discredit. He doesn’t need a tragic backstory to be interesting, but his motive should come from a place we can reckon with for it to feel weighty. But he’s just a big evil monster who hates humans because he thinks they’re lesser. It’s so boring, it’s the same old crap that we’ve seen time and time again. Ultima goes on about Clive’s will being his weakness and breaking it, and teaching us the meaning of suffering, but it’s just villainous buzzwords to fill the silence. Ultima ends up having no flavour whatsoever. He’s an alien, make him feel more like one instead of his anime-ass boring nonsense. You’d think the mysterious dark knight Barnabas would be more compelling, but when it’s revealed that Barnabas is just a servant of Ultima we run into more problems. For one, the world already feels small because of the limited maps we explore. But if Barnabas, a villain we know is actually just working for Ultima, then suddenly the complexity is gone. If we have myriad villains throughout the game with different motives and feelings from each other, then every action Clive and co. make makes the world that bit more complex and interesting. The world feels huge and alive. Welcome to Game of Thrones! Barnabas being a pawn of Ultima from the get-go slices off any interest dynamic that could’ve been there. Barnabas gives out lofty villain monologues about accepting your destiny and humans losing their free-will, and its just philosophical nonsense that is so incredibly easy to dismiss. The perspectives that Barnabas is coming from is one that no real humans believe in, so what’s the point in letting him talk? The audience will hardly understand where he’s coming from and Clive will just dismiss it, which is correctly done! It just makes Barnabas fall so flat at the end of the day and made him feel disappointing. I would’ve liked him more if he was different to Annabella, and different to Ultima. And that if he and Sleipnir had fucked nasty, which they should’ve done. At least Kupka was kind of his own unique villain.

The game’s FF14 DNA can be seen in its alliant quests, little miniature storylines that we do throughout side quests through the world. They are cookie cutter stories about working together, and the goodliness of acceptance. They have no real weight to them, and their characters are as bland as their messaging. They are entirely forgettable and far too frequent. Some of FF14’s worst stuff is when you have storylines that are saccharine that they make you want to feel sick. You spend enough time in the world of Eorzea and that’s what you get, storylines that conclude with everyone hugging each other and kissing each other on the cheek. The alliant quests are like that too and they are not good, they are just boring and bad.

That’s it, I think. I’m sure I’ll have more to say later, but that’s it. I didn’t spend much time praising the game’s writing, so I will say that the period wherein Hugo Kupka is the main villain up to the Bahumat fight is probably the best the game ever gets. Its exciting, there are multiple perspectives and strange things. The fight with Hugo is great and cutting his hands off is a genuine shock surprise. It’s nice to not have Jill around because she’s so boring, and we get to hang out with Byron and get some environment changes too. Then, there’ the eikon fight against Titan. With amazing music, it leans in on humour and spectacle and oh boy does it deliver. There aren’t many eikon fights in the game but this one is so, so, so good. I was cheering during it, and Hugo’s death at the end felt like this long-awaited rival who has been causing us problems is finally gone. The victory felt earned and the fight itself was amazing fun. If the rest of the game had this killer pacing and fun character balances, then this game could’ve been truly incredible. Unfortunately, its mired down by disappointing villains, arcs and storylines that simply make sense, and a pacing that doesn’t suit its unfortunately tiny world. I really did have fun with Final Fantasy XVI, I just think it needed to be tighter in its writing. I’m very excited to see if this game gets any DLC at all because I’ll definitely play it, and I’m looking forward to replaying it on PC with mods when it one day comes out. But for now, I think I’ll leave it at that.

actually, i think sonon not being controllable suits the perspective of yuffie. sonon kind of pretends/allows yuffie to be his "boss", like he's her older brother, right? when yuffie drops in battle he gives the remaining amount of his HP to her, and then he obviously permanently does that at the end of the DLC. you spend the whole DLC in the perspective of cocky naive yuffie that the one actual adult character should feel out of reach. idk, I just felt like it worked well in terms of its narrative structure! nero is still incredibly stupid and should've been scrubbed from the whole thing, and these dungeons are kind of too big, but idk, i had a good time :)

took me fucking ages to beat this badboy but i finally got around to it. should preface this by saying i never played 1.0 of this game! i wasn't super interested at that time and the more i heard of the gameplay mechanics the more i figured it weren't for me! by ashleigh played lisa the painful for me this year in exchange for me becoming the Cyber Punk, so i waitied until 2.0 dropped and here i am! i have become the cyber punk, the flatliner of gonks... or whatever

i like the gameplay. i like first person RPGs like fallout, TES, vampire masquerade, so on and so forth. so it was probably a given that i'd at least find this playable. but the gameplay is genuinely good and feels involved because it's got so much variation. there's a bunch of different types of gun, your pistols, SMGs, snipers, so on, but there's all these different variations of them from there. i don't just mean like, different types of SMGs, but there's power types, smart types that work with the cyberware in your body to produce extra affects, tech weapons that use electromagnetic technology to bust through walls and do the big damage. then there's melee weapons, which is blades and clubs, and punching, Gorilla Punching, or Mantis Slashing, or Wire Killing, theres so many different ways to murder people that it feels very fresh. i understand it certainly didnt use to be as balanced as it is now, but i decided from the get-go i wanted a shotgun, a sniper, a pistol, and mantis blades, and at literally no point did i ever have to even consider using other kinds of weapons. you can use quickhacks to set people on fire or distract enemies. i didn't do any of that sneaking stealthy shit because i'm not a pussy though. there are tonnes of options for avoiding combat encounters, and using quickhacks on tech around the room or on people to distract them, cover your path, so and so forth. i never did it as i say, but it's cool that every level feels designed with both rooty-tooting as well as sneaky peteing. you also, obviously, get better at your jazz as you go. there's normal leveling up and skill trees that you can put points into. if western RPGs have taught us anything its that interesting perks are ones that slightly change the way you interract with the world, not ones that produce bigger numbers. the perks allow you to get the dash, the sickest ability in the game, and not much else matters? there's a bunch of other cool shit in there like the first reloaded bullet being an eletrical explosion, or slowing down time, or deflecting bullets with a blade, but that dash and double jump is the only conceivable way to travel in this game. it makes movement for an RPG feel great, and i can't help but feel going back to new vegas where i cant even sprint is going to be a bit sore! especially now that matthew perry has passed into the great beyond! i digress... on the note of progression, there's also little mini level up trees that level up with specific actions that you do, so the game is constantly rewarding you for a specific playtype and you get better at the type of gameplay you keep doing. it's nothing major but its a nice bit of positive reinforcement. same with cyberware really, i found a lot of the cyberware was just "number go up" so didnt' care too much for it, but cyberware did allow me to double jump and have cool blades in my arms so i cant complain too much! i think the only problem with the gameplay is that maybe combat is too easy? i only had a few difficult combat encounters in the game. one was right at the start of phantom liberty (which i promised myself i woudlnt talk about, but fuck it. seems like the writers didnt give a fuck about dogtown because why the fuck would you renegate the quest of "who's going to lead dogtown" to a sidequest and make it THAT boring??? whatever) when i decided to kill ALL the guys outside dogtown's entrance, which was clearly not the intended way to play. the other hard fight was adam smasher, who wasn't too hard himself, more just that the ending segment makes it hard by capping your max health continuously as it goes. you have an infinite amount of healing items in teh game from the beginning, so all consumable items in a normal difficulty game were totally pointless. sold them every time and never felt wanting. maybe that stuff matters more in hardmode, but i just never felt the need to swap out from frag grenades or the normal healing item! they both served me perfectly for the entire game! tangent but the gun camo and car decals are so nice, i love that so many games have different coloured variants... shame you cant pick any! whats up with THAT? same with the car. i bought a maimai and used it for the whole game, but had to use the red one when i wanted a blue one? what am i carrying all these freakin eddies around for, huh, choom?

on the subject of "chooms" lets talk about that writing. was it preem or not? for the most part i really like it! the main story is relying so heavily that the relationship between V and Johnny will work. if it doesnt, the whole game is completely pointless and we should uninstall right now. it's not that you have to like johnny, but it's that you have to learn to understand him, the way he learns to understand you. the moment to moment plot beats are perfectly fine. they're servicable and sometimes serve to make night city feel like a lived in place. but the important stuff in this game is not really to do with themes of transhumanism or reliance on technology, or the ship of theseus. instead it's all about the characters. johnny is the duetoragonist of this and i think casting the most lovable man in hollywood as johnny works. listen, everyone loves keanu reeves (except for the aforementioned dead Benny Gecko of Fallout: New Vegas fame) so i'm choosing to believe that CDPR put a chunk of budget into Reeves bc they knew that if Johnny didnt work, the game wouldnt work... and not because they wanted a celebrity to help sell the game. even if the latter is true, which it at least partially is, Reeves' Johnny is overflowing with a well performed venom for your character and the state of the world. johnny's not edgy because he's a cool legend, he's a narcissistic dickhead who hurts other people and lets the guilt wash over him. he's also lonely, and bitter about what happened to him. the rare moments of sincerity in that character endear you to him so much. because like, this is the only guy in the whole world who GETS it. who gets YOU. he might not be the perfect person to team up with, but he's all you got, through thick or thin. and keanu makes it fucking work, baby. the side characters are okay too. or at least, judy is pretty damn good actually. i played as male V, made him a drug huffing booze cruiser who liked to shoot cops for fun. wasnt any place for romance for me. i did the quests for panam and kerry, both of which were fine, but i get why everyone says judy is queen. because she is! her story is so much more emotionally enriching and that much more tragic for it too. i didn't get to romance her because judy is a lesbian, but i know that if i ever play this game again i will do so as judy and see it through. characters got me wanting to come back to night city, which is saying something because the place is a shithole, and doesnt actualy have much in it! oh well, time for good chicken to delta! syonara!

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.

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!