this was made by an absolute fucking moron
2020
"souls-like" is officially a toxic genre tag, avoid at all costs.
it's like they had a design doc that just said "Bloodborne" and that was the end of their creative streak. From visuals, music, and style it is so blatantly Bloodborne that hearing melancholic violins makes you roll your eyes from how hard it is trying. I have no issues with a game trying hard, I'd rather a game try than be bland shit, but when a game is trying THIS hard to be Bloodborne it becomes bland shit.
This game isn't shit either! The graphics are beautiful, animations are fantastic, and there is some fun gameplay here, it just does nothing to stake its own identity outside of how obsessed it is with being a different game all together.
This game isn't shit either! The graphics are beautiful, animations are fantastic, and there is some fun gameplay here, it just does nothing to stake its own identity outside of how obsessed it is with being a different game all together.
1999
The closest a game has come to feeling like one of those "haunted game cartridges" except it is haunted by the ghost of Lanky Kong
2019
Okay I get why no one wants to say anything about it because neither do I.
2003
Haven't been playing too many games lately, because it's football season. So i've been watching my team play like shit while the fucking JETS are killing it. The JETS!!! Do you understand how insane that is??
I did go back to play some of this game, which I had when I was younger and played the shit out of. Yeah, I was the little bastard who always chose the Falcons, yeah I lied and said Tim Couch and the Browns were SOOO good in this one. You shouldn't have believed me and you should've banned me from picking Mike Vick, no one's fault but your own.
Anyway, check out my new single JUSTINE on streaming services everywhere.
visitor information
I did go back to play some of this game, which I had when I was younger and played the shit out of. Yeah, I was the little bastard who always chose the Falcons, yeah I lied and said Tim Couch and the Browns were SOOO good in this one. You shouldn't have believed me and you should've banned me from picking Mike Vick, no one's fault but your own.
Anyway, check out my new single JUSTINE on streaming services everywhere.
visitor information
2021
I'm not sure why there's this desire in action games to make the pacing just glacial and filled with fucking roadblocks. So many cutscenes, tutorials, bloat, just asinine shit that gets in the way of what is a REALLY fun combat system. This has an unskippable anime OP which is really pushing my patience, so if you like loud and busy go-nowhere plots sandwiched into a killer action game...go crazy? I guess?
I'm going to keep playing it because I do have a lot of fun playing it when I'm not having to skip through 300 million menu screens.
I'm going to keep playing it because I do have a lot of fun playing it when I'm not having to skip through 300 million menu screens.
1999
This review contains spoilers
My final log on FF8 I promise. I had to do one more please understand.
Now that I've beaten it I feel comfortable waxing poetic about it. I don't feel bad about it either! I see you out here writing 1000 words about Kirby and Homestuck, I'm writing an essay on FF8!! I safely feel like I've played the absolute shit out of it, I spent 50 hours on it and I loved every second of it. But, to be honest, I have delayed my FF9 play through just to play MORE of this game. It scratches such a particular itch that I didn't know I had.
The junction system, maligned by many, is one that I personally just sunk into, I loved finding creatures with rare spells I could put to sleep and just wring them dry of them, it makes what should feel like an exploit feel like gaming the system in my favor. FF8 is really a game that encourages you to use any opportunity you can find, it rewards a player who can get their party so fucked up that they one-hit a monster the second they spot them. Coming up with a party configuration to annihilate the Marlboros is one of those satisfactions that doesn't come very often in a game. This and FF7 have turned me into a turn-based combat die hard. Give me the menus!! I fucking LOVE MENUS!!
This game does do a really bad job at onboarding you for the junction system though, which I will not deny even a little bit. This game even has way more tutorials than FF7 ever did and it still took me many, many hours of trial and error before I really understood what I was doing.
It actually lead to a funny scenario. I went on vacation last month, and my save file for FF8 was on my PS3. While I was gone I was still itching to play FF8 so I said "Ah fuck it" and played the Remastered version that I still think looks fugly. Well, at that point I had become so much more knowledgeable on junctioning and triple triad that my party was swole as fuck, and when I returned home my PS1 party was completely underpowered compared to them. It creates a very interesting game where you're able to modify the difficulty very gradually, knowing it so well you can make it really hard or easy on yourself. I personally chose to junction sleep to Squall and silence to Zell, so I could basically just bully an Iron Giant into submission. After some of the shit I went through in FF7 this was vindicating.
Also the FMVs? God damn. I am going to deeply regret when voice acting is introduced, because the things they do with non-verbal communication and body language here is to die for. The dance sequence between Rinoa and Squall was the moment I was IN, the character dynamics already so delightful to see in action, and the call-back to it in the ending...damn who is cutting onions in here??
I also love these limit breaks, it is insane how strong they are. Squall can do the izuna drop, Zell does God Hand shit, Selphie damns enemies to Hell, Irvine just fucking shoots the shit out of people, and Quistis sends people to the shadow realm. It's all the completely over-the-top spectacle that has captivated me with Final Fantasy. Why just hit someone with a sword? Why not hit them 10 times in an aerial combo? Why just summon a guy to attack? Why not summon a guy to collapse the universe around a single enemy? While this shit definitely needs a skip button, I still find it funny when people rail on Final Fantasy for spectacle. Like, fuck are these epic internet gaming fucks capable of having some fun in their goddamn life.
Speaking of Epic Internet Gaming Bros who Smell, ProJared hates this game so I'm just letting you all know it's not too late to hear me out on this game.
The plot has been very much reclaimed over the years, as the geriatric gamer crowd who hated it so much have been flushed down the toilet of obscurity where they fucking belong. Spoony was wrong about Phantasmagoria 2 and this game!! He was never an effective media critic or comedian! The confusion surrounding the plot does absolutely baffle me though, are people not paying attention? Are they being daft on purpose? The game is explicitly clear what it's about. People are desperate to CHANGE THE PAST, people lament the TIME THEY LOST with loved ones, the main villain is ulTIMEcia. When time compression is first introduced Squall can't even focus on it as he is distracted thinking of Rinoa, it could not be more obvious!! Yet people act like the plot is fucking Ulysses! The most stunning criticism I see is how Squall only starts worrying about Rinoa after she falls into a coma.
Yeah? Have you ever had a real life experience before? What the fuck. Of course only when it's too late do you realize what you have lost, that's the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF THE GAME!!! FUCK!!! Sorry I'm getting really mad at a strawman gamer I'm picturing in my head who uses phrases like "it's objectively trash" or "this game aged bad" and shadow boxing at him like Zell does. Hey speaking of Zell!!
I love these characters! After FF7 had the best cast of all time, I was wondering how they'd top it, and they did it with another best cast of all time. Interesting is how different all of them are even when they play into the same archetypes, as it feels like FF8 has gone to great lengths to give characters a duality to them that gives them a depth that took me off guard. Squall is cold, distant, and emotionally closed, but is so insecure of how people perceive him that he takes great pangs to control their perception. Zell is hot-headed and doesn't think before he speaks, but can be level-headed and knows a great deal about the world around him, even being really beloved in his hometown! Irvine puts on a front of a cool and lone sniper, but is secretly shocked and confused that people he grew up with simply don't remember him anymore, and Rinoa, fuckin' Rinoa, I love this character. Her interactions with Squall, fuck it, her interactions with anyone! She can be naive, childish, and bratty, but also very introspective, very world-weary, she can ask Squall very matter-of-factly if he's prepared to kill Seifer, and she can see the tragedy in a 17 year old so ready to make that decision.
FF8 captures the fact that teenagers aren't so cut-and-dry, they can make good decisions, bad decisions, they can sometimes make decisions that wouldn't make sense to anyone but them. Whenever I see characters taken down a peg for it, it strikes me as people being infected with a lethal case of TvTropes brain, making them think characters not behaving rationally 100% of the time is a ding against the game. Not just for the sake of FF8, but for the sake of art in general, you HAVE to get that line of thinking out of your head, it is the destroyer of art. Teens fuckup all the time, that's part of the coming-of-age narrative in FF8. When I was 16 I tried dropping out of high school, why? Late 20s me couldn't even fucking tell you! I'm glad I didn't! But that's one of those things where I was doing shit off of my gut, because I felt like I had to. Squall feels like he has to close people off, can't let anyone in, and when someone as stubborn as Rinoa tries to get in, he only fortifies those walls. Once she's gone though? Only then does he realize what her laugh, her smile, her voice meant to him.
That's not bad writing, that's not a contrivance, that's how people are. FF8 has characters I believe, I root for them, I love seeing their adventures, and I love seeing them come closer.
What's interesting though is that I think years of life experience has given me a lot from this game than I probably would have AT 17. When I was a teenager I was listening to nothing but Foetus and was deeply cynical about love, you know how kids are. A game about love? About time? Who needs love? I got all the time in the world!!
Well, I am now in my late 20s and I don't have all the time in the world, I have loved, I do have regrets about love and life, and sometimes I do wish I could have gone back and made better decisions. But FF8 argues in a way that I find emotionally very gripping in this time in my life, that the past is immovable, but you are able to shape things in the present. Squall choose to open up to Rinoa in the Ragnarok, he chooses to hold her and smell the roses, it's one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in a game for how many little things it says.
The fact it takes place after battling aliens on a spaceship is why Final Fantasy is the GOAT in my eyes.
So I adore FF8, I'd even go as far to say that I am in love with this game. It's a game I could write thousands and thousands of words on. It's another FF7 case where I don't think it's perfect, but for how much scope and ambition is put into such an experimental, personal game is still hard to wrap my head around. Some modern AAA games feel like every plot point, every story beat, is carefully crafted to be crowd-pleasing, but FF7 and FF8 have felt like no one was telling them what to do, they had a story in their hearts and fuck they were GOING To tell it. I'm really glad they did.
Now that I've beaten it I feel comfortable waxing poetic about it. I don't feel bad about it either! I see you out here writing 1000 words about Kirby and Homestuck, I'm writing an essay on FF8!! I safely feel like I've played the absolute shit out of it, I spent 50 hours on it and I loved every second of it. But, to be honest, I have delayed my FF9 play through just to play MORE of this game. It scratches such a particular itch that I didn't know I had.
The junction system, maligned by many, is one that I personally just sunk into, I loved finding creatures with rare spells I could put to sleep and just wring them dry of them, it makes what should feel like an exploit feel like gaming the system in my favor. FF8 is really a game that encourages you to use any opportunity you can find, it rewards a player who can get their party so fucked up that they one-hit a monster the second they spot them. Coming up with a party configuration to annihilate the Marlboros is one of those satisfactions that doesn't come very often in a game. This and FF7 have turned me into a turn-based combat die hard. Give me the menus!! I fucking LOVE MENUS!!
This game does do a really bad job at onboarding you for the junction system though, which I will not deny even a little bit. This game even has way more tutorials than FF7 ever did and it still took me many, many hours of trial and error before I really understood what I was doing.
It actually lead to a funny scenario. I went on vacation last month, and my save file for FF8 was on my PS3. While I was gone I was still itching to play FF8 so I said "Ah fuck it" and played the Remastered version that I still think looks fugly. Well, at that point I had become so much more knowledgeable on junctioning and triple triad that my party was swole as fuck, and when I returned home my PS1 party was completely underpowered compared to them. It creates a very interesting game where you're able to modify the difficulty very gradually, knowing it so well you can make it really hard or easy on yourself. I personally chose to junction sleep to Squall and silence to Zell, so I could basically just bully an Iron Giant into submission. After some of the shit I went through in FF7 this was vindicating.
Also the FMVs? God damn. I am going to deeply regret when voice acting is introduced, because the things they do with non-verbal communication and body language here is to die for. The dance sequence between Rinoa and Squall was the moment I was IN, the character dynamics already so delightful to see in action, and the call-back to it in the ending...damn who is cutting onions in here??
I also love these limit breaks, it is insane how strong they are. Squall can do the izuna drop, Zell does God Hand shit, Selphie damns enemies to Hell, Irvine just fucking shoots the shit out of people, and Quistis sends people to the shadow realm. It's all the completely over-the-top spectacle that has captivated me with Final Fantasy. Why just hit someone with a sword? Why not hit them 10 times in an aerial combo? Why just summon a guy to attack? Why not summon a guy to collapse the universe around a single enemy? While this shit definitely needs a skip button, I still find it funny when people rail on Final Fantasy for spectacle. Like, fuck are these epic internet gaming fucks capable of having some fun in their goddamn life.
Speaking of Epic Internet Gaming Bros who Smell, ProJared hates this game so I'm just letting you all know it's not too late to hear me out on this game.
The plot has been very much reclaimed over the years, as the geriatric gamer crowd who hated it so much have been flushed down the toilet of obscurity where they fucking belong. Spoony was wrong about Phantasmagoria 2 and this game!! He was never an effective media critic or comedian! The confusion surrounding the plot does absolutely baffle me though, are people not paying attention? Are they being daft on purpose? The game is explicitly clear what it's about. People are desperate to CHANGE THE PAST, people lament the TIME THEY LOST with loved ones, the main villain is ulTIMEcia. When time compression is first introduced Squall can't even focus on it as he is distracted thinking of Rinoa, it could not be more obvious!! Yet people act like the plot is fucking Ulysses! The most stunning criticism I see is how Squall only starts worrying about Rinoa after she falls into a coma.
Yeah? Have you ever had a real life experience before? What the fuck. Of course only when it's too late do you realize what you have lost, that's the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF THE GAME!!! FUCK!!! Sorry I'm getting really mad at a strawman gamer I'm picturing in my head who uses phrases like "it's objectively trash" or "this game aged bad" and shadow boxing at him like Zell does. Hey speaking of Zell!!
I love these characters! After FF7 had the best cast of all time, I was wondering how they'd top it, and they did it with another best cast of all time. Interesting is how different all of them are even when they play into the same archetypes, as it feels like FF8 has gone to great lengths to give characters a duality to them that gives them a depth that took me off guard. Squall is cold, distant, and emotionally closed, but is so insecure of how people perceive him that he takes great pangs to control their perception. Zell is hot-headed and doesn't think before he speaks, but can be level-headed and knows a great deal about the world around him, even being really beloved in his hometown! Irvine puts on a front of a cool and lone sniper, but is secretly shocked and confused that people he grew up with simply don't remember him anymore, and Rinoa, fuckin' Rinoa, I love this character. Her interactions with Squall, fuck it, her interactions with anyone! She can be naive, childish, and bratty, but also very introspective, very world-weary, she can ask Squall very matter-of-factly if he's prepared to kill Seifer, and she can see the tragedy in a 17 year old so ready to make that decision.
FF8 captures the fact that teenagers aren't so cut-and-dry, they can make good decisions, bad decisions, they can sometimes make decisions that wouldn't make sense to anyone but them. Whenever I see characters taken down a peg for it, it strikes me as people being infected with a lethal case of TvTropes brain, making them think characters not behaving rationally 100% of the time is a ding against the game. Not just for the sake of FF8, but for the sake of art in general, you HAVE to get that line of thinking out of your head, it is the destroyer of art. Teens fuckup all the time, that's part of the coming-of-age narrative in FF8. When I was 16 I tried dropping out of high school, why? Late 20s me couldn't even fucking tell you! I'm glad I didn't! But that's one of those things where I was doing shit off of my gut, because I felt like I had to. Squall feels like he has to close people off, can't let anyone in, and when someone as stubborn as Rinoa tries to get in, he only fortifies those walls. Once she's gone though? Only then does he realize what her laugh, her smile, her voice meant to him.
That's not bad writing, that's not a contrivance, that's how people are. FF8 has characters I believe, I root for them, I love seeing their adventures, and I love seeing them come closer.
What's interesting though is that I think years of life experience has given me a lot from this game than I probably would have AT 17. When I was a teenager I was listening to nothing but Foetus and was deeply cynical about love, you know how kids are. A game about love? About time? Who needs love? I got all the time in the world!!
Well, I am now in my late 20s and I don't have all the time in the world, I have loved, I do have regrets about love and life, and sometimes I do wish I could have gone back and made better decisions. But FF8 argues in a way that I find emotionally very gripping in this time in my life, that the past is immovable, but you are able to shape things in the present. Squall choose to open up to Rinoa in the Ragnarok, he chooses to hold her and smell the roses, it's one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in a game for how many little things it says.
The fact it takes place after battling aliens on a spaceship is why Final Fantasy is the GOAT in my eyes.
So I adore FF8, I'd even go as far to say that I am in love with this game. It's a game I could write thousands and thousands of words on. It's another FF7 case where I don't think it's perfect, but for how much scope and ambition is put into such an experimental, personal game is still hard to wrap my head around. Some modern AAA games feel like every plot point, every story beat, is carefully crafted to be crowd-pleasing, but FF7 and FF8 have felt like no one was telling them what to do, they had a story in their hearts and fuck they were GOING To tell it. I'm really glad they did.
2004
I really wanted to LOVE this game like I feel like I should. My favorite game is Ninja Gaiden Black, so by that same extent I should be a sucker for any game with incredible combat in lavishly designed environments, and Painkiller really does have some gorgeous architecture. I'd say in that regards it has more to offer the world than boring ass shit like Serious Sam, it's mostly that the actual combat loop never does much for me in the grand scheme of things, and the player movement physics are surprisingly crap feeling. Whenever I remember this game I seem to remember a fast-paced action game but it's REALLY lumbering. It's like you are casually strolling through Quake levels and it makes the pacing feel almost glacial.
Also the plot is just asinine. It's 2004, why the fuck is your protagonist Some Guy? Your protagonist for a game called Painkiller that takes place in hell should be a fucking demon or skeleton warrior, it's so obvious. He should look like he is on an Avenged Sevenfold album cover not like he listens to Avenged Sevenfold.
Music kicks fucking ass though. This thing has some fucking riffs on it, and I love riffs. This is what I thought Doom 2016's music was going to be, it's perfect for this kind of game.
Overall, I have tried for years to love this game but sadly I can't give any ground to it. It's a beautiful looking, incredible sounding, but largely average shooter. In recent years we have been flush with spectacular shooters like Dusk and Wrath that Painkiller pales in comparison.
Also the plot is just asinine. It's 2004, why the fuck is your protagonist Some Guy? Your protagonist for a game called Painkiller that takes place in hell should be a fucking demon or skeleton warrior, it's so obvious. He should look like he is on an Avenged Sevenfold album cover not like he listens to Avenged Sevenfold.
Music kicks fucking ass though. This thing has some fucking riffs on it, and I love riffs. This is what I thought Doom 2016's music was going to be, it's perfect for this kind of game.
Overall, I have tried for years to love this game but sadly I can't give any ground to it. It's a beautiful looking, incredible sounding, but largely average shooter. In recent years we have been flush with spectacular shooters like Dusk and Wrath that Painkiller pales in comparison.
This game inspires a lot of complicated feelings in me: on one-hand, I think this is Miyazaki's crowning achievement in the director's chair. It's bold, ambitious, drop-dead gorgeous and offers a lot of mechanical depth that is to die for. On the other hand, I think it's a totally uneven experience with some truly baffling design choices that feel like people in the studio itself were at odds with the design philosophy on hand here.
When I gave it 4 1/2 stars I was playing on PC with mods, specifically the mod that axes the spirit emblem mechanic entirely. I have no idea the logic behind that one, as so many people I know have never engaged with the deeper prosthetic mechanics because the cost far out-stripped the benefit. If you fucked up on a boss you just lost them and had to farm for more. It's the terrible blood vial system from Bloodborne again! No studio is more eager to replicate mistakes and discard good ideas than From, it's stunning how it can happen so frequently.
Having them as an infinite supply doesn't even diminish the challenge! It's still a hard game where fuckups can cost you, it just removes pointless busy work from the equation, which for the record is a GOOD thing.
My recent playthrough on Xbox has made me decide to lower to 4-stars because of this mechanic and the game's first-half. This is the reverse Fromsoft game, where the first-half feels weirdly thrown together in a way the rest of the game just does not. It makes a killer first impression though! Sneaking out of the well, getting in sword duels, an epic confrontation in a field of flowers, it's striking and epic in scope in a much more closely personal ways than any Souls game has ever been.
But the Ashina Outskirts is a terrible way to start a game, like shockingly bad. It made me put the game down for years and only after brute-forcing through it did I understand the problem: half the shit here doesn't feel like it's in the right game!
The sneaking feels weirdly confined, bouncing between big open areas where you get a lot of chances to experiment, to boring slogs of kiting and pulling enemies, to some truly heinous boss fights. Chained Ogre and Blazing Bull are genuinely confusing, they have no place here, they offer nothing of substantial value, they don't serve to pump up a boss roster or add in dynamic challenges. They feel completely lost against Wolf's two-slash combo and quick-step, like you're playing Wolf against some lower tier Dark Souls bosses. The blazing bull I suppose does make good use of the firecracker prosthetics...but many enemies also do, and they are fun to fight. Like...you know...the Guardian Ape, for example.
I can see these shutting new players out, not by being too HARD, but by being too CRAP. It's like if Bed of Chaos was the 3rd boss in Dark Souls.
Luckily for this game, everything after is just completely perfect. As soon as you get to Ashina Castle and are sneaking along rooftops, learning the rhythm of the parry, and getting to a truly incredible, jaw-dropping duel at the very top, it's hard to not go, "oh my god!! why were they hiding the GOOD part of this game??"
Once it gets good, it stays good too! Bosses remain varied while challenging the core moveset in great ways, the prosthetics and arts give you some truly creative ways to dunk on enemies, including the fucking awesome temple arts. The story is personal, wonderfully written, subtle and moving in ways that From's usual passive storytelling could never hope to accomplish. It's a tour-de-force for the studio that happens to front-load some real stinkers for some ungodly reason. Do they also have the Ubisoft Shittiness Quota to hit? Imagine someone says "You get to see The Cure play fresh off of Disintegration, but the catch is you have to drink this fucking toilet water." That's Sekiro.
Okay, not really, but stay with me.
So I would greatly recommend you play on PC with mods. There are a ton of mods that ease the difficulty, which is a net positive and never let anyone tell you it's wrong to play that way! They're the assholes who put the Chained Ogre in the game if anything I'd suggest you mod his dumbass out!
To emphasize though, this is a game I would LOVE to slap a 5-star rating on, it has everything I want in a game but god the stuff I don't like is catastrophic. When fighting the Sword Saint, Corrupted Monk and Guardian Ape though this shit FEELS like a 5, no question about it. Its highs are the highest any Souls game has ever hit.
When I gave it 4 1/2 stars I was playing on PC with mods, specifically the mod that axes the spirit emblem mechanic entirely. I have no idea the logic behind that one, as so many people I know have never engaged with the deeper prosthetic mechanics because the cost far out-stripped the benefit. If you fucked up on a boss you just lost them and had to farm for more. It's the terrible blood vial system from Bloodborne again! No studio is more eager to replicate mistakes and discard good ideas than From, it's stunning how it can happen so frequently.
Having them as an infinite supply doesn't even diminish the challenge! It's still a hard game where fuckups can cost you, it just removes pointless busy work from the equation, which for the record is a GOOD thing.
My recent playthrough on Xbox has made me decide to lower to 4-stars because of this mechanic and the game's first-half. This is the reverse Fromsoft game, where the first-half feels weirdly thrown together in a way the rest of the game just does not. It makes a killer first impression though! Sneaking out of the well, getting in sword duels, an epic confrontation in a field of flowers, it's striking and epic in scope in a much more closely personal ways than any Souls game has ever been.
But the Ashina Outskirts is a terrible way to start a game, like shockingly bad. It made me put the game down for years and only after brute-forcing through it did I understand the problem: half the shit here doesn't feel like it's in the right game!
The sneaking feels weirdly confined, bouncing between big open areas where you get a lot of chances to experiment, to boring slogs of kiting and pulling enemies, to some truly heinous boss fights. Chained Ogre and Blazing Bull are genuinely confusing, they have no place here, they offer nothing of substantial value, they don't serve to pump up a boss roster or add in dynamic challenges. They feel completely lost against Wolf's two-slash combo and quick-step, like you're playing Wolf against some lower tier Dark Souls bosses. The blazing bull I suppose does make good use of the firecracker prosthetics...but many enemies also do, and they are fun to fight. Like...you know...the Guardian Ape, for example.
I can see these shutting new players out, not by being too HARD, but by being too CRAP. It's like if Bed of Chaos was the 3rd boss in Dark Souls.
Luckily for this game, everything after is just completely perfect. As soon as you get to Ashina Castle and are sneaking along rooftops, learning the rhythm of the parry, and getting to a truly incredible, jaw-dropping duel at the very top, it's hard to not go, "oh my god!! why were they hiding the GOOD part of this game??"
Once it gets good, it stays good too! Bosses remain varied while challenging the core moveset in great ways, the prosthetics and arts give you some truly creative ways to dunk on enemies, including the fucking awesome temple arts. The story is personal, wonderfully written, subtle and moving in ways that From's usual passive storytelling could never hope to accomplish. It's a tour-de-force for the studio that happens to front-load some real stinkers for some ungodly reason. Do they also have the Ubisoft Shittiness Quota to hit? Imagine someone says "You get to see The Cure play fresh off of Disintegration, but the catch is you have to drink this fucking toilet water." That's Sekiro.
Okay, not really, but stay with me.
So I would greatly recommend you play on PC with mods. There are a ton of mods that ease the difficulty, which is a net positive and never let anyone tell you it's wrong to play that way! They're the assholes who put the Chained Ogre in the game if anything I'd suggest you mod his dumbass out!
To emphasize though, this is a game I would LOVE to slap a 5-star rating on, it has everything I want in a game but god the stuff I don't like is catastrophic. When fighting the Sword Saint, Corrupted Monk and Guardian Ape though this shit FEELS like a 5, no question about it. Its highs are the highest any Souls game has ever hit.
2022
Unfortunately might be the quickest I've ever figured out I was just not going to like a game. Feels somehow stiff AND floaty, just feels really unpleasant to play, and apparently this is a marked improvement over the demo.
Graphics: $300
Gameplay: $30
Elijah Wood: $100,000
Animations: $400
Enemy Design: $10
My partner loved this game growing up, and throughout high school we used to hang out and I'd watch them play it. I faintly remember renting it once and playing for 2 hours, but this is my first time really getting down into this septic tank.
I love Spyro, I think the PS1 trilogy is borderline perfect, Spyro is a fun little guy. The music slaps and the art is gorgeous, there's lots to love. Everything after Year of the Dragon though is woeful. I would feel bad even tearing into Enter the Dragonfly because it had such a tortured development cycle, and it's just unfinished and buggy.
This game though, really pissed me off, and the Browns lost yesterday, so I'm taking my anger out on this game. The tutorial sections are fucking ruthless, just half-hour fucking slogs teaching you how to fire a new projectile. Like this is the 2nd video game I've ever played and need help pressing circle. Also the combat in this game isn't goddamn Ninja Gaiden it's not that hard to just 3-hit combo everything to death. Oooh it made it SO IRRITABLE!!
Music is actually really good though, and the stunt-casting is misguided but fine. Why is every enemy a monkey though? Spyro kills thousands of apes in this game, it's absurd.
Also by my rating metric this game IS better than Code Veronica and I will stand by that.
Gameplay: $30
Elijah Wood: $100,000
Animations: $400
Enemy Design: $10
My partner loved this game growing up, and throughout high school we used to hang out and I'd watch them play it. I faintly remember renting it once and playing for 2 hours, but this is my first time really getting down into this septic tank.
I love Spyro, I think the PS1 trilogy is borderline perfect, Spyro is a fun little guy. The music slaps and the art is gorgeous, there's lots to love. Everything after Year of the Dragon though is woeful. I would feel bad even tearing into Enter the Dragonfly because it had such a tortured development cycle, and it's just unfinished and buggy.
This game though, really pissed me off, and the Browns lost yesterday, so I'm taking my anger out on this game. The tutorial sections are fucking ruthless, just half-hour fucking slogs teaching you how to fire a new projectile. Like this is the 2nd video game I've ever played and need help pressing circle. Also the combat in this game isn't goddamn Ninja Gaiden it's not that hard to just 3-hit combo everything to death. Oooh it made it SO IRRITABLE!!
Music is actually really good though, and the stunt-casting is misguided but fine. Why is every enemy a monkey though? Spyro kills thousands of apes in this game, it's absurd.
Also by my rating metric this game IS better than Code Veronica and I will stand by that.
There are many words that make me think of Code Veronica, and they are: tedious, ugly, charmless, crap, poop, pee, piss, ass, fart, crap (again), and steve.
For years the only way this game has occupied my memory is with the admittedly pretty clever metal detector puzzle, that actually has great tension and payoff to it. Much to my surprise, the actual game is so putrid, so unlikable, so regularly irritating that I can't even say I like it due to it sharing the same disc space as the rest of Code Veronica.
In an act that has baffled many scholars for years, this was considered a particularly GOOD game for a long time. There's a famous 7.0 review of Silent Hill 2 making the rounds right now where Code Veronica is rated HIGHER than it. I don't like to cast wide nets about people's personalities based on what they rate games, but maybe your soul is unclean and heaven's gates will reject you if you believe that.
A fully 3D entry, you might be surprised to see them utilize the third dimension for some truly lifeless, ugly as sin environments that didn't look good AT the time. Silent Hill 1 has more art and beauty than this game, because I guess actual artists worked on it and had ideas, when Code Veronica only had ideas for Steve and the Ashford Twins. The Ashford Twins are such an antiquated and terrible idea on the face of it that I don't even want to discuss them, but fucking Steve. OH I can talk about Steve.
He might be the perfect embodiment of Code Veronica, he fits so perfectly in this game by being so irritating and such a clearly bad idea that in the grand scheme of this game it makes PERFECT sense why he is here. Did they even try to make him likeable? I know his english voice is so famously terrible, so incredibly bad that it is beyond belief, but could you ever actually like this annoying brat even in the japanese dub? If there is an undub, I've never played it, and if there is, I'm not playing THIS game ever again. This one is very firmly going on "Hated Of All Time" piles. This game just flat sucks, it could have had the fucking Soul Reaver voice cast and the gameplay would still be just straight Not Fun.
For the record, I understand why this game has been skipped for a remake: it is so bereft of any good ideas you'd have to essentially make a BRAND new game in its place, there is NOTHING here worth revisiting.
For years the only way this game has occupied my memory is with the admittedly pretty clever metal detector puzzle, that actually has great tension and payoff to it. Much to my surprise, the actual game is so putrid, so unlikable, so regularly irritating that I can't even say I like it due to it sharing the same disc space as the rest of Code Veronica.
In an act that has baffled many scholars for years, this was considered a particularly GOOD game for a long time. There's a famous 7.0 review of Silent Hill 2 making the rounds right now where Code Veronica is rated HIGHER than it. I don't like to cast wide nets about people's personalities based on what they rate games, but maybe your soul is unclean and heaven's gates will reject you if you believe that.
A fully 3D entry, you might be surprised to see them utilize the third dimension for some truly lifeless, ugly as sin environments that didn't look good AT the time. Silent Hill 1 has more art and beauty than this game, because I guess actual artists worked on it and had ideas, when Code Veronica only had ideas for Steve and the Ashford Twins. The Ashford Twins are such an antiquated and terrible idea on the face of it that I don't even want to discuss them, but fucking Steve. OH I can talk about Steve.
He might be the perfect embodiment of Code Veronica, he fits so perfectly in this game by being so irritating and such a clearly bad idea that in the grand scheme of this game it makes PERFECT sense why he is here. Did they even try to make him likeable? I know his english voice is so famously terrible, so incredibly bad that it is beyond belief, but could you ever actually like this annoying brat even in the japanese dub? If there is an undub, I've never played it, and if there is, I'm not playing THIS game ever again. This one is very firmly going on "Hated Of All Time" piles. This game just flat sucks, it could have had the fucking Soul Reaver voice cast and the gameplay would still be just straight Not Fun.
For the record, I understand why this game has been skipped for a remake: it is so bereft of any good ideas you'd have to essentially make a BRAND new game in its place, there is NOTHING here worth revisiting.
There are so many fucking releases of this game I couldn't even figure out which version i SHOULD rate 4 1/2 stars. The Dreamcast version is the one I grew up with and love, but it's functionally the same as the N64 version so I'm sticking with this release.
It's incredible that Rayman 2 is Rayman's finest moment because it's VERY VERY Good, which is interesting because the other Rayman games are just fine, mostly. This is an outlier series where one entry is the very best the genre has to offer and everything else is whatever.
Anyway, this game is wonderful, plain and simple. For my money, the best 3D platformer, it controls so good, Rayman is so buttery smooth, so responsive, it has momentum and weight while still feeling light and slick. When I play something like A Hat In Time, I feel like Hat Kid has no weight whatsoever, she is just flawlessly acrobatic in a way where I feel like my inputs make no difference and the game might as well play itself, in something like Mario 64 or Rayman 2, there is that element of player involvement that makes pulling off the meatier challenges really satisfying.
Honestly, this really should be in the echelons with Mario 64 as "really fucking good 3d platformers," but I feel like the hundreds of re-releases making the game worse and worse over time has done a number on the respectability of what really is a crown jewel for the genre. It really is the Sonic Adventure DX problem all over again!
The game does deserve to be remembered as it was originally released, as an extremely tightly designed game with fantastic level design, whimsical and catchy music, plus honest-to-god artistic cohesion. Rayman never goes to the Shopping Mall level or the Snowman level, he is always in a consistent, realized fantasy world and the platforming challenges feel fantasy enough to fit, while also feeling contextualized enough to make sense.
I think the combat leaves something to be desired, but it seems like they were aware of the problem a lot of 3d platformers had of combat being so ancillary and pointless it felt like an inclusion for its own sake, like, even as a child I don't think a goomba ever grazed me in Mario 64. For what it's worth, this world feels alive, enemies feel like actual threats, it doesn't have the Glover thing where it feels weirdly cold and empty, they've taken great measure to give Rayman an identity all its own.
So how should you play Rayman 2? Probably ReDream to be honest. The PC version requires so much dicking around to get working I don't think it's worth the hassle. The PS1 version is MISSING stuff!! Revolution adds in a bunch of crap to a game that didn't need anything, and every version afterwards finds some way to make the game less playable. A shame!!
It's incredible that Rayman 2 is Rayman's finest moment because it's VERY VERY Good, which is interesting because the other Rayman games are just fine, mostly. This is an outlier series where one entry is the very best the genre has to offer and everything else is whatever.
Anyway, this game is wonderful, plain and simple. For my money, the best 3D platformer, it controls so good, Rayman is so buttery smooth, so responsive, it has momentum and weight while still feeling light and slick. When I play something like A Hat In Time, I feel like Hat Kid has no weight whatsoever, she is just flawlessly acrobatic in a way where I feel like my inputs make no difference and the game might as well play itself, in something like Mario 64 or Rayman 2, there is that element of player involvement that makes pulling off the meatier challenges really satisfying.
Honestly, this really should be in the echelons with Mario 64 as "really fucking good 3d platformers," but I feel like the hundreds of re-releases making the game worse and worse over time has done a number on the respectability of what really is a crown jewel for the genre. It really is the Sonic Adventure DX problem all over again!
The game does deserve to be remembered as it was originally released, as an extremely tightly designed game with fantastic level design, whimsical and catchy music, plus honest-to-god artistic cohesion. Rayman never goes to the Shopping Mall level or the Snowman level, he is always in a consistent, realized fantasy world and the platforming challenges feel fantasy enough to fit, while also feeling contextualized enough to make sense.
I think the combat leaves something to be desired, but it seems like they were aware of the problem a lot of 3d platformers had of combat being so ancillary and pointless it felt like an inclusion for its own sake, like, even as a child I don't think a goomba ever grazed me in Mario 64. For what it's worth, this world feels alive, enemies feel like actual threats, it doesn't have the Glover thing where it feels weirdly cold and empty, they've taken great measure to give Rayman an identity all its own.
So how should you play Rayman 2? Probably ReDream to be honest. The PC version requires so much dicking around to get working I don't think it's worth the hassle. The PS1 version is MISSING stuff!! Revolution adds in a bunch of crap to a game that didn't need anything, and every version afterwards finds some way to make the game less playable. A shame!!
1999
FF8 is like NIN's The Fragile, an insanely ambitious, huge, sprawling, and extremely different game to the smash mega-hit that preceded it, and not unlike FF7, it was very controversial. Thankfully, both the Fragile and FF8 seem to have gotten their due amount of love in recent years. Squall kind of looks like late 90s Trent Reznor too if you think about it...
Anyway, I am nearly at the finish line, but like FF7, I have hit a point in the game where I know my personal rating isn't going to change, and to me FF8 is a 5-star game as affecting and stunning as FF7. I might do a big writeup on how much I love it once I've actually beaten it, but for now I'll say that the amount of spectacle, visual variety, and really incredible emotional depth has turned me from a Final Fantasy VII fan into a Final Fantasy fan flat out. If IX and X are as good as this, and I have reason to believe they are, then I'm going to give even more of these games 5 stars.
With FF8 I've noticed a lot about the story mentioned by people who are incapable of Having Fun, and perpetuate the STUPID ass "Squall is dead" theory. BOO!! I hate that shit. To be honest though, I don't think the story was any more insane than Final Fantasy 7's, both are extremely grand and operatic narratives that are carried by a deeply human and colorful cast of characters. That is the strength of this series as I've found it: drop characters you want to see win in an insane and twisting plot. I think that's cool!! I want my fantasy game to be over-the-top and larger than life! I live a boring, consistent real life and it sucks ass!!
Suffice it to say, I fucking LOVE this game!!! The junction system is the most fun I've had experimenting with an RPG since Morrowind, figuring out the most interesting ways to break the game or alternatively, make it really challenging. I can see why this one is really divisive but I love this insanely ambitious game even when it is being messy. I don't really give a game a 5 if I think it's "mechanically perfect," because that's stupid. I give a game a 5 if I lay down at night thinking about it, if I'm at work thinking about it, and if I can't help but bring it up in conversation because I am so fixated on it, and FF8 is absolutely a game I can't stop thinking about or excitedly booting up to try new junctions, or play more triple triad.
Anyway, I am nearly at the finish line, but like FF7, I have hit a point in the game where I know my personal rating isn't going to change, and to me FF8 is a 5-star game as affecting and stunning as FF7. I might do a big writeup on how much I love it once I've actually beaten it, but for now I'll say that the amount of spectacle, visual variety, and really incredible emotional depth has turned me from a Final Fantasy VII fan into a Final Fantasy fan flat out. If IX and X are as good as this, and I have reason to believe they are, then I'm going to give even more of these games 5 stars.
With FF8 I've noticed a lot about the story mentioned by people who are incapable of Having Fun, and perpetuate the STUPID ass "Squall is dead" theory. BOO!! I hate that shit. To be honest though, I don't think the story was any more insane than Final Fantasy 7's, both are extremely grand and operatic narratives that are carried by a deeply human and colorful cast of characters. That is the strength of this series as I've found it: drop characters you want to see win in an insane and twisting plot. I think that's cool!! I want my fantasy game to be over-the-top and larger than life! I live a boring, consistent real life and it sucks ass!!
Suffice it to say, I fucking LOVE this game!!! The junction system is the most fun I've had experimenting with an RPG since Morrowind, figuring out the most interesting ways to break the game or alternatively, make it really challenging. I can see why this one is really divisive but I love this insanely ambitious game even when it is being messy. I don't really give a game a 5 if I think it's "mechanically perfect," because that's stupid. I give a game a 5 if I lay down at night thinking about it, if I'm at work thinking about it, and if I can't help but bring it up in conversation because I am so fixated on it, and FF8 is absolutely a game I can't stop thinking about or excitedly booting up to try new junctions, or play more triple triad.