A waste.

I didn't finish the original Hellblade. I remember spending about an hour wandering through a forest where traveling through a gate would change the surrounding terrain, and it just kept going and going and going far longer than it had any right to. It was a ridiculously badly-paced section that was placed early in what was set to be a padded game, so I stopped. In the wake of the news of Xbox shutting down some of my favorite modern studios, I was surprised to see that they'd picked up Ninja Theory back in 2018; I hadn't noticed, given how many companies Microsoft has been keen on acquiring in the past few years. To be perfectly transparent, I was going into this sour. It was with my arms folded and my face screwed up that I downloaded Hellblade II — a sort-of defiant "well, let's see what Xbox thinks is worth keeping alive if not Arkane and Tango". What I had managed to play of the original game was, at the very least, interesting. I figured Ninja Theory would be able to tread water and release something that was about on par with the last title.

It's worse.

I wrote in my Breath of the Wild review that people who thought that game was doing anything seriously impressive or novel probably haven't played many games. It wasn't an especially polite thing to say, and it ruffled some feathers, but I stand by it. I'd like to take this opportunity to go further and suggest that anyone praising Hellblade II for being like a movie probably doesn't watch many movies; if they do, they don't have any actual understanding of the medium beyond blind, uncritical consumption. I've seen praise get heaped on this for its cinematography when it's comprised almost exclusively of over-the-shoulder shots, the most bog-standard drone flyovers you've ever seen in your life, and simulated shaky-cam group shots where everyone stands stark still in a circle while having a conversation about nothing of importance. This is shot, cinematographically speaking, like shit. Watching this feels like someone gave a film student an eight-figure budget. Take a shot every time you're in one of the over-long combat encounters and Senua gets grabbed from behind to transition into the next battle.

While I was settling in expecting a visual feast, this is more of a visual buffet. Maybe a visual McDonald's. It looks good, to be certain, but it's really not that impressive. The mandatory upscaling present here forces some compromise to be made where it really ought not to be; DLSS is hailed as being the best option of the lot, but it still leaves shimmering artifacts on the edges of models where it can't quite get the anti aliasing right. Switch over to FSR and you can mostly get rid of the edge-shimmer, but it similarly demands that you manually set the sharpness a bit too high and fuck up the graphics everywhere else. I can say without hesitation that I've seen a lot of games that look significantly better than Hellblade II. For probably the same amount of money and about six months earlier, Alan Wake 2 does everything that this wants to and more convincingly. Go back a few years to Detroit: Become Human or Death Stranding and it's plain to see that those are far more impressive works from an entire console generation prior. I wouldn't normally give a fraction of a fraction of a fuck about graphical fidelity, but seeing all of the praise for how good this game looks makes me wonder if our eyes are working the same way.

I appreciate Crystar for pointing this out in her review, but Hellblade II has a very funny concluding monologue. Ending the game on the statement "all the questions were answered" implies that any answers were given, and further suggests that any questions were asked. There's not all that much that's ambiguous here, and the parts that are don't manage to raise any interesting questions. I had a feeling that the giants didn't actually exist, which Senua seemingly confirms at the end when she screams it at the final boss. "There are no giants, it's just you", she says. Unfortunately, the giants not being real means that most of the game didn't actually happen. All of the characters who were talking about giants weren't. All of the characters who died fighting the giants didn't. Everyone who thought they saw Senua kill a giant didn't. The natural disasters that the giants caused were just random and unrelated; whether they ended after Senua "killed the giants" is either another coincidence, or they didn't actually end at all. Cut all of this away, and there's really not much story left. Senua and her friends (who may not exist) trek across the land (which might be ravaged by natural disasters) while fighting the undead (who may not exist) so that Senua can get a blessing (that definitely doesn't exist) from a group of underground mystics (who definitely don't exist) until they get to the slaver king's doorstep and beat him in a fight. This reads like one of those early-10s fan theories about Rugrats being Angelica's dying dream. I know I like to exaggerate for comedy's sake when writing reviews like this, but this is a stone-faced recap of what happens. There are no jokes here.

The command to not pay too much attention to the writing comes a little too late into the game, long after you've already sat through dozens of ridiculously trite scenes. The bar for the writing sits around the point where Senua cries while looking at her bloody hands, and the voices in her head say "you have blood on your hands", just to make sure that you understand. The voices aren't much more than exposition fairies. They exist to recap story events that just happened with breathless awe, never giving you a chance to think about anything being said. A character will mention something that Senua hasn't heard of — giants that control the weather, let's say — and the voices immediately pivot to acting like confused toddlers. "Giants? What are giants? Can we kill a giant? Are giants real? They can't be real. There's no such thing as giants. We don't know what's real. Giants might be real. What does he know about giants? Why is he telling us about giants? I wonder how much he knows about giants. Does anyone know what giants are? What if he's lying? Can we ask someone else about giants?" It continues at this pace for about five hours until the game ends. The voices chattering on and on is one thing, and I could at least understand it as something the devs were doing to intentionally provoke the player, but this constant motor-mouthing falls apart when you enter into combat. The voices somehow don't have enough lines to cover these incredibly strict and linear fights, so they're constantly repeating themselves. I heard the line "their bodies strong like rocks, you have to hit harder!" four times in a single encounter, and at least ten in total before the game ended. I was half expecting them to start asking if I had any potions, or food. Add this to the canon of game characters who manage to annoy the player by spamming voice lines like they're running HLDJ.

Pacing is, regrettably, another factor that Ninja Theory has regressed on. A vast, vast majority of this game is spent holding the left bumper and up on the left stick. You walk forward, and you walk forward, and you walk forward, and Senua's never really in much of a hurry to get anywhere. You'll have a good twenty minutes where you're doing quite literally nothing besides walking in a straight line while the voices ask questions about shit that you already know. They'll also celebrate you figuring out the solutions to the ridiculously simple puzzles in the most simpering way imaginable. I do not need to be told that Senua is a very, very smart girl who can do no wrong when the game told me where the symbol was, and then automatically solved the puzzle for me when I held the focus button vaguely in its direction. These over-long sections where you walk around and do nothing are occasionally interrupted by over-long combat encounters where you tap dodge and spam light attacks, and that's where the fun really begins.

Most of these fights are fucking silly; the part where Senua interrupts the ritual is easily five minutes, as is the cave fight, as is the undead raid on the village. This is only as much of a problem as it is because Senua can only ever fight one enemy at a time, which makes them drag. There are about nine distinct enemy types that exist in the entire game, and they all take turns to lazily swing at Senua and slowly get chipped down. A lot of games that do mob fights will have some enemies hang back while others slowly come at you, but this doesn't even attempt to give you the illusion. Senua never has to fight more than one enemy at a time, regardless of how surrounded she is. What really gets me is the fact that this wasn't a problem in the original Hellblade. Enemies would come at you in twos and threes, and that was even in the earliest fights of the game. This is a total regression of a system that was already pretty thin, and the fact that Ninja Theory have cut out a majority of Senua's attacks to streamline the combat even further than it was boggles the mind.

There are glimmers of something good in here. I really do like the part in the cave where Senua starts to get the blessing from the hidden men, and the entire place lights up like a LIDAR scan. It's got some genuinely good pacing, too; you've got puzzle sections that lead into little combat encounters, and then those lead into walking sections, and that leads into a stealth section, and then it leads into another puzzle. It's the only place in the entire game where any of these systems feel like they're working together in harmony, rather than existing solely to interrupt one of the others for going on too long. It's a shame that Senua has to exist outside of that cave. I thought it was a good place for her to be. It was interesting, at least.

Anyway, I'm not sure I buy Ninja Theory's Games for Impact-bait shift in the past few years. I see their logo and I think back to how they would write Monkey killing escaping slaves because it was badass, or that GDC talk they did for DmC: Devil May Cry where they dedicated a section to making fun of Dante for being gay. The company, to my knowledge, has never really had a reckoning for any of that. Tameem Antoniades seems to have slipped out the back door just in time for this to release, but he's still got the sole creative director credit. I'm willing to believe that Senua's actress Melina Juergens actually believes in what she's doing — she's said in interviews that her father had a psychotic disorder, and she seems to have the most solid understanding of the crew when it comes to how the narrative ought to handle Senua's mental illness — but I'm not extending that faith much further than her. There's something about the documentaries that Ninja Theory self-publishes where they go over how very, very carefully they handled psychosis (we promise!) that doesn't pass the sniff test. I don't think it's bad that this exists, and I won't erase the people who have said that these games have been genuinely good reflections of their own mental illnesses; I just have some strong doubts that Ninja Theory is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. One look at their back catalog suggests to me that they only wanted to make a Serious Mental Health Story because their old shit stopped selling and they could tell which way the wind started blowing. With the constant distractions of giant-slaying, risen undead warriors, and the sins of the fathers subplot, the current big game on the market "about psychosis" barely has time for the psychosis.

The conclusion that I'm forced towards, reductive as it is, is that people who love Hellblade II don't play anything else. They don't really watch anything else, either. I don't know what they do. It's not worth just harping on the fans, though; I don't think many people dislike this game for the right reasons, either. Complaining about a game not offering a good enough playtime-to-dollar ratio is peabrain shit. People also cry about Senua being Sweet Baby-core because she's got peach fuzz and bug eyes, all acting as though she isn't the the textbook definition of conventionally attractive. And the game isn't bad because it's story-focused — the game is bad because it's fucking boring. You engage with it in a boring way, and it tells a boring story. This isn't an inherently broken game. The concept is fine. It's the execution where Ninja Theory makes it clear that they've got no fucking clue what they're doing.

Great photo mode, though.

Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review.


Dyo is a free puzzle game on Steam, its appeal deriving as much from that price point as its co-op premise - you and buddy controlling one of two minotaurs in an attempt to reach the doorway(s) within each level. How fun is it? Well, given that I had to abandon it in light of the high difficulty curve, I’m going to say it wasn’t for me, though that doesn’t mean it won’t have its fans.

Occupying the platformer genre, Dyo’s gimmick rests on each player being able to attach their screen-halves together at any point in time, theoretically yielding all manner of makeshift jigsaws for obstacle circumvention. It works well at first; however, the complexity grows greatly the second the devs start adding new variables into the mix: perspective shifts, dissolving blocks, and moveable cubes being among the best offenders. Now normally I welcome these kinds of changes, but the problem is Dyo doesn’t go about organically-introducing them the way it did with its initial gimmick, resulting in players being thrown into the deep end without much warning.

Luckily, everything is unduly responsive and bug-free, rendering the excursion very smooth and responsive irregardless of my qualms.

Visually, Dyo is on the minimalist side, though that actually works in the game’s favor due to its shorthand nature- your two characters resemble the beasts of Ancient Greek fame, their brighter hues contrasting well with the cinereal props of standing columns and stitched-together brick. Backdrops further compliment this set-up by hosting innumerable items like wavering flames, looming columns, and well-honed sculptures. Yes, you will see a lot of repetition; however, the restrained stylization does serve its purpose of establishing a labyrinthine atmosphere.

SFX is reserved solely for select actions (locking-in screens, pushing blocks, and entering doors), while music, as far as I got anyway, consisted of a singular ambient track hemorrhaged by creepy wind & drum motifs. Both are fine given the brief length of levels, though Dyo probably could’ve benefited from some symphonic diversity as things progressed.

Ultimately, though, this is a title that’ll only appeal to the patient as finding those aforementioned harder solutions does get taxing the deeper you go. If you and a buddy are willing to do that, then Dyo should be a fun enough afternoon.

Rise of the Ronin is the result of a long, long build-up by Team Ninja. Everything they learned since making Nioh have been all thrown together into this one big attempt to make a meaty open world action game. Standing on the shoulders of greats such as Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Ghost of Tsushima, Ronin is a massive game indeed. I don't usually do this, but I feel like I had to separate my review in a few parts just to make it a bit more digestible. Anyways, let's start. This will be a fun one.

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COMBAT (on Normal difficulty)

I enjoyed the two Nioh games, particularly because of the combat system. It tastefully fits Team Ninja's hack and slash origins into a Soulslike's deliberate, lock-on dependent tendencies. Both you and the enemies would just aggressively hammer on each other, constantly looking for chances to fully decimate the other first. I'm very happy to say this school of combat is at its absolute top form here. With 9 weapon types to choose (not including the ranged sub-weapons), each with their own selection of unlockable combat styles, you have a lot of freedom to structure your modes of attack. Then you have the various combo-enabling mechanics, such as abilities that can be done after canceling attacks, being able to restore Ki (stamina) after attacking, attacks that can only be done when you switch combat styles or weapons, and so on. When you find the weapon that suits you the most, and are able to fully take advantage of it, you can end even boss fights with just 2 or 3 openings, and it's an utterly exhilarating feeling to successfully nail a planned attack.

Also, shoutout to the team for making a childhood dream of mine come true; being able to use a bayonet rifle like the Gunblade that it was meant to be. It's hard to beat the Katana just because it's easily the most flexible weapon, but it's a very close 2nd best weapon type for me.

Since the enemies are also powered by the same aggresive mechanics, you would still need to properly execute defensive moves, and boy the parries are satisfying in this game. The flashy visual effect and the clashing sound creates a strong, exhilarating feel. There's also a system where some enemy types' attacks would be best parried by certain combat styles, which allows you stagger enemies much faster with the right style. On Normal it's not necessary to strictly follow this, but I'm sure on harder difficulties it would be a much more helpful tool.

A massive thing that I have to appreciate is how many enemy movesets there are, especially the bosses. There is a LOT of characters in this game, and everybody wants to spar with you, friend or foe. Even rematch bosses would have new attacks and patterns that make it feel like you have never fought them before. And there's a dojo where you can fight against the characters you have met so far, I gotta say it's quite addicting to just start one of these fights and keep grinding until you get a better score.

When all is said and done, what you get is basically an fast-paced "anime" action game with a grounded historical theme in realistic clothing. Just sit on that for a second, imagine all those embellished folktales of swordsmen of yore, with such skill that allows them to strike faster than light, deliver multiple stabs within a second, and so on. Ronin is bringing that to life.

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STORY ELEMENTS

The way Team Ninja approaches the story continues the maximalist approach that they have been happily leaning on. The game wants to have as many story arcs and scenes as possible, and it becomes this dramatized history action show that definitely feels cramped and too fast paced in some places, because it doesn't necessarily show these story arcs in detail. You'll often feel like relationships are progressing a bit too quickly. This isn't such a huge flaw to me because ultimately the game still delivers solid emotional moments, but it's definitely something to keep a note of.

What I like the most about the story is the romantic portrayal of its historical characters. Even when people from opposing sides meet, if they each have the chance to show their strength, then no matter how it ends, they will usually gain respect for one another. It's a oddly wholesome thing to have in the midst of this bloody struggle for Japan's future. It's not to say that pure animosity and degeneracy doesn't exist, but through this romantic lens, you get this strong feeling that all the characters want a better future in their own ways, and because of that, everyone's stories are worth paying attention to. There's also a handful of lighthearted story moments, and the game never feels like it takes itself too seriously. I can't speak at all to how it compares to actual historical facts, but I do want to read up on some history right after this, and surely it means that the game is doing something right.

Like I said before, there's a lot of characters to meet, even when you're in the final hours of the game already. It is definitely too many characters to fully keep track of, but I'll say that the game does a good job with the characters that takes the most prominent roles. A lot of them have more elaborate personal side missions (called bond missions) that makes them stand out as well, and they're usually quite worthwhile from the story standpoint. You can also get closer to some characters and initiate romances if you gift them enough nice stuff or do enough missions for them. I got locked in with three lovely people; they didn't seem to mind the polygamy, and the intimate scenes are pretty sweet and wholesome, so no complaints from me.

I think the most disappointing thing about the story is the endings being basically the same, despite having to make some choices that feels like they would matter more. It would be way more fun if they have more actual endings, mostly because the story really allows for a lot of potentially satisfying places for it all to end up on.

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OPEN WORLD

The open world areas are pretty standard for the most part, structure-wise. It's very Ubisoft-inspired, you can see the entire map of the region you're currently in from the start, you just have to unlock fast travel points by lighting bonfires. Other than the main/side missions, there's some stand out activities like collecting cute cats, and the shooting gallery & gliding challenges, which I wish they had more of.

In exploration, you have a glider that you can use anytime and anywhere provided enough height, and I have to admit that it was kinda underwhelming until I got the upgrade that allows you to glide faster. You can also drop firebombs from above later on, which is quite situational but still fun. Then you have a grappling hook that you can use to grapple onto certain spots of the environment. There's not a lot of grapple spots, which is disappointing. You can use it to hook onto enemies, which is the most fun usage of the hook, since you can use it either aggressive or defensively in an active combat scenario. Overall, I think they could have done more to make these traversal mechanics more useful. The open world design doesn't lean on these mechanics enough, IMO. I'm not necessarily expecting something like Insomniac's Spider-Man where you would just swing and zip and glide all over the place like a madman, but I wish the exploration has the same level of flashy pizzazz that the combat has.

I do love the quality of life stuff that they figured out, like being able to find out locations of collectibles by doing enough activities in a local sub-area. Basically you can earn XP to progress a "Bond level" for a sub-area, and when you level up 2-3 times, the collectibles locations are revealed. It makes the side activities more rewarding because you're essentially being led straight into more rewards right after.

I also love the overall setting of the open world, this specific era of Japan is just so interesting to me. It's so cool to see how the previously closed world of Japan is being interwoven with effects from the outside world, it's like a place stuck between two different periods of time. I don't think this era of Japan is well-explored in pop culture, so Team Ninja really did well to strike gold.

A particular quality that I noticed about the overall open world design is that it feels like they made a handful of Nioh-style linear, smaller levels, and made in-between areas to connect them. Or maybe it's the other way around? Anyways, it's an approach that I have noticed more lately. Horizon Forbidden West had a similar feel, where I would stumble upon certain areas of the map that feels more deliberate and detailed in its design, and then I find out that a specific quest would take place in said area. It's probably a good way for a open world newbie like Team Ninja to start with, it's not like they did a bad job overall here. Finding a little nook in the map that feels intimately designed, taking a guess whether or not a quest will used that place as its backdrop, and finding out that you're right is a neat little meta-game.

There's also the neat detail of having other players' characters in the game. Every once in a while you'll stumble upon an NPC with an user name above them, and these are other people's MCs. You can see them just walking around the map, being held hostage in spots overrun by thugs, or even serving the antagonist's side as a hired ronin. It's a fun little touch that makes the game feel grander than it is.

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There's a lot more that I can talk about, but I want to end on how fashionable this game is. There's a lot of cool looking outfits/armors and weapons to collect. I probably spent maybe 5-6 hours total just trying to mix and match all the clothes and weapons I have. And it's all because you can just transmog your equipment so easily, so you don't have to worry about the stats. A lot of the coolest outfits/weapons are in the late game bond missions too, so you're getting rewarded for caring about the story of the characters. This whole fashion aspect of the game easily compensates for the horribly bloated loot system that Team Ninja carries from the Nioh games.

Now, that'll be enough. I had a lot of fun with Ronin. Although the open world aspects are far from perfect, it's clear to me that this is the way forward for Team Ninja. The claustrophobic and limited feel of their previous games always felt like the main obstacles for me to fully enjoy them. The open world approach fits Team Ninja because it always feels like they just want to do a lot of things at once, and in Ronin we finally get to see that desire unshackled. It's definitely my favorite Team Ninja game so far (although I'm not too familiar with their games before Nioh). They has successfully expanded their expertise, and that's good news for all of us.

Crash Twinsanity's development has been talked about a lot. From its switch from a more mature tone to a more comedic one, to the butt-load of things they had to scrap to meet the deadline.

There are people who love this game. There are people who hate this game.
Personally, I've always had an interest in this one. Not just because I'm a fan of Crash, but because some of the cutscenes were really funny.

And I think I'll start right there. The comedic tone that they went for really paid off! There were a lot of times I laughed my ass off! From Cortex's falling into a spiked pit, to Crash's dumb facial expressions, to Crash having a very interesting look when looking Cortex's behind.
Cortex even spanks Crash, nice to see they're getting along.

And that's the main gimmick with this one. Crash and Cortex have to team up to defeat an even greater evil... the Evil Twins.
I feel like that generic name might've been intentional.
You'll be playing as Crash and Cortex throughout the adventure, either as just one of them, or both of them. Launching Cortex and smacking his head into boxes, or using him as a sled, and hurting his balls on rails.

There's also a new playable character in Nina Cortex, the daug-- niece of Neo Cortex, and she... just kinda exists, to be honest.
I liked her gameplay style of using a hook on certain objects, but you don't play as her much.

The level desing has also seen a big change. While the game is linear like previously, the stages are bigger, and you can explore around them to get the game's gems, as they are no longer tied to boxes.
Getting these can be fun, because obtaning them is kinda like a puzzle. But I didn't feel like gathering them all, especially in the Slide levels, which are the hardest to obtain all of the gems.

Regardless, this change in level design is a welcome one, and I wouldn't mind future Crash games returning to this style. And it also does not come at the sacrifice of the game's platforming, as it's very well designed and fun to go through!

One thing that I think should be said about this game, and probably is the biggest point of contention of it... is the fact that you can clearly see that this game is unfinished.
Examples include, but not limited to:
- Collision detection being all kinds of wonky.
- Story jumps around a lot, and some plot threads are wrapped up out of nowhere.
- Characters like Evil Crash and Nina just kind of exist, and don't have much of a presence.
- Plenty of sound effects simply not existing in various cutscenes.
- A stunned Coco has a hitbox.

By collecting the gems, you receive a lot of the game's concept art, and it serves to also confirm that there's a lot of cut content.
Now, is this a 100% bad thing?
Not necessarily. I still think the game we got is pretty serviceable, but it definitely needed more time in the oven. I wish certain things got expanded upon, like the two characters I mentioned earlier.

Outside of the comedy and the gameplay, another thing I really liked about this game was the overall presentation! Compared to The Wrath of Cortex, this is night and day. Crash Twinsanity's graphics and art direction still hold up to this day, and I love how the game looks!
Character animations are also pretty good, especially Crash's and Cortex's.
The voice acting is also very good, but it came with a change. Clancy Brown is no longer the voice of Cortex, now Lex Lang is at the helm.
Simply put, I love the voice he brought to Cortex! His line delivery is on point, and it enhanced the comedy that much more.
What I find weird is that Crash never emotes anything in Twinsanity. Like, there are no grunts... at all. Weird, considering Crash is pretty expressive in this game, you'd think he'd "talk" more, but I guess not.
Also, Nina is pretty much a mute until her "Huh?" at the final cutscene. Most likely a consequence of the rushed dev time.

Speaking of voices, you'll be hearing plenty of them in the music, as it was composed by a band called Spiralmouth, an accapella band. Since it's accapella, which only involves voices, the game's soundtrack has its own unique vibe. It's not for everybody, but I really enjoyed it, and I think it enhanced the game's tone nicely.

Overall, Crash Twinsanity, while definitely flawed, was a really fun game to play through, and I can see myself playing this again sometime in the future.