There are some cases where a clone exceeds what its inspiration is. In Ghost Rider’s case that isn’t hard, as Devil may Cry is an atrocious series. In terms of its other inspiration, God of war, it falls short, but impresses with what it has.

Game play is divided into two segments, on foot and bike levels.

Before I begin, I highly advise that you save and reload in the first level over and over to fully max out ghost rider before continuing with your play through, the game is at its best when you are fully upgraded with a full move set.

I also implore you to not play this on anything higher than normal. The damage scaling on hard or higher is ludicrous, you’ll be getting 2-5 shotted nonstop and it will do nothing to instill you in the required rhythm the on foot combat requires, or the quick reflexes of the bike levels.

Combat in Ghost Rider is fun and competent, unlike DMC, you actually have a reason to get a high style rating even after you are maxed out, when you get a B rank, the size of your attacks hit boxes are extended, making it imperative that you maintain a high rank (getting hit resets it to zero). You also only get green orbs for your screen nuke when you have a style ranking on screen, with more rewarded the higher the rank. It’s astonishing but also hilarious how a pathetically shallow mechanic was made genuinely useful here.

As for said screen nuke, don’t be afraid to use it! The game’s waves after waves of enemies are designed around you firing off a link charge once the meter is full to quickly build style, which can then be quickly refilled with green orbs enemies leave behind. This makes combat frantic and tense, and solves the issue most games have with screen nukes where you are never sure when to use it.

You also have this games take on Devil Trigger, named Retribution mode here. It’s best saved for dealing with large brute demons, as they normally don’t stagger when hit. If you are being liberal with your screen nukes and maintaining high style, your spirit gauge will fill very fast and you will never have to worry about being SOL to use it.

As for your regular attacks, they all feel useful. All of them are just fast enough to feel smooth, but not so much that it ruins game balance. Like God of war, there is a heavy emphasis on crowd control. You’ll need to be using strings like triangle X2 > square > triangle to supercharge your style meter to level B, and for solo foes, it’s best to launch them away with basic combos or use strings like squarex2 > triangle X2 to knock them aside so you can pull off a risky taunt that leaves you wide open but fills an entire meter of style, or execute a safe finishing prompt by pressing circle to avoid enemy attacks with I-frames. By using your Nukes, Retribution, Finishers, and crowd controlling regular attacks, the wave after wave of enemies you’ll be dealing with never feels tedious at any point due to the game forcing you to use these well designed tools.

There are also skill check enemies that have barriers around them where you can not damage them unless you have a certain style level, further incentivizing you to learn how combat should be played rather than just whacking the triangle button in a hallway. There is no pretentious, shallow. and pointless mechanical bloat like DMC here. You must learn the game to survive.

In terms of enemy design the game makes up for it’s low budget by expecting you to rely on audio cues snyched to decent animations. Each enemy has a distinct sound you’ll need to memorize so you can block or dodge accordingly. Making combat feel much more involved. All regular enemies aside from brutes only have one attack, which have competent animations and are perfectly synched to audio cues, so memorization comes quickly. Your Dodges also have zero i-frames, so you can not abuse holding the right stick, Your recovery animation is also a little slow, so poor dodging can rightfully punish you as well.

Blocking is the fastest animation in your toolkit, but like God of war the game balances this out by making it so only the first two hits of your strings can be block canceled, meaning that while you must use a variety of moves to maintain high style and keep those larger hit boxes, you also need to know when to use your long, non cancelable and powerful last button inputs, making any instance of button mashing incredibly punishable. Whacking triangle and dodging every blue moon will not work here, you need to actually be aware of your attack animations and properly weigh the risks. A movie licensed game going this far to make sure they have smart combat is incredibly commendable.

Your shot gun is also an incredibly useful tool. From stopping an enemy dead in their tracks, or opening up space so you can execute risky moves, It should always be in your rotation, and the fact that it also uses up one bar of retribution is a great balancing act, as you somewhat need to weigh the risks of creating space to survive, or eating the hit and saving your meter for brutes.

The game does unfortunately lack a good screen shake effect, so while attacks feel fine to execute, they lack the sheer raw power of God of war or the finesse and skillful swiftness of Ninja Gaiden. Enemy damage animations are good enough that this is mitigated somewhat. But the combat is definitely missing that last bit of torque to make it truly incredible, rather than just great here.


While combat is carried by its strong rhythm, level design for the on foot segments is non existent. You’ll be going north-south and then, in a funny coincidence, going south-north DMC4 style in order to pad out the games length. Thankfully when going backwards, the game does have different enemy sets, and you can also ignore most of them during the back tracking if you want to get over the level quickly. The game was originally planned to have puzzles in the levels, but due to the film being pushed up to February of 2007, these had to be cut out. It’s unfortunate that the level design had to be left with hallways, but at the very least the combat makes up for it.


Breaking up the game play for variety, and authenticity to the character, are motorcycle levels, These are simple, fun segments that don’t over stay their welcome and make ghost rider feel unstoppable as you light up enemies with homing shots, power slide under rails, and make massive jumps over gaps. There is some trial and error in later levels, as the steering is very sensitive and knowing when to double jump, or lean forward to not run into walls can be annoying, but the track design is so well telegraphed and laid out that knowing where to land is never an issue, ramps will have huge arrows and rails have orangish red piping to let you know well ahead of time how to react. Once you nail down the timings after a few retries, it becomes and absolute joy to chain together power slides and huge jumps for the segments 2-7 minute play time.

While I did recommend earlier that you should reload your saves in the first level to fully max out, so long as you maintain a good style meter, you’ll have plenty of souls to spend on upgrades, though you’re better off doing as a I recommended and using those extra souls for unlocking the neat bonuses like concept art, behind the scenes videos on the games development, and a random assortment of comics picked from the Johnny Blaze era of the character. These bonuses are nice extras that very few licensed games would even bother trying to include, so it’s awesome they are here.

The game does suffer unfortunately from very poor boss fights. For the on foot ones, you will simply run around and wait till a boss makes themselves vulnerable, and then wail on them with a screen nuke or retribution, Black Heart is the worst offender of this, as he is one of those god awful “Giant creature who slams down fists” fights that plagued video games in the late 2000s. The two bike boss fights don’t fair much better, as you’ll just wail on circle when chasing Vengeance, or dodge a few slow attacks from Black-Out before again wailing on circle.

When you finish the game, you unlock Blade as a playable character , and while it’s great that he has his own move set, he only has 4 combos in his kit and no Retribution or screen nukes. Making all of the combat encounters an absolute slog as you’ll have no way of getting out of tight jams with a well timed screen Nuke or Retribution. The game does try and balance this by giving blade decently larger style gains, a quicker taunt animation, and the ability to drain health from stunned enemies by pressing circle, but it is ultimately a waste of time. If blade had his own levels designed around him, this could be a great bonus, but instead, it comes of as an unfinished concept at best.

You also unlock cheats when you finish the game, though the only one worth mentioning here is Turbo mode. Just like DMC, Turbo mode destroys the game balance due to the fact that enemies are not designed around your increased attack animation speed, like wise, your timing for blocks and dodges are thrown off as the audio cues and animations do not line up properly. The increased speed also destroys the timing for jumps and slides when playing the motorcycle sections, meaning you have to annoyingly retrain your brain if you wish to do these segments with this toggled on. Hilariously, Turbo mode does make playing as Blade far less tedious due to the increased game speed ,as it makes his light attacks borderline unstoppable, and it does make the slow chugging menus far smoother, but the breaking of game mechanics is not worth your time.

The story is basic and uninteresting. Presented with cheap, overly grainy, motion comic cut scenes. Mephisto needs Ghost Rider to round up demons who have escaped from hell that he can not go after due to his agreement with heaven, you then go to location after location, mop the floor with a villain, and then repeat until surprise surprise, Mephisto was wanting to trigger the apocalypse the entire time and needed Ghost Rider to unknowingly draw a glyph with the flames of his bike. You don’t actually fight Mephisto though as Black Heart comes out of nowhere, somehow seals him away, and then you fight him in an incredibly mediocre final boss fight. At the very least the game play is mostly solid enough sans boss fights that you can keep coming back on replays for a good time, cause the story sure as shit isn’t the reason why.

Graphically the game impresses. Bloom is used intelligently to make hellfire glow eerily, and textures are solid, though a bit flat in places. Environments often have massive moving background structures, like gigantic gears in hell, a fire breathing skull at the circus, and massive pipes with huge waterfalls for example. You also have some good looking particle effects, like dust blowing in San Venganza, dry ice mist in the government facility, and sparks when in hell.

While the level design on foot is borderline non existent, the game makes up for this in location variety. From the creepy, industrial prison that is hell, the dilapidated and abandoned wild west town of Sanvenganza, the rusted out laboratories of the military base, and the macabre circus, you won’t be wanting for location variety. All of this is presented with stylish fixed camera angles that frame a world under siege in a beautiful way.

Menus are OK looking, but definitely look like a “good enough” job, you may get a giggle out of the PNG of Sam Elliot in the upgrade menu, but the slow main menu with a grainy FMV will get annoying every time you launch the game, as said FMV makes it chug with every confirm or back button press.

The game mostly runs at a very smooth 60FPS, but it can drop to the low 40s when over 8 enemies are on screen during on foot levels, or heavy density sections of the motorcycle levels, these drops thankfully only last a few seconds, but can feel quite jarring when they happen.

Musically the game kicks ass. Composed by Timo Baker, who if you’re in your mid 20s-early 30s you may recognize as the man who did the music for River Monsters on the Discovery channel, you’ll get a fantastic duo of ambient hellish tracks and fast paced demonic rock. The game gives a great first impression with both tracks in “Arrival in hell”, the ambient version features minimal instruments and notes, with loud short horns instilling a sense of unease, and reverb heavy painful moans letting you know you are in the land of the damned. When combat kicks in, your drawn in to a fast paced guitar solo frenzy, with steady drums hyping you up for the proper rhythm for combat. Other tracks that stand out are the strum heavy sounds of “Perimeter breach (fight)”, the electronic wubs of “In Black-Outs Wake”, and the wild west rock rich “Lightning strikes”.

There is a good amount to like in Ghost rider, you have a very intelligently designed combat system that requires full memorization of your small but powerful toolset to survive, cool motorcycle levels that are a good 7 minute power trip, great visuals and an excellent sound track. And while it is marred by 50% mediocre unlockable content, empty hallway level design, mediocre at best and bad at worst boss fights, and a boring by the numbers plot, It’s still a great hack and slash in spite of those flaws and well worth the 2-3 hours you’ll put in.

8/10.

I played this bullshit while getting spammed Better Call Saul riffs, Laura Palmer screams and a miriad of other funny meme sounds at x10 the sound they should play, I got so fucking dissoriented I thought I was going to have a panic attack. All just to get the intended experience by the devs: A child who still hasn't learned how to read, has been left alone by their parents and is still susceptible to the sweet release of an epileptic fit.

This is what stimulates your cousin for 14 hours straight every single day. Actual hell on earth.

If you’ve ever installed Google Chrome or Ungoogled Chromium from your Linux distribution’s app store, you’ve come across Chromium BSU. And while the game is rather basic, it does nail most fundamentals.

Before you play I implore you to make sure you have hardware acceleration enabled. The game’s target 50FPS will not be hit other wise.

The game is an endless shooter, you move with the mouse and fire your weapons with the Space bar. Enemy waves are smartly composed to take advantage of mouse movement. Triangle formations require you to quickly jerk your mouse back and forth, purple bubble enemies need you to gently glide your mouse in a circular motion, the two boss enemies have you making sudden sharp movements to avoid beams with massive hit boxes etc.

Controls are tight and smooth and mastery will come quickly. The game’s HUD is also immersive and non intrusive. With striped beams on the side of your screen showing your ammo, shields and health. Every time you pick up a power up the corresponding beam will flash, which is useful when just starting out or coming back after a while.

The player must kill every enemy coming at them or they will lose a life for each one that escapes, power ups are plentiful but you only have a limited amount of ammo, and the game will punish you for holding down the space bar. So you’ll need to show some restraint or face brutal but fair punishment. The game throws just enough power ups at you for most waves to take care of them, but it’s still up to you to use them wisely. This simple yet brilliant approach kept me coming back for several hours to try and perfect both my reflexes and ammo management. It’s the clear highlight of the game and nothing else matches it.

There are only two boss enemies In the game and they aren’t very fun to fight, while their tells are fun to figure out the first time, since this is an endless shooter, you’ll encounter them nonstop the more you play on. This lack of enemy variety extends to the regular ships too, as the same 4 ships, 3 of which barely function differently, get old very fast.

There is one enemy that is unique but not to the games benefit, from level 2 onward you will be bombarded by bright purple bubble disc ships that require you to gingerly make a circular motion with your mouse to avoid their fire, the issue is that they are almost always paired with the other 3 types, meaning you’ll be eating attacks nonstop most of the time, they even show up during boss fights to make them artificially harder, which is just eye rolling.

The game also lacks sound effects when enemies take damage, while you do get a nice stock explosion sound with regular mooks that go down quickly, this lack of sound effects makes bosses feel much more bloated then they actually are, and gives them even more of a chore like feeling when fighting them non stop the further you play.

Visually the game is pleasant, you get a solid standard 90s sci-fi look with heavy piping, scuffed metal surfaces on ships, and circuitry heavy UI. The game lacks graphical options, and the resolution caps out at 960p, so jaggies are unfortunately everywhere.

There are only two music tracks and they aren’t very good, track 1 is a generic cyberpunk beat and track two repeats the same 3 chords nonstop during game play. It gets grating fast and since the game lacks damage sound effects anyway, I muted subsequent runs as it made no difference.


Chromium BSU is a decent time waster should you choose to install it from your distro’s app store, but there are far better Foss games out there.


5/10.

There are times with MGS where I get it: the tone, the atmosphere, that soundtrack, the early use of (very decent) voice acting, the backdrop of the Cold War being used to frame a mostly compelling narrative.

But Kojima just cannot help himself; every cutscene feels like it goes on 5 minutes longer than necessary; every bit of dialogue has to overexplain some aspect of the story or character motivations that ends up leaving you more confused; and every effective plot twist smashes head first into another twist that adds nothing to the story. Oh, and every boss goes on a 15-minute monologue while dying? Get in the bin.

MGS is a dope as fuck game, and I totally see how a 12-year-old played this and OOT in the same year and was hooked on games for the rest of their life. But one of these games still plays and feels as revolutionary now as it did then, and it doesn't involve the thespian Liquid Snake.

Hinokami Chronicles has set a sad and potentially depressing precedent to me that CC2 can’t even live up to their own standards of a basic but enjoyable display of spectacle.

As someone who absolutely adores the manga (yes the manga, the anime is an adaption, it is not Koyoharu Gotouge’s work) I knew going in that since this is based on Ufotable’s terrible anime adaption, I shouldn’t be expecting it to capture everything that made the manga such a great read. But even people who like the adaption will be let down here.


Asking for an Anime licensed arena fighter to re tell the story it’s based on well is already asking for a bit much, but I didn’t expect CC2 to be so lackadaisical that pivotal scenes like Sanmei testing Nezuko’s resolve to be shoved in lazy flashback slide shows using stills from the anime with adobe after effects filters slapped on top. The usual issues of just telling the cliff notes version of the plot that most of these games suffer from is also on full display here, but the models here don’t even have canned animations for emotions either, making the story feel extra cheap in the process.

You also get these pseudo omakes that have some charming low rate frame animations to them, but they’re just a different framing device for the same lazy slideshows made to save money.

Given this is aimed at people who are fans of Ufotable’s poor anime adaption, I expected that the cut scenes would at least carry over some of the goofy faces and non sequiturs that make the manga so enjoyable, as that is one thing the horrible anime adaption gets mostly correct. Sadly you’ll barely see them aside from a handful of major moments of humour that just couldn’t be cut, (like Zenitsu’s rant about how the boys aren’t exploiting getting nursed by good looking girls enough) so you’ll just be bombarded by bland, lazy stiff cut scenes for around 8 hours.

Due to the hacked up cliff notes approach, the pacing is sometimes even worse than the anime adaption, as the story constantly gets in the way of the game play with scenes that drag. Many scenes and events the anime fucks up by extending them for far too long over several episodes (Like the 1st training arc, which in the manga is at most a 20 minute read) is fucked up in the opposite direction by being overly brief and never having time to breathe.

Game play wise you’ll get an attempt at level design, but the implementation is so astoundingly minimal and low effort it borders on Devil May Cry levels of terrible. Aside from the collectible fragments (that unlock more slideshows) and paltry points globs you can spend in a shop, You’ll just be running through a flat hallway to point B marked on your map so you never have to worry about getting lost (you wouldn’t anyway cause you always go north).

This is also sometimes turned into boring slow walking sections, with Zenitsu’s two segments being insufferable. Yes, he is supposed to be immature and annoying and obnoxious, but what works in a manga panel that you can read through in around 12 seconds becomes borderline unplayable in a video game when you need to navigate him through a hallway and he frequently stops in place to have screaming fits. When creating a licensed game it is imperative that developers know exactly what won’t translate well to a video game. I am baffled that CC2 decided that a character that is intended to be insufferable should have two scripted segments where he annoys you cause of misplaced authenticity, this could have been replaced by something actually fun like Inosuke shoulder charging through walls, but that would probably cost too much money.

Combat is thankfully enjoyable. It’s even more simplified than the Storm series was but that’s not a bad thing as pure spectacle is the goal here. Unlike the storm games matches aren’t absolute hell on higher difficulties due to substitution spam being non existent. Chaining infinite combos is impossible thanks to a smart blow back timer that expires after around 4 seconds, and you have to weigh the risks of calling in your tag partner to rescue you from a combo as it will use up both of their assist slots and put you at a disadvantage for around 10 seconds.

Damage scaling is also incredibly well done, once your combo hits around 15 you start doing chip damage, you can either make the most of this by chaining your ult after hit stun, or use your forward special to build even more meter for a boost or another ult, or your neutral special to send them flying so you can recharge your energy. The flow of matches is incredibly fast thanks to no substitution spam, and the risk of boosting and surging for a somewhat glass canon approach with super armour, or playing it safe to chain an alt is very thrilling.

You do have a smash bros style panel unlock system in that you can either spend points to unlock stuff like music tracks, online profile banners and the like early, or you can collect exclamation points and get high ranks in story mode fights to unlock them at no charge, this would be a fine mechanic if the main way of grinding points wasn’t online matches, as I can attest at the time of writing this, the servers are completely dead. I tried searching during peak hours in my timezone, and late at night for people in Asia and Europe, and still found no one. While there is a good offline fail safe for unlocking stuff, the tedium sets in fast if you choose either method.

If you bought the digital deluxe edition, you would be gifted 8k, I highly recommend spending that on the two stages on chapters 8’s panel (It’s rather difficult chapter to S Rank), as characters will just be unlocked naturally and most of the stages are tied to bland generic demon matches after a chapter is completed that you can mop up later with OP characters like Hinokami Tanjiro.

Thankfully the game does have a good ratio of CC2’s fun boss fights. All five of them have great exaggerated tells and the reward of exploiting their openings to whittle down their health to get to the incredibly well animated QTE segments never gets old.

Rounding off the game play is two very basic rhythm mini games that are a fun novelty at first, but you’ll end up saying “fuck it” when you find out two stages are locked behind S ranking the hard versions and just want to spend points on them instead.


The visuals as expected of CC2 are outstanding. The anime’s more solid coloured and rounded designs translate to a video game perfectly. Environments do cut a few more corners with some rather basic or outright flat textures in places, but strong lighting covers up these weaknesses unless you really look for them. The series iconic elemental beams of motion look like a Ukiyo-e painting in motion, with graceful front, side and back flips making combat feel incredibly satisfying. The QTE segments look outstanding as expected, with great mixes of motion blur and quick camera cuts to convey power scaling.

Body language is also captured perfectly. Inosuke’s are wild, raw and brutish, Nezuko’s are feral and animalistic, Shinobu’s are graceful and calm etc.

Musically the game sounds almost exactly the same as the Storm series. So while you won’t remember any tracks in particular, you will enjoy the competency of the strong string sections, prominent Taiko drums and serene Shakuhachi’s


If you like Demon Slayer, you’ll get some enjoyment out of the combat and well translated feel of the characters when playing with them. As well as the strong fidelity and competent music. Unfortunately the story is a hackneyed cliff notes adaption of an already bad anime adaption of an exceptional manga. If you’ve already read the manga, this is really only worth your time if you just want to fuck around with a character in vs mode you enjoy from the first half of the story. Compared to CC2’s previous efforts, it’s incredibly cheap, and even if you really enjoy the source material, it’s an ultimately mediocre game.

5/10

Over the years I (and many others) have discarded the old notion that a game must be lengthy and packed to the brim with content to be worth playing. The DLCs for Batman Arkham Knight laugh in the face of the base game being a bloated, unfocused and bland mess with short and sweet scenarios that are at the very least worth one play through.

I always have to commend Rocksteady for masterfully portraying body language through animations, Red hood’s walking, fighting and take down animations convey him as a savage, rage filled brute who does not fuck around. Jason Todd’s pure ruthless nature leads to brutal neck snaps, pistol whips and hip firing his dual handguns to make you feel like a savage.

The handguns can not be abused for easy victory in free flow segments thanks to them being well balanced with a long startup animation, cleverly conveying to the player that it should only be used against a charging thug, this makes Red Hood’s free flow sections slightly more difficult than Batman’s. But not impossible, as you simply have to be smart with your X presses and not mash and catch yourself getting punished with a magnetized leap towards a stun baton enemy.

Red Hood’s sole predator segment is a challenging but fair scenario. His reckless brutality will sometimes have him shooting a thug during a take down, forcing you to memorize the layout before you act. The lack of grates and the AI also making sure to search the grates addresses one of Knights biggest issues, being that the predator maps in the campaign had an abundance of them to shill the overpowered fear take down (which is thankfully absent in most of the DLC). The AI’s tendency to pair up means you’ll also be forced to strategically use your flash bang grenades to divide and conquer, as the abundance of open doors means you can’t just crouch walk and take down with out a second thought. It’s one of the best predator maps in the series, which is high praise given how great they generally are sans base Arkham Knight.

Unfortunately the poor Boss fights that plague Knight once again rear their ugly head here. The Black Mask boss fight is nothing more than just beating up his thugs till a Y button prompt shows up every 20-40 seconds, then whacking LT and repeating. I was truly hoping for a predator segment where you would have to outsmart him ala the MR freeze fight in City and Origins, but sadly Rocksteady decided to take the low effort option to cap off what is otherwise a good DLC.

The visuals are as outstanding as always, Red Hood’s hood sways and shakes subtly depending on how fast you are moving, the scratches and scuff marks on his chest plate show plenty of detail, and the rain effects and dark lighting contribute to a killer brooding atmosphere.

The music is rehashed from the main game once again, the continued lack of music that could fit the theming of each character continues to be a big mistake, as the same tired high energy string sections get old fast.

The story isn’t anything special but it gets the job done, Red Hood sets out to kill Black mask and does exactly that. In the few cut scenes the DLC provides, Red Hood finds what he is looking for and then kills his targets to make sure he leaves no loose ends. The final scene where black mask begs for his life, and you assume Jason might spare him, since you may have done this many times as Batman, only for Jason to kick him out of a window with out a second thought, excellently portrays the callous no nonsense lethality of the character.


There’s a lot to enjoy with the Red Hood DLC, two solid game play segments, fantastic visuals and great character writing carry the ten minute plot very well, though the continued mediocre music and terrible boss fight leave much to be desired.

7/10.