A mini essay reflection disguised as a too generous review of a simple fun game:

House of the Dead 2 is not an insanely interesting game in the grand scheme of the history of planet Earth.
Taking together every corner that has currently been explored by the medium, quite frankly
the novely of this game to me that makes it addicting is that it strips away a lot of the
extra flair of multiple hits, machine guns, etc. that overtook the light-gun genre for precise aiming and intense moments
where very literally saving a person changes the way you move through the game. It's not even
remotely as good as Resident Evil 4 but I'm not gonna pretend like it doesn't at least get
into that ballpark in my opinion. When I play this game it reminds me of idk Trigun or Hellsing
like you gotta just be quick and precise or else you're screwed it's as simple as that
but sometimes that's all you need to have fun.

It's strange since I've been a solitary mostly-JRPG person for most of my life but I just keep going
to arcades lately, I think because now that I'm living on my own and I've never gone to an actual
GOOD arcade that doesn't have iOS-esc games it just seems very unique that I can stop by some
machines that are very literally 20+ years old but still fun.
Anyways because of this specific aspect of the medium where people can
walk by, play the games themselves, and such it creates an entirely different dynamic that I've sort of touched
upon in my Pac-Mania review. I'm certain back when arcades were popular that this was some people's only form of
video game discussion long before the dream of transmitting opinions over networks even existed in the public
conscious.

Ever since beating Metal Slug X with infinite credits on my Nintendo Switch I developed a habit of just trying to have a "perfect run" where I go as far as I can
with one credit over and over again just to keep getting good and to hopefully finish a game in a single run. I guess this is how arcade games
are supposed to be played but obviously there's the other end of just putting money in to keep going:
skill vs cash the age old conflict I guess. While going through House of the Dead 2 I had a very bizarre
situation occur where as I was playing this game I saw in the reflection of the game's screen that an old man
in a United States Punisher sweater was standing right behind me. I can't really count how many times
I stopped by to play this game after work but it was just something I did for fun and I wanted to beat it someday
so here I was, going through the first stage motions really. I was doing very well this round to say the
least, getting every head shot (sometimes that's not even enough to get regular zombies down this game is that picky lol),
and I saved a couple of people but this man stood very still directly behind me and I kept seeing him in the screen. I waited and kept going
through the game, I was curious what he would say but he just stood there looking at me and the game. In this
game where very literally the main character somehow knows IN A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE that some random bloodstain
belonged to a guy only known as "G" this old man standing behind me just watched and barely moved like he was seeing something. Legitimate
fear spread through my body and I made the decision to purposefully lose the round and immediately bolt away,
afraid of whatever he was going to say to me and going out of the building into my car where I drove all the way home (lol).
Part of me debated about even making this review but I feel like part of my proof of "hey this game is kind of fun
and an intense zombie experience" would have to go into the fact that this rando in LITERALLY A PUNISHER SWEATER
was looking at me breezing through the game like I was in VR training when this is the kind of video game
where they couldn't even seriously deliver the line "I'm sorry there was nothing we could do".
It's just strange, you can't even have a good time without projecting or being projected onto and video games
very much have always had this problem yet I've heard the opinionated statement "Fortnite makes people violent" uttered aloud
by an older adult. I think I've seen people throw around the phrase "that's violent" or "that can make people violent" for media more than
I've seen people address legitimate signs of violence, it's always some form of dehumanizing and never the real solution
most of the time isn't it. Obviously this is all coming from my biased perspective but I've met my fair share of people
who unreasonably have thrown this at me or others even in this age where video games aren't as new as they once were when
titles like Doom and Mortal Kombat were dropping so I just felt like I had to come here and I guess put my piece here, it's
something the medium has and will keep dealing with but it's a subject that has been misguided by bad actors or people who just don't care.

House of the Dead 2 is goofy fun. There's nothing much besides that when you look at it.

Nioh 2 isn't another dark souls cheap copy, this game does a lot on its own that makes the game unique and more interesting to play.

Story and Setting:
Nioh 2 is actually a prequel to the first Nioh but it takes place in similar times as its predecessor. The end of Sengoku period and the beggining of the Edo period, what I love is that this game is constantly reffering to the actual Japanesse history and its even kinda based on it with our main character Hideyoshi not being 1:1 historic one, but based on real Hideyoshi. Story follows the fate of a half yokai half human who travels with a merchant seeking to become someone "big", well in short. Story telling is mostly based on consequent cutscenes, we learn the backstory of every major character by "seeing through" their guardian spirit. Like in most of the soulslike genre productions this game also isnt really story focused so the plot might not stick out. But I assure you its not boring and if you like japanesse culture you will most certainly like it.
Worldbuilding is okay, nothing too crazy but still very solid. Basically we can learn the story of the place by solely looking at it or overhearing a dialogue between a couple of enemies. For example we come to destroyed, raided by bandits town and we know it because we see the bandits, we hear what they talk about and we walk through the ruins of the demolished town.

Characters:
Well like i said earlier its a soulslike game so the authors didnt pay too much attention to the characters, and we can already see it beacuse our main characters is literally mute...I personally didnt like that idea. The deuteragonist or main villain is a one person and its our first friend Tokichiro he is seduced by power and becomes evil in short, but later after we killed him twice he yet comes back to life again for this time to redeem his guilt.
Another important character is Mumyo, well she was supposed to be important but really is she? I didnt really find her interesting, she was a yokai hunter but after coming in contact with a good yokai (that being us) she grew to like us and became more emotionally stable.
Oh and lets give a shout to the phenomenal character creation system. Im gonna be honest I havent seen such detailed character creator in a long time, it is truly great.

Gameplay:
Concept of gameplay in this game is really simple, it's based on a soulslike system where enemies respawn after you die, there are checkpoints to be unlocked, killing enemies grant you exp to level up and after finishing every "location" there is a boss. Gameplay is pretty linear, I mean every mission's core is the same: go forward --> unlock shortcut --> go forward.. and repeat till the boss comes, you kill the boss and move to the next location. It would seem boring right? But its really not, combat system is what makes this game so much better. They give you the choice to pick two weapons out of like 10 or something. Every weapon has its own different moveset on every different position (there are 3 positions to every weapon). You can combo it however you want, every weapon has its own skill tree. There is also magic abilities and ninjutsu which would seem useless like in most of games but not this time, even if you play sword centered build magic will be usefull i can guarantee you. The variety of builds and skills and their usage is abstract. Whats more you have your yokai powers that come from your guardian spirit which you can choose on your own and you also have your yokai skills that you drop from the enemies and can also rotate them however you please. I havent even got to the armour yet.. There are tons of different armours with its own stats and sub-stats, when you dont like them you can forge or find new and etc. you can make literally your perfect build. What I dont like about this is the amount of it..I mean the loot drops from every mob in the game and after one "mission" your equipment is stacked with items, yes of course you can just quick sell them but the level scalling exists in this game so you should double check them since they are probably higher level than yours and who knows if they wont be better? (they will). I should also mention that this game has its own stamina mechanic - in this game called "Ki". Ki allows you to restore some part of it after doing attacks. Its not only helpfull to improve your stamina managment skills but also to fight mobs (puryfing created by yokais areas where you are weaker). Ki is also important in leveling your character cause you can increase the amount of it or make it restore faster etc.

Mobs / Enemies:
For the game as long as Nioh 2 (I have spent 100 hours, but I did a lot of side quests) its natural that the enemies will be repetitive and I didnt really mind that because even the weakest mob in the game "Gaki" has like 5 different attacks. Mini bosses are either really hard or super easy, for example foes like: "Karasu Tengu" or "Magatsu Warrior" can be really tricky and killed me a lot of times but at the other hand we have the monkey that only requires you to hold your block button.
The other thing I didnt like was mob/boss recycling. This game tends to use many times same bosses without even giving them any new attacks. In the end game you fight like 5 bosses that u previously killed or in almost every side quest you fight same bosses but with higher level.
Talking about bosses, I want to categorize them as: yokai bosses and human bosses. Most of human bosses were easy and died first attempt, had a lot of weaknesses and could be easily abused. At the other hand most of yokai bosses were really tough and I spent like and hour average on most of them. Couple of them had really great move-set like Ryomen Sukuna or final boss- Otakemaru but some were horribly designed like Gyuki. Not many gimick bosses and all of them looked visually crazy, designes were great.

Locations:
Even though story progression in Nioh 2 is completely linear, the locations itself are pretty well designed. Tons of verticality and shortcuts, rewarding player for looting with hiding some lootbox, hidden special loot or kodama (something like a perk upgrade). Some places were corrupted with the dark realm. Dark realm is like a domain for yokaias where they are a lot stronger and you are weaker, they are pretty big and can be purified by deafiting responsible for it enemy, most of times you can avoid it but you can take the risk and win some lootboxes when you defeat all of the foes. There is also a lot of tombstones of fallen warriors, you can summon and fight them to win some extra loot. Sumarizing lociatons are pretty, well designed and worth to explore, I'd say there are great.

Visual & Audio:
There are 3 modes in the game, I played with the middle one where you have what i believe was 60fps and decent looking graphic, you can also choose 120fps but low quality graphic and great looking graphic but 30fps. Cutscenes are well made, faces look realistic and they are fluid. I havent had any lag issues, crushes or any significant glitches, game was really taken care of. Moving to soundtrack, I found couple of tracks I liked but most of them are really boring, just playing same sequence for the entire mission, often not matching with current mood. I think it sometimes would be better off silent tbh. Boss soundtracks were also kinda average, nothing crazy. In my opionon soundtrack in this game is the aspect that could have been definitely done better (especially that this game is taking place in feudal Japan).

Final thoughts:
Nioh 2 is something more than a stepping stone from Dark Souls. An ambitious game with its own idea, very interesting and complex combat system and a nice historical underlie. Its a prequel but story from Nioh 2 crosses paths with the story of Nioh 1 so I would recommend to play Nioh 1 first but its not required. Locations and mobs are well designed, story is quite good even tho its not story focused game. Audio-visualy this game is decent, soundtracks are mostly boring but graphics are pretty good. Has some weaknesses like spamming loot or being really repetetive, linear and too long, still this game is great and its worth playing it if you like soulslikes and feudal japan.

Strenghts: locations, mobs/bosses, combat system, atmosphere, setting, mechanics

Weaknesses: length, repetitiveness (bosses, locations, etc.), soundtrack, characters (keep in mind its a soulslike!), side quests

Is the parry mechanic the most satisfying thing in gaming? It might be for me.
Sifu takes this and it's little brother the dodge mechanic and makes the kung fu game that us parry nerds have always wanted.
Tough enemies that are "learnable" makes the gameplay loop into visual storytelling process. I felt like a filmmaker trying to choreograph the most perfect and dramatic fight scenes. The "imma boss" factor goes through the roof after only a few playthroughs and my lizard brain was sparking!
Level design is smart and inventive. The shortcuts prevented the reruns getting boring without kneecapping the sense of scale.
There are some naughty bits though. Mrs Museum Boss's first phase: in the bin with you. The dodge window seemed miniscule and memorizing her patterns is almost impossible when they all look the same.
In general, a pet hate of mine is unblockable attacks having no indicators that they are unblockable. "Just learn the ones that are unblockable" you say? Well I just assume i'm "doing it wrong", missing the window or mistiming, so...no i won't learn them, dick.
Sure I should assume a huge roundhouse kick is unblockable but I want to believe my character does something awesome if I pull it off. The disappointment differential (TM me) becomes huge as I was expecting brilliance and literally got kicked in the teeth.

TLDR: more games should let you unlock a "punch in the balls" move.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Vaya puta obra maestra, todo lo que sea ve en los juegos anteriores, todos los personajes, la historia, etc. tiene un punto final aquí.

El mejor final de toda la saga y mi juego favorito de la saga.

(10/10)

Me ha flipado.