sadbear
2013
this is the first thing i'm logging here and that's fucking hilarious
the game slaps but is marred by the shit that everybody wouldn't shut the fuck up about on released even though it really doesn't make the game bad
its fallout is primarily a problem of marketing and Ninja Theory being told to do exactly what they did: make a DMC game that also wasn't a DMC game
as a result you get an extremely wild game with a bleh plot and a thick layer of grime that mostly doesn't work in the game's favor
which hey, every DMC that isn't 2 has two of those so if it plays good then i'm good
thankfully this does, and it has what i'm gonna call the coolest to look at boss fight in the series
and it's you fighting a fox news anchor lmao
it's also generally a lot more fun to navigate than the other games because of its commitment to Limbo being this "you get to see cool shit happen constantly now" fun zone
primarily the game is held back by its characters generally sucking
dante is annoying at first and grows into being Perfectly Fine, kat is also Perfectly Fine and vergil kinda sucks given how he is in the rest of the games (that goes for his fight at the end, it's the game's worst boss just because it mostly relies on a parry mechanic that is really finnicky and not fun to pull off)
your main antagonist being businessman joe rogan and diet vergil sniping a baby is funny though i'll give the game that
the trashy elements sometimes work (the fuck you bit with the succubus is great idk why people made fun of that on release) but they're obnoxiously straight forward in their commentary and don't do much for me personally
when the game gets creative with it is when it works
the demon baby fight is absolutely grotesque
i think if this game got a sequel the narrative issues would have been fixed since a lot of this has first game in what's totally gonna be a series guys i promise syndrome
ultimately i am glad that it didn't get one because we ended up with DMC 5, but at the same time Ninja Theory really deserved better
thank god hellblade went along well
if you've written this game off because it's the series black sheep outside of the other black sheep that actually sucks major ass i'd really give it a shot
it runs on toasters and looks absolutely incredible while doing it
just wish pc got the definitive edition but it's not entirely necessary i guess
2013 really was a year of games being lookers wasn't it?
the game slaps but is marred by the shit that everybody wouldn't shut the fuck up about on released even though it really doesn't make the game bad
its fallout is primarily a problem of marketing and Ninja Theory being told to do exactly what they did: make a DMC game that also wasn't a DMC game
as a result you get an extremely wild game with a bleh plot and a thick layer of grime that mostly doesn't work in the game's favor
which hey, every DMC that isn't 2 has two of those so if it plays good then i'm good
thankfully this does, and it has what i'm gonna call the coolest to look at boss fight in the series
and it's you fighting a fox news anchor lmao
it's also generally a lot more fun to navigate than the other games because of its commitment to Limbo being this "you get to see cool shit happen constantly now" fun zone
primarily the game is held back by its characters generally sucking
dante is annoying at first and grows into being Perfectly Fine, kat is also Perfectly Fine and vergil kinda sucks given how he is in the rest of the games (that goes for his fight at the end, it's the game's worst boss just because it mostly relies on a parry mechanic that is really finnicky and not fun to pull off)
your main antagonist being businessman joe rogan and diet vergil sniping a baby is funny though i'll give the game that
the trashy elements sometimes work (the fuck you bit with the succubus is great idk why people made fun of that on release) but they're obnoxiously straight forward in their commentary and don't do much for me personally
when the game gets creative with it is when it works
the demon baby fight is absolutely grotesque
i think if this game got a sequel the narrative issues would have been fixed since a lot of this has first game in what's totally gonna be a series guys i promise syndrome
ultimately i am glad that it didn't get one because we ended up with DMC 5, but at the same time Ninja Theory really deserved better
thank god hellblade went along well
if you've written this game off because it's the series black sheep outside of the other black sheep that actually sucks major ass i'd really give it a shot
it runs on toasters and looks absolutely incredible while doing it
just wish pc got the definitive edition but it's not entirely necessary i guess
2013 really was a year of games being lookers wasn't it?
2015
This review contains spoilers
i have played this game at least once a year since its release
i played it very close to when it dropped and loved it instantly
for most of this span on time i considered it my favorite game, even if there were other games i give that title to that i thought were better in pure technical terms
not that i really give a shit about quantifying that kinda thing, ratings are arbitrary and ultimately useless outside of a buyer beware context
which i think is, also, kinda defunct at this point given that most people learn about games from their favorite internet people playing them
but that's another topic
this game continues to mean a lot to me, but as i get older and as i continue to come back to it my fervor for its qualities have tempered into me just thinking it's a really solid game that's interesting to talk about
simple shit first: it's a fun, relatively short rpg made by one dude and yadda yadda you know how this game plays man don't lie to me
it's solid! very competent and consistently creative in its usage of its straight forward mechanics
most of what is interesting about this game lies outside of its gameplay core
toby fox wears his influences on his sleeves and is completely unapologetic in doing so
i think this shamelessness is the game's biggest strength, that it is exactly what it is and wants to be
that's the benefit of a solo dev project: it's a one on one conversation and those are often the most meaningful
it's mother, it's touhou, it's homestuck
it's an internet baby made by an internet baby
other projects bear their hearts and can fail given that this endearment is contextual
you gotta have the security to vibe with that kinda thing and i absolutely do
but it being self aware of what things people will levy against it, and ultimately saying "i don't give a fuck" while being one of the most charming and funny games you can play is why this game hit like it did
it will win you over, it won me over h a r d
even when it does a few things that i kinda hate?
it has a tone problem, not always but in a couple specific cases that i take issue with but also don't
it's complicated, because
when the game shitposts about its "primary antagonist" actually being an idiot fluffball that didn't want to hurt anyone and in the process skipping over the fact that this guy is absolutely a child murderer and the only person holding him accountable is his ex wife
it's honestly a good punchline
when the game sympathizes with its anime weeb dork that hates herself for, frankly, very good reason given that you eventually learn she's responsible for the most explicit horror section in the game [fucked up abominations that were once people, but are now reduced to pets that she has to take care of and keep hidden lest somebody hold her accountable for these (while unintended fuck ups) crimes against humanity] because what she did is actually perfectly fine since nobody really gives a shit that their family members are flesh puppets
it's, also, in full honestly, a good punchline
were these meant to be that? partially, but mostly i think this game wants to inspire the player to just be kind and let every character you meet have their happy ending
this is where the meta textual element comes into play, easily the game's most impressive feat
that it has the confidence to be this charming and fun to play while actively begging you to just
never replay it, never engage with the game's alternate playthrough with a more consistent tone, never go through the game's best boss fights and hear some of the game's best music
of course, this is a fucking video game, these people are not real and i will do as i please
so i have indeed killed them all, more than once, and i probably will again in the future
the game knowing that people will do this and taking THOSE consequences so deadly serious to the point of leaving a mark of your transgressions at the end of every playthrough you do after (unless you know where the save edits are which aren't hard to find lol) makes those previous complaints i levied stand out a bit more to me
why doesn't the story give the two characters that really do need to be held accountable for their actions that same gravity? i already said why but also why?
this is a problem that deltarune as it is currently also suffers from, that it wants you to
above all else
like its characters and laugh at the shit they have to say
to not really take the actions of its characters seriously even though it also wants you to do that for the sake of drama until it decides drama doesn't matter
yet it always
always
takes what you do seriously, it's a double standard that does make sense
in most games the strongest and most important character is the player themself and metal gear solid nier spec ops the line pathologic inscryption other games that do that
i think that ultimately why i've fallen out of my deep love of this game because i've played all those games and they do this schtick way better
except when it comes to the aspect of you replaying the game (except maybe nier i really should finish it)
that's undertale's ultimate success
it takes its own fandom (before there even was one) into account and tells you, explicitly, that you are meant to play it and let it go
to not obsess over every little detail because these characters that you like a lot don't deserve to have their lives be reset for your own sake
that's the entire point of asriel wait fuck flowey
not that this has stopped people from doing just that because
like i said before
this is a video game, it's software and these people don't exist
and that's kinda terrifying in a way
i guess, i was laughing at the unlimited hot dog stack
damn took two pages of shitty writing that i did one draft of to just say undertale's good because it clearly and evidently is
if you for some god forsaken reason haven't played it please do
you too may be able to just spit some bullshit about about one of the most well known indie releases period!
i played it very close to when it dropped and loved it instantly
for most of this span on time i considered it my favorite game, even if there were other games i give that title to that i thought were better in pure technical terms
not that i really give a shit about quantifying that kinda thing, ratings are arbitrary and ultimately useless outside of a buyer beware context
which i think is, also, kinda defunct at this point given that most people learn about games from their favorite internet people playing them
but that's another topic
this game continues to mean a lot to me, but as i get older and as i continue to come back to it my fervor for its qualities have tempered into me just thinking it's a really solid game that's interesting to talk about
simple shit first: it's a fun, relatively short rpg made by one dude and yadda yadda you know how this game plays man don't lie to me
it's solid! very competent and consistently creative in its usage of its straight forward mechanics
most of what is interesting about this game lies outside of its gameplay core
toby fox wears his influences on his sleeves and is completely unapologetic in doing so
i think this shamelessness is the game's biggest strength, that it is exactly what it is and wants to be
that's the benefit of a solo dev project: it's a one on one conversation and those are often the most meaningful
it's mother, it's touhou, it's homestuck
it's an internet baby made by an internet baby
other projects bear their hearts and can fail given that this endearment is contextual
you gotta have the security to vibe with that kinda thing and i absolutely do
but it being self aware of what things people will levy against it, and ultimately saying "i don't give a fuck" while being one of the most charming and funny games you can play is why this game hit like it did
it will win you over, it won me over h a r d
even when it does a few things that i kinda hate?
it has a tone problem, not always but in a couple specific cases that i take issue with but also don't
it's complicated, because
when the game shitposts about its "primary antagonist" actually being an idiot fluffball that didn't want to hurt anyone and in the process skipping over the fact that this guy is absolutely a child murderer and the only person holding him accountable is his ex wife
it's honestly a good punchline
when the game sympathizes with its anime weeb dork that hates herself for, frankly, very good reason given that you eventually learn she's responsible for the most explicit horror section in the game [fucked up abominations that were once people, but are now reduced to pets that she has to take care of and keep hidden lest somebody hold her accountable for these (while unintended fuck ups) crimes against humanity] because what she did is actually perfectly fine since nobody really gives a shit that their family members are flesh puppets
it's, also, in full honestly, a good punchline
were these meant to be that? partially, but mostly i think this game wants to inspire the player to just be kind and let every character you meet have their happy ending
this is where the meta textual element comes into play, easily the game's most impressive feat
that it has the confidence to be this charming and fun to play while actively begging you to just
never replay it, never engage with the game's alternate playthrough with a more consistent tone, never go through the game's best boss fights and hear some of the game's best music
of course, this is a fucking video game, these people are not real and i will do as i please
so i have indeed killed them all, more than once, and i probably will again in the future
the game knowing that people will do this and taking THOSE consequences so deadly serious to the point of leaving a mark of your transgressions at the end of every playthrough you do after (unless you know where the save edits are which aren't hard to find lol) makes those previous complaints i levied stand out a bit more to me
why doesn't the story give the two characters that really do need to be held accountable for their actions that same gravity? i already said why but also why?
this is a problem that deltarune as it is currently also suffers from, that it wants you to
above all else
like its characters and laugh at the shit they have to say
to not really take the actions of its characters seriously even though it also wants you to do that for the sake of drama until it decides drama doesn't matter
yet it always
always
takes what you do seriously, it's a double standard that does make sense
in most games the strongest and most important character is the player themself and metal gear solid nier spec ops the line pathologic inscryption other games that do that
i think that ultimately why i've fallen out of my deep love of this game because i've played all those games and they do this schtick way better
except when it comes to the aspect of you replaying the game (except maybe nier i really should finish it)
that's undertale's ultimate success
it takes its own fandom (before there even was one) into account and tells you, explicitly, that you are meant to play it and let it go
to not obsess over every little detail because these characters that you like a lot don't deserve to have their lives be reset for your own sake
that's the entire point of asriel wait fuck flowey
not that this has stopped people from doing just that because
like i said before
this is a video game, it's software and these people don't exist
and that's kinda terrifying in a way
i guess, i was laughing at the unlimited hot dog stack
damn took two pages of shitty writing that i did one draft of to just say undertale's good because it clearly and evidently is
if you for some god forsaken reason haven't played it please do
you too may be able to just spit some bullshit about about one of the most well known indie releases period!
2022
this is one of the best survival horror games period
resident evil's tight level design and strict inventory management
silent hill's puzzles, abstraction, sadness and brutal soundscape
dead space's utilitarian blood and steel
all wrapped in an art style that evokes the snes as much as it does the ps1
its influences reach much further than video games, however, being allusions and direct references to shit that requires homework (an important symbol is a copy of the king in yellow)
but also things that don't: ghost in the shell looms very, very heavily over this project
signalis represents the strength of the phrase "old but new," being a take on many different established properties that coalesce into something truly unique
it being so artistically cohesive, so polished and having absolutely no filler in anything it does is the result of an impressive effort by just two amazing devs and their musical collaborators
i have basically nothing but praise for this game
it eludes my all time favorites: actively playing it moment to moment is absolutely great but with most survival horror games encouraging replays it's somewhat disappointing that the best one released since re2make has me playing it twice and having my fill
but this is a very specific complaint because i'm autistic and like me some residence bad
it's also really gay
you will play this game, this is a threat
resident evil's tight level design and strict inventory management
silent hill's puzzles, abstraction, sadness and brutal soundscape
dead space's utilitarian blood and steel
all wrapped in an art style that evokes the snes as much as it does the ps1
its influences reach much further than video games, however, being allusions and direct references to shit that requires homework (an important symbol is a copy of the king in yellow)
but also things that don't: ghost in the shell looms very, very heavily over this project
signalis represents the strength of the phrase "old but new," being a take on many different established properties that coalesce into something truly unique
it being so artistically cohesive, so polished and having absolutely no filler in anything it does is the result of an impressive effort by just two amazing devs and their musical collaborators
i have basically nothing but praise for this game
it eludes my all time favorites: actively playing it moment to moment is absolutely great but with most survival horror games encouraging replays it's somewhat disappointing that the best one released since re2make has me playing it twice and having my fill
but this is a very specific complaint because i'm autistic and like me some residence bad
it's also really gay
you will play this game, this is a threat
this game's only real weakness is that the gameplay is mostly alright and i think the song that leads into the credits sounds like shit, but even so i dig the game's combat in spite of its jank
in every other category the game is firing on all cylinders
this game looks amazing, so damn good that low quality animations, assets clipping in some cutscenes and a l o t of low quality textures don't really dent any of it
the achievement that is senua's face has only been topped by cutscenes in the last of us part 2 for me and this came out six years ago
the game sounds even better
i complained about the credits song but that is quite literally the only sound element i can think of that isn't a total ten
when it says "play with headphones" you really do need to play the game that way - a lot of work was done to make this game's soundscape be the way it is and i'd argue it's mandatory
speaking of
i think it's difficult to make a game where your primary character is straight suffering from something like psychosis and it not feel at least somewhat exploitative, but i have a very
very hard time believing anybody on staff had a bad bone in their body about it
i am not someone who has to deal with psychosis so my voice here doesn't matter, but since i'm giving this game a star rating
so by the nature of this textual exchange, you are asking my opinion on it
this feels incredibly tasteful and at least indicative enough of the symptoms of the condition that i've seen well more than a couple people who do deal with it and say "i really relate to this shit"
while the game's disturbing elements specifically relate to psychosis and how that can fuck with the brain
the game never says that psychosis itself is a nightmare
it's more just that the world senua lives in, how traumatized she is has made her condition as severe as it is
and the game's never 100% clear that the things happening on screen are completely non-literal, which is a very good thing since it gives the devs a little wiggle room in how they gamified this
intent would not have saved ninja theory if they botched the execution but i don't think they did at all
the game's commitment to single takes and never breaking from senua's perspective, how mixed media elements are incorporated, the fucking s o u n d s c a p e dude, it all just works
it'd really, really suck if this was a shitty showcase of the condition because what's on screen is so consistently creative and impressive
something so confident and cohesive with its tone while being so technically exemplary is the kind of shit only studios like ninja theory could make
all thirteen devs that made this should definitely be proud, and so should melina jeurgens even if i'm sure she didn't have the best time playing this role
considering she was a fucking video editor and not an actress (nor did she want to be one, things kinda fell into place that way and you should look up some behind the scenes for this it's neat) before doing this, one of the more intense performances in video games
this is definitely a must play, something that's carried less by the game you're playing and more by the crafted experience you're in for
but at the same time there are some stellar game bits in this (the blindness challenge, fuck)
in every other category the game is firing on all cylinders
this game looks amazing, so damn good that low quality animations, assets clipping in some cutscenes and a l o t of low quality textures don't really dent any of it
the achievement that is senua's face has only been topped by cutscenes in the last of us part 2 for me and this came out six years ago
the game sounds even better
i complained about the credits song but that is quite literally the only sound element i can think of that isn't a total ten
when it says "play with headphones" you really do need to play the game that way - a lot of work was done to make this game's soundscape be the way it is and i'd argue it's mandatory
speaking of
i think it's difficult to make a game where your primary character is straight suffering from something like psychosis and it not feel at least somewhat exploitative, but i have a very
very hard time believing anybody on staff had a bad bone in their body about it
i am not someone who has to deal with psychosis so my voice here doesn't matter, but since i'm giving this game a star rating
so by the nature of this textual exchange, you are asking my opinion on it
this feels incredibly tasteful and at least indicative enough of the symptoms of the condition that i've seen well more than a couple people who do deal with it and say "i really relate to this shit"
while the game's disturbing elements specifically relate to psychosis and how that can fuck with the brain
the game never says that psychosis itself is a nightmare
it's more just that the world senua lives in, how traumatized she is has made her condition as severe as it is
and the game's never 100% clear that the things happening on screen are completely non-literal, which is a very good thing since it gives the devs a little wiggle room in how they gamified this
intent would not have saved ninja theory if they botched the execution but i don't think they did at all
the game's commitment to single takes and never breaking from senua's perspective, how mixed media elements are incorporated, the fucking s o u n d s c a p e dude, it all just works
it'd really, really suck if this was a shitty showcase of the condition because what's on screen is so consistently creative and impressive
something so confident and cohesive with its tone while being so technically exemplary is the kind of shit only studios like ninja theory could make
all thirteen devs that made this should definitely be proud, and so should melina jeurgens even if i'm sure she didn't have the best time playing this role
considering she was a fucking video editor and not an actress (nor did she want to be one, things kinda fell into place that way and you should look up some behind the scenes for this it's neat) before doing this, one of the more intense performances in video games
this is definitely a must play, something that's carried less by the game you're playing and more by the crafted experience you're in for
but at the same time there are some stellar game bits in this (the blindness challenge, fuck)
2015
all my ratings on here have been positive and will probably tend to be since i don't make a habit of playing pieces of shit but allow me to rectify that now since the experience of playing this is still fresh in my head
really unfortunate the way this turned out
a studio responsible for the pretty alright but technically very impressive god of war psp games ends up making a steampunk victorian era shooter with werewolves in it and failed so hard it came out the same year bloodborne did so its strongest element (its aesthetic) didn't even have a chance to fill a proper niche without getting surpassed
this game is still a looker, it's showing its age a little bit but being eight years old it's still extremely impressive
but i can't even say the entire presentation is all together because a lot of the guns sound weak as fuck
and the rest of the soundscape, voice acting included, suffers from what the rest of the game does
an overwhelming lack of creativity
i'm very okay with basic third person cover shooters if they can at least have satisfying gunplay, i'm extremely easy to please in this regard
i've 100%ed spec ops: the line of all video games, which at that point is just ignoring the best part of the game
this game just doesn't play well
none of the guns really were all that fun to use save for the ones that game lets you use the least
your arsenal is very basic and at best fulfills their stock-ness
which would, again, be fine if it FELT good which you think it would if you just see the game played and have the sound off but it really doesn't
for the most part guns lack weight and you're actively incentifized to just stay in one spot and be a passive little bitch so you can't even be dumb and risky for funsies
and the cover you take isn't even consistently reliable, there were enough times where i got shot when behind a piece of cover that i was basically stuck with that i thought to mention it here
again, easy to please, other times i wouldn't care that much
people use gears of war as a pejorative when it comes to cover shooters when that's an example of how to do this shit right, because in gears your incentives are to be constantly rotating between different pieces of cover and actually using strategy to get by (in high difficulties, which is how i played this game)
in reality this is what you should be thinking of when you hear third person cover shooter and wanna snear a little
the story is
i don't remember the details all that well, which would be because it's been a minute and i might have forgotten them if it weren't for the fact that they really, really don't matter
it starts kinda strong as a lot of in medias res do but when the game haze has a stronger plot than you there's an issue
it's basically that, but if you haven't played that also bad game it's the "i'm a military man but... huh, the military is kinda... bad... i'm a rebel now!" thing
you've seen it before
which is wild, right? this game is a steampunk shooter with fucking werewolves in it (you're playing as knights of the round table by the way, it's king arthur shit with guns) and both the most forgettable part and the worst part of the game is indeed what should be the coolest part
the werewolf fights are straight ass
when you're not knifing one you're playing the most boring kind of cat and mouse with a shotgun (hopefully) as they run at you
you shoot
you dodge their move that can obliterate you if you fuck up
you shoot again
and they fuck off
and you do that a few times before they die
the knife fights with werewolves are worse, which again what the fuck?
this is a remnant of qte boss fight season and boy howdy do i not miss that shit
it's as boring as it looks in a clip on youtube
there's not really anything more to say about this game, i don't really care about the whole cinematic video game stuff that this thing got muddied in at launch
and a game being a comfortable four hours is a selling point to me nowadays
i really didn't have high hopes for this game, i spent $10 on it at a gameshop because i had heard it was mediocre and was personally curious
and those curiosities have been rewarded before
but surprise everybody was right!
really unfortunate the way this turned out
a studio responsible for the pretty alright but technically very impressive god of war psp games ends up making a steampunk victorian era shooter with werewolves in it and failed so hard it came out the same year bloodborne did so its strongest element (its aesthetic) didn't even have a chance to fill a proper niche without getting surpassed
this game is still a looker, it's showing its age a little bit but being eight years old it's still extremely impressive
but i can't even say the entire presentation is all together because a lot of the guns sound weak as fuck
and the rest of the soundscape, voice acting included, suffers from what the rest of the game does
an overwhelming lack of creativity
i'm very okay with basic third person cover shooters if they can at least have satisfying gunplay, i'm extremely easy to please in this regard
i've 100%ed spec ops: the line of all video games, which at that point is just ignoring the best part of the game
this game just doesn't play well
none of the guns really were all that fun to use save for the ones that game lets you use the least
your arsenal is very basic and at best fulfills their stock-ness
which would, again, be fine if it FELT good which you think it would if you just see the game played and have the sound off but it really doesn't
for the most part guns lack weight and you're actively incentifized to just stay in one spot and be a passive little bitch so you can't even be dumb and risky for funsies
and the cover you take isn't even consistently reliable, there were enough times where i got shot when behind a piece of cover that i was basically stuck with that i thought to mention it here
again, easy to please, other times i wouldn't care that much
people use gears of war as a pejorative when it comes to cover shooters when that's an example of how to do this shit right, because in gears your incentives are to be constantly rotating between different pieces of cover and actually using strategy to get by (in high difficulties, which is how i played this game)
in reality this is what you should be thinking of when you hear third person cover shooter and wanna snear a little
the story is
i don't remember the details all that well, which would be because it's been a minute and i might have forgotten them if it weren't for the fact that they really, really don't matter
it starts kinda strong as a lot of in medias res do but when the game haze has a stronger plot than you there's an issue
it's basically that, but if you haven't played that also bad game it's the "i'm a military man but... huh, the military is kinda... bad... i'm a rebel now!" thing
you've seen it before
which is wild, right? this game is a steampunk shooter with fucking werewolves in it (you're playing as knights of the round table by the way, it's king arthur shit with guns) and both the most forgettable part and the worst part of the game is indeed what should be the coolest part
the werewolf fights are straight ass
when you're not knifing one you're playing the most boring kind of cat and mouse with a shotgun (hopefully) as they run at you
you shoot
you dodge their move that can obliterate you if you fuck up
you shoot again
and they fuck off
and you do that a few times before they die
the knife fights with werewolves are worse, which again what the fuck?
this is a remnant of qte boss fight season and boy howdy do i not miss that shit
it's as boring as it looks in a clip on youtube
there's not really anything more to say about this game, i don't really care about the whole cinematic video game stuff that this thing got muddied in at launch
and a game being a comfortable four hours is a selling point to me nowadays
i really didn't have high hopes for this game, i spent $10 on it at a gameshop because i had heard it was mediocre and was personally curious
and those curiosities have been rewarded before
but surprise everybody was right!
2016
"hey buddy did you like dark souls i fucking loved dark souls bloodborne too man that game's great what if we just like did that again wouldn't it be a great game?"
i mean yeah it's a pretty good game all things considered, as a certified long time souls fan i adored this game at launch
but as the years go on man has it easily aged the worst in my opinion
most areas feel like a slog to get through because enemies feel like they're bloodborne enemies and the cool thing about bloodborne was that you had a lot more movement options and more ways to actually recover from making a mistake
which in these games, mistakes are very easy to make - it's the name of the game, it's the reason these games get referred to as some of the most difficult ever
when in reality they just play by a different ruleset than most games and they really expect you to play by those rules
in this game, you're still operating on the rules set by ds1 but the enemies aren't
as a result you're gonna get fucked up more
it's hard to say that this game is explicitly harder than the other ones as much as it's just more annoying to deal with the way this game is difficult
see, what if we just had like the most punishing form of health regression upon death in the series?
like yeah demon's souls halved your hp but the game was kinda built around it, if you never turned human you could still do fine in that game
and yeah you can get to lower health values in ds2 but the chance of that happening is a lot less likely than the chance of you getting stuck in an area or on a boss and just having no more embers to use in this game
and the game is comical with its bonfire placement, there are areas where i was actively thinking "man i wish there was a bonfire closer to this fucking fog wall" meanwhile i kill the exact boss i'm thinking that with, rest at the bonfire, and walk a few yards before hitting yet another bonfire
the interconnectedness is definitely in swing here, it's better than ds2 in that regard, but the end result is that sometimes boss runs are really fucking annoying just because of how easy it is to get merced by some of the enemies in the game
because yes, just like bloodborne these enemies will often take significantly more hits than their counterparts in ds1 and ds2
it's just more of a slog to get through this game
and i'd give the areas here more grace if they weren't, for the most part, just boring to navigate
the only areas i really like are the first couple
and i've SEEN all of this before, sometimes literally, which is a shame to say given how much detail is in this game's assets
that repetition appropriate, but in moment to moment gameplay the only thing i really look forward to when playing this game are the boss fights
for the most part the bosses in this are great, i think this has some of the best fights in the series
it's the reason to ever really go back to this game for me
gael is my favorite souls fight period, i love everything about him - espcially thematically
this carries the series tradition of not being perfect in that regard either, but even in the element of the game that's its strongest i still take issue with how this game specifically handles it
because MAN do they love bosses having multiple phases, even if it's not necessary
why the fuck does nameless king have this stupid fucking dragon i gotta kill every time to get to the good part that's really hard so you're gonna die a lot and have to repeat this first part a billion times and get annoyed to shit because it's slow and hard to hit sometimes?
are you noticing the pattern of this game just having more annoying gameplay choices than the others? that's saying something since ds2 isn't exactly a saint in this regard
but hey, this is still a soulsbourne game, so it's still got from's attention to detail and, frankly, bold story telling choices
i say bold because in the face of easily the most derivative game they've made in all the years of making this kind of game
including how it circles back on itself and ignores the interesting elements of ds2's narrative
they make that narratively important, this world being a cyclical nightmare that just really needs to fucking end is front and center
the final boss of the entire souls series ends with absolutely no fan fare, you kill him and he dies leaving you trapped in the wastelands at the end of the world
loitering on top of ash dunes that've buried a world whose end was collapsing in on itself
that's just the souls way baby
even in the most boring and, frankly, consistently annoying to play game in this series you're still left with a very solid action rpg that's thematically potent if you give it the time of day
the three stars is just because it really, really got on my nerves
i mean yeah it's a pretty good game all things considered, as a certified long time souls fan i adored this game at launch
but as the years go on man has it easily aged the worst in my opinion
most areas feel like a slog to get through because enemies feel like they're bloodborne enemies and the cool thing about bloodborne was that you had a lot more movement options and more ways to actually recover from making a mistake
which in these games, mistakes are very easy to make - it's the name of the game, it's the reason these games get referred to as some of the most difficult ever
when in reality they just play by a different ruleset than most games and they really expect you to play by those rules
in this game, you're still operating on the rules set by ds1 but the enemies aren't
as a result you're gonna get fucked up more
it's hard to say that this game is explicitly harder than the other ones as much as it's just more annoying to deal with the way this game is difficult
see, what if we just had like the most punishing form of health regression upon death in the series?
like yeah demon's souls halved your hp but the game was kinda built around it, if you never turned human you could still do fine in that game
and yeah you can get to lower health values in ds2 but the chance of that happening is a lot less likely than the chance of you getting stuck in an area or on a boss and just having no more embers to use in this game
and the game is comical with its bonfire placement, there are areas where i was actively thinking "man i wish there was a bonfire closer to this fucking fog wall" meanwhile i kill the exact boss i'm thinking that with, rest at the bonfire, and walk a few yards before hitting yet another bonfire
the interconnectedness is definitely in swing here, it's better than ds2 in that regard, but the end result is that sometimes boss runs are really fucking annoying just because of how easy it is to get merced by some of the enemies in the game
because yes, just like bloodborne these enemies will often take significantly more hits than their counterparts in ds1 and ds2
it's just more of a slog to get through this game
and i'd give the areas here more grace if they weren't, for the most part, just boring to navigate
the only areas i really like are the first couple
and i've SEEN all of this before, sometimes literally, which is a shame to say given how much detail is in this game's assets
that repetition appropriate, but in moment to moment gameplay the only thing i really look forward to when playing this game are the boss fights
for the most part the bosses in this are great, i think this has some of the best fights in the series
it's the reason to ever really go back to this game for me
gael is my favorite souls fight period, i love everything about him - espcially thematically
this carries the series tradition of not being perfect in that regard either, but even in the element of the game that's its strongest i still take issue with how this game specifically handles it
because MAN do they love bosses having multiple phases, even if it's not necessary
why the fuck does nameless king have this stupid fucking dragon i gotta kill every time to get to the good part that's really hard so you're gonna die a lot and have to repeat this first part a billion times and get annoyed to shit because it's slow and hard to hit sometimes?
are you noticing the pattern of this game just having more annoying gameplay choices than the others? that's saying something since ds2 isn't exactly a saint in this regard
but hey, this is still a soulsbourne game, so it's still got from's attention to detail and, frankly, bold story telling choices
i say bold because in the face of easily the most derivative game they've made in all the years of making this kind of game
including how it circles back on itself and ignores the interesting elements of ds2's narrative
they make that narratively important, this world being a cyclical nightmare that just really needs to fucking end is front and center
the final boss of the entire souls series ends with absolutely no fan fare, you kill him and he dies leaving you trapped in the wastelands at the end of the world
loitering on top of ash dunes that've buried a world whose end was collapsing in on itself
that's just the souls way baby
even in the most boring and, frankly, consistently annoying to play game in this series you're still left with a very solid action rpg that's thematically potent if you give it the time of day
the three stars is just because it really, really got on my nerves
2005
this is about the campaign
i miss how fucking simple cod used to be
this game has no pretense of a story or any semblance of a connecting narrative beyond you playing through somewhat chronological vignettes
and that to me is peak cod single player content because when they try and tell a story it's very frequently not good
even the original modern warfare has a story that isn't very good and blows its load half way through and then coasts on a typical american military thriller plot that on paper is really fucking boring
but i still love that game, i am unfortunately a massive cod enjoyer
like a lot of people my age i grew up with this shit and this game specifically always stuck out to me even after playing later games and their improved gamefeel
the success of call of duty is that it nailed /that/ gamefeel in 2007 and has just been that ever since
even in entries which seek to massively change how movement feels (you know, the ones that ripped titanfall off), the core has at worst been consistent and at best is the entries post new modern warfare
i have a lot of problems with those games (at least mw1 and 2 which are the ones i've played), primarily that they're the most blatant examples of how this series has been a weirdo psy op for years
but the foundational mechanics and how it feels to do anything in those games is absolutely fucking sublime
easily the best call of duty has ever felt to play
but it definitely feels like call of duty
this is the game that infinity ward made right before they really figured out what call of duty was going to be going forward (i didn't play 3 so i can't really speak on that, seems like most people can't)
it's lacking in the pristine polish of modern warfare but in so doing is lacking in any of the narrative bullshit
the structure is reminiscent of episodic 90's/early 2000's pc shooters in that there are three campaigns representing three different military endeavors in ww2 that lack in any connective tissue beyond just being a shooter where you shoot nazis
soviets do stuff, the english do stuff (in africa for the most part, which is neat because i can't recall another ww2 shooter using that location) and americans do d-day and also stuff
once again this is no story
instead, it's characters that carry over from mission to mission
there's not very many missions, but they're all* pretty long and split into multiple levels
they don't even conclude beyond a "we did it!!!!!!" and then that part of the game is just over
while the game does have an order of events, you're also very welcome to just not follow them and instead play another campaign once it unlocks after doing a mission or two in another campaign
it's very loose with its pacing which is to say there really isn't any, it's a collection of shooter levels where you shoot people (nazis, so not really people)
most of your objectives are very straight forward, rarely are you doing anything that specifically relates to a set piece
you are a soldier who is good at being that and you are meant to go do good soldier things
that's what's so appealing about the earlier cods
it feels like history nerds wanted to make a cool shooter game that paid its respects to the boots on the ground grunts that died or nearly died fighting a fight that in some way shape or form was the "ideal battle"
a war that needed to be won, a definitive "good side" and bad side
this along with the human toll of the war is probably why ww2 fiction and nonfiction has stuck around so heavily in popular culture: it's a really important and well documented time in recent human history and it's very easy to write a story when things are a little more black and white than
say
literally every other conflict the united states has taken part
call of duty will never give the subject the true nuance it deserves but i also do not want that from call of duty
i don't think anyone really does if they thought about it
its intent was the same as the series that inspired it
(which probably isn't the right way to put it given the relationship early medal of honor and infinity ward as a company have)
and i'm perfectly okay with this simplistic hollywood neo liberal take on things because it's a video game that knows its a video game and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that
it says "man that war thing fucking sucked but there's a cool game there"
it's tasteful is what i'm saying
it doesn't really feel too disrespectful, it doesn't feel patronizing
it's the same reason why i like a movie like saving private ryan
yes, it fundamentally fails at being an anti-war work because it revels in the spectacle of the warfare thus showing itself to on some level think war is kinda cool and based actually, but because i'm fundamentally just a kind of smarter version of an ape i like the shiny
but i also respect the artists' intentions, the execution didn't come across as exploitative
this is something that cannot be said of entries past this one
so anyway as a video game that you can play and look at it's pretty damn good
call of duty kinda nailed being a solid shooter the first try and has steadily went up ever since
and two is an example of how talented infinity ward was early on when it came to making a competent shooter
if you have played call of duty this will, for the most part, feel like home
that being said there are
things
due to the game's age
the most jarring thing about the game is that there's no sprint
instead we're using counter strike rules, which is really funny because pistols are basically useless and the game rarely gives you one in a mission's starting loadout so i only realized this was a thing when i saw a big iron (the webley is not a big iron but whatever) and tried it out
once i noticed it i noticed the different speeds you get with different weapons and promptly thought "i don't really care" and never took advantage of it
or maybe i did, because most of the time i was using smgs since yes indeed this is a cod game
shoutout to every smg in this game fucking ultra hard, my favorite was ppsh which fits because the first campaign (the russian one) is the easily the best one even though i liked the rest perfectly fine
the second most jarring thing is that the game slows down like a mother fucker on 360 when you either see even a little bit of some big particle effects (so any time you or somebody else tossed a smoke) or you looked down a sniper scope
and this makes the not q u i t e there analog aiming a bit worse
not bad! just noticeably worse than when i recently went through world at war on ps3 very recently
but we had ads snapping even back in this one so it's really not that big of a deal
and man that's the only mechanical complaints i got because it's still cod baby
the pace is slower than other cods in theory but in practice it's just as hectic if not more so
constant yelling and gunfire, allies biting it left and right and it all sticking out more because you're just some dude and not Special Elite Cunt
the progression of levels is plenty scripted but they mostly rely on straight forward objectives that give you (a bit of) freedom in how you go about it
the progression is very linear, there isn't a big sand box or anything, but it's significantly less hand holdy than cod would get later on (something i'm glad they've experimented with in newer entries)
and the game does a very good job of minimizing its weaknesses
my favorite encounters were always when you had to go in and clear houses room by room, floor by floor
so when the game just says "go clear out these buildings and don't die!" the whole "wait i'm just a guy oh fuck" bit worked for me more than it does in other entries
the tricks that cod has always used to convey the chaotic spectacle of hollywood war portrayals just works way more in this context
so while this game isn't hardcore in the slightest it still manages to capture a greater sense of intensity than you'd get in
again
other cods while being the last cod campaign to have a T rating
world at war is the closest we've come to this kind of "i'm literally you" since but the game's need to be teh grim darkest of all really fucking sucks sometimes
and while this game doesn't have the same highs those other titles reach it has set pieces of its own while continuing to have no real bullshit
that's the operative and oft repeated phrase today:
no bullshit
cod 2 has a simple goal and it achieves that, it is nothing more and nothing less and that's why i like it a lot in comparison to the other games which i also do like for the most part
i wish modern entries would come back to this sense of purity but the series already came back here and it didn't quite stick the landing both times its tried since (again i never played 3 lol)
cod will never be this simple again, it will never be this tasteful in dealing with real life subjects again, it will instead be a skinner box with campaigns that are mechanically impressive for the series but continuously mired in the miasma that is totally not political dirty harry with bombs retreads
while i do enjoy cod, i do not purchase them unless it is second hand
a lot of that's because they're stupid expensive anywhere else but ya know
this review could've been a paragraph long and instead it was two and a half pages of text lmao
i miss how fucking simple cod used to be
this game has no pretense of a story or any semblance of a connecting narrative beyond you playing through somewhat chronological vignettes
and that to me is peak cod single player content because when they try and tell a story it's very frequently not good
even the original modern warfare has a story that isn't very good and blows its load half way through and then coasts on a typical american military thriller plot that on paper is really fucking boring
but i still love that game, i am unfortunately a massive cod enjoyer
like a lot of people my age i grew up with this shit and this game specifically always stuck out to me even after playing later games and their improved gamefeel
the success of call of duty is that it nailed /that/ gamefeel in 2007 and has just been that ever since
even in entries which seek to massively change how movement feels (you know, the ones that ripped titanfall off), the core has at worst been consistent and at best is the entries post new modern warfare
i have a lot of problems with those games (at least mw1 and 2 which are the ones i've played), primarily that they're the most blatant examples of how this series has been a weirdo psy op for years
but the foundational mechanics and how it feels to do anything in those games is absolutely fucking sublime
easily the best call of duty has ever felt to play
but it definitely feels like call of duty
this is the game that infinity ward made right before they really figured out what call of duty was going to be going forward (i didn't play 3 so i can't really speak on that, seems like most people can't)
it's lacking in the pristine polish of modern warfare but in so doing is lacking in any of the narrative bullshit
the structure is reminiscent of episodic 90's/early 2000's pc shooters in that there are three campaigns representing three different military endeavors in ww2 that lack in any connective tissue beyond just being a shooter where you shoot nazis
soviets do stuff, the english do stuff (in africa for the most part, which is neat because i can't recall another ww2 shooter using that location) and americans do d-day and also stuff
once again this is no story
instead, it's characters that carry over from mission to mission
there's not very many missions, but they're all* pretty long and split into multiple levels
they don't even conclude beyond a "we did it!!!!!!" and then that part of the game is just over
while the game does have an order of events, you're also very welcome to just not follow them and instead play another campaign once it unlocks after doing a mission or two in another campaign
it's very loose with its pacing which is to say there really isn't any, it's a collection of shooter levels where you shoot people (nazis, so not really people)
most of your objectives are very straight forward, rarely are you doing anything that specifically relates to a set piece
you are a soldier who is good at being that and you are meant to go do good soldier things
that's what's so appealing about the earlier cods
it feels like history nerds wanted to make a cool shooter game that paid its respects to the boots on the ground grunts that died or nearly died fighting a fight that in some way shape or form was the "ideal battle"
a war that needed to be won, a definitive "good side" and bad side
this along with the human toll of the war is probably why ww2 fiction and nonfiction has stuck around so heavily in popular culture: it's a really important and well documented time in recent human history and it's very easy to write a story when things are a little more black and white than
say
literally every other conflict the united states has taken part
call of duty will never give the subject the true nuance it deserves but i also do not want that from call of duty
i don't think anyone really does if they thought about it
its intent was the same as the series that inspired it
(which probably isn't the right way to put it given the relationship early medal of honor and infinity ward as a company have)
and i'm perfectly okay with this simplistic hollywood neo liberal take on things because it's a video game that knows its a video game and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that
it says "man that war thing fucking sucked but there's a cool game there"
it's tasteful is what i'm saying
it doesn't really feel too disrespectful, it doesn't feel patronizing
it's the same reason why i like a movie like saving private ryan
yes, it fundamentally fails at being an anti-war work because it revels in the spectacle of the warfare thus showing itself to on some level think war is kinda cool and based actually, but because i'm fundamentally just a kind of smarter version of an ape i like the shiny
but i also respect the artists' intentions, the execution didn't come across as exploitative
this is something that cannot be said of entries past this one
so anyway as a video game that you can play and look at it's pretty damn good
call of duty kinda nailed being a solid shooter the first try and has steadily went up ever since
and two is an example of how talented infinity ward was early on when it came to making a competent shooter
if you have played call of duty this will, for the most part, feel like home
that being said there are
things
due to the game's age
the most jarring thing about the game is that there's no sprint
instead we're using counter strike rules, which is really funny because pistols are basically useless and the game rarely gives you one in a mission's starting loadout so i only realized this was a thing when i saw a big iron (the webley is not a big iron but whatever) and tried it out
once i noticed it i noticed the different speeds you get with different weapons and promptly thought "i don't really care" and never took advantage of it
or maybe i did, because most of the time i was using smgs since yes indeed this is a cod game
shoutout to every smg in this game fucking ultra hard, my favorite was ppsh which fits because the first campaign (the russian one) is the easily the best one even though i liked the rest perfectly fine
the second most jarring thing is that the game slows down like a mother fucker on 360 when you either see even a little bit of some big particle effects (so any time you or somebody else tossed a smoke) or you looked down a sniper scope
and this makes the not q u i t e there analog aiming a bit worse
not bad! just noticeably worse than when i recently went through world at war on ps3 very recently
but we had ads snapping even back in this one so it's really not that big of a deal
and man that's the only mechanical complaints i got because it's still cod baby
the pace is slower than other cods in theory but in practice it's just as hectic if not more so
constant yelling and gunfire, allies biting it left and right and it all sticking out more because you're just some dude and not Special Elite Cunt
the progression of levels is plenty scripted but they mostly rely on straight forward objectives that give you (a bit of) freedom in how you go about it
the progression is very linear, there isn't a big sand box or anything, but it's significantly less hand holdy than cod would get later on (something i'm glad they've experimented with in newer entries)
and the game does a very good job of minimizing its weaknesses
my favorite encounters were always when you had to go in and clear houses room by room, floor by floor
so when the game just says "go clear out these buildings and don't die!" the whole "wait i'm just a guy oh fuck" bit worked for me more than it does in other entries
the tricks that cod has always used to convey the chaotic spectacle of hollywood war portrayals just works way more in this context
so while this game isn't hardcore in the slightest it still manages to capture a greater sense of intensity than you'd get in
again
other cods while being the last cod campaign to have a T rating
world at war is the closest we've come to this kind of "i'm literally you" since but the game's need to be teh grim darkest of all really fucking sucks sometimes
and while this game doesn't have the same highs those other titles reach it has set pieces of its own while continuing to have no real bullshit
that's the operative and oft repeated phrase today:
no bullshit
cod 2 has a simple goal and it achieves that, it is nothing more and nothing less and that's why i like it a lot in comparison to the other games which i also do like for the most part
i wish modern entries would come back to this sense of purity but the series already came back here and it didn't quite stick the landing both times its tried since (again i never played 3 lol)
cod will never be this simple again, it will never be this tasteful in dealing with real life subjects again, it will instead be a skinner box with campaigns that are mechanically impressive for the series but continuously mired in the miasma that is totally not political dirty harry with bombs retreads
while i do enjoy cod, i do not purchase them unless it is second hand
a lot of that's because they're stupid expensive anywhere else but ya know
this review could've been a paragraph long and instead it was two and a half pages of text lmao
a solid cinematic platformer which replicates all the strengths and weaknesses of its chosen subgenre
the overal story is directly inspired by several bits of nordic folklore, a subject that i know basically nothing about so i'm judging this entirely based upon what's put right in front of my eyes
and what i'm mostly seeing is a lot of really inspired imagery that was clearly made on a budget
you can see that primarily in how the children are made of plastic, and you can hear it in some of the sound design
which is fine because the art design is generally pretty fucking stellar - that's especially so with the game's story book illustrations
and i did mean some, earlier, because for the most part the game sounds fantastic
overall the score is great, the track used for the game's last segment is especially noteworthy and i won't spoil it here
i normally don't like shit like that but i came around in the end
the rating is kept down mostly because there are only a few moments that i can describe as "holy shit" and the rest i was kinda coasting
when it wants to scare you it's pretty good at it, the village segment has some of the darkest (as in you can't see shit) segments in the game and it takes full advantage of it by practically jumpscaring you with enemies that react to your light
the boss fight capping the village off (really that entire fucking set up) is probably the best bit of horror in the game
evoked memories of getting scared shitless by the abyss in dark souls one
your mileage may vary though, for the most part this game was vibe central both in terms of its spookiness being up my ally but also in that it didn't really challenge me at all
which is wild to say given how absurdly dark (tonally this time) the game can be at times
excellent addition to the "child has the absolute worst experience of their life and somehow survives it" genre of this kind of platformer
which is also basically all of them lol
but frankly, i wish this story had a bit more confidence
it suffers from the biggest pitfall that having a narrator can have which is that it'll show up at times when you really don't want it to adding fluff to something that did not need it and generally lessing the strength of some of the game's more powerful moments
the counter to this is that there is a discreet option to turn it off, but i didn't want to do that
there were moments where i appreciated its presence, especially as someone with absolutely no knowledge of the game's inspirations
and there are plenty of parts when the game knows that it should shut the fuck up and let you soak in what's going on
but overall i feel like the narrator was a net negative addition if what it's primarily there for is to story-book-ify a narrative that, while fitting, would be best experienced without it if given the choice
thankfully you are - if you haven't played this game and you're like me when it comes to absolutely abhoring when something just cannot accept the possibility that you may not know what the fuck is going on then i highly recommend toying around with that
go through it and then maybe skim through a playthrough and see the differences
i would hope it doesn't turn off the narrator for the literal story book segments because that's where the concept was best utilized but idk!
this game would benefit from a mod where somebody took a fine tooth comb and cut out all the fluff because i really want to like the idea
it fits! it makes sense!
i'm just picky with this shit nowadays i guess, who knows
the general gameplay is very bog standard
usage of specifically arranged camera angles that flow from one shot to the next while you do a thing that generally involves not getting absolutely obliterated by something that's horrific even in games like this that are meant for kids (which this absolutely isn't)
this isn't a bad thing
there are checkpoints that were mildly frustrating and the "i was supposed to jump there?" problem happened more than once
generally speaking these things didn't happen a lot though
the final boss, however, is chief bitch in this regard
and it stuck out like a sore thumb because it's the most bombastic set piece in the game in both what you're doing and the music being played
this is gonna be my go to example for "fuck fuck fuck don't die this moment is good don't die it'll ruin the vibe and pace do not fucking die" and then you die, are taken out of it, and then proceed to die several more times just to make sure the moment's ruined
it's not that the fight is hard
it's the most challenging part of the game but the fight is relatively easy and the checkpoints are very generous
it's just that the fight is driven by a specific choice of score (i've mentioned this already) and when you hear that, die, fade to black, fade from black, and the part you're at starts blaring again it's comical at best
i'm harping on about that because it would've been really, really cool if i hadn't died at all during this part but you can't win everything
but besides all that shit the game's cool, i like it
fuck with it, even
i wanna see what these guys do next
their last game was a vr exclusive called A Writer And His Daughter from 2017 that has a whopping seventeen reviews so when i get a headset in the year 2035 i'll play that in the year eventually and see if that's also cool
it also looks neat
the overal story is directly inspired by several bits of nordic folklore, a subject that i know basically nothing about so i'm judging this entirely based upon what's put right in front of my eyes
and what i'm mostly seeing is a lot of really inspired imagery that was clearly made on a budget
you can see that primarily in how the children are made of plastic, and you can hear it in some of the sound design
which is fine because the art design is generally pretty fucking stellar - that's especially so with the game's story book illustrations
and i did mean some, earlier, because for the most part the game sounds fantastic
overall the score is great, the track used for the game's last segment is especially noteworthy and i won't spoil it here
i normally don't like shit like that but i came around in the end
the rating is kept down mostly because there are only a few moments that i can describe as "holy shit" and the rest i was kinda coasting
when it wants to scare you it's pretty good at it, the village segment has some of the darkest (as in you can't see shit) segments in the game and it takes full advantage of it by practically jumpscaring you with enemies that react to your light
the boss fight capping the village off (really that entire fucking set up) is probably the best bit of horror in the game
evoked memories of getting scared shitless by the abyss in dark souls one
your mileage may vary though, for the most part this game was vibe central both in terms of its spookiness being up my ally but also in that it didn't really challenge me at all
which is wild to say given how absurdly dark (tonally this time) the game can be at times
excellent addition to the "child has the absolute worst experience of their life and somehow survives it" genre of this kind of platformer
which is also basically all of them lol
but frankly, i wish this story had a bit more confidence
it suffers from the biggest pitfall that having a narrator can have which is that it'll show up at times when you really don't want it to adding fluff to something that did not need it and generally lessing the strength of some of the game's more powerful moments
the counter to this is that there is a discreet option to turn it off, but i didn't want to do that
there were moments where i appreciated its presence, especially as someone with absolutely no knowledge of the game's inspirations
and there are plenty of parts when the game knows that it should shut the fuck up and let you soak in what's going on
but overall i feel like the narrator was a net negative addition if what it's primarily there for is to story-book-ify a narrative that, while fitting, would be best experienced without it if given the choice
thankfully you are - if you haven't played this game and you're like me when it comes to absolutely abhoring when something just cannot accept the possibility that you may not know what the fuck is going on then i highly recommend toying around with that
go through it and then maybe skim through a playthrough and see the differences
i would hope it doesn't turn off the narrator for the literal story book segments because that's where the concept was best utilized but idk!
this game would benefit from a mod where somebody took a fine tooth comb and cut out all the fluff because i really want to like the idea
it fits! it makes sense!
i'm just picky with this shit nowadays i guess, who knows
the general gameplay is very bog standard
usage of specifically arranged camera angles that flow from one shot to the next while you do a thing that generally involves not getting absolutely obliterated by something that's horrific even in games like this that are meant for kids (which this absolutely isn't)
this isn't a bad thing
there are checkpoints that were mildly frustrating and the "i was supposed to jump there?" problem happened more than once
generally speaking these things didn't happen a lot though
the final boss, however, is chief bitch in this regard
and it stuck out like a sore thumb because it's the most bombastic set piece in the game in both what you're doing and the music being played
this is gonna be my go to example for "fuck fuck fuck don't die this moment is good don't die it'll ruin the vibe and pace do not fucking die" and then you die, are taken out of it, and then proceed to die several more times just to make sure the moment's ruined
it's not that the fight is hard
it's the most challenging part of the game but the fight is relatively easy and the checkpoints are very generous
it's just that the fight is driven by a specific choice of score (i've mentioned this already) and when you hear that, die, fade to black, fade from black, and the part you're at starts blaring again it's comical at best
i'm harping on about that because it would've been really, really cool if i hadn't died at all during this part but you can't win everything
but besides all that shit the game's cool, i like it
fuck with it, even
i wanna see what these guys do next
their last game was a vr exclusive called A Writer And His Daughter from 2017 that has a whopping seventeen reviews so when i get a headset in the year 2035 i'll play that in the year eventually and see if that's also cool
it also looks neat
the value of this is apparent but the port is bad
it makes mk2's movement feel like mk1's and if you know the contrast between those two things then you know how fucked this is
really it's the input lag, and it is definitely not my input
everything else is fine to be honest, i'm really casual and easy to please when it comes to that
but my god is the lag bad
and in a fighting game, that is a death sentence
i have no idea how this plays on other systems
on pc it's functionally useless since you can just get on fightcade and have more people ready to go to kick your ass in these games while having a much better play experience
you don't even have to source your roms, if the json files are still up you're solid
considering when this came out and what it was meant to be this should have been way better, how wild it is that one flaw can be so critical
it makes mk2's movement feel like mk1's and if you know the contrast between those two things then you know how fucked this is
really it's the input lag, and it is definitely not my input
everything else is fine to be honest, i'm really casual and easy to please when it comes to that
but my god is the lag bad
and in a fighting game, that is a death sentence
i have no idea how this plays on other systems
on pc it's functionally useless since you can just get on fightcade and have more people ready to go to kick your ass in these games while having a much better play experience
you don't even have to source your roms, if the json files are still up you're solid
considering when this came out and what it was meant to be this should have been way better, how wild it is that one flaw can be so critical
1992
i suck at mortal kombat
i suck at fighting games in general but i really, really suck at mk
which is hilarious because this series is easily the one i've put the most time into, especially mk trilogy (lol)
and i feel like i'm especially unequipped to rate and talk about a fighting game in general just because my primary method of interacting with all games is to play them by myself
which, you know
not really what these are known for, especially arcade fighting games which only really have the arcade ladder and then the actual part of the game that people are there for
so i guess i'll just tackle it like that, be aware of the pitfalls that my approach has but also having enough history to be able to say that the game is still good
og mk is very simple, you can do some wacky shit but it's very much a beta for mk2
which is evidenced by that game coming out just about a year later and it fundamentally just being the same game
but better
so this makes this title not mandatory but a recommended play regardless
in '92 it was this or sf2, and while i would much
much rather be playing the latter, this game's still good
but only that
i suck at fighting games in general but i really, really suck at mk
which is hilarious because this series is easily the one i've put the most time into, especially mk trilogy (lol)
and i feel like i'm especially unequipped to rate and talk about a fighting game in general just because my primary method of interacting with all games is to play them by myself
which, you know
not really what these are known for, especially arcade fighting games which only really have the arcade ladder and then the actual part of the game that people are there for
so i guess i'll just tackle it like that, be aware of the pitfalls that my approach has but also having enough history to be able to say that the game is still good
og mk is very simple, you can do some wacky shit but it's very much a beta for mk2
which is evidenced by that game coming out just about a year later and it fundamentally just being the same game
but better
so this makes this title not mandatory but a recommended play regardless
in '92 it was this or sf2, and while i would much
much rather be playing the latter, this game's still good
but only that
1993
this game is fucking sick
it's a direct and unarguable improvement upon its predecessor that still remains a playable fighter both casually and competetively
not that i know anything about the latter, i'm terrible at this game
and i'm also dogshit at this game's arcade ladder but i know i'm not alone in that regard
as somebody playing this game on my own, the thing that really sticks out is the tone
it's martial arts b movie horror and it fucking nails it
there's a genuine sense of camp combined with legitimately impressive technical prowress (for the time, this was a looker) that makes it all come together
that's definitely what stuck out to me as a kid
it's very, very easy to spot that these games are primarily made by white people (i don't think i have to explain why that's worth pointing out) but i have a hard time paying attention to that when the games are so brazenly stupid and not at all knowing it
i'm sure the devs did, not that it matters
great game, you're probably better at it than me
and unfortunately that's all i really have to say about it
like i'm gonna talk about the mechanics go watch PNDK&M
it's a direct and unarguable improvement upon its predecessor that still remains a playable fighter both casually and competetively
not that i know anything about the latter, i'm terrible at this game
and i'm also dogshit at this game's arcade ladder but i know i'm not alone in that regard
as somebody playing this game on my own, the thing that really sticks out is the tone
it's martial arts b movie horror and it fucking nails it
there's a genuine sense of camp combined with legitimately impressive technical prowress (for the time, this was a looker) that makes it all come together
that's definitely what stuck out to me as a kid
it's very, very easy to spot that these games are primarily made by white people (i don't think i have to explain why that's worth pointing out) but i have a hard time paying attention to that when the games are so brazenly stupid and not at all knowing it
i'm sure the devs did, not that it matters
great game, you're probably better at it than me
and unfortunately that's all i really have to say about it
like i'm gonna talk about the mechanics go watch PNDK&M
this is probably my favorite mortal kombat but we'll see
thus far with my ratings of these games i've ignored talking about the mechanics simply because i'm bad at these games and i would rather you go look up how wild these games are on youtube than read me talk about them
i'm shit, my critiques are probably shit
and i'm gonna mostly continue to do that, but as we're ending the era of these games having basically nothing single player wise outside of the arcade ladder i guess we can talk about that here
simply because i don't really care for them
it's not why these games are great, and it's hard for me to talk about that because i'm not playing them with anybody these times around
every enemy is just an input mirror
they react to what you do and nothing else
a decent chunk of the time, if you just stand still they won't do anything
and when they do shit they're spamming the most optimal shit that makes you feel like you're playing a pro at this game
it's ai, and it can be cheesed, but not by me lol
so why is this and 2 highly rated for me? i've played them with people before lol
i played this and trilogy to death with my cousin, but i've played a fair bit of 2 as well
a lot of the snes ports of both of these
pissing people off with the sheva ground pound was klassic gamer shit my dude
the vibe is still just as good as it was before, that schlock that my head goop cavern truly craves
but a lot of my love for this game is nostalgia
look up comp footage this game is rad
thus far with my ratings of these games i've ignored talking about the mechanics simply because i'm bad at these games and i would rather you go look up how wild these games are on youtube than read me talk about them
i'm shit, my critiques are probably shit
and i'm gonna mostly continue to do that, but as we're ending the era of these games having basically nothing single player wise outside of the arcade ladder i guess we can talk about that here
simply because i don't really care for them
it's not why these games are great, and it's hard for me to talk about that because i'm not playing them with anybody these times around
every enemy is just an input mirror
they react to what you do and nothing else
a decent chunk of the time, if you just stand still they won't do anything
and when they do shit they're spamming the most optimal shit that makes you feel like you're playing a pro at this game
it's ai, and it can be cheesed, but not by me lol
so why is this and 2 highly rated for me? i've played them with people before lol
i played this and trilogy to death with my cousin, but i've played a fair bit of 2 as well
a lot of the snes ports of both of these
pissing people off with the sheva ground pound was klassic gamer shit my dude
the vibe is still just as good as it was before, that schlock that my head goop cavern truly craves
but a lot of my love for this game is nostalgia
look up comp footage this game is rad
look man it's umk3 but even more stupid, i love that shit
the roster is expansive and very dumb, it feels like you're playing mugen sometimes but mugen is one of the best things ever
i played the every loving hell out of this game as a child who was probably too young to be playing it but that's neither here nor there
it's just a lot of fun and it has all the pros and cons of the game it followed up except more cons but i don't really care about them
the game looks like shit in comparison to the arcade ports but that's just the nature of ports at the time
speaking of, i played the GOG release which is probably the best way to play it outside of n64 on original hardware
native xinput support baby
you probably have an opinion on this game and it's likely that umk3 is better, which it is but my favorite smash game is project m and this game being my foundational fighting game is probably part of why that is
the roster is expansive and very dumb, it feels like you're playing mugen sometimes but mugen is one of the best things ever
i played the every loving hell out of this game as a child who was probably too young to be playing it but that's neither here nor there
it's just a lot of fun and it has all the pros and cons of the game it followed up except more cons but i don't really care about them
the game looks like shit in comparison to the arcade ports but that's just the nature of ports at the time
speaking of, i played the GOG release which is probably the best way to play it outside of n64 on original hardware
native xinput support baby
you probably have an opinion on this game and it's likely that umk3 is better, which it is but my favorite smash game is project m and this game being my foundational fighting game is probably part of why that is
alright, i fucked with the idea of a 2d platformer that takes advantage of fighting game mechanics
even something jank like this that controls the way it does
the closest thing i can think of is the subspace emmisary mode from ssbb but i'm sure something else does this idea justice too
i hope so mainly because this game is fucking trash
like i said, it's not really the controls
but they aren't good either
this feels exactly like taking the movement of mk3 and putting it into a 2d platformer because that is what it is
there are a few obvious flaws, two of which being that you can't really do fine control of your jumping (because this is mk style controls and not a more modern anime fighter or what have you that would feel better) and there's not a great solution for locking onto targets
the latter of which the game tries to solve with a button that manually chooses which direciton you face
except your inputs aren't consistently responsive when it comes to anything other than punching something, so not only do you not always turn when you want
but you have enemies that can and will take advantage of you fucking around with just turning
i was playing on very easy (i knew this game's reputation) and the first level was me dying over and over just trying to figure out how this game was gonna opperate
but hey, i did! after that the controls honestly weren't that big of an issue
it's jank but whether it was me being better at doing it or the game mysteriously getting better at auto rotating your guy to kick a dude in the face, something clicked and i got over it
so yeah, that isn't the issue
nah it's everything else
this is one of the cheapest games i've ever played
we're running with a lives and continue system which inherently there is nothing wrong with
in the game's options you can give yourself up to six lives and four continues iirc, idk i'm not booting it up to check again
point is you get a decent amount
this will go by very quickly
now, i've said before that i suck at fighting games - platformers however are my shit
so when i say that if i didn't have save states i'd probably still be on the second level i mean i'd be hard stuck
this game kills you so god damn fast
enemies (again, i was playing on very easy) can easily cheap you out with sweep spamming and other annoying bullshit that isn't so much hard to counter as it is just really annoying to deal with
once you start getting abilities this is less of an issue, but it never quite goes away
you can spam freeze somebody (even bosses sometimes), which IS funny
but what isn't is when the moment you open a fucking door they just rock your shit for no good reason
sometimes they do, sometimes they don't! it seems to me we're working with input reading ai here which isn't out of character for mk but it is absolutely fucking abysmal in a single player action platformer
this is glaringly obvious with the bosses which seem designed specifically around you abusing this fact
the second level boss's primary method of killing you is tossing you off the stage and killing you instantly
did i mention that if you continue you will restart the level
and you'll never guess what happens when you run out of continues, i won't either because i didn't find out
i used savestates and if you play this you should too, i'm not risking the chance of this bullshit ass game taking me back to the very fucking beginning of it or making me reload a save that has a fucking password system despite saving to the memory card in the year of our lord 1997
maybe it does just let you reload the game! that would make sense, but like i said
i'll never know
because again, this game kills you so fucking fast
every hazard can kill you and it can kill you very quickly
the second level is entirely about putting you in situations where if you fuck up once you are sent back to a checkpoint
checkpoints are seemingly reasonable given level lengths (it shouldn't shock you to know that this is a relatively short game) but again
death is inevitable, it is quick and swift but the pain lingers
you know that boss i mentioned? if you drain his health bar he goes into a last attack mode that will kill you instantly if it lands
you have three options of recourse:
run, run and run but not too hard so you don't fall off the stage
spam your slide move if you have it (you should)
but those two methods are very inconsistent, no see what you're meant to do is go to the ledge of the stage and grab onto it
how? i have no idea, i did the former on accident
i KNEW what the game wanted me to do before hand and i went exactly where i needed to go but it didn't work
i feel like it was luck that i survived but it might not have been
the game conditions the player to expect deaths and expect them quick so i just assume most shit will kill me
which isn't always the case! the third level has pits that sometimes has goodies
and you'll never know unless you jump into one
but if you guess wrong you just die
so why the fuck would you ever try it without savestates or something
and listen, i like hard games, but i fucking hate bullshit ones like this
and the level design isn't even inspired enough to make it enjoyable
the reason i stopped playing wasn't because i got too frustrated, it's because i got really bored
by the time i hit the fourth level (water temple LOL) i noticed that it was a series of what looked like sewer pipes that all looked exactly the same
so i looked up a gameplay walkthrough, skimmed through it to see if i was missing anything, realized i wasn't and stopped playing
except there is ONE saving grace, one little nugget of cool that is worth this game's existence
the cutscenes are funny
it's cheap camp that hits, it's basic as hell and there isn't a lot of it but that means you can just look them up on youtube and not have to play this thing
which is absolutely the best way to go about things
this is a weirdly ambitious project that didn't even commit to its ambitions enough to make a game that was interesting to go through and i think that's the game's biggest flaw
ninja gaiden for the nes is bullshit but i like it and still consider it a good game
it feels good to control and it's not just the same closed off corridor over and over again
i am easy to please and i can handle unfair games
this is a bullshit arcade game in sheep's clothing, but instead of your money all your gonna wast is your time and that's significantly more valuable in the long term
even something jank like this that controls the way it does
the closest thing i can think of is the subspace emmisary mode from ssbb but i'm sure something else does this idea justice too
i hope so mainly because this game is fucking trash
like i said, it's not really the controls
but they aren't good either
this feels exactly like taking the movement of mk3 and putting it into a 2d platformer because that is what it is
there are a few obvious flaws, two of which being that you can't really do fine control of your jumping (because this is mk style controls and not a more modern anime fighter or what have you that would feel better) and there's not a great solution for locking onto targets
the latter of which the game tries to solve with a button that manually chooses which direciton you face
except your inputs aren't consistently responsive when it comes to anything other than punching something, so not only do you not always turn when you want
but you have enemies that can and will take advantage of you fucking around with just turning
i was playing on very easy (i knew this game's reputation) and the first level was me dying over and over just trying to figure out how this game was gonna opperate
but hey, i did! after that the controls honestly weren't that big of an issue
it's jank but whether it was me being better at doing it or the game mysteriously getting better at auto rotating your guy to kick a dude in the face, something clicked and i got over it
so yeah, that isn't the issue
nah it's everything else
this is one of the cheapest games i've ever played
we're running with a lives and continue system which inherently there is nothing wrong with
in the game's options you can give yourself up to six lives and four continues iirc, idk i'm not booting it up to check again
point is you get a decent amount
this will go by very quickly
now, i've said before that i suck at fighting games - platformers however are my shit
so when i say that if i didn't have save states i'd probably still be on the second level i mean i'd be hard stuck
this game kills you so god damn fast
enemies (again, i was playing on very easy) can easily cheap you out with sweep spamming and other annoying bullshit that isn't so much hard to counter as it is just really annoying to deal with
once you start getting abilities this is less of an issue, but it never quite goes away
you can spam freeze somebody (even bosses sometimes), which IS funny
but what isn't is when the moment you open a fucking door they just rock your shit for no good reason
sometimes they do, sometimes they don't! it seems to me we're working with input reading ai here which isn't out of character for mk but it is absolutely fucking abysmal in a single player action platformer
this is glaringly obvious with the bosses which seem designed specifically around you abusing this fact
the second level boss's primary method of killing you is tossing you off the stage and killing you instantly
did i mention that if you continue you will restart the level
and you'll never guess what happens when you run out of continues, i won't either because i didn't find out
i used savestates and if you play this you should too, i'm not risking the chance of this bullshit ass game taking me back to the very fucking beginning of it or making me reload a save that has a fucking password system despite saving to the memory card in the year of our lord 1997
maybe it does just let you reload the game! that would make sense, but like i said
i'll never know
because again, this game kills you so fucking fast
every hazard can kill you and it can kill you very quickly
the second level is entirely about putting you in situations where if you fuck up once you are sent back to a checkpoint
checkpoints are seemingly reasonable given level lengths (it shouldn't shock you to know that this is a relatively short game) but again
death is inevitable, it is quick and swift but the pain lingers
you know that boss i mentioned? if you drain his health bar he goes into a last attack mode that will kill you instantly if it lands
you have three options of recourse:
run, run and run but not too hard so you don't fall off the stage
spam your slide move if you have it (you should)
but those two methods are very inconsistent, no see what you're meant to do is go to the ledge of the stage and grab onto it
how? i have no idea, i did the former on accident
i KNEW what the game wanted me to do before hand and i went exactly where i needed to go but it didn't work
i feel like it was luck that i survived but it might not have been
the game conditions the player to expect deaths and expect them quick so i just assume most shit will kill me
which isn't always the case! the third level has pits that sometimes has goodies
and you'll never know unless you jump into one
but if you guess wrong you just die
so why the fuck would you ever try it without savestates or something
and listen, i like hard games, but i fucking hate bullshit ones like this
and the level design isn't even inspired enough to make it enjoyable
the reason i stopped playing wasn't because i got too frustrated, it's because i got really bored
by the time i hit the fourth level (water temple LOL) i noticed that it was a series of what looked like sewer pipes that all looked exactly the same
so i looked up a gameplay walkthrough, skimmed through it to see if i was missing anything, realized i wasn't and stopped playing
except there is ONE saving grace, one little nugget of cool that is worth this game's existence
the cutscenes are funny
it's cheap camp that hits, it's basic as hell and there isn't a lot of it but that means you can just look them up on youtube and not have to play this thing
which is absolutely the best way to go about things
this is a weirdly ambitious project that didn't even commit to its ambitions enough to make a game that was interesting to go through and i think that's the game's biggest flaw
ninja gaiden for the nes is bullshit but i like it and still consider it a good game
it feels good to control and it's not just the same closed off corridor over and over again
i am easy to please and i can handle unfair games
this is a bullshit arcade game in sheep's clothing, but instead of your money all your gonna wast is your time and that's significantly more valuable in the long term
it's better than mythologies but just barely
really what it comes down to is that this game does nothing uniquely offensive: it's a cookie cutter bad 3d beat em up on the playstation
it's simplistic and has no real personality to speak of
there are combos but they feel pretty useless especially when you can just mash low punch until the dude dies
unless an enemy has a gun which gets more common as time goes on it seems
i only played the first couple of levels so i don't know
i planned on playing more of it but it was way too fucking boring
the music is alright, the intro is terrible in a good way, and there's some mk camp in the cutscenes but none of that really holds up what is just a complete slog of a game that has nothing to really offer outside of its own novelty
maybe it gets better later? i doubt it but maybe
really what it comes down to is that this game does nothing uniquely offensive: it's a cookie cutter bad 3d beat em up on the playstation
it's simplistic and has no real personality to speak of
there are combos but they feel pretty useless especially when you can just mash low punch until the dude dies
unless an enemy has a gun which gets more common as time goes on it seems
i only played the first couple of levels so i don't know
i planned on playing more of it but it was way too fucking boring
the music is alright, the intro is terrible in a good way, and there's some mk camp in the cutscenes but none of that really holds up what is just a complete slog of a game that has nothing to really offer outside of its own novelty
maybe it gets better later? i doubt it but maybe