saggysamurai
2020
Comically bad
This is indeed a good game. The plot while basic is very strong in the character department. The wild hunt as villians are meh but serviceable. Geralt is a great protagonist and his relationships are all very interesting to watch unfold. The music is fantastic and sound design is all around pretty decent. The world of the witcher is a fun one to dive into but the exploration of it is either really fun or really frustrating and annoying. Level gating and the mini map need to go and die. The gameplay is quite average overall, the combat is serviceable but its quite shallow and either too easy or too hard. Geralt also feels too floaty to control, he doesn’t have that weighty feel that he should. Overall i think its a pretty solid game thats carried by its great writing.
2005
weird game bruh, what does it mean lol, shooting is good tho and lighting engine is very realistic and impressive for a 2005 title. I may or may not have been jump scared on a few occasions.
This review contains spoilers
Introduction
I think the discourse around this game is still so interesting 9 years later, theres just so much to chew on. Its contentious, brilliant, awful and generally quite confusing in so many ways. For a game that got such outstanding critical reaction when it first released (excluding the PC port) to me its interesting that a lot of what's wrong with this game was completely ignored. Make no mistake I do really enjoy playing this game, its addictive as hell and can be really immersive, its just as an overall package with the context of this being the big final entry in the series, its kind of disappointing, like there is a lot wrong with this game that's not talked about enough and I genuinely think as an overall package its probably the worst one in the series, it has elements that are far and away the best in the series but then it fumbles in places where the other games nailed it.
The opening
So lets start actually justifying some of these bold statements I'm putting forward. I think a good place to start is the opening, it perfectly personifies what is great about the game and generally what's its problems are.
Burning the jokers corpse to "ive got you under my skin." is just so perfect man, perfect way to set the tone and remind us of the great ending from the last game, the hidden detail in new game plus here is really cool too, trademark Rocksteady. We then cut to a first person segment where we play as a cop during a scarecrow fear toxin attack, again I think this part is really immersive, sets up the threat of scarecrow well, isn't too monotonous on replay and this is where you start noticing the level of detail in the environment's, little easter eggs and references litter this whole diner and this doesn't stop throughout the entire game, there was just clearly so much love poured into every environment in this game. theres even an optional conversation you can overhear later on in the game depending on if you shot anyone when you were playing as officer Blake, again its a level of detail that's unnecessary but its adds so much man. Then we get a lil monologue from Gordon about the city and we get this amazing seamless camera pan of batman transitioning straight into gameplay, that last line from Gordon : " and tonight we're relying on 1 man to save us all." still gets me hyped to play the game, really strong stuff. Also sidenote I prefer the starting costume over the advanced suit they give you later. It makes sense for the story that batman would want an armoured asf suit but idc i prefer less bulk for my batsuits.
The city and roaming
But this is the first point we are allowed to roam the city so this is a good place to mention that this game still looks (and runs.) better than I would say 80% of the games coming out today. 1 console generation later and its still one of the most detailed, pleasant looking games I've played. Im nowhere close to an expert on this sort of stuff but I think its the rain and the way it interacts with batman's character model and the way it reacts with his cape while he's gliding n stuff. Just looks really stunning.
The movement and traversal is also greatly approved, its alot faster to glide around and using the grapnel accelerator thing, especially when its fully upgraded is really fun.
Freeflow
Then we get our first free flow brawling segment and its kind of my least favourite thing to discuss when it comes to the game, its great and they make some welcome improvements to it in this game but that's about all I can say on it, its great, its addicting just like it always has been, theres afew new enemy types to spice this up, the medic is a good addition if a bit annoying just for when they charge up another enemy with an electric shield. Its easy enough to counter with the quick fire batclaw but its those moments when ur about to hit an enemy and at the last minute they get charged up so you hit them and lose ur combo, like that's kind of bullshit and feels a bit cheap and i say that as someone who considers themselves to be quite good at the combat in this game, like I've gone into the iceberg lounge challenge map and got to the 500 combo to get the killer croc boss fight thing. Somtimes i think they are overcompensating a bit with the amount of enemy's with relatively similar gimmicks you have to get round but tbf they do limit this with giving you multiple ways to get past various weapons and stuff, like for the shock stick guys for example, you can vault over them to hit them in the back, you can shock them with rec gun, disarm them, take them down straight up or just grapple it straight out their hands, theres usually more than one way to beat every enemy which is appreciated and shows good design.
The batmobile
We then get our first bat mobile segment which is probabley the one thing that everyone agrees is like kinda overdone and not executed in the best way it could have been. That being said, its introduction here is cool, the chase segments throughout the game are generally fun and fit well in the game, the environmental destruction and the way the car interacts with the city is really, really cool, i have no idea how the got the destruction and stuff to look as good as it does without completely blowing up last gen consoles. To me its seriously an underappreciated part of the game that goes a little under the radar. The problems with the car are the drone tank fights, how it can trivialise combat sections and the tank puzzle sections. The drone tank fights are easily the worst combat related thing you do in the game, theres issues with it gameplay wise but also i don't know how well these translate narratively. Lets start with the gameplay wise critiques first, ide like to first just say if there was like 3 tank combat sections in the game i genuinely think it would be a non problem but its how they insist it upon us as now a core element of the gameplay, it takes up so much of the runtime and it feels like you spend more time tank fighting than fist fighting, they banked so heavily on it being really fun and strong enough to carry large portions of the game but its just not compelling, its just very simple and easy, theres very little depth to it and it just feels very arcadey, it just needs something more and i genuinley do not know what that is, they clearly spent alot of time trying to make it work but I cant help but think the game would be better off without any of it. And this isnt even mentioning the god awful tank stealth they get you doing at later points in the game, theres so many issues with this, its actually crazy, they are overly simple, boring and feel so so dumb, i groan at every point i am forced to do them. Then we have the narrative questions that the tank combat brings up, firstly like i just cant shrug off the feeling that what im playing just doesnt quite fit with batman, the fact that i can bulldoze into criminals on the street with it feels slightly out of character. Its also like where tf did the arkham knight get these drones from and if he knows batman so well then why doesnt he just use manned vehicles? So then Batman cant just blow them up? I literally had this thought the very first time I played the game, just feels like such a poorly thought out addition. Theres also the puzzles man holy lawd, these are not fun, its like they decided it would be cool to do literally everything you did from the last few games but just in the tank, you follow round trails on the floor and do detective work in a tank? Its just such a chore man like did anyone even playtest some of this cuz it could so easily be removed from the game and the experience would be better for it.
Predator gameplay and how it has regressed.
Skipping ahead a little bit, i do also want to talk about the predator sections in this game, this might be the most divisive thing i say about this game but i feel like the predator sections are also kind of a downgrade from the last 2 games. To help understand where im coming from, let me explain what made the predator sections great in origins and city. To me the best preadtor maps are the intrinsically designed tight areas where the enemies are using all the tools at their disposal to limit what you can do. The more challenging these sections are, the better in my view. Like the final predator section in arkham city at the top of wonder tower is brilliantly designed because it forces you think outside the box and use whatever tools you have at your disposal, you cant rely on the gargoyles or floor grates all the time for safety, it forces you to be a bit more creative. The reason i dont like alot of knights predator maps is because i find alot of them to be too big, majority of them are seemingly outside and also as cool as they are, i think the fear multi takedowns actually hurt the experience. To explain, With alot of the sections being so large and outdoors, alot of the thought that went into the design of the areas can be largely ignored because if u make a mistake, escaping is often as simple as just grappling away from the area and then coming back, theres not much of a reason to engage and learn the space when you can so easily leave it and thats exactly it, alot of the predator maps in this game just arent memorable like they were in city or even origins. And just to add to this, fear multi takedowns can often absolutely trivialise these maps, you can upgrade it to the point where you can take down 5 enemies at once and all it costs is a single silent takedown? Dont get me wrong you should feel empowered as Batman but this is a little too much for me because it is so easily recoverable and enemies have virtually no response to it. It would work well if the means to acquire the ability were harder like maybe you could have been able to do certain things in the environment or being more theatrical would have started to build up your "fear meter." and once Ur foes were sufficiently terrified, you could use the ability and then if you were spotted or if ur enemies landed a hit on you the meter could go down or be reset. This is literally off the top of my head and doesn't it sound so much cooler, who knows maybe they did think of something like this and it just didn't work or they didn't have time, i dont know.
Boss fights (or lack of.)
Not to continue being negative but we also have to talk about boss fights, theres basically like 2 or 3 in the game. This is probably the most shocking thing about this game, the studio that went from creating one of the best boss fights in gaming in Mr freeze to these sorry excuses for bosses, genuinely infuriating. Just to list them, you have the arkham knights helicopter, arkham knights underground vehicle thing, arkham knights stealth tank fight, then the arkham knight predator section. Not one of these is fun, 3 of them require you to be in the tank and just to rub it in ur face a bit more, 1 of them is repeated just with deathstroke in the tank (we will speak about him more in a bit.) The bosses are just so so bad man, they are indefensible, like i cant even think of anything to say about them, they are just bad lol, asylum has better bosses. They dont even give you a fun scarecrow boss in this game, in fact there is no final boss, you just do the final joker first person section (which I like btw.) and watch a cutscene and then the game ends. This HAS to be a result of them just not having enough time to create these bosses, i refuse to believe a development team this talented looked at these bosses and thought yeah these are good. Its one of the many reasons that when i go back to play one of these games, i gravitate to city or origins over this game even tho it arguably has the gameplay at its peak. They even tease you with the thought of a good boss fight with death stroke again and then throw it away immediately by just having you watch a cutscene of batman 1 shotting him after a shitty tank fight.
The actual narrative :0
ITS SO BAD YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP IT SUCKSSS SO MUCH, WHY DID THEY LET PAUL DINI GOOOO?!
The Arkham Knight
Creating an entirely new character for the series was actually a really cool concept and genuinely showed alot of potential, his costume was actually pretty cool and there was alot of buildup over who the arkham knight was under the mask and then the game came out and it turns out he actually wasnt a new character and was generally just a reskin of the red hood, who would have been cooler. Oh and hes also just generally dumb and non threatening, WHAT WAS THE POINT? If you were gonna just do red hood reskin atleast do it properly, the entire appeal of red hood is that hes a direct answer to batman's ideals, hes one of the only characters in the verse that can go up to batman, challenge him idealistically and be justified in his position. But no the arkham knight is just kinda mad that batman couldnt find him so he joins up with scarecrow... ??? Feels a little out of character but ok then he also leads and entire army of military trained individuals that he got from... uh... well.. the game actually never explains this. Theres just so many question marks that arise from asking the simplest of questions and this theme carries onto the joker plot.
The Jonkler
The idea of batman having joker show up in his mind throughout the game is genuinely, again, a cool concept. Having him randomly pop up in the open world for a bit of dialogue is actually awesome, its just the reasoning behind it that really makes you raise an eyebrow, so jokers blood actually made it to some patients and somehow this makes them start turning into joker? @ROCKSTEADY you guys do know that joker is just a regular human and that suggesting he can be cloned through the use of blood transfer is not only ridiculous but it also slightly ruins his character cuz then it kind of implies that he isnt special at all, its just the toxins that he fell into that made him crazy? The execution of this whole idea is just messy as fucckk, like you can still have the jokers subplot at panessa studios without this awful explanation, just have them as some joker fanboys that want to continue his legacy, i wouldnt have questioned that and then for batman i can generally buy into the fact that he would be mentally damaged by the jokers death and then his mental illness is only exacerbated by the fear toxin that scarecrow keeps giving him throughout the night. Like you dont need the dumb "oh no the jokers blood is making me turn into him." Like such an easy fix and makes way more sense. Like we know Batman is mentally unwell. Paul dini please why have you done this to me. There was rumours that his version of knight was gonna have hush as the main villain with court of owls playing a big role and like i just think that sounds so much more interesting. This game is just a victim of key developers leaving and a rushed development, this could and should have been the greatest Superhero game ever made and i cant help but shake the feeling that they bottled it man. Im patiently waiting for the day when a developer goes back to this sort of formula and tries again with a Batman game, wether its in the same universe, a follow up to origins or a completely new thing.
I just also want to take a moment to speak on the voice acting, not just in this game but the whole series, its truly magnificent. The decision to get the animated series voice cast back way back in asylum was just such a great move and one that feels like it was truly made by fans of the character. Mark Hamils Joker and Kevin Conroys Batman are perfect renditions of the characters, these are the voices i hear when i read the comic books, They will always be a massive part of my childhood and its deeply saddening that we will never hear Conroy reprise the role again. May he rest in peace, he will always be My Batman.
I think the discourse around this game is still so interesting 9 years later, theres just so much to chew on. Its contentious, brilliant, awful and generally quite confusing in so many ways. For a game that got such outstanding critical reaction when it first released (excluding the PC port) to me its interesting that a lot of what's wrong with this game was completely ignored. Make no mistake I do really enjoy playing this game, its addictive as hell and can be really immersive, its just as an overall package with the context of this being the big final entry in the series, its kind of disappointing, like there is a lot wrong with this game that's not talked about enough and I genuinely think as an overall package its probably the worst one in the series, it has elements that are far and away the best in the series but then it fumbles in places where the other games nailed it.
The opening
So lets start actually justifying some of these bold statements I'm putting forward. I think a good place to start is the opening, it perfectly personifies what is great about the game and generally what's its problems are.
Burning the jokers corpse to "ive got you under my skin." is just so perfect man, perfect way to set the tone and remind us of the great ending from the last game, the hidden detail in new game plus here is really cool too, trademark Rocksteady. We then cut to a first person segment where we play as a cop during a scarecrow fear toxin attack, again I think this part is really immersive, sets up the threat of scarecrow well, isn't too monotonous on replay and this is where you start noticing the level of detail in the environment's, little easter eggs and references litter this whole diner and this doesn't stop throughout the entire game, there was just clearly so much love poured into every environment in this game. theres even an optional conversation you can overhear later on in the game depending on if you shot anyone when you were playing as officer Blake, again its a level of detail that's unnecessary but its adds so much man. Then we get a lil monologue from Gordon about the city and we get this amazing seamless camera pan of batman transitioning straight into gameplay, that last line from Gordon : " and tonight we're relying on 1 man to save us all." still gets me hyped to play the game, really strong stuff. Also sidenote I prefer the starting costume over the advanced suit they give you later. It makes sense for the story that batman would want an armoured asf suit but idc i prefer less bulk for my batsuits.
The city and roaming
But this is the first point we are allowed to roam the city so this is a good place to mention that this game still looks (and runs.) better than I would say 80% of the games coming out today. 1 console generation later and its still one of the most detailed, pleasant looking games I've played. Im nowhere close to an expert on this sort of stuff but I think its the rain and the way it interacts with batman's character model and the way it reacts with his cape while he's gliding n stuff. Just looks really stunning.
The movement and traversal is also greatly approved, its alot faster to glide around and using the grapnel accelerator thing, especially when its fully upgraded is really fun.
Freeflow
Then we get our first free flow brawling segment and its kind of my least favourite thing to discuss when it comes to the game, its great and they make some welcome improvements to it in this game but that's about all I can say on it, its great, its addicting just like it always has been, theres afew new enemy types to spice this up, the medic is a good addition if a bit annoying just for when they charge up another enemy with an electric shield. Its easy enough to counter with the quick fire batclaw but its those moments when ur about to hit an enemy and at the last minute they get charged up so you hit them and lose ur combo, like that's kind of bullshit and feels a bit cheap and i say that as someone who considers themselves to be quite good at the combat in this game, like I've gone into the iceberg lounge challenge map and got to the 500 combo to get the killer croc boss fight thing. Somtimes i think they are overcompensating a bit with the amount of enemy's with relatively similar gimmicks you have to get round but tbf they do limit this with giving you multiple ways to get past various weapons and stuff, like for the shock stick guys for example, you can vault over them to hit them in the back, you can shock them with rec gun, disarm them, take them down straight up or just grapple it straight out their hands, theres usually more than one way to beat every enemy which is appreciated and shows good design.
The batmobile
We then get our first bat mobile segment which is probabley the one thing that everyone agrees is like kinda overdone and not executed in the best way it could have been. That being said, its introduction here is cool, the chase segments throughout the game are generally fun and fit well in the game, the environmental destruction and the way the car interacts with the city is really, really cool, i have no idea how the got the destruction and stuff to look as good as it does without completely blowing up last gen consoles. To me its seriously an underappreciated part of the game that goes a little under the radar. The problems with the car are the drone tank fights, how it can trivialise combat sections and the tank puzzle sections. The drone tank fights are easily the worst combat related thing you do in the game, theres issues with it gameplay wise but also i don't know how well these translate narratively. Lets start with the gameplay wise critiques first, ide like to first just say if there was like 3 tank combat sections in the game i genuinely think it would be a non problem but its how they insist it upon us as now a core element of the gameplay, it takes up so much of the runtime and it feels like you spend more time tank fighting than fist fighting, they banked so heavily on it being really fun and strong enough to carry large portions of the game but its just not compelling, its just very simple and easy, theres very little depth to it and it just feels very arcadey, it just needs something more and i genuinley do not know what that is, they clearly spent alot of time trying to make it work but I cant help but think the game would be better off without any of it. And this isnt even mentioning the god awful tank stealth they get you doing at later points in the game, theres so many issues with this, its actually crazy, they are overly simple, boring and feel so so dumb, i groan at every point i am forced to do them. Then we have the narrative questions that the tank combat brings up, firstly like i just cant shrug off the feeling that what im playing just doesnt quite fit with batman, the fact that i can bulldoze into criminals on the street with it feels slightly out of character. Its also like where tf did the arkham knight get these drones from and if he knows batman so well then why doesnt he just use manned vehicles? So then Batman cant just blow them up? I literally had this thought the very first time I played the game, just feels like such a poorly thought out addition. Theres also the puzzles man holy lawd, these are not fun, its like they decided it would be cool to do literally everything you did from the last few games but just in the tank, you follow round trails on the floor and do detective work in a tank? Its just such a chore man like did anyone even playtest some of this cuz it could so easily be removed from the game and the experience would be better for it.
Predator gameplay and how it has regressed.
Skipping ahead a little bit, i do also want to talk about the predator sections in this game, this might be the most divisive thing i say about this game but i feel like the predator sections are also kind of a downgrade from the last 2 games. To help understand where im coming from, let me explain what made the predator sections great in origins and city. To me the best preadtor maps are the intrinsically designed tight areas where the enemies are using all the tools at their disposal to limit what you can do. The more challenging these sections are, the better in my view. Like the final predator section in arkham city at the top of wonder tower is brilliantly designed because it forces you think outside the box and use whatever tools you have at your disposal, you cant rely on the gargoyles or floor grates all the time for safety, it forces you to be a bit more creative. The reason i dont like alot of knights predator maps is because i find alot of them to be too big, majority of them are seemingly outside and also as cool as they are, i think the fear multi takedowns actually hurt the experience. To explain, With alot of the sections being so large and outdoors, alot of the thought that went into the design of the areas can be largely ignored because if u make a mistake, escaping is often as simple as just grappling away from the area and then coming back, theres not much of a reason to engage and learn the space when you can so easily leave it and thats exactly it, alot of the predator maps in this game just arent memorable like they were in city or even origins. And just to add to this, fear multi takedowns can often absolutely trivialise these maps, you can upgrade it to the point where you can take down 5 enemies at once and all it costs is a single silent takedown? Dont get me wrong you should feel empowered as Batman but this is a little too much for me because it is so easily recoverable and enemies have virtually no response to it. It would work well if the means to acquire the ability were harder like maybe you could have been able to do certain things in the environment or being more theatrical would have started to build up your "fear meter." and once Ur foes were sufficiently terrified, you could use the ability and then if you were spotted or if ur enemies landed a hit on you the meter could go down or be reset. This is literally off the top of my head and doesn't it sound so much cooler, who knows maybe they did think of something like this and it just didn't work or they didn't have time, i dont know.
Boss fights (or lack of.)
Not to continue being negative but we also have to talk about boss fights, theres basically like 2 or 3 in the game. This is probably the most shocking thing about this game, the studio that went from creating one of the best boss fights in gaming in Mr freeze to these sorry excuses for bosses, genuinely infuriating. Just to list them, you have the arkham knights helicopter, arkham knights underground vehicle thing, arkham knights stealth tank fight, then the arkham knight predator section. Not one of these is fun, 3 of them require you to be in the tank and just to rub it in ur face a bit more, 1 of them is repeated just with deathstroke in the tank (we will speak about him more in a bit.) The bosses are just so so bad man, they are indefensible, like i cant even think of anything to say about them, they are just bad lol, asylum has better bosses. They dont even give you a fun scarecrow boss in this game, in fact there is no final boss, you just do the final joker first person section (which I like btw.) and watch a cutscene and then the game ends. This HAS to be a result of them just not having enough time to create these bosses, i refuse to believe a development team this talented looked at these bosses and thought yeah these are good. Its one of the many reasons that when i go back to play one of these games, i gravitate to city or origins over this game even tho it arguably has the gameplay at its peak. They even tease you with the thought of a good boss fight with death stroke again and then throw it away immediately by just having you watch a cutscene of batman 1 shotting him after a shitty tank fight.
The actual narrative :0
ITS SO BAD YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP IT SUCKSSS SO MUCH, WHY DID THEY LET PAUL DINI GOOOO?!
The Arkham Knight
Creating an entirely new character for the series was actually a really cool concept and genuinely showed alot of potential, his costume was actually pretty cool and there was alot of buildup over who the arkham knight was under the mask and then the game came out and it turns out he actually wasnt a new character and was generally just a reskin of the red hood, who would have been cooler. Oh and hes also just generally dumb and non threatening, WHAT WAS THE POINT? If you were gonna just do red hood reskin atleast do it properly, the entire appeal of red hood is that hes a direct answer to batman's ideals, hes one of the only characters in the verse that can go up to batman, challenge him idealistically and be justified in his position. But no the arkham knight is just kinda mad that batman couldnt find him so he joins up with scarecrow... ??? Feels a little out of character but ok then he also leads and entire army of military trained individuals that he got from... uh... well.. the game actually never explains this. Theres just so many question marks that arise from asking the simplest of questions and this theme carries onto the joker plot.
The Jonkler
The idea of batman having joker show up in his mind throughout the game is genuinely, again, a cool concept. Having him randomly pop up in the open world for a bit of dialogue is actually awesome, its just the reasoning behind it that really makes you raise an eyebrow, so jokers blood actually made it to some patients and somehow this makes them start turning into joker? @ROCKSTEADY you guys do know that joker is just a regular human and that suggesting he can be cloned through the use of blood transfer is not only ridiculous but it also slightly ruins his character cuz then it kind of implies that he isnt special at all, its just the toxins that he fell into that made him crazy? The execution of this whole idea is just messy as fucckk, like you can still have the jokers subplot at panessa studios without this awful explanation, just have them as some joker fanboys that want to continue his legacy, i wouldnt have questioned that and then for batman i can generally buy into the fact that he would be mentally damaged by the jokers death and then his mental illness is only exacerbated by the fear toxin that scarecrow keeps giving him throughout the night. Like you dont need the dumb "oh no the jokers blood is making me turn into him." Like such an easy fix and makes way more sense. Like we know Batman is mentally unwell. Paul dini please why have you done this to me. There was rumours that his version of knight was gonna have hush as the main villain with court of owls playing a big role and like i just think that sounds so much more interesting. This game is just a victim of key developers leaving and a rushed development, this could and should have been the greatest Superhero game ever made and i cant help but shake the feeling that they bottled it man. Im patiently waiting for the day when a developer goes back to this sort of formula and tries again with a Batman game, wether its in the same universe, a follow up to origins or a completely new thing.
I just also want to take a moment to speak on the voice acting, not just in this game but the whole series, its truly magnificent. The decision to get the animated series voice cast back way back in asylum was just such a great move and one that feels like it was truly made by fans of the character. Mark Hamils Joker and Kevin Conroys Batman are perfect renditions of the characters, these are the voices i hear when i read the comic books, They will always be a massive part of my childhood and its deeply saddening that we will never hear Conroy reprise the role again. May he rest in peace, he will always be My Batman.
The perfect ending to the series. The dumbest most fan service thing you will ever experience but i would be lying if i said I didn’t enjoy it. The gameplay is sharper than anything else in the series that came before it, the music is great, the voice acting is as good as usual. I really didn’t appreciate the Akiba and Meryl thing, that was just annoying tbh, the cutscenes go on forever and theres alot of exposition that could stand to be cut out. The bosses are pretty average apart from the final one but yeah its fun lol but not as good as 2 or 3.
2019
This game is odd, the art direction is very unique and cool, the music is also pretty neat. The story starts off pretty interesting but the intrigue fizzles out after a while and the ending feels pretty anti-climatic. The gameplay is good i think but there are some gameplay sections that take so long and are so annoying to finish which also links in with another complaint that the checkpoints in the game are soooooo bad. There is also a significant amount of stuttering on the ps4 during combat sections. The combat itself can be very fun, the destructible environments are really impressive and the telekinetic powers are fun as hell to use. Facial animations and dialogue can both sometimes be quite janky. The ashtray maze section is quite exceptional though.
Playing this again this year made me appreciate it way more, it still has an abundance of issues but the pros outweigh the cons by quite a considerable amount.
I’ll repeat some things i said in my previous review, the plot is basic and kinda whatever and the combat is pretty meh but these things don’t really take away from the game because i feel like it nails other things really hard.
This is one of the greatest open worlds in all of gaming, even though it still relies on an overly obstructive mini map and a billion assassins creed question marks all over the map, The world is extreme impressive, i think out of every open world game i’ve played, this beats out all the rest solely based on immersion, the visuals, the sound design and the music perfectly ground you, the player into a believable and atmospheric setting. Just strolling the region of kaer morhen and exploring the ruins of old witcher buildings is so damn engaging, like you really do feel like you’re right there with geralt. And this level of engagement that the game manages to create in the player makes the kind of average combat mechanics feel better because you are fucking Geralt of rivia, one of the coolest characters in gaming, fighting monsters and shit, planning your fights, oiling your blade, drinking and brewing potions and none of that is at all necessary, the game is way too easy to make any of these things be mechanically required, but i engage in the systems anyway because i’m just so goddamn immersed into the experience, you do it because that’s what Geralt would do and not alot of games can create such a connection with the player. That being said, if there were more mechanical based reasons to utilise all these systems of alchemy, crafting, preparing for battle then i think the game would genuinely be on another level. Even as someone who has 100s of hours in the game, has played through on death march difficulty multiple times, there is still barely a mechanical encouragement to engage in these systems, the games combat just isn’t really suited to it in my opinion, fights end way too quickly for there to be that extra bit of thought. And even when you do find an enemy that has a considerable amount of health it will be because they are wildly over your level and then you can’t really engage with them until they become too ezy, there were literally no duels in the game that felt properly tuned, apart from the first available olgeird fight in the hearts of stone dlc, which is easily the best boss in the game and it is a fight that i think a lot of players will miss which is a huge shame.
I’ll repeat some things i said in my previous review, the plot is basic and kinda whatever and the combat is pretty meh but these things don’t really take away from the game because i feel like it nails other things really hard.
This is one of the greatest open worlds in all of gaming, even though it still relies on an overly obstructive mini map and a billion assassins creed question marks all over the map, The world is extreme impressive, i think out of every open world game i’ve played, this beats out all the rest solely based on immersion, the visuals, the sound design and the music perfectly ground you, the player into a believable and atmospheric setting. Just strolling the region of kaer morhen and exploring the ruins of old witcher buildings is so damn engaging, like you really do feel like you’re right there with geralt. And this level of engagement that the game manages to create in the player makes the kind of average combat mechanics feel better because you are fucking Geralt of rivia, one of the coolest characters in gaming, fighting monsters and shit, planning your fights, oiling your blade, drinking and brewing potions and none of that is at all necessary, the game is way too easy to make any of these things be mechanically required, but i engage in the systems anyway because i’m just so goddamn immersed into the experience, you do it because that’s what Geralt would do and not alot of games can create such a connection with the player. That being said, if there were more mechanical based reasons to utilise all these systems of alchemy, crafting, preparing for battle then i think the game would genuinely be on another level. Even as someone who has 100s of hours in the game, has played through on death march difficulty multiple times, there is still barely a mechanical encouragement to engage in these systems, the games combat just isn’t really suited to it in my opinion, fights end way too quickly for there to be that extra bit of thought. And even when you do find an enemy that has a considerable amount of health it will be because they are wildly over your level and then you can’t really engage with them until they become too ezy, there were literally no duels in the game that felt properly tuned, apart from the first available olgeird fight in the hearts of stone dlc, which is easily the best boss in the game and it is a fight that i think a lot of players will miss which is a huge shame.
Even in this updated version of the game, it just feels so generic, the soul of the ninja gaiden series is just not present here and it really hurts the experience, it actually bored me into not playing it, it became a chore. It just feels like a very hollow attempt at trying to turn the series into a cinematic story game, like a god of war 2018 gone wrong and it doesnt work. Whoever in particular got Troy Baker to voice Ryu should be fired immediately, its soooo bad.
2011
I do not like survival games in general and do not particularly like minecraft. I have two major issues with this genre. 1 theres just so much BS baked into these games, i really bristle against what i would describe as “eat your vegetables game design.” Game mechanics that force you to do tons and tons of boring shit to eventually arrive at a pay off. Grinding levels in a multiplayer game, levelling up in an mmo and gathering resources in an open world rpg, the survival genre combines all of these things together to create a creamy vegetable smoothie of pain without any of the pay off to make it worth it and thats the second major issue i have, for me the pay off just never felt worth it. These games rarely have compelling stories, they rarely have fleshed out endgames and they typically fail to create a feeling of satisfaction. You just feel like your on a hamster wheel the entire time and when you do make some big breakthrough like acquiring diamond equipment, your still gonna have to go back to the same boring activities you were taking part in previously. Survival games typically struggle to deliver a smooth feeling of progression. And thats really why i cant have a fun time in games such as minecraft.
Bonus note: My friends convinced me to get try minecraft again on ps4. I spent an hour staring at a “Locating server screen” until i gave up and went to bed, all the more reason for me to dislike this game.
Bonus note: My friends convinced me to get try minecraft again on ps4. I spent an hour staring at a “Locating server screen” until i gave up and went to bed, all the more reason for me to dislike this game.
This is a good ass game. I played through on the hardest diffIculty and i didnt even realise but the combat encounters are alot more intense when you realise that you die in like 2 shots. Nathan drake makes so many jokes about peoples asses in this game that i have to give the writing a 10/10. The reason you play this game though is for the big indiana jones set pieces, you go from climbing up a train as its falling off a cliff to jumping from moving trucks fucking blowing up shit with a grenade launcher but there no knack so i had to drop a point.
The game is kind of an unfinished mess. The story sucks, the characters are inconsistent, Big Boss is barely a character, shit tons of filler missions, the story especially in chapter 2 is just made up of moments, there is no cohesive plot however im not gonna lie i still thoroughly enjoy this game cos for the first time in a metal gear game none of this shit actually matters cos the gameplay is where its at, phantom pain offers up these massive sandboxes with every imaginable tool at your disposal, you are given so many ways to approach missions. You can impersonate a woman, you can shoot your hand off, you can rescue animals and make a zoo, you can plant C4 on a dudes ass, wait for him to get in a chopper and then blow him up, Theres simply no end to the freedom you are given. A true masterpiece of gameplay design.
2016
Cute little indie game. Very pretty and peaceful with some excellent music. I loved seeing all the different types of sea creatures in the art style too. Isnt that much to say about this one other than it was a very relaxing experience.
If i played this when it came out the score would undoubtedly be much higher but unfortunately the gameplay hasnt really aged well. This is the game that created the combat systems we know and love so it should receive credit for that but compared to any other arkham game ofc in the gameplay department it doesn't look very good. All that aside the story is still my second favourite in the series behind arkham city and the voice cast are all fantastic. This game more so than the others just feels like a continuation of the classic batman animated series. Theres one or two good bosses. The scarecrow and killer croc “encounters” are both amazing. The finale kinda sucks and everyone knows that but you should definitely still play this game.
Really enjoyed this one. Not quite as good as the OG overall but the gameplay has been refined and enhanced really nicely. I really like miles as the protagonist and he separates himself from being too smilar too peter with his own personality and interests. The villains are kind of meh, troy baker’s character is just like pure evil and its kind of funny, the tinkerer is a decent villian but theres alot of things she does that annoy me or are hypocritical. She’s relatively unlikeable which isnt what they were going for. Prowlers role is alright too and rhino is just rhino. There are some really impressive set pieces and Seamless cutscene to gameplay transitions. The overall structure and pacing of the game is relatively well done, its certainly not bloated but i think the middle section of the game kind of drags, its like 3-4 hour stretch with no bosses for the entirety of the middle section. but the opening few hours are perfectly done and the final act is pretty great too. Peter parker is hilarious in this game even tho hes not in it a whole lot and the tease after the credits for the inveitable spider man 2 is really exciting. The bosses themselves are good i would say, none of them are bad, i enjoy the rhino boss fights and the final boss is excellent, the prowler boss fight is kind of whatever tho. The score is actually fantastic, it perfectly fits the atmosphere and miles gets his own memorable motif. The gameplay is alot of fun, the swining feels so natural, so seamless and the animations are beautiful, its been refined to a T and the combat has seen some really nice improvements too. Miles special powers are super satisfying to use and his abundance of new AOE attacks lets there be even more enemies on screen and this leads to the combat being alot more challenging than it was in the original, theres more of an emphasis on stealth too because there are so many enemies, you have to pick off atleast a-few of them before going loud. They have gotten rid off the boring MJ sections from the last game and replaced them with puzzles which are better but still not great. I can see puzzles working really well as a way to break up the great combat, traversal and cutscenes, they just need to improve them to create that perfect video game formula for the next game. The game obviously looks great even on a ps4 but i did have a few frame rate issues during moments where there was just too much going on for the ps4 to handle, get it on ps5 if you can.
Part 1 is basically just more of Doom eternal but pushed further and harder, it may have been just me but I think part 1 is harder than part 2.
The three levels are all unique, large and well constructed with the 2nd level in the blood swamps being my personal favourite.
There are afew new enemy types that shake up gameplay a bit and the spirit enemies are especially challenging to deal with in a large brawl and the final boss was decent, nothing amazing but it was interesting.
The visuals and landscapes are just as breathtaking as they were in the main game but overall part 1 suffers from just being very similar to the base game which is definitely not a huge problem if you love it and I do.
The three levels are all unique, large and well constructed with the 2nd level in the blood swamps being my personal favourite.
There are afew new enemy types that shake up gameplay a bit and the spirit enemies are especially challenging to deal with in a large brawl and the final boss was decent, nothing amazing but it was interesting.
The visuals and landscapes are just as breathtaking as they were in the main game but overall part 1 suffers from just being very similar to the base game which is definitely not a huge problem if you love it and I do.