zachmaycry
I find its fluidity in presentation and gameplay to be comforting. Flawless is such a useless word in a critical context but as partially interactive cinematic spectacle it's just chef's kiss for me. It is a shame it's all in service of a nothing story, that it has nothing to say other than here is some more Uncharted. But it's kind of the best Uncharted you'll get.
i shouldn't have waited four months to write my review of this because I cannot remember what the fuck what I liked about it. i think mostly that it was just hilariously insane, weaving between real life historical conflicts and a highly advanced vision of the not too distant future. also had a very sensibly anti-american villain who - not unlike the riddle in the last batman movie - had some good points despite the psychopathy. america's drone program should be destroyed.
2013
this was lowkey the most stylish call of duty with its ps3/360 era's most imaginative set pieces. i mean it gave you a dog companion you could sick on dudes, it was actually kinda sick.
2011
battlefield is so mid but the level where you're running through Paris shooting cops had some kane and lynch vibes and that rocked.
2019
i went on vacation and my friend had to work for 3 days while i was there. luckily i gifted them my old ps4 in january so i basically had all my games on me there. ended up playing the rest of this after starting it a year ago. that's what i will always remember about it - that i wish i was walking down the beach with my bestie instead of operating camera after camera playing a poor man's dead space. BUT, i do appreciate the game's attempt to really make you do actual work. the gameplay while not refined completely is noble. shame it's in service of an utterly boring story.
2022
has fallen in my estimation a month after completing it but i dug what a throwback it felt like at times. all the exhilarant action of a solid first person shooter where guns are supernatural hand powers. it's kind of the dudes rock game of 2022. tokyo looked fantastic too. is a must play i feel in an age of western-produced Japanese games like ghost of tsushima and sifu.
2012
greg miller voice
really made me feel like i was fighting God
really made me feel like i was fighting God
there are parts that feel stolen right out of uncharted and the last of us that i thought really rocked and worked for a call of duty game.
and then there are parts that were lifted and remixed from old call of duties that felt staid and boring.
by the end i felt exactly as entertained as i felt bored. there is a futurama episode where bender meets God and God exclaims, "if you do something right no one will think you've done anything at all" and that's kind of what this game feels like.
felt actually like an amalgamation of several different mindsets at play to the point it loses all identity. it wants to be zero dark thirty and sicario but it's a game where the cover character wears a skull mask in every setting. it's a game that's like "we can't do anything with the villain because of laws" and then throws them out the window later on hoping you've forgotten that. i've written a review like this before where i've said, as an expert in being a dumb person and a bad writer, i can spot dumb, lazy writing a mile away, modern warfare ii has all the hallmarks that. it's the equivalent of that horse drawing meme that starts of super realistic and in each installment becomes sloppier and sloppier until it resembles a blind child's depiction of a horse. you could extrapolate some political takeaways from this but at this point it'd be in vain because it contradicts itself through its sheer contempt for basic coherent consistently.
ultimately i think despite looking like a billion dollars it just doesn't play any better than any other call of duty. and i think it's disappointing it fails to really remember what made the first modern warfare 2 so good - the commitment to michael bay levels of balls to the wall action (it gets there in spurts but it's almost more of a reboot of the 2010 medal of honor game than the og mw2).
and then there are parts that were lifted and remixed from old call of duties that felt staid and boring.
by the end i felt exactly as entertained as i felt bored. there is a futurama episode where bender meets God and God exclaims, "if you do something right no one will think you've done anything at all" and that's kind of what this game feels like.
felt actually like an amalgamation of several different mindsets at play to the point it loses all identity. it wants to be zero dark thirty and sicario but it's a game where the cover character wears a skull mask in every setting. it's a game that's like "we can't do anything with the villain because of laws" and then throws them out the window later on hoping you've forgotten that. i've written a review like this before where i've said, as an expert in being a dumb person and a bad writer, i can spot dumb, lazy writing a mile away, modern warfare ii has all the hallmarks that. it's the equivalent of that horse drawing meme that starts of super realistic and in each installment becomes sloppier and sloppier until it resembles a blind child's depiction of a horse. you could extrapolate some political takeaways from this but at this point it'd be in vain because it contradicts itself through its sheer contempt for basic coherent consistently.
ultimately i think despite looking like a billion dollars it just doesn't play any better than any other call of duty. and i think it's disappointing it fails to really remember what made the first modern warfare 2 so good - the commitment to michael bay levels of balls to the wall action (it gets there in spurts but it's almost more of a reboot of the 2010 medal of honor game than the og mw2).
2022
This review contains spoilers
I was hoping for a Last of Us 2 sense of dour self seriousness, with the scale of Shadow of the Colossus, a sprinkle of the challenging Baby Souls-like gameplay of Jedi Fallen Order, and the urgency of what a one-shot camera and 'Ragnarok' subtitle imply.
Instead, it's basically just Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy redo. Same kind of ragtag motley crüe. Similar late 2000s PC wallpaper aesthetic. Similiar kind of after school special writing and tone. Similiar repetitive gameplay. Same meta fakeout credits scene at one point.
My expectations aside, playing this just felt like a chore. The way the gameplay loop is set up. Get some dialogue about how killing is bad. Leap over a rock. Press O to shimmy through a wall. Swing a weapon to nonchalantly dismember some googly monsters while your companions tell you if you're on fire or not. Leave combat arena. Do a light puzzle, get a shiny do-dad. Repeat.
And sure, that's generally how video games go. But because of the slavish devotion to the one shot camera, the game has this very long, drawn out feel. The in-game walk n talks are expository dumps and always feels calculated and robotic, never naturalistic anf in step with the rhythm of the game. The fast travel feels that way too, always timed to end when the convo dies. And the game just feels like it's artificiality padded, all the little elemental puzzles in my way feel there to keep me around another hour. There's no fluidity to the combat.
This would he fine for me if the story was good but it's just as rigid and cliche as the game itself. No surprises. Every line that's walked feels like the perfect script one writes in their head when one imagines themselves after the therapy the plan to take one day. Kratos' authentic edge has been smoothed completely out. He says all the right things and feels all the right things. Atreus misbehaves but all in the good ways one would like their rebellious child to misbehave. Sure, he strays from the path, but he's quick to see the err of his ways and reign himself back in. Freya's rage toned down as well, and what could have been an interesting dramatic web to untangle becomes just another edge sanded away to make room for a simplistic stop the bad man story. The bad man being Odin, another character completely underwritten. There's just no edge to any of this. It feels utterly without consequence.
Instead, it's basically just Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy redo. Same kind of ragtag motley crüe. Similar late 2000s PC wallpaper aesthetic. Similiar kind of after school special writing and tone. Similiar repetitive gameplay. Same meta fakeout credits scene at one point.
My expectations aside, playing this just felt like a chore. The way the gameplay loop is set up. Get some dialogue about how killing is bad. Leap over a rock. Press O to shimmy through a wall. Swing a weapon to nonchalantly dismember some googly monsters while your companions tell you if you're on fire or not. Leave combat arena. Do a light puzzle, get a shiny do-dad. Repeat.
And sure, that's generally how video games go. But because of the slavish devotion to the one shot camera, the game has this very long, drawn out feel. The in-game walk n talks are expository dumps and always feels calculated and robotic, never naturalistic anf in step with the rhythm of the game. The fast travel feels that way too, always timed to end when the convo dies. And the game just feels like it's artificiality padded, all the little elemental puzzles in my way feel there to keep me around another hour. There's no fluidity to the combat.
This would he fine for me if the story was good but it's just as rigid and cliche as the game itself. No surprises. Every line that's walked feels like the perfect script one writes in their head when one imagines themselves after the therapy the plan to take one day. Kratos' authentic edge has been smoothed completely out. He says all the right things and feels all the right things. Atreus misbehaves but all in the good ways one would like their rebellious child to misbehave. Sure, he strays from the path, but he's quick to see the err of his ways and reign himself back in. Freya's rage toned down as well, and what could have been an interesting dramatic web to untangle becomes just another edge sanded away to make room for a simplistic stop the bad man story. The bad man being Odin, another character completely underwritten. There's just no edge to any of this. It feels utterly without consequence.
2014
A year off between playing the first third and finishing the rest didn't do this game any justice. Its weird mix of hoorah US military sensationalism and goofy sci-fi jibber jabber really confounds me. I kind of understood the appeal of the first one but this just feels like one of those movies they mock on Mystery Science Theatre. And the shooting and guns are all woeful. I don't know, man. It's just so bland and unappealing to me. Some of the art in the updated anniversary edition is neat, I guess. Kinda DMT-esque.
I'd like to add this next part for me, as it is a journal entry of sorts.
I started this in October 2021 with the intent to plough through the whole series. But I met someone online while playing it, and this new friend, she slowly helped to pull me out of my depression. Subsequently, however, this game and series got smeared with the unfortunate association of ... well, all my sadness and dark thoughts. I couldn't play it without thinking of my first time meeting her, and even though that should he a happy association, my mind would drift directly to the feelings I had leading up to that (all of which were deeply negative). It inevitably took over a year for me to come to terms with the fact that I'm better off now than I was back then, that I no longer have to let the loneliness I felt then dictate my life now (and especially as my friendship grew and evolved and remains one of the more stable things in my life, that there no longer remains any doubts of losing that is a huge boost to my self-esteem).
I didn't think this was a very good game but the act of returning to and finishing it is actually one of my proudest gaming moments of 2022, as it's a mental block I didn't think I'd get over (just three months ago I was staying with my friend and crying in their living room while they went out, as I thought back on how I got from playing Halo 2 to having the road trip of my lifetime; crying because at the time of starting Halo 2 I didn't really imagine myself being alive a year from then let alone enjoying myself so much).
This is a weirdly personal game for me. A lot of heavy, unrelated emotion tied to it. Shame it sucked.
I'd like to add this next part for me, as it is a journal entry of sorts.
I started this in October 2021 with the intent to plough through the whole series. But I met someone online while playing it, and this new friend, she slowly helped to pull me out of my depression. Subsequently, however, this game and series got smeared with the unfortunate association of ... well, all my sadness and dark thoughts. I couldn't play it without thinking of my first time meeting her, and even though that should he a happy association, my mind would drift directly to the feelings I had leading up to that (all of which were deeply negative). It inevitably took over a year for me to come to terms with the fact that I'm better off now than I was back then, that I no longer have to let the loneliness I felt then dictate my life now (and especially as my friendship grew and evolved and remains one of the more stable things in my life, that there no longer remains any doubts of losing that is a huge boost to my self-esteem).
I didn't think this was a very good game but the act of returning to and finishing it is actually one of my proudest gaming moments of 2022, as it's a mental block I didn't think I'd get over (just three months ago I was staying with my friend and crying in their living room while they went out, as I thought back on how I got from playing Halo 2 to having the road trip of my lifetime; crying because at the time of starting Halo 2 I didn't really imagine myself being alive a year from then let alone enjoying myself so much).
This is a weirdly personal game for me. A lot of heavy, unrelated emotion tied to it. Shame it sucked.
2006
fuck that ending fuck this shit life is too short i wasted a month of my life
It's my first Ace Combat game so the general concept is new and thus extremely exciting to me. And any faults are lost on me.
I don't have a lot to say other than that as a cacophony of various sense overloading images it is a blast and unlike anything I've played. Shameless but incredibly well composed and framed. As someone whose spent the better part of the past two years looking for meaning in overly loud action games, and primarily shooters, Ace Combat is a nice refreshing slap to the face and a reminder to keep searching because there's banging shit still out, I just gotta look in different places (dogfighting games apparently).
This exact realisation mirrors my current real world one, too, as I realise the last year for me has been a plateu and I think I've finally found a new obsession, which is exciting and a reminder that life is full of surprises and that saying, "it's darkest before the dawn" holds truth because there is always new light to be found.
This game will hold a weirdly special place in my heart. At least until I become disillusioned and jaded again.
I don't have a lot to say other than that as a cacophony of various sense overloading images it is a blast and unlike anything I've played. Shameless but incredibly well composed and framed. As someone whose spent the better part of the past two years looking for meaning in overly loud action games, and primarily shooters, Ace Combat is a nice refreshing slap to the face and a reminder to keep searching because there's banging shit still out, I just gotta look in different places (dogfighting games apparently).
This exact realisation mirrors my current real world one, too, as I realise the last year for me has been a plateu and I think I've finally found a new obsession, which is exciting and a reminder that life is full of surprises and that saying, "it's darkest before the dawn" holds truth because there is always new light to be found.
This game will hold a weirdly special place in my heart. At least until I become disillusioned and jaded again.
2013
i enjoy how openly this game is about nothing. how all its various narrative branches lead to wildly contradicting endings. in that way it reflects very well the philosophy that life is meaningless and empty but how we all strive to put our own unique stamp on all the random choices we make anyway.
i also enjoy the beautifully mundane liminal spaces and how video games have the power to really create some amazing interactive space if they choose to.
it's a game ultimately where you wander around and different shit happens and i think that's cool.
i also enjoy the beautifully mundane liminal spaces and how video games have the power to really create some amazing interactive space if they choose to.
it's a game ultimately where you wander around and different shit happens and i think that's cool.
2022
This review contains spoilers
I remember the first season of True Detective and how badly people wanted to unravel a complex mystery that involved the Deep State, time travel, sex cults, and aliens. The first eight or nine episodes teased it... and then it just sort of petered out. It was like being at a club when the lights come on and they herd you out with the "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here" cliche.
Norco is a game for those people - the ones who clamoured for some bizarre, absurdist, larger than life mystery to chase set against a Southern Gothic neo noir backdrop. But Norcp sort of does the inverse, where it builds and builds from slow neo noir potboiler to utterly insane cultist shenanigans, until it eventually ends on this seemingly unsatisfactory but largely personally emotional note.
By the end of this game things have escalated to Southland Tales levels of apocalyptic surrealism. And in such a way that the symbolism has boiled over to a point that feels either very meaningless or meaningful. Like the ending was either written first and everything leading up to it makes sense to the writer or at a certain point they kept spiralling things that they lost track of what they were trying to say.
The deep sense of lived in personality this game has shines brightest in the small details and small areas. Your home and Blake's room; the local street and bar; any time the world map opens and you see the refineries, swamps and highways dotting the distance. By the time you get to plantations and rocket ships in the swamp, things lose that personal touch. Although one still gets the the feeling that this precise level of surrealism could only be born from someone who grew up in this area. Once you're jumping off a spaceship with your mum's corpse things sort rounded into place for me. I can't even articulate what those things are, just the emotionality of it hit me in the gut for some reason.
Kentucky Route Zero this isn't. I think this games loses a lot whenever characters have to talk. The prose is maybe a little too precious. But any text in this game I think is quite poetic. Reminds me a lot of In Other Waters, where the colours and game art also really lift the text up and makes it feels presented as poetically as it is written. I just don't think this games contains any real people outside of Catherine (her sequences are the highlight for me). Everyone else feels like a crude stereotype, which is a shame but not a deal beaker for the game it ultimately ends up being and not what it seems at the beginning.
Norco is a game for those people - the ones who clamoured for some bizarre, absurdist, larger than life mystery to chase set against a Southern Gothic neo noir backdrop. But Norcp sort of does the inverse, where it builds and builds from slow neo noir potboiler to utterly insane cultist shenanigans, until it eventually ends on this seemingly unsatisfactory but largely personally emotional note.
By the end of this game things have escalated to Southland Tales levels of apocalyptic surrealism. And in such a way that the symbolism has boiled over to a point that feels either very meaningless or meaningful. Like the ending was either written first and everything leading up to it makes sense to the writer or at a certain point they kept spiralling things that they lost track of what they were trying to say.
The deep sense of lived in personality this game has shines brightest in the small details and small areas. Your home and Blake's room; the local street and bar; any time the world map opens and you see the refineries, swamps and highways dotting the distance. By the time you get to plantations and rocket ships in the swamp, things lose that personal touch. Although one still gets the the feeling that this precise level of surrealism could only be born from someone who grew up in this area. Once you're jumping off a spaceship with your mum's corpse things sort rounded into place for me. I can't even articulate what those things are, just the emotionality of it hit me in the gut for some reason.
Kentucky Route Zero this isn't. I think this games loses a lot whenever characters have to talk. The prose is maybe a little too precious. But any text in this game I think is quite poetic. Reminds me a lot of In Other Waters, where the colours and game art also really lift the text up and makes it feels presented as poetically as it is written. I just don't think this games contains any real people outside of Catherine (her sequences are the highlight for me). Everyone else feels like a crude stereotype, which is a shame but not a deal beaker for the game it ultimately ends up being and not what it seems at the beginning.
2008
sometimes it's difficult to divorce the feelings that surround you while you play a game from the game itself.
in this case, for me, a two-plus month depression that made playing this way more of a slog than I initially desired it to be.
on the other hand I found it a sort of safe recluse from everything else. it was nice to have an hour or so a night a night (or every other night (or every other other night)) to come home to this waiting for me, and just murder my way through an insanely detailed AI recreation of New York City as Niko Bellic, sociopath with a heart of gold.
in many ways this feels like an episodic adventure, a long form game that's meant to be played piecemeal over an extended period of time, not shoved down your gullet in a week (how I originally played it 13 years ago).
that said i feel like the game takes ages just to say one simple thing. and that length might be the point but it's also very wonkily written. it's weird to say that it either needed to be way shorter and tighter; or way longer and more meaningful. i feel like it's a huge slab of meat of a game that's undercooked in the middle.
i think the beauty of GTA IV, as much as there is a beauty to any game this bloated and wide, is all in the smaller brushstrokes of the world creation. the details in the environment, from the graffiti and murals on the walls, to the ethnic makeup of the NPCs in each neighborhood, the cars and traffic AI, the talk radio, the different uniforms and shapes of the police officers, the steam and hiss that rise from the streets. the fact that you have to pay a toll to go from Broken to Bohan and nowhere else. the useless atm and car washes. the stupid Ricky Gervais comedy act you can attend. the dating "mini games". it's a highly detailed game to no end except to create a larger diaroma-esque level of immersion. it's cool.
the ugliness of this game is just in its banal, flavorless story of revenge. none of the character and charm present in the world of Liberty City shines through in the story or actual characters. just broad cliche after broad cliche with a few somewhat vageuly memorable shootouts in the middle (the Heat inspired bank robbery still a standout). I forgot there's some overarching plot about stolen diamonds that's used as connective tissue between this and the two expansion DLCs that kind of adds up to nothing as well. it's all so meh. i guess i liked the shooting enough, the combat shotgun is S-tier, but honestly all this time spent replaying this could have been spent replaying the much stronger Max Payne 3.
eh. i wish i was in a better mood and finished this quicker because I am mostly thinking about all the games I could have played instead.
in this case, for me, a two-plus month depression that made playing this way more of a slog than I initially desired it to be.
on the other hand I found it a sort of safe recluse from everything else. it was nice to have an hour or so a night a night (or every other night (or every other other night)) to come home to this waiting for me, and just murder my way through an insanely detailed AI recreation of New York City as Niko Bellic, sociopath with a heart of gold.
in many ways this feels like an episodic adventure, a long form game that's meant to be played piecemeal over an extended period of time, not shoved down your gullet in a week (how I originally played it 13 years ago).
that said i feel like the game takes ages just to say one simple thing. and that length might be the point but it's also very wonkily written. it's weird to say that it either needed to be way shorter and tighter; or way longer and more meaningful. i feel like it's a huge slab of meat of a game that's undercooked in the middle.
i think the beauty of GTA IV, as much as there is a beauty to any game this bloated and wide, is all in the smaller brushstrokes of the world creation. the details in the environment, from the graffiti and murals on the walls, to the ethnic makeup of the NPCs in each neighborhood, the cars and traffic AI, the talk radio, the different uniforms and shapes of the police officers, the steam and hiss that rise from the streets. the fact that you have to pay a toll to go from Broken to Bohan and nowhere else. the useless atm and car washes. the stupid Ricky Gervais comedy act you can attend. the dating "mini games". it's a highly detailed game to no end except to create a larger diaroma-esque level of immersion. it's cool.
the ugliness of this game is just in its banal, flavorless story of revenge. none of the character and charm present in the world of Liberty City shines through in the story or actual characters. just broad cliche after broad cliche with a few somewhat vageuly memorable shootouts in the middle (the Heat inspired bank robbery still a standout). I forgot there's some overarching plot about stolen diamonds that's used as connective tissue between this and the two expansion DLCs that kind of adds up to nothing as well. it's all so meh. i guess i liked the shooting enough, the combat shotgun is S-tier, but honestly all this time spent replaying this could have been spent replaying the much stronger Max Payne 3.
eh. i wish i was in a better mood and finished this quicker because I am mostly thinking about all the games I could have played instead.