Short Game Reviews: May 2022

Lego Star Wars the Force Awakens:

Prefer this over the Complete Saga, this game adapts it's source material a lot better than the former and has better level design and gameplay despite being based on a mediocre movie.

OlliOlli World:

This game can be frustrating yet is also very fun, it's trial and error gameplay done right. I don't really care for getting high scores since the game was already really challenging. A must play if you are a 2D platformer fan or just any platformer heavily based around timing.

Team Sonic Racing:

Its pretty fun but I feel like it could be a chapter shorter then again this could be me playing so much of the game's story mode at once.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Hinokami Chronicles: 

I am not very familar with Demon Slayer's manga or anime and I checked this game out because I think CyberConnect2 anime game adaptations tend to be some of the more interesting anime licensed game fare. I think Naruto Storm 2-4 for the most part, is a better way to experience post timeskip Naruto than the anime and I will eventually play Dragon Ball Kakarot.

From what I can gather from the story of this game is that it's decent, but it's not enough to make run out and start watching the anime. It seems to be a weird cross between Bleach and Berserk with a lot of the typical demon related shennanigans that a lot of these kind of anime tend to have.

The game overall is pretty decent typical anime arena fighter gameplay and especially similar to the Naruto Storm games all though I think the fighting here is a bit more refined since you have an actual dodge command rather than relying on dodging as a cooldown. It has the same structure as other games from the devs, and I do like the adventuring aspect to break up the pace of fights all though there was way too much downtime after you beat one of the 12 Kizuki in the forest, and there was some strange difficulty spikes towards the Mugen Train boss all the way to the final boss, but the game lets you respawn from where you last died but you lose points reminding me a bit of Wonderful 101. It has heavy amounts of cutscenes at times but I am used to it at this point.

It has those crazy over the top boss fights with the crazy QTEs that CC2 games are known for and they are as over the top as they always are but there seems to be fewer than usual.

Overall, I was expecting a CC2 anime licensed game and that's what I got, the game didn't light my world on fire but I was never really expecting it to.

Nex Machina:

No one really makes Twin Stick Shooters like HouseMarque does. The game feels amazing to play the moment you boot it up and it's a game that does so much in just so little. If you love short games and short action games at that, this game is a must play.

Vanquish Review

I still love the game, the game's action feel still feels fast, chaotic and vast. It's crazy how much stuff is going on screen with bullets flying, the amount of npcs and so much destruction going on and the game keeps a steady framerate throughout all of it. The weapons and feedback when playing a game where you only fighting robots feels unique to this day. I also love the small and crazy details to combat like boast dodge cancelling, reload cancelling, shooting grenades and the different melee moves weapons have. I also love this is the only game I can think of where you can dodgeroll so goddamn fast and it feels awesome.

Also, playing this game and it feels so early 00s, the art style, the music, the setting to name some examples. The best way of describing this game to me(and I know apparently P.N.03, various anime, and G.I Joe were big influences on the game) is Zone of the Enders meets Max Payne meets Halo.

I know this was a big point of contention for the game but I think is one of it's greatest strengths is the length. The game's brisk pace is the reason why I replayed it so many times. The game's campaign is non stop action packed thrill ride and since it's so short no level overstays it's welcome and the campaign is constantly moving to the next action sequence, there is never a dull moment and the length complements it perfectly, have this game be around over 10 hours and everything starts to wear thin.

Now, with all that praise out of the way, here comes the issues I have and tbh, they have been issues I had for a while, first of all, why can't you have a melee attack that at least can kill weaker enemies? Every melee attack causes the suit to overcharge, and while I get this with stronger enemies, why the hell can't Sam's suit at the very least not be able to hit robots with a rifle butt? Transforers Cybertron games and Warhammer 40K Space Marine can give you melee attacks that can kill weaker enemies and I think this game can put it in too. It's can be super irritating as shit to have an enemy with a sword come close towards you and if you hit them once it causes a suit overheat and enemies can get close a lot, this now leads to another issue I have, every time you are at critical health when suit power has charge, the game will active slo mo automatically, and this I don't mind but my issue is that why can't I turn it off AFTER my health is restored? You can turn off slo mo at any time when aiming but you can't do that when health is recovering? Seems inconsistent, and it can become a problem when the action gets so intense that one slo mo health recovery won't be enough and you are surronded by enemies and that eventually leads to dodge rolling so fast that slo mo health recovery hopefully kicks in.

This is an issue I have with the game for a while but screw the one hit kill bullshit in this game, there are times where I will be at full health and suit is charged up and then I will randomly die for no reason even with suit energy not even used, nothing angers me more than randomly getting in one hit out of nowhere. Now the final issue and this is new to this latest playthrough of the game, but the Anti Armor Pistol is BROKEN, it makes Halo CE's pistol look like a damn peashooter. This gun breaks the game's difficulty in half the same way Bane broke Batman's back. You still got to use other weapons from time to time, but the tougher encounters you use the Anti Armor Pistol on and it makes short work of all stronger enemies and bosses. Upgrade this thing and the Burns boss you can deplete his health before you even get to the final phase and the same goes for all the bosses. It is good there are no pistol rounds for the final boss because that would ruin it and Vanquish's final boss is surprisingly good for not just a TPS but shooters in general in how fast paced it feels and how in line it is with the rest of the game.

Overall, I still love this game, so much so that I beat so many times and I wrote this long review of the game, I am still super bummed this game never got a sequel and ends on a cliffhanger because I feel this game if it got sequels really could've been something as a franchise.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Review

I have not been so conflicted on playing a game in such a long time, when the game is good, it's good, when the game is bad, it can be really bad. I'll get the bad out of the way, the camera is terrible, the platforming is super buggy and the combat isn't good and not in a serviceable kind of way. The camera makes it hard to tell where you can or cannot jump at times and it obscures your vision a lot both in platforming and combat, in platforming, you can't even see a platform at times and you can miss jumps, and in combat it gets worse, you get hit and when an enemy comes close the camera zooms in on when he hits you and the camera acts erratic in closed spaces on top of that you can get staggered like crazy if you get hit by enemies even once. Dodging can have the camera act spazzy too. The platforming and holy shit, this is where the game's frustration can REALLY kick in, there are times where Lara will grab on to a ledge or won't, there are times where she will either climb over something or won't, the grappling hook with unhook itself for no reason, you tell Lara to jump one way and she will jump another way. You will press the jump button and then she will refuse to jump. Shit like this made the game infuriating to play and I can see why I could never beat it years ago.

Okay, after all that negativity why do I enjoy it? Well that is due to the level design, I am not familar with Core Design's TR games and from what I played of this, I can safely say I am a fan of it. It's feels like platforming heavy version of Resident Evil with key hunts while also having the timeless level design of switch pulling to activate certain parts of the level design, I love this level design mainly in that it encourages you to explore and feels like you are slowly unravelling a mystery. I also love how much platforming, trap dodging and swimming there is, every level is large and it feels like you are actually "raiding" an unknown place you are not supposed to be. Every level feels like you are part of this large grand spanning adventure, the levels can be pretty exhausting to finish due to how expansive they are. It's interesting how Crystal Dynamics stayed true to this kind of design in the 7th gen no less. Overall, I enjoy this game, but if you remove the interesting level design, I would not be very positive on it.

I am disappointing that the TR franchise in general went away from this level design, this to me feels more timeless, hope the new one goes back to this style.

Sly 1 Brief Thoughts

Mostly a generic Crash Bandicot clone and a Crash 3 clone at that. With hub worlds that have mini games and boss battles giving you new abilities after you beat them. While that isn't it bad on it's own, the game doesn't have nearly as much of an identity compared to it's sequels, if you remove the different story and character, it's interchangeable with Crash 3. Not bad, but is the least memorable from the Sly games.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect Review

I had a blast playing it for most of the game. The sound design and damage animations were already great but the addition of blood splatter when enemies get shot makes the combat even more satisfying.

There is an actual overarching plot this time and it's surprisingly well written for an fps, the character interactions are funny and Cortez in general feels like he is a parody of the badass space marine protagonist that is so often seen in FPS games. It also makes repeating sections of levels compelling since it's tied to the story and it's interesting play out events you already experienced since they were a mystery and you get to eventually play it out.

The OST is still pretty good, but not as good as TS2's. I also like how there are more checkpoints and that health is actually properly spaced out throughout all the levels. I can actually play this game on Normal difficulty.

Now, the issues, first, Anya's commentary while can be funny, it can also be very grating in that she can point out the balant obvious and the game can be very hand holdy in general comapred to TS2. The Gravity Gun like arm thing barely gets enough use and felt like it didn't need to be in the game at all. The vehicle sections while decent, does feel like they were kind of borrowing from Halo for the sake of it. The titular Timesplitters are irritating to fight since their attacks always home in on you and they keep darting around the map, the penultimate sniping section being a gigantic pain in the ass because of this.

And this might not be an issue depending on your point of view, but the game's campaign feels like it adopted the Half Life approach rather than TS2's Goldeneye and Perfect Dark inspired objective system. So the single player can feel more scripted and linear when compared to TS2's approach of, "here's the level and do the objectives in mostly whatever order you want". I might prefer the Half Life style since the objective system sort of feel like it's wasting when you just miss one objective and then look around just to beat the level.

So it's personal prefrence at the end of the day, and they ended off the series well here.

Iron Man(2008) Game Review

I played the PS2 version for this review.

It was an interesting game if a typical movie tie in game where it feels like the devs wanted to make a good game but they were forced to rush it out the door like Captain America Super Soldier to name an example.

It's weird, everything that could potentially make for a good Iron Man game is all here, including the story(which I may even prefer over the 90s cartoon). The controls feel pretty fluid and the whole "wiring" system power to armour, flight and weapons all feel in character. There's a good number of flight and on foot action. There's even a good number of Iron Man villains here and some not even in the MCU or have really far removed versions like Titanium Man, Whiplash, Witney Frost, the Maggia and AIM to name some examples, everything is all here.

Where the game faulters is how much jank it suffers from for being a movie tie in game, while the weapon sound effects feel weighty and they should since you are using 3 weapons for the whole game, the melee feels weird in that no one ever reacts with much force to getting hit, and awkwardly fall down, this can be said for many of the death animations. Tony walks for a few seconds before activating a switch and the boss fights feel like 90s fps boss fights in that you just shoot them or shoot them and their minions and then they die.

Horgan, Stane, and Witney being the worst of them. Another issue is how many objectives mainly consist of blowing stuff, flying around and blowing stuff up, there was some interesting shakeups like how there are radar jammers but they are few and far between, and you fight the same enemies a lot, the same tanks, helicoptors, foot soldiers, jeeps, rocket launcher foot soliders and when the game throws armoured enemies into the mix, they are brain dead can be beaten easily and don't add much to combat.

Overall, I mainly just played it out of curiousity and it was okay.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure Review

While it has it's bad parts, mainly with the giant sized boss fights, I think the game is pretty enjoyable, it feels like weird and jankier precursor to God of War which I know is a comparison that has been said to death but it's hard not to see it even if it is ultimately Tecmo Koei trying to get a piece of the Onimusha pie that Capcom had with the whole monster killing mythological fantasy action game.

It is impressive what was done here, the world suprisingly feels interconnected despite it named like worlds in a platformer. You will be running around and backtracking a lot and learning new abilites to open new pathways or solve some seal puzzle, it also had a grappling hook before God of War 2 did all though GOW2 did it a lot better. There is also combat and platforming basically everything before GOW before GOW would do it even though GOW is tighter and more polished, but this game's execution of these ideas are decent enough in own right since this generally combines so many elements like action, adventuring and platforming and rarely do they overstay their welcome. Rygar also has the follow cam before GOW as well.

The Onimusha inspirations can be seen in how there are weapons that can all be upgraded to level 3 with enemies you kill giving currency.

Now this is all the good and honestly the only big issues with the game is that giant size enemies are a pain in the ass in that they are hard to hit, the lack of an actual dodge command can be a pain and the worst part is that bosses can hit you and then hit you again while you are getting up after the invinciblity frames wear off, a quick button tap to get up would greatly help. And that extended platforming section
in Aracdia is also really bad due to how easy it is to miss jumps due to the fixed camera, this isn't as bad Devil May Cry 4. The voice acting is also pretty bad but you can view it in a so bad it's entertaining kind of way.

Overall, for a game that was a weird indirect precursor to God of War, it's solid especially with no development hindsight to go off of.

Infamous 1 and 2 Brief Thoughts

Infamous 1:

This was a pretty good game the more you played it but some aspects of the design is rather confusing. It feels like Sucker Punch tried to do the more linear game design of something like the first Sly Cooper game but it applied to an open world sandbox rather than a set of linear challenges like Sly Cooper.

For example you don't get thrusters and electricity line grind until later in the game while fine for a linear game is kind of nuisance in an open world game where traversal is a big aspect of it. It's also strange how other moves like electricity grenade and shockwave don't come later when they are an important part of Cole's weapons and moves. It's like a shooter where you got to unlock all the important weapons later.

The game does get better overall the more of Cole's moves you unlock, so trudge through those early hours and then you will get a pretty good game. Lightning strike is one of the few times where earning the moves by doing the missions feel earned because it's such a powerful late game move.

The story is also pretty good minus the tacked on morality system. Kessler is a pretty good villain and does a good job at challenging Cole, the other villains are good too and the Infamous tie in comic also does a good job at expanding on Kessler. So you like the game, read that comic.

In short, get through those early hours and you are in for a good game.

Infamous 2:

Overall an improvement over the first Infamous in terms of gameplay. You get all your base powers from the start this time. The movement and combat also feel much better in this one. Enemy variety and the numbers on screen is also more grand than in the first game. Traversal is also improved.

It's funny this game might've been one of the first games to introduce me to games where shooting and movement played a big role in the gameplay.

God of War 1 and 2 Brief Thoughts

God of War(2005):

Good solid foundation for later GOW games and the story is the best in the series overall. But it has it's problems, the combat while not bad and the game does a good job at shaking things up with puzzles and platforming, the combat sections later in the game get a little overwhelming fighting the game enemies again and again. Some of the platforming and the Hades section is pretty bad, but it's a solid foundation.

God of War 2:

Where GOW found it's stride gameplay wise, the situational depth is truly incredible. The way it interconnects all the combat mechanics with jumping and platforming makes it better than the first. The story is worse but Kratos is still the high point of the story.

Earth Maiden Arjuna Review

I haven't been so conflicted watching an anime in a long while. The show is interesting at points and it can be thought provoking, but the whole story kind of just feels confused to me. It could be because it wasn't what I wanted it to be or that the first 2 episodes may have put my expectations out of whack but I was expecting this to be some kind of superhero globe trotting adventure show where Tokio, Juna and the SEED orangization go on adventures together defeating Raja and then some lesson and points about enviromentalism would be brought up while it was going on. I was expecting this to be some kind of monster of the week with an underlying over arching plot which would slowly reveal itself.

But it was ultimately a slice of life show with heavy enviromentalism themes with the show occasionally reminding you that Juna has superpowers. Juna would be struggling to live her day to day life and has that weird love triangle while problems around the world were happening and Seed was dealing with that. The latter was more interesting to me, and I care more about that because it felt bigger and more important then Juna's family problems or whether or not she still has the ability to eat "manufactured" food. I also got annoyed by the character of Chris and his endless philosophical ramblings and him constantly telling Juna that she "doesn't get it" throughout most of the show. The best way I can say it is, I wish the show had thought provoking themes and all that enviromentalism talk while also having a plot that was more engaging. Maybe I just wanted this show to be something like a cross between Blood Plus, Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex and Witch Hunter Robin but with heavy themes about how humanity treats the planet. I do feel being more like those shows could've quelled how lukewarm I am on the plot of this series overall.

I will admit, the OST and the dub did carry me through much of the show. I have a soft spot for the Ocean Group since back in the 00s, those guys were in a lot of animations and I get nostalgic listening to them. I always did like it when Shadowcat from X-Men Evolution pops up in anything.

Overall, this show was a weird experience, I can't decide I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would because it "subverted" my expectations or because the overall writing execution was sub par. It's alright, but I was very conflicted while watching and I probably only finished it at all was because I don't like leaving short anime series "unfinished".

Dragon Ball Z Battle of Gods Review

Watching Dragon Ball Battle of Gods for the first time in almost 10 years is kind of weird, I remember being so hyped up for the movie and remember being so let down by it, but watching it again, it was...alright. In some ways it's the best DB movie ever made by that point.

Beerus did have more character than most DB movie villains who most of them just wanted to rule the world or kill Goku because reasons, and they did do a decent job at building him up as a threat in typical DB fashion of excessively using the worf effect but that's what defined the series so I am fine with it. It is rather amusing how much they played on the whole, "DB villain blowing up the planet when they are pissed" by having the literal God of Destruction get angry over not eating pudding. It was dumb to me years back but now I find it hilarious.

Vegeta's portrayal which is the most infamous aspect of the movie I found to be kind of interesting, it's basically Vegeta trying to quell Beerus by not resorting to force because he knew couldn't do it after remember his father and beating Goku. That and he didn't want to turn his wife's birthday party into a battleground fighting someone he knows he can't beat. Him being stronger than Goku after hitting Bulma was strange but it's not too out of place in the series.

The weird part of it all is, once Goku comes back to earth, the movie actually goes downhill. Goku just randomly comes up with a plan to ask Shenron about the Super Saiyan God form yet I don't even recall Shenron ever knowing much about Saiyans at all, and this is the biggest problem with the movie, Goku's whole disappointment of obtaining power not because of his determinating, interesting idea on paper, but it's so awkwardly executed because it gets mentioned right when he becomes the SSG, I would've given him a subplot where during the party Goku just has to accept he can't just use his own power to beat Beerus, he also just popped up on earth out of nowhere after being MIA for so long. That and the movie was basically an overly expensive TV pilot than actually feeling like a standalone movie but overall, it was alright.

Saint Seiya Hades OVAs Review

I enjoyed the Hades arc when it started but the arc to got more boring as it went on. I can't really put my finger around it, the fact that they spent multiple episodes fighting 2 gods when they already spent episodes fighting the Spectres, the "God Clothes" came out of nowhere, Hades gets beaten in a super anti climatic way with Saori beating him with the power of "love". Seiya's sister coming out of nowhere and despite Sanctuary attacking Marin for being Japanese, no one ever even spotted or even noticed that there was another Japanese woman in Sanctuary before she showed up, a lot of the other characters mostly being sidelined and were just cheerleaders. The amount of times characters die, get brought back and then die again. The ending being super anti climatic.

Honestly, by the time I was done this part of the arc, I was glad it was all over. Not because it's bad but it was really starting wear out it's welcome both the arc and the tropes the series loves to pull as a whole like characters dying but then coming back then dying again, Saori getting kidnapped or is a damsel in every arc(seriously the reincarnation of Athena in this series was basically a purple haired Princess Peach), and the fights being special move spamming and then the characters saying, "the same move doesn't work twice" just to spam the same attacks again, all of it was just starting to get tiresome. I did wish the ending was better so I could've felt satisfied when I got to the end but I am left underwhelmed.

I get a lot of the behind the scenes drama regarding the series, and the whole thing reminds me of something that would happen in Marvel and DC with editors disagreeing with what the creators want but all of it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I wish I can say I got *something* from watching the Hades OVAs and the Overtrue movie, but all I get is just is "why did I bother?" I am sounding like a downer but that's how I felt.