SOCOM 2:
SOCOM 2 was a really interesting game to play. It's a good game with some refinements could be a great game. The level design is solid, and it's pretty cool how much it even allows for stealth. My big gripe is that there is no visiblity indicator, despite there apparently being a darkness system, it was hard to tell if I was hidden in the dark. That and it's cool that different surfaces can make certain sounds but this could also have more feedback. CoD MW 2019 really feels like it refines what this game did mechanically. It also has that objective style exploration level design and level extractions. For a game that was driven by it's multiplayer, the single player here surprisingly isn't as afterthought at all. There's exploration, stealth and the guns feel satisfying to shoot. The context senstive actions can kind of make it hard to tell what you can and cannot interact with, and that can lead to some confusion and the AI can get caught in places and don't follow you as much as you should, and sometimes it's hard to tell what you can do next like in mission 1 where you have to recon the patrols and mission 9 where it's hard to tell how the hell you were supposed to make the chopper land and extract. That and I wish I got to interact with sqaud commands more but this could be because I played on easy, but at the same time the game just seems too slow if I played on higher difficulties. This was a solid campaign for a game and series known for multiplayer.
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks:
MK Shaolin Monks was a good time, I am not big MK or fighting game player who would've thought if you kept the base MK moveset with Liu Kang and Kung Lao and make it into a brawler, it would actually be my favorite game in the series. I call it that since this game is more of a style of game I enjoy.
The combat feels satisfying and while many combos go unused like many game in the genre, the speical move like Fire Balls and Liu Kang's Bicycle Kick feel rewarding to pull in this context. Platforming generally feels fine if not always refined, and the parts where you have to do the "test your might" mashing can really go screw themselves and the final level being a massive difficulty spike with it being a boss rush with no checkpoints or health refills. But other than those issues, the game is very compelling. I wasn't even expecting Prince of Persia style platforming or even lite metroidvania elements in a game like but the game has it and is all the more compelling for it since it gives the game more than just being a "brawler in the MK universe". MK's excessive violence also shines through with enviromental takedowns in which there are plentiful in this game all though my only issue with them is that they do not reward health if you use them which can feel discouraging since only killing enemies using hand to hand combat and weapons reward health.
The bosses are okay overall, do the role of changing things up. The writing is also just there and the voice acting isn't that great, but overall, this game lives up to it's name as being a hidden gem, a good spinoff game and a game really deserving of some kind of sequel. I wouldn't mind if Neatherrealm tried to make the story mode of the latest MK game something along the lines of this even if it would be harder for them to do.
Super Mario Sunshine:
I prefer it over Super Mario 64 but only because you can control the camera with the right stick. FLUDD is cool but the parts where the game takes it away from you tend to be ungodly frustrating due to the fact that you have been using it so much and then the game randomly decides to take it away from you and then the unpolished nature of the platforming really starts to rear it's ugly head. The space levels without FLUDD are so difficuly and I don't even think I can do them without save states. The last space level felt like you needed luck to complete due to the fact it's hard to tell where you will actually get thrown. With FLUDD, I do like the more varied moveset you get but trying to play with the pressure sensitive R button was a pain in the ass, and aiming it was also a pain in the ass since using third person, or over the shoulder wasn't as accurate as the game wants you to be. The game's camera can also be a big issue at times, and it really got fixed with Mario Galaxy.
I didn't find Isle Delfino as bad as some make it out to be but that is because I never got a game over due to the above mentioned save states. The level design is decent and I felt it got better the more it went on, and the Harbour level being the worst designed of the bunch due it's overly vertical nature of it. I do find it interesting how this Mario makes you use the moving curve jump more than anyother game.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I had many frustrations with it along the way.
Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth:
It's pretty good as far as SOTN styled metroidvanias are concerned and one of the better licensed anime game ever made. If Record of Lodoss War can count as an anime franchise. It's pretty on the nose with how much it borrows from SOTN, super on the nose. I don't mind but at the same time it reminds me why SOTN styled metroidvanias can never be masterpieces to me. So much of the secrets in the game revolve around getting items that you don't really need, finding weapons that are already lower levelled than the one you already have, and abilties on top of abilities I barely get much use out of. I always had a soft spot for Deedlit's character design and her english voice in the OVA series and it being a game based on sort of anime franchise that's not a musou game or a arena fighter was enough to make me check it out. I am surprised that it's not a seemlessly connected map and more of a level by level afair that just so happens to take place in the same area. The health regen feature is pretty interesting and it does help mitigate frustration when low on health with a lot of enemies, it can be a life saver. It does help make bosses more interesting and dynamic affairs too since you can be low on health one minute and then you get it back.
Some issues exclusive to the game itself is that enemies can get super damage spongey especially late game, I got a high level weapon like the Chakram at Stage 6 and enemies felt like they were just tanking so many hits and spells. I was starting to get super annoyed but it was near the end game by that point and the game never lasted long enough for it to truely annoy me. The arrow puzzles I found to be kind of grating maybe because of the aiming controls for the bow since it requires precise shots and it's hard to aim it to be consistently precise since the aim can realign itself after some shots. Some of the platforms can be slightly hard to reach sometimes and the story is kind of just there. It felt like it took place in the middle of a much larger narrative rather than feeling something truly standalone, I get this game is a prequel to one of the novels but it doesn't do a good job at having people who know nothing of Record of Lodoss War to be invested in the greater universe of the series, I only understood some of it to due to having vague memories of watching the OVA series years back.
Overall, good SOTN style metroidvania, I prefer Metroid styled games in the genre but this game does the SOTN stand in thing pretty well.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven:
Not a big Jojo fan, got some casual enjoyment for it being a CC2 arena fighter, the campaign was decent with some weird difficulty spikes. I found mashing square, pressing block while enemies or down or just preparing to move out of the way when they are down, and doing special team attacks to be the most viable tactics. The camera was awful as expected with melee based games where you have active camera control in an open 3D space since you need to rotate when chaging your position constantly. The difficulty spikes mainly come from occasionally fighting enemies that have hard hitting attacks, Gyro Zepelli and some of the fights here and there have this. I did find this game lacking in presentation compared to CC2's other licensed games with stiffly animated cutscenes with textboxes and bizzare transitions to FMV sequences. The voice acting also does a good job at selling me on the material despite me not caring about Jojo that much after Part 2.
Overall, barely expected anything out this game since I am not a big Jojo fan but I got mild entertainment value out of it. I got it for cheap and it was a decent, if forgettable time.
Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
This game feels like an anomoly for me. It's a Batman game where Batman is barely even the focus at all. Considering how much I have gotten lukewarm on the titular character over the years, having a game where Batman is just more of a starring role rather than the main character was a delight. I also liked how Batman's boring tsundere act was contrasted with the other characters. The writing is also much, much, much better than in Lego Batman 2. It has actually has more of a plot with twists and turns and an actual structure. I also like Braniac and Sinestro so having them be the main villains of this game was nice for me. This game at the very least wasn't chasing Joker and Lex Luthor's mech for 70% the main story. There is also way more supervillain boss fights this time around abit less Batman centric ones but Batman's villains' are overexposed enough as is, so I didn't mind.
The gameplay is still your traditional coop action game escourt quest like it has been before, but the open world from Lego Batman 2 is a lot more downplayed and is more of doing missions to progress the main plot or is selectable from a level select menu which is good since I find lego open worlds boring. I also like how all the suits are slectable as opposed to them being power ups which gives you more random powers and abilites to play around with.
Overall, I never understood why this of all games is considered to be the weakest of the Lego Batman games, lukewarm thoughts on the titular character aside, the open world is more downplayed, and you get more variety of powers and suit abilites due to the different DC characters and all of them being easily selectable.
Cthulhu Saves Christmas:
I wanted to enjoy this game more considering how much I liked Cosmic Star Heroine but the game overall felt like a chore for me to play. A large part in that was how much the game got samey after the first few hours. I don't mind repetitive games but this game is mainly just consisted of dungeon, Christmastown, dungeon and then Christmastown. I wouldn't mind this so much but the game's dungeon design was just bad, so much of it was the same copy and pasted areas over and over again and partner that with the craploads of random encounters makes it easy to lose your bearing on where you last where in the level. I will give this game credit in that after a certain amount of times, the random encounters do eventually stop but I still don't think that saves how copy and pasted the dungeon designs are. It feels like a downgrade from Cosmic Star, and due to this I was relived when I finished the game.
The combat is pretty decent, and I am not even a big fan of turn based combat, I always did like how abilites can't be used more than once unless you recharge and it's about taking advantage of Hyper Mode, all though I eventually turned the game's difficulty down to easy since I am not 100% sure how the ability system worked which, I will admit might be incompetence on my part, but there were times I wished I had access to abilities enemies were weak to but I never had them on me and because of this I think I lost a lot of the nuance the game's combat could've had. All though the random encounters and copy pasted dungeons really didn't help. The writing and story is also decent enough, and some of the jokes can be funny, I also found the characters and the interactions to be charming, I didn't play the original game this title was a prequel to, but I did like how it mocked itself for being a prequel which is a delight for me.
This game was alright, but it's brevity was more so the reason why I finished the game than because I enjoyed playing it.
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