Sniper Elite: Resistance Review

I already knew going in that this was basically a DLC expansion pack for Sniper Elite 5 charged and marketed as a full game. Pretty much everything in that game is already present in this one minus some unpolished movement. However with that said, despite Resistance being a modern sequel going back to the game sequels of yester year where it's esstentially an expansion that doesn't overhaul much of anything, I got a lot more fun out of the game than I thought I was going to.

As much as I really wished the series would add some kind of light and darkness mechanic(Metal Gear Solid and even the latest Assassin's Creed adopted it) change the setting, or just have the movement system be seemless and smooth like MGS5, I still had fun with it despite all of that.

The good things about the game is that the story is just nothing more than excuse plot to do some covert espiongage missions so thanks to that, it means there is hardly any forced action segments and 98% of the game with the exception of the final mission where you need to kill a German Officer that was behind everything, you can do much of it in stealth. The lack of story and the need for gripping drama means the story doesn't need to have the villain getting the one up on the hero and getting into dull action at best or infuriating at worst.

I do miss Karl Fairburne but that's because I really like Tom Clarke Hill, the new protagonist is "fine" even if he's channeling Jason Satham.

After playing so many games especially modern ones where stealth is optional, almost feels like a fallacy and the game is pretty much biased towards action, it just feels refreshing to a play at all where stealth and being competent at it is something I can actually do. Playing so many modern Ubisoft games and Assassin's Creed especially just makes Resistance that much more refreshing to play. There are still issues I have more on that later.

Another thing the campaign in SER does really well is doing one of my favorite game tropes where you see a location off in a large distance and eventually throughout the level you will slowly make your way there. It does a good job at making the standalong level feel like a grand epic adventure. Takedown animations also look very nice and brutal and are also quick.

Final thing I liked of is that there will be "search zones" for the player to look around in order to complete the various objectives. One issue the stealth genre had was that using quest markers doesn't feel like the player is doing objectives organically but the genre by it's nature of being slow pace means that exploration will be more of a hinderance since you will have to look around while evading patrols. This is a decent enough middle ground. Rebellion also listened to the compliants of that one mission in SE5 where you needed a satchel charage to do progress through the mission since now maps in SER had them scattered throughout. Mission helping items like that, crobars and bolt cutters will be highlighted in yellow. Getting stumped won't happen as much. 

With all that said, there are issues still outside of the ones where I mentioned earlier. There is still some unpolish. The animations will sometimes glitch out no real reason. For example, sometimes the legs of the player character will clip through the ground, at other times he will hang off a ledge and won't let go or will let go but the game won't register the feet touching the ground.

One big issue is the AI, by no means is it terrible or inconsistent enough to the point where the game is unplayable but at the same time, it has some weird "quirks" about it. For example, I can headshot a guy and some guards will have heard the sound despite my gun being silenced(I know real life silencers aren't like this but this is a game) and I can even kill guards doing close quarters takedowns while they are unaware and that might have enemies suspect me. What annoys me about this is that stealth game logic dictates that if I take out guards before they make a very loud noise of any kind then I remain undetected yet this game will follow it insconsistently.

Another issue is that the game will introduce enemies who are tougher meaning you can't kill them when they spot you and can kill them seconds later but it never does organically. No cutscene or the player character having a line like, "these guys aren't your usual Nazi infantry" which can catch me off guard considering a tactic I did for a while was get spotted and kill them seconds after being spotted before a gunshot was fired.

Final issue is that I also really wish there was the ability whistle or have a guard come over to you since it having guards come over to me and taking them down is an aspect of stealth games I like since it feels like I'm manipulating the guard AI. 

Overall, SER was a game I had more fun with than I even thought I was going to. Sure, you can criticize it for being a glorified DLC to SE5 but it's not like there were annual SE gams or an overwhelming amount of modern releases that handle stealth gameplay extremely well so as a result, Resistance turned out to be a solid surprise all though I would get more annoyed with the game if I were to play more of it due to the AI quirks. The series does need a gameplay overhaul with all that said. 

Far Cry 3: Classic Review

FC3 was a game that I had fond memories of for a while when I initally beat it, I thought it was an amazing game. Any game that vaguely resembled it was something I inherently thought was good. This was until so many games and to this day borrowed what from FC3 did and Ubisoft themselves used it as a template for many of their games going forward to the point any linear level based franchise by the company got axed or turned open world. I did resent what this game and by extension the Assassin's Creed franchise turned Ubisoft into and I don't harbor as much resentment towards their later games now than I used to, I wondered if I still got the same enjoyment from FC3 that I did back when it came out. While I wouldn't consider the game to be as amazing when I did when I first played it, I still had a lot of fun with it.

The story is surprisingly decent stuff. I wouldn't consider it the best story ever told, it does a good job at making me pay attention inbetween the sections of over the firefights, stealth, driving, tower climbing etc. It begins with Jason Brody starting off as confused and not knowing what to do but the more the game goes on he becomes more detached from his humanity and starts to enjoy doing what he does. It's a decent arc especially for a game that is about over the top over world shennigans. Vaas is also an entertaining villain and what helps is that whenever he does do his over the top monologues, it's always after he catches Jason Brody and by extension the player by surprise. He's also a decently proactive villain.

However Hoyt is a alot more dull, while he was foreshadowed at the begginning of the game, he's not as proactive as Vaas was and most of his character consist of him acting like a bargain bin Tony Montana. He also seems to be oblivious during the sections where you dress up as a Privateer until it turns, he actually knew all along and chose a dramatic moment to reveal it.

Another disappointing thing is that you can take over every enemy camp and the story never once even acknowledges it. It's a shame since the story reflects on Jason Brody getting "stronger" with the skill tree. Still, story is decent enough which is the bare minimum a game story should be.

FC3 is a game very much inspired by popular games of the time. The shooting mechanics are very much inspired by the CoD games. You got snap auto aim when you use ADS, most of the guns being hitscan, having different throwable weapons and scripted campaign missions. You got the climbing and towers of Assassin's Creed and the detection arrows of Splinter Cell Conviction.

The shooting itself has aspects not even CoD campaigns do. For example, health doesn't automatically regen and can regen up to a certain block and you also have syringes to heal yourself or Jason can do first aid on the spot if he doesn't have any syringes. While the enemies you fight consist of infantry and animals. There is a bit more enemy variety with the former with snipers, heavies, and enemies who will throw molotovs among regular grunts and the AI is not too bad either. They will take cover, flank you, throw grenades, burn the grass to flush you out and will also eventually lose sight of you if you break from where they lasted spotted you. 

Many people nowadays scoff at the very idea of "Ubisoft Towers" and enemy camps. Thing is, I'd argue the Towers in FC3 serves a role in not only highlighting the map but also gives the player another way at getting weapons. You could pay the initial price upfront or try to find an enemy weapon but climb up a tower and you get the weapon for free as an added bonus of unlocking the map. Climbing up the towers in FC3 can have more tension by comparison since it's in first person and you don't have a "hold the trigger to climb everything" like Assassin's Creed does. It's more of a quick and easy navigation puzzle.

Enemy camps also break up the pace of story missions which can be on the scripted side with some optional stealth thrown in. The stealth follows the logic of 80s action movies like Rambo, Commando, and Predator where stealth is used at the start but eventually there will be an over the top fire fight. You also get an XP bonus for disabling alarms and clearing a camp undetected. The former you need to do since camps can be harder to clear with the reinforcments so it encourages stealth better than Assassin's Creed does. However Metal Gear Solid 5 has far better stealth mechanics.

The enemy camps and FC3 also does a great job with "immergent gameplay" since when running around in the open world or if an they have animals trapped, they can be a great way of thinning out the horde or they could be YOUR enemy. There is so much wacky and over the top stuff happening like random firefights with animals, other Rukyat warriors or just randomly enemies on the open world.
 

Only big negative from a gameplay standpoint is that once you get past the "early game hell", FC3 becomes a pushover especially regarding holster crafting, not having skills needed to be efficient and the early game weapons. Outside of an overwhelming enemy number or the healing item activation animation not happening while enemies are riddling you with bullets since the guns are hitscan, Jason getting hit by fire and the put out fire and healing item use being mapped to the same button, even normal difficulty you go down to critical health fast, and due to the fact that green leafs are mostly all over the map and it's easy to craft healing syringes in the pause menu this causes the game to be on the easy side. I wouldn't mind this but enemies later in the game are just as easy as the pirates you fight early on. Nothing really changes once you get past the aforementioned "early game hell". All raising the difficulty does increase damage numbers and the timing window to use healing syringes and get a successful heal in decreases drastically. 

Overall, if you can get past how easy it can be after a certain point, it's still a well made open world game even if it is hard to look past the influence the game has on the industry at large

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams Review

I always knew about this particular Onimusha game despite beating the initial trio of games years back, I always held off playing this one. I would always attempt to start it up but I wouldn't get very far. With the PCSX2 emulator getting updates that the game can run consistently and with me also knowing about the Japanese version of the game which allows for english audio, text and much more balanced difficulty by comparison to the North American release, I decided to finally play Dawn of Dreams from start to finish.

I would say as a whole, I'd consider this to be the worst in the series but not a game I consider bad just more so that I'm not really big on the genre shift and how long the game is. For the latter, it seems the devs took the compliants about how Onimusha 3 was too short to heart but I argue a game being longer doesn't equate to being better which Dawn of Dreams can attest to more on that later.

The story is just okay, I wouldn't consider it amazing. The big issue I have with it is how it feels like you are watching a TV show mid way into a seaon. Many of the character relationships and backstories are often never shown and it expects you to know them already before starting up the game. This would be fine if you played the other Onimusha games but this game stars new a new cast of characters and the series main villain Nobunaga Oda has been dead for some time.

However some positives I can say is that the villains are quite flamboyant and over the top and what I really like the game is that most of the members in your party have their own villain to sqaure off against which is something I really like since it gives each party memeber a personal stake in the story rather than them being there for the ride. The character interactions are also decent too.

I did enjoy the ending and I liked how it definitive it felt and considering how long the final boss rush towards the end of the game was, the fact that the ending felt conclusive is a massive point towards DoD's favor. This isn't Kingdom Hearts levels of eregious where you fight a really long bush rush and the game ends on a "to be continued" note.

The gameplay is where things get interesting. Where Onimusha 1-3 were action games with RPG elements, DoD is full on RPG with the exception of a gear system all though you do get items. You also have a Street Fighteresque input based command system but you never really need to use this since basic attacks will kill them just fine.

There is also a player controller camera and lock on system and I don't care for this. DoD as a result controls more like a Kingdom Hearts game than a traditional Onimsuha. At it's best the camera is tolerable but at it's worst it's easy to get attacked from enemies from the side or behind you. What also doesn't help that the lock won't let you hit airborne enemies even with Soki's purfication attack. Only Ohatsu can hit airborne targets since she uses guns so I always had her in my party. One big negative is that since save points don't restore health means that you have to share healing items with party members and I mainly want to keep them for myself and since the AI for party members never goes above serviceable so at best they either occasionally lend a helping hand or just barely a efficent meat shield at worst. 

Some good things about the combat is that the lockon is mostly reliable and never got in my way outside of the aforemnetioned airborne enemies. The game was at it's best when you had a follow camera and in conjuction with the lock on system can make for combat that felt more reliable with the strafe mechanic than Onimusha 3 did. I wish the whole game was like this. Purfication is also a nice addition to basic strikes and magic attacks since if you kill enemies with purfication attack, you get rewarded with extra orbs.

Final complement is that I liked switching between as far as level exploration is concerned. The game does a decent enough job at giving the player the incentive to switch between characters and using their abilties to get secret items or level progression items. However this does become a problem later since the game does a lot of asset reuse.

This leads to a big negative that you will be going through the same levels again constantly. You could complain about Oni 3 being a "short" game but that game always gave you something new to look forward to with different changes in scenery and location. Dawn of Dreams has you go through some levels at least twice. The Research Lab was nice to go through once but it got dull doing the same objectives twice a second time.

The final and big negative is that DoD does the KOTOR 2 thing where you are forced to play as characters you don't want to play as. At least Oni 3 prompted you to play as Jacques and you'd be familar with him by the end. DoD forces you to play as characters you aren't accustomed to at random points in the story on top of that you need to make sure they are well levelled since you will have a much harder time later game when you have to play as them. The boss rush towards the of the game hinges on you making sure you put points into them and gave high levels items and weapons or hope you have lots of items to cheese later boss encounters with. The items to keep Oni Form going on for much are especially the most useful. 

Overall, decent game but not something I'd play again due to length of the game, how you are forced to play as characters you don't want to play as and heavily invest into them to get past later parts of the game. 

Resident Evil: HD Remaster(Nintendo Switch) Review

I played the game around 9 years ago before I played the PS1 Resident Evils, indie surivival horror games like Tormented Souls, Crow Country and Signalis and replaying the Silent Hill games. I've been on a binge on with these games in recent years. I originally played the remastered version of RE 2002 on PS4 but I wanted to play on a different system and since the game started off life on a Nintendo system, I decided to replay the game on a Nintendo console. I recall this being one of if not the best survival horror game ever made. For the most part, I'd say it still holds up but there are some issues with it now that prevent the game from being something I consider a "masterpiece".

I'll start with that big issue: the difficulty. Difficulty is subjective and what is hard for one person can be easy for another and vice versa but the way RE 2002 handles it is as questionable as it is interesting. First, you have to choose between as playing either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. Probably most first time players will pick Jill due to her lockpick and her having more inventory space.

It doesn't end there, the game has 3 difficulties, Walk, Hike and Mountain. I supposedly beat the game on Mountain difficulty according to my Playstation Trophies but playing this mode now, I was shocked how difficult it was. Jill can only take 2 hits before getting a game over and the PS1 REs let you took 3 on their default difficulties. The ammo you get is the same on Hike, you get less healing items, there are MORE zombies and they take a lot more damage to go down the first time on Mountain. This would all be fine but the knife you get is useless and if there is some praise I can give Code Veronica is that the knife in that was geniunely useful. On Mountain, you have to rely on the hopefully having the zombie AI lunge at you so you can run past them, but this feels like a game of luck and zombie evading is what put me off the game to begin with.

The dogs are even worse since on Mountain difficulty, they will bite your hand more instead of running and jumping so you can get shots in. The worst part with this is, that when dogs bite you by the hand, defense items will not work. It will work when they lunge at you but not when they bite you. Combine this with frequency of the biting, the 2 hit points, and lack of ammo, I decided to lower it on Hike which is said to be the easy mode.

I get what Mountain difficulty was trying to do and it feels like it was attempting to appeal to people who enjoy RE games like Code Veronica but I found the execution lacking. Hike difficulty can feel a little too babying with the amount of ammo and healing items you get but I take that over dying every time I enter a room with zombies and dogs. Hike difficulty feels like it's more in line with Resident Evil 1996 Director's Cut and Resident Evil 2 1998.

Outside of that? The game is still just as great as I remember minus the crazy "moon" logic with it's puzzles. Like using a lighter to light a specific room to pick up an item, remembering the colors and numbers of billard balls to open a door later on, having to turn off a light and have an animal head statue not see you to pick up an item, or using a crank late game to move a waterfall among a few others, playing the game for the first time and even people returning to it a decade later, it can still stump me.

I have been complaining about the game, but when you ignore all of these issues, the moment to moment gameplay of RE 2002 is great. Combat while not amazing is very satisfying to land headshots on enemies especially with the shotgun or magnum. With the Crimson Heads, now getting headshots is even more encouraged if you want to avoid using kersone to burn bodies.

Defensive items gives the player more options when grabbed by enemies since now you don't have to just tank hits.

The inventory system is as great as ever, while I did criticize the game for having too much healing items and ammo, the limited inventory means you can't carry everything so now it becomes a question of, "what should I carry more of, puzzle, healing items or maybe some more ammo?" The decision making process before journeying outside of save rooms is where the tension can be found.

The save system too, some can bash for being archaic, but there is tension to be found knowing when or when not to save even when rolling in ink ribbons can be very thick. The question of "should I do more story milestones and save or should pop a save away" is a question to comtemplate every time.

Level design minus the "moon" logic is great. The various hubs like the Mansion, Courtyard, Tunnels and Lab all feel like you a solving an epic puzzle within a puzzle. Puzzle items you get early game might not be useful until later on. Like the Metal Object to open the Mansion Basement or the Medals to open the Labatory which just keeps your mind wondering.

Bosses are the only big negative but they go down fast on Hike difficulty, and are beaten before they really start to annoy me.

Overall, minus the difficulty and the "moon" logic for some puzzles, I really enjoyed the game.

Devil May Cry 3(Nintendo Switch) Review

Devil May Cry 3 was a game I played as far back as 2008 when I first finished DMC4 for the first time. I bought the original 2005 release because I thought I could handle the "hard" difficulty many at the time would love to say it has. I tried but without infinite Devil Trigger cheat I couldn't get anywhere. I did beat it on the HD collection over a decade ago but that was the Special Edition version. I did beat DMC1 2 months ago so that gave me the excuse to finally beat the Switch re release that I got years back. The Switch version of 3 comes with Style Switch from later games, being able to hold all guns and melee weapons without modding the game with "free style mode" as well as having the Special Edition's more forgiving normal difficulty and continue system. If you want to play DMC3 on console, this is very much the definitive way to play. A shame the PS4 and Xbox One version never got an update including "free style" mode and the other additions the Switch version has.

With all that said, when playing the game with Style Switch, it was never designed with this in mind since if you are not using one style throughout the whole campaign, it will take multiple playthroughs to get the base 4 styles up to level 3 especially if you are actively switching between them during moment to moment gameplay. 

Anyways, on to the game, with all these additions in the Switch version, it's my favorite numbered game in the series since you get all the cool stuff from later titles minus the drawbacks like the extra playable characters I don't want to play as like Nero and especially V in DMC5. 

First I'll start off with is the story and it's okay. It has well animated, well composed cutscenes, good music and the voice acting is solid but when ignoring all that, outside of the opening cutscene I just find it to be hard to invested in. The game is said to be and marketed as a Prequel to the entire franchise but that isn't true. The game seemingly expects you to know certain things about the franchise before jumping in. What happened during that year between Dante and Vergil met? Why does Dante resent his father so much? Vergil wanting power because he hates himself for not protecting his mother is mentioned but never fully shown. Who trained Dante and Vergil in the art of fighting? What was the specific catalyst that lead to Dante and Vergil hating each other? The whole story feels like how Halo Combat Evolved had all of it's backstory revealed in a novel or how it feels like a superhero adaptation where it expects you to read the comics before watching. 

Dante going from a cocky arrogant guy to taking the conflict seriously just seems to kind of happen too, might be me missing things mainly due to him not having a scene of introspection in the story. Maybe he cared about Lady and her plight, my big issue is that he spent much of the story being arrogant or indiffernent towards everything and everyone around him and him being serious kind of just happens.

I enjoy the attempts at DMC3's story trying to make Vergil seem "impressive" by Worf Effecting some of the bosses Dante fights like Hell Vanguard and Beowulf and having Vergil beat them in a few seconds. At the same time, it doesn't really seem so impressive when they were arguably already got weakened by Dante beforehand or why Dante never tries to finish off either of them himself before getting away. 

The story isn't all bad, Arkham is an entertaining villain. I do have a soft spot for villains like Emperor Palpatine where he manipulates all the parties involved for his own benefit. His voice actor also is like Ian McDirmaid in the Prequels in that he's over the top but he also knows when to take it back during the parts where he needs to act reserved and calm. 

Now on to the gameplay, since I'm playing on the Switch version's "Free Style" mode. This means, I can do stuff like use Swordmaster to combo an enemy, switch to Gunsligner to use a special firearm attack like say Shotgun numbchucks to hit everyone surronding me, and use Trickster to dash out of the way. With all that said, some melee and firearms I got more use out of then others since due to their simplicity. Having to switch to Gunslinger just to use charge shot was very inconvenient since there is no other action mapped to holding down the shoot button. Rebellion was the easiest weapon for me to use since it covered my entire flank when attacking and it has high reach. Beowulf was another weapon I used since it's great for singular enemies and the Hyper Fist crazy combo for it I inherently find to be really cool and it does a lot of damage. I also really liked Beowulf's Swordmaster attack and it allows it to perform two functions in one of being a melee and projectile weapon. I used Spiral before getting Beowulf when it came to guns since it did a lot of damage and Kailana Ann was the best gun in the game but it is a late game gun. 

I would personally like to have more attack shortcuts since letting go of the left stick to switch styles can lead me open for an attack but I slowly got used to it. However I did wish the Trickster dash and the dodge roll was combined into one since the former I find useful with attacks with long windup times like Beowulf's cage throws but the regular dodge is faster to pull off but also imprecise since at times I could do a roll or a flip instead.

One big negative is that the lack of Devil Trigger early game makes early sections on normal noticeably harder by comparison to later on since you have no way to heal outside of Devil Stars but once you get it, the game becomes easier by no means a cake walk but now casual players like me has a crutch to rely on outside of the occasional green orb drop but this isn't frequent enough to the point where it felt like I didn't need DT to feel competent early game.This also makes the game's camera less of an hinderance, at best it frames the actions in a servicable way but at worst it can lead to getting attacked off screen pretty off often. This was at it's worst in Mission 7 where you had to fight off multiple waves of enemies after destroying a ball and chain to get an item. The amount of times I got attack by the 7th Hells Lust's dash attacks are so numerous due to the amount of times they would just attack me and I can't see it coming, I'll give the game credit for them having an audio cue but it was so easy to just get hit by an off screen attack. This might've been the hardest part of the game for me.

The enemy types are also a mixed back especially later on in the game. Chessman, Blood Goyle, Dullahan, and the Fallen especially weren't the most fun to fight. 

The Chessman are basically a game of hitting them with combos until they do an obviously telegraphed attack, they take up so much damage and all they do is just sit there until that said attack happens 

Blood Goyles have an issues that the 7th Hell Lust has where they can often attack you from offscreen and do a lot of damage. 

Dullahans require you to attack in a very specific spot and often trying to land an attack on that said weak spot is a game of luck since the hitboxes for them to be extremely strict on top of them moving around a lot before you can land a blow on them.  

The Fallen are especially bad, the only thing that prevents me from being overly harsh on them is that they don't pop up frequently enough to geniunely get on my nerves. Their attacks do a lot of damage, they can phase through walls meaning that you won't always be able to land consistent blows on them on top of them having lots of health. When you combine all this, I'm thankful they only spawn in 2s because anything more than that would start to get me frustrated and I would get many more game overs. 

The backtracking is well handled, it may confuse first time players but the game does do an okay job of slowing egging you on in the right direction, like using red orbs to guide the player or how each section in a mission is a self contained "zone" and it connects back to the start of the game. There might be times where you need to look up a walkthrough, but looking at them were too few and far between to be noticeably annoying from my experience. 

The bosses are mostly good except for Arkham. With Beowulf and the Vergil fights being my favorites. They all have decent attack telegraphs and their attacks hit the sweet spot of timing your dodges right and not being too greedy with how whailing on them too much. Cereberus was the hardest of all the fights since you didn't have much upgrades and he pops up while some new players are just learning the game. 

The Arkham fight is easily the worst since his attack telegraphs aren't the greatest, his attacks have a high reach and can sweep the whole area, and on top of that if you aren't using Rebellion for the fishes you have to kill before you can damage him again, the boss is going to be even harder and grating time since like I said before Rebellion covers your entire flank when doing combos and the fishes attack you from all sides. 

Overall, DMC3 is an enjoyable game and despite my issues with it which can seem numerous, but as a whole, it's fun in the moment and that's what mainly counts. However much of my enjoyment of the game comes from the additions made in both the Special Edition and Switch versions. Playing as Dante the whole game also helped a big role as well. 

Spider-Man(2000) Video Game Review

I've been playing Spider-Man games since I was a kid and I dabbled with them throughout the years all the way to now with the Insomniac developed games. This was a game I'd hear pop up over the years but I never bothered to look into it until recently. I might've been turned away by the game for a while due to the lack of an open world and being able to touch the ground but I don't care about that now. I care about execution or if the game is even fun at all. Originally, I thought I was going to eventually stop playing the game or resort to using cheats on the Duckstation emulatior, however forunately, the game turned out to not be overly punishing. I'm also glad that the game is as short as it is since if it was any longer, I might've had a harder time putting up with the game's shortcomings. 

For the most part, I would say the Neversoft Spidey game is a solid time as long as you can put up with some very questionable camera and controls. This isn't even me saying that because the game released before dual analog controls were adopted, the problem is that the scenarios are fine on paper, it's letdown by the very things I mentioned, more on that later.

The good things about this Spider-Man game is that when it comes to story, presentation, voice acting and music, the game is just oozing with charm. I'm not into superhero stories as much as I used to be but it's hard to deny the immense amount of effort put into the game's presentation and story. It's also interesting how it predates the Sam Raimi movies and the MCU too. In many ways, the game feels like it is both appealing to people who enjoyed the 1994 Spider-Man animated series while also having elements from the comics. Daredevil, Captain America and Punisher make an appreance and it also throws in easter eggs to Thor and Galactus too. Neversoft really enjoyed the source material and it shows. 

The voice acting is also very good. It's well acted and directed for the time of it's release. Standout characters are Otto Octavious, Venom, Peter Parker and Stan Lee. The cutscenes are decently directed and have different camera angles and shot composition. It was disappointing to see the characters mouths don't even move since games like Tenchu 2 and Fear Effect came out the same year as this but I don't mind this due to the characters' movements during cutscenes are moderately expressive. 

Story itself is entertaining if nothing overly thought provoking, the game esstentially like an episode of Spider-Man TAS or a series of single issue comic books that slowly connect to an overarching plot. The comic book covers that show in some loading screens are a good indicator. The character interactions and voice acting does most of the heavy lifting. All it mainly amounts to Doc Ock releases gas all over the city is teaming up with another villain behind the scenes, Spidey's other villains are free, he beats them, chases Venom for a little while, join forces with him and then stops a symbiote invasion. There isn't much in the way over overwhelming amounts of dialogue and story here. 

Music I enjoy since it's rock and techno that much media from the late 90s and early 00s had. Having the 60s Spider-Man theme was a nice touch. 

The gameplay is where it gets interesting. It's by no means what I consider bad, when it's good, it's fine but when it doesn't it can be a strong exercise in frustration. The combat with basic minions is okay, it isn't an amazing beat em up combat system but the enemy count isn't high enough to the point where it feels like the controls and mechanics throws more than what the player can do. There is no dedicated dodge command and no dedicated lock on button. Most enemies outside of the Symbiotes go down rather quickly. You fight generic thugs and lizard people outside of that. Symbiotes can be skipped past too. You also are always given health refills when needed too. Most enemies can be beaten using basic combos. 

This would spell doom if the game was just that, but luckily there are more open exploration levels, boss fights and set pieces to break things up. 

The exploration levels are the best for me. It has that older level design feeling of being in a linear level based game but the game never outright telling you what to do. You get a compass but it's not there for most of the game and I wonder why it was even there at all due to how infrequently it pops up. You have a look button like Tomb Raider and the Tenchu games. It also has an emphasis on switch pulling that various games from this era has but instead of touching them you hit it with webbing. It's by no means as big as a classic Tomb Raider level or even a level from Tenchu since all of the indoor levels can be beaten in less than 10 minutes. The parts I enjoyed where you had to web switches to open doors, then move fast enough in time before the water can drown Spidey. The level in the Bugle was decent fun where you had to take down machines producing symbiote and an a level underwater was a funny way to end off the game. 

Bosses are a mixed bag. Some are not bad like Rhino others are annoying like the first Venom fight and Mysterio but Doc Ock and Carnage are decent. Doc Ock being the best since it's just pressing switches and dodging his lasers and Carnage was luring him to a sound emitter, Mysterio and Venom is where you have to deal with the tank movement, camera and inconsistent lock on. 

This leads me to the biggest issue with the game and what I alluded to earlier. There are scripted set pieces and while a lot of these aren't bad on paper like an aircraft chase, dodging missiles at buildings, moving subway fight or the web swinging, the controls and camera lets them down since they never feel precise and as quick as the game demands out the player. One, Spidey can't move while web swinging and his elevation lowers while he is doing it. On top of that, he has tank movement, and trying to press the d pad to move while the camera is constantly changing angles that requires precise movements as well as timed fast paced nature of these sequences can confirm the biases of many who dislike tank controls. These parts aren't overly long but they can feel that way due to the amount of times your average player especially those who dislike tank controls and not being to turn the camera will die. Save states on Duckstation helped me a lot here.

The best way of describing the scripted set pieces is what if 1996 Tomb Raider had sequences where Lara had to move very quickly, make split second decisions and if the player hesitates or fumbles once he dies? That's what this is.

Overall, game was a pleasant surprise, I was expecting little going in and it turned out to be a decent precursor to popular Spidey media that would come later. 

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood(Nintendo Switch) Review

This was a game I remember buying on a Boxing Day sale in 2010 and at the time I recall liking it, however time has made me look on it with less fondness. After beating the game again for the first time in 15 years, that apathy I got was warranted. It's hard to deny, coming from a guy who really disliked AC2, Brotherhood is better but not by much, it's tolerable because it's much shorter and certain aspects of the game is streamlined but it's not anything that fits into my criteria of what a good game is.

Be warned, if you play the Nintendo Switch version, there is some bugs and glitches in that version all though I mainly suffered one game breaking bug. 

I'll begin with with the story and I will admit, the opening hour of the game does an okay job at setting the stakes even if it does have a bad habit of trying to make Ezio look awesome like him easily winning over a married woman and him winning over Caterina even though they never knew each other for that long. There is also the fact that the whole "Desmond prophecy" that Minerva told him about in the Vault he forgets almost as soon as its brought up again. I also liked that Machevilli scolded Ezio for not killing Rodrigo, might set up some conflict between the two or seemingly it does. 

When Ceasre Borgia shows up, he's portrayed very well, he kills Mario, destroys the Villa and has Ezio battered and almost got him killed. The way Machevilli was selling Ezio and by extension the player on how villianous later on does a good job at possibly foreshadowing as how much of a threat he could be. It reminded me of how Ramirez was describing The Kurgan to Connor MacLeod in the first Highlander after The Kugan's inital assault on Connor. Machevilli is also set up as a guy who seems to admire Ceasre and might possibly play both sides to get what he wants.

This is pretty much where my praise for the story ends. From here on out, after Sequence 1, there is some intrigue on who's side Machevilli is on but everything Ezio does always goes according to plan, he never once makes a mistake, never gets anyone killed. Despite wanting to kill Ceasre for Mario's death there is no conviction in Ezio to want to kill the former. He never argues with anyone and when it happens, Ezio is always the one to be put "over" by the end of it. Claudia seemingly resents him for not always being there for her, but then she willingly joins Ezio without much resistance. La Volpe distrusts Machevilli but that never leads to anything terrible. Caterina needs to be rescued from the Castello but never does anything afterwards, it was entirely pointless.

All that intrigue and foreshadowing with Machevilli is all just a lie. To add the final nail in the coffin, the big bad Ceasre Borgia never does anything to annoy Ezio and by extension the player after Sequence 1 and doesn't even know that the people on his team are dead when Ezio and his allies kills them all. He then starts to throw tantrums and shouts so much that he makes Cobra Commander from the 80s G.I Joe cartoon jealous. All display of dominace Ceasre shows at the start amounts to him just being an overly entitled kid who thinks he's way cooler than he actually is. I already zoned out of the story when it turned out some random NPC with no character or personality was the traitor and not Machevilli and the latter was on the side of good the whole time. 

To compare to other Ubisoft games, Crawford Sterrick in AC Syndicate would always react every time a major Templar died in the story. Ghost Recon Wildlands would give the player short optional videos to watch for the player when you make a blow to El Sueno's operations. Just Cause 3 would also have the villain, Di Ravello get annoyed and angry every time the player would reach story milestones. ACB could greatly benefit with something like this. 

Once again, like AC2 this is not an excuse plot, so I can't ignore all this. At the same time, maybe it's "play the game, skip the story". Yet again I can't.

I will praise the graphics and art direction in that the game does look very vibrant and colorful. However a big issue is that like the Venice portions in AC2, the scenery can start to get boring and samey after a point, I also got bored traversing the Rome countryside since there isn't much in the way of buildings to climb. 

The gameplay as a whole is basically, "AC2 but with even easier and more ways to break the game".

For example, the chain killing system does make combat look much more over the top and flashier, but here's where the problem lies, that's all it does. Every enemy encounter just involves the player killing one enemy and then going on a killing rampage with barely any effort. Maybe you need to kick a guard from time to time but they still go down very quickly. Enemies on horseback could provide a challenge, but just press the grab button and then you can kill them every enemy can be countered with ease. Enemies can grab you but it's easy to break out of by just a quick press of two buttons. Combat provides so little geniune challenge.

So now it's up to stealth, it hasn't changed since AC2. No crouch button, no cover button and no whistle and noise making ability yet again. The stealth tactics you can do are hiring prostiutes for stealth sections with crowds. For traditional infiltrations, it's mainly playing ring around the rosey and holding the fast walk. Biggest improvement is that killing from the front seconds after an enemy spots you won't lead to a fail state. One big gripe I have is that the stealth kills in the Ezio games does not have the, "quick yet stylish" flare that games like Unity would have. 

The stealth can now also be cheesed with the addition of the crossbow and if that isn't enough, recruit enough members to the assassins guild, and you can get arrow storm which clears out all nearby guards with a hold of a button, this works on assassination targets too. So now stealth has no challenge. You already have one "win button" with the crossbow but you also have another win button with arrow storm. It's also on a cooldown and it doesn't even reset after death either so it's a crutch you can always rely on. 

You can also renovate Rome itself but the problem is, main missions give you money, Borgia Captains require very little effort to kill since they have higher health than regular enemies, but can be beaten the same way, if you can't already kill them through a stealth kill. Once, you renovate enough places, the player will be rolling in money but at the same time, you are probably better off not even engaging in all this since it already makes an already easy game on a base level even more so. 

It's also rather silly to me that climb leap needs to bought even though it's an ability Ezio already knows how to do physically and never needed a tool to use beforehand and while the parkour system is interesting with wall ejects, side ejects, climb leap and the ability for controlled descent, like AC2, it never leans you into actively using these the abilities. 

Overall, I find ACB more tolerable than AC2 but not by much, sure it's more streamlined and flashier but not a lot of the latter game's issues are addressed to make a geniune improvement. It seems the multiplayer was a big reason as to why this got released as a standalone game without it's inclusion in the Ezio Collection, this is now all the more obvious. 

Judgment Review

This is my first RGG Studios since Yakuza 6, I played the latter game back when it came out since I got burnt out on the series. I started it back in 2015. With that said, I won't be touching the mainline games since the main series' plot I have lost all interest in. I'm playing Judgment becuase it's divorced enough from that. In a sense, Yakuza and by extension Kiryu is Spider-Man and Yagami is Daredevil. I held off playing Judgment for such a long time because the length of the individual chapters are as long as a feature length films if not longer. It made organizing my playthrough whenever I would start very difficult.  

Anyways, with that out of the way, I spent a long time for years even deciding to play the game with the english dub or subtitled. For a while, I was going to with subtitles since RGG games with the exceptions of the first Yakuza and Binary Domain never had them and all though I watch anime english dubbed unless if there isn't one for it at all, Judgment's very realistic looking characters was going to create that weird effect of watching a live action movie of any kind not in it's original language. I can take this with anime and Japanese games since everything doesn't look realistic and it's mainly just the voices being replaced more than anything. 

With all that said, I think the english dub for the game is very well acted and the actors did a very good job. A lot of the VAs from games, anime and even western animation pop up here. It's far above the dub of the first Yakuza and I try not to trash on that as much as other people do even if there are moments in that can be really funny and not for the intended reasons. Everyone is directed well and considering how much talking and exposition there is in the game, I'm glad I chose this since the cutscenes and exposition can go on for some time and subtitles is going to make me feel like I'm reading more than watching it and my eyes will be glued to the bottom two inches of the screen. 

Enough of all that, the story of Judgment is good and entertaining for the most part. The characters in particular are well written with Kaito especially being my favorite with how he can be an over the top tough guy but also has a chill and goofy side to balance it out. Him and Yagami have a pretty good chemistry together. Higashi won me over in how he is still conflicted about Kaito after being banished from Matsugame family. Izumida was a character who greatly angered me at first with how little he seemed to know about critical thinking to the point where he would bring up the look who's talking and appeal to the person fallacies to a witness while then getting owned by the same fallacies a few minutes later but he does slowly start to get less antagonistic towards Yagami and even contributes to the plot. 

The story itself also has interesting themes and an extremely fascinating moral dilemma on the very idea of if there was a geniune cure for Alzheimer's disease with cover ups, conspiracies and how far people are willing to go to get the medicine put out even if it was never that effective to begin with. 

However there are issues I have, like how Yagami won the Shinpei Okubo case because the Jury felt sorry for Emi Teresawa than because Yagami did a very good job at arguing, the story hyped him as someone who somehow did the impossible when it was the sob story that won the jury over. 

The villains are on the underdeveloped side with the exception of Hamura but he turns face later. Kuriowa is a big example, he's a police officer who has the skills of a hitman yet there is barely anything revealed about his backstory and this is a game with lots of cutscenes. Shono doesn't really have much to him other than being cowardly. 

The story's pacing also isn't the greatest since at least 4-5 hours is you being forced to do side quests to progress the story, these can lead into the realm of filler since they get in the way of the moment to moment story beats, if one good thing about them is that you get more money to get healing items and to get past progression roadblocks. 

Much of the game consist of cutscenes which I don't mind since I enjoy the story but it really felt like they can drag out the chapter lengths since I view game chapters like episodes of a TV show and if I were to evaluate Judgment's ability to get story beats and ideas across very quickly without relying too much on words and talking, I don't think the game does the greatest job at doing that.

I have spoken mostly about story but that's the thing, if you choose to only do the story missions much of the game consists of watching cutscenes, fighting, investigating, running around Kamorocho and using the drone and tailing missions. 

Investigating mainly just involves moving the cursor around to until you found the clue to interact with to progress the story and pressing dialogue options that reminds the player that they are playing a game and not watching a movie and to pay attention to the plot so you can progress the story. 

The drone pops a few times and it's not particularly that interesting since you just need to position it and press a button, you might need to deal with wind even though the game doesn't tell you.

The stealth sections which mostly involves tailing and one infiltration level where you dress up as a repairman where the hardest part is getting the money to get past the progression roadblock early game to buy the disguise to do the mission. 

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the tailing missions are as frequent as some make out. The first level made me think there was going to be many but they pop up once every few hours. The hardest parts of these is when you are following them and the npc you are tailing turns his back and you are now in his line of sight and hoping you can stay out of it long enough for you to get behind him again and not get a game over. The hardest tail was with Higashi late game where the you have to be in a very specific hidespot in order for Higashi to eventually get out of his patrol pattern and get back to following him again. 

This pretty much leaves only combat, when not watching cutscenes, investigating or exploring the city. To put it simpily, it's tolerable at best and very obnoxious and grating at worst.

You have two styles to fight with crane and tiger and at first the game wants you to switch these two up one for crowd control and the other for one on one battles. Thing is Tiger style is objectively the best one since you will be fighting and taking enemies out one at a time anyway, crowd control is never needed to be done. There is acrobatic attacks but they seem very contextual and something I needed to go out of my way to do. You can just use Tiger style and use the 4-5 hit combo to get past most enemies and boss encounters.

The lock on system never feels accurate or reliable. You can actively switch between targets and it just focuses on who Yagami is the closest too.

However the biggest grievance is the mortal wound system. This just adds needless busy work. Since the lock on and by extension the dodging isn't very reliable, when you fight tougher enemies or bosses and they start to get powered up after wailing on them, it becomes a game of luck of dodging out of the way before they destory a chunk of your health bar which means you need to find and buy expensive medkits or keep on healing yourself as you tank hits if you want to save medkits.

The random encounter rate can get out of hand considering combat isn't amazing since there will be times where the Keihin gang will be everywhere around Kamrocho will keep spawning and you want to get to the next story objective.

Overall, I do enjoy Judgment but I'm not sure how much furthur I will delve into playing RGG games.

Assassin's Creed 2(Nintendo Switch) Review

This was a game whenever I would recall it, I always tend to remember not have very fond memories of. I have been playing AC games lately albeit in reverse order minus the RPG games. Every time the thought of me coming back to playing this came to my mind, I always dreaded it and after playing it, I can say I wasn't wrong. I may not be as impressed by mainstream games and by extension mainstream media that are fondly remembered by many on the internet, but I try to accept that people have their prefrences and what they think is good might just be "okay" or "dull" for me. With AC2, outside of the art direction, music and to some degree the parkour system, I have a very hard time seeing what many people see in the game. I don't even like to attack Ubisoft as a company as much as many people do now and how the company gets vilified by the gaming community every time when given the chance, I have enjoyed their games before 2014 and even after where you could consider when they became the infamous "heels" they are now and I do get some enjoyment from their games from 2014 and to now even if I mainly have an attachment towards their games before that. Their games 2014 and onwards I do get some enjoyment from depending on the title even if I don't consider them to be "great". 

AC2 however is a game that either made me laugh for how incompetently designed it is, annoyed me with it's design quirks or just bored me so much. At times, I wonder why I even got to the end especially when you shove in the fact that the Ezio collection version of AC2 forces you to complete it's DLC chapters that got made later as mandatory to finish the game, it made a game I already wasn't big on into something that was slowly starting to make me angry. This is also the most easily accessible way to play AC2 btw. 

I will start with the story and to point it simpily, there's so many writing sins the game has that everything about the story seems like it was designed to annoy me. A big problem is that Ezio Auditore is a very dull character. The inciting incident of the story involves Ezio not knowing any better than because it happening due to the choices he made. Ezio didn't know the papers proving his family's innocence were given to Templars. Then there is the fact that Ezio decides to become an Assassin and helping Mario despite his initial reluctance comes out of nowhere and has no build up to it happening. Ezio barely even struggles or goes through any personal growth of his own. Every time he asssassinates his targets, Ezio is always designed to be in the right for doing so and his targets are just generic bad guys who are in on the conspiracy and never makes Ezio or the player question anything. He is always designed to look good and never be vunerable(he gets stabbed by Rodrigo towards the end of the game and then just gets up like nothing happened). The biggest kicker to all this that Ezio only thinks of his father and brothers on occasion if even that, he never once brings up a memory he has of them before they died to sell you on how much they mean to him. Loranzo de Medici remembers Ezio's father more than Ezio himself.

It doesn't just end there, the amount of contrivances to bail Ezio out of a potential situation is too numerous to count. The game has no respect for foreshadowing, build up or just making the player pay attention to plot points or ideas that could pop up later on. I'll give you three examples, when Ezio's father and brothers die, the family's maid just so happens to know of someone who can keep his mother and sister safe while goes out killing people and conviently teaches him crowd blending. Mario and his villa never gets any mention from his father before he dies, Ezio just so happens to remember Mario exists when something bad happens and he needs a get out of jail free card espeically since Ezio will have no where to go since him, his mom and sister are wanted fugitives. When Ezio needs to a pass to go to Venice, Caterina Sfortza just so happens to be inserted into the story and is there for Ezio to help her so he can get to Venice. That's just a few examples out of many. 

One good thing I could say on the story is that there is also a decent change in scenery after a few missions but the Venice portion of the game drags since it takes so long for the plot to move forward, there is a guy Ezio needs to kill but then he is framed and then there is another guy Ezio needs to kill and the DLC being mandatory drags out the story even more. The DLC is esstentially a filler arc of a shonen anime but at least those you can skip if you don't enjoy them. This is mandatory. 

The plot twist late game makes even less sense the more I think about it, Niccolo Machievill pops up out of nowhere and they kept a secret from Ezio that doesn't even do much to benefit them. What advantage do they even gain by keeping Ezio in the dark about his "training"? His father died because he was an Assassin and Mario tells him about his heritage and heavily encourages him to join the cause.Then there is the ending section of the game where Ezio suddenly spares Rodrigo Borgia despite him already having an extremely high kill count before this moment. I could also complain about how Rodrigo became the Pope off screen, somehow got the Staff of Eden, and knew where the Vault was even though you needed the Codex Pages to find them. 

I will be a little nice on the story in that the concept of Ezio's entire life of being nothing more than a conduit to deliver a message to Desmond who won't be born until centuries later and Ezio will die before he ever meets him or knows what the message was even about is fascinating on paper, the  problem is that all of this is just frontloaded at the end and I already went in length on how the game's story has no respect for foreshadowing and build up.

The worst part is, this story is not even an excuse plot so I'm much less forgiving on how poorly written it is, if the story was nothing more than an excuse for the gameplay, I'd just put all my story issues aside. At the very least I can put AC2 under, "play the game, skip the story". I do enjoy the Team Ninja developed Ninja Gaiden games, Ratchet and Clank 2016, Star Wars Jedi Survivor and I'm forgiving on the numerous story issues Insomniac Spider-Man 2 has due to having solid gameplay to name a few examples. 

Unfortunately, I can't call AC2 this. 

The game has stealth but there is no crouch button, cover button or lure a guard over to you. On top of that, the game gives you throwing knives, poison, and smoke bombs but you don't even need them since every guard can be countered and Ezio is a one man army, not even the final boss is immune to this. The hidden gun I only used when forced to because of the game's buggy detection system or how some missions just forces you to assassinate some targets with it since any other way won't work. 

The hidden blade has a counter kill that instant kills every enemy upon activating it's animation. This move can kill at least 95% of all enemies. The game actually gives you the option to hire mercenaries to help you in combat with Ezio being as powerful as he is. Occasionally, the hidden blade's insta counter killing won't work, luckily, the sword has a smaller counter window, it won't be an insta kill counter, but the counters with them will widdle away at the enemies' health and they will die. You can also play with fists and disarm enemies and get free kills that adding options to a combat system that is already to break. 

The AI is very buggy and doesn't have very consistent rules on what you can or can't do. That just makes the no detection missions that much worse since the AI's buggy nature can lead to many unfair game overs, this is even worse in the Bonfires of the Vanaties DLC since many of those missions are no detections some of the assassinations in that DLC borderline requires you to be lucky because of the AI's buggy nature. To name an example, you can try to kill a guard seconds after spotting you and it could either lead to an instant fail or you can continue onwards. There were times where guards would spot me and it takes the game a while to even acknowledge the fail state. 

You can hire prostitutes to distract guards but I only ever used it once and that was escourting Ezio's remaining family out of Floreance and I can't use parkour, guards were covering the entire gate and it was an escourt mission. This is known for being the most reliable and easy way to cheese stealth encounters but I never even relied on it that much. 

With the amount of mechanics and systems AC2 has, it almost seems like the game is designed to see how many different ways the game could be broken something along the lines of Metal Gear Solid 5 but it never really ever leans into this since many of the missions are the typical Grand Theft Auto style mission system of linear missions taking place on the open world so there isn't much in the way of finding clever ways to "break" and play around with the amount of options you have. 

The health system makes little sense, there are doctors all over the map and getting a quick heal costs very little so there is little need for potion use. The armour system gives you more health but it's already hard to die due to counters being a quick solution for everything. The repair system is nothing more than an inconveince since fixing armor costs little and happens so infrequnently that when it does happens it feels like a massive inconvience that just wastes time. 

The funny thing is that the final mission has no doctors meaning that you might have to worry about your potion count but this could come out of left field since I hardly if ever need to heal myself using potions before this point. 

You also get WAY too much money, doing main missions even those that don't add much to the plot will have you rolling in cash. You can buy armor and that eats up money sure, but you will make all that money back again in no time if you just do story missions.

The parkour system is...interesting. I wouldn't call it good by any means. I do like the idea of wall and side ejects even if wall ejects I almost never needed to use since in the main game there were rarely if ever any any instances where there two opposite walls nearby by each other either because it looked cool and because there was random tower in the game where you can't sync the viewpoint with unless you do a side eject to reach it. I did wish the game forced you into using it more often instead of that one instance. I really do like how you can slow down your descent and even do climb leaps, the former however is inconsistent since I would hold the grab button and there is a good chance I could grab a ledge or tackle someone instead.

The big issue I have with the parkour is the amount of rooftop guards there are, for a game that really goes out of it's way to have an interesting movement system, there always a rooftop guard who spots you and then you either kill them before they spot you or fight them on the roof and their body falls to the ground and it raises your notreity. 

This leads into another issue I have with game is the notriety system, you can kill guard where no one is even a witness to the crime and it goes up. You can kill all the guards who is even aware of all the kills you did and it goes up. What's worse is that getting your notriety down can always be done by ripping off wanted posters, there are other ways, but there will always be posters to find and are all over the map and it's the easiest way to get it down. 

That's the thing with much of AC2's design. There's just inconviences after inconvience that wastes the player's time. Taken fall damage? Run to a doctor and heal yourself for little money. Armor gets damaged? Just run to a blacksmith and it's quick and adds nothing to the game on the occasion it gets damged. Want to use the parkour to run on rooftops? Watch out for rooftop guards and then you kill them and your notriety goes up and then you got to rip off some wanted posters than back to usual. 

To top everything off, you also need all 30 condex pages to unlock the the final mission but the game never once makes it urgent for the player to get them, I already knew about this beforehand but this is just even more tedious since inbetween main missions I would do, I had to sync viewpoint after viewpoint just to get them and it just wastes time. This is going to be even worse if you play the game for the first time and aren't aware of this. 

Final issue is that I'm not sure if this can apply to the original release but the Ezio Collection version but the game is insanely buggy and has bugs happen regarding parkour or air kill animations. The worst part is when at the game's final mission, the sound would bug out and not play and I couldn't continue the game, there is no checkpoint restart feature, I tried to get an intentional game over but the game would never respawn me and I had to load from the menu, if your checkpoints weren't your save points and I had start from the very start of the mission, I would've lost it since I just wanted the game to end by that point so I suppose I can give that as a positive. 

Overall, I should've just dropped AC2 at some point but playing it does remind me why I enjoy the games I like. There are people to this day who complain about games being "too short" but I argue if AC2 was much shorter, I would be much kinder on the game. I try to avoid calling any "mainstream" game I don't like as "bad" especially those I got to the end of and rolled credits on but there were many moments when I played the game that made me want to call it just that.