Call of Duty: Modern Warfare(2019) Review

This reboot of Modern Warfare caught me by surprise when I first played it and the direction CoD went into after it, surprises me even now. By this point into CoD's run, the franchise was flanderized, the campaigns while still decent action movie romps were just a side attraction to the multiplayers and it became the divisive punching bag it is now. While the idea of "back to basics" or "back to it's roots" was thrown around a lot in the 8th gen. CoD MW 2019 really did feel like it was doing just that along with CoD WW2 to a lesser extent. The campaign clearly wasn't a side attraction since there are no multiplayer trophies to be found here. Infinity Ward was expecting you to play the single player portion this time around.

Playing MW 2019 surprised me how this sub series of the CoD franchise still had a lot of life left in it. MW3 2011 before this point was heavily reusing assets and scenarios from the original versions of MW1 and 2 so to see a lot of fresh and compelling ideas at this point into CoD's run caught me off guard.

It also goes back to what CoD originally was, you being the underdog against an overwhelming force rather than you being an action movie hero where your npcs take all the credit for everything you do. Just that now it's darker and grittier.

I mentioned new ideas and there are some great missions here with much more mechanical depth this time around like "Cleaning House", "The Wolf's Den" and my personal favorite "Going Dark". The first two can be tense tactical shooters where it's about moving slowly with actual door breaching and opening animations with the flashbangs finally being useful now. The atmosphere of the missions as well as enemies attacking you from anywhere in those claustrophobic rooms can really make for tense moments you could find in a more tactical game. Always being careful when to fire shots and don't accidentally hit civilians. On top of this, you even get a darkness meter too.

This culminates in the penultimate mission "Going Dark". Ubisoft to this day has never made a new Splinter Cell game using the power of consoles post 7th gen and this mission lets you experience that all though only for one level. Shadows and light meters have been absent in games for so long at times I forget you can shoot out lights for more optimal sneaking conditions, it was in some instances but it was great to finally see these mechanics come back only for this one level in this one game in the rebooted MW series.

Other missions like Embassy and Sniper's Den are no slouches either. The former reminding me of the days back when CoD campaigns were about being the underdog and being overwhelmed where it's about an overwhelming force trying to take over and kill everyone in the US Embassy in Urizikstan. Where you have to escort an npc in a stealth section using cameras and then have to defend it from overwhelming counterattacks. Borrowing from Comrade Sniper in CoD2 isn't nearly as overt here as it can be in. The only big issue with this level is that snipers can expose the scripting of the level by not being able to sniper the enemy firing the mortor at you later in the level from across the map.

Sniper's Den does a good job at teaching the player bullet drop and is accomdating enough to have him be super good at it since it's a one off mechanic. It's Comrade Sniper again but at least there is a new mechanic to accomdate for it as well keeping in line with the theme of being the underdog especially with the enemies soldiers and trucks keep on coming.

There are some weird missions like a steath section where you play as child Farah but I didn't mind it too much despite how heavy handed it can get with it's theming on who's the bad guy. There's also a section later in the game where the game tries to pull sympathy cards by having threatning to kill The Butcher's family in order to have him to talk but I didn't mind it too much since the campaign mostly won me over by this point.

Issues I had is that during the missions where it's traditional CoD shooting galleries while there are attempts at innovations like a lean mechanic, it's not as smooth as it could be. The shooting is still ultimately just using hitscan weapons to point, shoot, get shot and then regen health. This is fine when the enemy count is small but can lead into frustration when enemies are everywhere and it can be hard to have them get line sight of sight off you so you can wait for health to regen. This is especially ergregious in "Proxy War" while the arena is decently open, the issues with the hitscanners and regen health can get in the way of the enjoyment.

Some sections can be a little too scripted especially early on in Embedded when you aren't picking up the brick and it's an instant fail.

Overall, playing this campaign again reminded me that CoD did have life left in it. Not very big on where the rebooted MW games would go into but like the og MW games this first one was captivating.

YS IX: Monstrum Nox(Nintendo Switch) Review

After playing YS VIII months ago and surprisingly enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, I decided to give YS IX a shot. As a whole, the latter isn't as good as the former but I still enjoy it enough to get to the end and roll credits on it.

Just to be warned, only get the Switch version of YS IX if you have no other option. The frame rate can get very slow almost to the point of single digits during certain parts of the games especially when fighting the enemies in the Balduq overworld.

This now transitions to the next part of my review. Instead of an unexplored island like in YS VIII, you are now in a prison city knows as Balduq. This is where much of the game can be a drag since now, you don't have the approval rating to get the "real" ending like in YS VIII so you can by bypass much of the downtime spent in the city by just spawning enemies in the overworld of the prison city. You do this for many hours until you spawn the Grimwald Nox and you do a series of wave defenses and then finally after all that, you can progress the main story.

This really can get tedious due to the game being as long as it is. It also doesn't help that the wave defenses this time around are a lot more unfair and cheap and this in large part due to the fact that enemies during these sections can spawn behind from the crystal you are supposed to defend and no matter how much you invest in the defenses, you can't spawn any traps or defenses from that blindspot. So during a wave defense, enemies might spawn from behind and due to the said crystal being so fragile and enemies being tanky, a game over will inevitably happen so then it becomes a process of knowing when they will spawn from the blindspot and lowering the difficulty enough that they will die faster and minimizing the damage done to the crystal until the wave is over.

However on the flip side. The dungeons are quite memorable. One big reason is due to the music in them being fantastic and really immersing you into the adventure and being great tunes to listen to. The various powers you get also makes traversing them more enjoyable since now you have a grapple hook(abeit contextual), wall run, glide, being able to destroy cracked walls, have a vision mode that can highlight hidden switches among other various ways to traverse through the environment. If there is one thing YS IX is an improvment over VIII, it's definitely this.

There are some annoying quirks however like the wall run being finicky on what surfaces you are allowed to run on and if it's not a smooth vertical surface, don't bother. You also have to manually switch to Yufa in order to use her hammer to break cracked surfaces.

Combat is mostly the same as VIII so it's decent but only when the enemies and bosses aren't moving so fast that the lock on will move along with them. It does get very easy to start doing the same old tactics when fighting hordes and fodder enemies.

I did miss the way the blacksmith worked in VIII since it was more about gathering materials than having currency and it encouraged you to explore the island rather than constantly get money to pay for weapons and gear.

The story is a weird one, it's not terrible and there are parts that can be pretty good especially the late game twist. However much of the story is spent doing the Grimwald Nox wave defenses for Apprills, doing a bunch loosely connected side plots and most egregious of all, those dull and boring sections where you play as the *real* Adol and not Crimson King. The last one is so bizarrely presented that for much of the game, I'm wondering "what is the point of any this?" It's never made properly clear what these sections are for until late game where it's there to avoid any bizarre retconning. I'm also starting to get more annoyed how Adol has no real personality and is just a stand in for the player or the responses you get are there to avoid him from being a complete mute.

The late game twist is quite interesting and insane but it takes so long for it to happen and a good portion of the game has gone by at that point. Also it was very weird how inconsistent the game was on what lines were voice acted and what aren't. There will be voice acting one minute but then during seemingly important scenes there won't be any at all. It can be incredibly jarring.

With all this said, due to the amount of time I spent with the game and the characters by proxy apart of did get emotional by the time game eventually wrapped up so in spite of my complaints, I did enjoy it since spent about 55 hours playing it.

Overall, YS IX was in improvement in some ways but is lacking in other areas. The music, dungeons, traversal and parts of the story do carry it.