Dead Space 3 Review

 Dead Space 3 Review

I have always really enjoyed Dead Space. The first 2 games I played a lot during my teenage years and I beat them both twice after my first playthroughs. Both of them are probably some of my favourite 3rd person shooters despite them being mislabelled as "survival horror" games but that is for a different time. The 3rd game however is a different story, I beat the game back in 2013 around the time it came out and I don't remember it that well and didn't like it that much, and I have just beaten again for the 2nd time after almost 10 years since I played it and well...I remember why I wasn't big on it.

One more thing I want to address before I get started with the review are the reasons why Dead Space 3 is so derided. It often gets that because it made the series more of an "action game". A criticism the 2nd game also gets but not nearly as much. Basically, action gameplay is the average horror game fan's kryptonite and I always found that weird considering Dead Space as it's very heart is a 3rd person shooter to begin with. As bad as people use that criticism for the later Resident Evil games, with that series it *sort of* made sense considering that RE before RE4 was a game centered around puzzles, exploration and combat whether it'd be avoiding or shooting but Dead Space was always a shooter and I hear this almost every time DS3 gets talked about and I want to address this because I am not talking about it all in this review. Dead Space 3 to me is the very definition of a mediocre game, it's not terrible enough to be aggravating and it's not good enough to stand out in any way. It's a shame since the 1st 2 games were games I really enjoyed while with 3, I have a hard time really saying much positive on it.

I will address the game's biggest flaw: the game completely retools and changes everything about the combat and everything surrounding the gameplay for the worst. The biggest issues is that now, necromorphs take a lot less damage compared to the 1st 2 games. In Dead Space, the most interesting thing about the combat system is that enemies can bit hit in multiple areas and you had to dismember them in order to get the kill. The funny thing that this gameplay idea even holds true for Dead Space Extraction as well. In Dead Space 3, the necromorphs take so little damage to the point where shooting almost feels extremely mindless. Aiming for the limbs isn't nearly as encouraged and enemies will die really fast a lot of the time. Remember how some Halo fans bash Halo Reach because the Covenant took a lot less damage to defeat? It goes double for this game. Enemies don't really require much effort to actually defeat, you often have to shoot them in the arm or leg twice and they go down pretty fast. The game does add enemies mutating after death to compensate for this but it never happens often enough or is done in an interesting way to really stand out. Dead Space 2 at least had a lot of enemy variety and large numbers to make combat encounters really interesting. You had enemies that can slow you down when they hit you, enemies that lunged at you while clinging to walls, enemies that were small, agile, cling to walls and can shoot projectiles where it's weak spots you had to wait to see come out(these enemies only show a few times in this game), the Stalkers where they hide and run away and use cover to flank you(they show up a few times, and they are a joke due to how overpowered the weapons and little damage they take), babies that explode, enemies that can infect corpses, and many others that were often mixed up to make for interesting and dynamic combat encounters where you had to watch your surroundings. DS3 on the other hand, just shoves the same generic enemies at you constantly for 70% of the game with very little variation mix up. Often leading to the same boring enemy encounters where you just shoot mindlessly and they die very quickly. The game does try to add challenge by adding lots of enemies in cramped rooms but that makes the game frustrating due to how many times enemies grab you and how enemies can stunlock you at times. Now the game adds human enemies into the mix, and well, they are nothing to write home about. Their AI is very dumb and they often just run around like idiots, with hitscan weapons forcing you into cover which was something that made Dead Space 1 and 2 stand out from cover shooters at the time because the former avoided that. Rocket launcher enemies is a game of hope you can kill them fast before they take big chunks of your health.

I want to get into the other game's other retooling of gameplay: the semi open world aspect, along with the weapons and resources. The game adds in RPG mechanics as well as sort of an open world which at times feels like a precursor to the open world games of the 8th gen. The open world doesn't really feel like anything I want to explore since I never felt there was any need to explore due to the issues I will now mention. The weapons and resources. Dead Space 1 and 2 and some great and creative weapons. They are up there with the Resistance series when it comes to creative weapons in a sci fi shooter. While I admit, that often used the Plasma Cutter, Line Launcher, Ripper, Pulse Rifle for both games, they all felt very satisfying to use and kept both game's balance in check. Now Dead Space 3 does away with set weapons to use and upgrade and now gives you a 2 weapon limit as well as letting you create your own weapons. While this is an interesting idea in theory, I feel the game isn't as experimental with weapon creating as it wants you to be because first you got the before mentioned enemy health, and lack of enemy mix up problem but now it adds all these pointless RPG systems that adds more clutter but doesn't add anything to the overall game. You don't need to be experimental because enemies are too easy to kill and some weapon combos are so broken that you don't need to aim for the limbs, all you need to do is just push the fire button and enemies can easily be killed. Now, the central pillar of DS combat is gone. You don't even want to be experimental because weapons creating is a huge hassle that you aren't even sure is worth it because some weapon combos are average to borderline broken. The resource management itself is just pointless clutter too. The game wants you to upgrade your Rig, and craft items as well as upgrade weapons, and you are often better off just crafting items since it's easier than saving resources to upgrade your Rig. The node and currency system from DS1 and 2 had much more decision making. With nodes you had to worry about upgrading your RIG and your weapons, and also you had special doors that gave you more loot if you were to use them but you risk losing a chance to upgrade weapons and your RIG. With the currency, you had to choose between ammo, health packs or possibly get a new weapon and you only had so much money. With DS3, it's just me pressing the x button to picking things to get resources I don't know anything about and there is no decision making. It's like Resident Evil 8 where you can hold everything and you don't have to worry about what you can or cannot carry.

Another reason why I didn't like this game that much at the time was because of how "long" it was and it isn't technically that long, it's only 10 hours. But the game feels padded. You spend the first chapters in space and not even on the planet where the plot takes place where Dead Space 1 had mystery to keep the player intrigued and whether or not the characters can survive the Ishimura and Dead Space 2 had you fight to survive in a necromorph outbreak, DS3 just takes a while to really get to the main setting and it's funny how the all of the space sections takes place in those first 7 chapters because it never pops up again. So upgrading air supple for the RIG is pointless once you crash land on the planet and the middle section of the game can be pretty dull too considering it's going through the same snowy areas and rooms constantly. Chapter 18 in particular felt like it went on longer than it needed to. I will give the game credit where in Chapter 8 when you crash land is quite tense section where you have to manage Isaac's body heat while also having no way point, so you had to rely on landmarks and piece together where you are and what do without freezing to death. It's easily the best part of the game, I wonder what could've been if the whole game did this.

I will talk about the story here and it's not terrible but not great either. The love triangle is really bad and Norton is a terrible character who acts like a dick a lot of the time and it's there to create conflict, and it's weird how DS2, Ellie and Isaac just hooked up and then a timeskip happens and Isaac has went through lots of problems since. I don't know what is it with games and these timeskips. Whenever the game would go into detail regarding the lore of the series, it's actually pretty interesting. I will also give the game credit for having the best villain in the series through Jacob Danik. He's not great and he makes classic villain mistakes like not killing the heroes himself when he clearly had the chance but Simon Templeman's performance does elevate him a lot. That and he's the only villain in the series that actively gets in Isaac's way and also acts more proactive where DS1 and 2's villains never really did anything to make the player and Isaac hate them. Danik taunts you and actively talks down to Isaac and he often gets the drop on Isaac too, he's more involved in the story compared to previous DS villains. Ellie's fake out was dumb and ruined any development Isaac could've had. Michael Carver while an interesting foil to Isaac on paper, don't interact with each other enough to have any real connection. Coop he is there more apparently but I have no idea if it fleshes out their relationship more.

In conclusion, Dead Space 3 is not terrible nor is it good. It's just "there" to me. It is pretty lame that the there couldn't be a great trilogy of 3rd person shooters through Dead Space but best 2 out of 3 is fine. I can also rank Extraction as a very good spin off. I will give DS3 credit that it doesn't really ruin the series in any way. It's not as bad as certain other reviled games in popular franchises but I can see why I never played this as much as 1 and 2.

Why I Watch English Anime Dubs

 

Why I Watch English Anime Dubs

Alright, I have been pretty vocal about my English Anime Dub defending and like with the Full Metal Alchemist write up I did back in December, with certain Anime topics I feel passionate about, I will most likely write a blog of some kind as a piece to keep on the record. In case I wanted to sum up everything I feel about that said topic.

 

First, I want to go over my experience with Anime Dubs. In the early to late 00s, I watched a lot of TV, in fact, I watched more TV than I did playing video games. It's the opposite now, and in fact I don't watch TV at all and while I watch shows, it's not on TV. The point is, I watched lots of cartoons and anime in the early to late 00s. And guess what? My method of watching anime in that type period was? You guessed it English Dubs, and this comes to my first point. English Dubs are pretty much made to expand the audience of an anime. Guess what? Not everyone enjoys reading subs and do you really expect kids too? Kids hated reading at school so do you expect them to go on their TV and expect them to read subtitles when watching TV? Yeah exactly. It doesn't even end there either, I remember years ago, that my cousin watched Gantz O on Netflix and he refused to watched it subtitled and this made me realize there are lots of people like him that English Dubs' markets are basically made for. I am pretty sure Netflix anime wouldn't be half as popular, if the service didn't have a dub and sub available at the same time. It opens a wide audience for a series, movie or OVA. Dub haters can keep insulting Dubs for their supposedly terrible acting but do you honestly think, the average person who wants to be entertained watching anime and hates reading subs really goddamn cares? They overlook this and it annoys me to no end. Then there is people who have visual disabilities which just gives English Dubs more of a reason to exist.

 

I get complaining about what 4Kids did with their Dubs and they changed a lot of the stuff and while not everything they did was a hit, their Dub of the original Yugioh series was a huge hit and made the series way more popular. You can talk about censorship sure, but really what matters is that a show becomes more popular through Dubbing and while their method was questionable, in the end they made the series way more popular. I am willing to bet a good majority of people probably heard of Yugioh was because of the 4Kids Dub. And goes into the bigger picture here, Dubs regardless of quality, if they expand a show's audience is what matters. If they did that, I consider the Dub to fulfill its purpose.

Now another reason why I watch English Dubs is because in some ways, I find it hard to concentrate when reading especially on a digital screen. I find it hard to get through novels and I have a hard time going through comics that have walls of text, so I dislike the idea of watching a visual medium in motion where I have to read subtitles. I find it hard to pay attention and I find it boring because I don't even have to watch the damn show, I can mute audio entirely and read the bottom two inches of the screen and I am getting the mostly the same experience. In fact, listening to the anime's background music could ruin my concentration in some ways, I could miss lines, and I always have to play a game of, "please don't miss that line, please don't". And why would I want to read subs during an action sequence? I want to enjoy the action and the spectacle. Reading subs would just ruin that and make me look at the bottom two inches of the screen instead of viewing the action. I can imagine kids watching Dragon Ball Z or a shounen and they have to worry about not missing some random line while the characters are duking it out or any show with action. Some shows like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, literally have the subtitles literally overlap with the characters' names, is this supposed to help in anyway? I will make it clear, I do watch subbed anime but that is because there are some great anime with no English Dubs like the before mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Rose of Versailles and Ashita No Joe. That is a different topic though.

Now I want to address the arguments Sub fanboys use. The first one being, they are Japanese, having them speak English makes no sense and isn't "realistic". First of all, anime characters have a race neutral look and the characters don't look like their nationality to begin with. That and I wanted to say this for some time, but if you were theoretically in Japan and heard two people speak Japanese, would you really for the life of you, see words pop up in front of you translating what they are saying? No. Them speaking English is unrealistic but seeing words pop up and an invisible translator pop up isn't my definition of "realism" either. Next they like to act like the subtitles are the be all end all and it's the most true to the "original" script? And my response to this is? How do you know this? Unless if the director of an anime disproves of the Dub or unless if there is general distain by the production team, I doubt some random dude translating Japanese words, is "God" and isn't someone that isn't fallible. It all feels too vague isn't specific enough, and seems like a case by case basis. "Japanese actors have more nuance". I hate this one. I feel like you need to actually speak the language to understand something like this, and it really feels like weebs are just trying too hard to sound smart. What annoys me is that they never explain how they are nuanced. What on Earth are the Japanese actors even doing that are so nuanced? Every time, I hear subbed anime I think everyone is voiced by the same 3-5 people. I must be missing these nuances because I don't get them. These guys can barely go into detail as to why English actors are so "terrible" and I am supposed to be believe you are voice acting experts now? Sure, yeah. I will also mention an argument they like to mention is that characters are less "annoying" in Japanese. What annoys me is that they never explain this and I am always end up being like, "no shit". Reading something annoying and not understanding what they are saying is going to be tolerable than understanding what they are saying by default. Hearing someone say stupid crap will always be more grating because depending on how good your memory is, and depending on how it's said, it will pop out more. Hearing an insult towards you won't hit as hard as reading one because the stuff being heard is right around you is harder to ignore. Would Jason's terrible fear monologues from Resident Evil Infinite Darkness be better in another language? Reading the words isn't going to be as cringe and actually hearing him say out loud since he is saying it and you would have to plug your ears to ignore him.

I will address a small point here. It may feel like I am talking in the wind, but it's vocal minority anime fans who hate English Dubs. Going to cons and going to voice actor Q&As and seeing lots of people there is enough to remind me that people who hate English Dubs are an extremely vocal minority.

I also have an attachment to dub actors, not as people, no, but their craft. I really enjoy hearing them despite how overused some actors are. I really enjoy Crispin Freeman, Steve Blum, Jay Michael Tatum, Jameson Price, Wendee Lee, Kari Whalgren, Richard Epcar, Robert MacCollum and so on. I generally tend to enjoy hearing them in anything they are in which will not transition to my next point. I notice Dub haters tend to attack them for overusing the same actors but I also notice western cartoons getting a free pass. I don't get why. Cartoons use the same actors as much as anime dubs do some actors even overlap like Crispin Freeman and Steve Blum. It just feels like a weird double standard to me. Phil Lamarr, Kevin Michael Richardson and Karry Payton voice almost every black person in a cartoon. Cartoons use the same female voice actors a lot as much as anime dubs as well. Jennifer Hale, Tara Strong, and Grey Griffin are pretty much almost in everything. Laura Bailey and Kari Whalgren even overlaps with both as well. It's just bizarre. That and weebs like to act like cartoon voice acting is way better than anime dub acting but never go into detail. Is it because cartoons aren't recorded in Japanese first so they are just better by default because there's no Japanese actors? Ugh. I think it's best to just say that, that voice acting in America isn't super popular unless if it's a big project and despite Netflix's best efforts to try bringing in new VAs that no one ever really gives them enough credit for. On a side note, as obnoxious as I find anime shoving in cute stuff in everything particularly with girls, I always felt Kari Whalgren, Cristina Vee, Laura Bailey, Tara Platt, and Luci Christian to me pull it off  better than when Japanese women voice teenagers but I consider that to be a personal preference as much as I want to spend time explain why this already a long write up as it is.

Here is another thing that English Dubs get overlooked for: Bad Dubs and entertainment value. If you want to watch a bad show, is good voice acting really going to save it? It's best if the dub and voice acting also be bad to add to the entertainment value. Hearing bad voice acting and makes the awful anime more fun to go through than reading it. Cyber City 808 isn't half as fun without being as stupid as it is. Do I need to remind you of the "bite off your fuckin dick" line. Like, it's fucking gold. Hell, all though not terrible on a technical level Dragon Ball Z Super Android 13 is much more entertaining with the English Dub than without. Android 13 is a boring villain but giving him that fun cowboy character elevated him a good deal. It just made a boring movie, really fun because they made everything so dumb with trash talk lines like, "don't you lecture me with your $30 dollar haircut, Goku dies". Or that weird part where the series gets philosophical with a line where Android 13 is like, "Free will? Pitiful humans, war, segregation, hatred is that what you done with your free will, boy" which is weird but funny.

Dubs with certain franchises and settings is the next point I want to make. I like funny accents in almost anything which is probably why I like Black Lagoon and Baccanno's dubs as much as I do. They are so over the top that they elevate shows that I deem to be mostly decent. Hellsing's dub is the best thing about it, the show is nothing special is just dumb entertainment at most but the dub elevates it. Crispin Freeman is great but the Major's War monologue is quite good. Jameson Price's performance really makes the Count of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou really standout as a larger than life charismatic character. Average and boring adaptations like Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood are elevated with the late Ed Blaylock's performance as King Bradley. He steals every scene in that series and makes Bradley even cooler. I also like to watch certain franchises like the before mentioned Dragon Ball in English and this might be something lot of people agree with me on but I am not exactly big on Goku being voiced by a 50 year old woman. It just really seems out of place and weird, I get the guy is a kid at heart but the guy is a full grown adult, and it doesn't suit him because women usually tend to voice little boys and it just seems obvious that a 50 year old is voicing Goku. What really annoys me is that she voices male character in Goku's family including Goten, Gohan and Bardock. This isn't a Metal Gear Solid situation where Big Boss and Solid Snake are clones, the former are completely different characters and how does she even remotely fit Bardock in any way? I don't see it.

In conclusion, I have covered mostly everything I wanted to say about English Dub in anime for a very long time and I now have some kind of recording to put it on.

Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

 

Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

This write up sounds a bit weird, a story comparison between 2 FPS games? A genre that never needed to rely on story to engage players to begin with? Sounds weird, right? Well, the thing is, both games came out around a time where story was slowly becoming more common in FPS games. There was Half Life, Marathon and Unreal yes, but the 00s is where storytelling in FPS games really started to get out of hand. I won't go into too much detail on this but I feel Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 both tell their stories in complete different ways. I think the former does a better job at telling it's story than the latter, is more enjoyable, and doesn't get in the gameplay as much. Which is strange because whenever Resistance discourse comes up at times, there are some people who really like 3's story or at least prefer it's more "personal" story compared to the "military" story of the 1st two games. I just find this to be so weird. I wanted to keep to make this it's own write up because if I included it in my R:FOM review, it would've made it too long.

Now, I will just talk about the series briefly before starting the comparison. I really enjoy Fall of Man and 3. Both games to me are some of the best FPS games the 7th gen has to offer especially in a time where the genre was in a very "strange" phase. And the 2nd game? Well, to avoid sounding like a ranting madman, I am not a fan of it, I played it again recently for the first time recently since 2009 and I was appalled by how bad it was. Everything about it felt like a poor man's Call of Duty campaign. Playing that game was like watching someone you respected sell out to a crowd you don't like. Everything about that game felt so "anti Insomniac" to me, and a 2 year timeskip after the opening level where Nathan Hale's team of super soldiers are already established was already enough of a bad sign for me to not to continue with the story. I might play on Easy mode and maybe get more fun of it that way and update this write up if I ever do beat, but I am not sure. Now the 3rd game is great. While taking a step back in some ways from Fall of Man, the game more than makes up for it's weapon feel and super satisfying combat. When it comes to having weapons that feel great and hitting the enemies, the game is a huge improvement over Fall of Man, and there's more environment variety too. For me, choosing between R:FOM and 3 is like choosing between Max Payne 1 and Max Payne 2.

But I rambled long enough, time to get to the point: the stories. Fall of Man's story to me was a simple story told well enough to keep me interested. It's not writing masterclass or anything, far from it but the story in that game is told well enough and doesn't get in the way of gameplay. It's sort of the reason why I tend to jump into Fall of Man randomly while as much as I like the 3rd game, I don't jump into as much. The story in Fall of Man is told through these documentary style cutscenes probably to make up for the fact that the Insomniac couldn't actively put in full on cutscenes due to budgeting most likely and I feel it adds to the game's charm and setting. Kind of like Max Payne's comic book cutscenes. The alternate WW2 setting with the documentary cutscenes makes it feel a bit like watching a WW2 documentary but not entirely. I feel it adds to the mystery aspect to what the first game is going for. Since the whole story is basically Racheal Parker's recollection of the Chimeran in invasion of Europe and her recollection of a mysterious man named Nathan Hale. Back a good couple of years ago, I saw some constantly attack Nathan Hale for being a "bland and boring" character, the same usual bargain bin critique but to my response, "isn't that the point?" The story isn't told from Nathan's perspective, it's Parker's and Nathan Hale is supposed to be a quiet and mysterious soldier that people only saw but never actually celebrated his actions to how ambiguous his existence was. It's what Halo 3's marketing campaign went for except it's actually is the plot here. Hale is a legend or myth by definition. The Chimera themselves are mysterious too since any documents on their existence were wiped out when the game started. On a side note, it is nice for an alien invasion story where the military isn't portrayed as complete and utter idiotic buffoons. The best part of these cutscenes and that they can be skipped and Fall of Man still keeps you in the action. It's a story is told in an interesting way and doesn't get in the way. I also really like how, the game also has an in universe explanation as to why the main character talks during cutscenes and not gameplay considering gameplay is just playing out Hale's battles huge plot dumps weren't happening. In fact the whole game is basically playing out what Racheal described what was going in the cutscene giving the player enough context for the levels.

Now I will get to Resistance 3, while I have bashed this game for having cutscenes that get in the way, it's not as bad as in other games like Wolfenstein 2 or hell, Machine Games Wolfenstein in general. I still feel like wannabe City 17 Opening in R3 kind of takes too long to get to the action for me. Some of the down time moments where the characters are going through major problems were just boring to me because I didn't really care for any of the characters. The walking sections just didn't add enough to the story for me and I prefer R:FOM's way of getting to the action fast. This isn't my major issue with the story in R3, my big issue is just how bad the story is in general. People praise R3's story for being more "personal", I feel the story just fails to keep me invested. It may be "personal" but that doesn't make it good. I also feel like the whole post apocalyptical setting and the world being destroyed is extremely generic and typical especially when the 1st game and even the 2nd at least portrayed the military as people who actually could stand a chance against the alien force. I remember some Resistance fans complaining about this change in setting and I agree with them. The biggest issue I have is how little I care for Joseph Cappelli. His motivation is "personal" yes but I don't feel very attached to his family and I get this isn't a movie or TV series where you have downtime but I feel like more could've been done. Now the biggest problem I have is everything after. Cappelli and Malakov have very little character interactions in general. It doesn't even make sense for Cappelli not to talk during cutscenes at least with Hale he was quiet and was playing out his fights. The lack of interactions just makes the 2 super boring. And the funny thing is, Fall of Man even had an actual dynamic with Cartwright and Hale. Cartwright being the witty funny guy who is tough and likes to tease Hale while the latter was more stoic and collected. I'd argue Cartwright had more character in sniper rifle than the entirety of R3's cast. The lack of interactions makes Malkov's death mean very little when he dies. The story also makes some dumb turns too. Like how Cappelli tells Charlie Tent, a guy he knew for 8 hours to check on his family because he had a bad dream. The former had no proof that his son was in danger and asks a guy who wasn't even his friend for help. There also that extremely poorly done foil villain late game where he was once a member of SRPA like Cappelli where the latter chose a quiet family life the former chose a life of war and survival of the fittest. The problem here is that the villain only shows up for one level and since Cappelli never talks and says anything in gameplay, there's nothing to contrast with him here, they only interact at the end of the level and this isn't the Last of Us where it uses it's foils more effectively with Joel and how each character him and Ellie meet represents certain sides of him. Here, it's just a guy a crazy bloodthirsty asshole fighting a guy who is mute one moment and not the next. Humanity fighting each other this much doesn't even make sense considering what comes after, more on that later. Before I get to my next issue with R3's story I will say the cutscenes of Cappelli walking in the snow and him making the speech before he charges into the terraformer to be pretty well done due it being shot well and having very little dialogue and for how hopeless it will be. Then the story starts getting dumb again by first of all establishing the Chimera as a boring Invincible Villain who loses all the time, but come back stronger than ever like the Templars from Assassin's Creed and the Light from Young Justice. What annoys me here is that the beginning of the game, it was said that SRPA was wiped out by the Chimera yet for some reason I am supposed to believe that a depowered Cappelli and Charlie Tent and his group are supposed to be strong enough to take down the force that killed a super solider army? That is just nonsense. The Chimera took over the world apparently, wiped out the military and they get beaten by a few humans? Ugh.

In conclusion, while I still really enjoy both games, I am surprised by how bad I find R3's story. It's not bad enough to ruin the game, but it's just too poorly written to me. R:FOM was a simple story told in an interesting. R3 was a "personal" story told very poorly. Execution is what matters and it seems online discourse either forgets or tries to ignore it.

 

Resistance Fall of Man Review

 

Resistance Fall of Man Review

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The 00s was an interesting period for fps games. You had stuff like Solider of Fortune and No One Lives Forever in the year 2000. And then you had stuff like Serious Sam The First Encounter, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and of course Halo Combat Evolved in 2001. With Halo CE's release and later Call of Duty 4, the fps genre would have a strange period of having 2 weapon limit and regen health shooters being the norm. Now, I want to talk about a game that came out in a time where the norm wasn't full set yet and instead of the Halo and CoD way of doing things it combines aspects of 90s shooters like Half-Life and Doom, the Halo series and also the WW2 setting of games like Call of Duty at the time and that is Resistance Fall of Man. I see this game get a lot of hate in from some people and it has a cult following in others. I fall into the latter.

I feel a lot of the reviews for this game that I have seen both written and video form doesn't really do this game a whole lot of justice. The game does borrow a lot from other shooters before where unlike something like say, Duke Nukem Forever where it only borrows stuff from the past 15 years after Duke Nukem 3D's release because the devs thought it would be interesting, this game borrows from them and makes it for a interesting and unique experience combining the old and the new.

Now, I will talk about how the game does a good job at combining the old and the new. The game takes the ability to hold all your weapons from Doom and Half Life while adding a Radial Menu to select weapons, not too different from Insomniac's previous series Ratchet and Clank. Which is a system I think the Doom reboot games' console versions adopted. It also takes elements from the Halo series like the partially regenerating health, the ability to throw multiple grenades, a melee attack and some enemy types being similar to the Flood. It doesn't end there either, it also takes the iron sights from the Call of Duty series as well but unlike that series, you are still accurate to varying degrees when shooting from the hip all though it will be easier to kill enemies more efficiently when using ADS.

All of this combines for a game with combat that feels unique in a lot of ways. With the health system, it's about being careful to duck behind cover while also choosing when to go out of cover and starting taking out enemies out in the open. It's not a full on cover shooter but you can't just rush in and kill everything in sight by holding down the fire button either. The enemy AI also plays a role in this, more on that later. An issue with this system that I do think Halo and even CoD to some degree do better is that in those games, the player is given an audio cue and in CoD's case an extremely on the nose, "you are hurt to cover" warning on when to hide and wait to for health to regenerate. In Resistance, you aren't given that and I think this could lead to why some dislike the game. In R:FOM, knowing when you are in critical health is like driving a car where you looking in the mirror and driving on the road at the same time. I don't mind it and it never bothered me but some people would probably rush in blindly and not even know they had one bar of health left. A way to fix this is to probably have Nathan Hale either have a breathing sound to know when the player need to recover a health block and then the screen turns yellow maybe to have the player know that they are at critical health.

I mentioned the enemy AI before, and I am shocked by how much enemy AI still holds up in this game, this is something not even the Resistance Sequels really improved on. It's better than enemy AI in games today. The Chimeran Hybrids will, hide behind cover, throw grenades to flush you out, rush and flank you, and move out of the way when shooting at them and even dive out of the way when the player throws grenades. They will also operate turrets when they are nearby and the Steelheads that pop up later do a good job at keeping the player on his toes. This game's AI is up there with the Replica Soldiers from FEAR, Killzone 2 and 3's Helghast and Halo's Covenant to me. It helps do a good job at making firefights interesting and dynamic because the player not only has to watch his health but the Chimera themselves too.

There's a wide array of enemy types in this game as well which is something once again the Resistance Sequels don't really improve on. There's the before mention Hybrids and Steelheads, Angel, Stalker, Leapers, Menials, Howler, Traphunter, Slipskull, and Grey Jack, and Titan among others. They even combine several enemy types at once in some levels which the players on his toes even with the smart enemies they have to deal with.

Now of course, I have to mention the weapons, even people who dislike the game can't say they dislike the weapons. And boy there's a lot of them but I want to touch a specific aspect of the weapons that not many talk about and that is how much the game makes you switch weapons. Yup Doom Eternal may have gotten a crap load of shit for making the player actively switched weapons but this game I feel, did it first at least I can recall. In Resistance, you can't just Carbine, and Bullesye your way through the game, there's going to be points where you are going to use a different weapon to make firefights easier for you, on top of that you get multiple grenade types too and you will need to use all of them throughout the game in order to beat it. For example, for the Slipskull enemies can be take out with either using the Bullesye tag or you can use the shotgun. For the Grey Jack you can either use the shotgun or use the Sniper to take them out. When there are hordes of enemies, it's best to use grenades to take them out because standard enemies take a lot of damage before they die which I feel is a good thing because their AI can shine more. The Leapers can be beaten with the Bullesye, Carbine or Shotgun. The Carbine's grenade launcher can come in handy during tougher fights at at least if there is a lone Steelhead or multiple. The Auger is at it's best when there are lots of enemies behind cover. The Air Fuel Grenades are best for narrow corridors. The game also does away with certain weapons sharing ammo like lots of 90s fps games and instead gives you limited ammo for each gun, which means you are going to have be careful on when to use powerful weapons. The Hailstorm's Turret while powerful, is something you have to be careful when using because ammo is limited. I will also mention that there are guns to unlock after the 1st playthrough and this is a novel concept to this day especially in FPS games. While I did find some weapons useful like the Bubble Grenades, Reapers, and Mine Launcher, the rest I found useless. I just wanted to point out that this is something more games can explore given the current gaming industry, I doubt it will happen ever again, outside of a Ratchet and Clank game.

Now, finally, I want to mention the "hard difficulty" that I hear about this game. And I find this baffling, I beat the game as a 12 year old kid and I found it mostly manageable, if not easy. Compared to other hard console shooters like Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, console Medal of Honors, and Black. This game feels a lot more fair by comparison. In those above mentioned games, you are basically a tank living off borrowed time. You can't reliably avoid damage and the enemies use hitscan weapons pretty much meaning that if an enemy attacks you, the hit is guaranteed. And you pretty much have to keep getting hit hoping you find enough health packs to get to the end of a level or die a lot and memorize the level to minimize damage. Resistance, this is not the case, the enemies use projectile weapons and attacks can mostly be dodged if not entirely. You have a wide array of different weapons and grenades to choose from that can help level the opposition. Different weapons that aren't generic hitscan. And I want to address another another thing about the difficulty and that is the "checkpoints". Again, like the before mentioned games, if you die in them, it's a level restart. Resistance does have checkpoints but it doesn't baby you either, if you are good enough at the game, and understand what I mentioned here, levels can be breezed on Normal Difficulty. And Resistance isn't crazy with it's checkpoint, if there is a challenging section, there will be a checkpoint before that. It's not like games like Timespilttes 2 where checkpoint placements are questionable, very few and get very little health packs. In Resistance, the checkpoints are plentiful enough and you get enough health packs to get by a level. It just baffles me how this game gets attacked for it's difficulty while the above mentioned games do not. Don't get me wrong there are some bad sections here and there like fighting the Titans, that one awkward platforming level and the opening level in the Nottingham Base mission but generally, this game is fair when compared to those above mentioned games.

In conclusion, I feel this game is quite a great time and Insomniac did a great job for making an FPS game for the time in over a decade. They made a game that did an excellent job at combing every aspect of old and new shooter design. I feel if this game came out now, with some tweaks, I can picture this game being loved but of course, it came out a year before Call of Duty 4 and we all know what happened and how Insomniac wanted to appeal to those people with this game's sequel.

 

Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

I recently played through Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 on the recently released Master Collection and I was quite surprised how bad the stories in those games were even for action game standards. And I get it, you don't play NG for the story and the devs of those games basically take the John Carmack Doom(1993) approach to story telling but at the same time, I feel like if they are going to have cutscenes, it tells me that they are attempting to have some kind of narrative, and I feel outside of brief breaks from gameplay, the cutscenes and storytelling in these games fail on a basic narrative level. For the sake of brevity, I'll get to the point of this piece. Ryu Hayabusa while having a great design and in some ways an interesting reserved, "man of few words" personality. He has no interesting foils to contrast him with to make these personality traits more interesting and as a result, every time he is on screen in a cutscene in these games, I often find myself bored half the time or just viewing the cutscene for the spectacle after just beating a boss.

I'll define a foil character for those who don't know, a foil character is a character is someone that highlights and contrasts traits with another character.

As overused of an example as this going to be and as much as I think he is an overpraised character. There is a reason why the Batman and Joker rivalry is so popular. Batman is a stoic, serious and at times angry dude while the Joker is happy, psychotic, and is insane. Both of them have poplar opposite personality traits that play off each other and create for interesting scenarios. For example, Joker can kill an innocent person while fighting Batman and laughs and acts crazy while doing it and this can bring out Batman's morals of not killing and push him ever so closer to losing his stoic demeanor and snapping but Batman never does because he believes that is a line he will never cross.

Now let's look at both Ninja Gaiden games, in NG1, who is a foil to Ryu? Racheal? She gets kidnapped and is a liability. Ayame? All she does is watch and narrate. Doku? He barely shows up and gets killed twice and barely has anything to contrast with Ryu. Alma? Same deal. Then there a bunch of other characters so forgettable(maybe outside of Muramasa) that they are almost not really worth mentioning. And that Murai twist of him being the villain the whole time was dumb, really, really dumb. The man is a trains people at day and is a secret Tyrannical Emperor at night? What?

Ninja Gaiden 2 does show some steps in the right direction with the character of Genshin being a rival of sorts to Ryu but the problem with him is that I am not sure what he really highlights about Ryu or what his motivations are. He just comes off as an obstacle for the player rather than a foil and the rest of the characters are as forgettable as the first game's cast.

Now to use a video game example on how to use a foil character and as overpraised as this game's story is, Devil May Cry 3 does use the character of Vergil very well for the purposes of narrative and gameplay. While Dante is loud, brash and obnoxious. Vergil is reserved, and stoic. It helps show highlight Dante's personality and makes it pop all the more. Platinum Games, even adopted this dynamic to varying degrees with their games like with Byonnetta 1 and 2, Metal Gear Rising, Wonderful 101, Anarchy Reigns, and even Vanquish to some degree.

While in NG1 and 2's cutscenes, it's usually Ryu talking to a bunch of characters with nothing really stand out about him.

To use another gaming example, there's a reason why Master Chief and Cortana's dynamic works so well. Master Chief is the quiet borderline mechanical super soldier while Cortana is the upbeat AI providing levity to the situations Chief is in. There's a reason why this dynamic works while Chief's borderline non existent interactions with the Arbiter don't. With the latter, Arbiter has little if no personality traits to contrast with the Chief and every time they are together, it borderline puts me to sleep with Marty O Donnell's and Michael Salvatori music the only thing keeping me awake. Cortana and Chief's dynamic highlights their respective traits more in Halo 4 where Chief is the machine despite being made of flesh while Cortana is more human despite being mechanical.

But back to NG, Ryu Hayabusa is basically Arbiter and Chief in Halo 3 but over the course of 2 games.

And before everyone starts jumping on me, I am not really asking for NG to be a well written story, I am just asking there to be a character to show off how cool Ryu actually can be as a character instead of being surrounded by boring cardboard cutouts. Maybe have a character whose motivations and personality contrasts with Ryu and make it less vague this time.

And I feel like I should address that stoic characters often get a bad rep but I think a good dynamic and a good foil can make them enjoyable and endearing characters.

I used to take foil characters for granted and while I did think they were important, I do realize their importance more than ever now in how the lack of them can make a story boring, intentionally bad or not.

Resident Evil 4 Review

The game is still good but there are some issues I have with it. First of all, the lack of on the fly weapon switching and how pointless the whole customizable inventory is. Once you upgrade the Attaché Case to large, it almost feels like the limited inventory just feels pointless, you can pretty much just carry as much shit as you want. And I always get annoyed when enemies get up close, and I want to switch to shotgun but then I have to wait a few seconds just to switch and an enemy could already have hit me.

Now the 2nd problem I have is a big one, and that is a lack of any kind of genuine evade command. When enemies hit you in RE4, it just feels cheap a lot of the time, because it feels like you can move out of the way but since Leon can only stay in one place, you pretty much have to deal with enemies getting free hits in. It doesn't feel like getting hit is my fault, it feels like I just have to deal with game's jank. RE3 had some form of an evasion command you RE4 can't have this? And the QTEs during bosses are finicky too considering I felt like I hit them correctly but yet I get hit.

Another issue I have is the health system and how inconsistent it is. One minute I am at green health and then get hit and I lose a quarter but then I get hit and lose half, and at other times, I am not even close to death yet I get killed, it often makes me wonder what even is the danger zone for the health system in this game is. It's either be at full health at all times or screw off. And finally the Island section especially towards the end was some of the weakest sections in the game. It's just non stop shooting galleries, but the game isn't interesting enough mechanically to sustain this. You basically just lure enemies into one place and fire away, there's not much decision making or anything interesting going on. It's still a good game but I really feel like I should critique the game on it's own merits since the old school survival horror fans and the people who deem the game to be a "masterpiece" sure isn't going to do it.

The island section is also really dull and exposes the combat for basically just being run, turn around, shoot, and kill everyone in your line of sight.

I have been negative on the game but the game does do a great job at changing up the combat encounters and it has some amazinginly satisfying combat, which greatly elevates the game but it does have some major problems that I don't think get discussed enough.

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Critique and the Perils of Adapting

 

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Critique and the Perils of Adapting

Introduction: I have been a fan of Full Metal Alchemist since I was a kid. I watched it almost every Friday night as a kid back when it was airing on YTV, and it was probably one of the darker animated shows I watched at that time. The 2003 version is what I am talking about and I notice that version of FMA tends to have a mixed reception nowadays which is strange because back before Brotherhood ended and rewatching the former on Youtube(back when you can watch Funimation Dubbed anime on the site), the comments sections were very positive on it but when Brotherhood finished airing back in 2011 (which is funny because my 2nd watch of the 2003 version also happened that time), a lot of the reception towards the 2003 version started to change and you tend to be in one of three camps regarding that version: you either pretend it didn't exist, you thought the first half of the show was good but the anime original sections were bad(I will deconstruct that notion later) or you liked the whole show. On top of that, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood also has lots of "critical immunity" and is often considered one of if not the greatest anime of all time. The manga is also considered to be writing master class too. Okay, I rambled on long enough, this blog will basically go over the reasons why I think FMAB while being a decent to good show isn't as great as it's claimed to be and this will also cover the manga too. I'd probably give the show a 7/10 and I generally wouldn't give a fighting shounen anything higher than that. I will discuss the show on its own merits first, then I will go over why I prefer the 2003 version(in case FMAB fanboys thought I was being a 2003 fanboy and disregard my opinion for that alone, yes they do exist and they get that defensive) and I will discuss the ideas of an adaptation and if being "faithful" is always a "good" thing.

The early sections and why they suck: This part of FMAB is often derided the most, and even fanboys of the show straight up admit that they are terrible. I do think that people don't go into enough detail as to why they are bad to begin with. Yes, they rushed certain aspects of it, but some changes straight up make no sense at all. For example, the first episode being about a rogue State Alchemist named Isaac McDougal, he is very lacking as an antagonist and the guy basically is a poorly written anti villain because all he does is just say the military is evil and blames them for the Ishvalan Massacre, but yet the guy is willing to kill innocent people himself to get what he wants and the plot never acknowledges this. He is a pretty nothing antagonist and I bet you probably don't even remember him at all. The show only ever acknowledges him for one scene and it's pretty much a throwaway. He's never even in the flashbacks either and plus he wasn't even in the manga, which FMAB fanboys love to mention when talking about FMA. Then the next episode makes another questionable decision which makes no sense for the following episode. They decide to show Ed and Al's entire past before the Leore section. With this, Leore is robbed of its purpose. Leore was clearly supposed to be the opener because it sets up multiple mystery boxes like how Ed knows so much about the human body, what alchemy is, Al being a suit of armour, brothers' transmutation of Trisha Elric, but by having all these questions being answered in the previous episode, Leore is rendered redundant and serves no purpose. It sets up the armed uprisings I guess, but that gets resolved later in the show and the Father's plan of using it as a piece for his transmutation circle fails anyway. Sets up Rose? Well, she doesn't do anything in general. Later sections involving the Death of Hughes and Nina's Transmutation and Death By Scar have little room to develop, and actually feel like emotional moments. This can extend to the manga too, since those moments had little fleshing out or any build up that can lead to any emotional resonance. Nina gets transmuted and killed in the same chapter that she is introduced. Then there is just a lot of the other moments like Lab 5, Al's existential crisis, the Brothers burning down their house, and Ed trying offering his life so Scar can let Al go, all lacking any kind of emotional build up and all feeling hollow as a result but I can go over other stuff on why it's bad but I rambled long enough.

Lacking villains: This is one of the big reasons why the show and also by extension the manga never connected to me as much as other people. Most of the villains in FMAB outside of King Bradley are pretty much a joke. Gluttony and Envy are both basically jobbers and lose or get humiliated in every fight they are in. Envy in gets humiliated by Marcoh(who somehow learns how to destroy a Philosopher's Stone) and he never even puts up a fight against Mustang yet a bunch of generic super soldiers can. The most Envy ever amounts too is advancing key moments of the story like killing the Ishvalan Kid and killing Hughes and his death scene lacks emotional resonance or build up because he acts like an evil bastard throughout the entirety of the show, and in that one moment, I am supposed to feel bad for him? Well, this could work, if there was any other side to him than being an evil bastard who hates humanity but there isn't. Gluttony is an immortal punching bag then again most of the homunculi are outside of Bradley and Father. Sloth is also nothing more than an immortal punching bag despite having a really hard body and can move super fast(the latter is established late in the story for some reason). Pride is basically the Ginyu Force from DBZ where despite being hyped up as a threat never really does anything really evil that makes me want to hate him. He's just an obstacle and nothing more. Lust and this is going to be a funny one is actually one of the show's better villains. She actually is more threatening than the other homunculi outside of Bradley and Father. She was the villain that pushed Mustang to his limit and not to rely on cheap tricks to do so. She made Hawkeye doubt herself and even made her not want to live and she help seal the death of Barry the Chopper. Why can't the villains of this series be more like her? Then there is that Mad Scientist Character who was more a threatening than most of the villains in the series and yet I hardly know anything about him in general, after the back story reveal of Bradley's origins, he no shows for a while and it's weird to me since he is a villain that managed to do more damage than the majority of the homunculi. Kimblee is okay, but outside of impaling Ed and using Winry as a hostage, he never amounts to whole lot either. Then there is Father, the dude is basically Cell from Dragon Ball Z, and he's about as on par with him too. The former's back story reveal is very good, but the problem is that he never shows that kind of character in the show again. He mostly just sits around a lot and just looks bored or monologues about how inferior humanity is. He doesn't start doing much of anything until he takes a page out of the before mentioned, Cell's book and becomes "Perfect". Then there isn't really much to him still outside of being a typical overpowered shounen villain. Among all these issues I have is that none of the villains show any kind of agency or individuality of their own. They are all just generic henchmen outside of Bradley. Bradley is easily the best villain because not only because he is the most threatening but because there is a certain honesty about him I like, he is a puppet but he acknowledges that and tries to live life the best way he could by what is given to him. He also really feels "alive" when he is in battle, the thing that he was bred for. His death was stupid, Bradley could've killed Scar 20 times over but for some reason the latter had two alchemy arms and the former somehow got blinded by the solar eclipse. It felt like a huge Deus Ex Machina to have the good guy win. So overall, not a big fan of most of the villains. 

Overreliance on Face Turns: Alright, another big issue I have with FMAB is that it relies on face turns so much. It relies on the trope so much that it starts to lose all meaning. For example, Barry the Chopper, I find it so silly that a guy whose sole philosophy in life is, "I kill therefore I am" to be so willing to be bossed around by Mustang and his crew. Then there is Kimblee who gets the weirdest one of all, the guy is basically is as evil as it gets while it is somewhat foreshadowed that he turns face, the way it's done is so ridiculous, he somehow has a conscious inside of Pride's body and has a weird respect for Ed that was never even shown up until that point. It felt like a Deus Ex Machina because Ed was in trouble and he had no way out so the plot needed a way for him to get out. The rest of the face turns are nothing really to write home about but they do suffer from the before mentioned problem of lacking agency. A lot of them just turn good and never get challenged by their beliefs at all. There is one face turn that gets a particular amount of praise and one I never understood at all is to be Greed. Honestly? This might legit be one of the most over praised face turns I have ever seen. My big issue with it how little screen time Greed actually gets to develop. Greed tends to have a weird thing to show up but then no show for a long period of time to the point where I almost forget that he exists. The reason why I say a character like Zuko from Avatar works is because not only he gets a lot of screen time but because his ideals are constantly challenged and he is always in doubt of what he wants but when he realizes that his destiny is to be friends with Aang and be by his side, Zuko starts to change as a person and becomes less angry and more calm about his state of mind and the world. Compare this to Greed, where he shows up acts like an arrogant ass to everybody then no shows for awhile then suddenly the living embodiment of Greed changes his heart and wants "friends" even Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z and him learning humility felt way more natural than this. My big problem with Greed is that he acts like arrogant ass most of the time and his true desires is never really shown all that well.

Unanswered Questions that Bug Me: There are some weird things about FMAB's plot that bug me in general, they might be answered in the show they still bugged me anyways:

How did Father create Amestrian military out of the Ashes of Xerxes? He clearly needed people and he and Hoeinheim were the sole survivors, how did he do it?

Can Ed use transmutation circles at all when giving up his clapping alchemy powers?

Why didn't Sloth use his speed at Fort Briggs?

What exactly was Ling's plan in case if he didn't find the Elric Brothers to tell him about the Philosopher's Stone? Was rotting in a gutter his Plan A?

Why do characters have a such a great sense of direction in big places, why do they keep bumping into each other? This happens so much throughout the show for example Ling knowing where Gluttony was in the City despite being way far off from the Elrics and fighting Bradley beforehand? Winry just so happening to walk in Scar's fight with Ed and Al in the alley way and also walking in when Ed and Scar are talking about Winry's parents, or the gang was able to randomly find Al in the snow.

Why didn't Father and the gang keep the Elrics and Izumi locked up instead of letting them go free?

Why is forced human transmutation a "last resort"?

Did Father spend his whole existence preparing for the solar eclipse? Did he ever have a backup plan before he went all "Perfect Form Cell?"

Why didn't Alexander Armstrong use his alchemy on his sister when fighting over the land?

The Over praised Female Characters: An aspect of FMAB that gets mentioned a lot are it's great female characters and honestly? The only one that really stands out to me is Hawkeye but some aspects of her feels like a missed opportunity like her having flame alchemy research on her back. It only gets mentioned twice and not much else is done with it. Oliver Armstrong has an interesting survival of the fittest mentality but she is mostly just a one note show boater and doesn't anything else besides that. Izumi Curtis really annoyed me with how modest she was, she kept calling herself a housewife even though she can already do more than what most people like her can do. She barely has much to do in the plot herself. Lan Fan is basically just a servant who knows how to fight and Mei Chan is an annoying kid that somehow gets away with getting involved with the military and corrupt conspiracies and the part where the Youswell Town started to help her was really cringey to me because everyone in her vicinity was going to help a random foreign girl. Winry is decent but her romance with Ed feels forced mainly because she spends most of her time screaming and beating him up rather than doing anything genuinely romantic.

The Humour: This will be short but a criticized aspect of FMAB is the humour and it feels really out of place most of, if not all the time. It's not only really unfunny but it can take me out of serious scenes too. Seeing Ed get called short for a lot of the show got old really fast and it's funny how the show contradicts its own humour where Envy turns into a big CGI monster and gets his ass kicked while Mei Chan can beat up monsters over half her size and Oliver Armstrong literally man handles a guy that is way bigger than him. The exaggerated expressions are super obnoxious, and while they get phased out the more the show goes on, it's still there to varying degrees. I do find it funny how fanboys defend the humour by saying, "2003 version had it too" and the "manga also has it". My response to that is, the 2003 version at least phases out it's terrible humour much earlier on and the manga and the anime both having the same problem doesn't fix anything.   

Fights are Mostly Decent: While the fights in FMAB aren't as bad as your usual shounen fare I say it generally pales in comparison to other stuff Studio Bones has made like Sword of the Stranger, Samurai Champloo and the short but sweet Production I.G fights like Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Morbito the Spearmaster, and Psycho Pass Season 1 and the movie. FMAB also turns into DBZ by the end and I always hated it when it did that, it just feels like such a jarring change in direction in terms of fight chorography.

Awkward Pacing: This might sound like a weird compliant but I felt FMAB moved at a really slow pace at times. I don't know whether or not I read the manga but it felt like plot stays on a certain plot point for too long. While the parts the FMAB does adapt properly are fine at first, I feel like the Pride fight in the forest and the final battle with Father took way too long. They both went on for so long that it started to get more and more boring.

The Ending is alright: The lack of consequences. This is a big reason as to why the ending doesn't land with me. There is hardly any consequences for the characters' actions. Mustang lost his sight but he gets it back, Ed loses his clapping hands alchemy but I am not sure if he loses his transmutation circle alchemy. Hardly any major character even dies and they missed a huge opportunity with Hoehinheim where he could've sacrificed himself for Al but instead Ed just uses the power of friendship to do it. And what's dumb to me is that Hoehinheim dies later anyway which I am just wondering what the point of that was. And Ed and Winry having a romantic relationship was just a forced romance to appease shippers and nothing more. Their relationship in the series never felt romantic at all. Hughes even acted like she was more of a surrogate sister to the brothers.

Comparison to the 2003 version and why I like it more: Brotherhood is a decent to good show but I argue if it's going to appeal to me now, it's going to a lot more to appeal to current mindset than face turns and being more consistent than your average shounen. It wouldn't be Brotherhood and the manga anymore but it would appeal to me more. That's where the 2003 version comes in. That show felt more personal and focused. I actually connected to Ed and Al more as brothers because the show actively explored their relationship. The conflict was much greyer and the homunculi had a family dynamic where Brotherhood mostly lacked. I also feel like 2003 didn't have way too many characters for the sake of it. The homunculi actually had agency and goals of their own. Sloth wanted to get rid of Ed and Al so she wouldn't be haunted by the memories of Trisha Elric. Envy wants to kill Hoehinheim and everything related to him because he was ignored by him and want to destroy any trace of the Elrics. Wrath wants to find a mother and protect her. Lust wants to become human again. Gluttony has acts like a child and is often needs Lust to guide and comfort him. Another reason why I prefer the 2003 version is because the homunculi were more a threat every time they showed up, someone would die or they the heroes would barely escape with their lives. They felt like genuine threats to me. Envy was more threatening too since Ed never even had a single victory over him. Izumi Curtis is a big improvement, she actually has a backbone actual conviction rather than saying, "I am a lovely housewife coming by" constantly. The biggest reason why I prefer the 2003 version is because that show deals with the human condition more and is explores how far Ed is willing to go to create a Philosopher Stone. The death of Maajahal was an interesting mainly because Ed killed him in self defence, then in Lab 5 he fought the Slicer Brothers and when he won, he showed them kindness and compassion and seeing all the episodes and content 2003 added(more on that later), made me sympathize with his conviction. Then he was forced to make a Stone but the thing is, Ed said that he might've actually have done it, after that, he fights Wrath where he has Ed's limbs but Ed still doesn't have the conviction to get what he wants. Ed's first fight with Greed happens and Greed taunts him that he doesn't have the what's necessary to get what he wants. Then the final fight with Greed happens and Ed kills him, he is shocked by the fact that he killed someone, but later realized that you have to do things you don't like to get what you want. I feel like Brotherhood and by extension the manga is lacking things like this. The 2003 version has it's issues too like the rushed ending, Bradley isn't as awesome and how it bit off more than it could chew with other side of the gate but that show did more than FMAB and the manga did for me. You could argue that FMA 2003 is more of a reimagining of the manga rather than a direct adaptation but that is a different topic.

The point of adapting media and what is the point really, when people bring up FMA, they always bring up the manga as to why FMAB is better than the 2003 version? And my question is, why? Just because something is similar doesn't make it good and something is different doesn't make it bad. I mean they say FMAB, makes 2003 "redundant" but that can both work ways. FMAB is redundant because you could read the manga, unless if color, animation and voices really mean that much to you. I feel like the only reason to watch the Brotherhood anime is for the Dub particularly Ed Blaylock as Bradley. Other than that FMAB is the same story but with a way worse beginning. I used to hear that and still hear, "you should watch the early parts of FMA 2003 and then switch to Brotherhood". Let me tell you with the most absolute conviction in that is objectively wrong. FMA 2003 gets derided for having anime original content later when that is a lie, FMA 2003 has a lot of anime original content even in the beginning. There's stuff like the Majaahal episode, the Pisiren Lupin the Third parody episode, the Fletcher Brothers, Al running away from Ed and Winry and meeting up with Ishvalans, a Barry the Chopper origin story episode, an entire sub plot of Hughes wanting to protect the Elric Brothers so Mustang can focus on his military career and episodes where Nina Tucker has more screen time that she never had in FMAB or the manga. All these anime original episodes have build up to their own twists and turns that compliment the 2nd half. So if you dislike the 2nd half, you better not like the 1st half either. And the fact this misconception exists proves my point that most didn't read the manga and use it as confirmation bias.

In conclusion, FMAB is an decent-good show and is a souless adaptation of a manga that I think is about the same in terms of quality even worse in some ways. It's better than a lot of shounen but that isn't saying a whole lot.