Sand Land Video Game Thoughts

I wanted to like this video game based on Sand Land, I watched the anime a few months ago and I enjoyed it, the story of that isn't a masterpiece but it's overall a solid time, this is how I wanted to feel on the game but instead, it felt like one of the biggest sunk cost fallacies I have engaged with in a while. I didn't beat it, I'm going to make this clear but at the same time, I did spend around 17-20 hours with it which is enough time to give me a decent assessment on the game.

The story of the game is not too bad and is moderately engaging featuring decent character interactions and has enough going on themematically to the point where it's not 100% a junk food story and can even make you think from time to time when going on the adventure with these characters. Here is the problem, much of this story is the same as the anime except now, it's a million times more padded to get from plot point to plot point. The first few missions of the game is essentially the same as the first few episodes of the anime however halfway through the game before it can get to the Forest Land sections of the show, there is a massive amount of padding before the story can get there with Belz and the crew needing to secure Aquanium and going on lengthy treks through the open world and going through similar looking dungeon after similar looking dungeon before the Forest Land parts even begin.

I do like that the character of Ann gets introduced early in the story but then I slowly realized that during the non Forest Land sections of the game, she has no presence in the plot can be boiled down to a plot device. When I realized this, all of my hopes that the Sand Land game could've brought its own ideas were dashed away.

The Sand Land game essentially took a 13 episode anime series and padded it out to be a 25-30 hour open world game. You could argue that much of this critcism can apply to Dragon Ball Kakarot but the difference with that game is that DBZ is lengthy story and if you choose to watch Kai that is about 167 episodes where Sand Land is only 13 episodes which furthur puts the existence of this video game adaptation in question.

The gameplay is however is where the game faulters. I can take a licensed game that has mostly a similar story to the story it's based on, I do enjoy some of the Dragon Ball, Naruto and various movie tie in games to name some examples, however Sand Land's gameplay just doesn't do enough of the heavy lifting.

At first, things are okay, the game gives you various gameplay mechanics and ideas all has been done before like stealth, platforming and melee combat, but some aspects that modern gaming has abandoned like vehicular combat is also a gameplay pillar which is one major reason why I played it at all.

This is all fine on paper but there are two major aspects that prevent the game from at the very least being a solid if nothing too amazing experience, the game is unevenly paced in terms of gameplay and narrative and the vechicular combat is too basic to support much of the game.

The vehicle combat never evolves past what you do in the first 5 hours, you fight animals who charge and throw projectiles at you, some robots and enemy vehicles which consist tanks, fodder enemies and jump bots. Much of the enemy types are basically this and the never game never evolves past fighting them. If the devs at the very least added more platforming, fist fighting and stealth more often rather than on occasion, this wouldn't be so bad, sure it isn't the most incredible game design but at least it tells me the devs know that the vehicular combat isn't their strong suit. So much of Sand Land is a one note 3rd person shooter and it wears thin quickly.

The biggest problem with Sand Land and this destroys the game for me is how bloated the open world is. The game has very, very, very large stretches of open areas where all the player does is follow quest markers, this is where much of the game's length comes from, the player going through a large open world where nothing happens besides choosing to do explore or fight enemies but this gets boring quickly since all it really does is pad the long sections where nothing happens in the story. This is pretty much what I'm talking about how they took a 13 episode anime into a game that lasts over 10 hours.

The same in game voice lines also get repeated over and over. The same 5-6 conversations while driving occur multiple times ad naseum which makes traversing the open world all the more tedious.

There is also inconsistent game design how some large falls will make me take damage while others is a death pit where I respawn upon falling into them even though I should be able to make the landing.

Some praise I'll give is that the bosses are decent, and have just enough going on in terms of specticle and attack pattern dodging that they can be a decent highlight to a game that is just dull to play 95% of the time. They are too few and far between.

Overall, if Sand Land was an 8-10 hour game, then maybe it would've been a decent but instead, it's a bloated mess that constantly beats around the bush and has uneven narrative and gameplay pacing.

A King's Tale: Final Fantasy 15 Review

For a game I randomly just heard about and played because it was free, this was a shockingly well made for what it is. I know this might sound crazy but this is a well made game from a series I never really cared about and based on a specific game from that said series I never played.

This is a well made 2D beat em up especially considering the fact that 2D beat em up I never really cared for that much.

Right away when picking up the game, what I loved about it is that moving up and down through the arena felt quick and smooth and on top of this, you have an actual evade command and avoiding attacks is something I can consistently do. Enemies also do a good enough job at telegraphing their attacks with them having various colored flashes above their head knowing when to move away, I can also cancel out of a combo and immediately roll out of the way.

Movement feels smooth, controls are pretty good and the combat has some solid design.

It doesn't end there, the game is constantly introducing new enemies throughout the 1 hour run time the game lasts.

On top of this and this is what the seals the deal for the game for me is that the game constantly encourages use your moveset to gaurentee survival.

For example to hit the skeleton enemies need to use shield bash or else you won't be able to combo them and you take damage, normal sword wielders need to be hit using heavy attacks to break their guard, bigger enemies need to be hit from behind, the slime enemies need to be hit with specific ice, fire and thunder spells in order to effectively kill them. You can deflect projectile attacks back at some enemies if timing your attacks right, you have to shield bash fireball enemies to have them explode, bulls have to be avoided and can't be attacked and ally attacks MUST be used for crowd control or else the enemy waves will overwhelm you.

There is a one hit kill enemy that appears later in the game but the game gives you enough ways to dispatch him like using magic, ally attacks, and combos that it never felt unfair.

There is no healing items and enemies do drop health pick ups so it keeps the fighting balanced and all though I played the game on casual difficulty, it still makes use it base moves and skills to survive the basic enemy waves. The game does have pretty lengthy enemy waves but the game does such a good job at giving you enough ways to dispatch enemies and teaches you all the mechanics needed to survive that I enjoy fighting large mobs of enemies. The game gives you enough tools and moves needed to handle and beat the waves of enemies.

Games having large enemy waves are boring when combat feels limited and there is only one or two reliable tactics if even two but this game does not suffer from that.

Overall, for a free game you can beat in an hour, A King's Tale is a well put together game that is really worth looking into. If you are worried that this is connected to FF15 and it needs that game for you to enjoy this one, this can be played mostly standalone since the story is just "there" and isn't shoved down your throat. You don't even need to pay for this one, it's highly worth it. I'd even consider this to be one of the best game spin offs ever made.

Timesplitters 2 Review

I thought Timesplitters 2 was never going to get a modern re release but it ended up getting one through the Playstation Premium Classic section along with the rest of the Timesplitters games. After playing this game again, I say the game is still "good" but it has a number of flaws about it that I think makes it not as consistently enjoyable as Future Perfect is.

The good things about TS2 is the sheer number of variety and locals the player will be going in and how it homages varies genres of film and fiction. You got Goldeneye homage with Siberia, a gangster film noir level with Chicago, a period piece with horror elements with Notre Dame, sci fi with Planet X, cyberpunk with Neo Tokyo, westerns with the titular level name "Wild West", espionage thrillers with Atom Smasher and treasure hunting adventures with Aztec Ruins. Every level has a weird motif to them with catchy ambient music and quirky cutscenes to go along with it. It's a game that is filled to the brim with personality.

The cartoony art style also adds to this with characters having very expressive movements and animations that still look impressive to this day. This also reflects to the gameplay too where TS2 technically isn't a game that is full of blood and gore, it instead has enemies reacting to shots in a very exaggerated way, they will react to getting shot in the arms, legs and head. The robot enemies have over the top explosions as death animations.

The guns also sound very loud and beefy and even the laser guns sound decently powerful too. It's up there with FEAR when it comes to sound design and enemy damage animations despite it not being as violent of a title.

The level design is solid for the most part, it has the Goldeneye and Perfect Dark style of objective system where you need to explore the environment as you are searching through the level to complete the stage. To give TS2 a massive amount of credit, the game isn't nearly as strict with fail states as Perfect Dark is. One issue that some can have with this style of level design is that you are playing TS2 for the over the top combat, having objectives where you need to look around to progress can seem annoying and the in the map you need to equip isn't very helpful since it glitches out a lot and gives the player a hard time on where their position is Some objectives like in the Chicago mission you need to drain 4 beer canisters but if you miss this and just ran through the level killing everyone and did all of the objectives besides that, the time portal won't open and you will be chased by the Timesplitters monsters everywhere you go which is almost like a soft lock, this can throw off first time players.

The biggest issues with TS2 and the aspect about that has aged the most are the controls even with the PS5 version of the game coming with dual analog aiming and needing to tinker with the camera controls for vertical aiming, the controls still aren't very good. For one, you have no weapon wheel or quick select option when switching through items and weapons with the d pad makes selecting them slow and cumbersome which doesn't help when enemies are shooting at you.

However the biggest problem with the controls is the fact that there is no targeting reticle when not in aiming mode so this means you have to rely on the auto aim to get consistent kills and when you are in aiming mode you can't move while doing it nor do you even want to since reticle is magnetized to the center and nudging it up, down, left or right will feel like trying to pull a large magnet away. Moment to moment gunplay can feel like a guessing game where hitting enemies in the head often feels like luck than skill.

Another big issue with the game and this is due to the whole theme of time travel the game has is the use of one off mechanics. Shooting cameras out with silenced pistols and using stealth? Only there for Sibera and Neo Tokyo. Using environmental objects as part of the gameplay? Only appears in Atom Smasher. Escorting npcs to help you do specific level objectives? Activating switches to open a time portal? Only in Atom Smasher. Puzzles and enemies that need to be killed using traps and fire arrows? Only there in Aztec Ruins. Using an electricity gun to help complete level objectives? Only there in Robot Factoy. Using gunpower as makeshift explosives? Only in Wild West. Using throwable mines to destroy things to progress? Only in Siberia and it's an easy to miss statellite.

The problem with all this is that most came to TS2 for the combat and all of these different mechanics can feel like they came out of left field. Don't like puzzles? Do it once and then never do it again which makes me wonder why it was even there at all. TS2 can feel really confused due it the amount of one off ideas it has and it can stump people since they were never there beforehand. I'm willing to bet anyone who starts Atom Smasher without beforehand knowledge even knows you have to pick up the fire extiguisher to progress furthur into the level.

Overall, TS2 is a good game and is a big improvement over the first but the game does have it's issues as a whole.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review

I always heard the game getting a massive amount of hate and not being very well liked by Resident Evil fans but then I realized in recent years that you are better off playing games for yourself and come to your own conclusions on media even if they aren't well liked. Plus, on a side note, I never saw eye to eye on the Resident Evil fandom on a lot of things so it just made me curious about this game all the more.

That out of the way, I can see why Operation Raccoon City never got nearly as much as a vocal cult following as games like Resident Evils 5 and 6 do. As a whole, Operation Raccoon City is a painfully average game that just so happens to be more of a fan service homage masquerading as an "okay" third person shooter. It's similar to Dirge of Cerberus in this regard. Both are spin off games that are reimagining of beloved PS1 games a good while before their respective remakes for both franchises would even see the light of day. So it's interesting in that regard.

As for the game itself, if you ever wanted a Resident Evil themed shooting gallery with elements found in the multiplayer portions of Call of Duty games from CoD4 onwards, with cover based shooting, custom loadouts, perks and playing with 3 npcs at a time that is basically Operation Raccoon City in a nutshell all though to Operation Raccoon City's credit, the coop isn't as forced on you by comparison to RE5. You can also move while shooting which is nice. The guns have a decent punch to them and killing enemies both infected, zombie and humans does feel stimulating enough.

However there are weird and awkward "quirks" about the game that I doubt I would tolerate if the game were longer. First being that you can't dodge or do any evade command but you CAN do such a thing while sprinting which doesn't really make much sense since I want to evade while moving normally. Second there is no dedicated cover button and the player takes cover automatically which isn't very intuitive when trying to run away with waste cover litereted everywhere. Third the player is given a two weapon limit and grenades which is fine but you run out of ammo very often even on easy difficulty and it can be very inoppourtune when there is a large horde of enemies and especially when there are Hunters who can take lots of damage and ammo drops aren't enough, I have to use pistols a lot and it feels like I killed the hordes because I got lucky since it feels like the pistols don't do much damage. Forth, you can only carry one healing item and herbs can be picked up and be used upon pick up, you can buy an upgrade to carry more but it might not be the most helpful during human enemy fights since they use hitscan weapons and there is no way to avoid damage other than hide behind cover and it might not be so helpful when all the healing items are used up partnered with being low on ammo constantly. There is lots of left stick waggling which a lot of 7th gen action games have and it's a carry over from the original RE4, which I never liked since half the time I don't know whether to waggle the left stick with my left thumb or use the palm of my hand to do.

The bosses also aren't that great due to the above mentioned reasons and the final boss is hilariously lame considering this is a Resident Evil game and an action one at that and on top of all that being killed through an infection and turning into a zombie can feel cheap since there are times I can find an anti virus spray and other times I can't and get a game over.

If you combine all these things together than the idea of an RE themed shooting gallery isn't too bad and sounds pretty fun but it's letdown by awkward design quirk after awkward design quirk.

A major aspect that is a massive point in the game's favor is that it checkpoints very frequently and the game levels rarely if ever go on for too long, you can probably beat it in a single sitting if you tried. This helps since if the game was any longer I would be annoyed beyond belief. One final positive is that combat encounters do become more interesting when zombies, humans and occasional monsters like Hunters and Lickers up since you got to prioritize different enemies but this is all let down due to the above mentioned "quirks".

Overall, I did spend money to play Operation Raccoon City so in a sense, I'm glad I got to the end and got something out the game but at the same time, the game is very much mediocre, I did hear the DLC for the game is much better than the main campaign and I wish 7th gen Capcom put these parts on the game on the disc but what can you do. I'd still say Raccoon City is worth checking out if you have an interest in short mediocre games like I do.

The Punisher Arcade Game Review

Pretty decent beat em up, it's nothing special and I'd say it's about on par with the X-Men Arcade game and much better than Marvel Superheroes War of the Gems. My only big issues with the game comes from my usual issues with 2D beat em ups like how there is no dedicated evade command, and moving around feels like awkward and rigid since you can move up and down as well as left and right and partner this with the lack of a dedicated evade command and a quick way to move around the arena outside of double tapping the d pad to run I feel more like a tank than someone agile and nimble. Weapons and item pick ups are mapped to the attack button meaning I could punch someone instead of picking up the weapon and item I want and enemies are huge damage sponges, you can unload massive amounts of bullets to these guys and they still won't go down. Bosses have two health bars and feel very spongey.

I do think the game letting me respawn right where I died which the Marvel vs Capcom collection does alleviate potential frustration I could have like with many older games styled after this.

Some positives is that the story and presentation are pretty decent, it's not going to be the most indepth Punisher story in the world but it provides decent context for the beat em up gameplay and I like Wilson Fisk as the final boss since he's one of my favorite Marvel villains. It's also interesting to see an on screen Punisher in the 90s that predates the 2004 movie, War Zone and the MCU and all the on screen versions after the 80s movie was this and the 90s Marvel animated universe so the game is intriguing regarding that.

To this game's credit, it does have more enemy variety than the Volition game does like ninjas, bigger thugs and robots all though the latter game is better as a whole.

Overall, not a lot to say, it's a typical superhero 2D beat em up made in the era, it does what it does well enough but it won't make me change my thoughts on the 2D beat em up genre as a whole.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink Review

I haven't played a "traditional" JRPG in so long I dabbled in stuff like Dragon Ball Kakarot and Super Mario RPG and played a few JRPGs before but not much. I have some experience with the Granblue Fantasy franchise, with me playing Versus and watching the first 12 episodes of the anime so on top of this, I also heard the game was short which was the final seal that made me try this game out. I'm using Relink as a way to slowly ease me back into playing JRPGs again and I'm hoping this amounts to something.

Anyways, that out of the way, I think the game is "fine" but nothing too amazing which is exactly I was expecting out of it.

I'll start with the biggest issue with the game and that is the story, it had a number of problems going for it. If you are new to Granblue Fantasy, right away, there's a number of refrences, callbacks and aspects you aren't going to be familar with, it's kind of like watching a TV show and you start with season 2 or start the Lord of the Rings trilogy with the Two Towers. On top of this, the original game from what I can tell isn't very accessible and the only reason I had some clue about what was going on in the story and some of the characters at all was because I watched the anime, my recollection of it did allow me to fill in some of the holes but not entirely.

Then there is the story itself which isn't really that good. It's not terrible since the cutscenes never drag on and the english voice acting is good enough that it does an okay job at selling me on the material but on top of being familar with Granblue and the actual plot mainly just consists of rescuing people more so than anything else. For example, multiple chapters of the game is dedicated to finding the location of an important character, finding the means to help her and then when you come close to it, she gets kidnapped again. Once the rescue is done, you then have to rescue someone else.

It doesn't help that as a result of needing to know the Granblue Fantasy, the characters themselves feel underdeveloped outside of maybe Rolan. There's heel face turns that almost feel unearned since all you were doing with some of the villains were fighting them and their character development was off screen. The english voice acting once again does much of the heavy lifting and maybe to some degree me watching the anime.

Another good thing about the story, which once again, involves voice acting is that every line is voiced as far as the campaign goes.

The gameplay is where things get better but it ultimately depends on what you are expecting, there isn't really much that you expect out of JRPGs for when it comes to gameplay. There is no dungeon crawling or heavy amounts of level exploration. The game is very linear, and you got quest markers telling you where to go. You only fight hordes of enemies on occasion and the game mainly just consist of scripted sequences and bosses, especially bosses so much so that 80% of Relink's main campaign is basically a boss rush.

I don't dislike the idea of this since I found the bosses to work in term of providing specticle and the set pieces are pretty interesting Excavallion being a highlight since it's very reminiscent of games like God of War 3 and Halo 3 with the Chronos Boss and the Scrab Tank respectively.

As much as I did enjoy the bosses for the most part, it can get pretty exhausting fighting them since this is basically 80% of the game.

One thing that did annoy me was how much HP bosses had on normal difficulty. This is one of those games where bosses can take out your health pretty quickly when not careful when dodging and learning attack patterns and they can take up so much HP that I eventually got sick of getting their health bar below 20% just to die and then try to widdle down their HP down to 20% again because I'm trying to get back to learning the attack pattens that are throwing me off. Then there is fact that teamates might need to get revived as I dodge these attacks and I only get to have one revival potion when in critical condition and I only get revied by teammates a few times before a game over, this was too much for me. I eventually lowered to easy because of this and enjoyed the game more as a result.

The lock on system also isn't very good and it often feels like it tracks different so many different targets at once.

Some positives I will say the visuals do look really nice and when it comes to anime asethetic games, this is by far the nicest looking game I have ever seen bearing the style. The cutscenes look very nice and colorful and the enviroments look crisp. The music is also immerses me into the game.

Overall, Granblue Fantasy Relink is a solid game, I had a lot of issues with it but this is a game I ultimately had a good time with, I didn't take many breaks inbetween play sessions which is a sign that the game was at the very least moderately engaging. I use that as a metric to see if I enjoyed a game and Granblue did deliver that.

Astro Bot Review

I wanted to love this game and sing all kinds of heavy praises for it, the idea of a Playstation version of the Mario Galaxy games sounds awesome, I remember enjoying Astro Bot's Playroom, everyone in their mother was singing the hardcore praises it and I wanted to put this game on my favorites list since these past few weeks of new releases I have been really enjoying. Ultimately, while I can't say I dislike Astro Bot since I did at the very least get to the end of the game and finished it, the title turned out to be one of the most disappointing games I played in a long while. It's hard for me to get disappointed by a game nowadays but Astro Bot was a game that did it.

Before I start describing what I didn't like so much about the game, I'll describe what I liked. The stage designs and visuals do like very nice, crisp and colorful. This is pretty much the most Nintendo inspired Sony 1st party game you will ever play from the control gimmicks, to the minimal story, to the cutesy asethetic, to the "silent protagonist", and so on.

The stages much like Mario Galaxy do have a good amount of variety to them with a lot of gimmicks for the player to engage with like grabing hands, boxing gloves, a jump pack, a grapple hook and son on. There is also stuff like Mario's glide from Sunshine being one of the moves Astro can do, it's a little unreliable to use when using during long distance platforms but this isn't forced on you.

There's levels after bosses that are homages to Playstation franchises some being well known like God of War, Uncharted and Horizon to more "niche" stuff like Locoroco and Ape Escape. If you are the kind of guy that really likes Playstation then there is a lot to love about Astro Bot, I very much am, so I got a couple "that's cool" moments from the game even if they slowly start to become diminishing returns.

Now, the negatives and why I'm lukewarm on the game, and this might sound questionable considering the game has made it's name off it, but the Bot collecting. I already do not like it when platformers especially those that are stage based and don't have a seemless world with no load times but Astro Bot takes the Mario Galaxy 2 approach and have make the player actively secret hunt to get anywhere in the game. Sure, the Playstation fan service is cool and it is more interesting than most linear platformers that make you do mandatory secret hunting to unlock bosses but fact of the matter is, the devs of Astro Bot knows the game can be beaten in 5-6 hours so they pad out the game length by having the player search around for these bots in order to get furthur into the game. It says it took me 18 hours to beat the game but that is because much of my time was spent beating the level once, then looking up a guide and try to unlock all the bots in the level afterwards.

It doesn't even help that outside of locking off progress, the Bot Rescuing doesn't give you any special abilties when you collect a certain amount, the refrences I didn't care for anymore and I just wanted to hurry up move and get it over with. What even is the point of collectibles if they don't give you no tangible reward during gameplay? The whole thing just starts to feel like padding, at least Jak and Daxter the Precursor Legacy had a seemless world and an interesting movement system so the level gating collectibles felt tolerable but it's easy to see why the Jak sequels did away with that and the collectathon died out even if the execution of the Jak sequels could've been better.

The next issue I have and this is what made moment to moment gameplay in Astro Bot a pain in the ass for me is the hit point system. You can chock this up to a "skill issue" but the devs of Astro Bot has litered so many checkpoints in the levels that it feels like whenever I scrape by a combat encounter or a platforming section, it's because I got lucky and being babied than because I have the illusion of competence. Astro Bot has more level checkpoints than any platformer I have ever played.

A decent way to fix this to me, is to lower the amount of checkpoints but increase Astro's hit points to 3 outside of bosses. Mario had 3 HP in the Galaxy games and 2D Mario lets you find an additional hit point, same with the Ubi Art Raymans, Donkey Country Tropical Freeze and Crash Bandicot. You might have to change level flow but I argue a compromise can be made.

It also doesn't help that many enemy attacks can feel out of nowhere and cheap and no matter how hard I try like the Jab-Jab's spikes, I will randomly move around and try to kill them get hit, and respawn, maybe additional HP could make these enemies feel less annoying.

Overall, I wanted to really like Astro Bot and say it was an amazing game like many people have but instead, I can't help but feel like, "is that it?" It's by no means a terrible game, I wouldn't have gotten to the end of if I did but apart just wanted a game I consistently enjoyed rather than groan at every 25 mins