Zone of the Enders HD(Playstation 3) Review

Zone of the Enders is one of the weirdest anomolies of a game I have ever played. I've beaten it twice over the year and this is my 3rd playthrough and each time I get through it, I always feel very lukewarm on it. Here's the weirdest part: ZOE as a franchise I have good amount of fondness for. The Second Runner is the better game in all respects with the exception of music but that's personal preferance. ZOE2's opening FMV song is amazing however. I like the spin off OVA and anime series that released along side the game. I like the musical motifs, some of the characters and it's world building. You could argue that it's derivative but there aspects of ZOE that makes it's own especially when acknowleding the larger franchise. This initial game that started everything is considered average even at the time of release with of course being an excuse for Metal Gear fans to play the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. What annoys me so much is that ZOE didn't have to be like this. It has so much going for it more than a lot of average games I played. If more time and money was given to the game, it could've been at least a good game or not solely relying on the MGS2 demo as a "just here for Godzilla".

The best way of describing the first ZOE is that it's an essay with an okay introduction paragraph, a solid concluding paragraph that suddenly gets cut off and a body of incoherent and messy jot notes.

This perfectly describes the game's story. The way it opens can be a reminiscent of a Gundam anime particularly the original series where the opposing force attacks a space colony and now the civillian reluctantly becomes the protagonist pilots a mech to survive and gets involved in a war he never wanted to be apart of. There's differences no White Base or family dynamic of any kind and the closest to an equivalent to allies that actually help the protagonist Leo Stenbuck are an onboard AI on the mech Jehuty known as Ada and maybe childhood friend Celvice. It's been said many times that Leo is unlikable and whiny but what I find confusing is where his pacifist idealism or his whole attitude even comes from. He's angry at Viola for killing his "friends" but they sold him out so much of his backstory is told about or hinted at but never fully shown, parts of it is but not enough to form a bigger picture.

Then the middle half of the game is nothing but padding with barely much character development or plot progression. As a whole ZOE's story can feel like some weird attempt at an anime series compliation movie where the first maybe second episode are in then it skips over so much, everything feels rushed and it cuts to the ending episode and it expects you to be emotionally invested. The conversation between Leo and Ada towards the end feels emotional but the music does most the heavy lifting but it is completely unearned when ignoring that. Leo, Ada and Celvice barely even had any kind of dynamic at all, not enough to create any kind of investment

There is however one saving grace the story has and that is the character of Viola. She's the thing that prevents the story from being complete garbage. She doesn't have much screen time but she does a lot with what she is given. She starts the events of the game by causing Leo to ride Jehuty, constantly gets in his way and tests his morals of not taking a life then shoots Celvice to show how not killing your enemies could lead to greater trouble and her motivation of wanting a worthy challenge and constantly being at odds with Nohman gave her such a memorable presence. Her death scene when she starts monologing feels earned due to everything she has done prior and this time the music and the writing complement each other. As a player, she earned my respect through her actions. Also nicely sets up the Idolo OVA too. Whenever Viola was on screen, I almost thought the story was actually good. That is a mark of a good villain.

The gameplay is a case of, "man the game is fun at a surface level and that's it". The combat animations look very flashy and stylish especially for controlling a mech. The controls also feel fluid and responsive especially when combined with the animations. Combat can look and feel like you are controlling a fast moving character in a fighting shonen anime than in a lot of mecha shows. You can also transition between shooting and melee combat seemlessly. In spite of the fact that melee strikes are plasma and you are not hitting flesh, melee attacks when landing hits can still feel very impactful and weighty.

There are 3 enemy types. Mummyheads and Cyclops being the most tough. Cylcops' can be attacked from behind and Mummyheads have a deadly laser beam. This attack kept me on my toes since it can really chip away at health can hit you at long distances. There is a decent wind up and sound cue when the laser fires so it's balanced

The bosses are decent and kept me on my toes since they do a lot of damage and have enough challenge and specticle to them.

That's the game. 3 bosses and enemy types. There's barely much of one. A good portion of this short campaign is trying to get past a shield to get to the mountains to then get past the insta kill super laser of the boss who guards the area. You backtrack to previous locations to finally get past the other side of the "hub area" and when you do, the game is almost done.

Overall, that's ZOE. I like the franchise but this initial game is a polished prototype.

Tomb Raider Anniversary(Playstation 5) Review

Tomb Raider Anniversary has finally come to modern Playstation consoles through PS Premium. I've been wanting to replay it since Legend released a while ago on the service and replayed it because of that. I also beat Underworld on PS3 over a year ago along with beating the first 2 games Core Design games. Unfortunately the series under them goes drastically downhill after TR2 and even that game had a good number of awkward stains on it. Underworld is also considerably worse than both Legend and this game. Legend itself was just on the so okay it's average side. TR as a mainstream franchise is about as consistent in quality as Devil May Cry and 3D Ninja Gaiden.  With the aforementioned Premium, I've been wanting an excuse to replay Anniversary since I beat it on emulator years ago. I did drop the game years prior but I wasn't as game design savvy back then compared to first beating it on PCSX2.

As a whole TR:A is one of the better games in the series even if it is hard to overlook the fact that it's using TR 1996's levels as a basis for everything and are reimgainings of those levels than completely new levels. Crystal did do a good job at modernizing the 96 game for the most part. It does highlight just how amazing that original game's level design is. Just by using what Core Design did in that particular game as a foundation, it easily has some of the best level design in a Crystal Dynamics developed TR game. It's level design so well done that it carries so much of the game and elevates it to being the most memorable title in Crystal's "trilogy" prior to Survivor.

Before I start describing the level design, I'll touch the story and well...it's serviceable at best and terrible during certain scenes. It is easy to bash the story of Anniversary being a filler arc in the grand scheme of the Legend "trilogy" and it pretty much is. Minus the part where Natla comes back in Underworld rewritten to be Lara's Lex Luthor. Ignoring that while the original 90s game barely had much of a plot at to the point where it might as well be an excuse plot in arcade game stretched out over 10 hours. There is more context by comparison to the original. There is long stretches gameplay but the end of a lot of bookend levels do have major story beat and plot revelation. It's not all too dissimilar in stories you'd find in Indiana Jones are stories like it but the more added context was nice and gave levels a reason to connect to each other like an action movie plot connecting fights and actions sequences together. 

Where the story drops the ball is with the human villains Lara goes up against in that they are nothing more than jobbers but are they? Later in the story Lara kills Larson and it's supposed to her first kill even though the story never acknowledged she was apprehensive towards taking human life beforehand. The other villains have show up have a few scenes and then die. The way Jerome and Kin die is almost something straight out a pacifist protagonist story where the hero won't kill the villain but die by some other means. 

They all have "boss fights" with QTEs which is Crystal saying, "yeah we know those bosses sucked in the original game". 

The aforementioned level design is fantastic and the biggest highlight of the game. It has my favorite kind of level design where there is a small puzzles within a larger puzzle. For a game that came out in the 7th gen, levels are open without needing hand holding or player guidance of any kind so the integrity of the original is kept but with new code of paint. 

What I really love about the level design is how they are designed and the camera is spaced out enough that the player will always a clear sight line of where to progress through the level. The end goal will always be visibly shown to you at the start or when progress furthur into the level. You have to press switches, find keys, swimming,  timed climbing challenges or solves puzzles within rooms adjacent to the much larger area where the level exit is.

There is one major caveat to all this and that is unfortuately TR Legend's automated climbing. The original game's rules where consistent in that jumps were about judging distances, positioning yourself and timing the interact button to reach the platform. Anniversary is automated which Crystal is aware since there are good number of quick reaction climbing challenges unlike Legend. Unforuntately this leads to a lot of buggy platforming where there are ledges and parts and of the environment Lara SHOULD grab but the game might grab on to but maybe she won't? Or she will? It really turns into awkward guessing games since in Legend, the level design are magnetic handholds, point Lara there press x and she will grab it. Since Anniversary has TR1 levels and it's more open nature means that there will be more ambigious moments where Lara's magnet hand will latch on to the hand hold or she will fall to her death? It can be hard to tell. There are times where even with the timing and the stars aligning, Lara just won't grab the handhold. 

There is also other issues where the grapple hook prompt won't pop up to know you should use it. This isn't too common. 

The buggy and unpolished nature of climbing can really test one's patience.

Combat is better than the original but still not as serviceable as I would like. It still keeps the sparse enemy encounters and with Legend's updated combat it should be leaps and bound better. You now have the shoot dodge from Max Payne all though contextual here. Survival hinges on how good you are with it. If you are combat is a breeze, if you aren't it becomes an infuriating ballet of getting staggered endlessly. There's lots of medkits and health refills on checkpoints to counter act this. 

The actual boss fights are decent puzzle bosses now.

Overall, TR:A is a solid modernization of  TR 1996.

Hellblade: Senua's Scarifice(Playstation 5) Review

I recently played the sequel to Hellblade a few months ago and while it had some major issues particular with combat and it's walking sections, I did find it to have some compelling aspects about it. A large part of me did wonder, "I did beat the original a few years ago. How come my memories of that game aren't that strong?" I thought it was because at the time I played, I mainly just wanted to get to the end credits and cross a title off my ever growing list. It's still that way now but I've become more game and by extension media savvy since then. The whole thing was weird. There is a PS5 port of the Senua's Scarifice that came free with an initial PS4 purchase so that gave me the motivation I needed to replay it.

Upon replaying it, a large part of me can see why it never really resonated with me. It's by no means bad but it does fall into the trap that Ninja Theory's games can fall into where the game is very well acted, looks great visually and their stories are generally well presented but the actual game side of it can feel lacking. The Definitive Edition DmC was the exception when it came to gameplay but the story presentation faultered halfway through the game.

Senua's Scarifice when summed up simpily is basically, "do a bunch of lining up symbols puzzles, walk or jog then combat" rinse repeat.

The story I'll give credit for in that it has the whole, "always following the player character and never cutting" style of presentation in a 3rd person camera game that came out after The Last of Us and before God of War 2018. As a result, when combined with the mocap performances and the visual direction it can feel like a very immersive tale experiencing the intense sorrow and grief Senua is feeling. You feel just as lost and confused as she is. What's also interesting is the voices instead Senua's head. It can feel just as creepy when you hear it as Senua can be by them and how the player needs to press on in spite of them constantly blaring and arguing with each other. It's a pretty well told tale using gaming as a medium to tell it rather rely excessively on cinematic cutscenes.

The lore stones I enjoyed listening to when I found them. It doesn't have much to do with the actual game's plot but they are so well acted and weirdly intriguing that I couldn't help but be glued to listening when playing.

This is wear the game loses steam. The gameplay is mostly spent doing the same puzzles where all you do is navigating level and line up Senua's vision, use focus and the object can materialize so much or at least a good portion of the game is this. There is some clever level design early game where you are in the Valravn's Keep and you need to go through portals and use Senua's sightline to have parts of the environment pop up to get across parts of the map so she can finally focus and have the environment materialize. Thing is stuff like this is few and far between. There is some other sections that stand out but both of those instances involved Senua being chased by a monster and then has to line up symbols while chased.

There are many moments in the game where there are 3 symbols on a door and you have to navigate the sqaure space to find all 3 symbols to open the door. This happens so many times that I slowly started to groan upon seeing them when they popped up. You slove and open the door the same way so many times. If I enjoyed doing this, I could put up with it but it's the same task with rarely if ever any new varations on it. Whole thing made me take breaks from the game after a point.

Combat fares better and out of all Ninja Theory's non DmC games, the combat here is kind of decent. You have quick and heavy attacks with your sword and a melee strike. There is also a parry with a very forgiving timing window. There is also focus during combat where with each strike and parry, it recharges. You can also evade and you also have the voices in Senua's head giving you heads up on when to dodge and move out of the way. There is more to chew on here admittedly and in the moment, combat feel very gratifying when you defeat an enemy wave.

However one major issue is that combat remains the same for much of the game with no new weapons or new abilites so while the combat does seemingly have things going for it, there's a reason why there isn't challenge rooms or an endless mode. Enemy variety while okay sort of just mainly becomes regular humanoid enemy, shield guy, bigger guy and the same enemies but needing focus to attack them.

The ending section is brilliant. In that it is scripted to have the player lose but the odds are so overwhelming and it can give the feeling that you could out on top but ultimately Senua won't get out of her delusions unless she stops fighting. It is scripted for you to lose but it is very well contextualized that it's worth praising.

Overall, Senua's Scarifice has a lot going for it as a narrative game but the gameplay is serviceable at best and tedious at worst.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Remastered Review

CoD4 is an interesting game. I'm not the biggest fan of the series even though I mildly enjoy most of the games but there is something alluring about the earlier mainline Infinity Ward games before the 2009 Modern Warfare 2. CoD4 is considered to be the game in the series that a non fan has the highest chance of liking before MW 2(2009) would come along and would slowly morph the series into what it is now. It also reginited my my interest in the series when I beat the PS3 version of the original game back in 2016 after being burnt out by the series resembling Hollywood action movies with it's over the top tone and bombast. I also strongly dislike the way their multiplayers are designed but that is a different topic. CoD4's campaign is a game I enjoy but it does feel like a title if I were to raise the difficulty or try to make it more challenging, the illusion would be broken. It did feel like the illusion started show it's cracks with this latest playthrough.

Before I officially start this review, I'm obviously playing the remastered version and Raven Software did an outstanding job here. Everything feels alive and the updated charcter models look fantastic. I also like the additions of modern animations like seeing the weapon model weave around when the player is moving in a prone position.

The tutorial is an interesting concept on paper but the execution is strongly lacking. The tutorial is framed as a speedrun obsticle course where you have to kill enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible. It encourages you to switch to pistol rather than reload but this is never an effective tactic in the actual missions since it's more about shooting and waiting for health to regen when at critical than sprinting interiors clearing out rooms of bad guys. It doesn't do a good job guaging player skill level for the rest of the game like intended. You could play on Recruit which in some ways is the best difficulty more on that later.

CoD4's story is solid especially when acknowledge that "early installment weirdness" I hinted at earlier. What made CoD4 interesting was how grounded and gritty it was. After the turtorial, you have an entire level where you are controlling a prisoner as he is about to get executed and seeing for yourself through his eyes how much the nation has torn itself apart.

Half the time you never really feel like an action movie hero where the only thing your enemies fear is you or will regret crossing your path. It starts with you infiltrating a ship just for it to explode and barely escape with your life. After you need to rescue a capture informant with the help of a group insurgent that isn't very reliable or trust worthy. When you actually control a chracter part of a militaristic force, they are fairly incompetent and often made for fools. Then later in the game, the Task Force gets hunted by a helicoptor then needing to be escorted the an AC-130. Then of course there is the famous nuke scene and All Ghilled Up which furthur illustrates what I'm saying.

Out of all the games after CoD2 post WW2 that captures the spirit of being an underdog against an overwhelming force. CoD4 is one of the biggest outliers that captures that feeling the most.

There is of course the slick presentation and how the cutscenes which mask the load times for the levels do a great job delivering exposition while the game needs to of course, load in the level.

The atmosphere in with the loads bombast of the U.S missions with quieter country sides of the SAS and with the absolutely impeccable ambience of All Ghilled Up and CoD4's campaign is still memorable even now.

This transitions to the negatives. While the sound design for the guns are great and damage animations are solid. CoD4 can really feel like one of those games where it doesn't feel like I'm geniunely good at the game but more so I'm waiting for the checkpoint system to eventually kick in and be an save scumming tool with a mind of it's own.

You got the regen health and hitscan weapons which means combat is ADS, shoot, get hit, duck behind cover, regen rinse repeat. This is fine when enemy count is low and the game favors you. When the count doubles and you aren't being favored, combat really can become a game dying enough times until you get furthur and the checkpoint system starts feeling nice. You got grenades and flashbangs but the former isn't reliable at quickly killing enemies as just shooting due to pause between throwing and detonation. The latter is hard to tell the distance if your vision will be obscured or not and unreliable in the heat of the moment. When at critical health, it can also be hard to see due to color red being everywhere

It's why playing on recruit is better since the wait times for health to regen is greatly shortened.

Also amusing how one rifle butt by an enemy can instantly kill you on normal.

Overall, CoD4's campaign is solid and is endearing now even with it's glaring combat problems.

Ninja Gaiden 4 Review

Before Ninja Gaiden would go on it's over a decade long hiatus I decided to play vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 and Yaiba before NG4 and to say they terrible games would be an understatement. It's fascinating how every 3D Ninja Gaiden past the 2nd game are not even at the very least mediocre but just bad. What I'm shocked by is that NG4 wasn't at the very least a "terrible story, good gameplay" like the first two titles. Every time I played the former, I kept asking myself, "who is this game even for?" It's really a Metal Gear Rising sequel in disguise but it often conflicts with so many other aspects of the game. 

This leads to story and yes, NG isn't a story driven franchise or has a high storytelling prowess. This was something the older games were also bad at since there is far too much effort put into a story that is incoherently presented nor are they exceptional at giving context for the gameplay. Somehow, the story in NG4 could be the worst in the series.

For a series that have characters that don't age and a continuity that isn't even worth trying to follow or piece together especially with the whole bizarre crossover with Dead or Alive. For some reason we need to have NG do what Devil May Cry did and have the series' long time protagonist Ryu replaced with a new character. Ryu wasn't that interesting to begin with if you ignore his character design but the thing is Yakumo is even more uninteresting than Ryu is. At best, he's a combination of Devil May Cry 2 Dante and Raiden from the aforemention MGR. 

NG4's story is just an extremely long and bloated escort mission where Yakumo spends most of it killing monsters and obtaining macguffins. Yakumo and Seori's relationship at the start isn't really that different by the end. The story wants you to feel like Yakumo cares for her during the adventure but most of it is unearned due to their interactions consisting of voice calls where Yakumo doesn't really care and not a whole lot of on screen interactions of anything interesting. Misaki is a villain than dies when the reveal happens. 

To top off all of this, you could've just had Ryu do this whole escort mission with Seori and Misaki and the story would be the same since Ryu is just as stoic and disinterested in what he does as much as Yakumo is. The parts as where Ryu is playable already had him act like how Yakumo was towards her. The part where the game ends with Yakumo doing a "final swing" inspired scene like in a live action Spider-Man movie made me chuckle for how unearned it was. 

The gameplay is basically Metal Gear Rising frankensteined with the mechanics and systems from past NG games. This might not sound bad on paper. MGRR's gameplay was mainly just reliably using the contextual blocking and timing it do parries, comboing enemies to weaken them to do a "scripted" takedown animation to refill health and that's pretty much it.

NG4's combat has more moving parts by comparison. You got the dismemberment system, obliteration and ultimate techniques. Instead of essence, it's now health pick ups which gives combat a game of, "absorb health or use it for an ultimate attack?" Enemies also block attacks and are armored so you need to use blood raven attacks to break it and attack. You also have on the fly weapon switching to consider with a simple touch of the d pad. There is also dodges and parries being rewarde

On paper, this is the part where I say, everything comes together and I love this combat but there is just one major problem: the over reliance on using the parry. You also have to first contend with the terrible on boarding of all the mechanics I mentioned with it being dumped to you through textboxes in the first 30 minutes. 

The series' infamously terrible camera is still here and that means lots of you getting hit by off screen projectiles and enemy attacks. 

NG4 may seem like a game where don't need to be great with the parry to be competent at combat but that's not true. There's also not one parry but 3. You got the MGRR contextual blocking parry, the parry with the actual block button parry AND the bloodraven form parry, the "super" parry. If you aren't good with these 3 different styles, mobs by Chapter 6 will steamroll through you on normal. Games like Doom the Dark Ages, Insomniac Spider-Man 2, and Warhammer Space Marine 2 features parrying but it's just part of the player's moveset and to do get major damage on tougher enemies.

If you aren't at least good at parrying by the time you fight Ryu, you might as well lower to easy or not bother.

You could chock this up to me being "bad" but NG4 is marketed as a game for newcomers. It already has wealth of accessblity options and rewards you with items upon dying multiple times. You can switch to easy at any time gives you auto dodge and parry. So why can't I customize the parry window? It's out of place considering everything I mentioned. It's Platinum using NG as an excuse to make MGR2 since the latter's skeleton is still there and Konami won't let them make it.

The Street Fighter combos add nothing to the game

Overall, my mild expectations were not met and I'm surprised. NG4 was going to be a monkey's paw but it could've been a fun game but no. 

Doom: The Dark Ages Review

The "rebooted" Doom series has been quite the interesting ride. Doom 2016 revived the FPS from having games being filled with regenerating health, weapons being predominatantly hitscan, weapon limits and brought back fast paced movement and added it's own ideas like mantling and glory kills. It made single player FPS more appealing to people who never really liked it when the genre was filled with what I mentioned earlier. Doom Eternal came along and does the sequel difficulty spike and while alienated certain fans of the 2016 game managed to create a new identity and find it's own audience. It also showed many including me how a game can challenge players to egg you into using it's mechanics and systems. With everything wrapped up in the Ancient Gods Part 2, it seemed like id Software was done with the series but now Doom: The Dark Ages is doing the same thing again but with Doom Eternal instead of 2016. For the most part, I'd say the former succeeds mainly with gameplay however.

This is the weird thing with The Dark Ages. It's so different from past Doom games in terms of emphasis on story, having you know the lore before starting and it's blend of dark and science fantasy that I'm almost convinced id wanted to make a new ip heavily inspired by Warhammer 40K but they couldn't due to new IPs in this day and age not doing so well in terms of making money. It then got repurposed into being an extremely loose prequel to Doom 2016.

Now this transitions to story and well. At first, I thought it was going to be id following the quote John Carmack said back around the release of the older games where story in a game is like story in porn and well...not really. There is more story I ever expected a Doom title to ever have. I didn't mind it in Eternal since the cutscenes never went on for too long. Dark Ages on the other hand has more cutscenes than 2016 and Eternal. It doesn't help that the story does the thing Warhammer games tend to do and expect you to know the lore before starting the games. It's a prequel where it's written like a comic book adaptation where it expects you to know everything beforehand.

Many of the characters the game just expects you to know and understand. It also doesn't help that Doomguy or Slayer doesn't do any of his shoot first antics that he does in 2016. It also never tries to create much attachment towards any of the characters and many of them just drone on in exposition.
Doom Slayer also doesn't have anyone to play off like Samuel Hayden in 2016 either making him more dull. The main villain gets the upper hand on Slayer due to some weird magic that is like Kryptonite. There is also some lovecraftian horror in there.

There are some good moments where the Slayer shoots one gatekeeper in the head in a late game cutscene to end a love. There is also the awesome scene where the main villain kills the Dragon and Slayer gets really angry which works since you've been using the former a lot throughout the game so some bond was at least formed. Moments like this are few and far between.

You are still playing than you are watching but it's still hard not to zone out during cutscenes and while they aren't well written they weren't bad enough to make me want to skip them due to how well rendered and decently composed the cutscenes are.

The gameplay on the other hand is just as good as it always has been. I already knew Dark Ages wasn't going to be Eternal again. I respect id for doing something new with every game they've made thus far. Doom 2016 could be considered too easy once you to keep moving, shoot and glory kill. Doom Eternal could be considered rather challenging for a first time player due to the sheer amount of mechanics and moving parts you have to keep track of when starting the game. Dark Ages on the hand makes a very solid middle ground. You can get down to critical health very quickly like in Eternal but you won't have lots of ammo with you at all times like in 2016 since enemies kills is where the ammo drops come from now. Enemies also drop some health and fodder enemies are also everywhere to get health back. Using the Pulverizer on large fodder hordes can get health back. There's health pickups scattered around the arenas and it sort of has that regen health shooter of retreating but you can get health back much quicker by comparison to those games since there isn't waiting endlessly. There is also Life Sigils now and you can always find one per level if not always stocked up to 3. I found the combat so enjoyable that I rarely if ever used them and chose to restart every enemy wave from the begginning. The combat has a very "agile tank" feeling to it. Everything feels weighty and punchy and every time you smash and enemy, they explode in chunks. Glory kill system is now a combination of a combo in a beat em up, Halo's melee attack and the Blood Punch from Eternal. It's primarily used to get back ammo adding to the "tank" like feeling where you need to recharge your firing rounds. There is also the parry and enemy armor you have to deal with. The parry window on default difficulty is very forgiving which is good since it makes me feel competent and it's mainly there to add some spice to the combat and make fighting tougher enemies easier. It can feel exhilarating to nail the parries, be at a critical health and then be at full again. You also need to destroy armor various enemies have before damaging them and it can be fun to use the various weapons to do it with, maybe use melee or parry them and then destroy it. There's a number of options here and they are valid. Level design is solid. It gives you waypoint markers but it mainly gives you a vague direction on where to go.

Dragon and mech riding sections are okay. They never overly long to the point I really want to get back to shooting. The parry windows for both are forgiving here too.

The only big issue is the upgrade system since there isn't much money throughout the game and so many upgrades it's better to prioritize what you like than experiment and try new options.

Overall, Dark Ages is a blast minus story but it's not too big of a deal since most of the time in Dark Ages is still killing demons. 

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Review

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is one of those games where it feels like everything "clicked" and I really should've liked the game on paper. It's seemingly a modern take on the classic 2D games of the series and it's The Messenger but no infamous genre shift this time. The game was also reasonably priced surprisingly.

When starting the game, it really felt like I was in for a game I would really like. The opening level is quick and gets you in the action and the tutorial does a great job at slowly drip feeding you information without the on boarding process being overwhelming. The controls feel tight and sharp and even Ryu in this game shows more personality here than many of his 3D outings. It felt like everything was coming together and then the Hypercharge attacks show their ugly head.

On paper, this is a fine idea, it's basically a magic attack like in so many games or even a variation on ninpo in the 3D games. The catch is however you can only do it once after killing a certain enemy that gives you the power up to do it. Once you use it, you can't do it again if you give up health or kill another enemy carrying the power up.

This also means that in order to kill stronger and more armoured enemies, Hypercharge attack use is an absolute must to be efficient at killing them. This is a game where other enemies will be attack you from different angles and directions as well you considering knockback upon taking damage. Factor in all this and me not being the most skillful at this kind of game means I often had to wait and avoid enemies before doing the Hypercharge attack since attacking once on a weaker enemy means I lost my shot. Maybe give up health but you are already getting attacked from all over and losing all hp means back to checkpoint.

This gets worse in the levels with death pits since you got to avoid the pits AND avoid striking enemies when powered up with the Hypercharge so you can kill that stronger enemy in your way.

You could have this system but make it a mana bar like in most games but you get 3 shots. Now good players can effectively use the mechanic by constantly replenishing the one out of three shots and mediocre players have 2 fallback shots if they miss the first time.

It doesn't end there. The boss fights are interesting and solid on paper but they take so make HP to go down since it also hinges on Hypercharge attacks since in order to stun and able to get some more hits in, the bosses need to be hit by it. They aren't even terrible fights but when you combine the large amounts of HP, over reliance on Hypercharge, and the hit detection, the bosses start feel more like an insufferably frustrating roadblocks.

The time Kumori sections can also be infuriating at times too with some of them having very strict time limits.

Ragebound is a game I often heard where Normal difficulty is too forgiving and easy but I'm not sure if I agree with that. At times it can be that but the difficulty is often schizoprenic. The bosses are pretty much a massive roadblock even after a seemingly forgiving level proceeding them.

After this I basically started to use the accessiblity options. I didn't want to but I was getting more and more sick of how the game was designed. I lowered incoming damage to 0 and disable knockback. Not like it's a complete mindless cakewalk you still to avoid those death pits from time to time.

Overall, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound should've really clicked with me. Everything was leading up to that but the Hypercharge attacks but their implementation just sucks away any kind of enjoyment I thought I should've had. A shame but it is what it is.