Terminator: Salvation(Playstation 3) Review

To of no surprise of anyone, the movie tie in game that never got a "vocal" cult following who enjoys it ironically or unironcally is not good at all. I was supposed to play this and then play Binary Domain after but I got a damaged disc and I was in no hurry to get a better one. If you want to play a third person shooter where you fight robots, go play Binary Domain or Vanquish instead. However, I do like to play some geniunely bad games from time to time and due to how short and cheap this game is, it was a right candidate for me to try out. The short length really is a blessing because if it went on any longer either I wouldn't beat it or my dislike for the game would be even bigger. The frequent checkpoints also help make everything bearable.

This is a rather popular game due to how short and easy it is to get the Platinum trophy and I tried to get that but the game on hard during the on rails section during Chapter 1 is almost borderline bugged on what's needed to not immediately get a game over.

I eventually lowered to easy but there will still be some cheap deaths here and there since Terminators up close can kill you in one hit even on that mode. You also need to get up close since you'll be able to take out enemies with granades more efficiently or be close enough to hit them in the back. Fighting from afar will drain ammo faster.

There's only 3 enemy types: the HKs, T-600s and a bipedal enemy. These are the main enemies you'll fight. Two you can beat the same way. There's also a bigger drone mini boss you fight and win by firing rockets at it.

An example of just how rushed out the door this game is how in Chapter 4 there's a large building and one load screen later, John and the Resistance are magically already on top fighting a drone mini boss which is the same as the one you fought in Chapter 1.

Two of the hardest parts are in Chapter 7 doing a defend mission where either the enemies will kill you or they will kill the npc you are defending. You also get to pilot a massive HK but due to the aiming and how enemies will slowly overwhelm you, it's easy to die a lot during this section.

There is no final boss and you just fight the same T-600s you've been fighting for the rest of the game.

Story? I guess it's a prequel. I haven't seen Salvation in full in over a decade but the cutscenes are awkward and stifly presented. The whole story is a filler arc since the developers can't mess with the canon in anyway. John Connor is on some mission to help the Resistance but this won't matter since it does't really play a role in the movie. It's not even as charming as setting up the Kashyyyk invasion in Star Wars Republic Commando.

Overall, I came for a geniunely bad game that was tolerable because it was short and got just that. With that said, it's certainly no Rogue Warrior or the Bouncer in terms of being memorably bad.

Fatal Frame II: Crismson Butterfly Remake Review

This was a remake I've been curious about since Fatal Frame 2 also had a remake on the Wii prior to this. I have beaten the original years ago but it's been a while and since then I've beaten Fatal Frame 4 and tried to with Maiden of Black Water. I'm mixed on the franchise from the games I played. It's certainly more of an aquired taste by comparison to Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I can say that this remake is my favorite in the franchise out of the ones I have played.

Your milage will certainly vary regarding this but before I played this remake, it was reported to be much harder than the original game. Enemies were super aggressive, resources were very limited and battles went on for ages.

A difficulty patch got released and after playing post patch, it's by far the easiest game in the franchise. This I don't mind however since Fatal Frame combat has it's very bizarre design quirks that doesn't make it very easy to approach for people who has played games like Resident Evil, Dead Space and even Silent Hill.

Much of this game are mandatory combat encounters where in Resident Evil and Silent Hill, it's possible to run past enemies but FF, you can't run past the ghosts with the exception of the stalker wraith.

A lot of the difficulty can attributed to only being able to aim in first person, slowly waiting for the ghost to appear in front of you and hoping that once it does, you can hit it. Waiting for ideal moments to do more damage, and if you get hit, the line of sight you once had will be gone.

There's also a willpower gauge which will also hinder the performance of your player character if grabbed by enemies or hit too much.

With this difficulty patch, a lot of the weaker film you have will do more damage if you upgrade focal point, reload speed and film capacity. You'll be rolling in so much film too all though you might slowly dwindle in resources by the end of the game.

Due to this, battle can still feel have it's feeling of being tense but without the long battle attritions that the series' ghost battles can have. The balance of knowing when to hit the ghost with the right shot and knowing when to dodge out of the way. Just that now, they don't drag on as much. There is the infamous ghosts turning red and getting and angry system here but due to the reduced difficulty, they more so just spice up the last few minutes of a fight rather than making you constantly see the game over screen.

Some of the more challenging parts is during the scripted sequence where you need to run away from certain ghosts and knowing where to go and hide from them to get them off you. Mayu's crouch speed can be a little slow when trying to evage a ghost's line of sight.

Load times on PS5 upon getting a game over can also last way too long but that's where the difficulty patch cancels this part out all though not during the scripted parts.

The level design is "fine". Very similar to a Zelda game where you got a overarching hub world and there individual larger areas you have to explore. At a certain point in Chapter 6 were the objective and what you need to do becomes overly vague and confusing on what you need to actually do.

Also the late game can feel awfully padded due to spending much of the game rescuing Mio and then going on a fetch quest, just to then lose her again and then fight the final boss.

One massive improvement the remake has over the original is that the final boss is no longer a one hit kill so no unnesscary frustration here.

Story is on the okay side. It's less about the two sisters and more and more about the setting itself. I read a couple of the note but I did wish Mayu and Mio had more character in the actual story and less of a reliance on notes.

Overall, with the difficulty patch Fatal Frame 2 remake is a solid game in a series that I'm lukewarm on as a whole. There's some issues I had here and there but not enough to detract from playing the game in the moment.

Binary Domain(Playstation 3) Review

The best way of describing Binary Domain is what if you combined aspects of various sci fi action movies with the pleathora of cyberpunk anime and OVA series while having the cover based gameplay of Gears of War with Vanquish's robot enemies and Dead Space's dismemberment system? You'd get this charming game. "Charm" is the key word here while the gameplay can feel derivative in areas and undercooked in others, it always manages to maintain that. This was also the first RGG game I have ever played years before touching the Yakuza franchise.

Binary Domain's story has the moment to moment pacing, character dynamics and over the top cheese of action movies while having the wacky yet philosophical you'd find in cyberpunk fiction particularly the anime and OVA series released in the 80s-00s.

One thing the game does extremely well is with the moment to moment dialogue with the "rest crew" combined with the cutscene animations. The character interactions particularly between Dan and Botang are so hilarious and entertaining that you just want to see what they'll talk about next. The rest of the cast are also entertaing like Charlie, Cain, and Shindo. Racheal manages to be memorable with her whole "speaks with a few words but makes up for in explosions" approach.

Dan and Faye's relationship is moderately fleshed out to care on what happens later.

Lines like "this is some philosophical bullshit" is so awesome, hilarious and dumb that it's hard for me to quote from time to time.

The story manages to be thought provoking with the idea of who is a "hollow child" and how even hollow children themselves believe they are human while they don't even know that they are machines.

Only big compliants I can make with the story is that it can get hard to follow towards the end with double crosses that can feel weirdly out of nowhere so a final boss can happen. There also a fake out death with Botang just for him to die for real at the end which made me wonder why they had the fake out death at all. I also don't like choosing responses for Dan when he already has a defined personality to begin with.

Gameplay is solid but can feel underbaked in places. One big example is that the game has a "social links" system in place but the various characters aren't going to be with you for the whole game. You can upgrade the damage of teammate firearms but why would I do that when I'm better off just firing my own bullets and killing enemies myself? You can give squad commands like having them squadmates charge but there's no real use for this. There's a swimming section that only happens once. There's an RPG system with buffs but they don't really seem to make much of a difference in the moment.

To go on some positives, remember how I mentioned Dead Space earlier? You have robotic enemies but there is a multiple hitzone system where you can damage different parts of an enemy. Shoot them in the head and that'll mess up their programming. Shoot them in the legs? They'll be crawling on the ground? Shoot them in the arms and they might lose the ability to hold their weapons. You also have enemies flying in by drones and you can shoot them down for a fast kill. It's all permeated by excellect sound design hearing the explosions when destroying enemy limbs and destroying the robots completely.

Boss fights are also interesting in that there are different ways of defeating depending on what hitzones you damage them in allowing for different approaches. An early game boss can have you jump from on top of a building or shoot it in the head with rockets. One thing that lets these fights down is how the framerate can bearly keep up during the intense explosions and carnage.

Many of the moment to moment firefights on normal can be easy to breeze by due to overwhelming amount of healing stims. The player can hold 4 and each squad mate can hold up to 3 so you're going to have to delibrately try to even get a game over. The levels also 2 or 3 lying right around that is easy to fine.

The big challenge of Binary Domain are the scripted sequences. This could be me trying to do this on a third party controller but due to strict timing of these sections especially speedboat chase halfway through the game can be hard to how stiff left stick movement can feel. You also don't get any stims for revives here either.

There's also the occasional and stupidly put together QTEs where instead of pressing on screen button it's a timed rythmn game styled button press.

Shotgun can be pretty overpowered but the game seems to know and doesn't spawn much ammo for it.

The final boss can also be cheap in how it can one shot you with it's underbarrel shotgun and could even get a friendly npc game over which was hard to get prior to that.

It's also jarring that Cain has the acrobatic and fast movement in cutscenes but not in gameplay.

Overall, Binary Domain is a charming game throughout. There are problems here and there but they can be looked past.

Space Adventure Cobra: The Awakening Review

The game that makes me ask "why?" It's a licensed anime game not made in Japan and it's not even a tie in for a brand new Space Adventure Cobra adaptation. The brand itself has a cult following outside of Japan and the series itself hasn't really gotten a resurgance of any kind. I did check this out since I've been curious in checking out the anime for a long while and this game was a convienent enough excuse to jump into it's world without actually watching it. The game also has an english dub and the anime doesn't have a proper one so it gave me more an excuse to try this game out first.

As a whole, it's on the "average" side. It does have the potential to be more interesting than it actually is.

One thing noticeable right away especially if you have played them is that the controls and abilites are almost shot for shot the recent 2D Metroids made by MercurySteam. Being able to precisely aim in any direction, the way cobra moves while firing his canon, the slide, a charge shot, Cobra having missile and super missile equivilant. There's also the way dashing implement like in the recent Prince of Persia the Lost Crown. There's also a super attack like The Prince has in that game.

On paper, this would make The Awakening a very deriviative game but the one thing that prevents it from being that it's not a metroidvania at all. The exploration is optional rather than manadatory and it's mainly there for health and "missile" upgrades. In a sense, you could say there's elements of Contra and Metal Slug here too. Cobra has a melee attack like in the latter game too.

All of this together could make for a bizarrely unique title. Metroid and Prince of Persia's controls with linear design of Contra and Metal Slug? Sounds like a fun time and it is but the thing that holds it back is the lack of polish and lots of reuse of enemies and content.

An example of how unpolished the game is that the anime FMV sequences didn't play at all during my playthrough which made for weird moments where I missed the context while playing the game and had to watch them later on Youtube

Platforming for the most part can feel fine but there are bizarre moments weird collision detection.

The thing that really lets the game down is just how samey much of the game can be. At first, The Awakening can feel really good with how you have Metroid's controls as a run and gun shooter. Shooting enemies while dashing and quickly avoiding obstacles can feel make you feel the empowerment that being a space pirate on the run can bring you.

You got regular enemies, red and blue shielded enemies, larger enemies, drones, animal life. All of them do kind of require different tactics like regular enemies are threatning in number, red shielded enemies need their defenses taken out by Cobra's revolver, blue shielded need to be attacked by melee attacks. It can feel very involving until the realization that's all there is to the enemy encounters and much of the game is going through these same enemies. Enemies also give little health drops on normal and due to how many of them are shooting at you, it's easy to die quickly.

Also, you better hope that Cobra's revolver hits the red shield enemies the moment you get your line of on him because if you miss, there's a lengthy cooldown time and you might still be getting shot at while it's happening.

The puzzles have you do the same process and pressing switches and doing Psycho Gun drawing puzzles over and over.

The mini bosses is what really lets the game down. You fight the same drone and snake enemy multiple times through the campaign and the only way to damage them is is doing a drawing puzzle with the analog stick with the psycho gun. This could be easier with mouse but the real challenge of these fights is to get the analog stick right where you want it to draw the symbol to damage it. Take too long and you miss your chance. Due to this these fights can just drag on and it feels like luck if you can even damage them.

One great thing about the game is that easy mode is doable and it checkpoints often. The only really hard part is the boss at Mission 11-2.

Overall, Space Adventure The Awakening's existence raises quite a number of questions and there's some design ideas here that could potentially have the game rise above them but instead it's more of a game that could rather than a game that the devs pulled all the stops for because they had no big name to cash in off of.

Driver 76 Review

What a surprise this game turned out to be. I always thought it was one of those lesser spin off games or that it was just mediocre and forgettable but it turned out to be highly engaging and a blast to play through it's short length. What makes me like it as much as I do? It has a fun soundtrack, an enjoyable and entertaining story and the open world is on the optional side. The last one surprised me a lot. I was expecting it to be an open world crime game on the portable like those Grand Theft Auto games but instead it went back to the style of being a more "linear" narrative focused car chase game.

The soundtrack fits the world and the recreated 70s vibe pretty well. I always did get hyped up whenever Low Rider started to play.

Story is pretty entertaining while nothing amazing, it was fun in the moment. Seeing the dynamic between Ray and Slink as they work together to make money, get of jams, try to make it big and avoid getting wasted by the various gangs made for an entertaining set up. The voice acting and comic panel cutscenes do a good job at getting the basic beats across. Having the comic panel cutscenes was a smart move since the in engine would've just looked a lot worse anyway especially when compared to the couple that are there.

The real surprise which I've mentioned before is that this is NOT an open world game. Driver 76 does what I always have a soft spot for and have it be optional. Instead the gameplay revolves around a series where all of them involves a vehicle and you are almost always on a timer. I always did love timers in this franchise or anything involving vehicles since the whole point is to go fast and be efficient while doing it and having timers is a great way to encourage the player to get good and not sleepwalk through the missions.

It also helps that the game checkpoints during missions and when there is a part of the game where it feels like the objective is taking too long even when the ride is going smoothly, you'll get a good amount of extra time to complete the next objective.

There's a decent amount of variety here too like escourting assassins, driving pick up trucks while avoiding detection of enemy gangs, hijack and delivering trucks, collecting things and avoid annoying your passengers, vehicle tailing, traditional races, wrecking supermarkets. There's enough variety here as well the game not being overly long so the game never gets overly monotonous or overstays it's welcome.

Some issues is that the game doesn't run the most stable. There's framerate drops and a fair share of pop in. This could be the emulator but this could be both the game and the emulation quirks. The on foot controls are "tolerable" but not good since the game is mostly car chases, it's awkwardness never really sets in. The shooting isn't great but it's fine due to reasons I mentioned earlier.

There are two missions that can sour the experience that are "Arms Dealer" and the final mission. The former is bad due to on rails shooting section especially when dealing the cars later in the level as you are entering and leaving a tunnel. If you try to this with the base assault rifle the mission gives you, it will be impossible to finish due to the bullet spread not hitting your intended when you put the crosshair on them. You will be riddled with bullets and your shots will only hit on occasion. If you just do main missions, you'll get a grenade launcher and it's best to cheese the early enemies and the ones in the tunnels using this, if not it's an unwinnable mission. It can be a misleading on the game's part.

The final mission while fine in theory, it's a very trial and error mission where if you make one wrong detour as you follow the helicoptor, misintrepret it's route or try to readjust after being lead off it's trail, it will be a series of mission restarts. I get it's the final mission but due to long it can feel, it feels like you need to be a perfectionist even though the rest of the game didn't require you to do this.

Overall, despite some technical issues and a few sour eggs here and there, Driver 76 turned out to be a very enjoyable surprise and easily one of the better 3rd party developed games on the PSP.

Doom II: Hell on Earth(Playstation 5) Review

The most actionized sequel to ever be actionized. Yes, the original game was very much an FPS game where you were mowing down enemies but Doom 2 does the thing expected from a sequel and ups the ante when it comes to everything. I will admit that when I first played the game, my attachment towards it was non exisistent. I found it very disappointing compared to the 1993 original game. The level design was far too obtuse, the inablility to jump or look up felt more like hinderances than advantages and it felt like amping up the difficulty for the sake of it. Upon replaying the game a few years ago and now recently. I've come to like Doom 2 the more I play it. Understanding it's mechanical and level design quirks has come to make me love it. Doom 2 might be one of my favorite game sequels of all time despite me not feeling that way when I originally beat it.

I said before that Doom 2 ups the ante in every regard and two things it does this with is the weapons and the enemies.

With the former, you find many of the key weapons of the original game like the shotgun, chaingun, plasma rifle and missile launcher much quicker. You also spend the entire game with them upon accquiring them the first time where in original, starting a new episode means getting them all back again. Also, weapons like the BFG you might spend the whole game not even getting but in Doom 2, you will certainly get it.

Then there is the weapon the game is known for: the Super Shotgun. It's been stated how awesome this weapon is and it lives up to it's name. The powerful sound it makes when fired, the amount of damage it does to close range enemies like the pinky demons, it being able to wipe out multiple possesed marines at once with it's spread under it's crosshairs and the beautifully done reload animation and sound.

You would think this weapon would become the primary shotgun to use and the regular shotgun would have no use. It would be that in theory but one big difference is that the super shotgun is meant to be devastating up close. The regular shotgun is a long range hitscan weapon so. Close range use is super shotgun and regular shotgun is for furthur or ones places in higher elevation

Then there is there the enemies where the first game's early levels would place some Imps, some Possesed Marines but then slowly roll in the Barons of Hell, Pinkies and Cacodemons. Doom 2 follows the logic that you played the original already so these guys are already in the early levels and you'll be fighting huge swarms of them. Some of only one enemy types like the barons and pinkies or a mixture of many like the imps and marines.

There's also new enemies introduced in Doom 2 like Chaingunner Marines, Revenants, Archville, Mancubus, Arachnotron, Pain Elemental, and Hell knight. Many of them spice up combat like Chaingunners, Archvilles, Revenants, and Mancubus due to them changing up tactics. Like Archvilles with constantly breaking like of sight. Revenants with dodging the homing missiles. Chaingunners due to accumlated hitscan damage.

Some can be annoying like the Pain Elemental summoning so many Lost Souls that home in on you. However, most of these are hits rather than misses.

However there is one major elephant in the room and a rather divisive aspect of Doom 2 and that is the level design. Where Doom 1993's levels were all well made and do a good job at guiding the player around with the exception of Limbo. Doom 2 can get bizarrely obtuse and hard to understand where to go. First of all, many of the versions of the game has no jump button so the game never tells the player that sprinting from one platform to the next is an unofficial jump button. There is also the fact that teleporters don't teleport you to one place but stepping on them twice can lead you to a new part of the level.

Not understanding these quirks can throw many players off.

With that said, Doom 2 has one of my favorite and most memorable levels in older series and that is Courtyard and especially Industrial Zone. Remember how I said that switching between regular and super shotgun for long and close range is something Doom 2 does well? This is a great example. You need to use regular shotgun to take out the Chaingunners from afar and are higher up while using super shotgun to take out the enemies at your level.

There is some bizarre parts like you need to look down to know to land on a platform to progress in Downtown but you can't actually look down to know to land there.

Some levels like Citadel are just terrible and an all around stinker too. It's so bad that you don't even need all 3 keys to beat the level along with floor switch that is really hard to actually hear with the music playing.

Overall, with all this said, Doom 2 despite it's level design and mechanical quirks and not having levels as consistent in quality is an all improvement over the first game, you may need to play it more than once to fully appreciate the game with that said. 

Iron Meat Review

As far as Contra games or games styled after that franchise is concerned, Iron Meat is the best of that kind of game I have ever played. I'm more of a Metal Slug guy but Iron Meat managed to win me over. In terms of sheer specticle and approachable difficulty, it's the best a Contra style game has ever been for me.

When it comes to the visuals, Iron Meat's pixel art looks highly detailed especially with everything looking macabe, decrepit and and grotesque. There's lots of explosions and body parts being destroyed mauled and destroyed as you wreak havoc across the levels. It's one of if not my favorite example of indie pixel art work.

I mentioned approachable difficulty before, you get 30 lives on easy with your lives resetting back to 30 when you start a new level. So for someone who isn't really good at Contra style games, this is an easy crutch to rely on.

In Blazing Chrome enemies soak up an ungodly amount of damage even on easy to the point where your lives will be mostly drained by the time you reach the level end boss. In Iron Meat, it's more reasonable where you can have a decent amount of lives left before reaching the level end boss. I make a big deal out of this because there is no health bars in Contra style games, getting hit once is a life lost and losing them all is a level restart.

You also have a reasonable amount of weapon power ups to level the playing field in Iron Meat. It also helps that you can aim in all 8 directions. I did wish the controls for this was better rather like having dedicated buttons to aim diagonally but it's workable.

It's not like the game is brainlessly easy for me on easy. I was almost close to a level restart on the city stage and was down to one life on the boss before took the last one. It was a massive sigh of relief and felt like an epic win when the boss went down. If easy mode can retain things like this? Is it really a bad thing?

Projectile speeds and traps are also reasonable enough for a less skilled player like me to get through. You also get a warning and ample time to get out of the explosions marked in a red skeleton.

Bosses are also the pixel art at it's best and have very maligned designs. Something like a cross between Alien and The Thing.

Overall, that's Iron Meat, it's well designed, looks amazing, very approachable and the best Contra style game that I'm aware of. I randomly heard of this game when it was being compared to the that latest Contra game and Terminator 2D No Fate and while I like the latter, Iron Meat is superior.