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.

Silent Hill: Downpour(Playstation 3) Review

When I first played Silent Hill Downpour, it was one of those Playstation 3 games I bought that I wanted to just play and get to the end of. I got put off by it a few times and when I did beat it, I didn't think much of it. After going through most of the Silent Hill games this past year. I have a new appreciation for Downpour. It does have it's issues mainly with aspects of it's story. In terms of gameplay, Vatara really did seem to be aware of the series' long time gameplay shortcomings. It's only held back by grating technical issues.

Downpour's story is on the decent side. The interesting aspects of the story is how bleak of a story it is for a game in the series and to some extent mainstream games in general. The closest thing the game has to a "good" ending is having Anne let Murphy escape with no poetic justice. Arguably the real "villain" George Sewell pretty much won the moment you boot up the game.

Murphy and his journey of self forgiveness is interesting. He's esstentially going through self loathing, it gets quelled then more self loathing insues. Silent Hill basically manifests all that guilt since that is one way the town is often intrepreted as.

He's also one of the better acted characters in the series. He does a good job at being reserved and hiding his pain but he can also get annoyed and short tempered when characters aren't being straight with him. Him being knowledge about vehicles was decently foreshadowed at the start of the game when he enters Silent Hill.

With that said, the side characters can be on the underdeveloped side. DJ Ricks was kind of fun and charming but he gets killed off in his introduction scene.

Anne Cunningham is just an awful character. Her entire character is to shout a lot and hold up Murphy at gun point in every scene she is in. She pretty much could've shot him at the start of the game but can't bring herself to do it. Might lead to some character development or having some more layers? NOPE. She does the samething at least 2-3 more times. She only shows any different side to her character at the end but by that point the game is almost over.

All in all, Downpour's story is mostly hits rather than misses and is one of the franchise's more interesting tales.

Gameplay is where it gets fascinating. Throughout my entire playthrough of Downpour, I was asking myself, "was Vatara listening to all my gameplay criticisms of SH a decade before I would even raise them?"

The combat was widely criticised at the time but one major aspect that was overlooked then and even now is that, you are not supposed to be a one man army monster killing machine. Contrary to popular belief Silent Hill 1 and especially 2 you were basically that. In Downpour, the enemy count never goes higher than 3 and even then Murphy is only really effective at one on one fights. One lower tier fodder enemy can get you down to critical health fast and there is no reliable lock on sytem or any elegant combat maneuvers Murphy can do. It's often better just to run away and only kill when you really have to. There is only 2 or 3 moments where killing enemies are needed to progress through the game.

You get one trophy for escaping enemies 20 times and another for not killing a single enemy so this encourages the idea even more that you aren't a one man army.

To add to this, you have a two weapon limit and can't hold all firearms as well as ammo being the most limited it has ever been in the series. Despite having updated over the shoulder aiming, using guns also isn't going to make you an effective monster killer.

The level design is also mostly streamlined and for the better. No more doors that are just wall textures in disguise. Everything is more on the scripted side. It's mostly being directed one way with you finding a weapon to get past obstacles, solving inventory puzzles or the series' trademark riddles. Otherworld is even more scripted where you get chased by a nameless void, solving some puzzles and even dodging traps. The last one caught me by surprise since I never thought an SH game would that. You might even do all 3 at the same time.

The final boss isn't even a fight you win by riddling it with bullets but a puzzle boss instead. Bosses are not that prevalent compared to past games.

In a sense, Downpour is a variation of what Shattered Memories but less overt due to not completely removing combat. The developers are aware of the issues the series always had and did their best to address them.

There are major issues that hold the gameplay back. The lengthy load times can be infuriating when dying during the Otherworld sections especially when you don't know how many times getting close to the void will cause a game over.

Game can't maintain a stable framerate and goes into single digits at times.

The left stick waggling and trigger mashing QTEs are obnoxious 7th gen game design tropes that detract than enhance.

Overall, Downpour held up better than I ever expected

Crysis 3(Nintendo Switch) Review

When I played Crysis 3 the first 2 times, I was on the lukewarm side. This time around, I enjoy the game much more than I did previously. Everything just clicked a lot better for me this time. I might even say this is easily the best game in the series. The game does have it's issues like with every game but when it comes to me playing this game in the moment, I had an enjoyable time. Crysis 3 in a lot of ways tries to combine the larger and more open environment of the first game with the combat improvements and bombastic and cinematic story of 2. It comes together for the most part.

The story has to be the biggest surprise. If Crysis 2 was mainly just a simple but decently presented alien invasion story, Crysis 3 is the more ambitious and thought provoking sequel.

What mainly carries the whole thing is the dynamic between Prophet and Psycho. The former is a supersoldier powered up by the nanosuit and is the only one left who still uses it. Due to this he's slowly going crazy by the Ceph and drives himself harder and harder to stop them while the actual threat is Cell and everyone thinks Prophet is going insane by the nanosuit.

Psycho after the events of the first game has been depowered and got the suit ripped off from him. Throughout the whole game, he misses the nanosuit like if lost a limb. At various points in the with Chapter 2 being a standout where he tries to rig a train to get past a Cell checkpoint with the Ceph also there.

My favorite moment in the story was the twist that Claire was one who skinned Psycho's nanosuit off and the latter starts angrily lashing out at her and Prophet stood up for the former after she insulted him for being Hardware and thought he was nothing more than a ticking time bomb. Prophet earned my respect after that.

The story does have it's problems. Rasch is a dull and underdeveloped villain. He does help give more conviction to Psycho's arc and his dynamic with Prophet. It also follows George Lucas Star Wars logic almost to a fault like many game franchise stories. Like how Cell became more powerful than ever after Crysis 2 making that game's events seem hollow, or how Prophet regained his body back, or what Psycho was doing inbetween Crysis 1 and Warhead to 3. Still, for an FPS story it was more engaging than I thought it was going to be.

The gameplay is interesting in that it doesn't have the corridors with a few branching paths like Crysis 2 but it kind of cuts down on the dead and empty space of the first game.

Crysis 3's length has been a commonly stated criticism but considering the first game's second half was filled with boring squid alien fights and a good portion of Crysis 2's campaign were mainly just large scale scripted alien shooting galleries while it worked for the latter, Crysis 3 keeping the forced alien fights to a minimum gives the campaign a killer no filler feel to it.

Many of Crysis 3's environments are larger than 2's with some scripted moments thrown in for good measure.

A nice addition to the game is that when opening the visor, enemies will already be avaliable to be marked so now it cuts down on the boring recon of tagging enemies which is why I almost never use the feature when a game offers it or prefer to not use it.

Due to this, it's easier to avoid enemy sightlines when decloaking. This doesn't mean that the Crytek guard AI quirk of enemies randomly knowing your location is completely eradicated, there will be some "what the hell" detections from time to time. This will happen a lot when the Ceph become more prominent later in the game. Luckily you can still sneak around them and perform the stealth takedown from Crysis 2.

The combat is also more satisfying than ever with better weapon feedback than before with better punch for the weapons especially the shotgun. The Ceph also blow up into bloody chunks when you blow them up now.

The bow is also a really fun weapon to use. You can view this as being weapon as being a "win" button but it's mainly an instant kill on the human enemies and it can be fun just to get a quick kill when sneaking and having them randomly detect you from time to time. The bow is less effective later in the game when the Ceph overtake Cell.

Final level can be on the dull and at times frustrating side. It can give the illusion of being open but the better, faster and more efficient option is to kill every alien you set your sights on. It does become the boring alien shootouts from Crysis 1 again but to this game's defense, this is only one level and it's the last one.

The final boss isn't as bad as Crysis 1's either. The only obtuse part is knowing when to shoot it's weak spot before it does the drill attack that insta kills you. It's not very good but not completely insufferable due to a checkpoint after the first two phases.

Overall, when you combine the open levels of Crysis 1 with the combat polish of 2, it's tightly paced campaign and story, Crysis 3 is my favorite in the series.

Silent Hill: Origins Review

Out of all the Silent Hill games I could play without needing emulation or a used PS2. This and the original 1999 game were what I had access to due to Playstation 3 PSN. There was Shattered Memories but I never tried to play it at that point. With that said even back when I played it in the early 2010s as a teenager, it was still on the forgettable side. Playing Origins now, the constant question that was ringing in my head was, "why was this game even made?" The 1999 title never had unanswered lingering plot points that potentially needed exploring. It all just feels like a thinly veiled excuse for Konami to make a quick buck out of the then hot Playstation Portable. It did eventually came to the PS2 so it's novelty of playing SH on the go went away pretty fast.

Before I start describing why I'm so lukewarm on SH:O. When it comes to presentation and music, this is something the game excels in. You could criticize the former for being too derivative of what Team Silent did but as far as the effort put into imitating them is concerned, they did a solid job even if it just amounts to copying off a cheat sheet. The blurry filter, the grotesque imagery, the industrial rotting look for the Otherworld and even seeing SH1's assets reimagined with a more "advanced" graphics engine was fun to see. The only major differentiation are the character models which can seem a little clean compared to the more dirty and grimey look of Silent Hill 2 and 3.

The music is also one of Akira Yamaoka's best post Team Silent scores. There's a number of good memorable tunes here both original and reused letmotifs. The Story Begins, Riverside Motel and Illusion in Me are very good stuff.

It's also a short game and can be finished very quickly so while in the moment, it can drag, the game seemigly takes around 5-6 hours to finish. More on that later.

Travis Grady also shows more personality in the opening cutscene with his banter with that one co worker than he does in the entire game.

Now I transition to story. Best way to describe it is that it's about as much of a dull filler arc as a dull filler arc can get. What do you learn about the cult and Alessa? Not much you don't already find out by playing the PS1 game. Dr. Kaufman, Dahlia Gallespie and Lisa Garland are just there, they have a few scenes that puts them above being cameos but nothing new or interesting that recontextulizes what you knew them as. Travis has a subplot about his abusive dysfunctional family but it's only there because he's so disconnected from all the overall story with the cult. Alessa just so happens to be burning to death and Travis saves her at the right moment and that jumps starts the entire filler arc. Almost everyone in the story is just confused on why Travis is in Silent Hill. Travis is just as dumbfounded. The whole thing feels like how the script writing process for this game went.

The gameplay much like the visuals is impressive even if it is just cheat sheet copying. Everything that was in the first 3 Team Silent games are here. The follow cam, the unlimited inventory, the auto aim, the puzzles, the titular town overworld that connects to individual levels, the doors that are glorified wall textures, the bottlenecking, it's mostly here.

There are some new editions like a quick select, energy drinks, QTEs, using fists, weapon degradation and otherworld not activating at key story points. All of this adds little to the game.

Quick select while nice on paper doesn't amount to much since the close quarters combat is awful. Enemies can be spongey and can often be the first one to land a blow on you once if not twice. So using guns and melee combat is better to be avoided, due to the long time Silent Hill tactic of turning off the flashlight and running past enemies is more useful than ever. If you fight every enemy levels will feel even longer. As a result, a lot of ammo can be stockpiled and bosses can be beaten easily especially how easy their attacks are telegraphed and healing items being stockpiled too.

QTEs are similar to God of War 2005 but enemies grab you instead of a kill animation, you get the prompts right to get them off. In GOW, they are used to give you red, green and blue orbs, in SH:O all they do is just waste your time since you can take damage if you get the prompts wrong but the animation needs to finish.

Otherworld exploration pads out levels since now you need to explore the same boring levels twice as much. Much and I mean much of this "exploration" is spent interacting with doors that can't open. The Team Silent games' having the quick pacing never made me notice how terrible the level design can by when everything is going at a snail's pace due to the fake door count being doubled. There's few secrets to find.

Otherworld in the Team Silent games added tension since it could come any dramatic story beat. Now it's padding.

Overall, SHO is a game that is just there to show off the PSP and that's it

Crysis 2(Nintendo Switch) Review

Crysis 2 was a game I originally played back when it came out mainly due to the positive reviews from websites I watched at the time. It seemed like a weirdly intriguing game. It is an enjoyable to play in the moment but it's nothing I consider truly great. It even slowly got me into playing stealth games due to it being an FPS and how cloaking gives you the ability to play it that like the former without needing experience points and buying skills that many games that have you play in different play styles would do before and after. I wasn't super into FPS games like I am now and being exposed to something like this was pretty cool. You got armor mode, fighting aliens and different branching options unlike the CoD games at the time so in spite of being inspired by that series, there was enough to make it different.

It is strange how I have beaten the game multiple times over the years but still just think it's "solid" but nothing more. Upon playing the game again, I have come to realize that Crysis 2 is the gaming equivilant to a solid action movie that can make you think at times but is ultimately meant to be comfort food something like Escape from New York or Con Air.

Level design is easily the biggest point of contention when compared to the first game. You don't have the vast open tropical island of the first game. It's either linear shooting galleries like a CoD campaign or wide open squares that connect with a level exit at the other side of it. There is no sense of you going through this vast open area where you getting past guard checkpoint after checkpoint.

There are no secondary objectives and the tactical options are slight branching off paths with some advantages to get leg up over enemies.

At the same time, considering Crysis 2 was on consoles with games like Deus Ex Human Revolution releasing months later, it is rather impressive that there is a 7th gen multiplatform FPS that even gives you more leeway to tackle objectives compared to how CoD was slowly becoming more infamous for how scripted it's campaigns were. The suit powers also made it stood out.

What also help that most of the time is that stealth is a viable option. It isn't deep by any means but within the context of an FPS game where it's about an alien invasion, I'm surprised I'm able to play a good portion of the levels of at all just by using the cloak and going from cover to cover.

There is one unfortunate elephant in the room and it's the AI. It wasn't well remembered even for it's time. Playing it now, it's easy to mock the game for how stupid enemies can act and how their pathfinding can have them run around in places or even walking into walls or obstructions. It's pretty amusing to see. Games like Splinter Cell Blacklist would have far more believeable enemy behaviour but that would release 2 years later. It can also get erratic when you don't get a clear indicator if you are in a guard sightline, you decloak and get spotted. What saves this however is that you can recloak, change position and enemies will have a hard time trying to tell where you are. Line of sight when seen is easy to break, none of that hivemind AI which makes stealth more viable. There is also a stealth kill that is satisfying to pull off.

Compare this to say the Assassin's Creed games releasing prior to Unity and even after, stealth in Crysis 2 can feel more refined and doable by comparison. There is crouching and a cover system here

There are a lot of lots of lengthy shooting galleries against the Ceph midway into the game unlike Crysis 1, shooting aliens actually feels decent enough especially with gooey splash they make upon killing them. It's also great that you can stealth kill them from behind which adds a little more depth. It is scripted like a CoD campaign but considering the alien invasion context, the loud bombast and the fact it takes place in a real city can give the game a feeling of being in a playable version of War of the Worlds. These sections do last can go on for a little too long but there is a fantastic level with "Eye of the Storm" that follows up on that goes back to the wide open boxed sneaking rooms so there is solid pacing in this campaign.

The story isn't going to be thought provoking but it does feel competently presented unlike the first game. Cutscenes provide enough context for levels, characters are decent in the moment and there is even a solid attempt at creating attachment to the villian with Jaccob Hargreave where he helps Alcatraz and the player by extension before betraying you later making it feel unfortunate that it happened. There's is some interesting recontextualized callbacks to the first game with him and Prophet.

Alcatraz can't talk and silent protagonists being the way they are makes me question why Nathan Gould never asks or demands for him to talk early game with the whole mystery that Prophet is dead.

Overall, Crysis 2 is solid action movie in video game form and that's fine.

Parasite Eve Review

Parasite Eve is a game I have a soft spot for. It was one of the first PS1 games I went out of my way to try out back when I was first looking into them. It's short length, the designs, and the battle system were all things that brought me to it. I played it a few times, I technically beat it twice but the first time I quit because the epsxe emulator version I used didn't let me switch discs so I had to stop on Day 5. I came back and used a different version of the same emu and finished. It's been a few years, beat many games later and Duckstation has become a thing which is a far superior emulator to espxe in every way. I decided to have one Duckstation playthrough of PE since changing discs no longer means it's going to crash the game. It's a game I remember really liking and I still do now but there are some weird issues and quirks with it that can get in the way. As a whole, the game is interesting for what it pulled off for it's time and is endearing now.

The story in Parasite Eve is really impressive for how well presented it is especially back in the late 90s. Everything about it follows action movie and thriller logic. The game was marketed as a cinematic RPG but it can be shown in how it's pacing works. The game has a quick section where Aya and her boyfriend is watching an opera play and right away, it doesn't take too long for action to start and establishes that right away how fearless and to the point she is. Most of the game is paced this way. There will be decent stretches of gameplay then cutscenes while arguably a little too lengthy does feel earned since all the gameplay you had to go through to get there. The characters are also very compelling and it seems that writer knows what he is doing with how Daniel is introduced. A pestering reporter talks to Aya and he smacks him in the face. It's a great way to introduce a character. There are exposition sequences but there are entertaining character interactions, the script has it's moments letting the viewer to come to conclusions and everything goes by a lightning fast rate to reflect the fact that the story is taking place over the course of a few days.

One could criticize the lack of voice acting but it was not of high quality for console games at the time, you could run the risk of having narmy voice acting getting in the way of a good story like this. The soundtrack often does much of the heavy lifting

  
It is rather unfortunate the game fumbles hard on Day 5. Things were already off to a bad start where you are supposed to go a location called Chinatown but it's actually a sewer level...which is ultimately pointless since there was just a random explosion in the Museum rather than Aya herself finding the clue on top of lots of nothing during the sewer exploration. Making it worse. This is the longest chapter in the game and it can feel the most padded because of this. Outside of this, the story mostly hits the mark.

The gameplay is also just as interesting. It has elements of Resident Evil with backtracking and inventory management but the combat is turn based in real time. When first starting up the game, it surprisingly feels pretty simple to grasp. Sure you wait your turn but you can also avoid attacks in real time meaning there is some control you have during combat.

There are your regular fodder enemies during random battles but bosses require a little more thinking and you need to attack different weak points to effectively manage them. This keeps the puzzle element of turn based combat intact.

There is weapon customization and stats too but I mainly went for which did the most damage and there were too many tools I got which weren't really useful since mod permits are needed to effectively use them and I got two the whole game.

Dungeon design is also solid if at times the places can look too copy and pasted. Central Park and the Sewers being prime examples. The Hospital was the best one due to the routes and being slowly led around it.

There is one major problem however and that is Aya's very slow run speed. During the early game, it's fine but when the challenge ramps up with more and more enemies and bosses that various inflict status aliments, having no evade and her moving so ungodly slow isn't ideal. Haste helps but you get that on late into Day 3 and it's ridiculous to cast a buff just to have an ideal run speed to reliably dodge enemies attacks. It can get hard to reliably cast haste when dealing with status aliaments and regular enemy attacks when the buff wears off. 

The game also gets boring at around the 2nd visit to the Museum. Fodder enemies become too easy to takedown and there is overwhelming amounts of random encounters. It feels like it never stops. Just to have a fight with Eve who is much much harder than everything before her which can feel jarring. Eve is a massive damage sponge who almost felt immortal.

Final boss is okay but the hardest part is a weird scripted escape sequence.

Overall, despite some stumbles PE is still very good. 

Yooka-Replayee Review

I played the original Yooka Laylee around the time it came but I wasn't into collectathon platformers back then. I remembered it as the "overshadowed by a Hat in Time" game. I never even knew there was going to be an updated re release that would overhaul the original game almost a decade down the line. The changes is what brought me to this version at all. It sounded weirdly intriguing.

As a whole, this version of Yooka Laylee is decent but nothing really special. What I find amusing is that it sort of feels like it's Banjo Kazooie is aping off Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy. Examples being how all your moves are avaliable for you to use at the start of the game, making the obvious jab that there is autosave after getting a collectible unlike Banjo, how there are dual analog controls, and even more efficient menus tracking collectibles. This game does have a map along with the collectibles list. It did feel satisfying slowly checking it off even I don't need to get them all to beat the game.

Other than that, it's about what you expect form a the kind of game in the genre. You can bash the game for being derivative considering the original game was hyped for being by the developers of Banjo Kazooie but it didn't provide much new ideas of it's own and all the new ideas it did have were so bad this version changed it.

The moment to moment gameplay is enjoyable, exploring levels and finding pagies so you unlock more worlds. Platforming controls feel solid and the moveset feels good enough that the act of getting around in the world doesn't feel like a chore. I did enjoy running around the map and slowly unlocking most of the pagies I felt like getting. Most of the time, the clues are simple enough where there isn't a need for too much use of a walkthrough

They double the amount of pagies you can get meaning you do a good chunk of the game very quickly without needing to explore other levels but that's been a thing with the genre, the main difficulty comes from 100%ing it.

The combat can be a little too easy since you have an upgrade later in the game that can be make short work of most enemies which was supposed to be unlocked later but it did feel good to hit those enemies. Getting a game over is almost too hard except for maybe the bosses but the battle in the first world was the hardest before the final boss.

The final boss is where the game ramps up in difficulty due to how the boss himself can hit you while obscured off screen while trying to deal with area of effect electricity hazards and then later needing to deal with fodder enemies all at the same time. It took a number of tries to get past this part where everything before this I didn't die much at all. It was surprising since the rest of the game was on the easy side.

Overall, that's Yooka Replayee. It's a competent and enjoyable collectathon platformer. There is nothing it does extraordinarily well but nothing that really annoys when playing it either. I mainly wanted to play since I got it at a reduced price for owning the original and wanted to quickly get a game out of the way.