Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Review

All I knew about this title going in that it was made by the developers of Warhammer 40K Boltgun which is a game I enjoyed for the most. It did however turn out to be a complete surprise in more ways than one.

Ultimate Bug War isn't really a traditional "boomer" shooter but it also has elements of games like Halo with the two weapon limit, vehicles(mainly just mechs but still) and the the supply drops from Helldivers 2. There's even having other soldier NPCs help you like in a Halo and especially a CoD campaign which adds to the immersive feeling that you are in a large scale battle. It's impressive that this is all done in an indie pixel art game. It gives it's own unique feeling. You got the powerful feeling guns and bugs have satisfying gore effects when you kill them.

There's different kinds of guns like of course your assault rifles and shotguns but there is also energy weapons and my personal a carbine that is hits hard but can't be reloaded like an M1 Garande.

The different bug types do a decent job at changing things. There's your fodder but there also flying ones, armoured enemies and bugs that can shoot fire.

What really puts everything together is the bizarre framing that the campaign cutscenes uses. It's used in the satire videos that were in the initial Paul Verhovan movie but the video game that you bought is now being used as a propaganda simulator to help recruit new members into the Federation. These live action satire cutscenes are hilarious and it's good way to frame why a single soldier is able to feel so powerful while being a single soldier in the military and how the player is able to be so proficient at killing so enemies, the game you bought is a satire military recruitment advertisement after all.

I was already enjoying the game but this whole framing device tied everything in a nice bow.

You could argue that the only big gripe is that the game is too short and can be beaten very quickly on normal difficulty but I argue it would start to get monotonous and mind numbing if it were longer.

If you are unsure on the price, the game is certainly worth getting on a discount.

Overall, now with this and Robocop Rogue City, all it is needed is a solid Total Recall modern licensed game to close out the package. 

Crisol: Theater of Idols Review

For a is a cheap game that was shadow dropped out of nowhere, made by a newly formed dev team that seems to have the very least double AA production values, Crisol is rather impressive for what it is. There are some major issues that prevent from being a I would highly recommend instead of midly but for what's on offer here, it's impressive.

To sum up Crisol simpily, it's a horror game leaning towards the action side where you use your health as ammo for your guns. It's like if Resident Evil 4 and Village combined together. It's an interesting concept but due to the early game hell that is at the start, this is more of a hinderance rather than something you can use reliably or strategically. This could be due to me playing on controller but enemies on normal take way too many shots to die. Your shots in the early game do little damage and I was in many situations where I was either out of ammo or was too low on it due to enemies taking away a large chunk of health when hitting you. Syringes were also very scarce and the knife also inflicts very little stun on top of the parry being unreliable. The final nail in the coffin is that enemies can do a scripted attack when you are at critical health but it's hard to tell how low does your hp have to be for the scripted attack to happen.

Add to how slow paced combat feels and because of how infrequent checkpointing can feel because of this, I lowered to easy. It is still strange how you can't lower the difficulty once you start the game even though the game also allows for custom difficulty but how I can use it effectively if I can't do it while playing the game?

Once I got to easy combat started to get more enjoyable, enemies took much less shots to die, the knife felt more reliable to use and I had more HP to draw blood for ammo for the firearms. Guns also feel very nice and punchy and enemies also have location based damage like both various of Resident Evil. I started to get into the groove of combat more.

There are some annoying parts like traversing parts of levels with a stalker monster coming after you. Reaching it's lowest point in Chapter 2 where you need to sneak past her, kill flying enemies and archers WHILE she can hit you while also being blindsighted by mines when running away.

It also doesn't help that audio cues for mines and cameras are minimal leading to plenty of surprise out of nowhere attacks. Dead Space 2 did it far better when it's explosive alien husks.

After all that, the game gets noticeably easier with so many syringes, healing and ammo that it hard to feel geniunely threatened by anything. The final level can feel long and tedious due to how many puzzles and combat encounters you have to get to before fighting the final boss.

There is also too much of that infamous yellow paint. I try not to complain about it but Crisol has a bad habbit in putting them in obvious spots where by the time you interact with the level, you'll already know that's the only places you can go. The levels are not super open nor is there any platforming to warrant this.

To give some praise, the story is rather decent. Not amazing but the main character has a decent amount of personality and he does slowly change and learn humlity throughout the game despite being hostile towards everyone at first. Not amazing but it's solid. The story doesn't rely on notes as much as other horror games do.

Overall, decent game considering the price and the devs who made it even if I had a lot of issues with it.

Metroid Prime 4(Nintendo Switch) Review

Back when this game was announced in E3 of 2017 when the Switch was still a freshly released console who would've thought it would've taken almost 10 years for the game to come out and it would be 18 years after Prime 3's release, 15 years since the last "mainline" 3D Metroid and multiple 2D games in the series would be released. This also isn't including the massive boom with Metroidvanias in recent times. A lot has happened during the time it took for Metroid Prime 4 to release. After playing this game and while there are some notable flaws, it's rather impressive how much Retro Studios was able to salvage what was already a messy skeleton that Namco Studios made.

This is what caught me by surprise when booting up Prime 4. In spite of the fact it has been 18 years and 2-3 console gens later after the Wii, Retro working on two Donkey Kong Country games and not working on the series in so long, Prime 4 felt like it could've came out a few years after 3. The musical motifs, the look and asethethics of the series, the immersive touches like seeing Samus' reflections on her visor, the game feel all the way down to the auto locking and morph ball physics, it all feels in line with the series. It feels like a Retro Studios developed Prime game in spite of the very long time gap.

The visuals on Switch 1 are also impressive even now and the fidelity felt like an evolution over Prime 3. The only big downer is the super long load times.

With all that said, if you wanted a Super Metroid styled game in 3D like Prime 1, this game won't scratch that itch. In fact, it scratches a different kind of one. Prime 4 is more Zelda than Metroid both older and elements of the open world games.

This leads to the first negative. The shrines are completely pointless since progression in the story locks off your ability to complete them. New Zelda lets' you complete it's shrines in a varieity of different ways where Prime 4 has you do them in one way where you need a certain ablity to do them. Also doesn't help that the map never marks which shrines as not completed.

I'm not the biggest Zelda and I don't care for the overworld Prime 4 has much like older Zelda. If one good thing I can say about this is that if you know to constantly collect the green crystals while travelling around throughout the gme, it will be the shortest late game fetch quest in Metroid Prime history. It could be the longest if you don't know. I did wish the game did a better job at making this clear.

Story also is just there and isn't that great. Not the worst but it just exposes how Samus just feels like an overly expensive moving action figure when interacting with characters since she never even says anything nor do we know her inner thoughts like in Metroid Fusion. It made sense in Prime 1 and 2 since she never has to interact with anyone in those games but it exposes the problems in Prime 3 and 4. The npcs are moderately entertaining if nothing special. Them scarificing themselves the first time being a fake out but then dying for real against Sylux just made their actual deaths diminish the emotional impact. Sylux doesn't have much of a prescene in the story than fighting Samus a few times and then having some weird backstory.

Positives are that once you get past the tedious parts of trying to get to the dungeons like in older Zeldas, the dungeons themselves are pretty interesting like going to the Volt Forge to get the power on. Trudging your way through the Ice Belt with how windy certain parts of the level was. Fighting your way while escourting the characters in Flare Pool and having that really weird fake out countdown sequence or slowly going though the Great Mines and fighting off the Greivers while going through it.

The bosses are mostly solid with the worst being Sylux Phase 1 due to the reviving of teammates you got to do. I did enjoy the boss fight with Phenoros where there is decent specticle and good amount of challenge in dodging it's attacks while you are on the offensive. It was also nice to see the motorcycle get use outside of just only open world traversal. The only awkward part is remembering to use the control beam to finish off the boss. It pops up so infrequently that I always forgot I even have it. Same goes for the psychic glove.

I also enjoyed fighting the Omega Griever since it follows the formula of Metroid Prime bosses of finding out on how to damage it then dodging it's attacks and finally doing enough damage to finish it off. It hits the right spot at being a puzzle and having a good amount of action. My only big issue this time around is mashing A to get out of a boss' grab attacks since I hate doing mashing sequences in any game.

Final issue is that it did feel very grating that some switches had to be scanned while other could be interacted with by just pressing the button.

Overall, MP4 was an enjoyable game in spite of major issues. Games that take almost a decade to release could be worse than this.

Doom(1993)(Playstation 5) Review

There's so much that can be said about the original Doom. It was an early example of gaming going into the 3rd dimension, it helped popularize a genre that is still around now, it's been ported to many different systems and formed a popular franchise much like Resident Evil and Metroid managed to reinvent many times throughout it's long history. In spite of the original game being relatively short especially if it's the first 3 episodes, lacking in features like looking up and down and the lack of a jump. It's still endearing even now. The original Doom is a simple game but what it does is give solid moment to moment decision making and always adding different variations on already existing ideas. It's fine to be repetitive but it's not good to be monotonous which Doom avoids. It's just one of those games where I supposed to play a few levels than stop but I ended up beating all 3 episodes in one sitting since I found it that fun.

The first pillar Doom does well is it's weapons. Sure a little tame by today's standards but every weapon outside of the pistol has a clear and distinct role during gameplay. Shotgun is good for close and long range but can take a quite a number of shots to kill an enemy depending on the range. Doom's shotgun has novelties of it's own that other video game shotguns don't have like being effective at longer ranges too. Chaingun is good for keeping enemies in one place and prevents them from getting closer or firing projectiles. Rocket launcher fires projectiles and is slow moving but can do a lot of damage you might need to guide it's shots to be effective with it. Splash damage can also hurt you and do a lot of damage so it's a no no at close range. Plasma rifle runs out of ammo fast but can kill multiple horde in one burst. The BFG of course is a weapon that do massive damage but it's better to be saved during a huge swarm.

The second pillar is the level design and variation. Doom has it's mazes of course but there is always variations to it's level design. There will be close quarters battles with enemies waiting to ambush you from behind corners. There could be an imp from afar firing a projectile or they could above or below you. There might be a shotgunner hiding from behind a pillar waiting to shoot you. You could pick up a key and enemies will spawn in from and cover your entire flank. The lighting could be a lot darker having you be careful on when is a good time to aim your shot on an enemy. There could be a wide open circular arena with lots of enemies for you to shoot. Teleporters can put you into different parts of the maps. The floors could have lava or be acidic so be careful that your health doesn't drain when on them. Elevators add verticality. Switches can open up new parts of the map or have enemies spawn in. Imps could be behind walls and shoot fireballs when behind them. You can also get crushed by moving ceilings too. There's also secrets to find rewarding people who throughly explore.

The only geniunely bad level out of the original 3 episodes is limbo due to how many lava floors that drain your health there is and over reliance on teleporters. It does say a lot when it's the only geniunely bad level.

The 3rd pillar are the enemies. You got the imps who are weak but can throw a projectile a fast moving projectile. There is a possesed human and his deadlier shotgun wielding variant who are hitscan but can die quickly. The pinky demon and his invisible counterpart where they are deadly upclose but can rush you if you aren't careful. Lost souls that can quickly zone in and hit you but can be taken out with a shotgun blast. The Cacodemon who float take more damage than the imp and can do more damage when firing projectiles. Then the strongest of the enemy line up being the Baron of Hell, they take a lot of damage and their projectiles can do a lot of damage if you aren't constantly strafing out of the way.

When you combine all these pillars together while you get game that while simple on paper can have plenty of variations and permutations on what kind of encounters and levels that can be created. There's a reason why it often gets cited so much when it comes to game design. Combine all this with a great soundtrack that does a great job adding to the upbeat power fantasy and I can see why I beat the game in one sitting rather than take my time.

The only real weak link are the bosses like the Cyberdemon and Mastermind. They are mainly just threatning due to how much damage they can do to you while you widdle away at their health using your stronger weapons. In Mastermind's case it mainly just had a super annoying hitscan chaingun. These levels are short and are over before you know it so you aren't even dwellling on this very long. In Mastermind's case, Limbo is such a long and confusing level that beating him quick with a good amount of health remaining can almost feel like the true reward.

Overall, my love for the original Doom has grown even more.

Tales of Berseria Remastered Review

Been planning to play this game for years but never knew how to approach JRPGs but after playing some YS games and Tales of Xillia, and with the recent remaster, I decided to finally jump into Berseria all though I might've learned recently that it's a prequel to the maligned Zestria. As a whole, I did enjoy my time with Berseria even if the gameplay is worse than Xillia and there are some major issues with the story pacing in the middle half of the game. It's also longer than Xillia and with the story pacing issues I mentioned it can feel that way.

The story which is usually the main attraction for these games is mostly on the good if not great at certain points. The prologue is fantastic for the most part, the initial backstory of Velvet's early childhood could be delivered better since it felt sudden but the rest of it is great. It can be a little reminscent of Berserk's eclipse but there's enough here to defreniate Berseria from that.

Like in Xillia, the characters and the synergy they have is by far the biggest high point of the game. The way the party banters especially during the skits do a great job at fleshing them out during frequent combat portions of the game and is a great way to have the other party members get involved even if you don't use them in combat. It's still shocking it's exclusive to this series. One complaint I do have is that it can get a little overdone here. There are moments you will run for little while if not less than that and a cutscene that is presented like a skit starts to playing then there are 3 if not 4 skits after that. Xillia did pace them out a lot better.

The story during the early and latter portions are quite good and move at a decent pace. There is the middle portions of the game where Shepard Artorious and the Abbey lose Velvet and the team's trailer and they disappear from the story for so long, I almost forgot there was any looming danger the cast has to worry about. There is a scavenger hunt where many of the monsters the characters try to get end in failure and there is this one child monster who is really annoying and serves no geniune purpose to the story. He has one touching scene where Velvet hugs me while unloading his hatred on to her but that's it. There is also a very long section where a book has to get translated and these sections really do move slowly.

When the fight does get back to the villains, it does get good and thought provoking again. There is a twist late game where it recontextualizes her whole revenge quest and it made into a much deeper character. She eventually mellows out becomes more like how she was in the prologue before she got consumed by hate.

The other characters like Rangetsu and Magilou have more agency towards the end and the story finally starts to pick up. It's just that I always have to think, "man that middle section was such an annoying drag". The ending was decent but the fact that it's a prequel to Tales of Zestria did hold the ending back from being more impactful since it felt like it was setting up for a game I'm not sure if I'll even play.

Gameplay on the other hand is where the gameplay for the most part is worse than Xillia. No linking or linked artes, no special move shortcuts, and the gear and weapon systems are presented in a convoluted way. Half the time I wonder if me buying new gear and weapons actually did much of anything. There's a stamina meter which replaces the turns you can do but that just made everything needlessly confusing. I eventually lowered to easy to get to the story faster.

One improvement is that there are actual dungeons this time and the devs seem to know how copy and pasted the level design is so they added those cat orbs to give the player a good idea where they are going without using the full map or mini map. The dungeons are okay if nothing special except for a bizarre water dungeon a good way into the game where you need to press a bunch of switches in a certain order to progress. Whole thing is a massive curve ball compared to the rest of the game.

Overall, I did like enjoy my time with Tales of Berseria in spite of it's problems even if there are certain parts I don't want to do again any time soon like that dreadful middle portion of the game. The highs of the narrative are still high with that said.

Resident Evil: Requiem Review

Resident Evil Requiem is such a fascinating game in that considering how much success Capcom had with Village, you'd think they'd just do a variation on that or just make a more casual friendly RE like last time but no they chose to up their game and attempt something different...or at least aspects of Requiem can feel that way. That's the thing with RE Requiem, when it's good, it's great when it's bad, it can really be stupid. There's aspects of the game that are interesting and adds new spins on existing ideas but there are other parts that ride off the coat tails of nostalgia. It's been said many times that it's a tale of two REs but I'd argue it's that while also being a tale of two Capcoms. The storytellers and as game designers.

I'll start off with the story and to no surprise at all, it's terrible. I always found it amusing how much effort Capcom puts into the narrative of these games since the overarching plot of the series is convoluted fecal matter. I'll keep my critique to this just this game as much as I can. It turns out there's another surviving Umbrella researcher named Victor Gideon. Who isn't named until now among such other names like James Marcus, William and Anette Birkin, Albert Wesker, Ozwell Spencer and are Sergei Vladimir and the Red Queen canon anymore? I don't know. You got a new character through Grace Ashcroft whose mother from the Outbreak games suffers the same fate as Harry Mason in Silent Hill 3. Grace tries to be like Stanley Goodspeed from The Rock but isn't as likeable while asking people if they are lying or wanting to give her life to protect blind girl who is a grotesque monster but only knew her for a few hours.

Leon and Sherry got infected by some virus offscreen and he needs to remind everyone that there's still some connecting tissue to the franchise considering the Ethan Winters games were basically filler arcs. He goes through some CGI movie bike chases with some nostalgia pandering to the RPD while him dealing with both Victor and a Wesker wannabe known as Xeno. It all culminates with Ozwell Spencer being a very important character despite being dead since RE5 and the story won't really acknowledge this. Then the it ends with Leon's disease he got off screen being cured and contacts Chris for more episodes for this on going terrible TV show.

Alright, I did speak about the story in a more facetious manner than I normally do but trying to actually talk about it with it a straight face would be even harder to do.

Now the tale of two REs and Capcom as game designers. The game fares much better here or at least during the Care Center part and to a lesser extent the downtown Racoon City portions.

If we are talking about the Care Center where you play as Grace. It is some of the best survival horror gameplay the series has ever seen. There's so many new things added to breathe new life into the gameplay. You have the zombies with different characteristics, personalities and patrol patterns where their characteristics change the more of the map you unlock. There's zombies like the Chief and singing lady for example.

Not only this but you can either sneak past them by using stealth but if you get caught or you can stagger them with bullets and make a quick getaway or run and try to break line of sight.

The zombies also can't be killed unless if you use a hemo injector or the Requiem Bullets so it's best to pick and choose which zombies you want to get rid of especially on which routes you want to take. They turn into Blister heads and can be very damage spongey, it's better to not use bullets but to either have Requiem bullets or stun them and then use a hemo injector so the game heavily encourages to never fight them.

The Care Center itself is one of my favorite maps in the series up there with the likes of the Spencer Mansion and the RPD. It has enough shortcuts and twists and turns and it's just large enough to not be overwhelming. I still have the west and east wing connecting hall in my head.

This is however not all of Requiem. You got the action sections with Leon and they range from, "this is kind of cool but that was over fast" to "wished we had some longer levels" to "oh my this is terrible". There's the Blister Borne but you only fight him twice. The downtown Racoon City section was the best Leon part since it kind of has the same semi open world that Jacksville from TLOU2 had where there's an overarching objective but lots of secrets and side paths to find.

Then it's all downhill from there. You have a stupid Advent Children and CGI RE movie playable motorcycle chase. Then a REmake 2 RPD visit a series of weak bosses with Tyrant, Plant 42, and a TLOU style hitscanner battle horde fight that ends in killing Hunk.

It gets a better when you play as Grace and have to stealth past Lickers and get resources to use molotovs if caught and ends with a dumb boss against Victor. Who's Xeno again?

Overall, RE9 is some of the best RE but is messy too

Yakuza Kiwami(Playstation 5) Review

Playing Yakuza Kiwami again was an interesting experience because I remember having a fondness for the original Yakuza's story and even going out of my way at multiple points to say it's one of the better narratives in the series and how the series got dumber and the villain writing got worse the more the franchise went on like say Metal Gear Solid. Playing Kiwami again however, it's hard where I got those notions from. I'm starting to think it was me being enamoured by the idea of the original Yakuza's story more so than the execution of it. It's not a repulsively terrible story but at the same time I question how you could make a long running series with an average at best story with an amazing premise like this one. I can now see why Yakuza 0 and 2 were considered better narratives especially with the flaws the latter has or how the former does very little legwork to improve Yakuza 1's story.

Before I start describing why I'm so lukewarm on Kiwami. The game itself isn't really a remake of the original PS2 game from 2005, it's more of a remake that is sequel to Yakuza 0. It's easy to see with Kiryu having the fighting like Brawler, Tiger and Rush from 0 and having his signature Dragon of Dojima locked behind the Majima is Everywhere is system. This is one of the most questionable aspects that Kiwami brings. It's retroactively made after the fact that Majima had limited screen time in the original game and the devs never expected him to be as popular as he was. You love Majima from 0 especially? Here's more of him more than you could ever want. This is still ultimately a mostly faithful retelling of Yakuza 2005's story so there are bizarre moments like where he gets stabbed and then pops up later in Soapland where the story still acknowledges his stab wound.

Then there is how bosses can have fighting styles that are similar to ones found in 0 like one of the Akai brothers having the Breaker style Majima had in 0.

With all that out of the way, Yakuza Kiwami and by extension the original game's story has an interesting premise of a man who was in jail in 10 years and having to take care of his lover's daughter while trying to find his foster father while learning about how his best friend has become a completely different person during those 10 years.

Much of this said story is mostly a series of wild goose chases and completely unrelated subplots that don't really advance the story. For example subplots involving Date and Florist is just filler. When you solve Florist's family issues the dead body with Mizuki pops up not because Kiryu did the favors but out a random picture of that dead body that Florist just suddenly finds. After that Haruka gets kidnapped a few times, you find her. Then go after Shinji and Reina and then the plot slowly wraps up and as you given so much information on everything. It doesn't help that characters like Shinji Tanaka barely show up and have much presence in the story. Shintaro Kazama barely has much presence in the story since he is in hiding for much of it. Shimano barely does much of anything that makes you dislike him. Nishki himself could be an awesome combination of Fredo from the Godfather and Harry McDowel from Gungrave but even he's out for much of the actual story.

I do like some of the flashback cutscenes with him but much of them is going over how awesome Kiryu is. Shimano even tries to glorify Kiryu taking the blame for Dojima's murder even though it was supposed to be an act of selflessness.

The cutscene where Nishki becomes the person he is in the main story and how he got his hair was pretty well directed.

Then there is fact that the bad guys only get anywhere in the story because Kiryu doesn't kill them but someone else will kill them after. This is an issue with the whole series unfortunately.

What does prevent me from disliking the story as much as say the first Red Dead Redemption is that the last few hours of Kiwami are pretty good and has some solid character work. Yumi telling Nishki that he is just running away is a solid line even if the writing up until that point was lacking. The final battle was pretty epic and Kiwami's version of "for whose's sake" make the final boss more epic than the writing did. Made me want to ignore Majima is everywhere more so the song and battle last longer.

The gameplay is pretty much Yakuza 0 but much harder. Heat moves do much less damage. Bosses now needed get hit by heat climax finishing move or else their health will regenerate.

What's worse now brittle Kiryu is even by comparison to the PS2 original. He can be staggered very easily and if enemies have weapons it's a game of how much Kiryu gets staggered and how many healing items the player has to see if the enemy and boss health bar will go down before Kiryu gets stunned yet again.

This does get mitigated with more upgrades you put into Kiryu but it'll still be prevelant.

Overall, while Kiwami is okay, I can see the lukewarm reception it got