Halo: Campaign Evolved(Playstation 5) Review

When this remake was announced and it being on put on Playstation no less I was like, "you could've just ported the Master Chief Collection instead". A remake like this does sound redundant on paper since the original Halo CE is often cited as an old shooter especially on consoles that still holds up today. With that said, while the existence of this game is rather questionable, playing it in the moment is "fine" at least for the for the first half of the game. It's not as nearly as much of a souless remake as the Metal Gear Solid Delta is. There's some interesting cutscene changes and some fun bonus missions here.

The best way of describing "Campaign Evolved" is that what if you had "Combat Evolved" but with the gamefeel of the 343's Halos and modern additions like sprinting, vehicle jacking and Halo 2's regen health. You also have the quest markers be there at all times rather than having them pop up at random points instead.

Story is much of the same but there is newly recorded voice acting and some cutscene changes. For one Miranda Keyes gets established early on as opposed to coming out of nowhere like in Halo 2. There is one hilarious cutscene change of two Hunters getting crushed by a Covenant ship at the end of the Truth and Reconcilation. Fohammer's model is actually shown and a really cool one of Chief fighting off Covenant before boarding the ship to get off Halo at the end of the game among others.

It's much of the same as a whole so it's basically just an excuse plot where it has slightly more going on than games like old Doom and Duke Nukem. It can be summed up like this: Covenant find Pillar of Autumn, Chief and Cortana crashland on Halo, find Captain Keyes, they find 343 Guilty Spark, there's a the flood, Halo is a doomsday weapon meant to kill them, blow up the Autumn and get off. It's as simple as I described similar to the vein as the original Star Wars before being retractively called a New Hope. There's not much in the way of interesting characterization and themeatic richness to be found here. It's as simple as I described it.

It's "fine" in the moment but it can be very simplistic and barebones compared to the multimedia franchise and expanded universe the series ultimately ended up spawning. The fact that much of the story was in a tie in novel would no doubt get scruntized if Halo was a brand new IP released today. World building without needing supplementary material was something even A New Hope had. There's no fun, destable or interesting villain here either.

Halo is an FPS after all and you came here for gameplay and for the first half of the game is quite good. Aspects of the game compared FPS of yester year is how streamlined everything is. No need to collect ammo since you just need to pick up weapons already on the ground or off dead enemies. Health management? No longer needed since your health regens so no need to worry about health pick ups.

Enemies are a lot smarter by comparison to those games where Covenant Elites will flank, move out of the way or will try to come up and ambush you if there shield isn't depleted. There's also the shield and flesh system where bullets drain flesh and plasma drains shields.

Vehicle sections are here too to break up the pace all though it's awkward to see the controls changed here since it now controls like a vehicle in anyother game

The environments are a mixed bag on the positive side, they are a lot bigger compared to the corridors and round circles and squares of shooters prior to this but at the same time so much of the design is copy and pasted which can lead to samey areas and bloated maps. You can tell that the devs of this remake are aware of this so they added nav points at all times now.

Some aspects I appreciate more now like how during the one section with no gun, it's there so the player can get used to controlling the camera. The first level is also meant to train you for the larger maps like Halo and also with higher enemy count and stronger enemies like in Truth and Reconcilation.

Assault on Control room is going through the same triagular areas 3 times and from then on the campaign gets weaker.

The 2nd half of the game is still very weak. If you didn't like the first half the game, then stop at 343 Guilty Spark because after the Library it's just the first half in reverse. You fight the Flood and all they are is that they swarm you and that's it. You point, you shoot, get hit, regen health, reload and then throw grenade every once and a while.

There are people who boil down FPS and shooters to "point and shoot". That's what these Flood sections are. They are very dull. The addition of sprint means that these sections are over faster and you could run past them on lower difficulties. The inconsistent checkpoint system is still very annoying but that is a Halo staple at this point. 

I did enjoy the extra campaign missions but they have more environment variety than the 2nd half of the game and there's no Flood battles.

Overall, questionable remake but still fun in the moment for the 1st half.

Metal Gear Solid 4(Playstation 5) Review

The common joke when discussing MGS4 for the longest time was whether or not it would ever leave the PS3. It finally did and with a solid functioning port too. I have a weird relationship with this title. I have beaten the game multiple times over the years but the more I start to play it, the more I start to realize that the game's strengths in terms of gameplay and even story comes Acts 1 and 2. Everything after the Act 3 tailing mission is where the game become diminishing returns and that's what sums up MGS4. It's the personfication of that very term.

I often start these write ups with story first but I have to here since you'll be engaging with that more than any other aspect of this game. It's been said and mocked to death how you'll spending more time watching cutscenes than actually playing the game. This has always been the case with the prior Solid games but MGS4 really wants to sell you on it's story.

It's easy to point out the issues like exposition that go on for ages, characters constantly reminding the audience of things they already know, the overuse of nostalgia baiting or mention of characters who weren't in the Solid games like Dr. Madnar, the constant retconning especially with many of them involving nanmachines, the rewrites or nothing changing for established characters, the open ended ideas MGS2 established being barely touched on or contradicted or how characters taking an excuriatingly long time trying to figuring things out. Two eregious examples is Meryl taking a long time to figure out that Johnny wasn't hooked on nanomachines or Otacon taking a few minutes to figure out Liquid Ocelot needed Rex even though it was already mentioned in the MK2 recording before getting destroyed.

What destroyed the story fundamentally was just how much of a disinterested and lifeless bore Old Snake is. The story never feels like you are going on a self discovering journey with him. Most of it is hearing other characters talk on and on and Snake just listens to them even him taking what someone just said and turning it into a question is gone. Now it's just replaced with awkward silence and cold indifference as characters around him keep on talking. Solid Snake at least showed enthusiasim in MGS1 and 2 but here he just wants to kill Liquid Ocelot and stop his insurrection because Campbell told him too.

Speaking of Campbell, this transitions me to the good. He and Raiden are some of the better characters in the game. Campbell in this game is in line with MGS1 where he witholds information from his friends and loved ones even if it means he'll hurt them for the greater good. Raiden also is one of the few characters Old Snake cares about and shows any conviction in saving. Him bringing out the best in Old Snake makes the former one of the better characters by proxy.

The cutscenes are beautifully rendered and are mostly very directed and the music, man the music it does so much of the heavy lifting where the story is unable to. It's a good thing these two aspects are top notch since without them, the game would be very insufferable to go through especially the ending that is as long as a feature length film.

This now transitions to gameplay and well thing is there's aspects about it I do enjoy. Act 1 and 2 feel like a streamlined version of MGS3. Octocamo is far better than the camo system in that game. The environments are more open and the psyche meter keeps the surivival system of that game without adding needless bloat. The controls are better now with crouch walking and there's actual third person grass crawling animations. CQC is more refined although it didn't get much use this playthrough.

There is also an encouragement to use the tranq pistol since in Act 1 and 2 it's about all out avoidance or you could help either side. Enemy gunfire can also tear thorough Snake's health quick on Solid Normal and it goes back to the ration system and no very slow regen health from MGS3.

If MGS4's was just this with occasional shakeups(notable one in Act 2 when tracking Naomi), I would be much more positive on the game but it isn't. Remember when I said it was diminishing returns? This is what I meant. Act 3 at the start has a decent tailing mission but it's divorced from the kind of stealth earlier. After that? It's just set pieces, boss fights and the stealth gameplay itself starts to dwindle the more the game goes on. You go back to Shadow Moses in Act 4 but since it is that level it has that more linear cramped block designs of MGS1 with annoying enemy placements for the Dwarf Gekko. You could cheese these with chaff grenades and I wouldn't blame you then it's setpieces and boss fights.

Act 5 has one very brief sneaking section and it's bosses and long cutscenes after.

Overall, MGS4 is mostly cutscenes and the story isn't very good with only Act 1 and 2 having decent writing. Same can be said for the gameplay. It can be easy to dislike despite not being bad on a technical level.

Cosmic Star Heroine Review

I'm not really familiar with turn based games outside of this and Child of Light. I remember being so mesmerized by the game at the time. A turn based game with a combat system I was really into, the soundtrack, a shorter RPG with quick action movie style pacing. It really did nail a lot in spite of not being familar with the genre in question and haven't really played many afterwards.

The story is interesting in that it's a bit of a double edged sword. RPGs are known for being long games and a time sync and this is game that gives you a quick and to the point experience. It's refreshing even now with only games made by the same dev and the occasional new release doing it.

As a result, the pacing goes by quick and there isn't too much meandering with the exception of going Rhomu and trying to get a macguffin there. The ealier parts and after do have the pacing go back to normal.

This can be a double edged sword like I said earlier. It's essentially what if a JRPG was paced like an action film? In action movies, you more or less expect the film to have charismatic characters with some depth thrown in here and there. In an RPG especially JRPG especially how long they are, it's expected that by the end, you have come to learn more and went on a big journey with them.

As a result, many of the characters at least on the main questline can feel like you don't know much about. It's like they're just there for the ride. It's charming but can also feel weird.

The soundtrack is amazing especially when I first listened to it. They add a sense of adventure and whimsy to the locations you are in. They are also catchy tunes in their own right. They can also be very chill to listen as well.

Combat is where things get interesting. You got the style system. What especially is interesting is how JRPG turn based battles can be infamous for how long they can last. Cosmic Star Heroine subverts this by encouraging the player to finish battles quickly. The longer they go on, the harder they become. The more fighting wears on, the less damage your characters will be able to take.

What helps with all this is hyper mode and when to time it right with your stronger attacks. There's also different enemies being weak to certain elemental weaknesses too or how you can give damage buff on a character one turn before a hyper mode activation.

To add to all this, there is different team up moves you can do with various party members. Depending on how experimental you get, you can end battles in wild ways too. Like for example, if you widdle down a boss' health down enough you can do a devastating attack that could to finish the fight but a risk is that you could have low HP. You can also finish fights by even using status aliaments too. You can charm enemies and even prevent them from attacking for one turn.

Two issues to level at the game is that the game requires you to play with certain party members so abilities and powers you were used to by that point are now taken away. You get to used to fighting with the new party members but then you swap again. By the time you get to freely swap, it starts to feel awkward since it's been so long since you used them. With a game as short as that, it's hard to get experimental with certain team ups too.

Second issue is that fights can go on for too long especially when you get a decent while into Rhomu and into the swamp level. Normal enemy battles have large amounts of HP and they start to feel like bosses. As a result, when you fight bosses especially when they can attack you twice in one turn, it becomes a game of them of constantly comboing you and then die. The game can get challenging even on easy at times.

Prior to the that the battles went on at a reasonable pace.

Overall, I still do enjoy the game and still give it credit for exposing me to a turn based combat system I find interesting. There are issues I notice a lot more now when replaying the game but there's lots of positives to balance it out.

Mafia II Review

Oh Mafia 2. I recently replayed the Definitive Edition of the first game after I recently finished The Old Country. I recall being lukewarm when I initially beat Mafia 2. The game seemingly didn't have the open world that Mafia 3 would be infamous for. If it didn't why was so I lukewarm on Mafia 2 but really enjoyed the first game's remake? Playing it again, I understand better.

I recall really enjoying to Mafia Definitive Edition and still do after replaying it. Mafia 2 on the other hand was a lot more hazey by comparison. I can see why that is now. I see on some parts on the internet that Mafia 1's story is cliched and Mafia 2 is more interesting due to being more ambitious. I disagree with that notion. I prefer a simple story that is well presented over a poorly presented complex one.

Mafia 1 was following the story of Tommy Angelo who starts off as a lowly cab driver but then discovers the mob, rise through the family ranks becomes disillusioned then tries to leave.

Mafia 2 tries have more subplots and be told over the course of multiple years and eras. A big issue is how there are a number of plot points and threads that ultimately go nowhere. Some examples include the hinted romance between Vito and the hooker. It seems that they're going to happen but once he goes to jail, this sub plot is dropped.

Vito's sister in Francesca shows up and here and there but has no promient presence in the story. A particularly ergregious example is during a chapter, you think everything about to wrap up but then out of nowhere she calls him about her cheating boyfriend. After this? Gone. In the same chapter, you get attack by the irish and get your house burned down out of nowhere considering the boyfriend subplot was disconnected from this.

Late game there's someone who is revealed to be a rat for the feds and the character is so underdeveloped that the twist can come out of nowhere.

No joke, on the last mission of the game. Vito's father who by this point in the story has accepted that his dad was a deadbeat loser turns out his death was actually a murder and he was standing up for his fellow workers. I usually try not to use the term "retcon" when something feels out of nowhere in a story since they happen with prequels and sequels but how out of nowhere this was, it can feel that way.

Don Clemente is also just randomly comes back in the story after seemingly is written out.

To top off all this, the ending can feel like a cliffhanger and is a massive step down compared to the first game's very well written conclusion.

After all this, what prevents me from being harsher on the story? The voice acting is very good and the chemestry between Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro carries A LOT of the game's story. Their interactions are very fun to listening to and the journey the two have together is the one narrative thread that persists throughout the game. If you cut this aspect out, I wouldn't even get to the end.

Gameplay is where it's really easy for me to get harsh on. Yes, Mafia 2 seemingly has the structure of the first game and it's remake where the open world is optional...but that is deceptive. Most of your time in Mafia 2 is spent driving. It's almost 60% of the game. If not 70%. You watch a cutscene that lasts less than 5 minutes and then 5-10 minute driving sequence then watch another cutscene and back to more driving. They changed the police system this time but considering how long driving to the next destination is, the cops can feel more like an annoying progression roadblock.

Compare that to the first game where car rides went by quickly and the car chases happened during big story moments. In Mafia 2, it's easy to call it downtime driving simulator. At times, it felt like the plot points dropped were supposed to be their own quest lines in a traditional open world.

Fist fighting is just kind of there. It doesn't have much going on to really go into detail on.

Then there's the shooting. Oh the shooting. I originally played on normal difficulty and thought easy mode might make it more bearable. It didn't. You can get down to critical health very fast on easy mode too.

A big issue with cover combat is that the higher you raise the difficulty or the more that is added, the longer time is spent waiting for health to regen. Mafia 2 is this. The big challenge of the shooting is hoping you can kill an enemy fast enough before they hit you and your health goes down to critical. Die? Do it all again since checkpoints aren't that frequent.

So much time is spent just waiting for health to regen and trying to land a shot on an enemy. Third party controller did add extra issues I will admit.

A good aspect of combat is that weapons kind of feel punchy. Sound design could be better.

Overall when looking back on my time with Mafia 2, I can't help but say to myself, "oh my god I spent hours of my life doing boring car rides and drawn out cover shootouts. I don't want to touch this again."

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition Review

As much as I have a soft spot for this game being one of the big titles that got me more into gaming that went beyond licensed games and the occasional Ratchet and Clank, playing it now made me realize more than ever the amount of flaws there is. When it comes to combat, visuals and music. DMC4 comes together but it is marred by so many other issues that undermine those qualities too. I'm going to try to be as quick and concise as I can be regarding how lukewarm I am on this game.

The story comes first and to put it kindly, it's remarkable how a plot for an action game like this can be hard to follow and underdeveloped at the same time. I'll give the game credit for it's moderately well done opening with the nice angelic choir song and later with Dante showing up shooting a religious figure in the head and the game starting off with a fight against him. Everything goes downhill after that. The story afterwards tries to have an overarching conspiracy plot that is very half baked with underdeveloped characters to partner it.

It's easy to tell since after Credo orders Nero to go after Dante. The thing is, you are searching all around for an empty town with no idea where he could be, his last sighting or where he might go next. Just hope you wander around for a while and he pops up. Compare that to DMC3 and even 1. In the former, Arkham attacks Dante and Vergil summons a tower, you go to that tower and fight him. DMC1 has Dante be hired by Trish who uses the face of the former's mother to encourage him even more to go there.

There's a locations that make me wonder why they are even there. There's a castle in the snow but also one in a forest? Why is there two locations that are both are a home base?

The characters are underdeveloped like Kyrie who is just soft spoken childhood friend of Nero's with nothing else to flesh her and is just a damsel. Credo is supposed to be Nero's equivilant to Vergil and Nelo Angelo but you only fight him once and then in the next scene after Santcus kills him. For a game that already reuses bosses, it's rather bizarre how quickly Credo is gone despite his importance to the story of being a rival to Nero.

Nero is a stock standard generic protagonist you could find in a shonen anime with not much making him stand out.

Wait, Devil May Cry already had an established protagonist, it's Dante. To give the story some credit, he's easily the best part. Watching the more flanderized version of him 3 but now more powerful than ever in 4 is fun to watch. Watching him taunt and make fun of his enemies is a joy to see. His personality, the way he acts, it creates a ludonarrative harmony with the gameplay....unforuntately, this version is more along the lines of Jack Sparrow. He's a supporting character in someone else's story and that is Nero. Why do we need the him? Dante's is already very powerful and it's not like he ages like a normal human.

Santcus is a unsurprisingly is an undercooked villain and with how powerful Dante is now. He's somehow supposed to get Dante into his statue of doom. With no worf effect on Dante and how powerful he is protrayed, it almost feels like Dante didn't want to finish off Santcus as a way being nice to Nero. Santcus has some vague plan on having the world worship Sparda but no idea how it was going to occur.

I've been going on about the story but it's just awful that it's hard not to write this much about it.

Gameplay fares better...when it comes to combat. Nero is initially fun to play as with using Red Queen combo A, B and C, alternate to buster, using snatch, going up in the air, hitting the enemy then charge Blue Rose up to do a powerful shot. However the only new ablitiy in combat Nero gets is Devil Trigger and the rest are puzzle items and navigation abilties.

Dante of course is better. You got style switch, different weapons and different guns to use and it's better than Nero's limited arsenal but Dante only has 7 missions and everything is given at a rapid fire pace. You know it's crazy when Dante gets a new fighting style and he's fighting a puzzle boss for his final level. DMC, a game acclaimed for it's combat having a puzzle boss. That's quite a low.

So you got more missions as a character with less and less missions with a character with more. There's also the whole thing of backtracking to the start of the game fighting the same bosses but that's been said to death.

The proud soul system is terrible. You only get a significient amount after a mission so Divinity Statue visits during missions when not buying items is pointless. You can't buy anything until a mission is done and get a good number of points to buy anything. This problem goes double for Dante since he has 7 missions.

The platforming and puzzle sections are unnessecary since it's combat focused but outside of a terrible one with spikes in Fortuna Castle, they aren't too annoying. The dice game bad.

Overall, good combat but a weak campaign surronding it.

Ruiner Review

This was a game I played a while back due to me liking the way it sounded. A twin shooter with over the top glory kills? Sign me up. I decided to play the game again just to see if I still would and I still do enjoy it. If anything, I consider Ruiner so much fun to play that I wished it was longer since the 4-5 hours it takes to beat the game can breeze by so quickly. Maybe 7-8 hours would be fine for me.

Ruiner is quite the charming game. It's an overly violent cyberpunk twin shooter that can almost resemble various cyberpunk anime. It even has Susumu Hirasawa of Berserk fame doing some of the tracks in the game. Speaking of that, they are quite good especially the overworld theme. It has much of his singing you can find in the 90s Berserk soundtrack although it shares some resemblance to the tracks of the Dreamcast game. The end credits theme is also quite good, I'm a little surprised I didn't spot him the first time I beat it.

The story is quite minimal but it does try to have more going on with it having what is seemingly an unreliable narrator. It's sort of vagely intriguing. There was one part of the game where a boss was called "TrafficKing" which can be almost too on the nose for me.

Gameplay is what is you'll primarily doing. Shooting and blasting your way through hordes of enemies. It does share similaries with Doom 2016 almost to the point where it feels like what if that was a twin stick shooter. Ruiner does have a dash mechanic a few years before Eternal would adopt it.

You can attack through melee and shooting. Attacks are mostly projectile with melee users. Battle are a fun ballet of using your Ruiner Gun which is similar to Robocop's Auto 9 with it's burst fire. You'll be switching between many guns with no reloading or two weapon limits either. Similar to how Neo was using firearms in The Matrix. That and constantly dashing and eventually doing the glory kills on downed enemies like I mentioned earlier. This is encouraged to get back health and be more aggressive in combat.

I did wish melee played a bigger role, I mainly did it occasionally on normal difficulty.

There's also a skill tree system that allows different for play styles and abilties. Not a big fan of this since I prefer to have it be structured in a more linear and universal way. This can sort of create "replay value" since I went with abilities I didn't get in my first playthrough. In this one, I unlocked and put points into a slo mo bullet time style ability similar to Max Payne and FEAR. It can help moving away from projectiles easier and aim shots with the sticks since I played on PS5.

You can also pause the screen and time and chain dashes but considering how fast and frenetic combat can be partnered with the bullet time ablity, actively using does feel like it would slow things down even more.

There also random deaths because a dropship landed and it instantly kills you.

Bosses are just okay and kind of feel like spongey fodder enemies.

With all this said, my only big issue is the length since it all this can feel so quick and breezy. This could be me having so much fun that I wish the game was slightly longer. The issues I mentioned are just minor in the grand scheme things especially with how enjoyable the action is. Since the pacing is so fast and it checkpoints so often that the super annoying parts never last long enough to feel insufferable.

Overall for a game I decided to just randomly feel like playing again. It lived up to my initial thoughts I had about it which is always a sigh of relief for me since it tells me I know my tastes well.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review

The best way to describe Shadow of the Tomb Raider is "arc fatigue" the game. The signs were already there in Rise of the Tomb Raider where Lara is learning the same lesson she learned in the 2013 reboot. Everything about the game feels like we should just move on already but let's drag things out furthur. It can be seen in the story and gameplay. As a whole, the whole title feels like making a new Tomb Raider for the sake of it but at the same time, she can't "become" the Tomb Raider she's destined to be just yet.

Story is a good example of this. Rise already shoehorned a bizarre rivalry between Lara and a secret organization bent on world domination known as "Trinity". This game is here to quickly wrap it up. It's easy to tell just by the way it starts. The after credits ending of Rise protray them as a group is very secretive and shouldn't be messed with. At the start of Shadow, Lara already manages to figure out who the leader is. Speaking of this "leader", he is super dull and uninteresting to the point I wonder how he's even a "main villain". I almost wished they went all the way and had Natla be the leader. The series did sort of play at her being the Lex Luthor and James Moriarty of the franchise and it felt like one big missed opportunity to not have everything come together and come full circle. Not that this would single handedly save the game's story but Dominguez has no screen presence and never does much of anything interesting other than, "I'm trying to save the world" monlogues.

There is an interesting premise of Lara indirectly causing the end of the world and has a sequence similar to Protragual from Assassin's Creed Rogue. It's squandered by much of the game taking place in Paititi where Lara spends much of the game chasing after one specific macguffin that ends in her not getting it. Much of the game is trying to get it with not much really happening. The only thing connecting all this is that Dominguez just so happens to the leader of the cult you are going up against in these parts.

It doesn't help that they retcon Lara's backstory again where Richard was still seeing his wife before his death and Ana from Rise isn't even there. She's still shook up over her father's death.

Things do pick up towards the end with a fake out death of Jonah and then Lara finally becomes the Tomb Raider...for real this time. It's hard to get enthastic towards this story since there's much of nothing in it.

Gameplay is much of the same. TR 2013 and Rise had combat, climbing and puzzles be broken and spread evenly throughout both campaigns.

Shadow on the other hand has shooting be downplayed considerably. The best way of describing the gameplay is that it wants to be a TR of yester year really badly. Much of the game is spent just doing platforming and puzzles. It might not be bad on paper but the DNA of the first two Survivor games are still here. You still have the scrap system and skill tree. Why would you want to use scrap to upgrade weapons when there isn't as much combat anymore? Why get combat related skills when the combat itself is much easier and downplayed?

Speaking of combat, the design of itself has been gutted. Stealth does seem to be improved with actual suspicion bars and a last known position system but this fall aparts when the guards notice you very quickly, are clumped together and have a hivemind system where one guard detection means the whole area is on alert. Gas arrows are gone and fear arrows come in late in the game. You can use mud to hide but the guard AI issues hold that bad too.

Combat itself? The arenas mainly just squared rooms with about many 4-7 guards that can quickly be gunned down. Where's the melee and shielded enemies, enforcers, armored enemies, enemies that throw grenades and molotovs, or enemies enemies from furthur distances? It's just the same machine gun wielders clumped together in a squared room. Drum mag assault rifle later on makes it more trivial

The hardest section is when you lose all your guns and you have to use stealth to get by but the AI issues especially the hivemind AI holds that back. Fear arrows are interesting but they come in too late.

Much of the game is puzzles and climbing. The latter especially. It does have more going than Uncharted does but having so much of the game be this reveals what little depth there is and how scripted it can be. It was always like this but Shadow dedicated much of the run time to it makes it more obvious so many deaths because it wasn't exactly what the game wanted me to do. It doesn't compare to the simple and elegant tile and grab system from the Core Design games.

Puzzles are "fine" but the over reliance on them just makes it feel like it wants to be the aforementioned TR of yester year. They are supposed to be downtime but after them it's back to more dull and more climbing again.

Overall, I've beaten Shadow 3 times over the years and it always manages to be a lukewarm game every time.