Doom II: Hell on Earth(Playstation 5) Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not understanding these quirks can throw many players off.

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

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

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

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

Iron Meat Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tormented Souls 2 Walkthrough

I really enjoyed the previous Tormented Souls and I was initally hesistant towards playing the sequel due to the mixed things I was hearing about how it was buggy at launch and the difficulty on normal being out of wack. After playing the game now, I can say the game is generally improvement on the first game mainly becase it follows the logic of Resident Evil 2 which is one of my favorite game sequels of all time. Both tend to have higher count of enemies and the enemies in TS2 are faster and more aggressive too. I did wish I played the game on normal difficulty since the mixed things I often heard before playing made it sound like normal was busted. Easy mode is still enjoyable but it is one of those difficulties that just keeps showering you resources due to reasons I will mention later, it didn't really hinder my overall that much.

In essence TS2 is more of what you liked about the first game. It Resident Evil's level design and limited saves with Silent Hill's more grotesque imagery, unlimited inventory and more cryptic puzzles. There's also a dodge this time around but I didn't really use it as much as the game would want me to since I played on easy. The save rooms are back and the music here is even better than it was in the first game.

There's also ideas exclusive to Tormented Souls itself like how the darkness can kill the player character if exposed to it without a lighter for too long and the dual world to solve puzzles in the levels.

Despite the level designed being more segmented this time around, the "ah this will make sense later" level design from the first game is still present here.

For example, early on the in the game you have to go up on top of a bell tower but the stairway is blocked by two vases eventually you will find a weapon that allows you to destroy them and progress furthur to eventually get the shotgun.

The level design classic Resident Evil is still here where you have this one big puzzle to solve that is the overall objective you have to do in the level but there is a bunch of smaller tasks like solving "riddles" and inventory puzzles you have to do inbetween all that. This is all retained in TS2. There's memerable levels like the Chruch, Mall, Graveyard and my favorite: school.

I do wish the riddle puzzles had different difficulties for them like the Silent Hill games from 2 onwards did since I don't really care for them and it's easy for me to view them similarly to the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene where Indy shoots the swordsman. I do think having riddle difficulties would be a solid compromise.

Since the inventory is limitless like in SH, enemies are much more aggressive and often come in 3 now. Where in games like the original Silent Hill 2, it would be a miracle if they could even close the distance on you if you riddle them with 3 bullets. Here, it's more like the first Silent Hill will they move in fast and will land a few hits before they die.

However easy mode did give me too many resources so it does sap away a little bit of the tension but the aggressive behaviour and Caroline's movement and aiming being so stiff does help cancel it out. So it feels in line with combat of the first Silent Hill in a sense.

The bosses are also an improvment since they are more along the lines of puzzle bosses where you need to figure out how to damage and defeat them rather a raw game of mechanical skill. It's smart on the devs part since they know the limitations of the combat system.

There's also a good and bad ending to get but luckily the former isn't too hard or complicated to get since you can backtract to an early part of the game and get it.

If one criticism I can level towards the game is that the game does start to drag it's heels out towards the end with the Bunker level. Where once you get back to the chruch, you'd think it's just going to be a quick trek to the final boss but then there is an entire level before you can get there. You also can't beeline it either since you need to solve a puzzle in order to not get killed in a cutscene before the final battle can actually start. By this point I did wish the game would just wrap up already even if the homage to Silent Hill 3 was enjoyable to see.

Story was okay, nothing amazing but nothing horrible, it did a good job at establishing the next levels you are going to go for the game.

Overall, TS2 was a well made sequel despite all the seemingly lukewarm and apathetic reception I saw at around the time of release. If one thing to be warned the trophy for beating the final boss is bugged as of now and doesn't unlock after beating it so I really hope that gets fixed soon. TS2 is a worthy sequel to the first game much like Resident Evil 2 was to the first game.

Yakuza 3: Remastered Review

Oh Yakuza 3 what an interesting game. What was originally going to be me buying the Kiwami 3 "remake" then turned into buying the remastered version of the original game before the delisting on consoles. To do this along with Kiwami 3 going into the frankenstein's monster direction that it did is one of many reasons why I'm becoming more and more dillusioned and disinterested in the franchise. To put it plainly, I don't dislike Yakuza 3 but I'm getting more and more annoyed by the series' antics the more I revisit it. I did play the original game before and while I prefer it over Yakuza 5, I'm noticing so many more narrative issues with the former and the series by extension. In spite of all this, the main villain Yoshitaka Mine carried much of the game and even some aspects of the Morning Glory subplot too.

This transitions me to my next point and a much derided part of Yakuza 3: the narrative pacing. I didn't really taking care of the Morning Glory children in the early parts of the game but I can understand the complaints in that it has barely if any connection to the main story at all. It's also easy to complain about Sayama from the 2nd game being completely written out of the story when it hinders the narrative growth Kiryu could gain. Besides that much of the early sections of the game is helping out with the children and their problems. Sort of like Mass Effect 2 with the loyalty missions but if there is one thing I can give this game over ME2 is that Kiryu isn't directly solving the problems the children are having, he's more along the lines of guiding them in the right direction. For a game that deals with parenthood, it's decently executed.

This all ties into what happens later in the game with the main villain Yoshitaka Mine. He might just be the most interesting antagonist the series has ever had. The story starts to get much more engaging when late game he delivers Kanda head to Kiryu and the gang. Speaking of Kanda, it's easy to write him off as a dumb, horny and arrogant moron but the story does a solid job at establishing he was only ever able to get anywhere because no one else better could step up to take over the Niskiyama family.

Mine himself has an interesting backstory on he's a self made man who paid to be part of the Yakuza life rather than having it forced on him or choosing to impress role model like Kiryu did. How he wanted to find geniune love and loyalty when he never got when he was younger which leads to a great scene later in the game where Kiryu showing love, compassion and sympathy to the children is more of him showing weakness than geniunely helping the kids.

Whenever I look back on the story of Y3, this is what I often think of since while this is well done. The narrative pacing gets really messy. The game's main plot is about brining a corrupt CIA operative to justice and finding a mystery man, so much of the game's plot is this wild goose chase to find the mystery man. That and long drawn attempt to draw out a corrupt CIA agent. When the plot twist is finally revealed you GO BACK to Morning Glory with the kids again for 50 minutes and then the story can continue.

However what really annoys me and this is much of the series is how Kiryu despite supposedly being a criminal acts like a superhero with his moral code of not killing but then he'll act "devious" and wait for someone else to kill or scarifice themselves to finish off the opponent he himself won't do.

He's esstentially the personficiation of the Lex Luthor line: "I'm not going to kill you, she is. I abhor violence" but Kiryu is supposed to be a hero and not a scheming villain. The lack of any kind of self awareness in the story itself just makes this so much worse and harder to swallow and I just can't take the series' writing at face value because of this.

So parts of Yakuza 3's story I like but other parts I can be downright apathetic towards.

Gameplay particularly is not as maligned as parts of the internet can make it out to be. Yes, enemies do block a lot but it mainly happens with bosses or mini bosses and when that dice roll happens, it just exposes the big issues with the Yakuza combat system. You need to land hits on them to build up the heat guage and if you don't build heat fast or efficently enough, combat encounters go on for so much longer.

On top of this smashing furniture to activate the frantic button tapping stomach punches is the most effective way to do damage and the button prompt to activate this in heat mode is a dice roll on if the animation will happen at all making combat even more dragged out if you don't land this move.

Just be prepared to have a lot of healing items on you since and go to the drug store to buy them since you'll need it for the blocking mini bosses and bosses.

There is also a challenging police chase mini game but lowering to easy helped.

Overall, Yakuza 3 is okay but I question venturing furthur with the series or replaying later games.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North Review(Playstation 3)

This was a game I wasn't expecting much out of. I mainly tried it out because it was considered one of the better games based on Lord of the Rings. Apart of me was expecting to drop it at some point due it to being a coop RPG but instead I had a blast with it atleast on easy mode playing as Farin. Would I call it amazing? No but as far as LOTR games I played before the Middle Earth titles, it's above the Two Towers and Lego Hobbit games and on par with Return of the King and Lego LOTR. To best describe War in the North it's a combination of Mass Effect with the dialogue wheel and two party members, the stories some of the various Star Wars games that run in conjunction with the movies, the loot and gear system that is come to be expected and the finishing moves of God of War.

Everything about this title felt like a bizarre precursor to the Middle Earth franchise minus the Nemesis system. You got a character who can use melee and ranged combat, brutal finishing moves and over the top violence, a skill tree and even sort of a gear system.

While the combat is a little on the simplistic and stiff side, the extremely satisfying and gory kill animations carries much of it. It also helps that beeline it to the next story mission will have the game be about 6-7 hours so it ends before the monotony really starts to set in.

It's a lot of fun to use War Cry, tank so much damage and then just seeing all the limbs of your enemies fly off and seeing the nice and brutal kill animations. It also helps that you get a lot of spell and healing potions and also Andriel will cast her healing shield whenever low on health. Some could argue there's too many safety nets here but considering I'm playing a coop RPG that is meant to be played with people on my own, I don't mind. I just have fun with the power fantasy especially when bosses could get tanky.

Level design is fine and serviceable, nothing complex but nothing that gets in the way of slaughtering hundreds of enemies either.

It's also funny to see to be able to summon the eagles at any time or them talking and playing an active role in the story.

If one criticism I can make is that there is are some super long and lengthy turret sections especially one later in the game where you defend Bruni and Nordi. That went on for so long I almost thought I was going to eventually get a game over and due the tedious enemy wave again. Turrets early game can also shred through your health on easy but this becomes less of a problem the more you level up.

The loot and gear systems can be hard to keep up with when so many are stacked and then becomes a game of stat checking but that's par for the course with games like this. The UI is at least easy to follow.

Frame rate can also can get into nasty dips on PS3 too.

The story is just kind of there. It feels like one of those filler arc stories where it can't interfere with the "main canon" so the heroes of this game have their own bad guys to fight while encountering the characters and locations from the movies. It's much like the gameplay, it's there, nothing overly exceptional but it's fun in the moment.

Overall, that's LOTR War in the North, it certainly isn't a great game but it is a fun and enjoyable romp and in some ways a decent change of pace up until that point with the amount LOTR games where you just relive the big set pieces of the movies. Wasn't expecting much it was a fun time.

Turbo Overkill(Playstation 5) Review

Out of all the "boomer" shooters that have been made, none of even managed to capture the sheer ambition of Turbo Overkill. If you ever wanted to see the feel of Doom Eternal replicated but through a much smaller dev team then you can't go wrong with this game. It's the most ambitious boomer shooter ever created but at the same time it can also come back to haunt it in a lot of ways.

As far as boomer shooters or even just shooters in general, Turbo Overkill is one of the most challenging I ever played. It's not just combat that is a hard time but also the sheer amount of platforming the game has too.

What makes combat so challenging where Doom Eternal has glory kill to replenish health back and chainsaw for ammo. Turbo Overkill at best gives you an upgrade you could by where killing fodder enemy with a chainsaw leg can get you back 1 hp. With ammo you have to find pick ups all over the map.

It does keep Doom Eternal's combat model of being having high HP one minute and then being down to critical the next.

Due to the lack of glory kills and chainsaw, the horde battle are even more intense than before. Every battle is an intense battle for survival. I'll be going through an enemy wave and then mech enemies pop up and I'm like, "damn it" after it kills me.

This is one thing Turbo Overkill does really well. The enemy variety is top notch one you'll be killing mooks with the chainsaw leg one minute, then switch to shotgun or assault rifle to kill the shield enemies, then use rockets to kill the drones, then running and shooting for your life when the mech enemies show up.

The weapon line up while standard like pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and so on. There are some insane alt fires you can have like the sniper having a telefraggins ability, shotgun having shock blasts that can be lined up, the pistol having a charge ability that can level most enemies if line up well. You even get a variation of the Hammer of Dawn from Gears of War here which is always interesting to see in the context of this kind of game.

Level design and platforming also returns from Doom Eternal and they can be quite expansive to how big the space can be. The levels can take so long to complete that it felt like I complete an entire episode of many boomer shooters even though I only did one level. There's levels that take place in wide open cities, traffic, destroyed cities, toxin refinery, factories, a scrapyard and so on. Each one of these levels can take a 30 minutes or an hour to complete. They have lots of platforming then lots of intense horde shootouts, then hunting keys and so on.

It doesn't end there either, there will be levels will you will be riding your car then the maps get bigger and then infiltrate structures while riding the said car, then getting out to progress the level. You'll in a motorcycle chase and then a mech late game. A late game set piece will also happen where an entire army gets wiped out as you are barely trying to survive while platfroming through the level.

In terms of sheer and utter ambition Turbo Overkill almost has no rival.

The sheer scope does come back to haunt the game. For one the upgrade system while interesting, it gives you a tons of perks and options but once you find the one that you are most comfortable with, you never want to try anything new.

Platforming and this might be me playing on a controller can so hard even analog stick can't even keep up like with the grapple hook mechanic, half the time I get past these sections by luck.

By far the biggest issue with the game is how long it is. Remember how I said that one level in TO can be as long as a single episode in many boomer shooters? This is what I'm talking about. The game can especially around Episode 3 can drag on for so long that by the time Maw was defeated I just wanted the game to end already.

It leads to the actual final showdown against Syn and to say this last level was hard would be an understatement. It's so hard that it dampers my experience on a game I really enjoyed. You not only have to defeat multiple challenging waves of enemies but you have to do in a time limit too. You already have to not die but also kill the enemies fast enough too. Then there is a late part where you have to use a sniper where you stand in one place since not all enemies can be telefragged and you could get hit and die here too. Doom Eternal never had this. Then you get to the actual final boss against Syn and it can take a lot of damage before it dies too.

By the time I got to the sniping, I lowered the game to easy and finished the game. I was just getting so worn out by everything that I wanted everything to wrap up. If the game ended with you killing Maw, I would've been fine with that.

Overall, while Turbo Overkill might just be the most ambitious and insane boomer shooter ever, I really just wished the game end earlier so it could be my favorite boomer shooter of all time.

Evil Dead: Regeneration Review

Played Evil Dead Fistful of Boomstick prior to this and didn't get very far since it tried to be a combination of a third person shooter and a survival horror game and didn't commit to either. Evil Dead Regeneration on the hand is Devil May Cry meets Ico. This game was borrowing from the latter before it really started to take off later on with games like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite and so on.

As far as Devil May Cry clones are concerned, Evil Dead Regeneration is easily on of the better ones up there with games like the Van Helsing video game all though the former has ideas that separate from DMC like aforementioned comparison to Ico.

One of the most interesting thing about the game is character of Sam. Where with many games that are escort quests like with Ico or TLOU, you have a case of consantly watching over Yorda and making sure she won't get kidnapped by the shadow monsters. It doesn't help the game has many combat encounters where you are meant to control a character who can't fight. TLOU has a case where the game world won't acknowledge friendly npcs unless if Joel is seen.

Evil Dead Regeneration solves both these issues where Ash controls much like Dante from DMC so the frequent combat encounters are more enjoyable and Sam is immortal so you won't have to worry about getting a game over when dying as him. Sam can also be useful in combat by distracting enemies and you being able to kick him into them as well.

One of the most fun part of Regeneration is when you play as Sam and seeing how many over the top and hilarious death animations Sam has after solving a puzzle as him before controlling Ash again.

There's also a surprising amount of conversations Ash and Sam have during gameplay too which keeps things lively rather than empty.

Combat itself is very similar to DMC. Ash has projectiles with unlimited ammo and one of the most fun things about the game is shotgun juggling with the ragdoll physics the game has. Enemies also can't die from just hitting them so you need to scripted finishing moves to actually kill them and they are a lot of fun to watch. Similar to the melee takedowns from God of War minus the QTEs. An aspect neither in DMC or GOW like being able to hit enemies while they are down.

There's even a rage mode Ash gets which is similar to Rage of the Gods but is obvious riff on Devil Trigger and it's just fun to watch Ash tear things up in this form. Bosses can beaten in short work depending on how efficiently you use this mechanic.

A big critcism is that I didn't even know Ash had a move list until you get to The Woods level. Trying to do the guard break on enemies can feel very awkward to pull off too. You also don't get many of the weapons until good while into the game. It starts to open up more and more when you get the harpoon gun when you are in the Mines level. Unfortunately you don't get all of your weapons until Port Turnham Shipyard level and by that point there's only two major levels in the game left.

Two of the biggest problems are how many times the game reuses the "escort Sam 3 times to open a door to the boss level" objective throughout the whole game. It can be very annoying since while Sam is immortal, but if he "dies" while getting charged up a by spirit, you have to do it again which can be very tedious and the game does become the babysitting escort quest that games like this or feature it can become. Save points are plentiful but most of the challenge comes from these sections. 

The biggest issue however is the story or should I say, it's a pilot episode of a TV show. The entire game is Ash breaking out of the Asylum, trying to rescue Sally and stop Dr. Reinhard. The game is well acted and entertaining enough that it's not completely insufferable but at the same time, barely much of anything happens in this whole story. Almost to the point where it feels like a side story. No big twists, no moments of character development, it's just Ash and Sam getting to Dr. Reinhard, they stop him, save Sally game ends. That's it.

This is where unfortunately where the game gets let down. Outside of being an Evil Dead fan, there isn't much of anything here that you want to come to game to. In 2005, there were your obvious heavy hitters like Devil May Cry 3 and God of War but there was also Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, Hulk Ultimate Destruction and Genji Dawn of the Samurai as well.

Overall, while Evil Dead Regeneration is a solid licensed game, I just wished there was meat to it's bones like a story with more going on and a more evenly paced campaign. Still it's worth checking out if you are mildly curious.