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.

Scarlet Nexus Review

I heard of this game back when it came out and especially how it tried to have more ambitious combat than a lot of JRPGs would try to have. It took awhile but I finally did play it. As a whole, there are things about Scarlet Nexus I enjoy and has aspects that have more going than a lot of action RPG combat but it's held back by so many things. It personifies the entire game. What is interesting on paper is held back by lackluster execution. I wanted to like the game a lot more than I did. There's still enjoyment to be had but it gets tedious the more it goes on.

It can be seen in the game's visual presentation. It has very nice cel shaded look and very well animated cutscenes...sometimes. Much of the game is spent watching these visual novel style sequences when you aren't in combat. I get it since there's a lot of dialogue and you can't animate every cutscene but it kind of makes the clean and crisp visual style not stand up as much.

The story is an interesting aspect of the game to talk about. The game has two routes with Yuito and Kasane. Both sides show different sides of the story when the two aren't together. It's interesting on paper but the cracks start showing in how Yuito's campaign while having it's interesting characters is rather dull. It's often said by many who played that you should start with Yuito first and do Kasane after. That can really test one's patience since both routes take about 20 hours to complete. There's no epilogue chapter recontexualizing everything and to add the final nail, Yuito and Kasane are together for the last 4-5 hours of the game making a second playthrough eventually become a slog. According to the trophy list on PS5 less than 10% of people actually did that so it's even less encouraging.

What also doesn't help is how Yuito's campaign writing is "fine" and is carried by the side characters. The writing in Kasane's route curbstomps it so much to the point where I wished I played as her first and skipped over Yuito entirely. Kasane's more cold, stoic and her initial refusal to care about anyone other than her sister makes for far superior character interactions. She has a more concrete motivation of wanting to protect her sister and the urgency she shows in wanting to cure her. The main antagonist Karen Travers is much more promient and has more screen time and Alice gets far better foreshadowing. There's also a much better narrative hook to kick off her side of the story too.

Yuito's campaign is mostly carried by side characters like Gemma, Luka and Arashi when she joins up later. Kasane's campaign has more going on by comparison. I could talk about the rest of the story but I can't help but feel a little "tricked" after looking up Kasane's cutscenes.

Gameplay falls in the same line. On paper, Scarlet Nexus SHOULD be a game I really enjoy. It foregoes many of the tropes found in RPGs. No gear or loot systems, XP is relegated to the skill tree, and stats don't really matter at all. You got interesting power like pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, a Crysis like maximum armor ability, teleporting and being able to speed up while time around you slows.

You got enviromental interactions to hurt enemies and stun them. This helps get an enemy's core out faster and do a quick finishing kill rather than killing them by widdling down their health bar. You can put oil on enemies and dose them with flames or find parts of the enviroment to use your psychic powers on them.

These powers are encouraged in gameplay too. Invisible enemies? Clairvoyance can help you see them. Use pryrokinesis to burn enemies to do more damage and destroy armor. Use hardened to take more damage than usual. Use teleportation to close the gap on enemies before they hide in their industrutible hiding spot. There's also a perfect dodge and a few different ways to do more damage like a rage mode when clicking the sticks. The optional "social links" missions even unlocks more interesting abilities for your party which made me want to do them even more.

This sounds great right? It does but then the game reuses most of the same enemy types for much of the game. Add to that the stages can drag on for ages and since they are less RPG stages and action game ones, it can really start to wear thin. You see so much of what the game has to offer early on. The tedium can really start to get mind numbing especially how I wrote describing what I liked about the combat. Add the challenging bosses and the stage lengths wearing out my healing items, I eventually lowered to easy and just went through the rest of the game.

For a game that had this much going on for it's combat, it's disappointing I wanted to lower to easy just to get it done faster. I don't even want to say that but that's just much steam the game loses after a point.

Overall while I did like Scarlet Nexus enough to finish it, everything about it feels I should like way more than I do.

River City Girls(Playstation 5) Review

Decided to randomly play this game again. I got a free PS5 upgrade path with the digital PS4 version I bought years ago. It was short enough that it was worth quickly going through again. I remember it being the "the wacky 2D beat em up with solid voice acting, great soundtrack and dumb ending" and it was just that.

The best parts of River City Girls is everything involving visuals and audio. The visuals are vibrant, crisp and colorful. It's some of the best I've seen when it comes to modern 2D pixel art.

Voice acting does a great job at selling me on the over the top and silly premise the game has. The VAs are acted and directed in a way that they know exactly what kind of story they are in. An over the top campy excuse plot to go beat up a wide array of goons.

Soundtrack might be one of my favorites in gaming or at least when it comes to "recent" releases. The snyth wave soundtrack with Megan McDuffee's singing gives the game a bizzarely chill atmosphere as you go around beating up dozens of bad guys. There's some good 8 bit sounding songs too. Whenever I think of this game, the soundtrack is what I often think of more than anything.

Gameplay itself is on the "fine" side. It certainly feels like a 2D beat em up of yester year where it's more reliant on the collision detection and hit boxes being line up perfectly for you to consistently do damage. Enemies also spongey and get spongey the more the game goes on.

To counter this, you get XP and level up to improve base stats. You also get new moves upon levelling up as well being able to buy new ones at dojos with items to help you out too. The game autosaves frequently too and madatory waves you only have to do once upon completion.

As a result River City Girls feels less like a game where it feels you are getting good and more so a series of safety nets and band aids are in place to prevent the game from being overly frustrating and difficult.

There are also bizarre platforming sections here and there. Mainly just 2 or 3 but they feel out of place whenever they happen.

It can lead to a massive issue I have with the game is that when you start running, it feels like you are being magnetically pulled back but after a little while, the momentum you are supposed to get from a running animation finally kicks in.

A big reason why I'm not as positive on the gameplay as I could be is due to the amount of fetch quests you have to do to progress the story. Every chapter there's at least one or two fetch quests before fighting the boss instead of just getting to the end of the stage and then fighting them. It can make this already short game feel padded. This is a bigger issue in the sequel with that said.

Bosses are a strange case where most of them are easy especially if you know to buy food at the various shops especially buying lots of Double Merv Burgers. The continue system can feel like a cheap way of adding stakes since you lose money and all the used healing items after dying to them or any enemy encounter.

Hibari is by far the hardest fight in the game since she's the only flying boss on top of having bullet hell attacks. She also spawns in a bunch of goons as she tries to fire her needle at the player and in turn has to predict where it will bounce back to her to do damage. This boss can feel bizarre in that even using food items would still not be enough to beat her.

Once you win, it's mostly smooth sailing.

The ending is pretty dumb. I do know Wayforward changed the ending after initial backlash. I have a hard time telling which of the specific ones were. It's not good but it only lasts about a less than 3 minutes so it's not get attached to how "bad" it is.

Overall, River City Girls was exactly what I remembered. It was a solid if not an overly enthuastic trip down memory lane. The PS5 version did come free so I'm not complaining.

Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour Review

This was a game I was initially super hyped for when it was announced it was coming to PS4 in 2016. I loved Doom 1993, Doom 2016 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I wasn't the Doom 2 fan yet. I might've recalled pre ordering this version of Duke 3D but when I finally played I was really disappointed by it particular in how I found the level design way too confusing. 2 years later, I would actually beat the game and I would really enjoy it. I'd beat it a 2nd time a few years later. I'd decided to another run of the Episode 1-3 again and while I still really enjoy some things like the over reliance on hitscanners and much of the enemy line up can be big sore spots for it.

When discussing Duke 3D two of it's biggest positives are it's level design and how it refuses to tell the player anything.

By comparison to the first two Doom games and the first Quake which came out the same year. Duke 3D's location have so much more personality and feel lively by comparison. Instead of in very abstract locations like a Mars Research Base, Hell or Gothic Mediveal settings, you are in futuristic LA, an Alien Spaceship, and various places on earth. It gives the levels an idea of them being actually lived in instead of just places that are an excuse for you to kill monsters. Places like a hotel, subway, bank, prison the San Andreas fault and even the Alien levels of episode feels like there's a slow gradual journey when going through it.

How you start at a Spaceport but then slowly go through a multi layered level where there's space terminals taking you to different parts of the levels that loop you back to the hub of where the level started. It's also fun to just find random secrets by blowing up cracked walls with either pipe bombs or the rocket launcher. You'll need those portable medkits due to issues I will mention later.

There's also a great amount of narrative foreshadowing and in universe reason for player hints with the cameras. The aliens are always watching and if you are confused on where to go, press the interact button on the monitor and it will give a list of places in the level you might've already been to or haven't explored yet. It's a good way of guiding the player without being intrusive.

This might as well transition to the next positive or an issue depending on who you are and that is how the game tells you absolutely nothing. That camera system is the closest thing to guide you even get in the game. Duke 3D tells you nothing. You need a jetpack to get a higher place or across? You even have a jet pack? Need to a puzzle to get furthur in a level? Need to jump on switch to open revolving doors to get a key? Need to go through specific color grading to not get crushed by moving gears? Need to find a shrink ray projecticle to get you small to open a new part of the level? Need to have a hook in factory get you into another part of the level? Accidentally missed a switch? Shooting switches can activate parts of the levels? You get the idea, the game just won't tell you or give you any kind of idea that you can or have to do any of this stuff to get the level exit.

This will be very offputting to many who play the game for the first time and if you are overly used to how a lot of after 1996 to now are used to doing things it will be even more so. It's hard to really get accustomed even if you play Doom 1993.

If you do get used this and come to terms with what the game expects. There's a very rewarding game that rewards problem solving just as much as shooting things.

The weapon line up is good. You got your usual archetypes like a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle(which is a chaingun but same idea), rocket launcher but you also get some weirder ones like Pipe Bombs, Trip Bombs, Shrink and Freeze Ray, and the Devastator. The latter weapons makes the game standout from Doom and Quake.

I do love lining up Shrink Ray shots and then squishing multiple enemies at once. Trip and Pipe Bombs are fun to use when low on rocket ammo. The Devastator is a fun dual wielding rocket launcher weapon.

After all this praise, there is one big problem with the game that can be irritating at best and absolutely infuriating at worst. That is overreliance on hitscanners. There's your usual culprits like Pigcops and they lots of damage but they are the least annoying due to their wind up time. You fight Assault Captains, Troopers, and Enforcers A LOT. They have hitscan machine guns that can chip away at your hp very quickly when in groups. The Battlelord Sentry has a hitscan chaingun too. It also doesn't that the Sentry Drone is also poorly designed and if you aren't chaingunning or firing rockets before they get close you lose a lot of health.

It's good that there's lot of health packs and portable medkits on normal difficulty since many of the firefights can turn into last man standing battles and getting attacked from behind a lot.

Overall, Duke 3D is very good but there can be some massive sore spots.

Ghost of Yotei Review

The best way to describe Ghost of Yotei is that it's the game sequel that's just there and offends barely anyone. I already knew all of this going in. Apart of me was expecting to get the infamous status that games like The Last of Us 2 got. Instead Sucker Punch took lessons from James Cameron and made a money making product that does it's best to never get under anyone's skin. Add to how Assassin's Creed Shadows was a very disappointing take on what people wanted out of a feudal Japanese game and it's easy to see why the game did so well. GoY is still far from what I consider a bad game but compared to it's predecessor Tsushima, it's writing can feel very play it safe. The writing particularly with Jin Sakai is what made that game stood out in the first place.

Ghost of Yotei's story is a revenge story rather a deconstruction of the samurai's code of honor like Tsushima's. Almost to the point where Yotei feels like a reconstruction. It's back to the days of the lone no nonsense samurai wandering around from place to place getting what he wants or a she in this case.

It's at least a well presented story with well shot and put together cutscenes. With many of it's shots in them telling it's own story. The individual memebers of the Yotei Six are decently despicable enough for you to want to kill them. A lot of it is rather typical. Atsu eventually comes to realize that there's more to life than revenge and you know what that entails.

The strange part is that much of the interesting writing in Ghost of Yotei comes from the characters around Atsu. Her brother Jubei, a former Yotei Six member Oyuki and even Kiku to a lesser extent.

Jubei's interesting in how he's often conflicted in helping his adopted family or his family by blood and often makes decisions where it could compromise either side while trying to appease both.

Oyuki is my favorite character in that she was a former Yotei Six member who trying to make amends for all the wrong doings she did and is trying to hunt down her former pupil and in turn helps you due to how far he's lost his way. Atsu sparing her does help make her a decently rounded character.

Kiku also represents the life that Atsu can live and move past her quest for revenge. She's at least not a completely helpless child and does want to start improving at being proficient in life.

Saito starts off as an interesting villain in that he opens the game by saying, "I regret doing this" but he never really shows that level of sympathy again and it's just him reacting to story milestones after.

It's also silly how Atsu believes Saito would stop hunting her after killing Yotei Six members and foiling his plans constantly.

Once again, I'll preface that the story is just "fine". One thing I'll say that is the side characters are an improvement over Tsushima but the protagonist is a downgrade.

Gameplay is mostly the same as the first. You got jaw dropping vistas and landscapes that also has an amazing wide shot when riding. The gust of wind system I appreciate more now and it's more organic way of guiding the player rather than quest marker.

Stealth is mostly the same. Just sneaking up from behind and do a takedown with some distraction items here and there. It really says a lot how this game has more stealth encounters by comparison to Assassin's Creed Shadows despite it not bragging about having prone or a darkness system.

Combat is also mostly the same. Just hit enemy, weapon switch, hit enemy then counter. I could do this on normal difficulty but combat becomes a tedious slog of attack, break guard, then enemy attacks, counter then guard resets. It's also ridiculous how rolling of all moves has to be unlocked in a skill tree making the bigger enemies with overheard swipe attacks hard to dodge.

Bosses can also level your health bar in a few hits while also being unable to use resolve orbs while in a downed state. I get they don't want you to abuse this but they could've just used the 2nd chance system from the Middle Earth games. You timing window lowers each time you are downed. I eventually lowered to easy and beat it. Luckily it's accomadating as the first gme.

There's far too much automated platforming for my liking but there's is so much that I got overly annoyed.

Overall, Ghost of Yotei is what I expected it to be. An inoffensive game that's made to make a lot of money. 

Strider(2014) Review

The first metroidvania I ever played. A great begginer friendly metroidvania is best way to describe Strider 2014. I remember the days of being a PS4 early adopter and recalling how barebones the releases on it felt back then or just how easy it was to whine about the new releases of 2014 before knowing what a backlog even was. I was feeling nostalgic(weird saying that, I know) and decided to just boot this game up again on PS5 for a quick trip down memory lane since it's a short game and it held up for the most part.

The way this reboot of Strider starts I can't help but love it in how straight to the point it is. No exposition dump, no cutscene or any quick rundown on the story, you are already in the middle of the action when you select your difficulty.

Controls take a little getting used to since it requires the analog stick to move but right away, Strider 2014 has a feel about it that feels unique back then and didn't feel again until playing Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. The way you go around levels has you quickly mowing down enemies with constant slashes with quick succession. You are constantly on the move mowing things down.

There's bigger robots to fight but you'll be sliding through them and then slashing them to take them down. A criticism to make is that the collision detection for the slide doesn't always work and it could get interrupted by the bigger robots.

Another criticism to make is that if you don't strike first or poorly time a charge attack it's easy to have your health drained very fast. The developers are aware of this since on normal there's health packs, save points and checkpoints litered everywhere.

Also bizarre is that while for the most part the bosses aren't too hard, both fights against Solo are very challenging and can beat me down multiple times. The first fight against him can feel like a huge difficulty spike. After his second fight is over the game never gets hard again until the freeze grenade gets introduced and there's a later game elevator climb where two mechs on each side hits you with freeze grenades and can stunlock you and can lead to a game over. The last one was easily the most frustrating part of the game. You'll need to get explosive kunai for this.

Some of the movement while climbing walls can be awkwardly unresponsive at times and it can get frustrating when there's flying enemies hurting you. The low gravity sections can also get a little disorienting too.

After all that criticizing, it sounds like I might not like the game that much but I still do. One great advantage the game has is quick and rapid fire the pacing can be. Outside of the Solo and late game elevator battles, everything goes by very quickly.

Remember how I said, it's a great begginner friendly metroidvania? This is what I mean. The map tells you were to go, there's constant save stations and checkpoints, there's health packs everywhere. If you want a quick and digestible metroidvania to play to get into the genre that doesn't take too long, this game is it. Bosses besides Solo can go down very quickly especially when timing in slashes and the phoenix attack to major damage.

It's brevity and accomadating nature is Strider 2014's greatest strength. Nothing in this game lasts overly long enough to the point it gets utterly grating minus the freeze grenade mecha elevator fight I mentioned.

You kill enemies, get upgrades, fight bosses in a rather quick and no nonsense package. You don't need to invest that much time into it to get to the end nor does it waste your time.

I was surprised to see Strider talk instead of being a generic silent protagonist. He's not super in depth but I like how stoic and to the point he can be.

Art direction can be rather striking and the music is great too. I'm amazed how I still remember the songs to this game 12 years after I originally beat it.

Overall, that's Strider 2014, it's worth checking out as a fast paced and concise metroidvania and was a solid trip down memory lane.

Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon Review

The original Spyro was an interesting game in that back when I played it 11 years ago, I didn't think much of it due to rather primative it can feel compared to other platformers and games. I can to appreciate it for how relaxing and tranquil it was. I'm jumping to Spyro 3 instead of doing a Spyro 2 review first and to put it simpily, Spyro 2's means of progression can be obtuse while also being fiendish in terms of how much time it demands out of the player to get to the final boss. On top of the said final boss being too challenging that the grind for orbs sucks the excitement out of fighting him. Spyro 3 keeps everything good about 2 while fixing the progression issues and adding in new characters.

Everything good about Spyro 3 can also be said about 2. Controls feels tighter and refined. Spyro's speed when turning while in his run animation feels much more fluid, snappy and responsive. Gliding feels tighter and the quick second few seconds of air time after a successful one when pressing the triangle is much more reliable to pull off.

Instead of going to one big hub world with smaller levels. The smaller levels have their own standalone story told in that specific level giving the vibe of you going through an episodic show when each larger hub. One big point to Year of the Dragon's favor is that when beating the smaller level, it remembers you beat it instead of doing the level's story all over again after getting through it once.

Here comes the biggest improvement over Spyro 2 and the first game by extension: the means of progression is very straightforward. In Spyro 3, all you collect are Dragon Eggs to unlock levels and gems to unlock new paths in those levels. So now Spyro 1 of collecting dragons, then eggs and then gems and especially 2's unlocking tailsmans than getting 8 orbs to 64 is gone, thankfully.

What also helps is that new levels will only be unlocked after collecting a certain amount of Dragon Eggs so you are always encouraged to find them to progress furthur into the game. This isn't a case of Spyro 2 where you get a bunch of Tailsmans and then you suddenly need green orbs since like I said earlier you need to collect Dragon Eggs to unlock more smaller levels in the various hub worlds so either way you are encouraged to get gather Dragon Eggs.

Also nice that all the moves you get from 2 carry over to 3 without unlocking them again. Nice way of keeping continuity.

With that said, you still need to collect 100 Dragon Eggs to unlock the final boss. The big issue lies that by the time you get to the 4th boss and beat him you might have around 66 eggs. That's still around 34 of them and it's a while of a lot of nothing of note happening just to get the final boss and it can still feel like grind just not nearly as much as Spyro 2's 8 orbs to 64. It helps that you can find many of them by exploring the world and the need to play the various mini games like skating aren't nessescary to beat them game.

It also helps that regular final boss against The Scorceress is easy so thanks to that, the grind won't feel as much of a waste of time since you'll by beat the game for sure once you get the 100th egg. All of the bosses in Spyro 3 are for the most part easy with the exception of Buzz but he becomes easy figure out after a point.

The grind can still expose the issues that the collectathon platformer had like if there were no progression roadblocks, you have no reason to actually collect the macguffins in question. No new ablities or resources to collect. It starts to feel like busywork.

There are new characters in Year of the Dragon. Most of them are just "fine". They don't really ruin much of anything and you don't need to engage with everything with these characters to roll credits but it can be bizarre that the most praise I can give is that they can be skipped. Shelia's fine to play as untill I have to be better at using her hop. Bentley is also fine as long I don't have to get good at using him.

I did LOVE playing as Agent 9 since the Ratchet and Clank fan in me knows that he's basically a prototype for that franchise. Thanks to the Reignited Trilogy his sections are more fun now due to them controlling like a modern shooter.

Overall, I could say Spyro 3 is my favorite in the Insomniac trilogy. It's a toss up between this and the first game. It keeps the relaxing and tranquil atmosphere of the latter without the obnoxiously obtuse progression of both that and the 2nd game.