Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Brief Thoughts

It's easily the best game in the series since a Crack in Time. The shooting and combat has never felt any better and it has the best shotgun I used in a long while. Platfoming and shooting all feel really fined tuned. The story is decent, but nothing special, the series never had super amazing writing but this game's story is functional unlike the 2016 game which I enjoyed but had a story that just sucks. This game is probably my favorite game in the series in terms of gameplay, sure the lack of exploration is kind of a bummer but usually games tend to either excel at exploration or combat, rarely if ever do they succeed at doing both well. Insomniac proving why they are still my favorite devs after all these years.

Hunter X Hunter Prequel

 

Hunter X Hunter Prequel

The story starts off a while before the series actually begins. Two nations are at war with each other one fighting for freedom and the other fighting for tyranny. The story starts off with two best friends who live in a village that is in the forest and is neutral. One's name is Ging Freeces and the other Crowley Crucifixion. One believes in the side of freedom which is Ging and the other believes in tyranny which is Crowley, and loves to fight and loves the thrill of battle. They are both friends because they both enjoy fighting and testing each other's limits, they respect each other's fighting prowess despite being different ideologically. One day the princess from the kingdom that believes in Freedom comes by to try to convince Ging and Crowley and the other villagers to join the cause against tyranny. The village elder declines and wants no part in the war, she leaves while Crowley and Ging go to find food and supplies when the princess gets attacks by bandits, Ging and Crowley rescues her and after the fight, Crowley decides to join the war because he enjoyed fighting those bandits and the thrill of being in danger but he justifies his bloodlust by saying, "evil is a cancer and must be punished". Ging goes along because he was bored wanted to stop living a sheltered life and wants to keep his friend from going down a dark path because he doesn't buy Crowley's words but he cares for him. They both ask the village elder and both are exiled to never step foot again. Crowley doesn't care while Ging questions if this is the right idea. They later join the Kingdom fighting for Freedom and they train under a younger Netero with Nen training. It's a type of ability that Netero is now starting to deploy in fights. Ging and Crowley excel at their training while the latter being the better of the two but has a bloodlust if left unchecked could lead him into ruin, Ging has a better judge of character and know when a fight is over and doesn't exert himself. No one else is good at nen besides them. Netero doesn't want to go into battle in the risk of getting captured and then revealing the secrets of Nen. Years pass by and Ging and Crowley are both winning battle after battle. Crowley is enjoying the killing while Ging has enough and wants the war to end. Crowley and the Princess slowly develop a romantic relationship, Crowley often likes to be comforted by the Princess after a long battle, and the Princess admires Crowley's conviction and battle feats, they later have a child together and get married. The child's name is Chrollo. Time goes on, and the war is almost over but Crowley wants to do more killing and enjoying the thrill of battle, the King is getting tired of Crowley's bloodlust, and pestering for fights and if he steps out of line, he will exile him and worst case scenario: kill him. The Princess is liking him less and less and forms a relationship with Ging. Ging is getting sick and tired of it all. Crowley wants the war to last longer, so he secretly leaves the palace and takes his son with him, everyone in the Kingdom tries to find Crowley and his son, and during the final battle that was supposed to end the war Ging and the final battle starts, but then Crowley shows up and Ging is in shock and won't bring himself to fight him. Crowley wipes out the entire Freedom Kingdom's army and Ging holds back while getting beat up in the fight. Ging then runs away and heads back to the Kingdom, he knows Crowley will wipe out everyone in the palace soon and he asks Netero to hold off Crowley while everyone in the kingdom gets evacuated including the King. Crowley shows up and him and Netero fight. Crowley and him are evenly matched, but then the king and hundreds of people die in the crossfire. Netero than tires Crowley out, enough for him, Ging, a few people and the Princess to escape. They escape to a mountain pass that is hard to find and far away from the Kingdom of Tyranny. It's been weeks and the Princess is a few days pregnant and keeps it a secret from Ging and she wants to kill Crowley for killing her father and destroying her kingdom and wants her other son back, while also wants her unborn son to have a good life. Ging thinks it's stupid and he knows he can't beat Crowley and Netero can only fight him to stalemate plus Ging can't bring himself to fight Crowley. Netero then talks to Ging and tells him that he is going to have to get over his friendship with Crowley and he will have to kill him in order for Ging to live a life without fear. Crowley won't stop until Ging is dead because of his bloodlust. Ging thinks about this long and hard and then he decides to go to the Kingdom of Tyranny to fight Crowley, they head there and are attacked by his guard and Netero fends him off. Ging and the Princess head to the throne room where Crowley is and he takes over as king, a young Chrollo, Phinks and Phaeton are there, they ask to help but Crowley refuses because he wants to kill Ging to finally get rid of him because he was tired of his self righteousness and how he killed people despite claiming to do it for a greater good, Crowley admits that he only joined the Kingdom of Freedom because he wanted the glory of battle and wanted out of that village, everything he did was to sustain his craving for the fight. Ging pleads Crowley to stop his killing and be his friend again but Crowley starts attacking violently and tells him to stop denying his nature Nen was meant to be a weapon for murder, Ging refuses to fight but then the Princess tries to kill Crowley and is hit by a fatal wound. Ging then gets angry and finally starts taking the fight seriously, Ging is still losing, then after the fight goes on Ging notices an opening in Crowley's attacks because of how much he is enjoying the fight and Ging attacks him there, he kills Crowley and then runs away with the Princess, Netero was worn out from the fight with the guard, he temporarily heals the Princess, and the run back to mountain pass, Chrollo, Phinks and Phaeton all look at Crowley corpse and their nen aura are now glowing. Ging, Netero and the Princess head back and Ging discovers she was pregnant with another kid, Netero only has enough knowledge to perform the child birth but not to prolong her life. The Princess dies and the Ging starts crying that his love is dead and his best friend he spent so much time with is now dead. His life was nothing but failure and he can't bring himself to raise a child he names "Gon". He heads back to the village that he was forced to leave and begs someone to find someone who is more worthy of a parent than he is, the Village Elder feeling sorry for Ging and what he went through tells her about his grown up sister Mito living in the forest, the Elder tells her where she went to live and how to find her. Ging knocks on the door with and she notices a white haired man sitting with her, Ging asks that he needs to become a stronger person and then he will have the nerve to face Gon again, he won't know how long it takes, and it will take him a while. He wants Gon to be raised by people who aren't tainted by sin. Kite tells Ging he will watch over Gon out of her being friends with Mito, and Mito happily accepts because she always wanted a child. Meanwhile, Netero forms the Hunter Association and wants to regulate and keep Nen a secret to avoid people like Crowley, and wants to use Nen for good. The story ends.

Halo 5: Guardians Review

It's not terrible nor is it great. I'd say it's a mediocre game not bad but doesn't stand out or do a lot of things that are really interesting. The most interesting things about the game is the parallels to Halo 2. The game introduces a new character and is a 2nd protagonist to Master Chief. Well more he IS the protagonist, and he was never in his the previous entry, it has in universe politics in it's story, brings back the SMG, has the newly introduced character have most of the combat encounters with it's 2nd enemy type, has a multiplayer focus, you fight a giant enemy machine that is controlled by the Covenant, there is faction a civil war within the Covenant, it almost feels like 343 just wants to make their Halo 2.

I always compared Agent Locke to Kira Yamato from Gundam, and I somewhat stand by it. Both are so hated by their respective fandom but both are just "there" to me. Locke has kind of interesting backstory from what I got everyone in Fireteam Osiris does from what I can piece together. Blue Team gets introduced out of nowhere and are suddenly BFF with Chief out of nowhere. Cortana is basically Injustice Superman all though a tad bit more naunced since she doesn't want to kill Chief where the latter just kills anyone disagrees with him. All though she really comes off to me as a yandere despite that Chief and Cortana are friends. They try to make Halsey more sympathetic but the Halo canon has never done a good job at making me think she is anything less than a dick. 

Okay, I am talking about story way too much but gameplay is nothing remarkable. It has new moves which are mostly useless and often get you in trouble. Halo Infinite is better for actually having an addition in the series that you want to use. Promethan Combat is better and I will give 343 credit for trying to improve the combat where Bungie made Flood combat the same. It still isn't all the interesting since it's just really the same shootouts a lot, the arena design is pretty decent but I feel nothing stands out but is functional. The coop is where things get bad, this game was meant to be played with people. The friendly AI is really stupid. They are about as useful as human characters in DBZ against main villains whenever you fight tougher enemies especially in groups. The Warden is like Halo's Nemesis and he sucks every boss fight with him is the same. Just shoot his weak point or keep hitting him until he dies. This game and Halo 2 are toss up for worst campaign for me. Halo 2 has a lot of boring and frustrating parts, Halo 5 is just kind of dull with nothing that stands out.

I'll give this game one thing, I like how it gave the Arbiter agency and gave him his own sub plot, something Halo 3 never did. It's like Attack of the Clones, everyone hates that movie yet no one gives the movie credit for giving Obi Wan agency and his own sub plot.

Gears of War 2 Review

I'd probably call this a pretty good game. It beats the crap out of the first Gears. But it is funny, the devs knew that the constant cover shooting of Gears 1 was not that interesting so they mixed things up constantly.

You have enemies that summon tickers and can heal fallen soldiers, there are Reavers who get you out of cover, you have different portable cover you can use(my personal favorite being the shield that you can pick up), it has scripted sequences and a number of vehicle sections, as well a section where cover can be can be lowered, as well as Flamethrower Locusts to rush you out. It's almost like they were ashamed of the game being a cover shooter so they tried to stay away from pure cover shooting as much as they could. It's basically everything Uncharted 2 gets praised for but I feel this game actually does it well.

All though flaws with the games are the crazy amounts of staggering animations when getting hit which is supposed to reinforce the cover mechanic but it can be annoying whenever you are of cover and surronding by enemies, and it doesn't help that the friendly AI can still be stupid at times which can make the game frustrating because you are getting screwed over by the AI's stupidity. Some of the scripted sequences can be kind of annoying and sort of hard to tell what to do at first, which is an issue a lot of scripted sequences have. Some random cheap deaths here and there. And the A button being the cover, vault and sprint button is still as annoying as ever before due to accidently doing one action when you meant to do the other.

The story is surpsinginly decent. I enjoyed that Dom's wife's subplot since it added a bit more of a human element to the series. Marcus does more stuff that is more heroic and interesting like killing the worm, and helping those people. And the part where Cole was screaming and insulting the Locust Queen was epic mainly due to him telling her to shut up after the latter's excessive monologuing. Nice to see a popular sequel to a 7th gen franchise actually live up to the hype.

Metroid Dread Review

Pretty good game, could be my GOTY overall. All though not going to lie, the game's structure caught me off guard, I kept going around in circles for hours because I had a hard time figuring where to go but then it "clicked" and I knew where I was going with the occasional stump. It did catch me off guard, I was expecting to find tons of random stuff and secrets but the game was secretly bottlenecking me to go to a specfic places. But other than that, the bosses and controls all felt great. The best Metroid has ever been. 

Two things that did bug me was the EMMI killing due to the aiming controls and the amount of times you fight the Chozo Soldiers but those are minor. 

The homage to Metroid Prime at the end was cool too. The story felt like it was doing heavy amounts of retconning. Like the Chozo being alive, or how Samus is actually a Metroid or something. That and I kind of felt like they could've dived into Samus inner struggle like Fusion did but that would've most likely slowed the pace down. 

Give a 3D Metroid now, already played 3 2D games now. Don't want Other M to be the last of 3D Metroid lol. Though Prime 4 seems to be heading into Duke Forever territory.

Crappy Games Wiki Dead to Rights Retribution Entry Response

I've never liked this Wiki Page and I feel that they are really condescending, and I personally wanted to complain about them for a while, since I just beat this game and still really like it, I might as well tear apart these guys:

https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/Dead_to_Rights:_Retribution

1. Really? It's "boring". You realize that combining beat em up and shooter gameplay it made the game different from other shooters? But then they say the game is "generic". Why are you complaining about the DTR being rebooted then complaining about it not "working for the series?"

2. How is it clunkly and terribly balanced? Headshots are super easy to make and the focus mode makes it easier, you can also use the clich and take hostages, you can send Shadow on them, and ammo isn't that hard to come by and encourages you to use different weapons. You can also Disarm enemies too.

3. How so? They aren't super great but they aren't the worst.

4. Buzzwords, so amazing. Grant City is a rundown shithole and looks like one. Boo hoo.

5. Go play most beat em ups with combos in them and the same problem applies. So this game sucks for having it? Plus the game isn't a full on brawler and also has shooter elements as well. So it isn't as dull.

6. You complain about the game being too easy and now you are complaing that it's harder. Make up your mind. Hitscan shooters tend to have awkward difficulty balancing too. Would you rather have a hitscan shooter be harder? I sure as hell don't.

7. It's pretty fun to pull off multiple headshots, plus there is the other stuff I mentioned that you can do and you run out of Focus pretty fast so it encourages you to vary it up.

8. SO WHAT? Why is this bad? Why is a 5-6 hour game bad? The first DTR had a ton of mini games to break up the pace and that game got boring after a point. And Titanfall 2 is 6 hours. Doom 1993 is 4 hours. My Friend Pedro is also shorter than that. Long games aren't inherently good.

9. Yeah this can be annoying but at the same time, Halo doesn't have grenade indicators and it's combat works better than CoD's which has them. CoD's doesn't even work that great either since you can run right into a grenade before the indicator pops up.

10. Yeah this can be annoying but headshots are easy and most enemies die in 2 hits from the Sniper.

11. Lots of games have dumb AI, and charging enemies is in plenty of games like Serious Sam and besides, enemies charging in this game mean you have to watch out and gun them down while enemies are shooting at you. Plus Shadow can come in handy too.

12. That can be annoying, but just use the clinch and you can generally gun down enemies out of nowhere.

13. No, ADS is pretty accurate, I played it, ADS works fine, got lots of headshots.

14. WELL IT'S A SHOOTER. Do you want them to scarifice actual gameplay to tell a story that was already not going to be better than in a movie or TV show? Exactly. And you prefer it over the first game, so it's not exactly a "bad quality".

This was a long one I wanted to do since I can't stand this page at all and find them to be really condescending, and this game just gave me the motivater to actually rip them a new one.

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

I make it no secret that I dislike Naruto's character after the time skip of the original series but I am going to put my money where my mouth is and try to see how I can make Naruto post time skip a more interesting character to me. I find Naruto Part 2 or Shippuden's failings with both Naruto and Sasuke as characters to be more fascinating than something that makes me angry and often mock. I will talk about Sasuke some other time but I will be talking about Naruto here.

First, here is the biggest problem with Naruto post time skip that just really annoys me. It's the fact that Naruto thinks like a stalker and someone who isn't inherently "there" in the head. This isn't bad on it's own, in fact, I felt Naruto was interesting in how it had its protagonist be a lot less deranged mentally compared to other shows. The problem is the lack of any kind of self awareness or any acknowledgement from the plot that Naruto is in fact not thinking clearly and that he is in fact so obsessed with Sasuke that it's detrimental to his mental health and how he acts in general. If the plot acknowledged this more instead of playing it entirely straight with a concept like this, then I feel Naruto post time skip could've been an amazing character especially for a shonen protagonist.

Here's what I would've done, I would keep Shippuden's first 2 arcs entirely the same. But where my version of the story diverges from is giving the characters of Sai and Tsunade more active roles in the story. After Sasuke refuses to go back to the village a 2nd time, Naruto starts to become depressed that he has no one to motivate him anymore. So now, he tries to find a new rival to match Sasuke through Sai, but here is the problem, Sai isn't as good as Sasuke at all, Naruto and Team 7 would go on various missions together and then Naruto realizes that Sai wasn't the guy he was looking for. He starts to miss and gets crazed over Sasuke as a result, Naruto later demands Tsunade to track down Sasuke so he can bring him back to the "light side". Tsunade straight up refuses, and tells Naruto that Sasuke is a criminal and has abandoned the Leaf Village, the latter has become a lost cause and isn't worth it. Tsunade shows more concern that she doesn't want Naruto to end up like other people in his life. So then Tsunade suspends Naruto from future missions until he gets his head together.

During this time, Naruto wants to get stronger and the only thing driving him now that someday he will fight Sasuke in battle so he trains and learns his new Jutsu the Rasen Shuriken. This then leads to his him defeating Kakazu.

Everything after I would keep the same except now when Naruto does his "Talk no Jutsu" on Nagato and the latter does his "Art of Rinne Rebirth" everyone who knows how to use Chakra sees what Naruto did to make Nagato change his mind while the villagers hate Naruto and the Leaf Government for doing a terrible job at defending the village. Naruto's ninja friends admire him and while the Leaf Villagers loathe him and then Danzo overthrows Tsunade through a democratic vote after rallying the Leaf Villagers to his cause. The series would then have Naruto learn how to control Kaurama so he can protect the Leaf better and the scene where he talks to his evil side in the Water Fall has more purpose because Naruto doubts he can control the Fox after how much the Leaf Village hates his guts.

Danzo has an iron grip on the Leaf Village and doesn't run things like Tsuande or any of the previous Kages did which would then lead to Sasuke attacking the Leaf Village under the orders of the Akatsuki, Naruto then fights Sasuke to a stalemate but senses good in Sasuke because the latter never tried to kill the Leaf but only went after Danzo. Sasuke kills Danzo and then Tsunade becomes Hokage again.

I would keep Obito's declaration of war and I would the uniting the villages mostly the same. The War Arc would take far too long for me to rewrite but to keep it short, Naruto and Sasuke fight again, but then he convinced Sasuke to change sides AND after Sasuke learns the full truth, they fight Obito while the Kages defeat the resurrected Madara. After this, Naruto and Sasuke have their final battle to see who is the best once and for all and then I end the series there.

In conclusion, there are other issues that prevent Naruto from being a great show but this is a major one that I am covering in this blog. I might do more, not sure. 

 

Serious Sam 4 Review

Outside of it's bad optimization and a little too many cutscenes, I think this is my 2nd favorite game in the series. I prefer it over 3 and TFE. The weapons are some of the most satisfying in the entire series. It doesn't rely on hitscan as much as SS3 does, on top of that the early levels are actually fun where SS3 gets good halfway through. I even did some of the side quests but they seem kind of like a waste since the items you get don't get to use in the final part of the game. 

Dual wielding awesome, all though I prefer to do it with some more than others. Pistols, shotguns, are the best to dual wield with. And the alt fire on the Laser Gun just devastes the shit out of enemies.

When it comes to the sheer number of enemies on screen, I don't think the new Doom games really compare. The amount of enemies that are populating the screen is just crazy and there's so many different types of enemies too.

The music is also my favorite in the series as well. Love the ambient tracks here as well as the remixed Cathedral theme. The sheer amount of guns that are in this game is kind of crazy to me as well.

I don't think I played a game that gave you so many guns to use since maybe Resistance 3 or a Ratchet and Clank game. I am surprised by how much I liked this game considering all the bad things I heard about it.

Halo Infinite Review

Its a pretty good game overall, not sure where this ranks in terms of the rest of the series but I say I prefer it over 2 and 5 at least. I predicted the open world was going to be like The Evil Within 2 and Gears of War 5 and it was basically just that. I didn't mind. That and the open world parts made my PC dip in fps so having those linear level broke up the pace. 343 did a great job with weapon feel like they always do. All though, some weapons I did use more than others. The Shock Rifle I preferred over the Disruptor. The Sentinel Beam felt way too powerful and the Covenant Carbine felt way better than the Plasma Pistol. The Boss fights were kind of lame as expected. They are better than Halo 2's if you can call it a complement. The story I actually found to be one of the better in the series. Its on par with Halo 4 for me. I liked the Pilot, and Chief and Cortana 2.0 had some charming and solid interactions. The villains were monologuing narcissists like always. Definitely one of the better new releases this year. Also another issue is that the game made you do those battery puzzles and 3 of something a little too much but it wasn't too bad.

Now, I feel 343 should just make single expansions instead of make a new mainline game. Whats here already works really well. Would be a shame to rebuild from scratch. They should do what Valve tried to do with the Half Life 2 expansions. Worked well for Doom Eternal.

Dead to Rights Series Brief Thoughts

Dead to Rights: 

This game is extremely bizarre. The first half of the game seems to know that the shooting is basic hitscan combat with weird controls so it breaks up the pace with these weird mini games, the drowning one being the absolute worst of the bunch. After, at a certain point, the mini games stop and then it becomes a straight up shooter and it can get feel drawn out at times. The game isn't that long but it can feel draggy at points. 

The story and presentation is rather strange, the whole game feels like it wants to be some kind of epic crime movie and it does have it's weird charm all though the in engine cutscenes feels like what would've happened if Remedy didn't give Max Payne it's signature comic book style cutscenes.

Dead to Rights 2:

Basically when I think of this game, I tend to think of Steve Blum and one of his more memorable game performances and the gameplay feeling a much jankier Strangehold. It's a fun short little game to play on a weekend.

Dead to Rights Retribution:

Out of all the DTR games you should play, this one is it. The game has a combination of melee and combat that I haven't seen many other shooters try to do before or since. It's cool the amount of combat options you have for a hitscan shooter. You can fist fight enemies, send Shadow on them, use Bullet Time and guns to get kills, disarm enemies, throw enemies into each other, do executions and even do them with weapons, take cover(which is often boring but I use it as a way to heal) and my personal favorite: the clinch. 

It makes for a combat that actually doesn't feel like it can get dull after a point for a game with hitscan weapons. 

The Shadow stealth sections are okay and are decent enough, it's interesting to play a stealth game as a dog.