Short Game Reviews: April 2022

 Invincible Iron Man Review:

This is a pretty decent game but I feel like it could be more. I mainly checked it out because this was an Iron Man game based on the comics. This is basically a 2D shoot em up in the style of Contra and Metal Slug and the game does what it tries to do well enough. The enemy death animations and carnage that happens on screen looks nice with those GBA sprites. The game does look and feel fun to play and it does that job well enough.

However, what holds the game back is how much gets reused. The same enemies gets reused a lot but with a color swap and not much else, the game makes you fight Blizzard twice, and the game never really does a whole lot to deviate from, "shoot stuff then an occasional platforming challenge", it's all fine and functional but doesn't really stand out when the Iron Man skin gets removed.

Another thing I feel like could be better is that the game lacks a lot of combat options even stuff the games it borrows from has like Metal Slug. Metal Slug gives you a melee attack and more distinct and different weapon variety than this game does. It feels strange for a game called "Iron Man" and Tony being a guy who makes weapons, all he has is 2 forms of attack and can't even punch anyone.

Still, it's a decent enough short little romp.

Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem:

Its basically more Serious Sam 4 which is a good thing since I loved SS4. Cutscenes are still badly optimized and optimization overall isn't great but it has way less cutscenes than the base game so it didn't bother me that much.

If you loved SS4 at all, this is a must play then again you probably got it already.

War of the Monsters:

Not a bad game, it sort of feels like Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects in that it's an "arena" fighter with lots of open space, makeshift weapons, destructible enviroments, and an "energy meter" to do special attacks. I do think this game is better but what holds this game back overall is that the camera controls feel very awkward, I feel like if the game let you move the camera with the right stick and had lock on be a simple button press rather than holding L1 and R1, then the game would just feel better to play as a result.

The bosses can get pretty irritating at times but the forgiving checkpoint system where you respawn at each phase of the boss as well as having your 3 lives back after every game over as well really mitigated a lot of the potential frustration the game could've given me.

Honestly, I consider this game to be a solid hidden gem on the PS2.

Timesplitters 2:

Good game overall, a massive improvement over what Perfect Dark tried to do. The level design is much better, it has far more charm, and the various movie genre parodies were pretty funny and amusing. The guns feel amazing and satisying and the OST is one of the best in gaming.

Now, the big issues I have which I think a modern remaster can fix if done well is more checkpoints, more medkits throughout the levels, and better aiming controls can greatly improve the game. I can't play on any difficulty above easy due to the controls especially.

Still worth checking out, until there is a modern remaster, I say emulate the game and tinker with the controls in the in game options to have strafe on left stick and camera controls on right. And also when you set the camera controls on the right stick, go to the emulator controller settings and invert the controls on the right stick because you can't play TS2 with camera on right stick with the normal up and down. It's weird, so weird, but for me, easy mode plus this control option is the most enjoyable way to play as of now.

Super Mario Galaxy:

Definately one of my favorite games in the 3D Mario games, it's level design and how it messes around with gravity is pretty damn creative. Every level is iterating on what was done previously, and no gimmick gets used once. The only bad thing about the game is the motion control stuff but other than that, I really enjoy it.

Twisted Metal Head On:

This is a pretty good brainless fun kind of game to play casually. This and TM Black are tied for my favorite games in the series. The bosses are pretty bad but other than that it's pretty solid fun.

Donkey Kong Country 3:

Unpolular opinion: I prefer Donkey Kong Country 3 over 2. 3 just had way less bullshit moments and animal transformation crap for me. First one is still the best of the trilogy.

Yoshi's Story:

An N64 game I actually do like which is funny but that is because it's in 2D and not attempting to be 3D. Overall, the collecting aspect was kind of interesting and probably the only 2D platformer non metroidvania game to have an interesting take on collecting because it's not mandatory secret hunting but you have to look around and collect in order to progress. But it is rather short, like it is really short, I can picture people who bought back in the day not to find the game to be worth the price but it's a decent enough ride and worth playing for the short run time it lasts.

Boomerang X:

It's a cool game but it's way too fast paced for a controller. It's impressive how they made an fps with one weapon so engaging.

At the same time, I wished the game was in third person rather than first. It'd be easier to know where enemies are attacking me, easier to tell where my position is in the air, and split second landings would be easier to pull off. 

Every time I am in the air, I always have to look where my character is in proportion to the ground, it's a game where your weapon is also your primary way of battlefield traversal and third person just makes it more clear where my character is when enemies are attacking me from all sides.

Onimusha 3: Demon Siege Review

Onimusha 3 is a good game and it's my favorite in the series overall. The level design is quite good and it handles backtracking much better than Devil May Cry 3 and 4 do.

Onimusha 3 does a good job having exploration but not having get in the way of the action gameplay. The puzzles are simple enough without being overbearing and the backtracking feels like it gives you enough information without feeling like you are going in circles.

The visuals, music and the opening CGI movie are great. The story has it's weird interesting charm in how oddly Hollywood it feels while combing aspects of cartoons and anime.

While the combat is good and feels mostly solid. There is one big problem for me that I dislike and that is the camera, remember how people insult the camera in older Resident Evil games for how you are at it's mercy during shooting parts? That is the problem here, it's easy to get attacked by enemies off screen, or the camera angle changing making you lose the alignment of where you are moving and I will admit this could be because I used the strafe feature too much, but I wanted to be more aquianted with it due to one big issue: the final boss and this is interesting because the final boss is a curve ball so big that I didn't beat him until 2 years later after I got to him when I first played the game and now I know why, the game changes it's camera out of nowhere. Remember how you were relying on a fixed camera and you rarely ever needed to strafe? Well here is a boss that uses a follow cam and actively makes you strafe out of the way rather than block, which the latter you were doing up until that point. The whole I was fighting him I am like, "why didn't the whole game just have a follow cam instead of a fixed camera?" This is probably why the final boss can stump people.

Another issue, and while I think they do an interesting job at breaking up the pace, but I do find interesting is how much of a mess Resident Evil 4 might've been if the whole game kept the fixed camera from the Michelle levels in this game rather than using the over the shoulder view. All of the combat problems with the camera I mentioned here goes double for the Michelle levels, and how the lack of aiming and overuse of auto aim makes the shooting feel not that satisfying as a shooter, fine for breaking up the pace, but I would never want a whole game like this.

Overall, it's a good game but I think it can be rough around the edges at times.

Rayman 2: Revolution Review

This is a very good game and better than I remember it. It's an interesting game for the era it came out, it felt like a platformer that came out in the early 00s rather than the 90s, there is nothing to collect to in order to progress and it's not a linear make it to end stage by stage platformer either, it kind of felt like a game with adventure elements where one minute you will be platforming, then you will be pulling some switches, then there is combat, then there is on rails sliding sections and vehicle sections, then you are lifting various objects to open a door, among many other things. The combat in some ways felt like a shooter too mainly with the strafing and dodging projectile attacks.

My only big gripes is that the camera controls are not great controlling the camera can feel weird and there are lots of sections with no camera control. That and the game while quite varied can go on for a little too long, you just spend so much of the game rescuing people and the whole goal of collecting the masks feels like it takes a lot longer than it should to reach due to the amount of detours you have to take before you finally get to them.

Wish they made another 3D Rayman game, I want Rayman 4 as much as Murphy does.

Saint Seiya Review and Thoughts

 Saint Seiya Review and Thoughts

Saint Seiya is a rather weird series for me. I watched the DiC Dub when I was a kid and I actually still recall watching it. I really liked the dub at the time, not knowing how bad it actually was, when it got cancelled, I was very disappointed back then.

Time Past and I would hear about this show from time to time, this series along with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Fist of the North Star I would hear was better than Dragon Ball Z a lot. And while I disagree with the latter two shows better than DBZ, I do think this show is good in it's own right and is enjoyable. I recently watched Netflix's Blood of Zeus and played the God of War games so a Greek mythos shonen sounded intriguing to me.

Alright, intro is out of the way, this show is a pretty well made fighting shonen that does a good job at ticking all the boxes of what I want out of an action story. It has constant looming of danger, the bad guys feel like a constant threat, and the characters are interesting enough to make me want to go through the next episode.

The interesting themes of survival of the fittest does make this show for me stand out from other shonen. The knights go through some tough and very rigorous training as children but it doesn't end there, many characters of the series have to prove their worth in order to prove that they are worthy of being what they are. It's themes of friendship while can be corny to many is more interesting here due to its themes of the survival of the fittest. The show's characters have to earn each other's trust through doing thing no normal person even with superpowers would even want to do. This makes the show's themes of friendship more endearing rather than corny. The Gold Knights later in the Sanutary arc have to be proven that the Bronze Knights are worthy of Athena's honor. Every character in the story has to go through some very tough trial and tribulations to prove themselves to each other which helps gives it's themes of friendship more weight.

Now here are my gripes, while the show's story is engaging, the fights are rather dull, this is something DBZ and Naruto are much better than this series at, the fights in Seiya are rather boring. There is no actual back and forth between any of the characters and a lot of the fights consist of characters doing the same signature moves over and over. They often feel like battle in a turn based RPG rather than an actual throwdown of fists. As a result the fights can repetitive rather quickly.

Another issue is how Seiya himself while not the worst main character in a shonen, is the least interesting of the main cast. All the other characters around Seiya are a lot more interesting than he is. Shiryuu goes through absolute hell to accomplish his goals, Shun is a gentle hearted kind soul who doesn't want to hurt anyone and  fights in self defense, Ikki is a lone wolf who prefers not to be overly attached to anyone and Hyoga is someone to driven by emotion and attachment, Seiya doesn't really stand out compare to the rest of them.

Ikki's resurrection ability can be rather confusing and weirdly defined too. He seemed to get brought back from almost anything super powerful attack that enemies can throw at him, which can get silly and can lower the stakes because of how undefined the rules for this ability is.

The final problem I have is that there is rough transition from the Sanutary arc to Posedian. This seems to be a problem in the manga too. When the villain Saga gets defeated, it just has a weird timeskip and then suddenly Posedian shows up. I know the anime had an original story with Asguard but I skipped that mainly because it was just there so the manga author can write more material, but the whole transition was rather strange and abrupt too.

Also, this isn't so much a flaw, but I know the anime got cancelled and it's weird how stand alone the anime's ending here knowing that there is still more content to come with the Hades OVAs.

These sound like major issues but I say the show is still worth watching for an older fighting shonen than got hyped for so many years by it's cult following it has, I actually enjoyed it.

UnMetal Review

I might prefer this over the Metal Gear series in a lot of ways. The situational depth is something MG never managed to pull off. Every section the game is throwing something new and unique at the player.

One minute you are dodging shredders using a raft while fighting mutant sewer monsters, you are avoiding laser turrets, then you are knocking out guards who can wake up quickly and need to be tied up in order to be taken out, you avoiding guards who see really well but can be knocked out very easily, you are avoiding flame traps, you are dodging cameras and replace a guard with a fake one to get past him, and this is only SOME of the creative scenarios the game throws at you. For a game that is parody of MG, I thought there were going to be a lot of shootouts and action segments but they were monstly kept to a minimum and it's kept insync with the story in that Jesse never kills a person and only shoots robots. The sheer amount of voice acting there is for an indie game is impressive too. The bosses are a lot more creative than MG as well and they are just as wacky.

My only gripe with the game and this might be a personal taste but the game feels more like an adventure game with stealth elements than a full on stealth adventure. You avoid guards but you aren't evading patrols or doing any complex sneaking tasks, it's about as much of a stealth game as the Sly Cooper games even though this game breaks up the pace in different ways from those games.

The story and writing seems to go on and just make fun of how crazy Kojima's writing is, the ending was pretty damn hilarious too.

If you like Metal Gear, try this out, if you don't like it, I say still do, it's different enough from those games. One could say this is to MG what Bloodstained is to Castlevania.

Terminator: Resistance - Annhilation Line

A lot of the stuff I say here can apply to the base game, but Terminator Resistance is easily the best Terminator game ever made, it has tons of fan service from homaging Brad Fidel's score, connections to the first 2 movies, characters like Kyle Reese and John Connor popping up(the former this DLC focuses on), and just being the Skynet Future War story that Salvation only partly delivered on.

The story in the DLC is better than the main game especially because it focuses heavily on Kyle Reese(my favorite character in the series and Terminator 1 being my favorite movie in the series), and it gives more of an interesting personal stake for Jaccob Rivers, the protagonist with his whole finding the truth about his father and everyone doubting if Kyle Reese and John Connor are doing. The main menu theme is also fantastic as well.

If you are Terminator fan, this game is a must play.

But this is where my praise ends, while the game isn't *bad*, as a shooter it isn't very good since shooting lacks any kind of impact or geniune feedback, makes sense considering you are fighting Terminators, but it doesn't make for enjoyable shooting gameplay, and there are lots of shooting sections in this game so the enemies being tanks that barely react to getting shot and barely get hurt when down makes for a dull shooter.

The stealth is also really terrible, even on the lowest setting, enemies spot you way too fast and stealth often consists of you hoping the enemy awareness meter doesn't fill up fast enough when going from cover to cover, or when you do get caught, you run away and hope the enemies stop noticing you and get back to the objective. The crafting and inventory is mainly just there to give the player something to look for and to give the whole, "at nights you can move around" that the first movie hinted at.

I mainly got this DLC because of me being such a big fan of Terminator 1 and on the story front, it delivered, but as a game, it's a solid Terminator game, but not a very good game on it's own, I give it a lower score if I wasn't a Terminator fan.