Short Game Reviews: January 2023

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II(2022):

I really wanted to enjoy this campaign I really did, but it was so awkwardly paced, while also having terrible AI on top of having inconsistent checkpoints that makes Halo jealous to the point where it sapped up much of the potential enjoyment I could be having. The early parts of the campaigns were okay, just your typical CoD hitscan shooter affairs but then you get two whole missions dedicated to the AC-130 and everything starts to get really questionable, the AC-130's gameplay is far too one note to even have 2 whole levels dedicated and as a result I feel an intense burnout from all the on rails shooting from a bird's eye view I was doing. The sniping mission while on paper is good just does the same old stuff that "All Ghilled Up" did in the past and it feels by the numbers while the later parts is interesting, the bad AI comes in and the game gives you an option to sneak past armoured guards but when you get to the places you are supposed to be breaching, the guards you choose to sneak past will spot you right away even if you use tear gas and since the games loves to shove in armoured enemies and shotgunners, the end result is a level is a lot more frustrating than it should be partner that there isn't many ways to dispatch these enemies outside of just shooting them and hoping they go down or grenades them and it adds to more frustration. It doesn't end here no, you then get an entire level dedicated to an Uncharted style covoy chase while not bad, on it's own just isn't interesting to last a whole level on due to how much the chase eventually starts to wear thin after a while due to how many vehicles you will be destroying and jumping on to, then the game has a Hitman style sneaking mission where the game asks questions on if you were paying attention to the plot, and then you get to the Hitman style sneaking but the AI being bad ruins this section this guards notice you too fast, and it's just a game of hiding, health regen and then shooting. Afterwards the game borrows from Uncharted again and you have to play a game of avoiding getting shot by hitscanners or the barges will kill you. Afterwards you get two terrible stealth missons and due to the bad AI they are a pain since moving 5 seconds in a guards' line of sight could get you alerted or not. I have gone on enough but this MW2 campaign has so many questionable design and pacing decisions that it actively hinders any enjoyment I could be having.

It's poetic really, the original MW2 is what made me lose interest in CoD and this new version of the game made me lose interest in the series again after staying away from it for so long. This could be my last new CoD release I even play.

Warhammer 40K: Shootas, Blood and Teef:

Really enjoyable Metal Slug style game, the guns feel satisfying, and it has a decent amount of situational depth with certain traps needing to avoid from time to time like flame, spikes and electricity. My only gripes is some of the difficulty spikes that I had to lower it to easy since I tend to do it with coop games that offer difficulty options. The game gets mostly smooth on that setting especially when you get the Bolt Gun, some difficulty spikes also made me lower to easy since humannoid or bosses your size tend to be really challenging and have multiple phases without checkpoints inbetween while the giant size bosses are really easy by comparison.

That and this game also made me realize why Metal Slug often made you lose high power weapons really easy because then it would be easy to become reliant on them.

Still, despite all my gripes, this is my 2nd favorite Warhammer game, first best Space Marine and third beind Necromunda Hired Gun. I had a blast playing this.

Evil West:

Evil West was a really good game, in some ways it was everything I wanted DMC5 to be in terms of easing you into the mechanics and low and behold Flying Wild Hog didn't need an entirely new character in order to justify having a grappling hook. I remember early in the game I was like, "oh god, it's one of those games where the only way it ups the challenge is by shoving in tons of enemies" but what surprised me is that Evil West gives you so many ways to dispatch the hordes that I didn't care, that there were craploads of enemies and how many enemies that were spongey. On Normal, I got to use 95% of my aresenal of weapons and it made thining out the hordes really enjoyable. I felt pretty good for killing everybody without dying once. You are given so many tools, the electricity guanlet, the revolver, crossbow, rifle, flamethrower, dynamite, and much more, most of them need to be reloaded or on a cooldown so they can't be spammed, making combat a frentic game of hoping you have something on you to thin out the hordes, I also like that there aren't many combos in the game, since a game with too many combos becomes a game of me spamming the easiest ones. The campaign also does a good job slowly giving you new tools and abilites as you slowly get used to ones you already got.

My only gripes that it's a 12 hour game that feels like it been shorter and Flying Wild Hog seems to be on Capcom levels of "we know we can tell a compelling story in our gameplay driven game", the camera can also be kind of a bitch, and the bosses kind of suck but that's it, at least you get a checkpoint on each boss phase during challenging ones which eases the frustration.

Playing this game was a really good time for me, and if you want a new Darkwatch game in terms of setting and tone, or a melee focused Serious Sam style game, Evil West is very good.

Van Helsing Movie Game:

If you ever wanted a game that felt like it carried the spirit of the first Devil May Cry more than the sequels, then this game might be for you. It has all the quirks that first DMC game has, like an interconnected gothic world strung together with linear levels with optional paths, an awkward dodging system that doesn't feel very precise much like DMC1, and a cumbersume camera all though this game uses a follow cam rather than just fixed camera angles. The difference with this game is that melee combat in general feels downplayed, I used firearms a lot more than using melee weapons since the dodging and the camera made melee more disorienting than anything especially with how much the camera likes to awkwardly zoom in when you use melee strikes. And firearms revolve around widdling away at health bars while dodging out of the way, it just makes me realize how awkward DMC could be if it had a heavy focus on firearms all though you could argue DMC2 was proof of that, this game however is better. I feel like maybe the game would've been better if it was just a straight up third person shooter and just ignored melee combat or just made melee a light part of the combat even if the game would need a new camera system to accomplish this. Another issue is how the camera during particularly with Dracula can be very bothersome and especially how the first 2 bosses with Dracula are massive difficulty spikes and the final boss with him being a pushover.

Some good about the game outside of the before mentioned interconnected gothic world is the cool "Monster Movie Universe" fan service. I haven't watched the Van Helsing movie in many years but the fan service here is as intriguing as a superhero movie tie in game having villains and locales from the comics in the game and despite not really being into the Monster Movie Universe, I do appreciate the fan service on offer here.

Overall, it's about as okay as a movie tie in game can get, all though to be honest, this game does make me curious about playing Castlevania Lords of Shadow again since it's very similar to this game in terms of premise, ideas, and feel.

The Entropy Centre:

This is a pretty well made game, and I do like how the game constantly throws in new gimmicks and mixes up previous ones and in regards to that the game works well but at the same time, I feel like I would've enjoyed this game a lot more if it was shorter and if I was more into puzzle games. I say the former is because I feel like when I got late game, my mind got really exhausted by all the puzzles by the halfway point, it reminded me how much Portal benefitted from it's brevity and I am curious about checking out Portal 2 again as a result, if that counts for anything. That and I am not super into puzzle games since I feel so much of the gameplay is finding the solution, once you look it up, then 90% of the overall gameplay is bypassed. I tend to prefer puzzle games with multiple solutions as a result something like an Hitman and it pains me to use this term but "immersive sim". I feel like the length of the game along with my lukewarm thoughts on the puzzle game genre worked in tandem to make me think while this game is enjoyable for the kind of game it is, I found it to be okay. Also, the voice acting and character interactions also helped me get through the game and the overall atmosphere of the game. There is a lot to like but at the same time, I got bored by the gameplay after a point since so much of it revolves around moving cubes in a certain order to progress. The action segments do a decent job at changing things up even if the combat can be tedious since you can only take two hits before you die. I mainly played the game since I heard it was like Portal and I am curious to see how those games hold up after playing this. Once again, this game is good for what it is, but I am ultimately lukewarm on it.

Super Mario Odyssey:

I enjoyed my time with this game the more I played it, that's the best way of describing my time with Mario Odyssey. I have beaten the game twice now and I always found the early parts of the game kind of dull while everything from Metro Kingdom and onwards to be pretty enjoyable. I do like how this game isn't so much an open world game in the traditional sense but more of a collectathon platformer you'd find in the late 90s and early 00s stuff like Banjo Kazzoie, Spyro and Jak and Daxter. It's not about doing missions to progress the story but more so exploring the world and finding collecticles in order to progress to later parts of the game, and while the early sections aren't bad, they were kind of boring especially Sand Kingdom which can have have way too much empty space for my liking, but Metro Kingdom and onwards has enough open space and enough collectibles to find on the beaten path or if you explore casually while on the beaten path to the point where exploring the open worlds with your move set can feel rewarding and enjoyable. I might prefer Bowser's Fury attempt at an open world Mario but this game was also pretty solid. I do personally prefer Mario Galaxy's linear level based approach but I prefer linear games in general but Odyssey executes it's open world gameplay well enough due it to emulating a style of game I do enjoy. The bosses and overall difficulty is pretty easy, and I have seen a number of people criticize the game for that but I am glad the lives system is gone since lives systems in games are basically just red herrings don't add much to overall experience. The bosses are also pretty easy, you might die maybe once or twice to figure out their patterns even if that but I do like the overall easy but not too braindead easy difficulty to be make a game for a rather relaxing experience. Not for everyone especially those demand challenge out of their platformers but for me, I did like there was nothing that was hair pullingingly difficult.

I had a good time with this one even if it did take a while to get into the groove regarding the level design.

The Legend of Tianding:

What if you had the Guacamelee games but remove all the metroidvania aspects? You basically get this game. And what is here is pretty good, the platforming and combat all feel as satisfying and prececise as the above mentioned games. All though what makes me not reccomend this game highly as I could be is the structure of it. When the game lets you partake in the various dungeons the platforming and combat all feel solid, well made and has a fast lighting fast pace to them, when you are in them, it feels fantastic. The combination of traps, obsticles, enemies and combat encounters makes for gameplay that is so seemless when going from platforming to combat feels so smooth and is hard to put down when you are in the groove. But here is the problem, there isn't that many dungeons or at least not as many as I would like, I was shocked to know that this game has a lot of story and cutscenes while I didn't outright dislike the story, I just found it dull when compared to the platforming and combat, and there are some lengthy dialogue and downtime sequences in this game, a bit more than I would like. I feel like if the game had maybe 2 more dungeons and lowered the amount of story and downtime in the HUB world than I would enjoy this game way more.

Other issues is that the RPG elements feel very tacked on, about as tacked on as it gets, you get various pickups from fallen enemies or npcs from the HUB world that don't really do anything, and the amulet feature only had 3 active slots being used and the rest I didn't even bother. I am glad it's not on reliant on rpg stuff elements over actual skill but everything about it feels tacked on. I also wish the game has a middle difficulty since I have a hard time telling which is the intended difficulty when there are two options. I assume the first one was for the first time player since you can take more damage and I eventually went with that since bosses wipe out your health bar super fast on anything higher.

Overall, it depends on how much you don't mind the heavy emphasis on story and downtime. If you don't mind them, then you might enjoy this game a lot, but if you don't you enjoyment might be that high. Keep that in mind if you want to try this game.