Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor GOTY Edition Review

I remember playing this game back almost 10 years ago and it was a pleasant surprise, I remember how much Monolith Productions was hyping up the Nemesis System and thought it was going to be nothing more than a way to garner hype but to my shock it turned out to be the thing that defined the game and to this day helps makes this and it's sequel Shadow of War stand out from other games. 

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor is that and I dislike to use the term here, "generic" game with high production values and a revolutionary AI and procedural generation system that helps made it standout from the pack. 

The best way of describing this Shadow of Mordor is that what if you had a Tolkien licensed game with the parkour of Assassin's Creed and the combat system of the Batman Arkham games and what you get is Shadow of Mordor. I do however prefer this game over AC and the open world Batman games in large part due to the Nemesis System and the high amounts of polish with it's animations in combat and stealth.

I'll start with the good, the animations for combat and stealth are really well done and does a great job at selling you on the power fantasy that you will partake in. Talion tears apart enemies with such savage energy that it's a pleasure to watch him tear orcs to absolute to shreds even if the game can start to wear thin at times watching Talion just viciously destory everything in his path really provides a high level of stimulus when playing the game. The fact that Talion can kill his enemies unlike Batman just makes the combat animations "pop" in a way the Arkham games never did since Batman has to hold himself back constantly. High amounts of polish and production values in animations can carry a game for me and SoM does such a great job with it that I can play the game for hours straight without taking much breaks which is high praise coming from me. 

The stealth is an improvement over Assassin's Creed since you can actually crouch, have a last known position system when spotted, lure enemies over to you, a crouch run and even have more options for the stealth kills like "brutalize" where you can build a fast combat while scaring away nearby orcs all though detriments to the stealth is that the lockon for air kills can be very finicky and you can kill enemies you didn't want to kill which is something I recall earlier ACs doing better since locking on was a button press. The orc AI can be dumb too taking advantage of the last known position system and parkour, along with the crouch run ability as well as being able to stealth kill an orc a second after he spotted you and it is a shame that Monolith Productions who were known to make smart moment to moment AI like in Condemned and FEAR, it is a shame but understandable considering both those games were linear action game while this game is open world and more has to be done to make the AI work. Stealth does at the very least feel like a worthwhile option despite how basic it is overall, and I like how it is encouraged since some orcs are weak to it. You could also it somewhat "true" to the lore since orcs are supposed to be a bunch of dumb brutes. 

The story missions are decent and does an okay job at breaking up the pace from all the orc stalking and killing even if the actual story accompanying it isn't very good. You will be engaging with the game's base mechanics like stealth, combat and parkour with varied enough objectives like killing a certain number of orcs, doing stealth, riding cargoors, unlocking new abilites, and even riding a graug. They are decent even if the Nemesis System could be interwined with them better but to this game's credit, the fact that open world exploration is more enjoyable than the main story missions is a feat in of itself due to most open world games, the open worlds might as well be mission select menus but here, the Nemesis System makes the act of going through the open world enjoyable. Now on to that.

The Nemesis System of course, the key feature that defines and it is great, usually dying in a game is tedious busywork since you got to load where you last saved and repeat content you already did but now with the added hindsight you got from your previous death and if you are dying too much looking up lots of guides and tips online. SoM manages to make death death an enjoyable part of the game, basically by and turning the trope of the "worf effect" in video game form. When you get killed by an orc and while the monologues they do could annoy some people, they add a sense of attachment towards from the player because after an orc kills you, getting revenge on them can be very satisfying and gaining intel from random orcs on the map can make you feel like a badass predator where you exploit various orc weaknesses to help you get the kill on them even with the easy difficulty taking advantage of orc weakesses as you stalk them makes me feel like the Predator from the movie franchise but in game from. Basically a cross between that Legacy of Kain's Raziel. 

This where I become more negative on the game and while this may vary from person to person especially if they played this kind of game before but SoM is a pretty easy game, and this was me playing the game with barely any upgrades and only equipping the occasional rune. I don't like bashing a game for being too easy especially when the gameplay on offer here is highly polished if very derivative but for a game that wants you die a lot and have you get attached to the enemies that kill you and want that victory feel epic and earned dying on occasion feels very counter active to that. You can't raise the difficulty here since there isn't any and a lot of the time, in order for me to even have an orc survive more than one encounter, I often had to be low on health and run away from multiple captains and this was because I didn't know about the upgrade system until the game told me about it towards the end. The game was easy even before that. 

Another issue is that the branding system is also very OP and while I don't mind as much as others it is easy to abuse since orcs will never betray and stay loyal to you until they die which makes the game feel less dynamic. 

Outside easy difficulty, another big problem I had with the game was it's context sensitive actions. One big reason why I was never big on Assassin's Creed was how everything you do in those games was based on context sensitivity. In this game, with the x button being mapped to so many actions like roll, climb, sprint, jump over enemy, there will be many moments where I want Talion to do something very specific like climb on a wall to escape a group of orcs and he will either, not climb, roll, jump on orc, and there will be a 40% chance he will listen to me and he will in fact climb up the structure. There will be times where I want to sprint and he will climb when next to a wall, or do some specific jump where I want him to jump to a ledge close by but instead he will leap all the way to ground. Talion feels like he will listen to commands and inputs when lots of things are going on maybe 60- 70% of the time and it can lead to some occasional frustration because I am screwing up to the game's context senstive being slower than I can press the x button. 

Final issue and this isn't a big one since I don't find it to actively hinder my enjoyment of the game is the story, I am not a big fan of interquels or prequels since they add in needless context to things that are meant to be intentionally vague, have established characters show up for pointless fan service, expand on characters that never needed to be expanded on or pointlessly add in new characters that the original continuity never once acknowledged and SoM pretty much does all of these things, Talion in an original character that the LOTR movies never acknowledge, and on top of that Gollum just has a bunch of cameos at best and doesn't contribute much to the overarching story since well he can't get involved in anything major before LOTR. Saruman gets a mention but of course you can't involve him in anything major since you could potentially contradict LOTR. 

Ignoring all that the story itself just isn't very interesting Talion and Celebrimbor hardly get into any arguments or have much tension with each other, most of the other characters are one offs who don't even appear at the end, and most of the games is spent finding Celebrimbor's memories. The overarching plot doesn't really pick up until the end with the whole late game twist of Talion just being used but that point, the game is already wrapped up. I don't even mind the final boss being a quick time event since Arkham combat never really excelled with one on one encounters and like with the interquel problem I mentioned earlier, you can't kill Sauron before LOTR and he already gets beaten in the begginning of Fellowship of the Ring, so having a boss fight with him in this game would give someone the expectation that Sauron in his physical form will do a lot in the LOTR trilogy.

The voice acting did carry me through much of the cutscenes in the story and it is well acted and directed enough to keep me sitting through the cutscenes even if the writing didn't really land at all. 

Overall, Shadow of Mordor is a derivative game held together by it's high level of polish with it's kill animations, and it's novelty that is the Nemesis System, both of these things carried me through a game that otherwise borrows it's ideas from other games while surpassing those games it takes inspiration from like Assassin's Creed and the open world Batman Arkham games, it's easy difficulty and it's finicky parkour system and controls prevents me from reccomending the game way above the above mentioned titles rather than midly.  

Serial Cleaners Review

What a surprise "sleeper hit" of 2022 this game turned out to be. I am an avid stealth game player and while the genre will never truly flourish and will always have a niche appeal due to the whole, "waiting to get anywhere in the game" style of gameplay, I am glad that games like this are getting made. 

One thing that irked me about the genre are two things, the fact that many of them have combat in them and either they tend to develop it's combat mechanics so much to the point where stealth feels like a less fun time waster since combat is faster and gives you more control over what you do by design and body dragging while I did kind of like how the first two Splinter Cell games did it where it penalizes you for actively killing in most of the other games in the genre, it feels like an afterthought, or it's either too dull to fully engage with since it feels like you are on clean up duty. 

This is where Serial Cleaners comes in, it removes combat entirely and it makes body moving an active part of the gameplay. And the before mentioned "clean up duty" issue I brought is the very premise of the game. 

Before I discuss the game I would like to say that I did play the first game and didn't like it very much, I found it to be far too punishing where if you died, you would have to restart the level from scratch with all the bodies you dragged and the blood you cleaned up set back 0 when you get caught, partner that with erratic AI and how you can get 95% of the mission done and then get caught and it's over and restart the whole level, it added so much frustration that I didn't want to deal with. 

This is where the sequel improves and the addition that made it me beat this game and not the first, bodies, blood and completed objectives are now saved every time you save at a save point unless if an enemy is chasing you nearby the save point. You will occasionally get checkpoints on missions during key story points which also mitigates frustration. You also get difficulty options now, and while I don't reccomend everyone to play on easy, I say if you feel like the AI is noticing you way to fast on the "normal" difficulty then switch to easy and see if you like it more that way. The game is challenging either way and you will get seen and restart a lot even on easy mode. 

With all that out of the way, let's start with the good, the story and voice acting are very well done and is extremely engaging, it feels like you are watching a fun crime drama with mysteries, twists and turns that does a good job at adding context to the gameplay while also keeping you motivated enough to see the game through to the end. The worst character is Viper and it comes from how awkward and forced her dialogue is since she basically feels like what middle aged adults think what young adults who use the internet a lot would talk like. The rest of the cast are charming and "likable" especially Bob since he's the kind of guy who's been around for so long to know how everything in his business works. He also is a guy trying to find attachment but not too much considering how she lost his mother. 

It's rather refreshing to see a stealth game with this premise since the genre tends involve spies, assassins, and theives. This also does a good job at contextualizing the fact that the characters you play aren't trained combatants and if you do get caught, you are better off running away than fighting, which is refreshing but can be offputting for some since this can arguably break immersion since you can run away from enemies so many times and they won't even suspect that something is up. The AI can act spotty but not to the point of being unplayable, it mostly comes from how they will see cleaned up blood, and a body being moved and they will suspect for a few seconds and be on patrol. I get why this is here but some could be taken out of it. 

The lack of combat mechanics and the fact that you aren't going full action movie hero mode after being seen is going to make it more obvious. I would've at least liked to permanently remove guards out of the levels like maybe 1 or 2 so I can have a few more options rather than constantly run away but you are given more options here than say survival horror games where all you can do is hide. Later levels of the games and different characters gives you different if rather unrealistic ways to get the heat off you. Like bumping into enemies, breaking line of sight and hiding, go into elevators where the enemy will stop chasing you, climb ladders, parkour up a wall, hide in vents, opening doors on guards, or using your bodies you pick up as a battering ram. Other levels will multi leveled areas which makes it even easier to slip past guards. 

You know also get to play as 4 characters and this game surprisingly handles this well too. Bob is the weakest to play as since his blood slide ability is rather situational in a game where you need to clean blood actively. Lati is great for her parkour abilties especially in later levels, where you can slip by cops a lot faster with her run speed, and climbing up a wall. Psycho for knocking out guards when running away, and Viper has that while also hiding under vents which is the best hiding spots in the whole game. If anything, I say do Bob's missions first and then do Lati, Psycho and Viper's missions afterwards. The later characters let's you mess around with the enviroments in more interesting ways. 

Overall, if you want a stealth game that is nothing but stealth with no combat mechanics or even being able to permenantly knock out guards and it's pure sneaking gameplay minus all the stuff that arguably makes the genre easier then check the game out. If you are struggling on normal see if lowering it to easy will make the AI more mangeable. This game is going to have a limited appeal for people and people who likes to play stealth with "options" aren't going to like it, but what's here is worth looking into for those who want to give it a chance. 

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Review

I was really conflicted on this game. I wanted to call this a good game and while I can kind of say it is, there is a lot of flaws that hold it back from being a solid reccomendation. I do like that a single player Dragon Ball game was even made at all considering how most if not all of DB's console video game outings have been multiplayer focused to some capacity, if you wanted a pure single player game based on the franchise, you had to look in the portable scene. While I do like the game in concept, the execution could've been much better. I still think the game is worth checking out at sale price at least for both fans and dare I even say people who are new to the franchise. The latter is even crazy for me to say since most anime licensed games don't really accomplish this even the stuff made by CyberConnect2 themselves. Naruto Storm games glossed over Part 1 of the story and Storm 3 ends on a non canon cliffhanger, Demon Slayer goes up to a certain part of the story, and Jojo Eyes of Heaven tells an original story. DBZ Kakarot a mostly faithful rendition of DBZ's story that covers all the way up from Raditz to Buu. 

I'll start with the good. This has to be the most faithful rendition of the DB universe in video game form of all time. In both story and even overworld design. The story isn't a cliffnotes version retelling of the series like so many of the fighting games are, the cutscenes, dialogue, voice acting(especially in English if you are familar with DBZ Kai) and even how it keeps you up to speed on the original DB series before Z with it's various lore information scattered throughout the world makes this in some ways one of the best ways to experience the story of the franchise. If you don't want to watch 291 episodes of the original series, 167 episodes of Kai or read the manga, this might be a decent way for you to consume the story if you think over 100 episodes of both anime are too much and you don't like reading. It's 90% faithful to the story of DBZ just like how many of CyberConnect2's anime licensed games are. There are however some new scenes added, and scenes that were reworked or removed entirely. It's why I say 90% faithful and not completely. There is going to be stuff lost in translation like with adaptations with almost anything, it's just inevitable when adapting anything. I say this if you are new to the series and play this game, beat the game and depending on how much you like the story watch Kai or read the manga to fill in the blanks that the game misses from time to time. If you haven't watch the experienced the story in over 10 or 20 years, this is also not a bad way to experience the story again. I still say if you like what you saw in the story of the game, check out Kai or the manga since I would be here all day if I went over every single difference. 

The game also does a good job at creating that TV anime feel with chapters being seperated into episodes and even having the anime thing that they in some episodes where show the credits as the scenes of the show are playing out like this game does at the end of every saga. 

Another positive is that the overworld is really faithful to the series and being able to fly, run around, swim, and jump around is quite the exhilarating feeling at first since in previous DB console games, you could never explore the series' fantasy world to this much of a degree. It was quite the fun and intersting novelty...at first. 

I have also seen many bash this game's side quests and while they aren't good or fleshed out as they could be, they did do a decent enough job at breaking of the monotony of the story quests, since playing a game where you have access to flight, super speed, and even super leaping all at once as a humanoid character is once again quite novelty since not a lot of games I played even have this. I do wish I had a quick descend option like in the Tenkaichi games and even characters in the show can do it which makes it strange why you can't do in this game. Not being able to quickly ascend when you are underwater is questionable omission since it makes underwater exploration a chore and you could run out of breath as you slowly ascend. 

Now on to the bad. The game's combat is very monotonous and one note, at first I liked the fact that you can easily evade by pressing x and the game does kind encourage blocking consider you have to use it to reduce damage and avoid getting staggered. Outside of Raditz, Dr. Gero, and the first Kid Buu fights, and some characters like Nappa having area of effect attacks that you have to rapidly press x to avoid and characters like Frieza, Cell and Kid Buu have ultimate attacks where you have to attack and destroy the health bar of in order to avoid losing lots of health. 

Outside of these aspects, so many of the fights you partake in, is just same one note dummed down version of the Tenkaichi 2 and 3 combat system. Many of the battles is just, punch, punch, energy attack, dodge, get hit, use healing item, rinse repeat. So much of the main story fights are basically this. 

I'll give Raditz, Dr. Gero and the first Kid Buu fights for being occasional shakeups to this. Raditz having his "Double Sunday" attacks being somewhat harder to dodge than your usual attacks, Dr. Gero's energy draining attacks adding some decent challenge since you got to watch out for when he grabs you and you can't spam ki attacks since he can absorb them and get health back, and Kid Buu being super aggressive and spamming energy attacks and summoning his clones that you have to take out since they have your entire flank covered.

Outside of these fights however, the game never really grows beyond on what I mentioned before. The game has a ton of moves and mechanics you will never really need to engage with all that much. Transformations are an okay shake up but not enough for the 20 to 40 hour game that Kakarot is since transformations are nothing more than temporary damage buffs. 

You do have side quests, an upgrade tree and the training grounds to break up story missions but those get tiresome due to the fact that that the side quests amount to being fetch quests or fighting the same Saibamen, robots and Frieza Force soliders over and over again with barely any new enemy types or tactics. You got them and some healing robots and that's it. By the time the Buu Saga happened, there were so many side quests being thrown at me to the point where I got sick of it and I just beelined it to the next main story beat. The side quests were reasonably spaced out but the time I reach the Buu Saga, there was so much of them that I just wanted to wrap up the game by that point. 

The upgrade tree while I get being there makes me question if it was a good idea long term. So many of the upgrades are locked behind long level ups, and beating the main story. I always had enough Z orbs to buy them and with how DBZ as a story is structured and how you play as multiple characters, the upgrade tree is something you want to avoid getting too invested in since if you like playing as Piccolo or Gohan, and if you know the story, uprading and levelling them both up is meaningless since both those characters don't get any major fights towards the end of the game even if you get involved with the other side activities, only one character gets the level ups and it's better off not being Piccolo or Gohan. 

Training ground fights you might need to do for a few times but that too becomes a useless endeavour since you need to unlock maybe a couple of the high damage special attacks and the rest is just stuff you want to do in order to 100% complete the game. Same goes for stuff like racing and doing all the side quests

At this point, the only thing keeping me going was me being a Dragon Ball fan and seeing CC2's visuals and them doing mostly a good job at being faithful to the story of DBZ, at the same time this is where what I said early on how newcomers to DBZ and people who haven't experienced the story in 10 or 20 years could like this game in that the story would be a bigger selling point to get past the tiresome gameplay since you are getting lengthy cutscenes and a solid job at recreating the story of the anime and manga. You might have to put down the controller from during it's long cutscenes just to be warned. 

Overall, while I do generally get enjoyment out of DBZ Kakarot, the execution of the kind of game it is trying to be could be a lot better carried mainly mostly by the various novelties it brings. Check it out at sale price if you can and you might get some enjoyment out of it. 

The 23rd World Tournament DLC Review:

I will admit, as a DLC part of the Season Pass, this probably would've been a solid deal but I bought it seperately due to my curosity of a Dragon Ball game covering the 23rd Martial Arts tournament since whenever a DB game would even cover anything before the Saiyan Saga, this arc would get skipped over. Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure did it and so did DBZ Tenkaichi 3.

As a seperate download purchase, the DLC is rather underwhelming. Not bad, just underwhelming. The DLC does cover this part of the story decently enough and recreates most of the scenes well as expected from CyberConnect2.

I also like that DLC in someways can be more challenging than the base game of Kakarot since you don't have any overpowered moves to spam, no transformations, and you can't hold up to over 9000 recovery items so now you have to engage with the bosses and patterns and have a higher chance of possibly getting a game over, I only got one on the opening fight against King Piccolo due to the above mentioned reasons and that I forgot the controls. There were plenty of moments where my health bar was close to reaching zero.

That and I also like that the DLC added a flashback section between Tien and Tao since the anime never showed them interacting with each other before they fought at the 23rd World Tournament.

The final 3 part battle with Piccolo Jr is pretty well done too and it felt like grand epic final boss to close the DLC on. There is enough challenge and specticle here to make this a decently memorable final boss and due to the above mentioned positives I mentioned Piccolo Jr as a boss tends to shine a lot more. It's up there with some of the better battles like Raditz, Dr. Gero and Kid Buu from the base game.

What I didn't like with how few the fights were considering that this a tournament arc and that the DLC skips over at least 40% percent of it felt rather questionable to me. The DLC is already nearly $20 without the season pass and a good amount of the content in this arc are the tournament bouts so this feels like a somewhat of a cliffnotes version of the story rather than a full on adaptation.

If I got this apart of the season pass, it'd be solid and decent, but since my curosity got the better of me, I paid for the full asking price so I suppose it's my fault despite this DLC being an interesting novelty in terms of DB game content. 

G Gundam Review

This show is a weird one, I do enjoy it and it's probably my favorite non Universal Century Gundam show that I have seen. I still kind of feel like I start losing engagement the more I watch it.

First of all, if you are one of those people who thought the Gundam franchise took itself way too seriously, this show might be for you. G Gundam while having the setting, the mechs, and the battles of a Gundam show, it's much more of a traditional fighting shonen, if you have ever seen Saint Seiya, this show feels like it borrows heavily from it. From the loudly screamed attack names that are mostly just punches, to the characters of the main cast representing a certain part of the world, and to the characters all having armor that represent their "gimmick". It all feels very familar. Familiar but welcome.

I do like the first half the show even if so many of the moments feels like you got to suspend your disbelief heavily just to go along with it but at the same time that first episode is pretty much make it or break it, the show established how ridiculous it is from the moment Rain makes a shield with her make up accessory, if you can't accept that, then the show is better off being dropped because it only gets more ridiculous from there.

The first half, I liked since it was introducing new fighters and expanding on the world and it's just over the top mech fight after over the top mech fight, plus Domon is just so typical of a shonen protagonist but at the same time so pure about it and never really contradicts himself that much that I can't help but find him delightful.

I did like how it was alluding to the Dark Gundam as this big overarching threat with him hiding but slowly showing his hand in affairs. It also had some solid character building with Domon and Rain while establishing other characters in the main cast with Domon fighting them and then their backstories getting revealed afterwards. The show will remind of their goals constantly to the point where it would be hard to forget even years after you watch the show.

But then the issue I had with the show and where I started to lose engagement with it is when Domon beats the Dark Gundam for the first time. It was way too early to fight him and it should've been saved for the end of the show since when Domon was fighting him, it didn't so much feel like Domon wanted to beat the crap out of him but because Domon was annoyed and wanted him out of the way so he can get to the tournament. It kind of lacked emotional investment by Domon to be engaging. The Dark Gundam also loses two more times and never gets a clean win over Domon so it's even harder to care about his as a villain.

After that it's a tournament arc and it's...okay, not terrible but it Wong and later Wullube are way too dull of villains to carry it. Wong's goal weren't all that interesting nor did he have an interesting enough prescence to make me wish he got beat up and Wullube is just such a generic out of left field and boring villain that I zoned out every time he was on screen. Wong also somehow gets access to the Dark Gundam parts...so the series can still have some overarching plot thread connecting everything. Wullube's redeeming aspect is that he gives all the Gundam fighters an excuse to band together and defeat him which does a good job making the tournament arc feel more than just a generic tournament arc.

Master Asia is a decent villain and a solid rival to Domon and his english voice actor does a good job at giving him a major prescence even if at times, he feels like he is crazy one moment and then rational the next but he is an entertaing character that I kind of let this slide.

Kyoji Kashu feels like a prototype to Itachi Uchiha from Naruto and to Kyoji's credit, he is done better here than Itachi, but I do ask questions why on earth did Neo Germany let Kyoji run around and do want he wanted and didn't question if that was actually their original fighter. He's decent character.

Overall, I do like G Gundam and it is a show worth checking out, but I can't deny that I did start to get slightly bored the more the series went on. It's still watchable but the later parts could've been handled better.

Berserk Golden Age Arc Memorial Edition Review

When I was watching this show, one question just came popping in my mind and that was, "who was this show even for?"

Make no mistake about this, it's basically the Studio 4 Degrees Celsius Berserk Golden Age arc movie trilogy that came out a decade ago except now it's in made into an anime series rather than a movie trilogy.

This series has the same issues that those movies have and it makes me bring up the question yet again, "who was this even for?"

If you are a newcomer to the Berserk franchise, you are just going to be asking a bunch of questions and wish the context for the emotional scenes were there when they happened or at the very least the good majority of them and if you are a Berserk fan whether it'd be the manga or the 90s anime, you are just going to get irritated by the amount of scenes and context that got cut in this version of the story. I read some of the manga and watched the 90s anime and while I can say thanks to the 90s anime, the scenes that happened in this adaptation still resonated with me due to me remembering the 90s anime, but that's the thing, it's because I enjoyed the 90s anime so much that these moments I still really like. Like Griffth's speech to Charlotte about friendship, Guts' first battle with Zodd the Immortal, the scene where Guts talks about himself and philsophy with Casca at the Campfire and so on. I love these moments because of the 90s anime and I recall it so well but if my memory was hazey and just watched this anime as a refresher, this show would fall flat, the whole anime fells like one of those licensed game or movie tie in game where it expects you to watch the 90s anime and read the manga to get all of it's context and that is a flawed way to make any adaptation since the story does not stand on it's own.

To name some more examples. Remember when Guts assassinated that Nobleman and killed the kid? Show by extension movies removes context. Guts doesn't fight Samson and get his sword damaged and get saved by Zodd establishing that Guts isn't the strongest that even he at times needs help. 2nd episode spoils so much of the story. Remember why that leader of Doldrey wanted to keep Griffth alive even though Basgone wanted to kill him? Show by extension movie removes context. The Minister Foss sub plot is removed entirely. Pipin barely gets any scene or character and the down time is not as prevelant anymore. Timeskips especially early in the show are quite frequent which makes it harder to get attached to the characters since they change so much offscreen.

But to this show's credit, and this is where I start praising it. Episode 9 and onwards isn't that bad, the sex scene where Guts reveals his insecurities about Gambino and his abusive relationship to Casca is geniunely well done since it actually feels like it was kind of built up and it was very emotionally gut wrenching to see Guts a guy who the show portrays and as strong and dependable is breaking down and crying to the woman he has grown fond of. The only person Guts can actually be emotional around.

From here on out the show doesn't time jump nearly as much and you get more character interactions and it feels like you are actually following them through their journey and them falling apart emotionally due to what the Midland Kingdom did to Griffth. This isn't enough to completely save this adaptation but it does at the very least prevent it from me calling it outright bad. The music and the dub are also solid and I will miss Marc Diraison as Guts and this series reminds me why I always found his Guts performance to be endearing.

And to give this show and by extension the movies some more credit, it does have a much better ending than the 90s anime, which was way too anti climatic and ends way too soon. Best thing to do is watch the 90s anime and then jump to the last few minutes of this anime and the 3rd movie to get a better and more cohesive ending to the Golden Age arc in an animated format.

Overall, while I don't dislike this show completely, I still question who it is even for and why it was even made to begin with since it doesn't really improve the GAA movie trilogy by a whole lot. The 90s anime is still the better choice if you want to watch Berserk in an animated format rather than reading the manga.

Short Game Reviews and Thoughts: July 2023

The Last of Us: Left Behind:

Decent story that could've easily have been a movie instead. I also would've much preffered a DLC fleshing out Joel and Tommy's relationship instead or at the very least wish another one dealing with that got made. As much as I am not big on the HBO show that recently came out, it cut out the mostly average gameplay sections. The Ellie and Riley bits are the best part and they have solid character writing with how Ellie and Riley despite being friends went through some rough patches but still try to maintain what they have is an endearing story,. The ending was pretty solid and it does a good job at tying into the survivor's guilt Ellie had which was foreshadowed at the end of the base game. I do however think when some people bash Last of Us for not being enough of a "game" this DLC comes to mind regarding that since there is a hefty more amount of down time compared to the main game.

The gameplay is still the solid third person shooting mixed in with stealth like in the main game but there are noticeably less shootouts this time around which makes it feel like Naughty Dog added these sections in for the sake of having combat in a DLC to a AAA game. Many of the Infected fights can be boiled down to throwing bottles and bricks and then killing them with your knife. I also had noticeably more handgun bullets here than I did in the main game. The best part is the last shootout where Infected and Hunters get mixed up and you can use them fighting each other to your advantage but this is short and never really lasts long enough to make an impact outside of the novelty that starts to fade very quickly.

There's not a whole lot to say, not great but not really terrible, it's just a middle of the road DLC which is fine since I didn't pay for this seperately and it comes with TLOU Remastered and Part 1, if I paid seperately for it, I might've been harsher.

Chasm: The Rift

The game started off extremely rough. At first I wasn't enjoying the game very much but the more it went on, the more I started like it.

I'll start with the bad first. The voice acting and story are terrible so much so I wish it wasn't even in the game at all. The voice acting isn't even so bad it's good like Resident Evil 1996 or Tenchu Stealth Assassins. It's just painfully awkward and bad, it felt like the actors were both recording voice over acting for the first time and received terrible voice direction. Every time a cutscenes happened I wished the characters would shut up so I can get back to killing more monsters.

The story also did not seem very comprehensible nor very engaging due to the above mentioned bad voice acting since the actor(s) did such a terrible job at selling me on the material. I also lost interest in the story when the general dude who gave you orders died off screen by that point I just gave up and just zoned out whenever the cutscenes played, really think they should've went with the Doom 1 and 2 style storytelling for this one.

The first 2 episodes also aren't very good, it could be 90s fps syndrome where the level designers were just figuring things out but at the same time, it gave me a bad first impression on the game, for example there was a switch I had to shoot just to open a door and it was weird since in games like this, I am used to getting close to a switch and then interacting with and the game doesn't throw this at you consistently to have it feel like something worthwhile. I tried doing the same in the Egypt level with the 3 doors with close by switches and it didn't work.

I also didn't like the objective system the episode 1 and 2 used very much, they were too vague and the backtracking didn't feel very coherent to me compared to the key card hunts of Doom and Quake, it was cool that the game tried to do something new but the execution was lacking, so many times I am not sure which switch activated which door and elevator and so much of it was just a guessing game of what I was supposed to do next. I looked a walkthrough often, and while it wasn't so much to the point where I got super annoyed, it was enough to make me go like, "man I am stuck for the 20th time". The traps were also very irksome since some of them felt like borderline trial and error avoid. Sometimes a trap would be activated a second before I had a chance to avoid, which is why if it weren't for the save anywhere feature in this game, I wouldn't be able to beat it at all.

The enemies seem like typical enemies you find in Quake, many of them will run, lunge or shoot projectiles at you. They are mostly okay but the hitscan screamers were some of the most grating enemies in the game since they can scream and you might not always be able to find cover in time to avoid them, they can ambush from behind a lot which many of the enemies in the game do and it can get frustrating from to time since one way this game challenges outside of traps and obtuse level design is seeing how many enemies can spawn behind you and get hits in.

Your jump arc is also way too small, and it feels like you can barely climb over even waist high walls.

Boss are also not very good and while kind of appreciate them for not being bullet sponges, they can be pretty obtuse in the way you beat them and outside of the first boss be very quick and easy to beat once you know what to do. They just seem like they are there because it's a 90s fps and we just need a boss fight to bookend the episode.

Now what I did like about the game is that the weapons feel pretty decent and semi satisfying to use unlike say the original Quake. The location based damage system was pretty novel and had it's charm. It's pretty fun to shoot an enemy's arm off and they kick you or aim for their head and their head comes off their body. It's not indepth as say Solider of Fortune or Dead Space, but it's kind of a decent concept to experiment with. The super shotgun, rocket launcher, minigun, and occasionally the bow and discs were the weapons I mostly used.

Episodes 3 and 4 also had much better level design since it went back to the more traditional key hunts of Doom and Quake which I prefered since the levels went to having more consistent rules of each door you have to look for being a process of elimination and which order you have to find the keys to progress, it was less the vague switch pulling, door opening and trap avoiding that episodes 1 and 2 had and this is when I was starting to enjoy the game and thought it was more than average. I was still looking up a walkthrough occasionally but now, I was doing it much less.

Overall, this was an odd game, episodes 1 and 2 were average and dull but episode 3 and 4 was when I was starting to enjoy the game and was actually motivated to get to the end. If episodes 1 and 2 were more like 3 and 4, I was enjoy this game more than I ultimately did.

Alan Wake Remastered Review:

I have actually played this game 3 times over they years. I only played it a third time due to it being on Playstation Plus this month and while I didn't like the game than much on my 2nd playthrough, this playthrough of the game was a lot more positive.

The story of the game is solid and entertaining. I always did like Alan Wake as a character and I have seen some criticize him for how "unlikeable" he is, I loved that about his character. The guy acts in a way not too dissimilar from the way celebrities and famous people have generally always acted so it adds an extra layer of relatablity to the story even the way he acts disrespectful towards his wife is well contextualized in the narrative since he feels everyone is just using him for their own end. The cutscenes are also well spaced out for the most part and it being structured like a TV series makes it fun to stop playing the game when an episode ends and then start it again when the episode starts. It even feels like a live show with flashbacks to the past in conjuction to the main story to understand Alan's plight better and different licensed tracks playing at the end of every episode.

The story feels very much like Twin Peaks and other horror stories from David Lynch and books I am not familar with. The character interactions and dialogue do a good job at making the story feel well realized. Unlike a lot of games that deal with horror, the game explains just enough to understand what is happening but doesn't overexplain to the point where it feels like characters drone on and on in expositions dumps. Some might not the constant narration Alan Wake but I didn't mind it since it never felt like Alan was overly narrating too much and it also makes the story kind of feel like a book since well he is a book writer so it is well contextualized.

The gameplay is where the game tends to divide people while on my second playthrough, I straight up did not like the gameplay at all. I do enjoy it more here.

The guns sounds and weapon feel is handled really well, every weapon sounds weighty and powerful especially the hunting rifle and pump action shotgun.

The combat itself while not amazing or as good as something like Remedy's Max Payne series, I do think the game has enough to make it feel involving. There is actual resource management in a game like this, and minus the final level you will always have enough flashbangs, batteries, flares and ammo for your guns to make it feel like you are scraping by just enough through the encounters. You can also look around and get random secrets which even makes level design exploration somewhat more exciting since being rewarded for going off the beaten path if always a fuffling experience since it rewards your curosity.

While the combat is not amazing or deep, Remedy kind of knew that so they put in lots of sections to shake up the gameplay, you will get no guns and traverse the world, have downtime moments, do some "platforming" and puzzles, have a flashlight only with no guns, drive cars, be escourted by characters and so on. The game breaks up the pace enough to the point where it feels like all you are doing more than just shining a flashlight and shooting people for 90% of the game.

At first, I was annoyed by the lack of a dedicated dodge button and dodge and sprint being mapped to the same button but I got used to it over time, weird how you can't click the stick to sprint.

However my big issues with the game are the lack of enemy variety all you do is fight the same 3 shadow enemies and possesed objects for the whole game, and both have issues of the lack of audio cues and attack telegraphing. You will get attack from behind a lot in this game and that is in large part due to the issues mentioned before. The game feel very cheap when an enemy hits you from behind and you couldn't see what is behind you or a projectile you couldn't see coming since you are so busy breaking the darkness shield with another enemy.

The scripted running and "platforming" setpieces are finicky and aren't very good and feel like borderline trial and error since a platform will move or you are running and you forget to jump hoping Alan's small jump arc can reach in time.

Overall, Alan Wake is a good game and an enjoyable PS Plus game and it's good since the sequel is right around the corner. I do enjoy it more now than I did before. There are some occasional frustrating moments here and there but the frequent checkpointing prevents them from being infuriating. 

The Signal:

Everything bad about the base game all rolled into one package. I didn't outright "dislike" the combat in the base game, it's just that the lack of enemy telegraphing and the lack of enemy variety held it back for me.

This DLC? If it didn't come with the Remastered version and that it was an hour long, I wouldn't have been able to beat it.

Lots of cramped rooms with the above mentioned issues and my patience was getting tested to it's limits, there was multiple moments where I wanted to quit but held on, luckily the DLC ends right before I just wanted to give up.

The story and Alan's interactions with Zane did carry it for me but when there wasn't story happening I was getting more and frustrated due to how combat focused this expansion was.

Not sure if I ever want to play this again, playing this was the definition of a chore.

The Writer:

Much better than the Signal, feels more in line with the base game in that there is combat but it has puzzle solving and "platforming" to break things up. Combat still has it's issues that I have covered already and playing this gameplay for the 3rd time with no improvements was starting to annoy me but luckily it was over in an hour.

This time around I was enjoying myself a lot more. The levels are a lot more "trippy" and dreamlike this time around and outside of one "platforming" going through a moving bridge of sorts, there was nothing that frustrated me too much.

The story and interactions are more plentiful for the hour that it lasts compared to the Signal, but overall, this was a solid time to go through by comparison to the Signal. This I could picture myself playing again unlike the former.

Neither of these DLCs are really must plays but this one was tolerable where the Signal was not.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter:

This has to be the most generic game I have ever played. I don't use that word lightly since I strongly dislike using it a lot, it's one of my most disliked adjectives when used to deride media, but man this game is as generic as they come. Everything about MoH Warfighter is basically a bargain bin Call of Duty particularly CoD MW and Black Ops except even those games are far better than this. Warfighter has even less aspects that stood out from CoD than Battlefield 4 did since the latter gave you custom loadouts and had "stealth" gameplay. This game is basically a CoD campaign minus everything they kind of do well.

When the opening cutscene played and it was a bunch of soldiers getting out of the water in the dark and it continued into a scripted stealth section that ends with an explosive set piece, I am like, "is this a CoD game?" It really did feel like some kind of knockoff. Then the following level has you getting into a shooting range "speedrun" challenge just like in the Modern Warfare games. The fact that this was the second level in the game especially by the first level, you would already be familar with the controls was already a sign that I was not going to like this game.

It doesn't even end there either, remember those obnoxious door breaching sequences from MW2 and onwards? MoH Warfighter has even more of these, and they are just as scripted and have as little agency as they do in those games, it really does make me glad that the MW reboots added in actual door breaching mechanics instead of it just turning into a wannabe Max Payne and FEAR for 5 seconds and then it's back to your usual scripted gameplay and shooting gameplay with little depth. They aren't even spaced out that well either you will do at least 2 to 3 of these in the same level.

Ignoring all that, the game is scripted beyond belief, you can't go 5 meters away or deviate from the script for more than 5 seconds and you will get a game over. There was one level that gets mocked involving a sniper and if you walk a few meters from the level box then you die but if you stay within the proxmity the game allows, then he won't even able to hit you let alone kill you.

The game almost lifts every major idea it has from CoD. Scripted chases on foot and vehicle? Check. Sniping level with bullet drop? Check? Marking targets with your laser desingnator? Check. Turret section? Check. Moving slowly and not having access to full movement when characters are delivering exposition during gameplay? Check. Constant explostions and scripted moments where characters are surivivng near death experiences? Check. Vechicle sections where you are only allow to go one way? Check.

I stopped playing the game when it required me to chase someone on foot while having a script timer while enemies were shooting at me, and this was before the previous mission where the level was 2 minutes long and it was scripted beyond belief. Even CoD didn't throw as many enemies at you when trying to chase someone threw a worn down village in it's campaigns.

I can go on and on but this game has nothing about it that is any different from any run of the mill CoD campaign. The fact that there are so many CoD games as is and with the CoD series itself constantly reusing the same ideas whether it'd be WW2, Cold War, modern times or sci fi already does very little to make this game stand out from the series it is borrowing so heavily from.

I get it, Medal of Honor was already really stale by the time it hit 2007 but I am not sure if being a knockoff of CoD in every single facet of it's design was really the solution.

I'll say this, after playing Battlefield 4 and this game, I am never touching a modern military shooter again, I doubt I will even touch a CoD game anymore considering that is a series I tolerate to varying degrees more than I geniunely enjoy.

Medal of Honor: Heroes:

There isn't really a whole lot to say on MoH Heroes, it's the same MoH gameplay since the PS1 days except now the campaign is much shorter and tells you where the objectives are. If you ever played a MoH game before, you have technically played this game but now with more awkward controls.

The same objectives being used over and over like taking command posts, stealing documents, planting explosives, and escaping the level luckily the game is really short and levels end fast so the montonous gameplay doesn't start to register too much by the time you get to the end.

Guns feel solid to use and still has that Allied Assault style of feedback to them rather than location based damage like in the PS1 games and Frontlines, it gets the job done.

One improvement it makes over the PS1 games is that there is no limited draw distance and you can see more of what it is ahead of you, it feels more immersive since the level isn't being loaded as you walk furthur into it. An impressive feat in it's own right is that the levels are decently sized for a portable adventure, there is a decent amount of exploration to be had with the side objectives, I didn't do most of them since they don't benefit you in any way but I did like how especially considering how shooters especially those with a grounded military setting of some kind around this time were getting more and more scripted, you can go forwards, backwards, left and right without the game giving you endless game overs.

I also like how you can hold medkits where you couldn't in Allied Assault.

Issues that really hold the game back are with the awkward controls, you move really slowly and you can't sprint at all which makes moving through the levels kind of a chore since it feels you could move way faster than this. Aiming feels very slow even with the sensitivity at it's max and this could turn away a number of people but I found it manageable. Being able to map camera movement to right stick also probably alleviated some frustruation even if the low senstivity can still be annoying.

I also wasn't a big fan of how objectives were marked on the mini map, which looking for each individual objective can be kind of tedious in these games, I also don't like how I don't even have to observe the enviroment and find the objectives myself, I'd rather just look at the mini map than look at the actual game. It's not enough to ruin it but this can also turn away a number of people from the game.

Overall, MoH Heroes is a game you have played before, and for a portable game it is kind of impressive for what they pulled off but there just isn't really a whole lot of innovation when the series was going on for a while and had a number of games up untill this point.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion:

Crisis Core is a strange game for me, I actually beat this game first before playing FF7 and I didn't beat the latter game until years later and now, I have a hard time remembering the latter game. I am not really interested in the FF7 Remake since I question the point of it's existence and the idea of "remaking" good games in general. I am not even a big fan of FF in general. With all that said, when I first beat CC back in 2014, I wasn't really huge on it, and I wasn't even going to buy this game until I saw this at a convention vendor and decided to impulse buy it.

With all that said, while I do kind of like this game now, playing this remake reminded me why I never gushed over it.

The story of the game while having some cool ideas and the character of Zack being decent, it really feels like a mess in a lot of ways with only Zack's character and Angeal really carrying it.

First it has the issue that many prequels have where it introduces characters not even in the main story that it is a prequel to even have like Genesis, Angeal, Cisseni, and Hollander, and of course prequels have to make intentional writing choices like this just to make the story flow better but when you do play FF7, you just wonder why some of these characters aren't even in that game since they played important roles in the prequels.

Then there is the fact that Angeal and Genesis are important characters to Sephiroth yet Sephiroth never mentions them in the FF7 game. Speaking of Sephiroth, he has so little screen time and then when he gets "defeated" he exits out of the story entirely and it's never confirmed he is dead or alive...unless you play the FF7 game.

Other issues I have with the story is that Genesis is just an insufferable villain where his motivation is interesting, his actual character is him cryptic dialogue and constantly quoting poetry and scriptures, every time he is on screen he just comes off as a flamboyant idiot who thinks he is way too cool. Cloud also barely does a whole lot of anything and spends 30% of the game being in a comatose state, you almost find it hard to believe that he is going to be the protagonist of FF7. If Zack didn't meet his fate, you'd almost think he is the main character of FF7.

Character interactions and dialogue are stiff and awkward much like something in a Kingdom Hearts game so it's hard to get invested in some of the cutscenes since the characters have no in universe explanation as to why conversations are awkward, unlike say the Silent Hill series. The new voices aren't bad but I would've preffered them to keep the old ones

Positives to the story is that Zack is a solidly written character, he has an interesting arc of him wanting to become a hero and holding on to his honor but then accomplished this by being a martyr for Cloud. He starts to slowly get more mature throughout the story while still having the cocky upbeat attitude.

Now the gameplay is where I am also lukewarm on, I do like the improvements it makes over the PSP version where you have a dedicated attack button and item and magic shortcuts and at first the combat can feel solid and satisfying where I am getting hits in with melee and using magic attacks. I also love how the limit break scripted animations can be skipped this time around, not even a PSP emulator had this. They get old after watching them so many times, and it gets aggrevating watching the animations when bosses do it and then you get one shotted.

Then I start fighting the bosses and they one shot me with their limit breaks and partner that with the terrible levelling system where XP is invisible and dependant on "dice rolls" and then I decided to level up my matera like Dark Firaga and Quake while using Cure, Cura or Curaga to regenerate health, and then combat basically turned into a battle of magic spamming and ether use until enemies and bosses died. Enemies will still hit hard but your powerful magic attacks and my strategy will get past many encounters after a couple of tries. Combat became dull after I learned this.

Add to the overly scripted and very on rails feel of the game and "exploration" isn't enough to break up combat monotony. The game isn't so much an RPG as it is a melee brawler with checking stats from time to time. I wouldn't mind this if the combat had more going for it but once you have your overpowered materia, the main thing you are doing in the whole game becomes a breeze. 

The music is however great and the best aspect of the game so I will give it that.

Overall, I sort of liked this remake but not enough was done to make me enjoy a game I was already lukewarm on to begin with. It was impressive what the PSP was able to pull off at the time yet I also feel like the remake doesn't do enough to make the game feel geniunely fresh.

Sephonie:

This could be my expectations being way out of wack but I was expecting a more "typical" 3D platformer adventure rather than a 3D platformer with finicky controls, confusing level design and dull tetris mini games.

The platforming controls felt off the moment I started playing the game, the momentum and jumps never felt as precise as I wanted it to be, I would run and jump and I would always fall to my death or just do something I didn't want to do. I eventually just played and beat the game with the accessiblity options of unlimited jump and eventually unlimited jump turned on so I didn't have to deal with the confusing and awkward platforming controls.

The tetris minigames were okay at first but it started become one note and dull since this was the only way the game could add any kind of geniune challenge and I thought this was going to be secondary to the platforming, I eventually just played these with invinciblity option turned on so I can get past them faster. I get not having combat but this felt so disconnected from the rest of the platforming and exploration that I found offputting.

The level design is also confusing since I had no idea where I was going 90% of the time and I eventually gave up and looked up a walkthrough, going on the main story path felt like I had to randomly and magically guess that I was going the right away, the level design is too abstract and vague to give any geniune clue on what the beaten path was or if I had to to interact with the right species.

The game was also way too story driven for my liking, the avant garde style of storytelling I didn't really cling on to since the lack of voice acting made it easy for me to zone out during a lot of the game's cutscenes. This could be my expectations being out of wack again, but I normally don't play these kind of games to excessively read.

I don't have much to say on the game that I was lukewarm on it. I was probably better off dropping it and seeing it through to the end, the indie scene has a number of good platformers and 3D ones at that as of late and this could be my fault for expecting a game along the lines of those, but I just didn't find the game compelling enough.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2:

After enjoying both Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 and 2 and Ghost Recon Future Soldier, I decided to come back to GRAW2 to see if I am better off playing the game as a cover based shooter where the player had low HP rather than a stealth game and I am glad I did.

The gameplay overall is a pretty satisfying and tense time like the above mentioned games. What I like about these games over most cover based shooters is that combat is tense due to the player having low HP even on easy mode and also how most of the combat takes place at long range. It's about about waiting for the right time to take out enemies from afar while your squad is distracting the enemy combatants while you go in and take out them to make up for your lack of HP. It's quite nerve wracking to move around and check every corner while sending in your squad to take out enemies that could potentially blindside you.

It's also benefical if you try to mark as many enemies as you can before engaging in firefights whether it'd be through your squad or the drone even though I played on easy, that looming threat of accidentally getting a game over if you acted way too careless was still there, and the game checkpoints well enough to the point where you don't have to redo an overwhelming amount of content.

The game also knowns when to mix things up too. You will have more than one infantry until to command, command and a tank and tell to destroy other vehicles, you rockets to destory other vehicles, have multiple objectives for you to search and destroy, and holding a position and there is one mid way section that comes out of nowhere if you are playing for the first time. All though it doesn't mix things up as well as Future Solider does, what is here does do a good job at making the game feel fresh throughout it's short run time.

Issues I have with the game is that machine guns are way too inaccurate and since they are you are better off using the very overpowered Countersnipe since it is the most accurate gun in the game, AND it can shoot through walls. Since your squad is doing of the most of the distracting, it is easy to take shots from cover while you use it. There is barely any drawbacks for the Countersniper other than when you occasionally run out of ammo for it and then use the innaccurate machine guns.

The story is also your typical take over the US terrorism technobabble and it does remind how impressive that a series like Splinter Cell can have a character that can stick around as much as Sam Fisher compared to other Clancy titles.

Overall, this game was a solid time, I would play the first one but it's not on PS3 and the PC version is apparently a very different game.