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.