Short Game Reviews: September 2023

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7:

This was basically the exact same game as Years 1-4, which is fine I suppose since this game is to Harry Potter what Star Wars the Original Trilogy game was to that series after TT did the SW Prequels first but like I said with Years 1-4, SW has characters of different classes and types like Jedi have the Force, lightsabers and can double jump, there are non force users who use blasters and have grappling hooks, and droids characters who can use machinery.

Lego HP doesn't really have this since the HP brand is mostly everyone having access to the same abilities where all the characters just wands that can cast spells with exceptions like a level having the occasional one off chracter who isn't as adept at using magic like Hagrid or some random Goblin who can't use magic. The invisibility cloak gets even less use in this game so whenever you play the game as the trio you are almost always better off playing as Ron or Hermione since Ron can open Weasley boxes, use those color coded S puzzles and can take light sources, and Hermione can do the symbol puzzles, and have context sensitve actions dedicated to her. Harry is kind of just a husk in his own game since all the characters eventually learn the same spell moveset as the titular character does.

All the issues like the doing 3 of something to progress is still here all though downplayed here somewhat. Going through the same HUB worlds like Hogworts can get dull due to reptitive scenery, this time it's not entirely in Hogwarts since adapts Deathly Hollows.

New to this game is the duels and they are pretty one note since it's just a game of color matching and frantic button tapping and not much else.

I did like the destruction Reducto caused, felt like a LEGO rocket launcher of sorts which is nice and it does have the feel of being just engaging where it's not super boring even though at times I did get bored since the Half Blood Prince sections felt dull due it's padding.

Some parts felt buggy and got me confused at times but nothing too ergregious. My big issue with the game is that it just feels way too similar to Years 1-4 and other Lego games while having even less going in it's moment to moment gameplay like Star Wars, Marvel and DC adaptations do due to the aforementioned every characters having a similar skillset.

Not a bad game, but a dull one. I mainly played due to it being a PS Plus game.

Biomutant:

Biomutant sure started off pretty well and slowly went to shit. The combat felt decent and I like how you have access to swords, firearms, and psi powers and seemed to have more going on that some other open world games and the early hours were okay since it felt like a linear game. It was held back by the endless cutscenes and exposition dumps, I wanted to get back to the action after getting interrupted by cutscenes every few seconds.

When the open world plays a bigger role and one mission with a character named Gizmo decides to make go hunt down for a hazard suit which is supposed to make immune to cold which also required me to find a satallite over halfway across the map just for it misdirect me twice and the cold suit didn't do shit against the temperature, I gave up. It was super cumbersome since the waypoint markers would just lead me to so many random parts of the map. It was hard to tell what my main overarching goal even was, it's to destroy some monsters but I am doing a bunch of random sub plots instead, it seems typical of a WRPG styled game but it reminds me why I was never big on them since I prefer to have one epic plot and the sub plots connected to the main plot in some way.

This game does have more going mechanically and polish wise than WRPGs but this then leads to my next issue.

The game is just so bloated and the open world is so big and dull. The more of these open world games I play, the more appreciate Zelda BOTW for the fact that the open world exploration IS the game where with games like this, it's just following waypoint markers and killing enemies which would be better if linear since the open world might as well be a level select menu. If the game was linear, I would be engaging more with the combat and the early hours were more or less this, when I went on my aforementioned Cold Suit fetch quest, I only fought enemies on occasion to get a few level ups and tried to avoid them whenever I can since it's about running to the super far away waypoint marker and fighting enemies is just having me delay myself getting to those waypoint markers. I never really like the whole "follow the waypoint marker" style of level design since you might as well not even pay attention to the level and just have a white room where you are following a dot and you'd get the same game. Playing this game reminded me open world games a lot of the time just don't appeal to me even when they have solid mechanics and decent combat.

The narrator was also super annoying and he just kept on going on and on and while I heard after the fact that you can turn him off, I don't really want to read subtitles while playing video games either. Foreign live action movies is probably the only time I am willing to read subtitles of any kind. So it's either have a narrator who never shuts up or just read subtitles, sounds like a no win situation. Really felt like they did this because the dev team couldn't hire more than one voice actor. Was already hard to take the story seriously when the main villain can randomly show up on the map for no geniune reason.

I knew I wasn't going to like the game but for a second there, I almost thought I was going to enjoy it. Glad this is a game I tried out before I end my PS Plus subscription. I can't imagine buying this as a standalone purchase.

Brutal Legend:

I honestly didn't even know why I bother to buy or even play this game, I saw it a game store and then decided to impulse buy it for the reasons that it was cheap and I recall hearing good things about it, the game was a fascinating learning experience not only because it confirms that RTS games aren't my thing but because it reinforces my beliefs that open world games or a lot of games that attempt the concept really feel unfocused a lot of the time. When it comes to open world games that takes this idea of being so many games at once and take to the extreme, two titles come to mind, Jak 3 and Saints Row 4.

The former is what to me is what you get when you take the open world design philsophy of "do everything excell at nothing" to such an extreme that I find the game to be very offputting and tough to play for long periods of time. SR4 is what you get when you do the same philsophy but everything is so zany and over the top that I can't help but laugh at the same for throwing something ridiculous every few minutes.

Brutal Legend falls into the former. I will admit, when I first started this game knowing how bad the RTS minigames are, I thought I was going to drop it within maybe one or two hours, and while I did drop the game, I can't deny that the game's opening and the first half in general was a decent and charming time.

The opening of the game was so crazy and over the top that I was more engaged than I thought I was going to be. The writing and music do a good job at establishing the setting and tone in that it's a fish out of the water heavy metal themed adventure.

All though that opening in some ways is a red herring, you think the game is going to be a God of War style brawler where it's gory and over the top and you are going on an metal themed power fantasy of killing lots of enemies with some car and driving sections thrown in to break up the pace. The car combat at times reminded me of the Twisted Metal games in that you add machine guns on to your vehicle and blow up other cars with them.

You think the RTS minigames aren't too intrusive since from what I played on the easiest difficulty, they were mindless enough to the point where even an RTS novice like me can get past them. The first half was solidly paced.

It generally mixes up brawling(even if it is less than I would like after the first few missions), vehicle sections and RTS enough to the point where while it feels unfocused can make for a dumb "mini game compliation" of sorts.

Then I get to the half way point where the game basically turns into RTS central with how many of the minigames there are and they start to get challenging to the point where even I have to get good at it and there the tedious aspects of the game starts to show. Why I was never into the RTS genre to begin with.

There is so much waiting, so...damn...much of it. You got to wait for units to spawn, you got to wait for player units and enemies units to finish fighting, you got to lead each individual pack of units to the enemies and structures to destroy, you got to wait for the units to run towards the intended target. Then there is stuff exclusive to this game like doing a rhythmn mini game to rebuild lost territory and then the game starts spawn those ghost horse riders that cuts my units to in half no matter how many spawn, and I got to get the Face Melter Solo and upgrade my base which is just more waiting to get past the main quest line and I gave up.

I looked up more of the game to see if there is more RTS levels after this and there is. There isn't even any brawler sections left, the final boss is but by that point there are so few of those sections left to the point if someone were to play them again, they'd forget the controls for them. It's just racing and RTS segments and I just wanted give up and move on to something else and so I did.

The story, voice acting and writing are decent but they weren't enough to make me want to plow through any more of the game.

I wanted to beat this game especially after how moderately fun the first few hours were but I gave up, I'll give the game credit, I am probably never going to play another RTS game and open world games if they want to be minigame compliations should try to stick with mechanics that work to some degree rather than throwing everything at the wall hoping something sticks. I was never a big fan of that style of design and this game made even less of one. I am glad I got the game cheap.