Rise to Honour Thoughts

Rise to Honour has to be one of the most fascinating case studios on how *not* to do an action game both when it comes to melee combat and shooting. I have seen some call it a "hidden gem" but this game is anything but that.

First impressions aren't too bad, the animations, models and general production values are really good and generally still hold up now to some degree. The checkpoint system is shockingly forgiving and isn't overly punishing if you fail, you get lots of health refills both after and even upon getting game overs.

Then there is fact the game feels like a weird precursor to Batman Arkham, Sleeping Dogs and the Uncharted games. The Arkham series with it's counter based rhythm game combat that emulates martial arts movies, Sleeping Dogs in it's Hong Kong action movie style presentation and that it has shooting and melee in it, and Uncharted for it's over the top scripted set pieces. All sounds good, right?

However in spite of Rise to Honour being seemingly being a precursor to all those games, it does everything much, much, much worse.

Throughout all my time of playing this game, I can't help but think that Rocksteedy knew what they were doing when making Batman Akham Asylum while the devs of this game didn't. In Rise to Honour, when you attack, you primarily use the right analog stick to attack, the R1 button to block, L1 to do focused slo mo attacks and all 3 plus it being contextual to do counterattacks.

Yup, that's right the face buttons get no use at all, 4 buttons on the controller that are unused, want to map a dodge roll, dedicated attack button, or lock on? Not in this game.

Which leads to my first issue, there is no lock on, not even a soft one, this is where Batman Arkham does this sort of thing better, in the Arkham games Batman lunges and bounces off to different enemies automatically so if there is far off enemy when in combat, he will constantly close in the gap between large distances, in Rise to Honour, Jet Li will flail around where you "slap" the right stick but he will never close the distance on enemies that are a few feat away from him, so you'll either have to have an enemy come close to you or you will have to wait for the attack animation to finish then run up to them.

Then there is counter system, in Batman Arkham, the titular character's head will have a blue flash telling you to press a button to do a contextual counter it can be done as long as a enemy's close and you pressed within the right time. In Rise to Honour? You have two defense buttons and both are mapped to the same button and use the right stick. With generic thugs just hold R1 to block which is fine but enemies rarely ever give any audio or visual telegraphs on when to press the counter button by comparison to Batman. With bosses and tougher enemies you have to use counters that two buttons and the analog stick, yup in most games countering is usually one button but in Rise, it's two plus hitting the right stick in the direction that the attack is coming from and it feels cumbersome as it sounds.

Combine this with previous issues, and combat is basically a game of, "slapping" the right analog stick untill you randomly hold R1 to block and with tougher enemies and bosses hoping that you pressed the 2 button and right stick parry in time you can finally combo on them. Counterattacking at times feels like a borderline game of how lucky you can.

The shooting is just as if not even worse than the melee combat. To put simpily, the shooting feels like a much, much, much worse Dead to Rights, it's DTR in that it's heavily based auto aim and you have slo mo except in DTR, auto aim is much more reliable and it's much easier to cycle between targets, on top of that slo mo dodging feels reliable in DTR where Rise, it feel awkward and isn't very reliable. In DTR, the auto aim isn't connected to by using the right stick. Plus there is cover mechanic but I can't recall being able to shoot from cover. Enemies who use submachine guns can stagger you like crazy and can rip your health bar to shreds.

Finally, there is the action set pieces and this is where I feel Uncharted wins out, and I'm not even big on Uncharted. In Rise, you have simplistic running away from explosions set pieces while you move the left stick forward but in Uncharted the x button is always use for jumping, in Rise? The button for jumping and evading obstacles is contextual so even if you did press R1 the game won't register the command until the prompt pops up so because of this running away from over the top explosions in Rise to Honor feels like a rhythm game where the right button presses are done with the game feels like acknowledging them.

Overall, I didn't even finish Rise to Honour, but I spent more than enough time with it to the come to the conclusion that I can't stand playing it. This is a game so bad that it made me understand why I like the games I like so in sense I can Rise to Honour that backhanded complement

Ion Fury Review

I finished Ion Fury twice beforehand, so I already really liked the game, but with the Aftershock expansion recently coming(going to get to that soon) out and the fact that I got a physical copy on PS4 at a con 2 years ago, I decided to beat the game one more time on PS5 and, do I still really like it? Of course I do. I was hesistant towards playing the game at all since I beat it twice and it was all pretty recent too. Playing the game for a 3rd time I still really enjoy it. There are some flaws and they can annoy me at times but when Ion Fury got me into it's groove, it was a game that is impossible for me to stop playing, Ion Fury is the kind of game that can hook me for hours on end. I just a massive soft spot for pick up and play games with very little story getting in the way.

I'll start with what I liked. The music is great, every track just immerses me into the world and makes me bob my head along with the tune, it fits the game and the world so well that it's hard to picture the moment to moment carnage without it. That's a sign of good game music when it complements playing the game so well.

The next positive is the level design, the game runs on the Build Engine, that's no secret but what makes the level design stand out compared to Duke 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior is how much longer the levels are and how much larger and more expansive the maps and levels are by comparison to those 3 games. Levels in Ion Fury can have multiple buildings that take place in the same location. Where previous Build Engine games might take place in say one boxed area Ion Fury's levels smoothly transition from area to the next on top of just being much bigger in general. For example in Hesekel's House of Horrors, you think all you are exploring is the house, right? No, you to explore a pretty decently large house first which would make for a single level in another Build Engine game get to the go to the backyard to find a key then go inside of the house and then there is an elevator ride where you fight enemies and then that bookends the level. That's just one example of how Ion Fury's levels can feel large and expansive even compared to other games.

Add to that the levels are so much larger and take longer to complete and it every level in the game can feel like one big epic adventure, of keycard hunting, switching pulling, generator activating, and swimming, there is so much that is done in an Ion Fury level and when you do everything without a guide like in this latest playthrough, I am like, "I can't believe I did that".

Another positive is that the guns feel fantastic and all feel good to shoot. My favorite weapons were the chaingun, the uzis, the crossbow, the bowling bombs and the shotgun. The pistol especially it's alt fire is especially useful here its going to especially come in handy since a lot of the weapons in the game can run out of ammo really quickly.

Final positive is that the game manages to mostly hit the right line of being challenging but not overly difficult even on normal difficulty. Ion Fury unlike a lot of games, you have to work to drop health and armor, you need to get headshots on top of that a lot of the enemies can kill you in a couple of hits with enough concentrated fire, despite there being moments in this game where I had lots of health and armor all that would legit get cut into pieces witin seconds, there is hardly any moment of Ion Fury where it felt like I was geniunely invincible or unkillable.

The negatives are that outside of the Pistol, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, and Crossbow, ammo for all your other guns get drained pretty quickly. The Uzis, the Chaingun and even Bowling Balls can run out of ammo pretty quickly, I often save those guns along with the crossbow on tougher enemies, that is all fine and good but I would at the very least like to use the Uzis more.

The bosses are bad, no suprises there, either they consist of circle strafing or in the final boss' case just circle stafe on higher ground until all the Wendigos are dead and then bombs away up top.

Some of the enemies can be pretty annoying to fight, not all but some, like Bony Whoop with his constant flying and projectile, Deacon with how it fire so many fast projectiles that can rip your health to shreds and the name of the game is to kill him before he fires at all, the Diopede which is a game of spamming bowling balls until it dies, the Mechset which aren't too annoying on there, but appear so many times that I start to get sick of them because they pop up so much just keep strafing around them until they die and Liberators with Grenade Launchers since explosive weapons, is Shell's kryptonite and those guys can randomly ambush you.

Overall, I still really like Ion Fury, and while there are things that can annoy me it's highs generally compenstates for the issues I have with the game.

Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 Review

For a PSP and Wii shooter, I consider this to be somewhat impressive for what the devs managed to accomplish, but at the same time, the game was starting to show that Medal of Honor as a franchise had very little staying power left.

To put it simpily, Medal of Honors Heroes 2 is kind of a different game from the first one. Where MoH Heroes 1 was about completing objectives and was essentially the older MoHs but on the handheld, Heroes 2 is basically a Call of Duty clone, not a bad one and is certainly a more tolerable one than Warfighter was but it's basically CoD on the go or with motion controls.

Everything in the WW2 era CoD games you have in Heroes 2, you have a two weapon limit, regen health, the compass telling you where to go, a melee attack, throwing grenades as well as the scripted nature of them where enemies will keep spawning until you reach a certain point on the map. Everything you experience in the CoD games before CoD4, you pretty much experienced here.

To the game's credit, the enemy count is decently high especially on the PSP version, the guns feel pretty punchy and powerful and the game generally does everything it does competently, nothing is outright bad here but nothing is really good either.

The PSP controls are okay and with emulator fiddling I got them to work how I ideally want them but there is weird stuff like how there is no dedicated sprint, melee attack or grenade throw buttons. The lasting one was especially grating since I wanted to switch to my secondary weapon but I would accidentally select a grenade instead.

With all that said, the game does share the same issues that games of this type have like for example, you are better off using the MP40 at all times since enemies use it and it's super accurate at almost any range, enemies go down super quickly and you fight the same enemy infantry throughout the whole game.

Grenades are also pretty useless since spraying and praying is enough to get you far in a lot of the scenarios since enemies have low hp and there is rarely is ever any stronger enemy types with them having basic AI too.

The regen health gives you very little agency so in combat since all you are doing is breaking enemy line of sight from the enemy and hoping they can leave you alone while your healing factor kicks in, the Base Demoliation level is especially bad when it comes this since that level just constantly shoves in enemies and they shove in more than the regen health can handle even on easy mode, the last stretch of the level was especially bad since you are on a timer and the game just continues to spawn enemies and you just wait for health to regen and either time will run out or you die, thank goodness for emulator save states to make this easier.

Luckily the game is short, so no none of it's shortcomings stand out too much.

All in all, this game is very much a typical WW2 run gun shooter of the era and it is easy to see why this genre was and by extension Medal of Honor as a franchise was on it's way out, but the game is a solid time, I was looking for a random short game to beat in a quick afternoon and this game basically did just that.

Gargoyles Remastered Review

Gargoyles is one of my favorite cartoons of all time, it's probably one of the few if not only "original" Disney properties that I really enjoy. So with that said, the only reason why I even played this game at all was because it had the same name as that show I liked.

I wasn't expecting much, I do go into any game expecting some enjoyment out of it. I already knew the game was probably going to be an extremely loose adaptation of the show since it's a 2d action side scoller so it's not like I would want to get bogged down with heavy amounts of plot, I already knew the game wasn't going to have voice acting inspite of the fact that arguably the most famous thing about the series is the voice acting. At the end of the day, I was just expecting a competent side scrolling action platformer that had the Gargoyles name on it.

To put it midly, I did not, the game is an incompetently made mess that I don't even think was a good game even for it's time. I really wish Disney had Wayfoward remake the game like with Ducktales or how Castle of Illusion got a remake because this a textbook example of a sub par game even for it's time not even being good that is somehow being preservered. I'm guessing the Gargoyles IP just wasn't popular enough to warrant a full fledged remake.

I'll start with what I liked, the Remastered visuals weren't too bad since it looks more like the show, I never grew up the visuals of the Genesis game so when I see it, the whole thing looks weird to me, at the end of the day you can change between both original and remastered visuals with a button press, I just preffered remastered visuals, hearing the main theme of the show for time in forever was nice and the save states and rewind helps makes this game somewhat playable.

Now with all that out of the way, the game just isn't good, moment to moment platforming when jumping on to different platform feel "okay" but the jump never felt as precise as I would want it. The climbing doesn't feel that great and it's hard to tell what you can or cannot climb to, I thought you could climb on any vertical service but there are parts of the environment that Goalith won't climb on to. This could be a problem with the Remastered visuals. I sometimes attach myself to walls and Goalith won't move.

There is also a shoulder charge mechanic that I can't tell is contextual or I need to double tap the d pad in order to activate, there are times where I mash the d pad like mad just to activate the attack to progress on to the next level, but it won't come out at all, this goes double for the penultimate level where you need to take out those green eye of odin statues while on moving platforms, at times it just felt like I was lucky to get past that part.

The sections with contextual handle bars are a nightmare since you have to swing on them in multiple successive d pad button presses in order to make it to a platform with higher ground, if it weren't for the rewind feature, these sections would be an even bigger hassle to deal with, rewind in general just makes a borderline grating game to play slightly more tolerable

Now, here comes the biggest reason why I dislike this game: the combat. To put it plainly combat just sucks. To the game's credit, I played on the easiest setting and there is a fair share of health pick ups, the lives systems seems to be generous, and rewind makes these parts less frustrating but it doesn't make them any less bad.

When you attack people there is no sense of feedback for when you hit them or feedback for when you get hit, when enemies don't make any noticeable grunts when you hit them and they just move their heads back when Goalith punches them, when the latter gets hit, he just makes growling sound. Enemies don't go flying after completing a combo they just stand there weaving their heads back on and forth, and they can attack you while you attack them so every combat encounter in the game is Goalith getting into an awkward boxing match until the player or the enemy caves in. The combat is so badly made that I argue it has to be seen to be believed.

Add to to all this that even basic enemy types even the Vikings at the start of the game takes an insane amount of damage to kill and boss fights being pretty bad HP sponges as well combine all this this with the weird visual language and platforming and you get a game I wonder why it was even made at all other than to cash in off the Gargoyles IP.

Overall, I get this game being lost to time but the fact that it got preserved at all with no modern remake is more fascinating that the game itself. This really should've gotten a remake from the ground up instead of a remaster.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Review

I normally don't talk about fighting games, but I'm sort of familar enough with the Mortal Kombat and by extension Injustice games that I want to talk about this particular game. 

I always heard this game wasn't very well liked by people and heard it wasn't very good, while I don't think the game is anything amazing since fighting games aren't really my genre, the game is at the very least decent enough for the kind of casual player I am. 

I only played the story mode and while it seems weird that I am primarily talking about the Story Mode for a fighter, I primarily bought this game for it since over the years I heard it was a proto MK9. 

Outside of the fact that the game has two playable sides with MK and DC, it very much plays like MK9 before MK9 you control a certain character for a few fights and then you switch to the next one, I have seen many criticize this system, and while I do very much understand where they are coming from, I kind of like it in the sense it feels like a weird, if somewhat not efficient enough tutorial on how to use certain characters, it's basically sort of like a tutorial mode with a narrative and this works for a casual player like me. I would've just ignored this game entirely if they went with the option of just having Arcade mode and that's it. 

However the problem but at the same time a strength is that since you play as so many different characters, you'll play as a character you like one minute and then a character you like another all though since I'm more familar with MK characters and their movesets over the years, I might've enjoyed playing as the MK characters more than DC, I know Liu Kang's fireballs, Bicycle Kicks, and Flying Kick and I know some of Raiden and Scorpion's moves too. I did like using Lex Luthor on the DC side, so it wasn't all bad. 

I also didn't mind the "3D" aspect of MK vs DC since I felt it did an okay job at feeling familar enough to a guy who plays modern MK and Injustice games, I mostly felt at home with the button and combo button inputs of despite the additional plane. The physics were weird sometimes, but I didn't mind. I also used combo breakers a lot more in MK vs DC by comparison to the Neatherrealm Studios fighters since there are no x-ray attacks. 

However despite all this, the story was kind of a letdown, I wasn't expecting writing masterclass or anything but the whole narrative felt like it could've had more meat on its bones. For example, Darkseid and Shao Khan both iconic villains in their own right combine together to form "Dark Khan" this sounds awesome, this could be a really wacky and over the top silly premise, I even bought the game for that, but instead Dark Khan barely has any screen time or doesn't do much of anything, he's just an end boss and that's it, no villainous acts, no worf effect, nothing to make me dislike him, he's just a boss fight, for such a wild concept, it felt like the writers could've done more with it. 

The rest of the story isn't much better, it's mainly just MK and DC characters, getting surprised or angry at each other then they fight, and then it moves on to the next fight, my big issue is probably just the lack of a geniune plot, it just feels so loose that it's hard to get invested even for a "dumb fighting story" point of view. 

The whole MK and DC playable campaigns also felt like a weird wasted opportunity, I thought with both sides being playable, you were going to play out both perspectives to "get" more of the story but they don't seem to intersect or change that much, probably due to the lack of plot but at the same time, it was kind of a wasted opportunity yet again. 

The voice acting is also decent stuff and it has number of the MK9 and later NRS game VAs too, and outside of Shang Tsung, they get the job done. 

Overall, I complained about the story a lot but I did enjoy the game from a moment to moment gameplay perspective, I'm a casual fighting game player and I doubt I will ever be a hardcore one, but at the same time, for the relatively cheap price I got this game for, I had a decent amount of fun out of it especially for a guy who occasionally plays the NRS game, I was expecting some decent fun and thrills and got just that.

Penny's Big Breakway Review

This was a good time, I wasn't expecting much out of the game and I mainly played it at all because it was one of the few indie games that had a simultaneous console and PC release which I wish was more common among indie games.

I'll start with what I liked first, the game has a great movement system, probably one of the best in 3D platformers that I played in a while, I thought Hell Pie's grapple hook system was innovating but this game takes it to the next level where you don't need to find upgrades, and you can just swing in the air at any time by holding the square button, it just feels amazing to chain multiple jumps and then do a swing to land on a platform. I felt like generally felt like a fast and nimble character most of the time, and the sense of control I get with this movement system can almost feel unrivaled at times, there were times where I thought I was going to die but instead I barely managed to make it, all though there were also times where I did miss jumps too.

This leads to me to the next thing I liked, the checkpoint system, you will be dying pretty often in this game and the best part is that you never get overly chastised for it. The worst that can happen is you losing a lot of points but I'm not really in it for games for that so this never really bugged me, all the checkpoints felt reasonably spaced out and there was never a moment where it felt like the game gave me checkpoint starvation, which is great since checkpoint starvation is one of my least favorite tropes in games.

The camera system is innovating for a 3D platformer too, I'm surprised I can't name many 3D platformers with this system, it felt like the old God of War games in how you have no control over the camera and it constantly follows you, the camera isn't behind the character's back like in 3D Sonic or Spark the Electric Jester 2 either. It's s surprisingly good system and I welcome more of it in the genre.

What I dislike about the game is that it can be pretty buggy, I had a grappling hook bug happen where I'd fall off for no reason, but it seems that got patched after since I never fell off once after I picked up the game again later. However, I did clip through walls, and the floor a few times so there is that to deal with just be warned.

The controls are mostly fine but using the analog stick can be cumbersome especially during some sections where they are timed and you need to be precise, these aren't too common but it can get grating trying to say aim a bomb directly at a rock formation you want destroyed as you are moving through the level. It's nothing too bad. There is one annoying thing where trying to build up speed momentum and not having the character just move seems to be a herculan task. Sometimes, I held R2 and I would start to build some momentum and other times I held R2 and the character would just move instead, I never managed to figure this system out.

Finally, the bosses are quite weak, they aren't "terrible" but 95% of them can be beaten pretty easily too, every time I beat most of the bosses, I'm like, "that's it?" The patterns can be pretty simple and the methods of getting to damaging them are so simple that you can beat them in probably less than 10 minutes, with the exception of an Ape Escape styled race boss that happens late in the game, this part is the hardest and a massive difficulty spike, you not only need to win a race where the boss constantly teleports a few steps ahead of you but you need to collect more tokens than the boss as well. This almost made me quit the game, but I was able to beat him but it felt like a close call more than anything, I'm willing to bet this would be a stumping point for many people who play the game.

There is also that 3D platformer issue of accidentally missing a fast jump and constantly adjusting the left analog stick hoping you will make the landing but I'm sort of used to this.

Overall, Penny's Big Breakway isn't my favorite game but I had a good time considering I didn't know much of what I was getting into outside of hearing it was a 3D platformer and how much I gravitate towards the genre. I'd say it's up there with Spark the Electric Jester 2 as a high speed 3D platformer that does 3D Sonic better than 3D Sonic.

X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse Review

I played the first X-Men Legends back when I was a kid and I decided to play this game first since I always wanted to as a kid as well but never go to, might go back to the first game one of these days.

The best way of describing Rise of Apocalypse is that it is a weird precursor to Marvel Ultimate Alliance and there might be a number of comparisons between the former and the latter throughout this write up.

My thoughts on this game is that it is "good" but at the same time it felt like it could've been so much more. Definately play this game if you are an X-Men fan if you aren't, the game is going to be a much harder sell.

The story is solid, but only as a video game narrative to give enough context to what you are doing more than because the story is memorable. I do think Apocalypse is portrayed pretty well, he has an awesome design and is decently acted, he at the very least is a competent villain if most his feats are mostly done off screen, I couldn't help but be reminded of Ultimate Alliance's Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil, while Legends 2 does an okay job at characterizing and making you dislike it's villains with Apocalypse defeating Beast and mind controlling him and Angel being taken and turned to Arcangel, MUA has Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil interact more often and Doom is shown in cutscenes doing more villianous acts by comparison to Apocalypse.

Legends 2's story isn't bad but it just feels like a decent game story to connect levels together, I really felt like they could've done more with the idea of the X-Men and Brotherhood teaming up. Magneto for example is a playable character but he only gets acknowledged within the story at the start and at the end of the game, outside of some optional dialogue with a villain on Genosha, Magneto spends most of the game being silent, which is pretty disappointing considering the premise.

There is a solid amount of voice acting here and most of it is pretty good minus some characters who just talk way too slowly, Patrick Stewart is even in the game much to my surprise and he gets a good amount of dialogue. The game also does a very good job at keeping you up to speed if you aren't familar with the X-Men with lots of NPCs giving background information on the plot or the various characters so if this your introduction to the franchise rather than you being apathetic towards it, this isn't the worst place to start.

Okay story aside, how is the gameplay? Much like the story, it's not bad and can be pretty good but it ultimately depends on how much of a fan of the source material you are. I generally enjoyed the gameplay on a service level and I did like how unlike X-Men the arcade game, you can use your mutant powers as much as you want all though it's on a somewhat long cooldown, however you can use energy packs to replenish your power meter, all though my strategy was to use my fists on occasion and them spam powers between the 4 playable characters untill everyone is dead. Wolverine was my major damage dealer, while Cyclops, Storm and Magneto were primarily support characters.

You can generally do this strategy throughout 95% of the game, the only major difficulty spike in the whole game was a weird boss rush of sorts where you had to fight Omega Red and Mikhail within short proxmity of each other, Omega Red can drain health packs pretty heavily if you aren't using energy packs to use your strongest moves and Mikhail has 3 very challenging phases after which is even harder than any boss afterwards. Once you get past this difficulty spike, the game never gets hard again outside of maybe on occasion one of your characters accidentally getting knocked out from exteneded damage and they hit harder faster than the auto health pack use can kick in. This is another aspect I prefer in Marvel Ultimate Alliance since it has health and energy drops rather than having limited recovery items.

The level design much like the rest of the game does an okay job at feeling like levels you can explore and the very least they don't feel like a string of scripted set pieces but at the same time, I'm rather mixed of the game having a minimap and the game telling you where to go, I was looking for a more relaxing game where I just wanted to beat people up and not think too hard and the game pulled that off. There is a few levels like Madri Temple and the Great Pyramid where you might need to backtrack, but these are mostly straightforward if jarring pace breakers compared to 85% of the game.

The bosses and some levels have some decent gimmicks to break up the pace, the part where you need to defend a SHIELD Agent from Sentinels as he is preparing bombs, the fight with Arcangel, the final fight in the Madri Temple, the boss with Beast and Sinister and the Apocalypse fight being noteworthy examples.

The music isn't as good as the first game outside of the Madri Temple theme. The game can also be a little too long for how the game doesn't have an overwhemling amount of story, I did start to feel it by the time I got to the Great Pyramid, your mileage may vary however. 

Overall, Legends 2 is a good game but nothing really spectacular, if you are new to the series or an already existing fan, the game is worth checking out, but if you were already apathetic towards the franchise to begin with, best to skip this one. 

Tomb Raider 1996 Remaster Review

This was a game I always hear about and Lara Croft's legacy can't be ignored. I did originally play the TR Survivor games and the Crystal Dynamics reboot trilogy before that but I would always hear about how good the Core Design particularly this game was. At the same time, there are your fair share of modern gamers and even retro gamers who are used to the Mario style of 3D platforming often critcizing this game. So where do I fit in?

I really like it, I can't deny if this was the original PS1 version of the game with the save crystals or the PC version without controller support, I wouldn't be able to get to the end and I can probably picture myself not liking the game even with it's hiccups, the remaster helped increase my chances of enjoying the game. I also played mostly with the original controls with some input remaps primarily putting interact and shoot to R2.

With that out of the way, I mostly had a blast if not rather exhausting time playing this particular Tomb Raider game.

I'll start with what I liked and is the platforming and level design. I'll start with the platforming, be warned, this is not your typical 3D platformer with analog control or heavily automated movement. Lara essentially moves like a tank where she has to jump to a series of sqaures and the name of the game is to judge the distance and line up your jumps to the next sqaure. Ledge grabbing isn't magnetized like in many games that come after instead you must time your jumps with the interact held down in order to grab ledges to avoid falling, this took me a while to get used to and I never fully got the hang of it even by the end but at the same time, this slow paced form of platfoming does give TR 1996 it's own unique and interesting brand of 3D platforming, it's esstentially more of a 3D transition of what cinematic 2D platformers like Prince of Persia tried to do. There isn't many games that really play like this in terms of how you interact with the ledges and how moment to moment jumps are handled.

The next positive is the level design, this is some of the best level design ever put in a game, these levels are lengthy and exhausting especially if you minimize walkthrough use, but I was already aquainted with this style, of backtracking, pulling switches, collecting keys and items and the whole, "here's a big open space, now figure out where to go as you are going through it" with other late 90s games like Resident Evil, Shadow Man, and shooters like Duke Nukem 3D and Syphon Filter to name a few and TR 1996 felt right at home for me while also having some surprises of it's own. For example the Egypt loop back twice and these are both segmented isolated levels, stuff like Duke Nukem 3D never had stuff like this. The Great Pyramid level always reminded me of how far I was from the bottom of where I started from by constantly looping back to the center with platforms placed on different sides and when I got to the top especially with how long these levels are, getting there felt pretty satisfying. If you love good level design with barely any waypoints and guides, then this game is a must play. The only issue I have with the levels is that towards the end, the game did have a lot of out of nowhere traps that can insta kill you, but this remedied by the remaster's save system.

Now I only have two major issues with the game and these could be deal breakers for some but the first I have is the lack of story. I don't really care for story in games as much as others but TR 1996's plot and characters are so paper thin that I almost with there was more actual context to what was even going on, who are the villains Lara fights' why is there a dude with a skateboard with SMGs? What was Lara's backstory and her plight? For a character that is so famous arguably more so than the games themselves, you know so little about Lara in her debut appreance, definately a strong case of first installment weirdness. That and there is so much gameplay and so little story while charming, it can sort start to feel empty with the lack of overall context to what I'm doing. This might be a positive to someone else with all that said.

The next issue and this one bugs me is the combat, while I get what the devs were trying to do, this isn't a full on TPS, combat is supposed to keep the player on his toes when doing the moment puzzle solving and platforming and it's supposed to provide some degree of tension, the combat just feels awful, and also makes me glad for the saving anywhere in the remaster. Lara can't strafe and most fights involve jumping around so the enemies can never hit you but the controls to do the sommersaults don't feel as quick and useful in the moment as they should. The auto aim doesn't feel that reliable and locks on to dead enemies too on top of the double tapping the d pad while weapons undrawn is where Lara will turn like a tank or actually jump. I never felt like I was decent at it.

Overall, Tomb Raider 1996 is a very good game depending on what you are getting into. If you are used to more traditional mascot platformers or games with heavy amounts of automated platforming, you might not like this game, but if you are open enough this might be a game you might come to like. 

Hi Fi Rush Review

I was planning to play this game for some time, I was originally going to play it on PC but I waited since there was going to be a PS5 version instead and I'm glad I did since I prefer to play on console than PC. Hi Fi Rush is now on a console I actually own. That said, I was also hesistant on playing the game since it was apparently a "rhythm game" of sorts and those aren't really my thing, I am willing to tolerate them in some random mini game to break up the pace or if a game feels like a loose inspiration of them like the free flow combat in the Arkham games or the platforming in Prince of Persia but generally speaking, I would never go out of my way for a genre like this.

With all that said, I enjoyed the game, but like many character action games, I only got a causal enjoyment from it. I like the combat in the moment but so much of the advanced combos and tactics I really don't care for.

The timing hits on the beat to get higher damage I am not sure is a gimmick or you actually need to do, it "felt" like I was timing my hits to the beat, but at the same time, for the timing rank I never scored very high, I was at the same time also getting an S rank during moment to moment combat and I was clearing combat encounters at a quick rate, I wanted to try on very hard on mode to see if it was just a fluke or I was actually that skilled but this leads to a big issue that prevented me from doing so despite very hard appearing to be forgiving, and that is the parry system.

I didn't even know the game had a heavy emphasis on parrying and my big issue is that the timing just feels way too strict and it almost feels like a rhythm game on hard mode where the circle to time the parry only pops up once and the rest of the parry prompts felt like I had to be very good at spotting the animation frame on when to parry. The Koriesca boss was a nightmare because of this or any enemy where parrying was a requirement to defeat them was. I just couldn't get the rhythm down and it felt like a completely different game every time it was there, the moment to moment fighting felt like I could just be decent at this style of game to succeed where anything with parrying felt like I had to be geniunely good.

I think there is a reason why I have seen a Reddit thread complaining about it and how the devs would later on patch in an accessiblity option where the parry window was super forgiving, unfortunately this option is only on normal so I just gave on very hard and played on normal. I did wish the game did a better job at being a more consistent, "rhythm games for people who don't play the genre" overall.

The style system apparently has your attacks be stronger and encounrages your meter to reach S at all times, but the only issue is that it's too easy to be at S rank at all times so it's hard to notice a geniune difference.

Other than that since I played on normal, the game is perfectly adequate for someone who gets casual enjoyment from the genre, I like how the support characters is something the game actually made me use like Peppermint for blue shields and Macaron for green armor, the game taught to me in a way where I started to use them actively and it felt like an extension of my moveset rather than never using them at all so good job to the game there.

I like how the game does a good job at almost never needing to use recovery items instead the game will reward you with health depending on how well you are doing which is something I like since it never feels like I need to look at my health and then retreat and look into a menu then activate the item, I like how it kept me in the action at all times.

The platforming at first felt a little obnoxious in how basic it was but later in the game, it did start to throw some more complex time challenges especially when Koresica joins your team where you have to use her special ability to activate a generator and then have a limited number of time to make to the end of a a platforming gaunlet. It does have the Platinum games problem of not doing much inbetween the major arena fights where it's just, "here's a platforming section, and here's arena combat" but it the platforming in this does have slightly more going on than in something like Bayonetta does especially later on.

The bosses are solid and enjoyable they aren't super great but they do a good enough job at filling in that larger than life action sequence in between group fights, the mid boss checkpoints did remove some frustration especially the fights later in the game.

The voice acting is pretty good and the story is serviceable, Chai is a little obnoxious at first but he gets slightly more tolerable as the game goes on. The character interactions overall are entertaining enough, nothing that is going revolutionize anything but it gets the job done.

Overall, I was expecting to get some casual enjoyment out of Hi Fi Rush and I got just that, I don't think it's a masterpiece but it's decent enough.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong(Nintendo Switch) Review

This might be the most, "its not bad but not anything amazing" game I have played in a while. Nothing about the game is outright terrible but at the same time, it's not exactly masterclass in game design either. The whole game feels like Nintendo wanted to remake this particular game because the recent Mario movie had DK and Mario be "shonen rivals" and Nintendo wanted to cash in off that.

My big issue with the game is the asking price for it and how since this is a Nintendo 1st party Switch game trying to find a discount for it is going to be something you have to go out of your way for.

You can probably beat the first 8 worlds and get the first credits drop within less than probably 4-5 hours, it seems the most of the game's content and value comes from getting 100% it and doing everything the game has to offer, which doesn't really interest me. I normally don't like complaining about this stuff since I was looking for a short game to play but the whole thing while not "terrible" just feels underwhelming. It's a little confusing what I am saying but the best way of describing the game is that the gameplay is "fine" but the content feels lacking. Maybe adding in 10 worlds instead of 8 would've helped.

With all that said, what exactly do you do in Mario vs. DK? What if 2D Mario was a puzzle platformer rather than a traditional one? You get this game. The game overall has this very relaxing and chill tone going on that I really enjoy, if you like games like that this is worth playing, I played on Casual Mode since timers while solving puzzles stresses me out. The lives system is pointless on casual mode especially since you will have to try pretty hard to lose them all on that setting.

The whole game mainly consists of getting keys where Donkey Kong is than getting the Mario toy inside the level and you don't need to get the optional gifts in the levels either, you can run straight for the Mario Toys and the game will not chastise you for skipping the "optional" gifts much to my surprise which adds more to my point that you'll get the most out of the game if you aim to 100% it.

The game controls decently enough, Mario has just enough weight and feels precise enough for the most part that it never feels like I am killing myself due to doing things I never intended to do.

I am not big on puzzlers but solving the puzzles in this particular game 95% of the time felt engaging and intuitive, I rarely if ever needed to look up a guide and when I did it's mainly because of an ability I forgot Mario can even do which is an issue I always with the genre since it's easy to be stuck on a part and you are stuck because has reintroduced the ability in a while like for example being able to throw objects upwards or Mario's long jump, to the latter's credit once the game reintroduced after spending multiple levels without doing so, I was abusing it left and right.

The level design and scenarios are mostly "fine", I wish the levels before the first credits roll had more abilities stack on to each other rather than introduce one or two gimmicks in one stand alone level, then disregard it in the next level after. For example the shield enemy might get introduced in one level, but the following one he might not pop up again or how there might be fireballs or lasers in one or two levels but they might not show up until 3-4 levels later.

None of this is "bad" by any means since the mere act of solving the puzzle in each individual level generally hits the sweet spot, "of not too easy but not too hard" but it does add more reasons on why I am just sort of lukewarm on the game. Also, while I think the brisk levels sort of add to the game's charm, they sort of make long term engagement hard since for me, I think the right length for any video game level is 20-30 minutes, anything lower or higher might take me out of it but your mileage may vary.

Overall, Mario vs. DK is not a "terrible" or "great" game, it's an enjoyable game that I feel like is a bit more biased towards people who like to 100% games rather than have that inital first time through feel incredible. If you can somehow find the game for cheap and you love to do everything a game has to offer, I'd say the game is worth checking out.

Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier Review

I am going to start off the review by saying I never even planned on playing this game, I spent years avoiding it because I always heard how "bad" it was and even from some other people on how they were also lukewarm on the series like I was saying that the game isn't good.

If it hadn't been for the game appearing on PS Premium Classics and me playing it on that for a couple of hours, I wouldn't even have played Lost Frontier at all. However, do not buy the PS Classics version as of now since there is a Far Drop crash quarter way into the game that I recall not being patched, however due to me giving up on waiting for a patch, I emulated the PS2 version and simpily put, the PS2 version is the way to play the game, the controls are far superior in the PS2 version than the PSP and emulated version on PS5. Mainly due to the weapon selection being on the D pad and the eco ability shortcuts, the latter is a big reason why I adovocate playing the PS2 version since the shortcuts are a far more intuitive way of using them rather than individually selecting them on the D pad. Being able to use all your abilities at once without switching just makes the game less clunky to play. You can just reach a spot to use your contextual eco power and then immediately use it without, awkwardly cycling through your ability to use the power you want. Shoot weapon is also mapped to R1 on PS2 and camera control is right stick adding more reasons to play the PS2 version.

Sony made a bad move by having the PS5 version be an emulated PSP version rather than choosing the PS2 version. The Far Drop crash as of now only adds insult to injury.

With that finally out of the way, I liked the game A LOT more than I thought I was going into it, I was expecting myself to drop the game after a few hours because I heard there is a huge emphasis on aerial combat and that there is barely any platforming, so I was expecting it to be a repeat of Jak 3 where instead of endless mini games, it's aerial combat and to my immense surprise, there is a good amount of platforming, more so than Jak 3 ever did. The first few sections of the game had a good amount of it, the aerial combat was there but it was more of a pace breaker along with the Dark Daxter sections.

What surprised me was how Lost Frontier during it's on foot sections, introduced new abilities, gave me a little while to get the hang of it and then gave me sections where I had to use those abilities during gameplay challenges. For example, I got a statue displacement power, the game introduced it to me to get s grasp on it and then I was doing a bunch of statue displacement powers to get furthur through the platforming gaunlet, the slo mo power even gets more use than it did in Jak 3 all though I would've liked more mandatory use of it.

Another example and the best bits of game design is when you have to use the statue displacement ability in conjunction with your other powers to name two examples, I had to use the eco crystals and the statue displacement in conjuction to across to the other side of the level, or how I had to use the eco shield and the displacement ability together to get past a pool dark eco and get line of sight on the statues as certain parts were rising. I was not expecting this at all especially with how Jak 2 had boring open world traversal, and Jak 3 was mini game overload. I just wished the game had more stuff like this because it could've been a stand out game in a series were I am not a big fan of it's direct sequels.

The aerial combat is decently fleshed out but it's either too hard or too easy. Your default ship is insanely weak but if you use the Sky Raider, the combat for the most part becomes a little bit too easy and the game has a heavy emphasis on it and it never managed to find the right difficulty.

Other issues I have is that I was bummed that roll jump, long jump and hoverboard are gone but I gave up on Jak leaning it's into it's movement mechanics a while ago.

The aforementioned aerial combat just hits in the realm of "okay" and the Dark Daxter sections are too few and far between to even be worth talking about.

The gunplay and moment to moment combat isn't very good, you don't have a dodge button still and still no ability to strafe and most of it just consist of spamming imbuse and using powerful weapons like chaingun to kill enemies until they die. Like the aerial combat and Dark Daxter sections, it isn't "great" but for the most part it's serviceable yet again, I gave up on the series trying to integrate combat and platforming seemlessly together a while ago.

Overall, if Lost Frontier just leaned into the game design I mentioned earlier, I would glowingly recommend the game but as it stands, it's an enjoyable game in a series where the only games I like are Precursor Legacy, Daxter and Jak X. It surpassed my extremely low expectations I had for it. It's a decently made game for the bad reputation I always heard it had.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - Trunks: Warrior of Hope Review

Out of all the DLC I played for Kakarot which aren't many admittedly, this is the one I say is worth checking out, I might even end out playing Kakarot on this DLC since I am not sure I can take it's gameplay anymore.

What's good about the DLC is that it geniunely improves on the Future Trunks backstory from the anime movie released in the 90s since those portions of the DLC are much longer and has more scenes and better written down time moments than that said 90s movie. My favorite part is when Future Gohan and Trunks are discussing the past events of DBZ in a campfire at night or just any time, the characters are discussing past events, this DBZ fan service at it's finest and it doesn't just end there either, you get to defeat Android 17 and 18 and it feels cathartic finally killing them after fighting them in the DLC as many times as you did. The difficulty spikes are still infuriating but more on that later. You even get an extended epilogue where it covers the backstory in Super where you get a Future Trunks time line version of the Buu Saga and it's decently done here especially considering they could've ended it with the Imperfect Cell defeat but they took the extra step and it was nice. Compared to the 23rd World Tournament DLC, this feels like DLC done right.

Now on to the bad, remember how the most criticized part of Kakarot was the combat? Well, it's much harder here like much harder, I even had to lower the difficulty to easy just to beat this DLC which is something I never did in the base game of Kakarot. The Android 17 and 18 fights are very difficult and you even have to win these fights by depleting their health bars which makes no sense since Future Gohan and Trunks lose to 17 and 18, what is the point of having really challenging fights that you are supposed to win, if you lose in a cutscene, it just makes the victory during gameplay feel hollow.

The fights themselves involve widdling down 17 and 18's individual health bars while both are attacking you, sounds simple enough but then you have to deal with the fact that they have individually, they have lots of HP, both have powerful attacks, both have desperation attacks that can destroy your health in half and all your flanks are covered when fighting them so you could punch 17 or 18 and either one of them can hit you from various blind spots. You fight them at least 3-4 times and all the fights can be pretty lengthy due to how much HP they have.

The bosses in general are much harder here than in the base game, characters like Android 17, 18, Imperfect Cell and Dabura will do their rage/desperation attacks much more often than any boss in the base game, you will pummel them and then there is a decent stretch of time where you must dodge their attacks and avoid getting hit, my thumb was hurting on the 17 and 18 fights.

Then there are just issues I have with Kakarot's combat in general where Ki attacks and transformations don't do much to widdle health bars down and you are better off just mashing the attack button until they are down and firing them occasionally or how many attacks and boss patterns all revolve around the same thing, punch, punch, use ki attack, enemy does powerful attack where they flash red, punch, punch, then they do rage/desperation attack, rinse repeat, I never minded this that much in the base game but playing it now, I can see more issues with it that I didn't see before.

Overall, this DLC is worth checking out if for the Future Trunks backstory portions and the value you get, but I am reminded that Kakarot's combat and that it's harder just showcases that it was never that great. This will most likely be the last DLC of this game I'll play since the rest don't sound that interesting.