Daxter Review

I originally played Daxter a few years ago on the PPSSPP emulator since I thought Sony would never put this game on modern Playstation systems and it ran very well, of course I had to tinker with the controls to have right analog stick movement and the FMVs were really blurry but other than that I had a very good time. Now, a modern Playstation consoles version of Daxter does exist and I'm replaying the game years later, and how does it hold up? I still think the game is geniunely fantastic, I do notice some issues with the game on a replay but for the most part, they hardly get in the way of playing Daxter. The moment to moment platforming and level design is still just as top notch as ever.

Out of all the games in the Jak and Daxter series, this is the safest reccomendation to me. Don't like the collecting of Precursor Legacy? Don't like the bloated open world of 2? Don't like the mini games of Jak 3? Don't care for the racing gameplay of Jak X? Don't really like the aerial combat of Lost Frontier? Then Daxter is by far the most pure platformer of the whole series, sure there are some pace breaking moments like riding and vehicle chases, movie parody mini games, a turret section, and the occasional simon says mini game, but outside of those 85-90% of Daxter is spent platforming and combat. This was especially welcome since Jak 3 is just so adamant of having so many different mini game genres at once.

One very notable comparison you can make with is with Super Mario Sunshine, the titular character Daxter has a spray gun that can help him glide in the air by firing the gadget downwards by holding a button, much like Mario can with FLUDD. The main difference between this game and Sunshine is that the Spray Gun can also be used during combat and there isn't levels where it's randomly taken away from you and you have to do unpolished platforming levels. In Daxter, you keep the spray gun at all times which is good.

Another comparison that Daxter can made to is it's own franchise and how much Daxter improves on everything Jak 2 tried to do. With Jak 2, the idea of a platformer where you didn't have to collect items to unlock more items and how you can run to the start of every platforming guanlet without needing "x amount of stuff" was an interesting and sound approach especially at the time since you can argue a lot of 3D platformers outside of say the Crash Bandicot series focused on exploration than pure platforming, the problem was is that in Jak 2, you spent more time driving an empty and boring open world where there was too much happening except accidentally bumping into a Crimson Guard solider and possibly dying and halting your progress then you got to do short missions that checkpointed inconistently to make up for much time was spent driving to the next mission.

Daxter? It pretty much solves everything by making Haven City, much, much, much smaller, all the mission start locations are only 1-2 minutes away. Due to this, I finally get an appreciation for everything Jak 2 tried to do and I appreciate that game a bit more in retrospect. On top of this, Daxter's levels are much longer than many of Jak 2's missions. So in a lot of ways, Daxter is what Jak 2 and 3 should've been.

The level design is also quite good, standouts include, the Transit Station, Fish Cannery, Baron's Palace, and Prison. What I love is that all these levels are pretty lengthy and all all self contained levels that tests your platforming skills, with minimal interruptions as you go through them, they might've been overly hard especially the Transit Station level with the PSP analog nub but with analog sticks on a controller, it's much more enjoyable. The Transit Station level be a heavy standout with how fast the trains are moving and the players has to quickly think on his feet like dodging signs and laser as the train is moving very quickly. Baron's Palace is also great in that it turns into a puzzle game of trying to get past various laser grids and also making and timing the jumps and spray gun glide enough to make it through.

After all this praise, what do I dislike about the game? Not much but they can be big flaws to some. One, if you are a big Jak fan for the story, Daxter's story is basically a fighting shonen anime filler arc, where the important scenes like Vieger and the Metal Head leader can be counted on one hand. Combat also gets too easy, at first it's challenging with using the fly swatter and using gas to stun, but later upgrades makes enemies too easy to kill and it never introduces new enemies to compensate for Daxter's growing weapon arsenal. Sometimes, the pick ups to use the spray gun's glide doesn't magnetize to Daxter quick enough which leads to some cheap deaths, it might need some rewind use on PS5.

Overall, Daxter is a great game and one of the greatest gaming franchise spin offs ever made. I can't reccomend this high enough especially for someone who isn't big on the Jak Sequels.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Game Review

Note, I made a short review on this blog years ago, that one is outdated and this is my more updated thoughts. 

I played this game a few years ago on emulator and while I remember liking it, I might've screwed up the controls for it since I was emulating the Gamecube version Dolphin, on top of that due to this, I don't think I customized the controls right to make me play effectively, on top of frame rate drops on certain levels, as a result I had to beat the game using cheats the first time through. The game recently came to PS5 with the new PS2 emulator Sony dropped what made get buy it again and play it all was because of it's cheap asking price which is under $10, compared to how Tomb Raider Legend's PS5 port was extremely overpriced, I'd say this Clone Wars game with save states and especially rewind is well worth at under $10.

The port runs mostly well except for some audio skipping and the save states bugging out when you try to save again after a few seconds, but the latter is no big deal since it still mostly works. At least it's not at 480p like Tomb Raider Legend.

Upon playing the Clone Wars game again, I still really like it. The game almost in a lot of ways feels like a redemption arc and a better attempt at a vehicular based Star Wars game than SW Demoliations was. It was also Pandemic's first SW game that predates their versions of Battlefront 1 and 2 but I might prefer this game over both in some ways.

Good things about the game is that the story is pretty good especially if you are a fan of the SW Prequels era content like I am, the whole story can feel like it can be an episode of the non canon 2003 Clone Wars show, it has many of the same voice actors from that same series after all. The in engine cutscenes are pretty stifly animated with no camera angles or anything going on where characters talk to each other with stif movements. The CGI cutscenes do pick up the slack and do geniunely look pretty nice to this day. The story might not have the status quo change since well Episode 3 would come out 3 years later, but the stakes are high enough with Dooku making a doomsday device and even refrences ancient Sith lore, and how it does a good job at giving Anakin's character importance since he's the one who takes down the device that it feels like a solid enough narrative to keep an action game narrative going. It's not going to win awards but Pandemic could've chose to barely have much narrative at all, the fact they had a story that can feel like a lost episode of the 2003 Clone Wars show especially in a game that is primarily about blowing up vehicles, I commend them for what they did.

More good things the game does is that the controls for many of the vehicles you control while dated in some respects like pressing L2 and R2 to strafe instead of using the right stick is easy enough to get used to especially if you play a lot of late 90s and early 00s games like I do, worst case scenario, you can probably go into the settings of the PS5 and customize it to your liking.

The main vehicle you will be using is the IFT-X and the best way of describing combat in this is like the Batmobile combat in Arkham Knight before AK except unlike that game, you got more methods of attacks like missiles as well as your default laser beam, various powers and you got at least 3-4 enemy types rather than just 1 or 2 like in AK. There's various other vehicles like the LAAT Gunship and many of them are protect missions but luckily you got a super powerful laser attack as well as missiles to make short work of many of the enemies, only problem is constantly getting attacked from behind from fast moving droid ships. There's a variety of other vehicles to use and there'd be too many to list but generally speaking the game's combat revolves around using the auto aim, and avoid projectiles during land based battles, some vehicles can strafe while others have a shield while also having various special weapons like missiles.

Might as well get to the negatives, the on foot levels are not very good, luckily they are over pretty fast but the on foot sections uses tank controls which is something even 3D games at the time stopped using, and it mainly consists of spamming lightsaber throw and killing enemies within it's reach. If you want a Jedi power fantasy game then play Jedi Outcast and Academy instead. These sections could've been cut out entirely and Pandemic would improve upon them greatly in their Battlefront games.

Also, there is just too many escort and protect missions, this could make or break the game for someone, if you don't like these kinds of missions and are interested in the game than be weary, and even I got to admit, I lowered the game to the easiest setting because on the first mission where I died because an NPC's health reached zero and not because of my own skill, I was like, "no way". With save states, occasional rewinding and easy mode the game is certainly beatable enough to me.

Overall, Star Wars the Clone Wars is a well made game for what was esstentially a movie tie in game for SW Episode 2.

Total Overdose Review

Total Overdose was a game I always heard of but for the longest time never actually tried, some people really like it, others are critical of it but I'd say the game is just "solid" and nothing more. It's not the third best person shooter you can find now and even back then but it fufills it's role as being a dumb fun action romp that doesn't want you to think about it in an overly complex way.

The best way of describing Total Overdose is that what if you have Mafia 1 and Destroy All Humans' open world, with Dead to Rights' shooting mechanics, with Stranglehold's special attacks, Prince of Persia Sands of Time Trilogy's Sand Rewinds and early Saints Row's respect system? You pretty much get Total Overdose.

Here's some of the biggest misconceptions regarding the game I want to address of the way first, it technically has an "open world" the same way the Grand Theft Auto series does but unlike GTA, the open world is actually mostly optional, you probably need to engage with it on occasion, but for 95% of the game, you can select the missions in a level select menu and this is fascinating to me since, I feel the biggest problem open world games have is that the open world is pointless and you can select all the missions in a level select menu and low and behold Total Overdose does just that, so if you don't like the open world, engaging with it is entirely optional which is good since the vehicle controls and open world itself is pretty barren, you ever wondered what Jak 2 would be like if you didn't have to spend so much time driving to the next mission? Total Overdose is your answer to that as well as answering the question of whether or not open worlds add much to games. Since the open world itself like I said is optional, that means it's more like Mafia and Destroy All Humans more than GTA which is a very good thing.

The shooting mechanics often gets compared to Max Payne when it's actually more like Dead to Rights with Enter the Matrix's contextual wall running mechanic. Like DTR, TD's shooting is basically just using autoaim where you activate it primarily by using the shoot dodge mechanic, you also pick up random weapons and you never need to reload either, unfortunately no Shadow or the ability to use human shields but you do a variety of special moves like in Stranglehold but I argue this makes the game too easy even on hard. Also, the contextual wall running doesn't really add much outside of using it by accident.

You also get the Sand Rewind from the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games and these work like lives when you die, you also get some health back upon use of a rewind but if you ever run out of lives it's restarting at the last save point or autosave, but if you do die, save points tend to be fairly plentiful as well as autosaves so it's never overly punishing like the Grand Theft Auto games at the time were. You could criticize the Rewind for being a shameless ripoff but not many games even have the feature at all, it wasn't as widespread as say Max Payne's bullet time was so I'll let it slide.

There is also Saints Row's respect system, but this is honestly a trivial part of the game since you don't have to do many side missions to get to the main missions, it may seem like you need to try, but just do one or two side missions and main missions will be avaliable right away. It's trivial padding but it's nothing too bad.

The missions of the game are decent enough and what I like about them is that the feel like self contained levels where you have to search for switches and actually have to find the objective as opposed to looking at your mini map at all times, it manages to straddle the line between telling you enough but not too much. There is one mission where you are in a jungle and killing enemies while activating a receiver on a pyramid and then you to destroy 3 anti air guns before ending it off.

However the game's biggest flaw is the difficulty, and I don't mean it's too easy or too hard, it's just that if you play on normal or hard, the game doesn't really doesn't make you use all of your mechanics or abilities. Normal mode is easy where you can just use the auto aim, kill some enemies to get back health and then die and use rewind on occasion or play on hard mode where the cheap deaths number will increase and enemies hit harder, and I got to spam the scipted area of effect kill everyone in vincinity super move and El Mariachi on bosses. It is a game where you do fight human enemies with hitscan guns so it's already hard enough to make difficulty feel fine tuned but as a whole the game was a decently fun enough power fantasy romp on normal difficulty at least, the game lets you jump out of a car in slo mo while crashing into things, GTA doesn't even let you do that.

Overall, Total Overdose is an enjoyable game, it's a dumb over the top shooting romp that could've amounted to more but doesn't waste your time and can be enjoyed in the same way simple action movies can.

Ghosthunter(video game) Thoughts

I only played Ghosthunter at all because it's an Sony Compter Entertainment Cambridge game and it came to the Playstation Premium service recently where you can purchase it as a separate download, and all I got to say is, this game is a mess. If you ignore the impressive production values with pretty detailed environment and character models for the time and solid voice acting, the game is just a mess to play on all fronts.

The game makes an okay first impression, the character models, cutscene composition, voice acting and even the way it opens makes you think you are for a good adventure and a good time.

First thing I notice that felt off about the game is that the combat lacks any kind of stimulus. What do I mean by this? One big example is that the guns don't have at least a little bit of recoil and the biggest problem is that the gun barrel doesn't even move upon firing the weapon, so you will fire a gun and there is no bullet coming out of the chamber or any form of barrel movement. This might not sound like a big deal but it goes to show how important details like this are because the guns don't feel very powerful, the lack of weapon kickback makes the guns feel like toys rather than geniune firearms.

Due to this combat "feels" off. Then there is of course the fact that you are primarily fighting ghosts in the games through riddling them with bullets or throwing your grenade and then riddling them with plasma. Fighting ghosts means there is no stimulus for killing enemies unlike say killing humans, aliens, monsters and robots.

This is where Ghostbusters the game improved where Ghosthunter fails. In the former, it's not about killing ghosts and defeating them conventionally, it's about finding their weaknesses with the PKE meter and then weaken them enough to trap them. In Ghosthunter, you either kill enemies by just shooting them, or just spamming the grenade and then defeating them.

I'll complement SCE Cambridge for the fact that the game is pretty innovating with it's controls, it has over the shoulder aiming in an action game context before Resident Evil 4 did and unlike RE4 2005, you can move while shooting, a drawback to this is that you can over the shoulder aiming is a button toggle rather than a hold which can make the aiming feel a little clunky since you can't stop aiming as fast when you press a button by comparison to holding it. There is also the fact this is yet another 00s TPS with a first person aim mode that I rarely used and why couldn't they just make this a dodge roll button instead? Since you can aim in third person and first person aiming is rarely required.

Then there is level design and progression which isn't very good either, at first I didn't mind it that much since the game seems to know combat isn't it's strong suit so it gives you a fair number of "quiet moments" where you are exploring using the contextual x button to climb and clambor up things and solving puzzles, there is also some stealth sections here and there too. All of this isn't too bad at first but it all comes fall apart when it comes to fact that the game's attempt at giving hints to the player is inconsistent and unhelpful at best. One minute, the game will give you written hints and there are other times where Lazarous will just give you hints through voice lines but the thing is the latter can outright lie to you. For example, there was a section in the swamp level where he will constantly say, "I can't reach that or wish I can swim" and I assumed I couldn't get to the cabin where the dynamite was but it turns out YOU CAN get to the cabin but only specific parts of the water Lazarous can in fact walk on and he will walk on them while saying, "I wish I took swimming lessons".

The Swamp level just goes on for ages and there is barely any plot progression or story for a while, and for a game that sells itself on story and production values and the gameplay just seems to be a means to an end, that is a no no. The level just goes on for so long that I wish would end, there is just such little plot movement.

However, the straw that broke the cammel's back for me is when you get back to the school and you can run past much of the content the school has to offer, I activated a plot progressing cutscene and thought I can continue on with the main story, just to find out that I need to go to an earlier part of the school to get the smoke bombs to defeat the poltergiest ghosts and continue onwards. Why wasn't this in my notes or Lazarous saying, "I need a smoke bomb for this" or better yet, lock off my progression untill I got the smoke bombs? Design like this annoyed me so I dropped the game.

Overall, I'd say avoid this game and play Ghostbusters the game instead, try Ghosthunter out at your discretion but I won't be surprised if the production values and all the effort put into the game outside of the gameplay fooled you into thinking you are playing a good or even decent game.

Naruto: Clash of Ninja Review

This is about as forgettably medicore games as forgettably mediocre can get. Not sure if I can outright call this game bad since well, I didn't pay a dime for it and I just emulated it, I also got to the end and rolled credits.

The fighting, I guess is functional, you got your usual combo attacks with B and A buttons and you can press Y to do a scripted overly telegraphed special move, x is for throwing and press L and R to move around the plane since many fighting games of this time were like this. Time it well and you do a substituion and teleport from beind kind of like in some of the Dragon Ball Z Budokai games. None of this is outright bad and is just functional enough to be a bare minimum fighter.

The real flaw of the game is how you can beat the story mode in less than 30 minutes and it's some of the most forgettable less than 30 minutes of gameplay that I have a hard time even recalling. I never judge games based on how "memorable" they are since I think it's a flawed way to judge them but this game does nothing remarkable outside of the visuals which is pretty faithful to the source material. Speaking of the source material, the story goes up to the Land of the Waves arc and if you are familar with the series at all, that already sounds like you can't make much of a game campaign around. They could've added "filler" in it to pad out the length much like the Naruto anime itself does but apart of me does respect the devs for their honesty and just have it end super quickly. It's still by no means a faithful adaptation of the Land of the Waves arc since in the story mode you primarily play as Naruto and there are fights that never happen in the anime like Naruto getting into a fist fight with Iruka and Sakura, Naruto actually defeating Zabuza in one on one combat or my personal favorite(if you beat the game without losing once) get into a fight with Rock Lee to show off how cool Naruto is.

Overall, I played this game at all because I was looking for something short and I just wanted to experience the short length of the campaign in order to no pun intended, "believe it". It's easy to see this game was even made at all because the Naruto anime was a hot property at the time, it's strange how this and the DBZ fighting games were some of the casual fighters that kept the genre going the early to late 00s but I'd even say the original DBZ Budokai has more worthwhile content and just holds up better than this does despite that game also being a medicore fighter. Still, if you have an interest in short games and are looking for a game to be just functional enough and nothing terrible, this isn't the worst time but if you have a hard time recalling the game after you beat it like I do, then I understand.

Urban Reign Review

This was one of the games I wanted to look into when hearing about lesser known "hidden gem" PS2 games for some time. Urban Reign was pretty high on the list, I finally decided to give it a chance and it really did manage to surpass my expectations. If you are a fighting game fan, a wrestling fan, a beat em up fan or just looking for a good game, Urban Reign delivers on all fronts. As far as 3D beat em ups concerning fist fighting and not using weapons as your primary means of attack are concerned, I'd say Urban Reign might be the best of the bunch.

What really separates Urban Reign from many 3D beat em up games that have combat like say God of War, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden and Onimusha is that Urban Reign, you are primarily spent fighting enemies and bosses, no puzzles, no platforming, no backtracking in Urban Reign it's just 100 missions of Brad Hawk and his buddies getting into brawl after brawl, there is something really refreshing about the game's purity that makes it stand out from other games in the genre before and after. The game stands tall and is confident enough to stand on it's combat system, even similar games that released around the same time and became franchises like the Yakuza series relies on it's open world, mini games, production values, and story to be engaging more so than because of it's combat.

Might as well get the story out of the way here first, Urban Reign makes it abundantly clear that it's a low budget game, there's barely any cutscenes or much of the events of the story actually being shown, the most you get for context in the game is a bunch of narrated menus, that's pretty much it, but it highlights just yet again just how confident the game has in it's combat.

Another aspect of the game where the game shows it's lower budget side is the enviromnents or should I say fighting game stages because that's what they are they aren't even levels you explore these are just combat arenas where the fights take place and you will be fighting in the same 5-8 locales throughout the game so be warned if you are one of those people who dislike repetitive scenery in games.

The best way of describing Urban Reign is that it's a beat em up with the frame work of a fighting game. One thing you will notice right away is that the game is very much inspired by professional wrestling in the way the moves are performed and how Brad Hawk fights, sure he has his traditional fighting game attacks like low attack leg sweep, being able to juggle enemies in the air using his 3 hit combo while having special attacks like fast barrage punching and a powerful super punch, but there is a lot of wrestling moves in the game, one of the singnature attacks he can is a power bomb and while pressing the x button can turn into it a running power bomb. There's moves like running power slams, bulldogs, backbreakers and so on. If you are somewhat familar with pro wrestling much of UR's fighting system is inspired by it.

The actual combat mechanics consists of a variety of things, there is strikes, grapples, special attacks, reversals, and later on being able to run up walls and weapons too. The game pretty stressful and challenging, I played on easy but it seems to be that the easy mode was the intended normal since not only do the enemies can do all the things you can, they have the same amount of health as you do and preform the same moves as you can. Some good things UR does right off the bat is the game is mostly very good and never gets in the way, lock on works well and switching between targets isn't too complicated even though it can spazz out at times, switching between different enemies for no reason but I had less issues as the game went on. The game might be really be challenging at times but here is the thing UR does really well, it never ever wastes your time, fights are over very quickly much like bouts in a fighting game, and each mission is an indvidual fight meaning that if you die, not much progress is even lost since dying is like restarting a fight. Urban Reign is a challenging game that respects your time rather than doing so much content and getting past parts you already know how to do get past to the hard parts.

On top of this, you can get a partner to back you up during many fights and perform double team attacks like you see in tag team wrestling, and the best part is, for the most part if your ally lose all his HP, it's not a game over so it's a good assist feature and you aren't a babysitter.

A big thing I like about UR over many games with melee combat is that when you get staggered, it's not the end of the world, you can break out of grab moves if you time the presses of the square button right and you can break out of staggering animations by performing special moves.

The bosses can be pretty hard too, Naplam 99 and Golem being the top two and it gets annoying fighting them again and again which is the only major complaint I have. That and some of the mission involving you to damage body parts of different characters to progress but these missions can be over fast just be warned to check out the move list on buttons to press to attack specific body parts. 

Overall, I highly reccomend this game

POed: Definitive Edition Thoughts

I initally tried the game out for about an hour and it felt awful, level design is bad, some parts of it can be red herrings like how there is a platforming section in level 2 but you can skip entirely by sprint jumping from the left adjcent to the platforming section to reach the level exit, enemies can fire projectiles far away from you even though you are far from their line of sight, you can get hit the moment you load into a level, you can get randomly attacked from all sides, and the guns are just maybe "okay" at best. This clearly does feel like an FPS post Doom and Dark Forces and pre Quake and Duke Nukem 3D.

It even has the jetpack before Duke 3D but it just feels clunky and awkward to use since I don't even recall there being a dedicated descend button and I just kept on unequiping it to descend faster.

Another example of how bad the level design is in level 3 in how you need to go past a wall to progress through a level but the wall texture looks the same as all the other walls textures in the level.

The game might as well be: terrible level design, the game.

To prove my point, you can esstentially speedrun through the levels without even being an expert speedrunner by taking advantages of exploits, glitches, level skips or taking advantage of spawn points or event triggers since in POed, and I'm not even kidding here, the entire act of killing enemies, activating switches and exploration is filler 95% of of the time. Sure some levels require you to kill enemies but other levels just require you to reach the exit and that's it. The hard part is knowing where level exit actually is, you don't need to hunt keys, do objectives or even kill every enemy in the level to get to the end, all you need to do is just run past enemies and touch the exit and you complete the level.

The hard part is to know *where* to go since the levels are overly large, bloated and generally has a samey looking feel to them but get this, once you know exactly where to go, these levels can beaten in less than 5 if not 3 minutes.

Everything about POed feels like the devs didn't even know how to make an FPS game or how to make an FPS game engaging or fun. They didn't even know how to design levels and it's a speedrun game where the challenge comes from navigating the same looking areas and figuring out where in the overly large levels you need to go next. Some of the levels end so abruptly once you figure out where to go that my jaw was on the floor in how laughably short and not very challenging it is, parts of me where like, "is that seriously it?"

What even is the motif of this game? Every 90s FPS game had a distinct motif about them Doom was sci fi supernatural involving hell, Quake is about medieval horror, Duke 3D was an action movie parody, Blood was a horror genre parody and so on, POed's themes and motif is basically seems like the devs just doing throwing everything at the wall and hoping to see something stick, it certainly feels like they were taking the piss.

Overall, playing POed Definitive Edition feels awful in every sense of the word, it's not even so bad it's funny like say Rogue Warrior is, the game is just plain bad, how Nightdive chose to remaster this game instead of Disruptor or any game with a geniune cult following is truly beyond me, if this was supposed to be a long lasting April Fool's joke, then it worked because I got POed while playing this.

Tomb Raider Legend Review

I played Tomb Raider Legend back in 2017ish and I thought the game was decent but nothing special and I'm only playing it again because of the recent PS5 port and I wanted to test out Sony's new Playstation 2 emulator and I already played Sly 1 and Star Wars Clone Wars much more recently than my TR Legend replay so I went with the latter. Quick thoughts on the port itself, it's "fine" but not good or an ideal way to play the game, it's most certainly playable and there are no crashes that I found while I playing but the fact that it's 480p and not 720p makes the game makes it come off as a very lazy version of the game, and this is even worse for areas with darkness have low lighting, it makes the later parts of the game hard to see even on an HD monitor, if the game was 720p, I wouldn't mind this but since it isn't, the port comes off as all the more lazy. If you do want to experience TR Legend, there are many other ways to, but if you have to play the game on a Playstation modern console, this isn't as bad as some say but it's not "good" either. Just keep that in mind if you choose to play this version of the game. 

Now the game itself, I played a number of TR games recently, one of them being the 1996 original and having not played the classic TR sequels while being familiar with all the TR games Crystal Dynamics made, it's easy to see how jarring Legend can be, in some ways it's easy to tell the game was a success at all was because it had to follow up on the disasterous Angel of Darkness game.

To name some examples, platforming is now automated filled with magnetized ledges, combat is mostly just auto aim and holding the fire button and occasionally dodging out of the way that mostly consist of fighting hitscan human enemies, health packs are now dropped by enemies and there is no need to search the levels for them, levels are mostly very linear with small of amounts of backtracking and there are QTE sequences to top it all of it all. In many ways, this was the cinematic action adventure game that came out post Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, and pre Uncharted. It's easy to see how much Crystal was inspired by the former since the way Lara moves is very similar to the Prince in that said trilogy, all though PoP by Two Thrones definately had far more involving automated platforming by comparison to Legend since that game had you dodge lots of traps, had the speed kill sections, and also the Dark Prince where you are forced to move around quickly and there is more tension where in Legend, it's mainly just magnetized ledge grabing where it's not as polished as it could be.

This is where the original game succeeds where Legend fails, where in TR 1996, it was a slow paced platformer where you had to methodically time your jumps, whether it's be through leaps, lining up on a platform, or reaching platforms above you, position yourself, and then grab and hold the interact button long enough to grab the ledge and make the jump I'll admit this was a learning curve that it took me a while to get down but when it started to click, I loved the game for how much it aged than the automated platforming that came later, and dare I say it, it gave PoP a run for it's money and it certainly curbstomps Uncharted.

In TR Legend? You either activate Lara's lunge animation while jumping and grab the ledge, or she doesn't do the lunge animation and either you miss the jump or barely make it. None of it has the decision making or timing the interact button fast enough to make it, everything all the legwork is done for you. The QTEs only add insult to injury since those are set pieces the designers could make but reduced to button prompts.

After all that complaining, I'm sort of positive on TR Legend, if you look past the fact that it's a much more dummed down Core Design era TR game, the game's brisk campaign does a "good" enough job at emulating action adventure films like Indiana Jones even if the story in Legend itself is nothing to write home about. Lara is charismatic enough even if her buddies can be pretty annoying, and sections like the Peru bike chase with the OST in the background can be pretty exhilarting.

But that's the thing with TR Legend, that's kind of apart it's appeal, combat isn't that amazing and fleshed out but it's over very quickly before it starts to wear thin. The platforming can be fast and quick and while it doesn't require much effort, it does fufil a baseline specticle of watching Lara climb tall things.

England wasn't a particularly great level and it relies a little too much on the physics based puzzles for it's own good but Nepal and the final level are over so fast that before the game starts to wear thin.

Bosses are basic and can be beaten in less than 5 minutes but they are also over very quickly.

Overall, this is pretty much Legend's strength, it's a collection of okay mechanics and ideas with a pace as brisk as an action movie, in a lot of ways, TR Legend's campaign is a CoD story mode of the TR series.

Resident Evil 3(2020) Review

 I recently replayed an emulated version of Resident Evil 3 1999 on PS1 and while I felt it was just "good", the game wasn't as good as Resident Evil 1996 or Resident Evil 2 1998. Enter the remake of Resident Evil 3 released in 2020, I honestly didn't like the remake of Resident Evil 2 released in 2019 all that much despite me being super excited for it at the time, I found the game to be a tedious experience and it was vastly inferior to the Resident Evil 1 2002 remake, so when I originally played Resident Evil 3 2020, I barely had any high expectations for it, I recall enjoying it more than the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2, but not by an overwhelming degree, I feel much the same way now, I "like" Resident Evil 3 2020, but not super highly, I found it to be a "good" remake for a generally solid game.

One thing right away I have to address is the start of the game, it's....not good, I'd say it kind of enters into the realm of bad. I'd argue this opening sequence is kind of where the game gets it's bad reputation for being pretty over the top. I argue RE was always that, but this opening gameplay section is the kind scripted I found to be patronizing and obnoxious, just hit forwards a lot of the time, doing some super scripted action movie style sequence with barely much thinking or depth as you go down forced corridors getting chased by Nemesis and zombies, I get very agitated when I was supposed to go down one corridor but a zombie bit me and it was an instant game over because I didn't run fast enough down that said corridor.

However once you get to the subway station and get to the Raccoon City portions of the game where you have to get the subway up and running is when the game starts getting good and doesn't get as obnoxiously scripted again, it does get scripted but it's not as bad as the opening sequence. Raccoon City if you played the original can feel much smaller compared to the original game, and I didn't mind since I felt RE3 1999's version was just a little too big for my liking, you do get the much superior map from the 2002 remake of RE1 and you could argue they could've made the place as big as original RE3, but I didn't mind, it felt decently sized enough and I found the exploration of finding items, solving puzzles, managing inventory space while shooting enemies to have a satisfying enough execution here, it is the most open RE3 2020 gets and I might like this portion the best but the rest of the levels do a good job at satisfying that exploration itch since the rest of the levels are open but not linear where all you need to do is run across a straight line. RE3 1999 also gets more linear as the game progress as well.

I might as well mention a common complaint with this remake is that it "cuts" out content, and while that is true to some degree, I argue it's more "playing with the expectations" of original game players than "cut content". Sure the Clock Tower is cut out but there is an expanded upon Police Station section and an expanded upon Hospital section so it's even trade. Plus the Grave Digger fight was mostly a filler boss at best since it just randomly halted progress than being a geniune threat. Carlos is much more developed and expanded upon compared to the original game too since he goes through more of an arc by comparison to how much of a goof ball he was in the original game. Also, Nemesis himself isn't THAT persistent in the original game, he does chase you at certain points in the 1999 game but he does screw off at a lot of the parts, I was only able to beat RE3 1999 at all was because of the long sections where Nemesis isn't actively stalking you. 

Other good things is that there is a dodge button this time around and it just irkes me why the series is never consistent with this. Some games have a dedicated dodge command while others don't. The Resident Evil 4 remake doesn't even have this and it just makes me wish Capcom would just actually incorporate a proper evade command in their RE games because this indecision just annoys me, I would like to be able to evade with a button press instead of having it be a QTE, I would at least have more mobility options. I'm not a fan of how REmake 3 has rolling be contextual but I'll take this.

I have heard many complain about how short REmake 3 is, but I argue it's actually more of strength. One of the big reasons why I don't like REmake 2 is because it has a lot of annoying quirks the original games managed to avoid like the camera following you when bitten by a zombie instead of being static like the original making it disorienting, a zombie's head doesn't get kicked off after being grabbed from below, the guns particular the shotgun not taking nearly as many shots to kill a zombie and my least favorite of all, being unable to tell if a zombie is actually dead. I would shoot a zombie while they are down and they would make what appears to be a death animation just for them to get up or bite me even though I swore I saw them die. With REmake 2, the 2nd run playthrough means I got to deal with this stuff for much longer to get the true ending but with REmake 3, it's over before it starts really pissing me off. So to me, this is a strength.

Overall, solid game but nothing amazing. A big reason why I probably like this remake at all is because I never had that big of an attachment towards the original game. 

Princess Peach: Showtime Review

Princess Peach Showtime is a weird game to review since it's basically a mini game compliation featuring Princess Peach, I knew that going in but that's what makes the game difficult to actually judge. What I find the most interesting about Showtime and it might sound odd but it shares a striking number of similarites to Sony franchises, it has the mini games of Jak 3, the costumes that gives special abilites of Sly 4 and Ape Escape 3 and it has the over the top and whimsical theater aesthetic of the PS3 game Puppeteer. In a sense, Showtime is interesting to me is that it's one of the most Sony 1st party inspired Nintendo game so despite me not being as big of a Nintendo fan as many, the Sony connections does tickle my curosity.

Enough of that, what is Showtime even about? Like I said, it's a mini game compliation where the titular character will dawn different outfits that grants her different contextual abilties and powers to that stage. There will be stealth themed levels with Ninja Peach, Detective levels with Detective Peach, some rhythm themed levels with Skater and Mermaid Peach, a grapple hook centric platformer with Thief Peach, a Kung Fu style melee brawler and fighting game with Kung Fu Peach and a superhero auto scrolling flying levels and brawling with Superhero Peach, there's a few more where that came from but basically if you ever recall playing Ape Escape 3 where the levels and constumes you get refrence a movie or genre of fiction, that's basically Showtime.

This is kind of where Princess Peach Showtime is greatest strength but at the same time it's weakness lies. It's a mini game compliation much like the aforementioned Jak 3. Jak 3's problem lied that the titular character had a good movement system, on paper interesting combat and the hoverboard but never leads into any of these things since it's too busy shoving in minigames that has nothing to do with the interesting stuff where Showtime's gameplay mechanics and systems are mostly simple and never has much in the way of complexity, for example, you will primarily being using two face buttons in Showtime which are B and A, the former is all your contextual commands related to that specific costume, like stealth attack, inspect, grabbing, punching and the latter is to jump. That's pretty much it. It has GBA style controls on a controller where it has 4 face buttons.

Due to this, Showtime can very much feel in of itself an episodic TV show in terms of gameplay structure with a loose overarching plot and as a result, every mini game will vary widely depending on what your tastes in games are which was a problem I was predicting was going to happpen when I saw gameplay. For example, I like stealth games so Ninja Peach I found to be my favorite, I liked how the stealth had easy to read sightlines and it was nice to see a game attempting stealth in today's day and age without a scripted takedown animation when attacking enemies from behind. On the flipside, I wasn't big on Detective Peach since I'm not big on solving mysterious in games and point and click style of game in general since to me, those games are just mashing the interact button until you move on to the next sequence but if you are the opposite of me you might dislike stealth and like point and click.

On top of this, the game is pretty easy, and I don't mind easy games but outside of maybe the pastery minigames I never really found Showtime to be challenging in a way I found stimulating. The hard parts of the game is getting the collectibles in the hope you will have enough to unlock the boss rooms later in the game, the requirements aren't steep, thankfully but I argue the only way to get any challenge for someone who has played all the genres of game Showtime attempts to have is to 100% the game, I don't do that but it might be something worth considering if you find the game too easy.

I do like the visuals and asethetics even if I think Puppeteer on PS3 did a better job at selling on the whimsical theater feeling with full on voice acting and the puppet like visuals, at the same time, Showtime does look decent enough. I just kind of wished it leaned into the asethetic more.

This is where I start being positive, as much as I harped on the game, I might've found the first video game I ever played where I could reccomend to someone who hasn't played games before, as of now I don't talk to many people who aren't gamers but if you really want to get someone into games, Princess Peach Showtime is probably the best game to introduce to someone the ins and outs of playing games even the final boss feels like it was both an on rails shooters and a bullet hell game for people who don't play those genres actively so if you are looking for that "specific" game to get a relative or friend into video games, Showtime is by far the best option I can think of just as long as those people aren't picky about specifics things.

Overall, decent game but aimed at a specific audience.

Quantum of Solace(Playstation 3) Review

This is kind of a hard game for me to review in some ways because while the game isn't "bad" and is mostly very polished and functional especially considering this is a movie tie in game and it is well made one, the game just feels very derivative a lot of the time, some aspects can be innovating but those parts suffer from lackluster execution.

On a surface level, the best way of describing Quantum of Solace is that it has Call of Duty's shooting mechanics with Rainbow 6 Vegas' cover mechanic with some QTE melee takedowns here and there. The thing with many of Activision's Bond games is that they tend to borrow from CoD pretty heavily, and while some might view this as lazy and derivative, I don't mind as much since this scripted rollar coaster ride approach very much fits the franchise it's based on. All though it can the borrowing of CoD can definately be felt at times. The good thing about QoS is that the guns feel very punchy and powerful and the shooting in general has a good amount of polish to it but the thing is much like the shooting in CoD games, it's very much just aim gun, whether it'd be through ADS or cover, shoot, get hit, regen health, rinse repeat, as a result the shooting can feel pretty one note and don't require much thought to dispatch enemies. To the game's credit, enemies will throw grenades and sometimes rush to your position while behind cover but it all feels like the bare minimum.

The level design is very much forcefully linear, not much exploring you can do, and in order to progress you need to wait for the next scripted trigger to happen. The most you can do is get collectibles that don't really change gameplay that much.

However much like a typical CoD campaign, the game does break up the pace with it's moment to moment shooting, there will on foot chases, QTEs, stealth sections, sniping sections, and for me, the much dreaded beam balancing mini games. The game also checkpoints really well and surprisingly better than a lot of Treyarch CoD games since this game was made by them.

This now leads to the negative, the stealth sections could've been potentially good pace breakers from the shooting but it's let down by inconsistent AI, lack of a visiblity indicator, and hiveminded AI. What I liked about the stealth that it felt like a proto Deus Ex Human Revolution. Bond has a cover mechanic, dashing from cover to cover system and third person takedowns(all though needing a QTE in QoS) much like Adam Jensen does in Deus Ex HR but Deus Ex HR has more consistent AI and an actual visiblity indicator by comparison. For example, in QoS, I was in an enemy's sightline for a few seconds and I didn't get alerted but I took down an enemy while there was cover nearby and then got alerted. Add to all this that everyone will be alerted after you kill one enemy seconds after being spotted, destroying a camera with a silenced pistol, or just trying to sneak around without all the guards' backs being turned and stealth just feels like an excuse for more shooting. Which really is a shame since it could've done what Deus Ex HR did before HR.

Another negative is that the story is very poorly told, it's told like a CoD game where characters will speak to each other or monologue during load screens but it's hard to tell what exactly is happening. Feels like it has the Goldeneye on the N64 problem where you need to watch the movies to get which is a shame since I think EA and Activision Bond games generally do a good job at avoiding this.

Overall, not a bad game, and I would sort of call it good, it's not going to set your world on fire, it didn't even do it at the time of release but if you can find this for cheap and want to beat something in a quick weekend, this is not a bad time, it's not a great game but it is at the very least a mostly competent one.

Phantom Fury Review

I heard a lot of bad things about Phantom Fury before I jumped into it, I also didn't like from what I played of Wrath Aeon of Ruin which was also published by 3D Realms and as a result, I was very hesistant to play Phantom Fury at all. I thought I was going to play it for a few hours and then drop it but I didn't, I actually got to the end which surprised me.

However the more I started play Phantom Fury, the more it started to warm up to me, fact of the matter is the last Half Life game that even got released was a VR title and I don't have access to that so Phantom Fury doing a decent enough job at scratching this itch is going to make me softer on it even though the game has a lot of issues.

I'll start with issues you will notice right away, the game is a mess on a technical level, physics can be unpolished, dialogue during cutscenes might not always play when they are supposed to, I had one moment where an enemy was firing at me while a cutscene was playing, the UI is a complete mess and it took me forever to figure out how selecting things in both the upgrade and options menu works(you have to move the cursor at least 2-4 if not 5 times for the selection to register), you have to press the grab button multiple times just to pick something up, the game might not remember your last selected weapon especially when getting out of vehicles(there is only one of these sections the whole game) and these are just some of the things you might encounter when playing not involving moment to moment gameplay.

With that out of the way, I'll start with what I liked and by far the biggest star of the show is just how much Phantom Fury does such a good at mostly scratching that Half Life itch I mentioned earlier, there's a lot and I mean A LOT of Doom, Quake and Serious Sam style indie shooters but there isn't much in the way of stuff inspired by HL. In a lot of ways when playing PF, I was reminded all over again what made the Half Life series special and what sets them apart from the above mentioned games and that is the journey and how the game contextualizes that said journey. PF and by extension HL both don't have amazing stories(more so in PF's case since the characters are just there and the over arching plot is thin at best), but what made them both stand out is that you are given a reason as to why you are shooting and why you are doing the things you are doing in the various levels. In Doom and Quake, you see a text crawl, kill enemies, collect keycards, then get to level exit, in Serious Sam just shoot hordes and watch an occasional cutscene, in PF and HL, you are given objectives and clear goals on what you have to do to get to the level exit. It's not vague, you are given a clear goal and enough as to why you need to get to the end of a level.

That can require you to do a wide number of things like collect items, use cranes, solve puzzles, use computers to activate parts of the enviroment, finding codes to open doors, blowing areas using explosives using items to get furthur into a level and much more all all though PF has first person cutscenes, they are minimal, load times are also minimal too, mostly keeping that sense of continuity of going on this long epic journey, the fact that enviroments are much bigger and levels take longer to complete than the aforementioned games gives the game the sense of an adventure. HL2 does it the best, but Phantom Fury does a such a solid job at emulating the formula that I commend the game for it. There are some weak levels like, Los Alamos Research Facility and Retrive Demon Core but I'd say the level design scratches that HL itch 90% of the time. Some great levels include White Sands Facility and Chicago Under Fire.

Final positive is that the game checkpoints really well, I thought it was going to have a save anywhere system but the game uses checkpoint and the game does autosave and checkpoint quite frequently which is good because there can be some cheap deaths from time to time. 

The weapons in terms of feel are fine but some sound better than others like how the Lover Boy and Flak Cannon sound better than the default shotgun and the base pistol. Damage animations also feel good and are very punchy which is great, this now leads to my next issue and this is a big one. 

The enemy roster is weak, like pathetically weak. You mainly just fight the same hitscan enemies and zombies for probably 95% of the game, the game might throw in some cloaked ninjas, helicoptors, tanks, and some jumping zombies but make no mistake, much of the fire fights feel samey. The AI is really bad, they have no sense of preservation and will often just charge at you and move around with no sense of tactics at all. On top of this, you get so many guns more than the game has enemies so most the of time especially later on in the game you will become an unstoppable powerhouse due to how little enemy variety there is and how your arsenal gets bigger and bigger with not enough growing oppositon to compensate.

Also, I dislike the health system since partially regen health is an upgrade, no holding medkits and enemies don't drop much health on top of combat being hitscan making damage hard to avoid. As a result, I played one easy, but I felt like I should've raised it to normal when I got more weapons but by that point, I just wanted to take the option where I took the most damage since playing hitscan games where you are a tank and can't regen parts of your health, hold medkits or enemies dropping health gave me all the more reason to. Why was partially regenerating a suit upgrade? Why? 

Overall, this is a good game but very rough, but if you can get past it's many rough edges there is a solid enough indie FPS shooter that is a breath of fresh of air from the stuff coming out now. 

Metroid: Zero Mission Review

This was the first Metroid game I ever actually finished and after recently replaying Super Metroid, I decided to return to Zero Mission 10 years later, and what did I think of it?

It's still a pretty good game but I got some issues with it that prevent it from being great, I never played the original Metroid and it really feels like I should just to have a much better appreciation for ZM but as it stands even without the context of the original Metroid, Zero Mission is easily one of the better game remakes mainly because it doesn't really do what many remakes tend to do and be the same game but with "better graphics".

Right off the bat, what is improved in this game over Super Metroid are the controls, like holy crap, these controls eat SM's controls for breakfast, it actually feels like I can precisely move around for the most part, you can ledge grab, moving between diagonally aiming feels better and this is the biggest difference, using missiles no longer requires you to take your thumb off the D pad, now you can just hold the R button, and the you can just fire missiles that way, this alone to me makes ZM better than SM. I know these controls were introduced in Fusion but it goes to show how much better Fusion's controls were than Super's and it was very smart of Nintendo to use Fusion's controls for this remake.

The music is pretty good, I have soft for the Brinstar theme and the Norfair's music sounds something straight out of the Prime games which is awesome since I love the musical motif of the latter.

Zero Mission isn't as braindead easy as Super either, I have seen some people call ZM the "easy" game but I argue Super is much easier, ZM's moment to moment combat can still feel a little too easy for my tastes but at least in Zero, some enemies are immune to the ice beam, I wish more were but by comparison where 99.9% of the enemies were weak to it, this was a welcome change. In ZM, 95% of enemies are weak to the ice beam as opposed to 99.9%.

The level design in Zero Mission is good about 90% of the time, outside of Kraid, the areas in ZM do a good job at scratching that exploration itch. Energy Tanks are pretty reasonable on where they are hidden while missile upgrades felt a little too easy to find for my tastes. But that metroidvania itch of, "oh man, this area is so hard to traverse, it feels like I can barely get anywhere" then you get more upgrades and unlock more of the map is still here, and probably more refined and better made than the original game. The only issues I have with the exploration and power ups, is that space jump and power bombs you don't get late game, I would've really loved to have power bombs early in the game since this will lead to my first negative:

You will have to morph ball bomb EVERY SINGLE TILE in every room you enter in order for you to have some clue to where to go. Don't let the much derided hint system fool you, there will still be lots of morph ball bombing in order to have some clue on where to go, this is what I mean of having power bombs earlier, this would eventually cut down on the tedium on needing to constantly bomb things. The hint system also doesn't do much to make things easier to look around due to the aforementioned issues. It straight up lies to you it says you need to go to Norfair but you actually need to go to Crateria to unlock ledge grab to progress furthur.

Kraid is also a very badly designed level, it's easy to be bottlenecked borderline have the feeling you are getting softlocked at times due to immense bottlenecking.

Then there is also the fact that there are some parts of Norfair where it's establish that lava flames hurts Samus, so I decided not to go there just to avoid getting damaged just to find out that YOU DO need to go under that fire to progress. Was this to promote strategy guide sales in 2004?

The next two issues are interconnected but the Mother Brain boss is awful and the stealth section after is awful.

Mother Brain boss is bad because it not only has the floor that hurts you, but you need to deal with multiple bullet hell projecticles while also dodging MB's energy attack while standing on the two platforms to make eye contant with her just to hit her with your missiles. It has you doing at least 3-5 things at once and it felt like the fire floor was there just to make it hard for the sake of it.

The stealth section can't decide if it wants to be a that or a scripted set piece I say this because there are moments where need to avoid sightlines, but then you will HAVE to get caught and get chased. It makes this section really frustrating which is a shame since once you get the armour back, it can feel liberating all those pirates you were hiding from, the section preceding this could've been much better handled.

Overall, Metroid ZM is a very good remake but at the same time, I got a lot of issues with it. I still say Dread and Prime 1 are better but you could do worse regarding first Metroid games.