The Chant Review

This game was a massive surprise, I was browsing through a bunch of random PS5 games to buy physically at a convention and when I looked at this particular game I thought it was going to be one of those narrative point and click adventure horror games like Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures games but to my surprise, The Chant isn't that and it has more traditional gameplay.

The best way of describing The Chant is that what if you had the level design and level progression of the Resident Evil remake games particularly 2 and 3, with new God of War's combat with the tone and presentation of the aforementioned Until Dawn and Dark Pictures games? You get this.

The story and presentation is pretty decent stuff, it's commendable that this is a double A game at all. It's very similar to something Supermassive would make, there are choices here but there are few and far between.

However the moment to moment gameplay itself is where the game I'm most surprised in, The Chant like I said is a AA horror game. Level design and how you progress through a level is much like the newer Resident Evil games where you have to look around, backtrack, find key items and progress through the level using these items to interact with various locks and objectives, they both have a traditional over the shoulder camera too. All though some issues is that a lot of the item based progression puzzles can revolve around the same thing, where you need to get a key to interact with a specific lock, or find 3 occult items that forms a key to open a door with an occult symbol on it. There is some interesting parts where you need to line up some lights and direct them at a lighthouse or gather some colored balls within some areas with their respective colors to a church door of sorts.

There is a good amount of combat however and it's not "bad" by any means, it's decent stuff and it's decently made for a horror game and for a melee based one at that. I wouldn't say it's on the level of the Condemned games but it's solid enough for what it's going for. A comparison to make is that it's much like the Newer God of Wars with the over the shoulder, the fact that you have an attack button mapped to a trigger button, a dodge move and a "roll" which isn't really a roll and more like a "trip" that works like one, and some secondary attacks like a slowdown to name an example.

What makes this combat work and not terrible is how forgiving it tends to be, enemies have a certain telegraphed wind up to when they are about attack meaning there is a solid enough timing window to dodge attacks, some enemies do have "invunerablity states" where they act aggressive but can't be hurt but of the time, their attacks are telegraphed well enough that it's actually possible to consistent dodge attacks add to this that healing items are generally plentiful and you can regen apart of your health after encounters and it's melee based horror combat that is actually playable.

Some issues I did have is that enemies can be spongey, apparently enemies are weak to certain weapons and items but I tried using red weapons with enemies with red health bars and even used red weapons on enemies with blue health bars and they seem to do the same amount of damage, it also didn't help that pressing R2 to attack constantly hurts my fingers so I eventually lowered to easy since I found so many of the enemies to be spongey, but the difficulty is reasonable on that mode, and it maintains the tension that horror games and by extension many games should have where it's challenging to the point where there is tension but not so much so that it becomes offputting and frustrating. There are also moments where you need to run away especially when there are more than 2 enemies which is good because I can't picture myself fighting 3 enemies with these controls, there are other issues like occasionally being attacked from behind and you don't have an indicator like in new God of War but like I said, most combat encounters tend to be 2 and maybe 3 enemies at most. 

Another issue that boss fights aren't very good, this is a horror game and that is to be expected but what annoys me about the bosses in this game is that the actual bosses aren't hard, it's just that there are long phases inbetween where you have to fight waves of enemies inbetween the actual boss and if you die since enemies can be spongey, you got to start from the begginning, easy mode does mitigate but this was one of the reasons why I lowered to easy after a point.

The last few areas can feel a little rushed since there is more walking sections in the last chapter than there is in the rest of the game, there are some good moments like the aforementioned colored balls but it feels more guided compared to the rest of the game and there is an actual puzzle you have to do to make a solution to detroy a grass wall which can feel jarring since the rest of the puzzles are just item puzzles. The fast travel element also feels half baked since you could just teleport Jess back to the start of the hub at the end of a boss and start her there at the start of a chapter than pointless downtime walking back. This almost makes me think there was supposed to be an open world, thankfully there isn't.

Overall, The Chant was a surprise, it was a random convention buy, it turned to be a game I actually did enjoy playing

Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2 - Hidden Empire Review

This was a surprisingly decent little game, I wasn't expecting much out of it and I was also expecting to either eventually use cheats or drop the game entirely but I got to the end of the game at all. I did play on easy mode since it's an on rails shooter without a mouse. I only checked the game out at all because it was on PS Premium Classics a few months ago and it was a quick short game to beat.

The game was also made by Factor 5 who would later make Rogue Squandron but I never played those games.

To best describe Hidden Empire it's basically an on rails shooter for most of the game with Sega CD style live action FMV sequences. Watching these cutscenes I did find charming in a corny 90s game kind of way much like Disruptor's cutscenes. It also felt like a weird novelty at the time of the game's release since Phantom Menace was a few years away and the last live action Star Wars anything was Return of the Jedi. This was back when the series in terms of live action output or media with a lot of money put into wasn't as over done as it is now. This and Dark Forces 2's live action can be considered corny by today's standards I find charming due to how much the devs tried to create that "movie like" SW experience while being on a small budget by comparison.

The actual gameplay consists of traditional rail shooting on starfighters, cover shooting on foot sections, sections where you have to dodge debris, an FPS sequence very reminscent of Star Wars Dark Forces, or one speeder bike scene where you dodge debris and shoot enemies.

Most of these are doable and are pretty reasonable in challenge on an analog stick or D pade and save states and rewind on PS5 especially helps, but mission 3 on the Millenium Falcon was just awful and requires you to be way too precise with how much is coming at you, any debris dodging section was a pain, but this one in particular was so bad that I almost considered turning on cheats, luckily after this, the game never gets that hard again, but it is a pretty notable difficulty spike. The amount precise movement and timing on mission 3 just felt impossible at times.

The rest of the game is decent and solid fun but there will be lots of trial and error and memorizing enemy patterns and spawns much like a lot of games from this era, however save states, rewind and if you choose to play on easy will make these parts much more bearable on a first time through.

Overall, not much to say, this was pretty much about as experimental 90s games as experimental 90s games can get. It has it's good parts, it's bad, but it's a charming game especially if you like Star Wars. I'm sort of one so I got some enjoyment out of a game that was a pretty random addition to PS Premium Classics.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(2007) Video Game Review

I heard of this movie tie in game based on TMNT 2007 to be like Prince of Persia and it was developed by Ubisoft so that got me interested in checking it out despite not watching TMNT 2007 in a long time despite me recalling myself loving it. I emulated the PS2 version of the game.

TMNT 2007 the game does make a pretty decent first impression, the environments do look kind of nice and the controls seem decent if a little worse than Ubisoft's PoP efforts especially wall running being contextual rather than being a button press, it has a follow camera instead of being controllable like in PoP where the camera will zoom out during platforming and I like the idea behind the game where it's basically a speedrunning version of the PoP games with you being timed on each level, the game seemingly wanting to beat the game levels super quickly, it has all 4 turtles playable in most levels with their own special ways of traversal and attacks of their own along with "team up attacks" does make the game seem like it would be a good Turtles game in 3D, but like many games of this type, if TMNT 2007 the game was not forced to be released alongside the movie and wasn't shackled to the film it's based on then the game would've been better off for it.

The platforming does feel like PoP but then there is just weird things about it like the unpolished nature of it, there will be many times where the game wants you to make precise jumps but if you are close to a wall while doing it, you could wall run and fall to your death, then there is wall jump where unless if it feels like I'm pressing the x button like mad, I won't be able to any consecutive jumps, or how during precise platforming moments, I will fall to my death many times. The lack of polish really holds back the fun I could get from moment to moment platforming. The game does checkpoint pretty well for 98% of the game, I used save states from time to time but the unpolish was why.

The aforementioned turtles do get their own unique ability, for example, Leo can phase through walls like Raziel in Soul Reaver, Raph can climb up walls, Donnie can lunge across platforms with tight spaces, and Mickey can glide across but for only a short period of time. This is all great on paper but the only ability that got active use from was Mickey's since it helps cover long distances between handholds, I only need to the other turtles' abilties when the game called for me to use them, like when a wall needs climbing, use Raph, when there is a wall that has bars, use Leo and Donnie's ability got use on maybe one or two occasions.

The combat is where the game however really drops the ball, this is where criticism of the game being "too easy" comes from, it almost feels like a weird predessesor to the Prince of Persia 2008 reboot that came out a year later, except in that game the better you are at platforming, the more random combat encounters you can skip, where in this game much of the game is combat it's too easy to the point of being brainless, you have a dodge command but it seems to be inconsistent where either you hold R1 and move the right stick to dodge or hold R1 and the turtles will dodge automatically, but none of this matters since unless there are death pits which are rare and are only in the final boss, it's impossible to fail these sequences since for one all you do is fight generic foot clan and purple dragon thugs for most of the game where you can beat them by mashing the attack singular attack button(you can't even chain attacks and kicks together making combat more basic), and if you do run out of health, all you have to do is press x super fast and a turtle can revive you and on top of this the turtle that is down has a super quick cooldown and can be brought back again.

The only useful characters that I found where Donnie and Mickey, the former has a long reach with his bow staff and the latter can keep a combo going for a while with his break dancing attacks. I never used Raph or Leo unless if I was forced to play as them.

Bosses are slightly more challenging but not by much, the final bosses will be the most confusing since in order to avoid some of their moves and to damage the final boss like Winters, you need to use the brotherhood team up attacks to do it and you can go through 98% of the game without ever using them so when the game forces you to use them without teaching you it's jarring, confusing and a game design sin in my book.

I also found that the turtles talked too much and said certain lines way too much that it can be irritating to listen to when doing moment to moment gameplay

The story while presented in an interesting way with narration and the turtles commenting while playing is hard to follow unless you watched the movie, which the game uses scenes from.

Overall, I wanted to like more TMNT game more but its a mediocre movie tie in game that could've been better, I kind of reccomend playing if you are are curious but expect little out of it, you might find more enjoyment than I did, but I really felt the game could've amounted to more. 

Tomb Raider 2 Review

Tomb Raider 2 is the game that geniunely pushes the idea of being a video game to its absolute limit. I played Tomb Raider 1996 a few months ago and honestly, I only bought the recent TR remastered collection at all is because of that game, not so much it's sequels but I decided to play TR2 anyway since there isn't many games like the classic Tomb Raiders and as much as I don't want to mention other Youtubers in my reviews Josh Strife Plays' vid on TR2 got me interested in playing it

When I started up TR2 all the stuff I liked about TR 1996, the level design and platforming is all here. The level design in that they are large expansive puzzle mazes where you are slowly solving it as you go through switch pulling, swimming, key finding, among other things are still here. The slow paced and methodical take on platforming is also still maintained, and it gives TR2 the same feeling as the original where it's more about positioning and hoping you can make the jump at all with some added movements like climing certain areas and how you need to do things like backflip jump, and jumping while turning into air to make certain other jumps. TR2 does make more out of the movement system by comparison to TR 1996 does.

However there are some strange "quirks" about TR2 that prevent it from being as good, still a good game, but not as much. The first thing is the over reliance on hitscan enemies and how combat controls themselves are fundamentally the same, where in TR 1996, you fought monsters and animals with human enemies being bosses, in TR2, you fight human enemies with guns and melee enemies, and they all involve the same tactics, you beat melee enemies by jumping constantly and making sure you can jump faster than he can run up to you, and gun enemies can be beaten by using similar tactics but also relying on shooting them from far away and the AI being so stupid that they will run around in circles and you fire at them and they maintain line of sight on you as little as possible. What makes these parts of the game bearable however is that enemies constantly drop ammo and medkits, and you can use medkits anytime you want so as not so well designed as these enemies are the game slaps a band aid on to itself by doing this. There are more damage spongey enemies later in the game, but you will be able to take them out with more powerful weapons you get later.

What's weird about all this is that later in TR2 enemies start to use projectile weapons and enemies start to use hitscan weapons less so in a sense, if TR2 just had these kinds of enemies for it's roster the whole game, it's emphasis on action gameplay would've felt more welcome.

The level design is still good, and while apart of me loves the idea of how the game uses really strange level design logic in real world locations like say needing a chip to turn off a sawblade, or keys to turn off 3 fires which is so gamey but yet the game sticks with it so much that it is endearing. Another part of me thinks that while it is well designed, it just doesn't reach the heights of TR 1996 since in that game since it was spent actually raiding tombs and not spent in real world locations using game logic, TR 1996's levels tend to be more memorable as a result since the tombs are mysterious places not meant to be disturbed, where in TR2, you spend 3 multiple hour levels on an offshore rig.

However, when TR2 starts to have more traditonal tombs, the game's level design reaches it's peak. Barhang Monastary and Temple of Xian are both geniunely fantastic levels with multiple areas to explore and the former feels like a big puzzle room where you are slowly uncovering everything the level has to offer. Temple of Xian is insanely challenging but every challenge I overcome made me feel good and when I got to end, I felt like I overcome such a hugh and epic obstacle gaunlet.

Some improvements to TR 1996 is that when Lara presses most of the switches, there is a cutaway to which door that switch opened, I like this since it feel like whenever I pull switch, I am uncovering a potential mystery all though I will admit, there was a lot of, "what door did that switch open" when I played. This probably explains why Stellalune made the career that she did since TR2 can feel like the levels can be bigger and there's parts where I feel like I didn't even uncover yet.

However, there is many more cheap deaths in TR2 than in TR 1996, the saving anywhere feature comes in handy because of this. There is also much more timed switches in TR2 as well, just in general, TR2 ups the challenge, but I did find it mangeable contary to popular belief. Most of the challenge of TR2 comes from the random deaths and the hitscanners ambushing me out of nowhere. I thought the game was going to be so cheap that I would stop playing but much to my surprise, I was able to get to the end at all. 

Another aspect about TR2 and by extension these older games is that how very little story there is, it's both charming as it is a hinderance since, I would love to be given more context as to why Lara does what she does but another part me loves how purely gameplay driven these games are. There isn't many long games I can think of where 98% of the game is spent you playing it. Not even 90s FPS or Nintendo games are as long as these classic TR games are. 

Overall, solid sequel to a predecessor I really liked, I was expecting to not like TR2 but I do like it

James Bond: 007 Agent Under Fire

Decent enough game to play for a couple of hours and get to the end on like a lot of the other Bond games before and after, it isn't a masterpiece and I wouldn't call it a classic but it's a decent enough, "dumb fun for an afternoon" kind of game.

All though one hurdle you will need to get past are the controls, Agent Under Fire came out during the same time period as Halo CE and Red Faction so instead of left stick being up, down, and strafe left or right and right stick being camera control instead it's left stick is up and down, right and left on it moves the camera and right stick strafes left to right, while also having L1 and R1 being strafe left to right, I could've changed the controls on emulator but I chose to stuck with it since I have played games with unorthadox control schemes before, but if you can't stand games that don't have the universal control scheme of modern games and you aren't playing on emulator then it could be a big barrier for entry. I didn't mind World's Not Enough PS1's controls because I expect that out of a game on PS1 where Agent Under Fire is on a console where the controller has dual sticks, so this to me just feels more jarring. 

Other than that, it's typical hitscan shooter and by extension Bond game fare. The shooting mainly consist of you pointing a gun and shooting all the enemies and they die, I play on easy mode since I can take more damage and don't need to memorize every stage to get anywhere. There is some added variety as usual like car chases with machine guns and rockets, on rails shooting sections, stealth segments, a tank fight, boss fights with helicoptors and even some veritical level design with the Q-Claw and Q-Jet. All of these do a decent job at making the game not too monotonous since the shooting is pretty basic.

The visuals also look pretty nicely detailed for 2001, I'm only talking about this at all because these are the kinds of PS2 era visuals I have a soft spot for.

All though some issues outside of the controls is that the sound design for guns is just "okay" and enemy damage animations could feel a little more expressive since in these kinds of hitscan shooters, expressive death animations tend to be much of the heavy lifting for combat.

The story also feels half baked and lacking, it has it's charm but compared to other Bond games like say Everything or Nothing or even other Bond games like the Goldeneye remake or From Russia with Love, it feels like it's just kind of there compared to how dumb, over the top and goofy other Bond games tend to be. Q is a charming enough character with that said and the mission briefings give just enough context for gameplay.

One major innovation the game tried I felt was lacking was the more "open levels". The problem with these levels is that it feels "open" the same way Deus Ex Invisible War did where the game can feel very linear a lot of the time with maybe 1 or 2 branching paths that lead to the same outcome. Sometimes you can use the Q Claw or the Q Laser but much of the level progression will lead you back to the same areas. It's still a linear game with occasional branching paths. The stealth mechanics are pretty half baked as expected so good luck trying to do some geniune sneaking.

Overall, Agent Under Fire is yet another decent enough Bond game if you can get past the controls. The attempted innovations fall flat but the game's short length makes many of it's shortcomings mostly bearable. I doubt I can picture myself playing a longer game with these controls and shooting mechanics.

Sleeping Dogs Review

I played Sleeping Dogs a couple of years ago and some part of me remembers liking it but years later I never could recall the game for the life of me, it's just that all the talk of in recent years of it being some kind of "underrated masterpiece" has gotten me curious in trying it out again, I got to wonder, was I just not consuming the game properly or there was a reason why I couldn't recall the game 5 years after beating it? Turns out, it's because Sleeping Dogs is really just a style over substance kind of game, I don't condemn style like many, you need it to bring people into your product at all but SD is a game that really feels like it adopts the same game design philosophy that the Uncharted games do in that it wants to make you *look* cool in spite of the fact mechanically and design wise overall, the game is very simple in every way.

I'll start with what I liked in which I will say the game does look very nice visually and the character models for the main characters do look pretty detailed without looking too overly realistic. The story and voice acting is pretty solid stuff, as far as game narratives especially in open world games are concerned, it did do a decent enough job at making me pay attention to it especially with how conflicted Wei Shen is and how is voice actor does a geniunely great job at selling me on all of it, the rest of the cast are decent and the character interactions are entertaining enough in that Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie kind of way or just any movie or show where the characters, writers and actors know what they are doing and unlike say some of the Grand Theft Auto games, there is an actual overarching plot here where in GTA 3 and 5 feel like they are episodic crime dramas maserquading as game narratives.

The next few paragraphs of the review is where I am much more lukewarm on the game.

First I'll start with the open world, much like GTA, why is this even in the game especially when the main campaign missions are so unbeliveably scripted? You have lots of freedom in the open world but it's super scripted during missions, you might as well just make the main missions its own linear campaign like Mafia 1 or Destroy All Humans. The open world is basically filler especially when the main draw of the game is the story, writing and character interactions. You could cut the open world out and the player can get to the next story beat faster. This is like watching a TV show or movie where the viewer has to watch the protagonist alone with no one around with no immediate danger head to his next location like say if an Indiana Jones movie, you are watching the titular character riding the plane to the next destination instead of just showing in the background that he is heading there.

The next issue is the fist fighting, this is the part of the game that gets quite a bit of praise, but I didn't like it that much. The biggest issue is that it's too easy and this is coming from someone who doesn't demand games to be hard. SD's combat however is focused on making the player *look* cool more than anything. Wiping out an entire group of enemies in melee combat doesn't require much effort, and there is no hard mode either. This is also coming from the guy who doesn't mind Batman Arkham combat. Outside of having better looking moment to moment animations, the combat in SD doesn't even surpass Batman Arkham Asylum. In SD, environmental takedowns are easy to do on weaker enemies, and your "face" meter gets a massive boost when doing them, on top of every enemy is beaten by punching them, weapons can also fill up the face meter fast. I didn't even need to unlock the later moves because it's that easy. Since the face meter can get filled with ease, every enemy can be countered with triangle, the game stops introducing new enemies types after the first few hours and as a result combat melee combat gets monotonous pretty fast. Compare this to say Batman Arkham Asylum, some enemies need to be caped stunned, others need to be jumped over, some enemies can throw things at you, and titans are huge and can take quite a bit of damage, on top of this, you need to build up a combo multiplier in order to perform free takedown on enemies instead of Sleeping Dogs, environmental takedowns where it's a free kill with a meter that makes the combat even easier, and every enemy be can be countered using triangle and beaten by mashing square. The hardest parts of combat is when a grappler grabs you and the triangle prompt that pops up as he grabs tends to be a 50/50 guessing game of whether or not the input will actually register but then I figured out just to press triangle seconds before the prompt pops up so even that gets trivial since the command to break out of a grab is always triangle. 

Since melee combat isn't that great how does the rest of the gameplay fare? Not much better, the gun combat is a typical cover based shooter of the era and to the game's credit, the damage animations and sound design for the guns do get the job done but like the melee combat, it lacks any depth, there is an optional bullet time mechanic but enemies go down with ease and it's easy to build up face while shooting without bullet time so shooting is just there because the game needed shooting. On top of this, you don't need to keep weapons with you at all times since an enemy will have their back turned to be disarmed and you will be able to defeat gun enemies. Apparently bullet time makes the shooting sections even easier. 

There is car driving and these parts are also lacking, outrunning the cops is easy and they might be a little persistent but 2-3 rams of their cars or any enemy vehicle and they get taken out. On rails combat with cars is easy since you got to shoot car tires once and they are down, motorcyclists get beaten with ease too.

There is "persuading" npcs but those are a QTEs and outside of timed missions, you can screw up hacking as many times as you want. The only parts with geniune tension is the bug planting sections since timers in any game puts me on edge. 

Overall, SD's greatest "strength" is how many gameplay styles it but it's all focused on making you "look" cool, the actual gameplay the player engages is just enough to barely sell itself as a game rather than a game pretending to be a movie but at the same time, the game gives you so little to do earn the power fantasy. I'm not asking for much, but SD could've been more considering how much I heard it was an "underrated masterpiece". It goes to show how little that term means. 

Kaiju No. 8 Anime Review

It pains me to write a negative review on any anime series I watch, I geniunely wanted to enjoy Kaiju No. 8 and have a fun time, maybe just have an average mindless "turn your brain off" show but due to the reasons I will explain, I just couldn't stand watching it. 

Show is very derivative of Evangelion, Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. I'm not a big fan of either of these shows but all 3 of them feel more competently written than this series. 

Why I watched this show and why it was even on my radar was due to the fact that there is a 32 year old protagonist. The protagonist Kafka Hinbino is 32 years old that is struggling to figure out what to do with his life and wonders if he can still amount to something at the age, this is a great premise for a show like this and it's something I geniunely relate to everyday. The thing is, Kafka is a 32 year old in name only, the guy is basically My Hero Academia's Deku in terms of personality and how much he wants to avoid using powers, and how he uses his knowledge and him "studying" the things around him to be effective at anything than outright combat. He cries a lot, is super hyperactive, screams like no tommorrow, and just acts more like a teenager than someone who is 32, he acts so much like a kid half the time, I wonder if he is secretly DC's Captain Marvel in that he is child inside of a man's body. This could've been something that made this series stand out and why I came to this show at all but instead, I just can't help but get super annoyed with most if not all of Kafka's antics. If the guy was a teenager, fine act this way, but what is the point of making what seemingly is a fighting shonen with a protagonist way older than than he is 15-18 when he doesn't act his age? If the other characters didn't constantly call him an "old man", I would never even think that he was a full grown adult. 

Never read the manga but there is lots of scenes that seem like they would flesh out the story like how did Kafka control his Kaiju powers for 3 whole months with no one noticing, why did the Kaiju monster inside Kafka took took so long to take him over? The side characters and especially Mina Ashiro who basically the show hypes up as this super awesome action hero and Kafka knew her since childhood but yet not much is actually shown, like what were their childhood like outside of the few seconds flashbacks that were shown? When did Mina and Kafka start to become more distant from each other? How did Mina become the "badass" woman everyone can depend on? All that is ever shown of Mina during flashbacks is her crying as a child, that is not enough for me to believe she would grow up to become capable and dependable. As it stands Mina is barely any different and one note as Mikasa was in season 1 of AoT while having Levi's personality. She also seems to be the only famous soldier in the whole show, aren't there other decorated war heroes besides her? Why does she have that tiger around? The lack of her character being fleshed out makes her so dull to me. Since their might cut manga content, this leads me to my next issue 

It never really feels like humanity is really losing, Attack on Titan did this better. At least in that show, a human monster hybrid made some degree of sense since humanity was clearly on the losing side and Eren is given a power to change the tide of the war. In AoT, right from the start, the Titans are made to be powerful threats and they are so powerful that humanity has to be behind a wall to thwart them off, and every time the soliders fight in AoT, they take heavy casualities. In Kaiju No. 8? Most of if not all the Kaiju are pathetically weak and there is still human civiliation at the start of the show even in the first episode, the Kaiju is beaten which already dimishes them as a threat. Then there is weirder inconsistencies like how did the Defense Force get infiltrated and get attacked during training drills despite the fact that they've been training soldiers for years and are so proficient at killing Kaiju? Then Kaiju No. 10 comes so out nowhere into the story with barely any build up or even any hype for his initial appreance that I pretty much didn't care when he was on screen. Where did this dude come from? What is so special about him? I know so little about him and the show barely hyped him up that I was like, "huh?" There was also stuff like how Kaiju have existed in the 1970s, if so, how exactly did the war lasted this long? And so much of the stakes have to be told, like when Kaiju No. 6 showed up he caused a lot of damage, I would sure love to see how Kikarou's mom died. Maybe this gets explained later on but there is such little of anything here that I don't know if I care enough. There is also the fact that AoT takes place in a fantasy where Kajiu No. 8 takes place in modern day and I'm asking questions like, why is Japan the only country that seems to matter in this whole conflict? Even the fight between Kikarou's dad and Kafka feels it's trying too hard to echo the courtroom scene in AoT. 

There is a lot of exaggerated expressions and terrible over the top humor especially in the early to middle part of the series. If you wanted me to be turned away from the show right from the offset, you put this stuff in. There's lots of tonal whiplash or "bathos" in this show where something serious would happen followed by something humorous and over the top, it took me out of the show multiple times, for example, early in the show, there is a scene where Kafka saves a little girl from getting eaten by a Kaiju then it's followed up by a couple of seconds of exaggerated expressions and over the top shouting comedy. Kakfa's Deku like personality didn't help and many of the downtime and even serious action scenes are basically this. It was almost Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood levels of obnoxious. 

None of the characters really stand out except for maybe Reno Ichikawa. At least he's interesting in that he's trying to prove himself to everyone and kind of feels like an underdog. Kikoru feels like a generic one note female tsundere like Asuka Langely from Evangelion. Kikoru's father appears so late in the series that it's almost impossible for me to get attached to anything he does, he just comes off to me as a typical strict dad who seemingly has compensation issues. A lot of the other characters I can barely recall being anything of note. I might not like Chainsaw Man that much but at least that show had Aki and Kishibe, this show there is no one even gluing me to my screen. 

I wanted to like this show, the adult cast and the fact that Production I.G tend to make anime that  appeal to me are big reasons as to why but instead I was watching an anime I question why I even bothered getting to the end of. I was either bored or zoning out for much of my watch Kaiju No. 8. 

Freedom Planet 2 Review

I played the first Freedom Planet about a year ago and I didn't even know for the longest time that there was a super lengthy wait for it's sequel, the console port for the 2nd game came out 2 years after the PC release and now that I finally played it, I think FP2 is a better game than the first and the first to me was already a solid game. The best way of describing the Freedom Planet games is that it's 2D Sonic for those who aren't big on classic Sonic.

I'll start with what I dislike out of the way first since well there is a number of things that bugged me about it, the first Freedom Planet was a pretty challenging game especially on the bosses and I had to beat it on casual mode, FP2's continue system felt like the devs' heart was in the right place and I'd even say it's innovating for a 2D platformer game like this. It has a continue system and a lives system, you can use up 2-3 lives depending on difficulty when you die and you can be revived on the spot if you lose all your HP, if you get a full on game over, you can restart from last checkpoint, this all sounds pretty good on paper, but there is two major issues with this, one checkpoint restarts require gems and if you don't have enough it's a level restart. Thanks to this I set the assist mode option in the game to cheaper continues, and infinite revivals as well as putting the game to easy mode since easy mode has cheaper continues as well as letting you making them even cheaper in the assist options in the off chance that I did get an actual game over, I won't be as punished upon getting a game over. Getting a hard game over is rare since the only thing that you can't use infinite revivals on is getting crushed and dying to a put a death pit, the latter only happened with Kalaw boss. This feels like what Nintendo tries to do make their Mario games more "accessible" but I'm not sure if this was a good way to do it.

Due to all this, it feels like the intended challenge the devs seems like they wanted me to have might've been lost. The only geniunely hard parts of Freedom Planet 2 is when during a platforming run, you might not 100% not to be sure on where to go since some areas require you to puzzle solve, have forced combat sections or just not be clear on where the beaten path even is. This is where much of the challenge of the game can lie if you did what I did, and I'm not big on this, I prefer to just be simple linear stages for 2D platformers like Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze or the Rayman games.

With all that out of the way, I do enjoy this game, first thing I liked about it is the story, I will admit, I didn't really pay attention to the first game's story since I was surprised there was even an indepth story in a 2D platfomer at all. With FP2 however, I was much more engaged with the story, it's surprisingly well written for a 2D platformer which I didn't expect. The voice acting is pretty good too for an indie game. The game has a pretty big an expansive world and characters like the Magister and Merga are well written as well. Magister especially for being a guy who is wise but isn't afraid to admit who is wrong from time to time. The character interactions might annoy some people but I found them moderately engaging since the characters were friendly with each other while also showing signs of disagreement too. I only did Lilac's run and the story is your typical story about good guys with the power of friendship beating evil but it's the voice acting and character interactions did make the story endearing especially for the kind of game it is.

The moment to moment gameplay is pretty good too minus the occasional part I got stuck, FP2 much like the first is about gaining speed and going fast, and surprisingly the game even address what people complained about for the longest time in 2D Sonic where there are explamation marks for upcoming enemies and nearby obstacles you could run into. Knockback and guarding can be turned off too which is another thing I like all though I'm not sure if that is how the game was intended to be played but it does make the game less frustrating to me.

The level design is a massive improvement over the first game. The artstyle looks colorful and vibrant and the levels themselves have a wide variety of gimmicks to them. There are levels where you need to do combat, puzzle levels, traditional speed challenges and keeping momentum. There are handle bars, teleporters, grind rails, parts where you got to swim, avoiding magma, jungle levels, highways, a courtyard when it comes to variety Freedom Planet 2 has it. The last few levels will even have gimmicks interwining with each other a highlight being Inversion Dynamo where you have to use teleporters and grind rails. Clockwork Arboretum where pretty much every previous level gimmicks is rolled into one level. Level design is mostly good.

Overall, FP2 is a good game while not really 100% being into high speed platformers, it's still a well made game.

Short Game Reviews: July 2024

Naruto Clash of Ninja 2:

This is the better game than Clash of the Ninja 1, all though it's simpily better because it has more content than because the actual game is. As a whole, it's esstentially a DLC expansion to the first game, story mode is longer now where it's an hour rather than 20 minutes and you got the occasional mini game reminscent of Super Smash Bros where there is up to 4 characters, 1 of them you control and the rest are by the AI. There isn't much to say, the fighting is the same, the graphics are the same and there is more content.

If you want to start with the Clash of Ninja series, you might as well start here, it covers more of the Naruto story all though not really as faithfully as I would like for example, Sasuke is still wearing his blue clothes when you fight Gaara rather than his black ones that he did in the Chunin Exams. Seems like all the devs needed to do was a skin swap. That and the game ends with a fight between Naruto, Gaara and Kankuro which isn't how the Chunin Exams arc ended but the devs probably couldn't do a full on Naruto vs Gaara Kaiju battle from what I can tell.

Other than some difficulty spikes especially when you fight Neji and Gaara especially the latter(his "ultimate defense" definetly shines in this game), the story mode is doable.

Overall, not much to say on the game, if you really disliked how Clash of Ninja 1 lacked in content than this game could win you over, unless you hated the fighting mechanics in the original game. This about as "expansion sequel" as expansion sequel can get.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants: 

An arcade game based on a TMNT cartoon I'm not a big fan of? Sounds like something I wouldn't really enjoy but surprisingly I got some fun out of it. It's not a great or even a good game, it's a pretty average 2D beat em but thanks to the continue system that works like the PSN and XBLA version of X-Men the arcade game, I was able to get to the end since you are able to respawn as many times as you want with the lives system being a red herring, not sure if it's because I played on easy. I'd say thanks to this continue system, I found the game more accessible than the recently released Shredder's Revenge since that game, it's a level restart upon losing all your lives and coop is a must in order to get anywhere in that game.

The game is based described as a 2D beat em up with a 3D art style much like the show it's based on, the whole game is kind of a loose amalgamation of the first 4 seasons of the 2012 TMNT cartoon with Cyber Shredder being the final boss. It's also easy to tell it came out post S2 since Seth Green is voicing Leonardo. You have one basic attack button, a super attack, and a jump. Regular attacks, super attacks and power up attacks is what I was using actively especially power up moves which can level all the enemies in an area and same goes for the super moves, if it weren't for these attacks and the health pick ups after long waves, I would be dying a lot more. You can also complete the levels in any order you want untill you get to Shredder but it doesn't really make a difference.

My only big issues is the lack of an actual dodge button and while this is okay for against Foot Ninjas since they are upclose and don't have ranged weapons. Other problems start to persist like when there are Foot Ninjas running at you with spears and my least favorite enemy type, the Kraang. Those guys have guns that seem to be projectiles but there is no method to dodge out the way before the slow moving lasers can hit you and the best you can do is just be a tank. The worst enemies are by far the Kraang with the lightning gun and their attacks are much like the Crimson Guard soldiers in Jak 2 where their attacks are seem like projectile but are actually a well disguised hitscan attack, a lot of my deaths and health lost in this game as a whole was when fighting these guys since like much of the Kraang fights and this game as a whole since there is no dodge button, you just got to be a tank.

The game can also be completed in about an hour which is fine, if the game went on any longer, I would've gotten sick of it, the price point is kind of okay, at least it's not at full retail.

Overall, for a game I only bought and played because I was watching a TMNT cartoon I ultimately didn't enjoy that much, I had an okay time with it, I was expecting worse and I was expecting myself to drop it since I thought it had Shredder's Revenge's continue system but it didn't. If you like the show, you might possibly get more enjoyment out Wrath of the Mutants than I did.

Warhammer 40K Boltgun - Forges of Corruption:

It's more Warhammer 40K Bolt Gun, whole DLC is basically just some brand new levels and the price point is surprisingly reasonable with it being below $10. If you like the base game then the DLC is a steal at that price. You get some new levels, and some new weapons. The game also is more streamlined in some ways where the keys you need to find to progress being in the direct vincity of the player than looking too intensely for them or them being separated by large stretches of land.

My only big gripe with the DLC is that the first level is way too hard because your arsenal is too small at the start, there is a massive toad like enemy that takes a lot of damage and can rip your health bar to shreds within seconds, it was either lower to easy mode or play with accessiblity mode cheats on so I chose easy mode and the game never gets that challenging again, it was truly bizarre, the game is pretty mangeable when you start getting more weapons.

There is also the use of the dash jump this time around which can be pretty jarring since I never used it in the base game, without the knowledge, I was frustrated by some of the platforming but when I learned that you can do it by dashing than jumping, they got noticeably more tolerable.

Overall, just more Boltgun, solid DLC and reasonably priced too. If you ignore the opening level with the lack of powerful guns and tough enemies and waves then it's a good time.

Tormented Souls Review

The survival horror genre I have mixed feelings on, when it's good, it's great, when it's tedious, it's unbelivably tedious. In Tormented Souls' case however, it manages to be up there with the likes of games older Resident Evil all though there are some things that annoy me about it, what's here is great stuff. I'd say it's up there with the A listers of the genre and beats out all of the C tier games. 

The best way of describing the game, like many have said, is basically Resident Evil meets Silent Hill and there is a lot from both series TS borrows from. You got the one location setting from the first RE, the limited saving of the older RE games, the interconnted map, being able to reload most weapons from the menu, the puzzles, the resource management, the decently powerful guns, and there are things from the SH series like the atmosphere, follow camera, tone, unlimited inventory space, and the fact the game deals with religious themes as well as the psychological horror.

However, TS does have it's own set of innovations like how you need a lighter and need to light candles in dark areas to see and in order to avoid getting a game over, how melee really comes in handy to save ammo, how there is a dedicated dodge command unlike many REs, and there is video tapes that puts you in different dimensions.

The strengths of Tormented Souls comes from it's level design and how it obtains the "sweet spot" when it comes to challenge. The level design feels very meticulous and calculated, for example at one point in the game you need to to use an elevator to get back to a higher floor to use a bolt to open a door, but the elevator can't be called from that floor but there is a cart where the elevator is to prevent it from going back up. There is also narrative foreshadowing how a switch that is in the main hall of the Wildberger Hospital will play a key role at the end of the game. Another example is how there is a switch with 3 key sockets that will help you open a door underground or how the underground sewer you will find a vault you will go into later. That's the thing with Tormented Souls' level design almost everything in the Wildberger Hospital services a unique purpose that you will start to come back to later down the line.

The next aspect that TS does well is the moment to moment challenge regarding combat, in the early game, much of the tension can come from finding areas to light with your lighter and while the enemy variety can be a little on the smaller side, I do think the enemies generally put up enough of a challenge and there is just enough amount different enemies to avoid the game from being stale. You do get a flashlight later and this could sound like it ruins the game, it does feel pretty liberating to get, being able to shoot and see in the dark at the same time. What TS does really well however is the moment to moment tension, early in the game, it can feel a little too unforgiving due to how stingy the film reels are but once you get a quarter way through, combat does a good enough job at making me feel weak but not too strong, at the same time, enemies take quite of nail gun shots to kill, and they go down quicker with the shotgun and electric lance, but at the same time there is a risk reward factor of, using the crowbar and wailing on the enemies while they are down, to save more ammo and hope they stay down long enough for you to kill them without using more shots of any of the guns. TS doesn't shower you with healing items like the old school RE games does with RE2 being the biggest culprit, in the former you get just enough amount of healing items that the tension of, "oh man will I find another healing item" is maintained throughout the game. Same goes for saving, early game is stingy with the film reels but after a point, the game gives you just enough to the point where the tension is maintained.

Things I didn't like about the game is the map, the former because I don't care for overly complicated puzzles in games since I don't have the patience for them anymore but that is a personal issue. The biggest problem I have is the map, and consistently unhelpful it is. I had to use a walkthrough a lot because the map in TS does a terrible job at slowly making rely on it less and less. With RE, I use the map a lot at first but then slowly able to memorize the layout, in TS while I was able to understand the layout, the map did a terrible job at easing me in and another big issue is that while the map isn't good, it takes way too long to bring it out, why bringing out the map wasn't mapped to the touch pad on PS5 is truly beyond me. How you bring it out in the game is that you have to press start, select the files tab and then move the cursor over to select it. The map is not only cumbersome to use but even selecting it too much of a pain. I prefer to not use maps in games but TS gives you a lot to keep track of and some parts of the map I forget, this is where I feel the 2002 remake of RE is an improvemnt over TS in.

Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I'm not super big on the survival horror genre but this game was a title I enjoyed much more than I was expecting to once I got past that early game hell. 

Call of Duty: Finest Hour Review

I recently heard of this game's existence, I always heard that it was "bad" and not very good but considering I played through some not so good CoD games like United Offensive and 3 and some rather forgettable ones like Big Red One, I decided to give this game a try and what do I think? It's not particularly a great game, I wouldn't consider any CoD game to be that but Finest Hour is kind of fascinating in that it's a console exclusive "follow up" of sorts to the original CoD and this was a year before CoD2 would grace the Xbox 360 and PC. I emulated the PS2 version and it ran fine.

Right away, the first thing that caught my eye where the production values, it surprisingly looks pretty high quality for a console exclusive. Environments look quite nice and sharp and they did a good enough at keeping that early CoD asethetic on the PS2. The gritty and grimey art direction is replicated pretty well here. Everything is all torn apart and destroyed, and the Russian campaign steals the show with it's scenery yet again, as usual in these early CoD games. The sound design is also pretty good and the guns sound pretty meaty, death animations are decent too even if there are some moments where it felt like the hit detection was off especially with precision guns, I headshotted some of them with the crosshair on their head, and it either missed or they shrugged it off.

One big difference between this game and the rest of the CoD games and this caught me by surprise was well, actual in engine cutscenes during missions, where even in the modern CoD games, the cutscenes were usually there to mask load times and they were at the start and end of every mission, and a level is bookended with an NPC talking. Finest Hour however has cutscenes during levels and it caught me off guard, I was just surprised to see a CoD game do this at all. I got used to it but I have been playing CoD games for so long that stuff like this stands out to me, even to the point where I have to dedicate an entire section of this review to it. They are at least decently shot and made at least.

There is also an emphasis on tanks in Finest Hour, you will be escorting them, and riding them from time to time. This might be the most tank heavy CoD game to date. The tank combat is okay, all though enemy tanks take a little too many bullets to die and the once the armor on the tank is gone, the health for it does auto regenerate, so it's hard to get into any unwinnable states. There is lot of tank escort missions but I didn't find these as bad as some people did. Probably due to the following reasons:

I used save states on an emulator which probably bypassed much of the potential frustration I could've had and I played on easy. The checkpoints in the rare instance where I didn't use an emu save state was pretty bad, the worst CoD's ever been. I can see why people who played on the base hardware would've gotten frustrated.

Another big change that even the finite health CoD games before CoD WW2 never did was let you hold medkits, Finest Hour might've predated the first FEAR game in being a mainstream shooter where you can hold healing items. This alone makes the game better to play than United Offensive for me. The final battle of Finest Hour also feels like a proto CoD WW2 as well which is interesting.

After all of this, I'm still rather lukewarm on the game because really, it's a typical CoD game and WW2 run and gun shooter at heart after all these differences. Levels are still very linear with you only being able to go straight and not being able to backwards at any point, this just makes level design patronizing, there's lots of dead ends and not much in the way of anything to find, there's medkits to find, but exploration or the sense that these levels exist just for the player to be funneled forwards and do what the script tells them to do is minimal at best. It's still very much traditional CoD campaign level design despite all the differences I mentioned.

Then there is the shooting mechanics and as usual for CoD, it's just, "ADS, shoot" and watch enemies die where you fight the same enemy infantry soldiers, tanks and occasional planes for the whole game. I tend to judge any game with shooting in it with how much effort it takes to kill a lowly grunt enemy and in CoD, all of the enemies can be dispatched without much effort since they mainly just stand there and move around only when you get close with reloading being the only form of kryptonite the player character has, that and maybe grenades.

Difference here is no regen health, this could potentially make the shooting less about waiting, but health packs are littered inconsistently and so does enemies dropping health, CoD Vanguard gets a lot of shit, but the New Doom styled inspired shootouts in one of the sections of the game is how picture this game in some ways should play.

Overall, game lived up to my expectations, just an okay CoD spin off that you might enjoy more when emulated.

Tekken 5 Devil Within Mode Thoughts and Partial Review

This was a weird game for me to be playing. I got a weird and random urge to play Tekken again and with the recent Tekken Bloodline anime pretty much being stuck on hold indefintely, I decided to play more of the Tekken game I recall liking the most, I played Tekken 7 and just found to be alright.

With all that said, I played T5 at first for the Devil Within mode since I tend to like fighting games better when they resemble beat em ups, like for example Granblue Fantasy Versus' RPG mode or a spin off example being Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. If anything, I'm surprised Namco even put in a mode like this at all since if you wanted to play full on beat em ups or melee brawler at the time, God of War and Devil May Cry 3 among the myraids of other games at the time were probably better options on the PS2. At the same time, say if you were a kid, or someone who could only afford one game and couldn't get other games on the PS2 at the time, this mode is a rather fascinating addition that didn't really need to be included but they did anyway, so it's worth giving a look. It's why I played the game at all. A beat em up game where you play as Jin Kazama? Sign me up.

First impressions are weird, punch is mapped to square, kick and secondary attack is mapped to cross, and you can't chain combos together despite this being based on the timeplate of a fighting where one of the things that is effective is chaining combos. You get special moves sort of like older God of War's L1 face button attacks and like older GOW, you can't chain into these or dodge of these attacks either. Holding R1 locks on to enemies and circle allows you to dodge but pressing circle alone is just a jump. You can also transform into Devil Jin by holding L1 and triangle. All though the mode never outright tells you much of this and you might need to look up a guide online to do this. An image of what all the button inputs are going to do isn't going to be enough.

To add to all this, there is also platforming and puzzles, the platforming is kind of "okay" but not great since Jin's double jump and ledge grab isn't entirely consistent, you might need to press the jump multiple times to have Jin grab something. The puzzles are okay and it's nice that Namco tries to break up the pace from the beat em up combat kind of like a traditional action game with adventuring elements even if many of the puzzles revolve around, "go to room, bust up generator or platform up certain areas to bust up generator". To the game's credit by Stage 3, things start getting more elaborate, all though the more elobarate it got the more I lost interest. The part in Stage 3 where it resembled the 00s Ninja Gaiden game's "Crypt" level was when I slowly losing interest. The level required you to find a door that look the same as many other doors nearby while dealing with super precise platforming.

The game also brings in new enemies too which surprising to me but I was starting to get bored due to the following reasons:

Bosses are also cheap, can stuck lock you and pummel you to death, and the lock on zooms into the enemy too much to get a good reading to dodge out of the way.

When Stage 4 happened, I gave up on the game, the platform challenges were getting too numerous and the controls were not good enough to be a full on platformer and enemies were starting to hit harder too and puzzles were getting more obtuse, I could've solved them but I was just losing interest. These platforming controls are not good enough for the game to rely on having insta kill death pits for added challenge.

Then I started to play Tekken 5 for the actual game itself, the fighting game, and I started to enjoy the game more, I beat the arcade or "story mode" as Kazuya and Jin(also because the Mishima family are the characters Tekken's canon revolves around primarily), and the CPU is hard difficult even on easy but due to this, I might've understood some aspects of the game and even the fighting game genre as a whole better. I was starting to block, trying to time my grabs, resorting to going low, trying to mix up low and high strikes, doing running attacks and so on. I'm by no means an "expert" but I may have learned the genre better in some ways due to Tekken 5's CPU being so anti noob friendly.

So overall, I do like Tekken 5, but not for the reasons I thought I would, it's a good game in a genre I mainly play casually. I thought I was going to really dig Devil Within but instead I liked T5 for the thing you bought the game for, who would've thought.