Astro Bot Review

I wanted to love this game and sing all kinds of heavy praises for it, the idea of a Playstation version of the Mario Galaxy games sounds awesome, I remember enjoying Astro Bot's Playroom, everyone in their mother was singing the hardcore praises it and I wanted to put this game on my favorites list since these past few weeks of new releases I have been really enjoying. Ultimately, while I can't say I dislike Astro Bot since I did at the very least get to the end of the game and finished it, the title turned out to be one of the most disappointing games I played in a long while. It's hard for me to get disappointed by a game nowadays but Astro Bot was a game that did it.

Before I start describing what I didn't like so much about the game, I'll describe what I liked. The stage designs and visuals do like very nice, crisp and colorful. This is pretty much the most Nintendo inspired Sony 1st party game you will ever play from the control gimmicks, to the minimal story, to the cutesy asethetic, to the "silent protagonist", and so on.

The stages much like Mario Galaxy do have a good amount of variety to them with a lot of gimmicks for the player to engage with like grabing hands, boxing gloves, a jump pack, a grapple hook and son on. There is also stuff like Mario's glide from Sunshine being one of the moves Astro can do, it's a little unreliable to use when using during long distance platforms but this isn't forced on you.

There's levels after bosses that are homages to Playstation franchises some being well known like God of War, Uncharted and Horizon to more "niche" stuff like Locoroco and Ape Escape. If you are the kind of guy that really likes Playstation then there is a lot to love about Astro Bot, I very much am, so I got a couple "that's cool" moments from the game even if they slowly start to become diminishing returns.

Now, the negatives and why I'm lukewarm on the game, and this might sound questionable considering the game has made it's name off it, but the Bot collecting. I already do not like it when platformers especially those that are stage based and don't have a seemless world with no load times but Astro Bot takes the Mario Galaxy 2 approach and have make the player actively secret hunt to get anywhere in the game. Sure, the Playstation fan service is cool and it is more interesting than most linear platformers that make you do mandatory secret hunting to unlock bosses but fact of the matter is, the devs of Astro Bot knows the game can be beaten in 5-6 hours so they pad out the game length by having the player search around for these bots in order to get furthur into the game. It says it took me 18 hours to beat the game but that is because much of my time was spent beating the level once, then looking up a guide and try to unlock all the bots in the level afterwards.

It doesn't even help that outside of locking off progress, the Bot Rescuing doesn't give you any special abilties when you collect a certain amount, the refrences I didn't care for anymore and I just wanted to hurry up move and get it over with. What even is the point of collectibles if they don't give you no tangible reward during gameplay? The whole thing just starts to feel like padding, at least Jak and Daxter the Precursor Legacy had a seemless world and an interesting movement system so the level gating collectibles felt tolerable but it's easy to see why the Jak sequels did away with that and the collectathon died out even if the execution of the Jak sequels could've been better.

The next issue I have and this is what made moment to moment gameplay in Astro Bot a pain in the ass for me is the hit point system. You can chock this up to a "skill issue" but the devs of Astro Bot has litered so many checkpoints in the levels that it feels like whenever I scrape by a combat encounter or a platforming section, it's because I got lucky and being babied than because I have the illusion of competence. Astro Bot has more level checkpoints than any platformer I have ever played.

A decent way to fix this to me, is to lower the amount of checkpoints but increase Astro's hit points to 3 outside of bosses. Mario had 3 HP in the Galaxy games and 2D Mario lets you find an additional hit point, same with the Ubi Art Raymans, Donkey Country Tropical Freeze and Crash Bandicot. You might have to change level flow but I argue a compromise can be made.

It also doesn't help that many enemy attacks can feel out of nowhere and cheap and no matter how hard I try like the Jab-Jab's spikes, I will randomly move around and try to kill them get hit, and respawn, maybe additional HP could make these enemies feel less annoying.

Overall, I wanted to really like Astro Bot and say it was an amazing game like many people have but instead, I can't help but feel like, "is that it?" It's by no means a terrible game, I wouldn't have gotten to the end of if I did but apart just wanted a game I consistently enjoyed rather than groan at every 25 mins

Gori's Cuddley Carnage Review

Gori's Cuddley Carnage was an unexpected but welcome surprise. I was expecting a 3D platformer with a hoverboard from the gameplay footage I have seen of it but the game is ultimately a combination of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, meets the newer Doom games, meets Devil May Cry, meets Sunset Overdrive with some elements of older God of War. I never expected the game to be as combat heavy as it was but the combat turned out to be the best part and why I enjoyed the game as much as I did. If you are one of those people who think indie games particularly the indie 3D platformer scene is trying to hard to replicate the games of old, here is a title that I think if worth looking into.

What Gori's Cuddley Carnage is 3D platforming and combat but surprisingly, what I originally came to the game which is the platforming turned out to be one of the weaker parts of the game, it's not "terrible" but so much of it can either be jumping from platform to platform, going at high speeds and dying because I didn't seen an obstacle coming, the double jumping not working when I wanted it to, or me double jumping when I'm supposed land on a wall which activates a contextual wall slide animation but I end up over shooting it and either missing the wall, or move the analog stick in time and barely make on them which can also lead so some disorientation from the camera. The platforming physics didn't feel as precise as I would like due to the reasons I mentioned.

It's not all bad, I eventually got used to the quirks of all this like for example, instead of using double jump I used the dodge roll instead, to reach furthur platforms since it can work like a dash during platforming. I also like how there is a dedicated grind rail button, which is something I really wished Bomb Rush Cyberfunk had since if I press R1, Gori will grind automatically where with Bomb Rush reaching a grind rail and successful landing is a 50-50 guessing game.

However, where the game shines is the combat, at first it might seem a little basic with the game shoving in basic fodder enemies and all you do is slice and dice them. Fortunately, Gori constantly shoves in new enemies and not all of the enemies can beaten by just hitting the attack button, some enemies have a shield and you have to shoot them which means frontal attacks will damage you, they will provide shields for other enemies and you have to kill them before you can attack them, there is flying enemies which launch projectiles, but are easy to kill and also refills your rocket/laser gun, enemies have shields and you have to use the slam wheel to break them, there also enemies where you have to hit them while they are attacking and once you do it exposes their weak spot, other enemies will have summon an area of effect attack that can damage you and decativate your shield but you can kill them by getting close and using the slam wheel.

The game throws in enemies like this to constantly shake things up. It doesn't just end there, there is death pits to avoid and be weary of like in the newer Dooms but you don't get a game over if you fall into them which I can picture bother some.

I mentioned elements of the older God of Wars and the game has a decent number of moments where you need to watch out for environmental hazards and the levels possibly doing damage and killing you while you are fighting. Some levels do this more than others. Particular level 2, level 4, and level 7. There's parts where you have to shoot switches to avoid getting game overs while fighting enemies, avoid drowning in water, and avoiding electricity to name some examples.

The game checkpoints really well so there is no need to worry about redoing lots of content. 

Two aspects of the game I really enjoyed is how the game constantly incorporates shooting in every facet of gameplay, you need to shoot switches to solve puzzles and activate platforms, and shooting will be done to damage enemies and bosses like I mentioned earlier. I also like how the game introduces an idea early in the level and then slowly eases the player into them. For example, there an underwater level where Gori has limited breath and missiles will slow down underwater, and you need to activate oxygen stations in order to restore breath, and using the slam wheel on on the drain will lower the water. Another example is how in an earlier level you need to precisely shoot multiple switches to activate parts of a level to proceed and the game gives you a small puzzle introducing you to concept showing you how the idea works.

On a side note, I love the gyro aiming on PS5 for the missile/laser gun, it geniunely feels precise, and I never once switched back to analog control, I wish all gyro aim on PS5 was like this.

What didn't I like? The penultimate level is too long and unnesscary since it's ultimately a dream sequence, the slam wheel can be a bit buggy at times where I hold the trigger and triangle and it simpily wouldn't activate, and the bosses felt a little too easy mainly because their HP goes down so fast.

Overall, I highly reccomend. If you like fast paced action games then this is highly worth looking into. 

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 Review

The first Warhammer Space Marine was a game I really enjoyed, I had more fun with it than I thought I was going to, I finished it twice over the years too. I don't know much about Warhammer and still to this day don't, but that title was a decent gateway to trying out random Warhammer games. I still wish they somehow made a mainstream adaptation of the franchise so I can understand what on earth goes on in the story of these of these games but that is a topic for a different time. The first Space Marine and ended on a pretty annoying cliffhanger like many games and I thought it was never going to get followed up on but like Alan Wake 2, Space Marine would be another game that would get a sequel over a decade later but unlike Alan Wake 2, I actually enjoyed Space Marine 2 where Alan Wake 2 just bored the crap out of me.

Anyways, with that out of the way, much of what made the first Space Marine really interesting is that despite borrowing elements from games like Gears of War and Halo, with Gears being the controls and weapon limit, and Halo being the shield and dedicated grenade throw button, it also have had it's own innovations like how it predates Doom 2016 where you can enemies to get back health, sure games like the older God of Wars also did this but Space Marine did it in the context of a third person shooter especially in a time period where so many games that had third person over the shoulder shooting would have you hide behind cover.

Much of that is retained in SM2, with some changes some being for the better others being for a downgrade from the first.

The positive changes is that now you have 3 armor bars and a health bar, enemy kills bring back armor while stims and the "valor mode" of sorts bring back health. The best part about all this is that enemies will not interrupt you when doing a melee takedown which is a very welcome change.

The jump pack controls much better now and it does just as well as a good job in this game of giving you added verticality in level from time to time.

Weapon feedback and damage animations are much more satisfying this time around since the game runs on more powerful hardware and more powerful engine. This also shows in other ways like how there are much more enemies on screen than there ever were in SM1, the whole thing feels like a cross between something you'd find in Serious Sam and World War Z. The way the Tyranoids come in droves and how so many of them are climbing and on top of each other can look very similar to the latter where with it's zombie hordes and I can appreciate it more here since SM2 can actually be played on normal mode without needing human players.

Which leads me to my next positive, the AI controlled allies are surprisingly handle themselves decently enough in combat on normal difficulty, milage may vary, but they had a lot of HP meaning I rarely needed to revive them and your 2nd partner does a good job at doing it for me. They never got me a game over due to them being inept unlike say the first 2 Gears of War games.

Changes I'm lukewarm on is the parry system, I don't really care for the most part since the window is forgiving but there are times where it feels like I'm going gear up for a parry just for an enemy to die before the attack happens.

I also dislike how the armor regen sound and the enemy attack audio cue sound them same which can create some confusion.

As a whole SM2 mostly does a very good job at keeping what I liked about SM1 but there is one major thing about it that I dislike that I think the first game does better.

That is the weapon limit, when I played the prologue of SM2, I noticed something was off and that is because you can't carry 4 weapons like in SM1, Titus can only carry 1 rifle and 1 pistol. This really annoys me because Titus is a big bulking Space Marine, and he can't carry around 4 guns, and this discourages weapon experimentation since I want to try out different weapons but instead the game just makes me use one and it has ammo boxes littered around everywhere making use that one gun even more.

On top of the game having so many interchangeable hitscan guns, so the Halo fan in me just stuck to using the Instigator Bolt Carbine since it reminds me of that series' Battle Rifle. This is a shame since SM2 does so many things well and I never got to experience the potential guns I could've liked.

That and there are some annoying sections like 2 wave defenses, which I found tolerable on normal but could've infuriated on higher difficulties without human players helping me since I got to shoot down flying enemies destroying something while enemies from the ground attacked me.

There is also some obnoxious left stick waggling to break free of certain enemy grabs which the first game didn't have and this luckily didn't happen often but it was infuriating during the litcher boss.

The story I found impossible to follow since I know nothing about 40K lore. It also pulls a Kingdom Hearts 2 in that expects you knowing a lot that happened in between games and lots of things happened off screen like Titus being in the Deathwatch. I started to zone out of the story when the cutscene after the prologue made at least 4-5 refrences to Warhammer lore I did not get. From then on, I was in it for the gameplay solely even if I did like some of the throwbacks to SM1. 

Overall, had a good time. It was a decade long sequel in the making that I actually enjoyed and that's all I really wanted. 

Secret Agent Clank Review(Updated)

I decided to replay Secret Agent Clank again since it showed up on the PS Premium Classics recently and I'd still say it's a decent enough game all though I originally prefered this game over Size Matters but now I'm not so sure.

The camera controls for shooting is much better even the PSP version itself controls pretty decently and I didn't need to tinker in the PS5 emulation settings menu to customize the controls and the D pad for strafing felt pretty fine here maybe it was also good in Size Matters, who knows SM's camera was bad enough.

The game has a more unique identity of being a more stealth oriented Ratchet game rather than a heavy emphasis on shooting. It certainly has more going for it than Ratchet on a smaller screen but at the same time, where Size Matters went by at a brisk pace with barely any section lasting overly long, Secret Agent Clank feels much more dragged out and takes a while until you get anywhere.

The stealth while not too bad and can be decent has an issue that a lot of stealth game without detection arrows have is that you can bump into or enemies can or screw up a stealth run because you mentioned the QTE takedowns, admittedly rewind on PS5 does mitigate the issues that stealth can have but there will be come instances where you get spotted and you just wondered how it happened like many games pre Splinter Cell Conviction's detection arrows can feel like. Speaking of the aforementioned QTEs to do takedowns you have to do a QTE button press to do, sort of like Adam Jensen's takedown in Deus Ex HR except there is more steps with the QTE instead of just watching the takedown animation, time even freezes when it's happening too like HR. You also get a bonus for using stealth. They can be cool to watch but at the same time it can be boring seeing takedown animations play out and makes the stealth sequences longer since you got to do the QTE and watch the takedown animation play out and so much of stealth is basically this, in Deus Ex HR, you did at the very least had more options to takedown guards without using takedowns.

If there were enemies who kept spotting me no matter how I tried even with rewind, I just killed every enemy when the game gave me the chance.

I did like the disguise sections and it handles them better than the earlier Hitmans and would even include the certain guards can see you system before the 2016 Hitman game all though trying to get a disguise before the guard you stole the disguise from spots you can be a 50-50 guessing game due to this, it can get frustrating.

The shooting is decent but lacks the feedback that other Ratchets have on top of Clank's arsenal of just being fancy gadgets instead of cool guns, the cufflink bomb and PDA combo became my go to method for beating the game after a point since the Cufflink Bomb is a dominant strategy espeically when levelled up late game.

One big issue with the game is that the rhythm games are terrible and saps out all the enjoyment from it, the feels like the devs wanted to make something really cool but didn't want to spend too much time fleshing out the sequence due to budget or time. The first level of the game is especially ergregious of this since you think it's going to be a challenging stealth room but it's rhythm game instead. These sequences are bad due to how long they are and how much content you got to do just watching Clank play out the same motions depending on how many of the button presses you screw up luckily, you just need to get a good number of them right to move on.

However, the poker game rhythm section being the worst in how fast your reactions need to be and how long and dragged out it is in general and how many times you need to protect Clank with Gadgebots but the funny thing, get past the Casino rhythm game and the game gets pretty enjoyable. So if you can bear with those awful rthymn mini games, there is a decently enjoyable game here, afterwards but this can be a rage quitting moment especially without rewind. The other mini games are decent distractions with that said but they can drag on especially the gadgebot sections.

Here is the weird thing about Secret Agent Clank, much of these issues can apply to the Sly Cooper series, the whole game feels like a Sly game with a Ratchet skin, the barebones stealth, the rather basic combat mechanics, the mini games and how every character plays a specific role in the story instead of the protagonist driving everything(examples how Ratchet helps out Clank in some way while in jail or how Quark is used by Clunk to keep tabs on Clank). The whole game feels like one big audition for Sanzaru games to make Sly 4 and say what you want about it, the studio did have an understanding on what made the Sly games interesting from a gameplay perspective even if the their moment to moment writing isn't as strong as Sucker Punch's games.

Overall, I do enjoy SAC, I enjoyed years it back and I enjoy it now too. I've played worse games.

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb Review

I played this game for two reasons, the first reason that this was one of the games that inspired David Jaffe when creating the first God of War and GOW is one of my favorite franchises and I also saw it get listed as a "pretty good" Tomb Raider like. I do like a good style of action game with adventuring and I also enjoy the Indiana Jones movies after rewatching them two years ago so I decided to jump into this.

The first thing that is really noticeable right away is that despite Indiana Jones as the main character and his name being on the cover, the game is very much a Tomb Raider like. In fact, Emperor's Tomb came out in between Classic TR and before Prince of Persia Sands of Time and all though SoT did overshadow this game by a large margin, I do think Emperor's Tomb is a solid enough game in it's own right all though one caveat I want to mention is that I emulated the PS2 version of the game which means I had access to save states, and this game has it's fair amount of unpolished and awkward gameplay mechanics to it on top of having levels with no checkpoints where if you die, you got to restart from the begginning, so with these save states I was able to bypass some of the more frustrating parts of the game.

The first good thing about the game is the combat, no it's not going to win any awards for having deep mechanics but it does a geniunely good job at preserving the spirit of the movies. Indy in the movie fights tends to be a brawler who barely scrapes by in his fights, he's not a trained fighter or martial artist who can dispatch enemies with proficiency, and the game shows that in gameplay. The enemy count is generally up to 2 and sometimes and rarely 3 and many fist fights shows a cinematic camera where you do combos and guard to knock off enemies off their feet, and my favorite is knocking them down and then picking up the weapon and using it against them, especially with firearms, it feels so satisfying to knock a gun out of the enemy's hand then pick it up and finish them off with it. It just does such a great job at replicating the famous Raiders of the Lost Ark scene where Indy shoots the swordsman. You can even enemies fall off cliffs and hit each other too, so even if it isn't deep, it can be dynamic.

However the combat does get easy by the end of the game since enemies don't use guns by the late game so much of combat is picking up the spears enemies use spam the light attack and widdle away at them until they die. You also get a glaive later on which also makes combat pretty easy and trivial since enemies get killed by it pretty quickly.

With that said, this is one aspect where I do think it's an improvement over the Classic Tomb Raider games and it feels a lot more enjoyable and less tedious than Sand of Time's combat.

The platforming and moment to moment gameplay is mostly solid, it manages to a good job at feeling not as "the game is playing itself" as Uncharted's platforming does and gets the job done all though not as good as Classic TR to me since it can be automated and the automation can be pretty rigid. Sometimes Indy will grab ledges and at other times he won't where Classic Lara as long as precisely time jumps and press the interact button in time, Lara is able to consistenly grab ledges where Indy's ledge grabs kind of feels like a guessing game.

Speaking of guessing games, one aspect that could piss off many is his whip grappling hook, for the life of me I'm just not sure what the timing for this thing is, there were times, where I pressed x and Indy's whip grappled on and other times where I pressed it and the whip grapple hook could miss. This could anger many without emu save states since there isn't anything more frustrating than getting moderately far into a level, and then die and restart because Indy botched a whip grapple hook part. There is also two sections in the game that could piss off many, one being a Crash Bandiocot style first person boulder chase with a Nazi drill tank and late game level where you need to time across on timed pillars and you got to do this 4 times with the time for them going down fast. To top off all this, the final boss is almost too easy so the difficulty overall is uneven.

The story of the game is "fine" but it borrows heavily from classic TR in that there isn't much plot and it's just Indy exploring tombs. The music nails the atmosphere, but if you come into this game for an indepth Indy adventure you will be disappointed. The game is also pretty lengthy so I kind of wished for more story too.

Another issue is that if you aren't dying a lot, levels can be pretty short and you might have to watch a fair number of load screens and save game prompts inbetween levels. Classic TR had larger more seemless levels which is why the lack of story is more tolerable in Classic TR.

Overall, for a game that I never see get talked about that much outside of a few instances, I had a good time with it, the game is a solid licensed title.

Lollipop Chainsaw Repop Review

I wasn't going to play this game but not as soon as I did, it was mainly because I had PS Plus for a month and it just so happened to get a PS Plus discount before it was going to come out so I decided to purchase it. I was also looking for a short and somewhat easy and relaxing game to play and this "remake" of Lollipop Chainsaw fit the bill, I never played the original game so this was going to be a fresh experience.

Before, I start talking about the game, there's been some people talking about how this isn't the most polished "remake" in the world but I didn't have much issues, outside of one game breaking bug which made me restart from a checkpoint and some audio issues, it was smooth experience for me, I suffered no crashes and it's certainly playable enough to get from begginning to end. Others might have different issues, but I had barely any.

Anyways the game itself is "good" enough but it wasn't anything amazing and that's fine since I was expecting that.

The story and writing is dumb and over the top, I wouldn't consider it to be well written or anything amazing but it just seems to know what it is. Juliet did admittedly come off to me as a dumb airhead at first but her chemistry with Nick did make her a bit more tolerable since he's the one that tries to be normal in a story full of wacky and over the top weirdos.

There's also some crazy villains that don't appear much before hand and you basically by the end of every stage, they are okay but I wouldn't really call them memorable outside of their appreances and over the top personalities, they seem to follow the Cobra Unit logic from Metal Gear Solid 3 which is something I'm not that big on but considering how Lollipop Chainsaw's story is never as highly praised in my circles as MGS3 is just makes me tolerate the former more.

The gameplay is once again, just hitting on the realm of just "fine" but nothing standout. Juliet has light and heavy attacks which can be chained together, there is dodge command by hitting circle, there is a super powered up mode like Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry or a rage mode in a God of War game and there is a "Nick Toss" to do more damage based on a roulette wheel. Everything you see here has been done before and I won't criticize the game for being derivative since the combat manages to be entertaining enough on a service level to avoid being too dull but it's also suffers from the issues these melee combat games do is that, all you really need to do is just randomly press square and triangle together and dodge and you will be fine. On top of having a lot of healing items too.

One issue I do have is that enemies don't really have much in the way of telegraphed attacks with normal zombies, where I will be attacking and then get interrupted by a couple of zombies punching me because there was no visual or audio cue to get out of the way. You also can't cancel out of a combo into a dodge meaning since there is no telepraphed, I can mash the attack buttons and then cancel out when I randomly want to.

The stronger enemies fare a bit better since they have telegraphed attacks like the zombie football players but this leads me into another issue, in that the dodge is mostly fine but if you try to dodge and do a follow up attack, Juliet will do a dropkick instead of her chainsaw attack meaning that I can time a dodge, Juliet will do a dropkick and then it will take her 5 seconds to get up and then enemies will get free hits in as she is getting up. If the game wasn't so forgiving with healing items, this would make the game potentially very frustrating. The only part of the game I consider "hard" was the boss on Stage 5 since he had so many phases and moved quickly and I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough healing items for the final boss but there were some shops left on Stage 6 so it didn't matter.

Final issue I have with combat is that during boss fights or enemies who can dash around very quickly, there is no stinger or flying swallow equivalent so that means every time some enemies or bosses get to the other side of the arena, you are going to have run all the way to the other side to get there and then the enemy will dash again repeating the process.

Luckily the game isn't just combat but these non combat sections mostly are the bare minimum to break up the pace where they are mostly just QTEs, scripted sequences and mini games, they break up the pace without being overly frustrating that you wish they were over, except for the building climbing mini game.

There is the Chainsaw Dash but only the School Stage actually makes much use out of the mechanic, it mostly goes away in later stages.

That's prettty much the thing with Lollipop Chainsaw's gameplay, none of it is outright "bad" but nothing really stands out and it carried by it's over the top premise, writing and it's production values.

Overall, for a game I got at a PS Plus discount, I had a decent enough time with it.

Akimbot Review

I randomly heard about this game when seeing a trailer for it on the Playstation Youtube channel a few months ago and it was marketed as a game "like" Ratchet and Clank and since that series is going to be on ice for a while. I decided to play this but what I also didn't know that the game was also being sold for $20 and for a price that is surprisingly under $50 and for a game that is charged at the former price, I'm going to be a bit softer on it as a result. Also if you are one of those people who don't want to pay full price for a game that is around 10-13 hours and don't want to wait for a sale, here is something to look into.

Anyways, Akimbot is marketed as a game like Ratchet and Clank but really it's not so much like Ratchet all though it can somewhat bare a resemblance, it has more of an emphasis on 3D platforming with some shooting and some mini games thrown in for good measure unlike a game like Smurfs 2 Prisoner of Greenstone, I'd say Akimbot does a better job at differentiating itself from the Ratchet series where Smurfs was just a knock off of Rift Apart.

Before I describe the gameplay the first thing I will mention is that the main characters Exe and Chipset are not really like Ratchet and Clank, they are more like how Jak and Daxter are in the sequels. Exe's voice actor in particular feels like he is channeling Mike Erwin's performance in Jaks 2 and 3 than feeling like any version of Ratchet. Chipset is more talkative than Clank is and speaks, acts hyperactive, and jokes around as much Daxter does.

The story overall is decent but nothing really going to make you change your mind on platformer stories, it's moderately engaging enough for the kind of story that it is, even if Exe and Chipset still feel like they don't get along that much even by the end of the game.

The gameplay like I mentioned before is a combination of 3D platforming, shooting and mini games. The platforming in Akimbot and the game in general can be much more challenging than the Ratchet games, and there's much more platforming in it by comparison. There's lots of lasers to dodge, moving platforms, lots of wall running segments that has more challenge than Rift Apart's does(this game even requires you to shoot targets to activate wall run platforms which is something I don't think RA does), there's much more stage hazards like water and lava, and even some sections that require you to avoid camaers and lasers while jumping, which Ratchet doesn't really make you engage with.

The shooting and combat is also much more challenging than R&C too where you don't get XP to level up health and weapons. Exe's health remains the same throughout and he only gets 5 weapons, 1 of which you can choose from 4 and have to stick with since upgrading those weapons are rare. Enemies even in smaller waves can rip Exe's health to shreds within seconds and they don't drop health either, you need to shoot down health picks ups that are around the battlefield. There are also some enemies specific to rocket launchers and chaingun in order to kill.

However what prevents this game from being overly frustrating is that the game checkpoints pretty frequently and there's never a moment in the game that overly wastes your time in terms of redoing content upon failure, and load times to respawn are quick so the game as a whole can be challenging but I'd say it's "fair".

With all that said, there are things that Akimbot does worse than Ratchet particularly the weapons, Ratchet gives you lots of wacky over the top and crazy weapons to use where Akimbot you can choose between 4 main guns and a special wacky weapon. I only stuck with the laser since upgrading one gun requires lots of resources and the assault rifle becomes useless once you get the chaingun, I mainly used the rockets to disable shields so the guns I often used where the sniper and chaingun, the sniper was main for it's long range and aim assist when aiming down sights.

Then there is other aspect of the game like how some parts of the game can feel padded and drawn out like when you were with the Processor and had to go on multiple fetch quests, Chipset makes jokes about it but it's still pretty obnoxious. The dream sequence in Exe's head can be cut out entirely since they don't add much to the game.

Some of the mini games can be a little overbearing, like the car and space ship shoot em up sections go on for a little too long for my liking since I prefer these parts to be 5-8 minutes at the most but they seem to go on for 20.

Lastly, the final section of the game is way too drawn out, you do so many mini games and smaller sections before you get to the end. You stuff like a Flappy Bird clone, a fighting game, a laser dino turret section, a racing game and by the shoot em up section that lasted over 20 minutes, I just wanted the game to end and get to the final boss. It was testing my patience at times.

Overall, for a $20 game, it's a pretty good value even if it can be padded

Homefront Review

Homefront was a game I was expecting to be terrible going in, I was expecting myself to play and dislike it as much as the campaigns to Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 4, Medal of Honor 2010, Medal of Honor Warfighter and Ace Combat Assault Horizon but surprisingly, I got some enjoyment out of it, sure the game is a CoD clone to the point if you put a screenshot side by side of this and a CoD game from that gen, you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. Yes, games like Freedom Fighters are much more realized and better executed game with a similar premise. And yes, this game isn't going to win over the people who don't like these style of scripted military shooters but I'd say Homefront is an acceptable CoD clone than an insufferably bad one like the aforementioned games. I'd say it's a CoD clone on par with the James Bond games from the Activision era.

Two of the big reasons as to why is that for one, it checkpoints well, rarely if ever has moments where the scripting becomes so obvious that it breaks the illusion like say prison to ski lift shootout in Battlefield 4 or that building sniper section in Medal of Honor Warfighter and the game is pretty short and goes by quickly like a movie does. Another good thing it does, and this could be as a negative for some but the game tells you during it's more scripted sections who to kill and what precisely to do during them meaning there be less restarts because of ambiguity of not being able to tell what to do during scripted sections.

The gunplay is pretty similar to CoD especially the CoDs in the 7th gen, you got the two weapon limit, grenades that will rarely be used since all you fight are human infantry soldiers, lots of interchangeable hitscan weapons where reliable aiming is through ADS and the difference between them being the various attachments, but it does replicate CoD's combat decently enough, at least weapons have decent firing sounds and damage animations to enemies have decent feedback.

However one thing I do like is that using the sniper does not require you to hold your breath and you can fire away with it which makes it a weapon I want to use. I also like that weapons run out of ammo pretty often even on easy meaning I have to use guns enemies use from time to time which makes combat slightly more dynamic.

There are some cool moments like battling on the San Franciso bridge, escourting multiple trucks while riding a helicoptor(this never got as obnxious as the protect missions in Ace Combat Assault Horizon), and fighting through a store where the infamous white posphorous scene happens.

Some negatives is that easy mode doesn't make a difference since your player character's health is pretty low even on that difficulty. CoD's easy modes does at the very least give you more HP.

The story also isn't that good but at the same time, I'm more annoyed by the silent protagonist since the characters talk to him a lot and he never says a word. I find the concept to be wildely outdated especially in games where the story involves characters interacting with each other.

There was glitch where an NPC was supposed to open a door but it wouldn't causing me to restart the mission and then have it happen when getting to that part again.

Overall, for a game I was expecting to be completely garbage, I kind of liked it, is it something you should go out of your way to play? No but if you want something to beat in an afternoon or weekend, you could do worse than this.

El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron Review

This was a weird one, I played on PS3 a few years ago and I recall dropping it pretty quickly, I might've learned that the game was one of the PS3's most expensive games at the time or later, but that doesn't really matter since the game now has a Nintendo Switch remaster while getting a PC remaster beforehand, and after beating it? My thoughts are pretty much the same, I can see why myself from a few years ago did drop the game and the only reason I was able to get to the end at all was because it checkpoints well and for the combat, you restart exactly where you died from pressing the L, R, and A buttons at the same time, more on that later. Outside of that, I find the game to be painfully mediocre in almost every respect. I intially played it at all because some called it an "underrated" game while terms like that are nebulous at best, I still don't think it's a good game or a game deserving of that reputation.

The good thing about El Shaddai or at the very least is the visuals, it might be the only thing about the game that geniunely stands out. If you are one the seemingly many people who love to complain about 7th gen games being "brown", "grey" and having "ugly" color palletes, this might be a game from that gen to capture your interest since everything is vibrant, colorful and has a nice cel shaded look to it. The environments have a dreamlike design to them and some of the visuals are so bizarre yet awfully eerie. If you are the kind of guy who really wants a game to look very nice and care about that more so than the gameplay or love to go on and on about how a game looks visually then check the game out because now I transition to the negative and not so good things about El Shaddai.

Before I do that, I'll also say music and voice acting is passable enough if nothing standout.

I'll start with the combat, and it's interesting on paper, the game apparently uses a rock, paper, scissors system of enemies being weak certain weapons but the problem I noticed right away was even back when I first played is that enemies are massive damage sponges, they take forever to die and taking them down just takes way too long, and btw, I played on easy and this is still an issue.

Veil was by far the best weapon since it does the best job at staggering enemies and it has a dodge command that is somewhat reliable, it's esstentially the Nemen Cestus from God of War 3 in that it's a pair of magical boxing gloves and it allows the character to move like a boxer but due to the enemies being damage sponges, it never feels as awesome or empowering as GOW3's Cestus.

Arch and Gale never really feel that great and just feel weak, especially the latter, I just whailed on the attack button with Gale and it chips away at enemy HP very slowly and it felt like what was supposed to be a 5 minute fight went on for 10 minutes. Arch just feels like a typical sword with not much standing out from it.

The enemy roster is also pretty weak, outside of the fact that the game stops introducing new enemies after you get Veil, their only threat to the player is how hp spongey they are. I wonder if having the ability to switch between the 3 weapons could make the combat more dynamic and enjoyable but I'm not sure.

So with all these issues, what helped me get through the game? Well, it's the fact that during combat Enoch can't get a traditional game over, like I said before just press L, R, X and A and you can keep respawning without redoing any content, this also works on bosses. They are also HP sponges and some are required to lose in order to progress the story but it doesn't really matter since you can keep respawning with no consequences.

However there is one problem, you can keep respawning after death during combat but not during the platforming, and this leads me into my second big issue with El Shaddai is that the 3D platforming is really terrible. There is 2D platforming as well, and these parts are okay, if nothing special but it does make the game feel confused on what it tries to be since the 2D platforming can feel jarring compared to the 3D sections and they go away entirely over halfway into the game.

The 3D platforming is just awful, some of the worst 3D platforming I can even recall, there are late 90s 3D platformers that control better than this. The best way of describing it is that what if Devil May Cry 1, had more platforming? This is what you get, the camera doesn't do the greatest of job giving you an angle on where to jump and the jumping physics never feel precise, half the time if I want to make it to a platform, it's a 30-50 guessing game, sometimes I'll land and at other times I'll fall off if I nudge the analog stick a little too much, and the game doesn't just have you jump to platforms, no, you got to dodge traps and moving platforms as well and it takes what was already bad and makes it worse since these controls weren't even good for the 3D platforming in the game without hazards. The game does checkpoint mostly well to make this bearable all though before a combat section with some of them and getting back to the platforming section can be tedious since combat is long due to the aforementioned issues of enemies being damage sponges. 

Old God of War also had 3D platforming with a follow cam but Kratos' jump arc actually feels like I can predict where I'm supposed to land and it doesn't feel like 30-50 guessing of whether or not Kratos will land on the platform or not. 

Overall, El Shaddai could've been so okay, it's average but the platforming just makes me dread playing it. Remove these sections and it could've been just that. 

Ratchet and Clank Size Matters Review(Updated)

I decided to play Size Matters again at all because it got added to the Playstation Premium Classics service and I heard the PSP version was better than the PS2 so it got me curious in playing the game again. I also have a soft spot for it since it was the first Ratchet game I ever played

As the game is, I wouldn't call the "bad game" so many hype it up as but it's not a great game either. It's pretty much middle of the road all though it's a middle of the road game that I had a moderate amount of enjoyment out of.

The best way of describing Size Matters is that it's an amalgamation of the 2002 game and it's sequels.

You have Ratchet being more self centered and dawning his 2002 look, you got the PDA, and you respawn with the amount of ammo and bolts you had before you died instead of at a checkpoint. It also has the nanotech health upgrades, the weapon upgrades, armour and strafe from 2 and 3. It almost feels like Ratchet and Clank 1.5 at times.

In the PS2 version what held the game back however is the awful camera, it zooms in too close and it jerks around too much when moving and when in tight spaces, and when too many enemies get on screen it becomes frustrating to dodge the attacks since enemies hit as hard. I'm not sure how difficulty in the older Ratchet games worked but it seems the more well you do the harder enemies hit and more ammo they take to die, if anything I'm glad this system was dropped in later games.

The PS5 version which is an emulated PSP version is interesting in that it comes with right stick movement and since the PS5 version lets you customize the controls through the emulator, it meant I can make Ratchet moved like he did in Deadlocked where left stick lets you strafe left and right. It's the way to play the game for me. The auto aim and by extension camera isn't that great since the autoaim follows the enemies and the camera moves along with him on top of being spazzy in tight spaces and with many enemies. So the PS5 version somewhat fixes a prominent issue but at the same time not really.

The mandatory races especially the first while have David Bergeard's awesome music, controls really awkwardly especially with how movement with the analog stick works. Boosting will send you flying upwards instead of on the race track. There's only 2 mandatory races which is fine.

The aforementioned difficulty can be an issue since enemies get so spongey by late game that that I just used the shield, rocket launcher and PDA combo to get past everything. This is towards the end of the game but things just got so unbearably difficult that I stopped using the other weapons. I do disagree with the common sentiment that enemies don't react to getting shot because they do, but they just take so many shots from non rocket launcher weapons that it isn't worth the effort. That and bosses are also spongey and some weapons just won't be able to effectively do damage so PDA spamming becomes prominent after a point.

However the biggest issue with Size Matters is that the game just feels the same game as the console Ratchets, it doesn't offer much you can't find from the PS2, PS3, PS4 and PS5 games. The game's selling point at the time might've been that it was, "Ratchet and Clank on the go" but when playing it on a console, the novelty wears offs. Games like Daxter offered more platforming than the Jak sequels did and the God of War PSP games offered a remaped controls like pressing L and R to dodge and magic shortcuts. Ratchet Size Matters on the other hand doesn't have much you can't find in other games in the series even the PS3 spin offs like Full Frontal Assault and All 4 One have more of an indentity.

There is some good with Size Matters with all this said, the story and character interactions are moderately entertaining and it got some laughs out of me, the game seemingly is an interquel between the first game or and any of the PS2 sequels despite apparently not being that.

The setpieces while cumbersome and possibly frustrating on the PSP analog nub are pretty decent and have more going on than the games Uncharted games do since you can't just hold forward while cool stuff is happening around you.

While it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary for the series the attempt at emulating the series is solid enough. The game really is carried by how much of a series fan I am and how this game was the very first I played.

Overall, I like Size Matters slighty more than I did when I replayed it 2 years ago but rewind and custom controls played a big role in this. I still wouldn't call this game "bad" in a million years since I played worse games but at the same time, its a fun game all though I'm biased towards the series which is another reason. I'm still bummed there won't be another game for years and Insomniac is the "Marvel Studio" now but that is a topic for a different time.

Helldivers 2 Thoughts

Helldivers 2 is a weird one, I've been a Sony first party games fan for a while and one thing I've always seen is that every time they would attempt a multiplayer game whether it would be only that or have a single player, they would never get the audience that they were looking for and never really broke out to mainstream success. They would have cult followings but never become mainstream. Enter Helldivers 2, the first game I ever recall where Sony published a multiplayer game that is apart of the Playstation brand where it broke out into the big leagues, I've seen people cosplay as Helldivers 2 characters at conventions and that was the final nudge to make me play this game. I had PS Plus for one month so I might as well jump in even though I still can't help but hold a grudge at the Xbox 360 for popularizing online paywalls for console multiplayer. That was a big hurdle to get past to play this game since PS Plus I didn't have much use for outside of the occasional sale.

With all that out of the way, what did I think? I wanted to like this game, I really do but despite having a lot going for it, the game to me is just okay at best.

What I liked about Helldivers 2 is the gunplay and weapon feedback. Weapons have decent punch and killing hordes of enemies felt gratifying to do. I like the look and designs of the game even if it can be derivative of franchises like Starship Troopers and Halo, everything in terms of moment to moment shooting and the aesthestics, the game nails. I also like that it even uses Metal Gear Solid 5's movement system like being able to crouch, go prone, dive, dive into prone, and shoot while knocked down, the fact that there is even a game that uses that uses MGS5's moveset in the context of a third person shooter is pretty cool. It was another thing that piqued my interest regarding the game.

However there is one thing that held the game back for me and that is the fact that it's a multiplayer live service game without a traditional campaign. I know me being the introverted gamer that I am I was better off playing a dedicated single player game but I'd argue that even games like the Sqaure Enix Avengers game did try to have a single player, it wasn't very good, but it could've been implemented to some degree with this game.

As it is without one, I just play with random people randomly through matchmaking and while I do get some fun out of it, I just get bored after extended hours since there is no story or campaign mode. I'm not the kind of guy to condemn a game for having a bad story but I tend to like games even gameplay driven ones to have some narrative.

So much of Helldivers 2 mainly just consists of doing of objectives on a map where it's "do x" or "destroy y" while fighting hordes of enemies and then waiting for a chopper extraction when done. It starts to get so one note and samey, maybe this is what live service games are all about, I don't know, I only ever played the aforementioned Avengers game when it comes to those kinds of titles.

The more I was playing Helldivers 2, the more I felt like playing 2 hours of the game felt like I have seen everything. Leveling up takes far too long if playing on medium difficulty or below which is worse for me since anything higher than medium doesn't even make me an effective helping gun or meat shield since I die so quickly.

Overall, I wanted to really enjoy Helldivers 2 for how popular it is and for being the first multiplayer Sony 1st party game with mainstream success but live service games really aren't my thing. Maybe if they ever add a campaign I could try to play it again which is doubtful, but as it stands, I certainly won't be touching live service titles, and at the same time since I won't be, it means I won't be one of those guys on the internet who whines about all the time knowing that those games aren't aimed at them and aren't their thing.