Portal(Nintendo Switch) Review

Portal was a game I played 10 years ago and I remember wanting to play it because it was short and I wanted to beat it one sitting. I did enjoy it but at the same time, I didn't overly think too much of it outside of certain things like Glados and how the game told it's story over the course of it's short length. However, upon replaying Portal on the Nintendo Switch, I really appreciate the way the campaign is structured and the idea of smooth difficulty curve that eased you into the game while playing.

The story is interesting more so in how it's told much like the Half Life series where there isn't much in the way of cutscenes or cinematics and the player is always in control whenever story beats are happening. The main difference between this and Half Life is that the player will often have to pause and wait for the characters to finish speaking before he can continue on with the game.

Portal changes this where now, you can keep playing the game while characters are speaking but instead it's just one character which is Glados. It's fascinating in how the whole thing is contextualized, you are trapped in a facality being forced to do these "experiments" of sorts. Glados is an antagonistic figure who just keeps insulting and belitting you and never expects you to solve any of these puzzles but the player keeps surprising her every time you solve one.

In one sense, if you choose to listen to her, it makes solving the puzzles that much more rewarding when you pull it off but you can choose to ignore her if you want to.

I don't make nearly as big of a deal in how a game story is presented as long a game writer follows the rule of establishing major character traits, story beats quickly, efficiently within in a short period of time. Portal's story much like Half Life does do that but more so over the course of the game where the more you progress through it, the more Glados gets annoyed and wants to get you out of the way. It's a good way to give a reason to solve the puzzles.

The biggest star of the show is how campaign. I don't like puzzles in games especially really challenging ones since trying to figure them out is the gameplay. Portal manages to strattle the line between being easy enough to follow but without being challenging and eventually needing a guide.

A big reason to this is how the campaign eases you into doing what the player will be doing throughout the game. On a replay and if you are adept at puzzles this might be very easy but for some not really into a puzzles or even someone who is new to video games, the game hits the right level of challenge. That and the very idea of the portal gun wasn't really even explored in gaming before this.

The campaign structure plays a big part of in that. What Portal esstentially does is that it gives the player one gimmick, do a few puzzles with that said gimmick, then introduces a new one a few rooms later.

First you start off with only one portal, then you get two, then there is pressure and interactable switchs and cubes, then there is momentum jumps, then there is turrets, then there is energy orbs, timing puzzles, then there is shooting a portal jump while during a momentum jump and so on.

What works about all this is that it has the player slowly learn the game's mechanics and slowly he starts to feel more competent. A common theory in game design is that the more player feels competent, the more he wants to be challenged.

This all culminates in Test Chamber 18, some have criticized this section for being noticeably harder than the rest of the game, however the argument I make is that it feels like a culmination of everything the player learned. Everything is here from momentum jumps, turrets, cubes, switches, energy orbs and fast paced timing to boot it all off is all here. It might stump a first time player but on a replay, I appreciated this a lot more.

In many ways, this section is a great final test because from here on afterwards, it's an escape from the Aperture Science facility and the player pretty much knows the mechanics and concepts of the game inside out and now he is using them to outsmart Glados. By this point, the player instictively knows what he is supposed to do because of everything learned in the Test Chambers.

The only big issue with the game I can say is that certain puzzles require the player to fire a portal while in the air but every time he gets out of one, the camera reorients itself constanly and as a result not giving a good angle to see the platform to fire another portal. If I had motion sickness this would make me feel dizzy.

Overall, Portal is a game that I had a great time with and has a very well structured and enjoyable campaign. Some could criticize the game for being "short" but the game feels so self contained and never overstaying it's welcome because of how short it is.

Blacksite: Area 51 Review

I bought this at a convention, the fact that I am more willing to try out games that aren't fondly remembered, and it was cheap did get me curious in buying it. It's also connected to the Area 51 game from 2005 and I remember having some fun with it. Honestly? I wasn't even expecting to get to the end of this game at all, I was expecting to reach a difficulty spike of some kind and drop but no, I actually managed to get to the of the game and finish it. As a whole I wouldn't call the game in the vein realm of "good" but as far as painfully mediocre games that are just "there" is concerned, it's not the worst. With that said, there is nothing about Blacksite Area 51 does isn't done better elsewhere like pretty much everyone has said.

I'll start with good. The game checkpoints pretty well and there isn't a whole of content you have to redo upon death, however if you choose to play on casual difficulty, you probably won't die that much to begin with since the player can take a lot of damage on that difficulty. I only died twice one during a mini boss with the giant grab creature where kamikaze enemies where attacking me while I was aiming a rocket at the former and the final boss since everything about the last level is poorly explained and I didn't know the game was scripted to have the fight take place inside of a closed interior, before that I just kept firing bullets and he wouldn't die.

There is no standard or normal difficulty of any kind, just easy, hard and very hard, which is pretty weird for a game like this. It's also pretty short and can pretty much be beaten in one sitting which is good since if a mediocre game like this was any longer, I would just start to get more and more annoyed and wish it would hurry up and end. The character of Grayson is pretty over the top and unhinged and his over the top lines did make me a smile a good deal.

Final positive is that the game does an okay job at breaking up the monotonous shooting by having a vehicle section, turret section, sniping, on rails rope rapelling and mini bosses and bosses. The game also does a decent job at guiding the player where to go with lighting and with environmental details even if the game is very linear.

This is where pretty much my praise ends. Like I said before everything Blacksite does has been done better in other games. You got the two weapon limit, melee attack, quick grenade throw, regen health and vehicle sections from Halo, the following around npcs in CoD games, the squad tactics in Rainbow 6 Vegas, and the whole alien invasion desert motif from Half Life 1 and 2.

There are some weird quirks with Blacksite that makes it inherently worse than those games, for one on console the default controls has two crouch buttons, the left analog stick crouch button isn't toggle but down on the D pad is so why have one that isn't toggle and the other that is? You could have the left analog stick click be a run button. Another quirk is how in CoD games when the player had to do a contextual action or if an NPC will activate the next sequence, these sections were made clear. In this game, it tries to have squad commands of R6 Vegas and be like CoD where there is always a marker for the player to press R1 in order for the NPCs and the player to do anything. Want to open a door? Wait for the red marker to turn green and then you can do it. Want to do anything do what I just said, everything that this pseudo squad and interaction system is waiting for the red indicator to turn green.

There is also technical bugs maybe this is just the PS3 version but there is a lot of level loading that disruptes the gameplay since you will be playing than the game just says "loading". This is an issue with 7th gen games but Blacksite has so many of these. There is also game breaking bugs that will make you reload from the menu to progress since there is no restart from checkpoint option.

Combat is pretty dull, despite this being a game where you fight aliens, many of them can be beaten with using the base M4 assault rifle at the start of the game. It has the same CoDesque combat where you just need to ADS, shoot, enemy dies, get hit, then hide behind cover, rinse repeat, all the combat entirely takes place in your forward direction.

The weapons are dull too. You mainly just kill everything with the M4 and enemies don't make noticeably reactions or sounds to getting shot making combat feel not so great. Compare this to fighting the Chimera in Resistance where they groan and get stagger to getting shot by the weapons.

You occasionally need a sniper and rocket launcher but those are during situational and specific moments. The alien shotgun is also pathetic since you don't even have any trace of the bullets land on the target you aim at.

Overall, it's been said many times that the game isn't good but the cheap price and short length enticed me to play. If anything, I'm just surprised I finished it and wrote this review at all.

Call of Duty: Roads to Victory Review

Well this was certainly a CoD game on PSP. I wouldn't call the game terrible but at the same time like many of the WW2 "spin off" CoDs like Unitied Offensive, Finest Hour and Big Red One, I struggle to question the existence of this game. It's not as bad to me as Unitied Offensive but like Finest Hour and Big Red One, it does so little espeically from a gameplay standpoint to standout from those games and the plethora of CoD and Medal of Honor games that got made in the 00s.

With all that said, if you were a fan of those WW2 era CoD games and if you are looking for a quick game to beat, it's sort of worth looking into whether it'd be through original hardware or emulation.

The visuals get the job done and does an okay job at capturing the art style of the CoD games pre Modern Warfare.

However the biggest differences is going to be the controls since it's on the PSP. You can use the face buttons to move the camera but I opted to map them to the right stick on PPSSPP. With that in mind, the controls aren't too bad, you got all your CoD usual stuff before MW like grenade throwing, crouching and going prone, aim down sights, and reloading, it's somewhat impressive that with the PSP's control scheme they were able to replicate all this.

The biggest difference is that there is a heavy amount of aim assist when shooting from the hip so now the reticle will lock on to an enemy regardless of distance and it makes CoD's already basic shooting mechanics of "point and shoot" even more basic since the aim assist is so high that even trying to aim down sights and lining up shots is done for you.

The regen health from Infinity Ward CoD2 is back and it functions exactly how you expect. So many shoot outs consits of point in general direction, shoot from hip or use ADS, kill enemies, then get hit a couple of times, and crouch or prone around objects to regen health so it's the same as the console and PC games in the series with regen health. Easy mode lowers the amount of time I have to wait for the health to regenerate.

To the game's credit, the campaign is pretty short, levels are rarely longer than 15 minutes and the only level that dragged on was the on rails plane shooting section. Game also checkpointed frequently too. If the game was longer, I'd be much harsher on it. Blasting enemies with an MP40 and firing weapons like an M1 Garand can still provide some fun even if that said fun had greatly diminished in returns due to how many of these games that can already let you do this.

Other than that, it's your usual early CoD game stuff. Plant charges, shoot down tanks, clear out rooms and buildings, do some NPC escorting, shoot down enemies with turrets, some sniping sections and shoot enemies that come from you attack you in one direction which is from the front, if you played these games before you know what to expect. The only difference now is that the demoliations timer is noticeably shorter and the base movement speed isn't fast enough to get away from the blast radius without taking some damage.

Overall, pretty much an iterative portable "spin off" game and a very iterative game as a whole, not terrible but not anything worth looking into. I only tried this out of curosity and I did get some fun out of it.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Review

I'm not really a Zelda fan however I did play Hyrule Warriors a while ago and I remember kind of enjoying that, I have heard some say Age of Calamity is the better game so I decided to buy it and play that. While AoC has some improvements over the first game it is hindered by a story that fails to be anything other than a happy ending and a long and bloated campaign that could've ended at least 5 if not 10 hours earlier.

From a presentation standpoint AoC is an improvement over HW in that there are way more cutscenes and there is quite a lot of voice acting here. The first half of the story is pretty interesting especially considering I didn't know too much of the spoilers and I thought at first it was going to be to Zelda BOTW what Halo Reach was to Halo CE and Crisis Core is to Final Fantasy 7. How at first, it was going to start off as hopeful and optimistic but as the game went on, slowly the bad guys would start winning and it would eventually set up BOTW, like how Reach did with CE. Zelda was slowly had to win over everyone, how her father "dying" and the Divine Beasts being taken over meant that it was going to end where BOTW would begin but no, Nintendo doesn't like the idea of a Downer Ending so they came up with some weird time travel plot twist instead where the good guys win.

So now, the very premise of AoC being a prequel to BOTW is pretty much a complete and total farce. It starts to make me wonder what even is the point of it since now all it does establish that the Calamity Ganon in the AoC timeline is a weakling and the Ganon in BOTW is retroactively more interesting since he actually succeeded in conquering BOTW's version of Hyrule.

As a result, by having the 2nd half of the story esstentially be defeating Calamity Ganon, it bloats the game's length and this has a major effect on the campaign itself.

Now this transitions me over to gameplay. At first, there are some geniune improvements. NPCs won't get you game overs nearly as often. The regular enemies are pretty easy to beat after all this is what the musou genre is known for, the various mini bosses are enjoyable to fight due to multiple ways of getting the stagger meter down. You can hit specific weak spots on them to get a circular meter to zero which allows them to be staggered but there are other ways to do it. For example, the flurry rush from BOTW is back and it encourages the player want to make "perfect dodges" because it allows you to damage the stagger meter on mini bosses without hitting them in specific weakspots. There is also elemental weaknesses which can be accessed by holding down the L button which allows the player to also weaken the stagger the meter without hitting weak spots depending on what element they are weak to.

Ability uses like cryosis, bombs and magnesis from BOTW can be quickly accessed by holding the R button and when timed right, you can damage and stun the mini bosses for a bit so in a lot of ways there is a decent number of ways these mini bosses can be beaten. Two other improvements is that healing items like apples can be accessed using the L shortcut on elemental attacks, the game also has difficulty options with the easy mode being pretty accomadating.

For all these improvements, there are multiple things that hold AoC back by a long shot. First you can't buy apples from the menu and it seemingly was added as DLC which is bizarre. The game doesn't explain it's systems or mechanics that well particularly involving weapon fusing which is something you will need to get through later parts of the game.

Two of the biggest issues it has is the camera and the especially the reused mini bosses. The former is so bad that it reminded me why I strongly dislike player controlled cameras in 3D beat em ups. They especially get bad when you fight flying, big or fast moving enemies since the camera has a hard to keeping a decent view of the player and the enemies surronding him, the lock on tracks the enemy but it say if an enemy starts attacking especially a fast one, the lock on will track him and while the character is closing the distance, the camera will follow him. With bigger enemies, he will take up so much of the screen making dodging a guessing game since so little of the screen is given to the player to reliable dodge and attack. It especially gets bad in tight spaces since the camera will just have Link be in first person while the interiors are covering his character model.

Then there are the reused mini bosses, here is much of AoC, fight Bobokins, Lizalfos, Hinox, Guardians, Moblins, Lynels, Talus, and Wizzorbes and different color variations of them for 20 hours and then have more of them pop with way more HP and just have the challenge be from being HP sponges. As a result, I lowered the difficulty to easy so I can kill them faster because adding more tough enemies with lots of HP is the only way the game knew how to add challenge.

The Divine Beast sections while really fun at first to reign fire down on weaker enemies gets boring when you do it a second time since these sections are too basic and dull to be something worth doing a second time, adding a timer just makes these less of a power fantasy since know you can't just win by spamming the various attack buttons, luckily when as the timer goes down the places you need to destroy do get marked but why weren't these just added to begin with? The lack of commitment is confusing. 

Overall, AoC as a whole, I question it's existence and what even was the point so the gameplay isn't very good and the story doesn't even commit to the interesting premise it has. 

Attack on Titan Anime Review

AoT is a strange show for me. I remember it being one of the most popular anime in the 2010s, the show pretty much got viral around the time it aired and even before I watched season 1 of the english dub on Adult Swim Toonami 11 years ago, I already heard quite a lot about it. It's was even popular amongst people who didn't even watch anime that much. When I did initially watch the first season, I was wondering what on earth the hype was even about, why on earth was it so popular and even recall it being one of my most hated anime for a few years, I was really convinced that AoT was not a good show at all, I even got into multiple flame wars with it's fans back when I did do stuff like that. However, AoT is a series while starting off rough, did slowly start to get better as it went along, all though the final season's writing while fascinating on paper left a lot to be desired. It also ends on a rather undwhelming and unffufilling note. 

Anyways, enough of all that, let's begin this review. The first season like I said before, I have a complicated history with, it might be one of the few anime I watched 3 times(2nd time I watched was due to me thinking that the final season was going to be quickly finished in 2020), but every time I watch it and especially in the first half of that said season, I get a strong sense, "the writing is extremely underwhelming". This is in large part due to the underdeveloped characters, outside of maybe Jean Kirstein and Erwin Smith. The cast are all completely one note and don't have much going on to them. Eren Jaeger is short tempered loud mouth hot head who has to shove in a shout almost every 5 minutes. Armin Arlett despite being smarter than Eren is esstentially just follows the latter around like a dog and Mikasa Ackerman's entire character despite being stronger than Eren physically is nothing more than just a guard dog for him. The rest of the characters don't really fare much better other than just having one note quirks to them. Sasha just likes to eat food, Hunjie is extremely quirky, Levi is a borderline psycho and the Levi's squad are just extremely loyal to him and get killed off pretty quickly and those are the ones I recall. 

This is much in large part due to the season 1's knack for relying on shock value more so than developing and fleshing out characters. 

To give an example, Eren's mother Carla Jaeger despite her being important to the story and her death being the inciting incident that kicks off the said story, the viewer is barely given enough to know her before she dies so they can feel as invested as Eren, all I really know about her is that she is kind hearted and puts up with Eren's brashness. If you ignore that fact that this might be many people's first introduction to anime and seeing an animated character get eaten to death might be geniunely shocking to many but even by 2014 when I did watch the dub, I already watched a decent amount of anime so this had no effect on me. 

Another example is how the character of Marco despite being important to Jean Kirstein, only has one major and somewhat forgettable scene where the former tells the latter that he's good leader because he knows when to be afraid, not bad but this is the major scene Marco gets before he dies. 

The final battle of Annie Leonheart fighting Eren at the end of the season is pretty much supposed to be Eren being conflicted about fighting her since they were in Cadet training for so long but they only had one major scene together and that's it, yet the writers want the audience to believe they've known and spoken to each other for a while before the showdown. 

Then there is shock value that contradicts it's own themes and character roles. The former being how AoT establishes itself as nilhilstic show where anyone could die but then it turns out Eren has superpowers, many including myself had an issue with this since one, it circumvents any character development Mikasa and Armin have by having needing to grow past their need to rely on Eren but then it's also a show that establishes that superpowers are suddenly a thing. The problem isn't that there is superpowers it's more so how it's used as a way to keep Eren alive when the story seemingly killed him off. The story does do interesting things with this later but this is a hard pill to swallow. 

The latter is how Mikasa is much stronger and more combat efficient than Eren is despite the two's first encounter has the later killing multiple grown men much bigger than him and so how is she stronger than Eren if he is capable of doing all that? Who trained Mikasa? Never explained. 

I can list some other examples how the show wants you to care for a bunch of random soldiers and their dead comrades during the female titan portion or how Petra had an attachment towards Levi despite it being revealed after she died but I made my point. 

Then there are just other issues with the season like how the Battle on Trost district takes a good 8-10 episodes to finish and this would be fine if the characterization was there but instead I just wanted it to be over and partnered that with the Eren death fake out and that only added insult to injury. 

I have complained about S1 a good deal but some good things to come from it is that Jean and his chracter development as someone who starts as someone who wants to live a free and complacenent life to realizing that there someone who believes that isn't really the way to live is decent writing especially for S1 standards. 

The 2nd half introduces Erwin Smith who is my favorite character in the series and S1 does a decent enough job at establishing his cryptic, reckless and cunning ways. 

Then there is the fact that 25 episodes has gone by and not much has been explained regarding the cellar in Eren's basement in Shinganshina. 

After all that, it's really to easy to see why AoT is a show I disliked for a decent number of years and time hasn't made me kinder towards S1. Attack on Titan's anime thus far really seems like the kind of anime adaptation that seemingly cuts out a lot of material from the manga. The thing is, bad manga adaptations usually get derided and get forgotten about to the sands of time, this was a show that had a huge following despite having the many shortcomings that it did. 

However seasons 2 and 3 would come along and massively overhauled everything I had with the series. If you told me from about 2014-2019 that AoT would be a much better series and would become a geniunely good show, I would tell you were wrong but AoT is a show that proves that any series especially long running can have a rough start. 

Season 2 pretty much massively improves the characters, now the show isn't relying immense shock value anymore and characters are getting much more fleshed out now. Ymir and Historia who were esstentially just background characters in S1 have a pretty interesting relationship in S2. How Ymir is brash and upfront about who she is and Historia is more shy and quiet by comparison. Historia's character development in S2 and 3 is one of my favorite things about the series in how she slowly comes to accept who she is regarding duty to the throne and herself. 

Reiner was one of S1's more slightly developed characters and the show this time around has him along with Connie, Sasha, Ymir and Historia try to fend off some titans in a castle and there is a decent bit of downtime, in between titan attacks and a scene like this while there somewhat in season 1, didn't really pop as much as this scene did. 

Eren's battle and even being conflicted about Reiner is a bit more developed by comparison to the fight with Annie since they had more time together. Seeing Eren slowly get angry but comes to grips with the fact he has to fight Reiner hits close to home with me now. 

The only major gripe I have with the season is that Eren having the ability to control titans was a seemingly out of nowhere deus ex machina since the Scouts were borderline out of luck and the plot needed to find to get them out of hairy situation so the writers came up with this. 

Then comes season 3 and this is pretty much AoT at it's highest point in terms of writing. A conspiracy gets introduced, mystery boxes get revealed and after this point the show's writing never reaches this height again. 

The aforementioned conspiracy is already interesting stuff since it turns the much of AoT's premise on it's head where it turns out there is a greater threat than titans out there and it's about uncovering all that. The Scout Regiment are pretty much the ultimate underdogs here with them slowly trying to uncover it all, trying to route the people behind them and answer the mystery box. 

Kenny Ackerman is my favorite villain in the series, his appreance establishes multiple things, there are members in the Scouts who now have to kill actual people than titans, he's the only character in the series that made Levi uneasy by the mere mention of his name, that there is something that government is hiding and even in death, he has the titan serum that can turn certain people into titans which will come into play later in the season. 

His line during his death scene where he mentions everyone is a slave to something is a line that resonates with me more now than it did when I first watched it. 

Historia's character arc comes to a complete circle. 

Erwin's backstory and why he is willing to gamble so many lives is explained here and he feels very guilty about but at the same time, he's gone too far off down the deep end to stop now. 

The final battle on Shinganshina is pretty well in that both the good and bad side are constantly one upping each other and it all esstentially comes full circle with Erwin willing to scarifice himself in order to give the Scouts one major chance at victory. The season a great job at selling you how important Erwin was to cause and how everyone wanted to keep him alive and even after the victory, Erwin's name is still being mentioned and remembered and everyone doesn't know what to do now. 

If you AoT summed up as simpily as possible is that it was a series that lived and died with Erwin Smith. S1 got more tolerable with him introduced and the series starts to become more dull with him gone. 

However a big issue with S3 is that the backstory is revealed that Eren eats his father Grisha to obtain his titan powers but Eren never once comes to gripes with the fact that he killed his own father or how the story explains how he managed to get back to to civilization since in order to turn into a titan behind the wall, it would cause a lot of noise. It's not to dissimilar to Naruto Uzumaki's backstory on his body was just lying there after his parents were killed. Dragon Ball is a much more lighthearted series than AoT and the former had a scene where Goku came to gripes to the fact that he accidentally killed a parental figure while being transformed into a monster and not being in control while in it. 

Now this leads to the final season and well...it's a weird dozy. AoT might've finally explained it's mystery box with that the wall was nothing more to keep a certain group of people known as "Eldians" in where they have "titan blood" and it has started century long war with the a group called the "Marlyeans". Attack on Titan in many ways suffers from the same problem that the 00s Battlestar Galactica reboot did in that when the mystery boxes are explained, it becomes less interesting and more confusing. Both pretty much start off with "humanity - good" and "opposing force - bad" turns into, "good guys were actually connected the opposing force the whole time". 

Some parts of this season is interesting on paper, the idea of the protagonist you've been following the whole time, Eren Jaeger turning heel. Armin and Mikasa needing to come with the terms with the fact that the guy they depended on isn't there for them anymore, so everything season 1 seemingly copped out on is now being full embraced here. There is also a fascinating retcon that could've retroactively made Mikasa Ackerman an interesting character, where it was Ackerman blood was the reason why she was such a guard dog towards Eren and the latter actually hated the former the whole time. With that last one especially, it felt like final season was going to head somewhere but punches were pulled but in a different way. 

The biggest problem this season has is that there is almost no one of geniune virtue that is worth supporting and the characters we are supposed to root for have barely any geniune agency or worthwhile solutions plans of their own. 

Two of the characters in the final season who have the power to change the world Eren and Zeke Jaeger are both genocidal nilhilists. The former pretty much wants to use the Rumbling to kill as many Maryleans as can and the latter wants Eldians to slowly die by taking away their ability to reproduce. 

Both are esstentially people that are impossible to root for in any way since both of their endgames involve commiting genocide. The series than switches main character chair to Armin and Mikasa and their whole group and once Eren activates the Rumbling the entire season from here on out is just fighting Eren's cult terrorist group the "Jeagerists" and catching up to Eren. The plot moves at a snail's pace and Armin has no interesting alternative to stop this century's long war despite the story establishing that Armin is smarter than Eren.

As a result, it's hard to get invested in anything that goes on in the final season then the series establishes that Eren had the ability for titan blood to be completely eradicated without killing Eldians and it comes too out of left field for me to care and comes off as a last minute attempt to make Eren seem heroic despite all the horrible things he did. 

Mikasa was the one give the final blow on Eren but at the end, she ultimately has stockholm syndrome to a dead guy and isn't conflicted or tries to grow past the guy who's final words he said face to face was "I always hated you". The subplot regarding her duty to her clan never once even gets mentined. It felt like by that point it just pulled the biggest punch.

Speaking of the ending, I know it's often derided but what I dislike about is that it pulled an original Final Fantasy 7 where it turns out humanity at the end is pretty much wiped out making Eren's entire struggle to get rid of titan blood entirely pointless since mankind would wipe each other out anyway regardless of that said blood. 

At this point, how do I not know Hajime Isyama isn't going to do what Square Enix did with FF7 and retcon the ending to AoT for a quick buck by making endless prequels, spinoffs or alternate realties? Akria Toriyama sort of did the samething by making constant prequels before the timeskip epilogue of Dragon Ball. That's what I truly dislike the most about the ending. 

Overall, this review has been pretty lengthy, and Attack on Titan is a series I can basically say I liked the middle portion of more than anything. It is fascinating how an anime I used to be so apathetic towards was a show I got to the end of at all. Would I consider it great? No but it is interesting how I managed to ultimately invest this much time to a show I initially disliked 11 years ago. I am open for this happening again but at the same time, I doubt it. 

Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered Review

Shadows of the Damned was a game I played a few years ago and I do recall enjoying it, one thing that always haunted me regarding my original playthrough was that I had a really bad PS3 disc that prevented me from getting furthur into the later parts of the game so I ended up having to procure another copy just to beat the game since there was no digital PS3 store version. If you want any geniune downsides to physical media, it's most certainly that. This remaster has come along and while it has some weird glitches here and there, the addition of gyro aiming on PS5 as well as being a more accessible version of the game makes this remaster a no brainer when playing SotD again or for the first time.

I will mention that I suffered two weird bugs regarding the game, one wasn't game breaking and the other made me reload my last save, so the lack of a checkpoint restart option from the pause menu did annoy me this time around. Also, while the gyro aiming mostly works fine, there are moments where it starts randomly spazzing out and acts unresponsive.

Anyways on to the game itself, before and at the time of release, the game was using big industry names like Shinji Mikami, Suda 51 and Akria Yamaoka as major selling points.

The game's story and writing does have Suda 51's trademark bizarre weirdness to it and the game's story itself is basically an excuse plot like many game stories. It's "fine" and the over the top voice acting did carry me through much of the story. Fleming was a pretty dull villain since he shows up at the start and end of the game and never does much to get in Garcia and by extension the player's way. The journey of slowing making through the underworld is pretty decently executed especially with the world select screen remiscent of 2D platformers.

Akria Yamaoka's music however is pretty disappointing stuff. Early tracks aren't too bad and has his trademark ambient sounds but the game itself hardly has any background music and if there was, there wasn't anything that stood out or got me into the rhythm and stood out from the gunfire and exploding body parts. This could be said with the Silent Hill games since many tracks played during cutscenes but SotD doesn't have much memorable music. The songs with Mary Elizebeth McGlynn is fares better but there is only two the whole game, they do fit the mood when they start playing especially towards the end.

Shinji's Mikami's influence does feel the most noticeable. SotD is basically Resident Evil 4(2005). Garcia aims his gun like Leon does and the combat feels very RE4 inspired where enemies have different damage reactions depending on where you hit them. You get a run button and you can quick turn. The last one is pretty much useless.

However, SotD has some major differences. Garcia can move while shooting, has a dodge roll, there is a dedicated melee attack button, he can attack downed enemies, and can also perform a counter attack on an enemy when attacked from behind(making the aforemention quick turning useless).

Combat is also way more satisfying and stimulating than RE4 is with demons exploding when blown up with a shotgun, headshots popping out way more and limbs just bursting apart at the seem when shot at.

There also isn't moment to moment combat either, you have to find different keys to open certain doors and having to contend with a dark world that drains Garcia's health when in it with only strawberries to recharge his resistance. You need to light shot goat heads to turn off some of these.

To the game's credit when combined, there is usually something new to break up moment to moment shooting, there are parts where you need certain keys to open certain doors, go to the dark world to turn off shoot red switches, light shot certain doors, get chased and will need to contend with enemies while doing all this. There is also weak point targeting with some enemies.

The problem is that SotD at times can take this a little too far. The stuff that involves the moment to moment shooting is fun and exhilirating but the 2D shoot em up sections and that "Big Boner" section I just wished were cut out of the game entirely since they don't add much. Big Boner was a huge difficulty spike too.

Biggest issue with the game and that RE4 avoids is the healing items and upgrades. You can carry 3 types of healing items small, medium, and large but you can carry as many as you want and gems are plentiful so it's easy to stockpile thus making dying on normal difficulty something you have to try hard to do. You also get invinciblity frames while healing. You can put all your upgrade points into health making it even harder to die.

To counteract this, bosses have lots of HP and they aren't hard because they are geniunely challenging, it's because they have so much HP and take forever to die especially the final boss. It's hard for the player to die, but they will take lots of bullets before going down.

Another big problem is that the game never tells you have a shotgun and to top it all off, it isn't even hitscan like most if not all video game shotguns, this is fine when dealing with weaker enemies but when during during harder foes especially with weak points and it's the only weapon you have, it can be a massive pain to use since the projectile takes a while to land and trying to quickly hit an enemy weakspot and have the hit register feels like a game of luck due how the randomized registering hits with it is. 

It's also never told you have the grenade launcher attachment for the shotgun and you aren't forced to use until the 5th chapter, I'm willing to bet many looked up a walkthrough during that grenade launcher puzzle in Act 5-1. 

Overall, good game but there are big issues and I'm willing to forgive them since the game is a lot of fun when it comes to most of the moment to moment gameplay. 

Ninja Five-O Review

I always heard this title was a weird "hidden gem" of sorts, I just never thought it would even get a modern re release but low and behold, it happened. The game is enjoyable but I doubt I would be able to beat it without rewind and save states. It has that old school charm of having nothing more than an excuse plot to justify the player going on his killing sprees and rescusing hostages.

Best way of describing the game that it's 2D Ninja Gaiden meets Bionic Commando with elements of boomer shooter keycard hunts. You have sword swipes and air attacks plus magic with a grapple hook that can attach itself on to mostly if not every service where you can swing off of and moment to moment level progression is gated by rescuing hostages and getting color coded key to open certain colored doors. All of this is pretty enjoyable and I would play this on easy to avoid using save states and rewind but not all the levels are unlocked on easy. 

As a result, save states and rewind carried me through much of Ninja 5 O since a lot of the game pretty much encourages you to memorize every enemy placement and trap and demands you to never get hit once. Enemies can kill you in 3-4 hits and not only that but if you get power ups to level up your magic attacks and get hit, the level below is much weaker. Enemies take much longer to die using weaker level magic attacks. When enemy ninjas attack you, it almost feels like you need to know exactly where they spawn because while they die in one sword strike, they can do a lot of damage to your health bar. 

The swing phsyics is also quite awkward since it feels like the momentum from swinging either feels like I'm not gaining enough height or I am overshooting it. The lack of a double jump can also make relying on the swing physics even more of an annoyance. 

Bosses are somewhat easier than the levels and moment to moment enemies but I was still doubt I would get anywhere without rewind since well getting hit once lowers your magic level collected through power ups and weaker magic does much less damage. 

The final timed section to cap off the base stage would borderline feel impossible to do on base hardware since it requires you to be super precise, move super fast and never get hit maybe once but not more than that. 

Overall, I might've complained a lot but I did have some fun with Ninja 5 O but I can't deny that if I tried to play it without save states and especially rewind, me getting to the end would be impossible. I would get much more angry with it. It's a short game and it adopts that NES and arcade philosophy of, "it's short so let's make the game really hard". I'm not a fan of it but at the same time with the ability to rewind in the recent re release, it bypasses much of the potential frustration.

MediEvil 2 Review

I wasn't expecting this game to come to the PS Premium Classics as soon as it did but it has come now. Medievil 2 doesn't seem to have as many re releases and different versions by comparison to the first game. I wasn't expecting much out of Medievil 2 but I got some enjoyment out of it. However apart of me has got to wonder if it's design problems I found more tolerable due to save states and rewind on the PS5 version more so than the game itself being consistently well designed. That and towards the end of the game, the difficulty started to ramp up so much that I eventually resorted to cheating, this seems to be a reoccuring theme with Medievil games for me.

First all I'll describe the story and it's...weird. Fortesque is now in London England, he has a girlfriend, there is a doctor and there is an evil crime boss who actively gets in his way. The best way of describing it is that it feels like everything is underdeveloped from the girlfriend to the doctor to the crime boss. All of the relationships feel half baked and undercooked and it's hard to get any attachment towards anyone. One story beat requires you to help a bunch of sewer dwellers just for you to betray them a few levels later with no build up or any sense of emotion for Dan. You fight vampires, you are fighting Jack the Ripper and it feels like the game just want an excuse to shove in as many cool things as it can. The story isn't super intrusive but when it pops up, I just feel a sigh of indifference towards it.

The gameplay at least from a mechanics standpoint is the same as the first game much like many direct PS1 sequels except there are three major differences is that there is a quick select for weapons, Dan can now climb certain areas and his head can detach on to hands and open up new parts of the level.

Due to all this, the moment to moment combat still isn't very good, it mainly consists dashing and running around since there is no evade or lock on during melee combat and holding the square button and hitting them with a charge attack. Occasionally you will have to switch to a ranged weapon to kill a smaller or far away enemy. As a whole combat is generally the same with not many big improvements.

Camera and movement is also just as much as the same. You have very limited control with the right stick and much of the camera tries to frame the action as you are moving around. During moment to moment running, this is fine but when during tight spaces, narrow walkways or crammed areas it's hard to tell have a good view on where you are moving. There is platforming is back is also just as awkward as ever with the timing of Fortesque's movements and his jump arc being high enough to reach a platform being a game of luck especially when combined with the camera.

Thing is, these were all issues with the first game. Medievil 2 does retain all of the good aspects too like the level design which does a fascinating job at combining boomer shooter keycard hunts with inventory puzzles of survival horror games. There isn't many games that has this style of level design and I enjoy the game for it. I might prefer the level design more here since the pointless overworld is gone and it's simpily just a level select now. Making things more straightforward, just finish one level and move on to the next one, just the way I like it.

I do like the quick select since it means less going around and fiddling in menus. The climbable walls does give the level more verticality and removing Dan's head and putting it on a head to solve puzzles and unlock more parts of a level is a nice way to more variety to level exploration since now there is more than just keys and inventory puzzles.

However one major thing that prevents Medievil 2 from at least being mildly better than the first game is the lack of health refills inbetween levels and the chalices depending on the player not giving them the ideal rewards for later parts of the game.

These issues sound trival for most of the game, but the Jack the Ripper fight onwards requires the player to have the Blue Magic Sword in order to deal decent damage to him before Dan's girlfriend's health also depletes or else you will need to use lightning to recover her health and this will do take away lots of health and since there are no health refills inbetween levels and healing areas are few means you have to avoid or tank hits for a good while.

The chalice rewards also seem randomized too, I got the Blunderbuss for the penultimate level and that thing was such an underpowered pea shooter than I eventually cheated and got the Chaingun instead, why this weapons I didn't get instead is beyond me. Enemies also become insanely spongey here which makes the lack of health refills and powerful weapons late game stand out that much more.

Overall, Medievil 2 like many direct sequels on PS1 is generally just more of the same but there are things that prevent me from saying it's mildly better than it's predecessor.

Ion Fury: Aftershock Review

I was pretty much expecting this to be more Ion Fury and I got just that there are some annoying things about it here and there but as a whole it's the same enjoyable gameplay. Playing this really does amaze me that the Build Engine can still be pushed this far.

If you played the base game, you know what to expect. Lots of guns, keycard hunts with mazelike levels, fast movement and lots of enemies. Considering this is following expansion logic from yester year, the game will expect you to play the base game so it expects the player to know how the weapons work and throws in multiple high level enemies at the player pretty much the moment you start up the game. It also introduces new enemies not in the base game either. There also are some new vehicle sections introduced in Aftershock.

You pretty much know the DLC ain't kidding around when it spawns in a Skinjob, as soon as you get decently into the first level but unlike a lot of the expansions of yester year, Shelly is given lots of ammo and good amount of new weapons to deal with the increased enemy waves like Disperser getting Cluster and Gas Bombs as well the Homewrecker which is Ion Fury's equivilant to the BFG. You get a good amount of ammo for those as well as other guns so it never feels like you are underpowered while playing.

There are some annoying quirks with this like for example when running around in a level and a Wendigo, Deacon or a Skinjob just pops up in your line of sight and since your health when getting hit by them when at 100 health and 200 armour will go down to 20 in a couple of hits just makes it seems like the devs just want you to abuse that quick save button.

The new enemies are mostly just reskins and different weapon variants of already existing enemies but the GDF troopers are new even if they can be beaten with the Penetrator.

The biggest new addition is the vehicle sections and I'm mixed on these that racing section was awful and felt out of place in a game like this since some of the turns feel too tight to consistently pull off and the jump physics feel too unreliable to consistently make the gaps without falling to my death.

The following vehicle section after is a fascinating thought experiment of, "what if Half Life 2 was done on the Build Engine?" It doesn't have the Gravity Gun, at the same time, it has a similar section very reimiscent of Highway 17, where the player drives across really long and expansive roads, makes pit stops to activate a part of the level to continue onwards except there is now keycard hunts. It is amazing that the Build Engine is capable of this even if this part of Ion Fury didn't have nearly as much as the narrative foreshadowing and the sense of adventure Highway 17 did. Still, I commend the devs for pulling this off.

Afterwards, the game also takes another cue from HL2 with how you see Nova Prospect or in Ion Fury's case a massive Valcano and you will eventual fight Heskel there and everything from that vantage point of seeing the valcano onwards is slowly making your way there. It's great stuff since I have a soft spot for stuff like this.

The only major negative is that the final boss while not as insufferably designed as the base game still suffers from that 90s boomer shooter boss fight problem of you just circle strafing with your strongest weapon and then he dies, you might accidentally fall into a hole with lava but after a few minutes, he should be beaten unless you are playing on higher difficulties.

Overall, Aftershock is probably if not the greatest boomer shooter expansion I have played, it does a good job at adding in new ideas and it's not difficult for the sake of difficult like many of these expansions tend to be.

Silent Hill 2: Born From a Wish Review

Considering I didn't really care for the base game, I'm surprised I liked this sub scenario as much as I did. This is mainly because I found the subject matter more interesting. The themes it deals with like slowly going insane, resigning to your fate and the idea of taking your own life but at the same time you consider your life precious enough that killing yourself is too painful to do. I found these concepts fascinating and the fact that this sub scenario made me reflect on all this much and it's only 30 minutes to finish is a testament to how less is more and how what you do with the time you are given can really elevate a piece of media.

Ernest Baldwin is also one of the most interesting characters in the series and is one of SH2's more interesting characters. Where the ambiguity in the base SH2 game I found annoying, the ambiguity here I found more intriguing since the subject matter resonates with me more. Does Ernest represent what little sanity Maria has left? Is learning that Baldwin wasn't really there basically just Maria slowly going insane and accepting her fate? Was doing his requests esstentially showing that Maria never had any control over her fate to begin with? The fact that I'm thinking about all this in a sub scenario that lasts 30 minutes is a rather impressive feat.

There is some nice songs here that wasn't in the base game like Terror in the Depths of the Fog and Morning Calm. I liked that Love Psalm played in the end credits.

As for the gameplay, it's basically SH2, monsters on normal difficulty die in 2 or 3 pistol bullets tops and you are showered with healing items and ammo, there is hardly any puzzles either. It kind of feels like an experimental indie game with just random sections of "shoot some monsters". There is no final boss either kind of furthur cementing this point. I did like that you got to visit a mansion a la Resident Evil even if it is much much smaller by comparison.

Apart of me wants to see if this gets the Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways(2023) treatment and there is full on adaptation expansion going on with this being a DLC expansion to the SH2 remake but only time will tell.

Overall, if you can find a way to play this, it's an interesting 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay you can find and something I can point to as a good example of "less is more".

Tenchu: Fatal Shadows Review

The Tenchu game that is pretty much forgotten about, I did buy it at a Flea Market on PS2 back in 2012 but I never got far in it. I only bought because it was a Tenchu game and I was interested in the series but I didn't know how emulation worked so this was the Tenchu game I actually could play. I didn't get very far in it but after playing through the PS1 Tenchus and Wrath of Heaven again a few years ago through emulation and me wanting to play random games in a game series I enjoyed, I decided to play Tenchu Fatal Shadows from start to end.

The best way of describing it is that Fatal Shadows is pretty much just a very iterative sequel to Wrath of Heaven, it's about as much of one as you can get. It almost feels like a Wrath of Heaven DLC than a sequel that improves upon it. The fact that Fatal Shadows in North America released one month before Splinter Cell Chaos Theory also didn't do the game any favors either, it just highlights how dated and awkward Fatal Shadows played even for it's time.

Before I describe the gameplay, I might as well just mention the story, it is supposed to be a prequel to Wrath of Heaven but outside of Tesshu popping up, it might as well just be shonen anime filler arc because nothing of geniune value even happens, nothing that gets brought up in Fatal Shadows adds any furthur context to what happens to Wrath of Heaven which is the bare minimum a prequel should do. The anime fan in me did find the mission/episode previews that plays at the end of a level to be pretty amusing but the production value is lower than WoH since many the cutscenes before a mission starts has these weird slideshow like cutscenes and then transitions to more traditional cutscenes.

To put it simpily, WoH didn't have a good story but that felt like a shonen anime with a poorly written canon arc where Fatal Shadows feels like a dull filler arc that was made because the anime had to keep up with the manga.

Gameplay of Fatal Shadows can at times provide the fun that Wrath of Heaven and by extension the Tenchu series brings but it is marred by issues that while there in WoH, the devs did not do nearly enough to fix upon that game.

The stealth kills still look awesome and even to this day, Tenchu's stealth kills is some of the best gaming industry has to offer and Fatal Shadows delivers. The stylishly over the top ways enemies are killed and the detail each kill animations is something that gives me a "hell yeah I did that" when successful taking out an enemy from behind, from the side, the air and occasionally from the front. The parts where it takes place small cities is still as fun to do since using the grapple hook or double jump to reach higher ground and stalking enemies from above is still provides the feel of being ninja predator. Thing is, WoH already gave a version of this fantasy with the double jump, air kills, and bigger draw distance.

However with all this said, there now comes plenty of problems that while WoH had are excerbated in the this game and introduces new issues not present in the former.

I'll describe the latter first, WoH had plenty of long corridor stretches where enemies would patrol in a straight line and the player often had to use cover to avoid their line of sight, the thing in WoH is that the enemies would never walk past the wall the player was hiding behind but in Fatal Shadows, they now do so there will be plenty of moments where you think a guard will eventually turn around but they are going to walk past the player and get detected. The lack of corner takedowns of any kind makes the lack of any changes to WoH's mechanics all the more obvious. The lack of ledge takedowns and being unable to hide behind waist high walls when crouched being two other big examples. This just makes Splinter Chaos Theory look that much better since you can do both in that game.

Another big issue with Fatal Shadows are the guard placements and if you are playing the game for the first time and you want to play the game to see cool looking stealth kills, the game will often chastise you in doing so becuase 9 times out of 10, there is a guard above, around or next to the guard you are trying to kill often leading to detections that felt like you couldn't have anticipated. The camera still doesn't let you turn the camera around your character and the look button doesn't give you enough of a bigger to view to locate nearby enemies, so it becomes the usual Tenchu game of running away when detected and then the guard loses interest in you when running away long enough.

The combat still isn't good which is fine but the bosses are too challenging for the game being based around stealth. Bosses block your attacks too much and they even have unbreakable scripted grab moves straight out a Team Ninja game. The Black Box Assassinations from Assassin's Creed Unity is far more fitting for Tenchu than the awkward 3D beat em up boss fights.

Overall, I can see why FS is such a forgettable game.