Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars Review(Playstation 3)

I played most of the Lego Star Wars games, but this one always managed to slip past me so I decide to try it out since I've played every major Star Wars game so I might as well have a fresh experience with a Lego SW game I never played before. As a whole, the game is decent but the major problem is that at it's best, it's the same fun and enjoyable lego game that you come to expect. At it's worst, all of the game's major innovations barely add anything worthwhile and detracts from the adventure. I'm questioning this game's existence. It doesn't adapt the entire CGI Clone Wars show only the first two seasons and there is no seasons 3-5 content. On top of all this since it's adapting a show that not everyone has seen and adapts the much derided first two seasons so the plot is harder follow compared to the lego games based on the SW movies. I'm really not sure if watching 2 whole seasons of Clone Wars really adds a whole lot to the enjoyment of this game.

The basic run of the mil lego levels are still exercise of smashing everything in sight to build new pieces with some light platforming and physics puzzles.

One major improvement in Clone Wars is that lightsaber combat is much better now with the more continuous swing animations and especially the ability to deflect blaster fire. That's about the only major improvement.

The biggest additions are the RTS like wide open battlefield missions, open spaceship gameplay and the split screen with 2 lego characters on separate screens. Neither of these aspects add much to the game, at best they are tolerable and at worst they just bog the pace down.

RTS levels being the worst of the bunch since much of everything in these levels are poorly explained, at first, you'd be mistakened for doing these levels by mashing the attack button untill all the enemies and the red lego health bars on the enemy structures are depleted to take over the command posts. That's not really true eventually you have to gather enough studs to put up enough cannons to have on more units like troopers and vehicles. All you really need are troops and vehicles. Walkers to destroy silver structures, RX-2000 to destroy gold structures, rocket clones for the former and blaster clones for the latter, but the thing is, the game won't do a very good job at explaining any of this to you.

This was doubly so for the weapons factory level which is the longest mission in the game and a big difficulty spike since you won't be able to summon powerful units right away making it even longer. I'm not a fan of real time strategy games so at it's most tolerable, I was just mindlessly mashing the lightsaber attack button and then getting units to destroy silver and gold structures.

The open spaceship gameplay doesn't add much since all you do is follow blue arrows to do specific objectives to eventually have the ability for your ship to carry proton tropedos to destory enemy cruisers with.

Split screen gameplay is just traditional lego levels except you just need to solve puzzles with one character then prompted to switch and you are better off doing it when prompted since I had a game breaking bug where during the final Grievous level I had Anakin on the ship while Obi Wan was on the ground, I solved puzzles as Obi Wan but Anakin kept dying over and over and wasn't instead his fighter.

Final issue is that some of the game design can be really obtuse for it's own and show the limitations of the game design. For example, one level require me to destroy a wall to progress I had a rocket launcher clone, clones to radio in for demoliations or use the force but instead the game required me to build a turret to destroy a wall. Another example is how I could've used a turret to destroy apart of a level to progress but since the turret couldn't aim up I couldn't shoot it, but instead I had to destroy the turret and build it into a switch.

Then there was other weird level design like needing a droid mask to ride an LAAT gunship.

Overall, I wouldn't call this game terrible by any means but everything about it just feels like the devs were pressure to get a tie in CGI Clone Wars Lego game out then because it seemed like a game they geniunely wanted to make. I'd say Lego Star Wars Complete Saga, Skywalker Saga and even Lego Star Wars TFA are better than Clone Wars. When Clone Wars is good, it's just feels like I've played this already when it's doing something new it doesn't add much to the game and were better off not being there at all. It just feels confused.

Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury Thoughts and Rant

I always heard that Buu's Fury was underrated and one of the best Dragon Ball games but upon me playing it for the first time, I'm just wondering where that notion came from. Like Legacy of Goku 2, I went in expecting it to be a solid if nothing amazing game but what I was shocked by was how much worse it was.

When you start up the game, all seems fine it's basically the same as LoG2 but with a block button and a gear system. The former I welcome, the latter I don't. I was happy that defensive options was finally introduced but the more I played Buu's Fury is just how many changes to the gameplay didn't need changing or how things that were in LoG2 was not present in Buu's Fury.

I'll start with the combat, LoG2's combat was nothing too amazing but it was decently made for what it was. You fought enemies with fists up close when high on health and used ki blasts from a distance when some health was lost, it was simple but fine system since enemies always dropped health and energy upon death keeping fights fair and making the player feel good when barely getting out a fight with low health.

In Buu's Fury, this was all changed for the worst. When enemies drop health, instead of walking up to it and it heals you, now it's an item used in the pause menu. However what really ruins the combat is that the only way to reliably get health back is through level ups since gaining levels is very easy in Buu's Fury so now you don't even need to use energy attacks anymore since now, everything can be solved by just punching enemies since you know after fighting 5-6 enemies, you will level and get a health refill. You don't even need to use the healing items dropped by enemies since gaining levels refill all health and you will be frequenting the pause menu less if you do. It also becomes ambigious when is a good time to heal using heal items since there are times you know when a level up is coming but are low on health and get a refill after gaining xp or if you should waste one when a full healing is coming up.

Due to all of this combat went from being a simple but enjoyable time to being either easy 95% of the time and then randomly dying because you thought you could tank a few more hits on critical health before a level up.

There's other issues, LoG2's take on transformations was a faithful to the series, where Buu's Fury transformation are now on a seperate meter and doesn't drain key anymore making them easy to abuse.

On top of all this, Buu's Fury has a very nasty habbit of making the player do forced level grinding to progress, that I don't mind, but the problem is, the game will never have side paths on the left or right of a zone where the gate is so you can beat up weaker enemies to help you gain levels.

What adds furthur insult to injury is that previously visited locations are never marked on the world map, this was something LoG2 avoided since areas were marked in that game. As a result, even trying to find places to grind and open those level gated doors becomes a guessing game.

It gets worse from there and this is what made me drop in the game is that there is a dragon ball hunt after Vegeta scarifices himself which is something that never happened in the show but what is worse that the dragon balls aren't even marked on the world map like LoG2 to get it done faster you now have to follow arrows on the world map to get them making the process more tedious.

Then there is just pointless additions like needing to descend to enter an area, what does this even add? I can just press A on a part of the overworld to enter and it would accomplish the same thing.

Soundtrack also isn't as good as LoG2, there are some good remixes of Gohan Angers and Gohan Fights Frieza, the rest of the OST is pretty forgettable.

Overall, I wanted to like Buu's Fury, but instead all it really did was make me wish someone would mod in LoG2 with a block button and it would be a million times more enjoyable than this game. I was critical on Dragon Ball Kakarot but it's a masterpiece when compared to this.

Convergence: A League of Legends Story Review

This game was a welcome surprise, all my knowledge of League of Legends comes from that Arcane Netflix series and I didn't particularly care for that. However this was a pretty solid and an enjoyable casual metroidvania game.

Best way of describing Convergence a LoL story is that what if the Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy combined itself with a game like Guacamelee with some RPG elements here and there.

You can rewind time in the game by using pickups for the timewinder and it can be used in combat like PoP Sands Trilogy. You also have forced enemy encounters, platforming challenges and metroidvania moves that can help you out in combat like Guacamelee.

As a whole, if you are new to the metroidvania genre, this is about as a solid as a pick as it gets. The map screen tells you where your objectives are, you have no set save points to save your porgress, it autosaves frequently, bosses aren't the most challenging since there are health and timewinder pickups during fights, the main story isn't that long on top of that there is customizable difficulty that lets you tune enemy aggression and how many pickups you are allowed to carry.

Combat and platforming is pretty well done. You have a projectile disc to throw that you can reach flying enemies with, a dodge roll when timed right can be turned into a parry with a generally forgiving timing window, a dodge roll, a teleport, a circle that slows down enemies, an area of effect push ability and a dash late game.

All of this can be used organically during platforming like in Guacamelee and while the platforming never gets as challenging as something like Prince of Persia Lost Crown, it is very involving, like chaning together jumps(later double jumps), teleports, slowdown, wall runs, pushes, and later on dashes.

Convergence also does a good job at scratching that metroidvania itch of having levels being hard to traverse without certain upgrades but when you get that upgrade, the level becomes liberating to explore.

Story is also surprisingly decent, while not amazing and does require you to know about LoL lore, there are parts of it that resonated with me like how Ekko tried to convince his parents to see his way with the timewinder but he ultimately realizes they should choose for themselves. Future Ekko also gives me Dark Prince from PoP Two Thrones vibes in that he's more pragmatic in getting his goals done but younger Ekko and by extension regular Prince are more heroic and aren't willing to do morally questionable acts to get what they want.

The story is decent for this kind of game and especially since I said before, I'm not a big Arkane fan. However, the bosses of the game do seem to require you to know about LoL lore to understand their motivations, goals and personalities better which is a shame.

Overall, I had a solid time with the game, I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I was going to and it's up there with one of the best video game franchise spinoff games.

Silent Hill 2(2024) Review

I'm going to put this out by saying that I'm not a fan of the original game, I don't think it's very good and it's my least favorite game in the original "trilogy" of Silent Hill games, I did replay the 2001 game a few months ago and it was after this remake released but if I did play it earlier, I would be skeptical but I would never be as apathetic towards Bloober Team remaking it as much as many others did before the positive previews by game journalists started to surface.

With that out of the way, I wasn't apathetic nor overly excited for the SH2 remake but in the end as a whole I'd say it won me over. I wouldn't say the story of the game is the epic masterpiece that many on the internet hype it up and it's primarily because of the gameplay as to why I really enjoy SH2R. I'd consider this to be one of the best game remakes ever made up there with stuff like Dead Space 2023, Resident Evil 2002 and Metroid Zero Mission.

I'll start with the story and like I said before, I don't consider it to be amazing but I do appreciate it more than I did when I played the original. The improved acting, dialogue and voice direction are big reasons as to why. I do like remake James' facial expressions and acting is a massive improvement over the original and all though like in the original game, how James character is in the story is dependant on how he acts in the gameplay particularly towards Maria, I do like he seems to show more emotion and seems more geniunely concerned for the people around him unlike the original where in that version he seemed so impartial towards everything he was around. I didn't mind this in SH1 and 3 but in original SH2, the vague nature of the story just got me that much towards James' indifference towards everything. I also think the additional scenes do a better job at getting me attached to the characters since they now have more screen time to get me more attached to them especially with Maria and Angela since they basically had less than 5 major scenes in the original game.

At the end of the day, the story is still esstentially something where you have to fill in the blanks for the author. For example, what was Angela's family connection to Silent Hill? Is Maria an illusion, a real person or an immortal monster who looks human? Why did Eddie come to the town? Is the town trying to kill James or is it putting him through trials and tribulations to help him overcome Mary? At least with the Cult storyline of the series, things are less ambigous and more concrete by comparison.

However the gameplay is the real star of the show here. All of my major issues regarding the gameplay of the 2001 title gets addressed.

I criticized the original game for the fact that enemies died in 3 bullets, pistol bullet clips are 10, the enemy count is never higher than 3, enemies have a hard time hitting you, the enemy variety is lacking and you are stockpiled with so much ammo when you reach Brokehaven that not even bosses are even a threat.

All of this gets addressed outside of enemy variety. When you pick up pistol bullets, you will never get more than 5 so while enemies died in 3 shots, you will probably stockpile 20-30 pistol bullets as opposed to hundreds. The enemies are far more aggressive, attack you far more often now and will often try rushing you. To counteract this, James now has the ability to dodge enemy attacks.

Bosses are far more creative and less a game of tanking hits and firing your gun, there will be different scripted sequences and attack patterns to avoid to beat them. They aren't challenging but they at least require some effort to beat.

Then there are just improvements that games like SH1 and 3 didn't even have like seemless transitioning between melee and firearms. The ability to quick select weapons and how healing is done in real time.

However the biggest improvement by far is the level design, where most doors and rooms can be opened as opposed to past SH games where probably only 3-4 doors you had the ability to open.

Level design in SH2R is finally up to the standard of an older Resident Evil game. You could argue that key items and story beats needing steps to unlock is "padding" but I argue it makes the individuals levels feel like a large interconnected puzzle much like an RE game where instead of one location it is multiple. The lack of explorable interiors annoyed me about the original SH2 and Bloober Team pretty much fixed it now.

Outside of that, my only big gameplay issue is that the camera in cramped spaces can be a little cumbersome to navigate and getting attacked by Mannequins that climb up walls can be very aggrevating since they can attack you off screen, then disappear when realigning the camera and then attack you off screen again.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with SH2R, it took a game I was always lukewarm on and turned into something that is a well made game. When it came to the gameplay, Bloober addressed most of the issues I had.

Reocurring Themes with Online Fandoms and Spotting Them

This is going to be a weird write up, I might get more personal and even mention some people in real life in some of my examples, but lately this whole year of 2024 has been one big realization for me regarding online fandoms, it's probably been like this since internet communities started. What they ultimately boil down to is that they are basically one big turf war between wannabe profesional wrestlers and religious cultists.  

Before I get to the meat of the blog, what started this slow realization in motion was an Anime North I attended in 2022, I was at a Q&A discussion panel featuring a voice actress named Caitlin Glass and I don't particularly remember the full on question that was asked but part of what was said by a fan was and it was something along the lines of, "how could someone or why would someone prefer the 2003 Full Metal Alchemist over Brotherhood?" I was already very angry before attending the Q&A due to reasons that would bloat this part of the blog, but the way that part of the question was phrased made me very angry and I was going to shout, "don't bring this shit here" but Caitlin did a good job at difusing the situation, better than anyone could've when asked a question like that. 

When I heard that part of the question it made me dislike Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and it's fans even more than I already did, I was convinced everyone who liked media I disliked was wrong and how people can ignore the flaws of that series. I thought those people were crazy and I kept asking myself, "why do people regarding media so beloved never bother to speak out on being lukewarm or disliking it?" I thought they were spineless cowards and wished they didn't try to save face so much. I was absolutely right for liking what I liked and disliking what I disliked. 

Things started to get worse when I watched, "The Batman" on Netflix at home after the Saturday of Fan Expo 2023 and after all the praise I heard about it, I was just wondering, "what was so good about it?" Everyone heavily praised a movie I found to be painfully average. I was heading into an exisitential crisis and wondering was there even a point in critiquing media anymore, I'm just a guy who unapolgetically gets into needless fights online over acclaimed media that I thought were overpraised. 

After my 6 month stint on Reddit and seeing people get needlessly worked up or heavily downvoted my comments for disagreeing with the majority, I slowly came to the realization that internet fandoms is essentially a war between pro wrestlers and religious cultists. 

I'm pretty sure everyone on who uses the internet to write opinions has seen a "write an unpopular opinion regarding media or franchise" countless upon countless of times. I particapted in these more times than I care to count. There's a good deal of "Youtube Critics" who announce unpopular opinions acting like he has something to prove to people because he believes he's right. Here's the thing, when you do stuff like this, it ultimately doesn't contribute to much of anything, it's just you projecting your own vanity but this is where the pro wrestling aspect comes in since really when you write stuff like this, it's nothing more than a heel wrestler and his attempt at angering the crowd. 

The difference is with wrestling is that the performers are paid to do this, it's their job to annoy the crowd since it's part of theatrical and audience partcipation side of what they do. In wrestling, they play characters for the audience to get attached to and the whole point is to prove that they are, "the best". You can basically take Videl's line from Dragon Ball Z where he describes Mr. Satan as, "he's a profesional wrestler and the whole world is his ring" quite literally here. 

When you do similar tactics on the internet, what exactly does getting insulted and arguing with insecure people online truly accomplish? Nothing, squat. You wasted your time better spent on other things including playing potential new favorite shows, movies or games, there's no material gain and all you have done is that you are no better than the cultists that you act like you are superior to.  

This is where the 2nd aspect of my write up comes in the religious turf wars. At the end of the day, "overrated" media are only as such because chances are, you are in an online circle where people are scared of saying their true thoughts on x media. Many people online want to avoid a similar situation to the Family Guy scene of Peter Griffin saying, "I did not care for the Godfather". It's how it is, I've gotten into many online fights whether it'd be Youtube comments, Tweets, Discord, Reddit, and many other places where all it did was make me angry for even participating in them at all. I felt like I wasted my time and needlessly getting myself angry for no real gain to come from it. 

Remember what I mentioned about turf? This is what I mean. Sure, it may seem like everyone on the internet likes a piece of media that you deem sub par at best, but what if I told you there are people with similar feelings as you? The thing is, they need to find a place where they feel okay to deride popular acclaimed media without the fear of getting dogpiled. There's various Reddit threads and Youtube vids with comments where people were agreed with the uploader's opinions. If they are surronded by likeminded people and know things won't turn into a scene when saying certain opinions, then will speak out. 

As petty as being scared to say speak out over opinions regarding media can be, it's how crime bosses and religious cultists silence others who speak out. 

To name an example, Pixel a Day uploaded a video heavily criticizing and deriding the video game Nier Automata, I'm also lukewarm on it and going everywhere online made it seemed like everyone loved the game but go to the comments section of her vid, and there are actually lots of people who are lukewarm if not outright disliking Automata. This is what I mean, people need a safe zone to say their criticisms towards beloved media. 

Hypothetically, if someone made a critique heavily deriding games like Silent Hill 2(2001) and Metal Gear Solid 3, sure there will be those who lash out at the mere idea of critiquing them but there will be also be people who will agree with what the uploader has to say and will finally have a chance to confess their true thoughts. 

This is why words like "overrated" and "underrated" means nothing to me, but that is a different topic altogether. 

At the end of the day, all you can do at this point is just try not to talk you have something to prove, take things way less seriously but try to remain humble when criticizing and praising anything. Also, remember where you are saying certain things online and avoid giving into the temptation of sounding like a pro wrestling heel. It can be very tempting but at the end of the day, time is better off not being wasted on doing something you don't like with your free time. That's the realization I have came to. 

Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

Wolfenstein TNO was a game I played back around in the time of it's release, I heard of it through positive word of mouth even though I wasn't the avid FPS game player at the time like I am now, I dropped after getting about halfway into the game mainly due to how dull I found it. Fast forward 11 years and I've beaten many FPS games since then including Return to Castle Wolfenstein among many others. I also bought the Wolfenstein PS4 physical collection that came with The Old Blood almost a year ago so I decided to revisit TNO, I also am not a big fan of MachineGames' take on the Wolfenstein series with the New Colossus being a game I questioned why I finished at all.

With that out of the way, I do kind of like TNO but that is because I played the game on the 2nd lowest difficulty, anything higher would make the design shortcomings all the more apparent and start to annoy the hell out of me.

I'll start with the story, at best it ranges from tolerable to outright obnoxious. Most of the good things I can say for it is that the cutscenes are generally not very long and it does an okay job for giving a reason why BJ goes from point A to B. However, the game's story I can't say is well written.

You got BJ needing to monologue his inner thoughts almost every few minutes and they just come off as a lousy way of humanizing him since the dialogue barely adds anything of note to the scenes.

This could all be forgiven if the characters were good which they are not, they are either too one note to even care about them or barely have enough screen time or interesting interactions to care. For example, Fergus' survivor's guilt only gets mentioned once and never pops up again. The side characters get fleshed out through levels where all you do are fetch quests and don't add much to the campaign in terms of gameplay.

Deathshead only shows up at the start and end of the game with Fergus or Wyatt being a short boss fight and never has BJ be conflicted on having to face them. Frau Engel only gets to do anything of note at all because control is wrestled away from the player. The rest of the characters are either just there or BJ cares about them through dialogue like Anya especially, one sex sex scene and they are dating.

One big annoyance about the story is how like I mentioned before control is wrestled away from the player to make BJ look weak. In the 2nd prison break level, BJ gets caught not once but TWICE and it was out of the player's control. In the final level, BJ takes out an entire battalion of Nazis, the guy is a one man army but then he gets jumped by Frau's lover in a cutscene. I died a number of times to that preceding fight so to be beaten in a cutscene really got on my nerves. Then the game tries to give Deathshead character by monolouging or wrestling control away for him to do something bad. It rarely ever feels organic.

Gameplay is weird at first, you'd be mistaken for thinking TNO is a CoD campaign with how scripted it is, but luckily the former does get better. Gunplay in TNO is thankfully pretty solid with great weapon sounds and death animations.

TNO's gameplay is at it's most fun, it tends to have weaker enemies and gives me ample time to tank enough hits moving from cover to cover. What TNO essentially is FEAR but without slo mo and the ability to hold all your guns.

Gameplay starts to faulter when the game shoves in tankier and more harder to kill enemies and since the guns are hitscan and enemies start taking more bullets to kill, battles become a quick game of hoping you can make it to the next cover spot in time and finding enough medkits to get your health back. Your health does regen up to certain thresholds but it doesn't mean a lot when the threshold gets lower the more you get shot at.

It also doesn't help that to pickup health and ammo, you need to contantly press the interact button, remember how I said how it turns into a game of hoping you make it from cover to cover? Now, add constantly picking up ammo and health while getting shot at.

Add to this, that you can't hold medkits or how enemies don't drop health upon death and firefights when challenges starts to amp becomes games of luck rather than skill. That's also when you put in that concentrated gunfire from 2-3 foot soldiers can kill you quickly.

It's a shame that TNO has these shortcomings since the arena design does support the idea that the player should actively be on the move where cover shooters just often have you sit in one place and wait for health to regen. Ideally, TNO's combat should be about running, tanking hits, using the lean button to get kills, relocate, pick up some health, then using the shotgun upclose while approaching a group of enemies from behind. It SHOULD make you feel like you are on the move especially with the ways the player can flank but instead the shortcomings just make me feel like I win because I'm lucky.

Overall, okay game but I get why I never really connected with it

Objectivity in Media Critique

If you've been discussing media on the internet for many years or a over a decade like I have chances are that the idea of "being objective" or "objectivity" tends to come up a lot when it comes to critiquing, discussing or debating media on whether or not if they are "good" or "bad". 

To define "objectivity" when it comes to the concept of media discussion, it is basically the kind found in journalism where you show no favoritism or signs of bias when writing an article on a subject or topic of any kind. You were completely imparital. 

Here is the thing: everyone is always going to be biased when it comes to media they like or dislike especially on whether or not if the person grew up with certain media, if it consumed during the perfect time in their live, or if they found something they never thought would resonate with them as much as they did. 

There is some truth to the concept of "objectivity" when it comes to critiquing fiction, but that's the thing, it's a half truth and when it comes down to it, people who value in the concept of being "objective" in the media critique sense tends to value the craftsmanship more than anything. 

For the most part, there are two kinds of people who consume fiction, if they choose to get into passionate discussions regarding it and not just view it as a primary means to escape their life for a few hours when they aren't at work, school or anything that doesn't involve their downtime, it's craftsmanship vs memorablity. The former are those who care about how fiction is constructed and formed and look for all kinds of different ways in how well made a piece of media in question is whether if if twists and plot points are foreshadowed well, if characters are well written, and if the themes of a story is poignant and well explored among many, many, many other things. Where as memorablity people care more for if the media in question is something if they will of course remember after experiencing it, and they don't care as much if the fiction in question has questionable design decisions in how it was crafted, they care more about how for the say "entertainment" value more than anything. 

If you want an example, there are two kinds of pro wrestling fans, those who care about the wrestling(the cherographed fights and stunts) and those who care about the entertainment side(promos, skits and sketches). Craftsman people are the former while memorablity is the latter.

For me, I'm for the most part on the craftsman side of entertainment since I experienced so much media over the years but there will be exceptions later in the write up. I will also bring the idea of "objectively bad" here and there. 

I'm going to be separating this blog into 3 categories since I actively consume all 3 entertainment mediums at a pretty active rate: Movies, anime and video games. 

1. Objectivity in Film 

When it comes to movies, believe it or not, I'm in many ways on the memorablity side of things since with movies, they require me to sit down for an hour and a half to 3 hours and beyond and since I have a hard time sitting in one place for too long especially when I have to stand still and not use my hands, the movie in question better be the most memorable hour and a half to 3 hours of my life. 

I'm going to compare two movies from the same franchise and while I consider both to be terrible, they both pretty much illustrates what I'm talking about: Mortal Kombat 2021 vs. Mortal Kombat Annhilation. 

From a craftsman's standpoint MK 2021 is "objectively" the better movie than MK Annhilation, the former has far better special effects, far more believable fight cherography, better acting and has a far more coherent plot at least by comparison. However the thing is, MK 2021 is generally a dull and forgettable film while MK Annhilation is hilariously terrible on so many levels that I'm going to remember it far more later down the line. Sure, MK 2021 from a craftsman's perspective is "better" but outside of the various scenes with Kano, I will not be looking back on the movie fondly since I argue it being the better made movie in terms of the craft just makes me wish the writing was better where with MK Annhilation, watching one clip from the movie is enough to burst me into laughter and have so much fun with it. 

Once again, if you prefer how competently made a movie is, MK 2021 is going to be a far superior experience to Annhilation but if you care about memorablity, you are going to prefer the latter. It esstentially comes down to personal preference. This is kind of what I mean by "objectively bad" not really being a thing since even stories that are bad from a craftsmanship standpoint might have so redeeming qualities and so bad, it's good you can just have a good laugh at. 

2. Objectivity in Anime

I consider myself a craftsman side when it comes to anime since the shows do require a time sync, and unlike movies something that is hilariously bad in a run time of an hour and a half to two hours can feel like diminishing returns if stretched out. I could put live action shows in here too but there isn't any overly mainstream examples that I know of for live action shows that are "so bad, it's good" or live shows with a following of any kind that was bad at the very start and continues to remain bad throughout it's entire run especially from a "craftsman" standpoint. 

This is where things get weird because anime has so many different lengths when it comes to various stories. It can range from OVAs around 4-5 or even less episodes to over 100 or even a over 1000 episodes in length. For the sake of keeping things simple I'm going to compare two series I don't consider myself a fan of and that is Genocyber and Elfen Lied. 

Genocyber is 5 episodes where Elfen Lied is 13 episodes. The former from a craftsman and "objectivity" standpoint is worse than the latter, episodes are very incoherent, the characters are poorly written and some episodes end without even a geniune proper resolution but at the same time, one could prefer Genocyber since it's shorter and is over way faster compared to Elfen Lied's 13 episodes. However, this is where someone could prefer Elfen Lied because from an emotional standpoint, there is more going on that than there is in Genocyber, the former has a "memorable" opening and the story and characters are far easier to follow than that of the latter. 

This once again, goes back to what I'm saying is what do you prefer, craftsmanship or memorablity? I actually finished Genocyber but Elfen Lied I never got to the end of so in a sense, when it comes to anime if it's not very well made, I prefer shorter the better. 

3. Objectivity in Video Games

This is obvious while also weird one but I'm a craftsman guy when it comes to games. If the game has geniunely bad gameplay like the kind of bad gameplay found in Superman 64 or Bubsey 3D, no one is going to call it good, maybe in a so bad it's good kind of way but not geniunely good. 

Video games however is the strangest one to talk about in terms of "objectivity" since there are many games that might be considered "bad" but play well decently enough but are more so considered that because they didn't live up to the player base's expectations. They might be moderately if not greatly enjoyed by game critics and if they enjoy those games, then chances are the game is probably not that bad if even great. Games require not only a time sync but also particpation from the audience so, if a game is geniunely "bad", it might get considered as such from people who play games for memorablity than craftsmanship. It's why games also get criticized for being "repetitive" or "generic" since those people might care for games being something they will not recall rather than if it's at least suffientently put together. Games could be considered "bad" if the story isn't to a person's liking which is another aspect memorablity people tend to value. 

That's the thing, games when it comes to craftsmanship and memorablity is where things get blurred. I don't think there are going to be many who say, "The Bouncer has better gameplay than DmC Devil May Cry". 

What is often considered "bad" in gaming is often disappointing than geniunely bad games. Games like Rogue Warrior, Aliens Colonial Marines, Knights Contract, Big Rigs and the before mentioned Superman 64 and Bubsey 3D are pretty much terrible games that no one geniunely likes. 

I'm rambling here but I see the term of "objectively bad" get thrown when it comes to games from time to time. Can a game be "objectively bad" and this is where once again, I say, "no". All though people playing games for how bad they are aren't as common as they are for movies, some people like enjoy breaking and mocking games for their short comings like Superman 64. Games like Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment has a cult following in competitive fighting game circles for how terribly unbalanced it is. Some people just love to laugh at Rogue Warrior, myself included for the one liners, curse words, terrible AI and Mickey Rourke's super earnest line delieveries. Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 is pretty much one big laughingstock for how bad it is. 

Gaming is where it can get very muddled but I argue the craftsman side to games is important, just that some will admit it more than others. 

Overall, this is pretty much where the write up concludes, at the end of the day, objectivity in media discussion while not the be all, end all isn't really that as complicated and enforced of a standard as many on the internet makes it out to be. Just be honest and self aware enough to know which side you are on: craftsmanship or memorablity, which ever side you are on just try to be modest about which side you pick. 

Short Game Reviews: January 2025

Soul Calibur 2:

After playing so much of Tekken, Soul Calibur can almost feel like playing the former on easy mode, there is a dedicated guard command, attacks have far greater reach since the game is melee weapons based instead of fists, and it's much easier to read attack telegraphs by comparison. Side steeping feels noticeably easier in SC by comparison to Tekken. This isn't a bad thing since SC's easier to approach gameplay I find very appealing and fun, I remember SC2 being the best and I had a blast playing Kilik and Nightmare through their arcade mode routes, I always like easy to pick up and play games and SC2 delivers on just that.

Super Star Wars:

I was expecting to go into the game expecting it to be terrible and garbage but instead while it I wouldn't call the game great, it's a competent enough 2D side scroller shooter in the vein of Contra and Metal Slug. I thought I was going to abuse the cheat system or try to use the level skip cheats of some kind or eventually just start cheating in general but instead I managed to beat Super SW without doing that.

The easy mode did help with that, enemies give much more health drops on that difficulty and the game was much more forgiving with health in general.

Biggest hurdles you need to get past are the controls which are really awkward, the basic jump arc is fine and manageable but in order to moves like the slide you need to press down, right diagonally and x to do. To do a a higher "double jump" of sorts you need to press x and then up on the d pad, sometimes you will need to manage the descent of the high jump to reach higher platforms or hope that your character can grab the ledge when high jumping.

To top it all off, there is no dedicated buttons to aim up or down diagonally you need to do all this while using the d pad and you can only shoot up diagonally when holding down square.

However, in spite of all this, I slowly but eventually got used to these controls and thanks to the easy mode and save state within the game, I was able to beat Super Star Wars.

The bosses can be a little on the cheap side but you can eventually win by hiding in certain parts of the boss room and holding the fire button.

Final Death Star level can be out of place since it's the final level and doesn't use the base game's mechanics and this level can be really rough especially during the pseudo 3D trench run when using d pad aiming, there is analog stick aiming in the PS4 version during this part of the game and the game would be impossible without it.

Overall, Super Star Wars is a decent game, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece and had a solid time with it. I only played it at all because it was on sale for $5 on the Playstation Store.

Soul Calibur 3:

Pretty solid SC game, amazing production values like the series always has but the arcade story mode surprisingly shakes things up a bit it being a weird choose your own adventure story. It's a nice change of pace from the usual arcade modes in a fighter. Played as Kilik and Nightmare and had a pretty good time with the simple and more casual fighting system. On par with SC2 for me.

Son and Bone Thoughts and Rant

Son and Bone was a game I desparately wanted to like, and when I first booted up the game, I thought was getting just that. The opening cutscene was short and brief and the game had an old school pick up, play, story is secondary approach. For a few hours, I thought this was going to at the very least be better than Turok 2008.

Before I start criticizing the game, I will give the game credit for having a massive stockpile of guns, much like Turok 2, there is a wide array of guns for the player to choose from, many of them are a variation of the same gun like there will be 3 shotguns, 2 machine guns, 2 chainguns, two pistols, two snipers and so on, the attempt at having a large array of guns is appreciated even if it never reaches the heights of creativity like an Insomniac game or the Dead Space series.

The game's damage animations while unpolished and awkward does get the job at creating moderately satisfying combat and the new Doom glory kill system is welcome here.

With all that said, this is where my praise for Son and Bone ends. One big ugly problem with the game is that the levels are way too large and bloated. Play times for the various longplays I have seen on Youtube ranges from 2 hours to 8 hours. The reason why they tend to vary this much because the "shooting" part of this "first person shooter" is entirely optional, you don't even need to actively kill enemies in the game to progress since there are rarely ever any barriers that will block progress unless you kill all enemies. On top of this, the game occasionally uses keycard system from FPS games from the past while also combining it with the Serious Sam and Painkiller horde shooter level design and as a result the level design can feel confused.

One minute, you can follow the waypoint indicator telling you where to go, and skip past enemies, then another minute the game will block progress and you need to find keycards since the game never tells you even with the waypoint indicator where the keycards are.

If you fight the enemies, the game is going to be even longer for you and since the levels are super long, bloated and dragged out on top of combat being optional, you are only artifically extending the length of the game.

The level design isn't good and combat in this FPS game is entirely optional.

What really destroys Son and Bone is the first person platforming, on it's own, the platforming ranges tolerable and unpolished to completely infuriating. I say this with the latter statement because with the former, as long as there are no death pits, the platforming is doable if a mild annoyance, but when it's the latter when there are death pits, and when you fail a jump, the game does not respawn you from the last platform you were on before you failed the jump instead you either die a slow death by lava or fall through the level with no ability to restart from checkpoint in the pause menu.

In order to restart the game when failing a jump especially when the death pit is an endless void, you need need to quit the game and restart from the start menu to restart the platforming guanlet, by that point, I gave up and realized I had better things to do and better games to play.

Overall, Son and Bone barely has any coverage and I doubt many know about the game, but as a whole, I just say it's a game you stay far away from. Don't let the Turok meets New Doom gameplay in the trailers fool you, the game is very poorly made and is a must avoid. If you are curious, get at a VERY steep discount.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate Review

The movie I don't really remember that well however I do recall playing the demo of Weapons of Fate many years ago and thought nothing of it, however I wanted to try out more random PS3 games and this game came back into my mind. I was mainly looking for a quick and breezy game to beat in a quick afternoon or night and the game provided me just that, it isn't going light the world on fire but if you are looking for a quick and short average game to play then you can do worse than this. Due to issues I will mention later, the short length felt like a blessing because if the game was any longer, I would've stopped playing after a point.

The game starts out extremely rough, it starts with a cover and flanking turtorials that never get explored that much in main campaign. Not only that but it's one of those games where there will be a cutscene, walk a few steps and then there will be another cutscene. The first level was basically a bunch of scripted set pieces and cover shooting. It's also easy to run up to enemies and use the insta kill melee attack. The only thing that carried me through the game was the over the top and crazy lines and delivery by Wesley. The sections with Cross don't do a whole to add extra context to the scenes and often derail the pace since an important plot moving part happens during Wesley's sections and then out of nowhere a flashback with Cross happens.

There are other things that are not so good with the game like the slo mo on rails borderline QTE sections where I was lucky to rarely die on since that is more unskippable cutscenes to watch. The turret sections are also really awful and since the health pool with either character is low on normal on top of being a stationary target meaning there will be lots of time hiding behind cover. This will become a bigger issue later.

This is where I start becoming positive on the game and say once Wesley gets his suit and signature gun, things just start to "click". First of all, Wesley's gun sounds awesome and is great to fire which is great since you will be using it a lot and won't get another weapon until later on. On top of all this, there is a decent gameplay groove where you use the curve bullet to get an enemy out of cover or just straight up kill him either way, you can finish him off with your gun and get a bullet time slot back or just get a kill anyway. You can't spam this either since you will eventually run out these slots since there is a 50-50 chance it will be a guranteed kill or get an enemy out of cover.

On top of this you also get melee kills and the ability to hold a hostage when approaching an enemy from behind. The enemy variety slows starts improving with knife wielding enemies and snipers. You eventually get Cross' dual SMGs and the special ability for this gun is that curve bullets is an explosive grenade sharpanel that works as splash damage. The cover to cover bullet time I only ever found useful on bosses however since there were often stationary enough and had enough health for the move to be useful.

Weapons of Fate is a game I got to give credit for, it has more going on in it's core gameplay and moveset than something Gears of War and Uncharted does.

There is just one major problem that holds the game back and it's a problem with many shooters that use it: the regenerating health. You can throw hitscan guns in there too but some games have managed to make hitscan and finite health work. Regen health is something I never really liked all that much since your only option is to wait for your health to regen and hope to god no enemy is coming or shooting at you while the regen is kicking in. That's pretty much my issue, your only option is to wait and that's it. So much of Weapons of Fate's challenge comes from having enemies in large number shoot at you, then wait for health to regen. Aim, shoot, get hit, wait for health to regen, the frustration even on normal difficulty is that you will repeatedly get shot at from so many directions except from behind, aim, shoot and waiting for health to regen.

The problem I have with regen health is that there is no agency, you are forced to wait for health to regen and waiting is all you got. You have no other options partner that with hitscan weapons and many of Wanted's late game shootouts is just waiting, shoot, get shot, more waiting. On top of all this, your base health on normal difficulty is pretty low which lead to some pretty frustrating deaths due to the above mentioned issues. The checkpoint system is at the very least forgiving and add the short length to it and it helps makes the game less frustrating.

Knife enemies also get annoying late game since you need to tap the circle button and press the left stick in a random direction, fail this and it's a game over, if you don't kill them with gunfire and the left stick isn't pushed in time and are a slow button tapper could lead to more cheap deaths

Overall, okay game game, it's short and very flawed, but if you want something quick to beat, you can do worse. 

Smurfs: Dreams Review

There's not much to say on Smurfs: Dreams, it is very much a 3D platformer in the vein of games like Super Mario 3D World and Sackboy a Big Adventure. If you have ever played those games before, you pretty much played this.

However that isn't to say Smurfs: Dreams is horrible, just more on the painfully average side. The game is mostly easy with some difficulty spikes here and there but not too many since checkpoints tends to cover everything you did in a level say for example, you collected x amount of a collectible to progress and you collected 4/6 before you died, it will remember you did the 4 so when you die, you will never be set back by an overwhelming amount of time redoing content. There's many checkpoints scattered throughout the level and no limited continues. Also, after playing Astrobot it is rather refreshing to play a platformer where you can take more than one hit before you restart a checkpoint and there isn't nearly as many as Astrobot.

Bosses in Smurfs will respawn you at right at the phase you are on instead of a full restart upon failure which adds more to how the game isn't really too challenging. I don't mind this since I don't think any game can annoy me as much as Psychonauts 2 removing the ability to die in the options which thankfully Smurfs: Dreams doesn't do.

There are some neat ideas here and there like using an ink gun to raise platforms and stop enemies, a hammer to destroy and build platforms, a light that you have to turn on to activate certain platforms and to turn off to reveal others. I wish these mechanics intersected more often or even have the ability to select them so you can stack up these level design gimmicks.

Another positive aspect is that rescuing Smurfs to unlock levels isn't too time consuming and steep, you can just rescue Smurfs and get to the final level with Gargamel just by playing the levels. You only need 8 to beat the whole game if you aren't 100%ing which is another reason why I'm not too harsh. If the game was any longer, I would be much more harder on it.

Some big issues with the game is that the level objective of, "collect 5-6 of something to progress" is here and it gets reused a lot to much for my liking since it feels like the game has no new ways of creating a variation on something already existing.

There is also Yoshi's flutter kick that your player character can use and on top of this, he can also suspend himself in the air inside of a bubble and stop himself from falling for a few seconds by pressing the sqaure button. I don't even get why this is a thing when the flutter kick already exists, I used the bubble ability for a bit then just stopped altogether.

Overall, if Smurfs Mission Vileaf was a Smurfs version of Mario Sunshine and Daxter, Smurfs 2: Prisoner of Greenstone was a Smurfs version of Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Smurfs: Dreams is pretty much Smurfs Mario 3D World and Sackboy a Big Adventure. If that sounds interesting try this game out, just don't expect an amazing game going in.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

This CoD campaign was very much a welcome surprise. When I saw the immense praise it got, I was questioning if I was going to be one of the people who liked it since I got varying degrees of enjoyment from CoD Vanguard but not so much CoD MW 2022. I can say that this is easily the most polished CoD campaign since Vanguard and the campaign that left any kind of impression on me at all since CoD MW 2019.

At first when I start the BLOPS 6 campaign, I was feeling a strong sense of "been there done that" from the corridor shooting, set pieces, following people around, combat making me feel like I was competent one minute and then I went prone just to get killed by enemies I didn't even know I was in their line of sight.

Then the second mission happened and the game turned into more of a play your way style of game, I chose stealth and the AI was accomodating and I didn't get spotted for getting into the line of sight for 5 seconds, knocking out a guard from the front doesn't alert the all the enemies nearby you, performing headshots with the silenced pistol felt consistent and easy to pull off, and the level was decently open. Sure, this isn't anything overly new for gaming as a whole but this felt like a nice change of pace from the lackluster mission preceding it.

Afterwards the home base opened up and this is a CoD campaign that somewhat rewards exploration and makes you look around levels to max out perks to get like in the multiplayer.

Best part is, these abilties I actively used due to how much CoD BLOPS 6 likes to shove in different enemies from armoured enemies, shotgunners, shield enemies, RC car spawners and enemies that threw electric mines. MW2 2022 did this too with armoured enmies but the problem in that game was that the only way to actively kill them was to just shoot them or hope that you timed your grenade throws that it effectively wiped away their health. Here, you get stim packs that slow down time, buying an ability where throwing grenades don't blow up after holding the throw button for too long, C4, RC cars, air strikes and motar strikes, some of these I wasn't using throughout the whole game but by the end, I was using them all to thin out the hordes.

It's rather impressive that a CoD campaign managed to have more going on with it's combat that isn't just aim down sights, shoot, get hit, hide behind cover, and repeat the process.

There is also not one but at least three standout missions one where you are in a warzone taking out SAM sites and there is a bunch of optional objectives to do like supplies, enemy camps and additional SAM sites. If you do all this, it makes the ending section where you can summon a chopper gunner to thin out enemies feel that much more satisfying since it felt like I earned that and took time out of my way to do it.

The bank robbery mission was memorable since it felt like a Sly Cooper game in that it's a heist but you get to play out every character's perspective while the heist is happening and it also does a good job creating a sense of place where you slowly infiltrate the bank then have an explosive exfiltration.

Under the Radar was a well made Hitman style stealth mission where the levels are open and AI is lienient enough to make moment to moment stealthing enjoyable and it makes the base raid that much more satisfying.

There are two major issues with the campaign with all this said, there are two very out place missions in BLOPS 6. The two being Emmergence and Separation Anxiety. Both are too out of place with the grounded military feel CoD campaigns go for. I did get some enjoyment out of Emmergence since I liked the hordes of enemies and the bosses but it can feel very out of place for those who don't want to play a section with zombies since that is what zombies mode is for. Also, you like the grappling hook? Have fun with only using it for one mission and it never pops up again outside of that brief movement in Separation Anxiety. Plus the entire level in Emmergence is filler and contributes nothing to the plot.

Separation Anxiety felt like an out of place trippy dreamlike level that develops a character who gets killed off in the following mission afterwards. You wanted timed first person platforming and puzzle solving in a CoD campaign? Well here you go. It's out of place to what the rest of the game is.

As a whole this campaign has so many memorable moments that the parts where it starts to have traditional linear CoD campaign shootouts can feel rather dull since Ground Control was very much that and it reminds me of all the problems with CoD shootouts that I mentioned at the start regarding the first mission.

Overall, CoD BLOPS 6 was a very welcome surprise, this franchise has been going on for some time and considering how much I was getting apathetic towards the series, I was surprised I ended up liking the campaign as much as I did. There's some stumbles here and there but this is easily the best one in a long while.