Yars Rising Review

I randomly just found this game when browsing through game releases for the Fall of 2024 and found a trailer of it. I'm not very familar with old school Atari games outside of hearing about Missile Command a decade ago. On top of the most well known stuff assiocated with them like Space Invaders and Tetris. I also don't know what the "Yars" franchise is. As a result, much of the fan service and throwbacks that this game has will be lost on me. I bought it a convention and the fact that it didn't release at full price also made me try it out.

Yars Rising is esstentially a metroidvania with it leaning towards the "Metroid" side. There is also some light stealth which is mainly the hidespots in Mark of the Ninja. There is also lots of mini games, lots upon lots of mini games. There's more hacking mini games here than any other game I played, it does make sense within the story since the protagonist is a computer genius.

One major thing I will suggest is to turn on inviniciblity during the minigames. This does not effect trophies or anything. I say this because there is already a timer and you lose health upon failing them. Being stuck on those mini games can get in the way of the moment to moment platforming and exploration.

The way it handles health and missile upgrades and additional perks is also interesting in that you can't permenantly keep it unless you fit it in with a tetris style mini game.

From the looks of it, you could think that Yars Rising is a typical 2D metroidvania and outside of the light stealth, upgrade system and execessive mini games and you right. With that said, while it doesn't do anything standout, it doesn't do anything outright terribly either.

It's an enjoyable game to play in the moment. This is also a forgiving game too with plenty of save points scattered throughout the various maps, the game autosaving after every successfully completed hacking mini game, and the game being too generous with the amount of inviniciblity frames upon damage taken.

It does satisfy the itch that a metroidvania should give you in that you are bottlenecked but slowly throughout the game, you find more and more upgrades that opens up the map.

Music is also solid too especially considering it has the same styles and motifs as the River City Girls games and as a result certain areas of the game can have quite a bit of personality

There are some major standout moments with that said mainly just two bosses one with a spider lady monster and especially with Missile Commander. The latter especially in that incoporates the gameplay of the series it's based on in a boss fight with a really awesome boss theme accompanying it. I can picture many calling Yars Rising a forgettable game but I find it hard to believe they would find the latter boss fight forgettable.

That's another issue with the game. Spider Lady monster and Missile Commander are the toughest while also most memorable fights in the game. Every boss after Missile Commander is a pushover and can probably be beaten in a 2nd, 3rd if not first try.

The last few sections of Yars Rising is also a slog because you have to rescue 4 aliens before you can fight the final boss. It almost felt like this was here because the devs knew that the fight was a pushover.

There is also random moments of unpolish early game but went away the more I played it.

Story was decent and entertained me in the moment even if some plot points kind of feel forgotten about like with Mrs. Davidson and Missile Commander I don't even recall getting a full on death scene. The main character can enter into a try hard of being a quirky nerdy girl character but she never got overly indulgent with it since she never acts overly smug or condescending.

Overall, I expected Yars Rising to be nothing more than just a quick game Wayforward put together and it was just that. It entertained me in the moment, had some solid music and had some enjoyable boss fights. I was expecting to drop this game after a point but I didn't. Not the most amazing game you can play but not anything I consider awful either.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver(Playstation 5) Review

Soul Reaver and by extension the Legacy of Kain series takes me back in more ways than one. Back when I first heard of, "video games with great stories". Soul Reaver and LoK by extension were one of the games that always popped up. I tried to get into SR1 over a decade ago and was turned away by the initial lack of hand holding in the game design. I did finally beat it around 2014 through PS1 emulation and I enjoyed it but apart of me wondered if I liked it because it was one of the first "older video games" I played where it rarely held your hand and was able to mostly play it without a guide. I've beaten many older games since then and the recent remasters of the first two SR games convienently released as well. As a whole, I'd say SR1 while a very ambitious game for it's time and even now, it's hard to not overlook a lot of the design shortcomings it has which were there even for it's time.

When it comes to story and presentation Soul Reaver delivers...in some ways but feels lacking in others. The opening cutscene is easily one of if not the best in gaming. It follows the idea of stories creating attachment in a quick period of time almost down to the letter. The music, the narration and dialogue by Michael Bell, the cutscene cinematrography, the hints and foreshadowing within the scene itself and it's implications later in the LoK series is impeccable. If you want to open any video game with a single cutscene and create a strong first impression, you can't get any better than this. To top it all off, Soul Reaver is a sequel to the first Blood Omen game yet it never feels like you ever needed to know the latter to get into this.

The voice acting as it's been said many times over the years by Simon Templeman, Tony Jay and the aforementioned Micheal Bell is fantastic and is easily some of the best voice work at the time especially in terms of mainstream console games. There are other good things the story does well like how you learn about Raziel's Sarafan brethren as the character kills them one by one throughout the game. There isn't much in the way of exposition but they reveal their characters through dialogue and Raziel's inner monologues as he explores each other their domains. I felt bad for Melchaiah the most since he seems to geniunely regret what he did and is revolted by what he's done. This is a well presented story for it's time especially.

However, with that said, SR1's story can feel like a prologue to later events and is more step up for Soul Reaver 2. With some plot twists and the ending especially playing a bigger role in the latter than the former. Much of the amazing dialogue and thought provoking moments happen in SR2. SR1's plot is framed as a revenge story and it isn't until 2 where it really starts to become something much bigger. As a result, SR1's story feels like a solid first season or protracted prologue to a TV show where it sets up an amazing second season. I'm talking about story so much because this was Soul Reaver's biggest strength.

Gameplay is where things are ambitous but lacking. To describe Soul Reaver it's basically Core Design Tomb Raider meets Legend of Zelda meets the Metroid(before Prime and metroidvanias were even a thing).

One big defreniating gameplay idea is that Raziel can't die by conventional means since he's a spectral husk and thus there are no fail states. Crystal Dymanics at the time seemed to be aware of this since much of SR1's challenge is figuring things out rather than combat.

Combat itself is a puzzle where every enemy is immortal but by burning, staking or throwing them in water, you can kill them. This starts to not matter in the long run since once you get the titular Soul Reaver, this can be trivial but not completely. Damage enemies and stun them and you can get a one shot kill if you get hit the sword dissolves but then comes an issue that there will always be a material realm portal nearby with souls avaliable to absorb to get back to where you were.

The spectral realm is interesting but it's mainly just there to extend platforms to make jumps and to bail the player out of redoing content upon failure, it is possible to lose all health in the spectral realm but the enemies in that realm are so easy to defeat and die in a few hits that you will back in the material realm in no time.

This leaves platforming and exploration. The former felt awkward and unrefined even for it's time. One could criticize the aforementioned Tomb Raider games for not having traditional analog controls. However, once you slowly learn the rules of the TR games or TR 1996 at least, the rules of platforming are very consistent and doesn't feel floaty. SR1 despite having analog controls and the modern remaster having right stick to turn the camera, I still felt like getting jumps right especially in some sections felt like a game of luck than it felt like I was good. The camera can get too close to Raziel in tight spaces, being precise while using the glide ability feels like I could undershoot and overshoot my landing on the platforms and there are times where I missed a jump where it felt like I could've grabbed the ledge or landed on the platform.

There are dungeons and bosses. The opening necropolis dungeon was the best and it never reaches that point again. The puzzles and clues felt like it was slowly guiding the player. Silenced Cathedral was a terrible follow up level and has all of the aforemention platforming issues of I mentioned as well doing x amount of something to progress at least twice in the same level. The rest of the dungeons while not as terrible don't like up to Necropolis. The bosses' biggest challenge is figuring how to defeat them but the clues to beating them aren't hinted at very well especially in Dumah's case.

The metroidvania elements while novel add little to the game. There are no traditional fail states meaning there is no need to get them and you don't need to use them on enemies or bosses. The latter especially since they are puzzles and can't be beaten through combat so the abiltiies give you no edge over them. In Metroid for example, health tanks are needed to give the player more hit points so they can help defeat bosses but since Soul Reaver's enemies and bosses are puzzles, on top of no fail states why would you want to find health upgrades?

Much has been said about the block pushing puzzles but a big issue is the game overly relies on them without much to spice things up. Tomb Raider had it's block pushing puzzles but there were other aspects to exploration like finding keys and plot progressing items, pulling switches, avoiding traps, and doing timed puzzles. The last dungeon of the game has so many of the same tedious puzzles especially regarding block pushing that I wanted things to wrap up already.  

The abilties you get by killed bosses do open up the map and the game does a decent job without spoonfeeding you where to go next in the overworld making the map in the remaster sort of redudant. The abilties do get decent use like the projectile attack, climbing and spectral realm phasing through walls so there is some interesting level scenarios here so it isn't all sub par game design. 

Powers earned by defeated bosses do open up the map and the game does a decent job without spoonfeeding you where to go next in the overworld making the map in the remaster sort of redudant.

Overall, while ambitious Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver crumbles under it's weight and is mainly carried by it's story and presentation. Still, it did introduce me to the wonders of backtracking and non hand holding game design so I can give the game credit where it's due even there many games before and after that has surpassed it. SR1 is still worth looking into since in spite of this game and by extension the series' gameplay shortcomings, it earned the cult following it has for a reason.

Lost Judgment Review

Judgment was a game I enjoyed for the most part. The game's individual story chapters can drag on for a little too long, I didn't like the forced side cases and the combat much like the rest of the Yakuza series was just so okay it's average. However, the story was gripping even though I do have some other issues with it besides the pacing. I played it because it felt divorced enough from the mainline Yakuza's overarching plot. I did hear some good things about the sequel "Lost Judgment" however throughout my entire time playing I just kept asking myself, "why wasn't this just a TV show instead of a game?"

Yes, I have played the aforementioned Judgment and Yakuza games and I'm aware that they have lengthy cutscenes. With Lost Judgment since I played the main story, a good amount of my time was spent just watching cutscenes and having characters getting into lengthy conversations and exposition. There were multiple times where I even finished food and the cutscenes were still going. Longplays of Lost Judgments's campaign can be 21 hours but the cutscenes are 15 and 6 of those hours are actual gameplay. In a lot of ways, LJ is a TV show where each episode is as long as a feature length film.

With that out of the way, there is already one major issue when starting up LJ's story in that basically it follows the logic of Marvel and DC comics where a major crossover event happened and if you pick up a solo hero or a hero group's comic after that said event, the story is going to be harder to follow. I can accept that but there are also other aspects like there are characters in the story that date back to the days of Yakuza 0 and the first game but I'm just now hearing about them so there are aspects where I'm scratching my head. The Like a Dragon series started off as standalone stories and now there is some greater narrative going on. It's out of left field.

Then there is other major problems like how despite the cutscenes being so lengthy Yagami's allies have less challenges and things to do in the plot. With Saori being about the only exception but she contributes to Yagami's case the same way in the first game. Mafuyu had so little presence that I almost forgot that she was even a character in the story. Kaito, Higashi, Genda, Sugihara, and Hoshino might as well be IMF agents from the Mission Impossible movies in how little they are involved other than just being Yagami's helpers. Tsukomo despite at first having a more active role is not much different than Luther from MI is in the plot as a whole.

I'll give the story credit in that the new characters like Yoko Sawa is kind of interesting and she has enough going on for me be hooked to Yagami's plight. The forced side cases and scenes that don't advance the plot are noticeably toned down. The themes of bullying and vicitimizing are interesting and made me even think about them even after beating the game despite the fallacious logic the main villain has. It however doesn't make me less kind on other issues I had with the story especially where I'm spent so much time watching cutscenes.

Gameplay takes two steps forward and two steps back. The mortal wound system is gone, thankfully. There is only one tailing mission in the main story and there are no progression roadblocks. There are however very scripted stealth segments which just tells you how to do everything and you get a fail state for not doing things exactly the way the devs intended.

There is automated platforming and parkour now. Both are so infrequent that I wonder they are in the game. The stamina system adds nothing other a pointless fail state, it's still your typical automated platforming. If the wallruns are QTEs, it might as well not be there.

Speaking of QTEs, RGG still uses them to this day. They are also uncommon that when they pop it can be a "huh?" Failing one QTE restarts a boss fight and the last two bosses has you do a QTE and then you finish off them off...when 95% of the bosses can be beaten by just depleting their HP.

The combat itself is better in some ways, for one there is a soft lock on when Yagami is facing enemies all though no cycling between targets.

Fighting styles while interesting, I mainly just used Snake since it has an easy to use counterattack and the combos is enough to get me by hordes and bosses.

There are powerful EX moves that are easy to abuse especially one where you are downed and then activate to get a free attack that levels a health bar in. Bosses can't counter this. They also do a lot of damage making me never want to use Burst mode. There is also Mortal Reversals which are so easy to pull off and can can level any enemy or boss' life bar.

Bosses' only major advantage over you is that they can level your life bar before you can heal yourself and many health upgrades are locked.

The skill tree has pointless extra step like finding books.

Overall, aspects about LJ are interesting and improved but it's inferior to the previous game.