Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Review

All I knew about this title going in that it was made by the developers of Warhammer 40K Boltgun which is a game I enjoyed for the most. It did however turn out to be a complete surprise in more ways than one.

Ultimate Bug War isn't really a traditional "boomer" shooter but it also has elements of games like Halo with the two weapon limit, vehicles(mainly just mechs but still) and the the supply drops from Helldivers 2. There's even having other soldier NPCs help you like in a Halo and especially a CoD campaign which adds to the immersive feeling that you are in a large scale battle. It's impressive that this is all done in an indie pixel art game. It gives it's own unique feeling. You got the powerful feeling guns and bugs have satisfying gore effects when you kill them.

There's different kinds of guns like of course your assault rifles and shotguns but there is also energy weapons and my personal a carbine that is hits hard but can't be reloaded like an M1 Garande.

The different bug types do a decent job at changing things. There's your fodder but there also flying ones, armoured enemies and bugs that can shoot fire.

What really puts everything together is the bizarre framing that the campaign cutscenes uses. It's used in the satire videos that were in the initial Paul Verhovan movie but the video game that you bought is now being used as a propaganda simulator to help recruit new members into the Federation. These live action satire cutscenes are hilarious and it's good way to frame why a single soldier is able to feel so powerful while being a single soldier in the military and how the player is able to be so proficient at killing so enemies, the game you bought is a satire military recruitment advertisement after all.

I was already enjoying the game but this whole framing device tied everything in a nice bow.

You could argue that the only big gripe is that the game is too short and can be beaten very quickly on normal difficulty but I argue it would start to get monotonous and mind numbing if it were longer.

If you are unsure on the price, the game is certainly worth getting on a discount.

Overall, now with this and Robocop Rogue City, all it is needed is a solid Total Recall modern licensed game to close out the package. 

Crisol: Theater of Idols Review

For a is a cheap game that was shadow dropped out of nowhere, made by a newly formed dev team that seems to have the very least double AA production values, Crisol is rather impressive for what it is. There are some major issues that prevent from being a I would highly recommend instead of midly but for what's on offer here, it's impressive.

To sum up Crisol simpily, it's a horror game leaning towards the action side where you use your health as ammo for your guns. It's like if Resident Evil 4 and Village combined together. It's an interesting concept but due to the early game hell that is at the start, this is more of a hinderance rather than something you can use reliably or strategically. This could be due to me playing on controller but enemies on normal take way too many shots to die. Your shots in the early game do little damage and I was in many situations where I was either out of ammo or was too low on it due to enemies taking away a large chunk of health when hitting you. Syringes were also very scarce and the knife also inflicts very little stun on top of the parry being unreliable. The final nail in the coffin is that enemies can do a scripted attack when you are at critical health but it's hard to tell how low does your hp have to be for the scripted attack to happen.

Add to how slow paced combat feels and because of how infrequent checkpointing can feel because of this, I lowered to easy. It is still strange how you can't lower the difficulty once you start the game even though the game also allows for custom difficulty but how I can use it effectively if I can't do it while playing the game?

Once I got to easy combat started to get more enjoyable, enemies took much less shots to die, the knife felt more reliable to use and I had more HP to draw blood for ammo for the firearms. Guns also feel very nice and punchy and enemies also have location based damage like both various of Resident Evil. I started to get into the groove of combat more.

There are some annoying parts like traversing parts of levels with a stalker monster coming after you. Reaching it's lowest point in Chapter 2 where you need to sneak past her, kill flying enemies and archers WHILE she can hit you while also being blindsighted by mines when running away.

It also doesn't help that audio cues for mines and cameras are minimal leading to plenty of surprise out of nowhere attacks. Dead Space 2 did it far better when it's explosive alien husks.

After all that, the game gets noticeably easier with so many syringes, healing and ammo that it hard to feel geniunely threatened by anything. The final level can feel long and tedious due to how many puzzles and combat encounters you have to get to before fighting the final boss.

There is also too much of that infamous yellow paint. I try not to complain about it but Crisol has a bad habbit in putting them in obvious spots where by the time you interact with the level, you'll already know that's the only places you can go. The levels are not super open nor is there any platforming to warrant this.

To give some praise, the story is rather decent. Not amazing but the main character has a decent amount of personality and he does slowly change and learn humlity throughout the game despite being hostile towards everyone at first. Not amazing but it's solid. The story doesn't rely on notes as much as other horror games do.

Overall, decent game considering the price and the devs who made it even if I had a lot of issues with it.

Metroid Prime 4(Nintendo Switch) Review

Back when this game was announced in E3 of 2017 when the Switch was still a freshly released console who would've thought it would've taken almost 10 years for the game to come out and it would be 18 years after Prime 3's release, 15 years since the last "mainline" 3D Metroid and multiple 2D games in the series would be released. This also isn't including the massive boom with Metroidvanias in recent times. A lot has happened during the time it took for Metroid Prime 4 to release. After playing this game and while there are some notable flaws, it's rather impressive how much Retro Studios was able to salvage what was already a messy skeleton that Namco Studios made.

This is what caught me by surprise when booting up Prime 4. In spite of the fact it has been 18 years and 2-3 console gens later after the Wii, Retro working on two Donkey Kong Country games and not working on the series in so long, Prime 4 felt like it could've came out a few years after 3. The musical motifs, the look and asethethics of the series, the immersive touches like seeing Samus' reflections on her visor, the game feel all the way down to the auto locking and morph ball physics, it all feels in line with the series. It feels like a Retro Studios developed Prime game in spite of the very long time gap.

The visuals on Switch 1 are also impressive even now and the fidelity felt like an evolution over Prime 3. The only big downer is the super long load times.

With all that said, if you wanted a Super Metroid styled game in 3D like Prime 1, this game won't scratch that itch. In fact, it scratches a different kind of one. Prime 4 is more Zelda than Metroid both older and elements of the open world games.

This leads to the first negative. The shrines are completely pointless since progression in the story locks off your ability to complete them. New Zelda lets' you complete it's shrines in a varieity of different ways where Prime 4 has you do them in one way where you need a certain ablity to do them. Also doesn't help that the map never marks which shrines as not completed.

I'm not the biggest Zelda and I don't care for the overworld Prime 4 has much like older Zelda. If one good thing I can say about this is that if you know to constantly collect the green crystals while travelling around throughout the gme, it will be the shortest late game fetch quest in Metroid Prime history. It could be the longest if you don't know. I did wish the game did a better job at making this clear.

Story also is just there and isn't that great. Not the worst but it just exposes how Samus just feels like an overly expensive moving action figure when interacting with characters since she never even says anything nor do we know her inner thoughts like in Metroid Fusion. It made sense in Prime 1 and 2 since she never has to interact with anyone in those games but it exposes the problems in Prime 3 and 4. The npcs are moderately entertaining if nothing special. Them scarificing themselves the first time being a fake out but then dying for real against Sylux just made their actual deaths diminish the emotional impact. Sylux doesn't have much of a prescene in the story than fighting Samus a few times and then having some weird backstory.

Positives are that once you get past the tedious parts of trying to get to the dungeons like in older Zeldas, the dungeons themselves are pretty interesting like going to the Volt Forge to get the power on. Trudging your way through the Ice Belt with how windy certain parts of the level was. Fighting your way while escourting the characters in Flare Pool and having that really weird fake out countdown sequence or slowly going though the Great Mines and fighting off the Greivers while going through it.

The bosses are mostly solid with the worst being Sylux Phase 1 due to the reviving of teammates you got to do. I did enjoy the boss fight with Phenoros where there is decent specticle and good amount of challenge in dodging it's attacks while you are on the offensive. It was also nice to see the motorcycle get use outside of just only open world traversal. The only awkward part is remembering to use the control beam to finish off the boss. It pops up so infrequently that I always forgot I even have it. Same goes for the psychic glove.

I also enjoyed fighting the Omega Griever since it follows the formula of Metroid Prime bosses of finding out on how to damage it then dodging it's attacks and finally doing enough damage to finish it off. It hits the right spot at being a puzzle and having a good amount of action. My only big issue this time around is mashing A to get out of a boss' grab attacks since I hate doing mashing sequences in any game.

Final issue is that it did feel very grating that some switches had to be scanned while other could be interacted with by just pressing the button.

Overall, MP4 was an enjoyable game in spite of major issues. Games that take almost a decade to release could be worse than this.

Doom(1993)(Playstation 5) Review

There's so much that can be said about the original Doom. It was an early example of gaming going into the 3rd dimension, it helped popularize a genre that is still around now, it's been ported to many different systems and formed a popular franchise much like Resident Evil and Metroid managed to reinvent many times throughout it's long history. In spite of the original game being relatively short especially if it's the first 3 episodes, lacking in features like looking up and down and the lack of a jump. It's still endearing even now. The original Doom is a simple game but what it does is give solid moment to moment decision making and always adding different variations on already existing ideas. It's fine to be repetitive but it's not good to be monotonous which Doom avoids. It's just one of those games where I supposed to play a few levels than stop but I ended up beating all 3 episodes in one sitting since I found it that fun.

The first pillar Doom does well is it's weapons. Sure a little tame by today's standards but every weapon outside of the pistol has a clear and distinct role during gameplay. Shotgun is good for close and long range but can take a quite a number of shots to kill an enemy depending on the range. Doom's shotgun has novelties of it's own that other video game shotguns don't have like being effective at longer ranges too. Chaingun is good for keeping enemies in one place and prevents them from getting closer or firing projectiles. Rocket launcher fires projectiles and is slow moving but can do a lot of damage you might need to guide it's shots to be effective with it. Splash damage can also hurt you and do a lot of damage so it's a no no at close range. Plasma rifle runs out of ammo fast but can kill multiple horde in one burst. The BFG of course is a weapon that do massive damage but it's better to be saved during a huge swarm.

The second pillar is the level design and variation. Doom has it's mazes of course but there is always variations to it's level design. There will be close quarters battles with enemies waiting to ambush you from behind corners. There could be an imp from afar firing a projectile or they could above or below you. There might be a shotgunner hiding from behind a pillar waiting to shoot you. You could pick up a key and enemies will spawn in from and cover your entire flank. The lighting could be a lot darker having you be careful on when is a good time to aim your shot on an enemy. There could be a wide open circular arena with lots of enemies for you to shoot. Teleporters can put you into different parts of the maps. The floors could have lava or be acidic so be careful that your health doesn't drain when on them. Elevators add verticality. Switches can open up new parts of the map or have enemies spawn in. Imps could be behind walls and shoot fireballs when behind them. You can also get crushed by moving ceilings too. There's also secrets to find rewarding people who throughly explore.

The only geniunely bad level out of the original 3 episodes is limbo due to how many lava floors that drain your health there is and over reliance on teleporters. It does say a lot when it's the only geniunely bad level.

The 3rd pillar are the enemies. You got the imps who are weak but can throw a projectile a fast moving projectile. There is a possesed human and his deadlier shotgun wielding variant who are hitscan but can die quickly. The pinky demon and his invisible counterpart where they are deadly upclose but can rush you if you aren't careful. Lost souls that can quickly zone in and hit you but can be taken out with a shotgun blast. The Cacodemon who float take more damage than the imp and can do more damage when firing projectiles. Then the strongest of the enemy line up being the Baron of Hell, they take a lot of damage and their projectiles can do a lot of damage if you aren't constantly strafing out of the way.

When you combine all these pillars together while you get game that while simple on paper can have plenty of variations and permutations on what kind of encounters and levels that can be created. There's a reason why it often gets cited so much when it comes to game design. Combine all this with a great soundtrack that does a great job adding to the upbeat power fantasy and I can see why I beat the game in one sitting rather than take my time.

The only real weak link are the bosses like the Cyberdemon and Mastermind. They are mainly just threatning due to how much damage they can do to you while you widdle away at their health using your stronger weapons. In Mastermind's case it mainly just had a super annoying hitscan chaingun. These levels are short and are over before you know it so you aren't even dwellling on this very long. In Mastermind's case, Limbo is such a long and confusing level that beating him quick with a good amount of health remaining can almost feel like the true reward.

Overall, my love for the original Doom has grown even more.

Tales of Berseria Remastered Review

Been planning to play this game for years but never knew how to approach JRPGs but after playing some YS games and Tales of Xillia, and with the recent remaster, I decided to finally jump into Berseria all though I might've learned recently that it's a prequel to the maligned Zestria. As a whole, I did enjoy my time with Berseria even if the gameplay is worse than Xillia and there are some major issues with the story pacing in the middle half of the game. It's also longer than Xillia and with the story pacing issues I mentioned it can feel that way.

The story which is usually the main attraction for these games is mostly on the good if not great at certain points. The prologue is fantastic for the most part, the initial backstory of Velvet's early childhood could be delivered better since it felt sudden but the rest of it is great. It can be a little reminscent of Berserk's eclipse but there's enough here to defreniate Berseria from that.

Like in Xillia, the characters and the synergy they have is by far the biggest high point of the game. The way the party banters especially during the skits do a great job at fleshing them out during frequent combat portions of the game and is a great way to have the other party members get involved even if you don't use them in combat. It's still shocking it's exclusive to this series. One complaint I do have is that it can get a little overdone here. There are moments you will run for little while if not less than that and a cutscene that is presented like a skit starts to playing then there are 3 if not 4 skits after that. Xillia did pace them out a lot better.

The story during the early and latter portions are quite good and move at a decent pace. There is the middle portions of the game where Shepard Artorious and the Abbey lose Velvet and the team's trailer and they disappear from the story for so long, I almost forgot there was any looming danger the cast has to worry about. There is a scavenger hunt where many of the monsters the characters try to get end in failure and there is this one child monster who is really annoying and serves no geniune purpose to the story. He has one touching scene where Velvet hugs me while unloading his hatred on to her but that's it. There is also a very long section where a book has to get translated and these sections really do move slowly.

When the fight does get back to the villains, it does get good and thought provoking again. There is a twist late game where it recontextualizes her whole revenge quest and it made into a much deeper character. She eventually mellows out becomes more like how she was in the prologue before she got consumed by hate.

The other characters like Rangetsu and Magilou have more agency towards the end and the story finally starts to pick up. It's just that I always have to think, "man that middle section was such an annoying drag". The ending was decent but the fact that it's a prequel to Tales of Zestria did hold the ending back from being more impactful since it felt like it was setting up for a game I'm not sure if I'll even play.

Gameplay on the other hand is where the gameplay for the most part is worse than Xillia. No linking or linked artes, no special move shortcuts, and the gear and weapon systems are presented in a convoluted way. Half the time I wonder if me buying new gear and weapons actually did much of anything. There's a stamina meter which replaces the turns you can do but that just made everything needlessly confusing. I eventually lowered to easy to get to the story faster.

One improvement is that there are actual dungeons this time and the devs seem to know how copy and pasted the level design is so they added those cat orbs to give the player a good idea where they are going without using the full map or mini map. The dungeons are okay if nothing special except for a bizarre water dungeon a good way into the game where you need to press a bunch of switches in a certain order to progress. Whole thing is a massive curve ball compared to the rest of the game.

Overall, I did like enjoy my time with Tales of Berseria in spite of it's problems even if there are certain parts I don't want to do again any time soon like that dreadful middle portion of the game. The highs of the narrative are still high with that said.

Resident Evil: Requiem Review

Resident Evil Requiem is such a fascinating game in that considering how much success Capcom had with Village, you'd think they'd just do a variation on that or just make a more casual friendly RE like last time but no they chose to up their game and attempt something different...or at least aspects of Requiem can feel that way. That's the thing with RE Requiem, when it's good, it's great when it's bad, it can really be stupid. There's aspects of the game that are interesting and adds new spins on existing ideas but there are other parts that ride off the coat tails of nostalgia. It's been said many times that it's a tale of two REs but I'd argue it's that while also being a tale of two Capcoms. The storytellers and as game designers.

I'll start off with the story and to no surprise at all, it's terrible. I always found it amusing how much effort Capcom puts into the narrative of these games since the overarching plot of the series is convoluted fecal matter. I'll keep my critique to this just this game as much as I can. It turns out there's another surviving Umbrella researcher named Victor Gideon. Who isn't named until now among such other names like James Marcus, William and Anette Birkin, Albert Wesker, Ozwell Spencer and are Sergei Vladimir and the Red Queen canon anymore? I don't know. You got a new character through Grace Ashcroft whose mother from the Outbreak games suffers the same fate as Harry Mason in Silent Hill 3. Grace tries to be like Stanley Goodspeed from The Rock but isn't as likeable while asking people if they are lying or wanting to give her life to protect blind girl who is a grotesque monster but only knew her for a few hours.

Leon and Sherry got infected by some virus offscreen and he needs to remind everyone that there's still some connecting tissue to the franchise considering the Ethan Winters games were basically filler arcs. He goes through some CGI movie bike chases with some nostalgia pandering to the RPD while him dealing with both Victor and a Wesker wannabe known as Xeno. It all culminates with Ozwell Spencer being a very important character despite being dead since RE5 and the story won't really acknowledge this. Then the it ends with Leon's disease he got off screen being cured and contacts Chris for more episodes for this on going terrible TV show.

Alright, I did speak about the story in a more facetious manner than I normally do but trying to actually talk about it with it a straight face would be even harder to do.

Now the tale of two REs and Capcom as game designers. The game fares much better here or at least during the Care Center part and to a lesser extent the downtown Racoon City portions.

If we are talking about the Care Center where you play as Grace. It is some of the best survival horror gameplay the series has ever seen. There's so many new things added to breathe new life into the gameplay. You have the zombies with different characteristics, personalities and patrol patterns where their characteristics change the more of the map you unlock. There's zombies like the Chief and singing lady for example.

Not only this but you can either sneak past them by using stealth but if you get caught or you can stagger them with bullets and make a quick getaway or run and try to break line of sight.

The zombies also can't be killed unless if you use a hemo injector or the Requiem Bullets so it's best to pick and choose which zombies you want to get rid of especially on which routes you want to take. They turn into Blister heads and can be very damage spongey, it's better to not use bullets but to either have Requiem bullets or stun them and then use a hemo injector so the game heavily encourages to never fight them.

The Care Center itself is one of my favorite maps in the series up there with the likes of the Spencer Mansion and the RPD. It has enough shortcuts and twists and turns and it's just large enough to not be overwhelming. I still have the west and east wing connecting hall in my head.

This is however not all of Requiem. You got the action sections with Leon and they range from, "this is kind of cool but that was over fast" to "wished we had some longer levels" to "oh my this is terrible". There's the Blister Borne but you only fight him twice. The downtown Racoon City section was the best Leon part since it kind of has the same semi open world that Jacksville from TLOU2 had where there's an overarching objective but lots of secrets and side paths to find.

Then it's all downhill from there. You have a stupid Advent Children and CGI RE movie playable motorcycle chase. Then a REmake 2 RPD visit a series of weak bosses with Tyrant, Plant 42, and a TLOU style hitscanner battle horde fight that ends in killing Hunk.

It gets a better when you play as Grace and have to stealth past Lickers and get resources to use molotovs if caught and ends with a dumb boss against Victor. Who's Xeno again?

Overall, RE9 is some of the best RE but is messy too

Yakuza Kiwami(Playstation 5) Review

Playing Yakuza Kiwami again was an interesting experience because I remember having a fondness for the original Yakuza's story and even going out of my way at multiple points to say it's one of the better narratives in the series and how the series got dumber and the villain writing got worse the more the franchise went on like say Metal Gear Solid. Playing Kiwami again however, it's hard where I got those notions from. I'm starting to think it was me being enamoured by the idea of the original Yakuza's story more so than the execution of it. It's not a repulsively terrible story but at the same time I question how you could make a long running series with an average at best story with an amazing premise like this one. I can now see why Yakuza 0 and 2 were considered better narratives especially with the flaws the latter has or how the former does very little legwork to improve Yakuza 1's story.

Before I start describing why I'm so lukewarm on Kiwami. The game itself isn't really a remake of the original PS2 game from 2005, it's more of a remake that is sequel to Yakuza 0. It's easy to see with Kiryu having the fighting like Brawler, Tiger and Rush from 0 and having his signature Dragon of Dojima locked behind the Majima is Everywhere is system. This is one of the most questionable aspects that Kiwami brings. It's retroactively made after the fact that Majima had limited screen time in the original game and the devs never expected him to be as popular as he was. You love Majima from 0 especially? Here's more of him more than you could ever want. This is still ultimately a mostly faithful retelling of Yakuza 2005's story so there are bizarre moments like where he gets stabbed and then pops up later in Soapland where the story still acknowledges his stab wound.

Then there is how bosses can have fighting styles that are similar to ones found in 0 like one of the Akai brothers having the Breaker style Majima had in 0.

With all that out of the way, Yakuza Kiwami and by extension the original game's story has an interesting premise of a man who was in jail in 10 years and having to take care of his lover's daughter while trying to find his foster father while learning about how his best friend has become a completely different person during those 10 years.

Much of this said story is mostly a series of wild goose chases and completely unrelated subplots that don't really advance the story. For example subplots involving Date and Florist is just filler. When you solve Florist's family issues the dead body with Mizuki pops up not because Kiryu did the favors but out a random picture of that dead body that Florist just suddenly finds. After that Haruka gets kidnapped a few times, you find her. Then go after Shinji and Reina and then the plot slowly wraps up and as you given so much information on everything. It doesn't help that characters like Shinji Tanaka barely show up and have much presence in the story. Shintaro Kazama barely has much presence in the story since he is in hiding for much of it. Shimano barely does much of anything that makes you dislike him. Nishki himself could be an awesome combination of Fredo from the Godfather and Harry McDowel from Gungrave but even he's out for much of the actual story.

I do like some of the flashback cutscenes with him but much of them is going over how awesome Kiryu is. Shimano even tries to glorify Kiryu taking the blame for Dojima's murder even though it was supposed to be an act of selflessness.

The cutscene where Nishki becomes the person he is in the main story and how he got his hair was pretty well directed.

Then there is fact that the bad guys only get anywhere in the story because Kiryu doesn't kill them but someone else will kill them after. This is an issue with the whole series unfortunately.

What does prevent me from disliking the story as much as say the first Red Dead Redemption is that the last few hours of Kiwami are pretty good and has some solid character work. Yumi telling Nishki that he is just running away is a solid line even if the writing up until that point was lacking. The final battle was pretty epic and Kiwami's version of "for whose's sake" make the final boss more epic than the writing did. Made me want to ignore Majima is everywhere more so the song and battle last longer.

The gameplay is pretty much Yakuza 0 but much harder. Heat moves do much less damage. Bosses now needed get hit by heat climax finishing move or else their health will regenerate.

What's worse now brittle Kiryu is even by comparison to the PS2 original. He can be staggered very easily and if enemies have weapons it's a game of how much Kiryu gets staggered and how many healing items the player has to see if the enemy and boss health bar will go down before Kiryu gets stunned yet again.

This does get mitigated with more upgrades you put into Kiryu but it'll still be prevelant.

Overall, while Kiwami is okay, I can see the lukewarm reception it got

Resistance 3 Review

Oh man, Resistance 3 it's easily one of my most replayed games of all time up there with titles like Mark of the Ninja, Vanquish and FEAR to name a few examples. I've played most of the games in the series with the exception of Burning Skies and I at least enjoyed all of them. My favorites being Fall of Man and 3. In spite of me replaying it so much, I'll more critical on it than if I were to play it once or twice, I do get more critical the more I replay which is a side effect. I also tried to play on hard mode this time around. If I were to make one big criticism on R3 is that it's easy to see why the series did die out. This game is completely removed from Fall of Man and also R2 as well to the point where each game in the series feels completely different from the last with the Chimera and the weapon line up being the thing that links everything together. R2 had a focus on multiplayer where R3 had no trophies for mp feeling like the mode was a contractual obligation.

This leads to story and it's easy to see that R3 is more or less Half Life 2. Fall of Man was an alien invastion during WW2 and R2 was super soldiers fighting off aliens in alternate pre Cold War America. R3 is in the post apocalypse where the Chimera are like the Combine and it's a post apocalyptic road trip to get New York. One aspect R3's story does well is how it humanizes many of it's NPCs from Capelli's family and community to Charlie Tent's rag tag fighters to a religious community all the way down to cannibals. When it comes to the people Capelli meets, he has to earn their trust like moving a down battery or killing a monster in the tunnels or helping a captive in the base of the Cannibals. Cappelli doesn't have much personality himself during gameplay but the various npcs you'll meet are interesting enough.

However it's hard not to draw the Half Life 2 connections. You help out Resistance fighters, break out of a prison, fight zombies in an abandoned mining town and fight a monster in the tunnels like in that game all while heading to a Citadel except here it's in New York.

There also some criticisms to the story divorced from that game like how Malikov never tells Cappelli how to stop the wormhole before he dies. Cappelli never talking during gameplay making him hard to connect with as a character. How SRPA couldn't take down the Chimera but a depowered Capelli and Charlie Tent can. How much of Cappelli's assault on New York can be skipped over since he needed to be rescued by Tent and then the former has a sudden epiphany on how to stop the wormhole.

R3's story is decent if derivative and having some major problems. However the story was never really the main attraction.

In terms of gameplay especially in terms of it's weapons and combat, it beats Half Life 2 by a mile and in terms of weapon feedback, it's the best in the series. The super loud and punchy sound effects especially with the Bullseye and Marksman to the very detailed and gory animations to the enemies making very loud groaning sounds as you are hitting them. The weapons like the Bullseye, Auger, Marksman, Rossmore, Magnum are all back but can be levelled up now which makes them even deadlier. An issue with this system is that you would have to play the game 3 or even 4 times just to level up every gun. The level 3 magnum's alt fire makes it the best pistol in gaming.

The enemy line up especially when you are fighting the Chimeran Hybrids is great you got the foot soldiers, Ravangers, Shock Drones, Long Legs, Stalkers, Steelheads, snipers, brawlers and widowmakers are fantastic and keep you on your toes. They have enemies that run that run the archetypes of your close range, mid range and longer range combine that with the weapons and damage animations and it's easily some of the most fun first person shooting in the 7th gen.

With that said however, you won't be fighting these enemies for the whole game. You will also spend a good chunk of the game where there's no Chimera footsoldiers for much of it. The parts where you'll be mainly fighting Grim and human enemies. The latter is where R3 loses what makes it so much and very much resembles the hitscan human enemy combat you often went up against in many 7th gen FPS games. So for a good while of R3's campaign it's fighting human hitscanners and zombies which isn't playing to R3's strengths. Everything does pick up in New York and back to fighting foot soldiers.

This does lead to another criticism which is the health system. I do like that it's finite and not regen like in R2. Enemies also drop health upon death abeit inconsistently. I did really wish your health can regen up to certain thresholds since shots enemies fire can't be as reliably evaded like in Fall of Man since it's more hitscan now. Due to this playing on higher difficulties and using close range weapons feel like games of luck since you have to kill an enemy upclose to get health back but you could get down before you even close the distance. 

Overall, R3 might be derivative of HL2 but it's weapons and combat makes it the best HL2 inspired game. 

Hard Reset Redux Review

This was a game I played years ago. I have hard time recalling it but I want to know why that is and having playing it again, I can see why. It's by no means a bad game just feels like a game that is just there. I'll give it credit in that it does invoke some weird nostalgia with it's whole "early 2010s PC look" and if you want a quick game to be in an afternoon, the game gets the job done.

If there was one novelty the game had is that at least with the original game, it was an FPS game in the early 2010s that didn't have regen health or a two weapon limit so it had that going for it.

There is some interesting ideas here like there is bullets and there is plasma weapons sort of like in Halo but the game never really encourages you heavily to use prioritize on certain enemies. Some enemies are seemingly weaker to either one but it was never I never felt like I had to use plasma on to get down a shield and then bullets to hurt flesh like in Halo. There's also environmental hazards to kill enemies with but even that is never encouraged either. Bulletstorm at least had the skill shot system that encouraged you to kill in different ways.

There's the katana from the reboot Shadow Warrior games but it didn't really serve much of an actual purpose during combat.

Bosses are a decent specticle at least with weak point shooting.

The big issue with the game is the arena design in which many of them feel like corridors that box you in and relying on the same idea of being so claustrophohic that the enemies will widdle away at your health. One later in a trash area was the worst since the enemies can hit you hard and the arena itself is so tight which made evasion really hard. It never got that hard again however. Being able to save anywhere does help at least.

Overally, I can see why I had a hard time recalling Hard Reset Redux, it's by no means terrible but Flying Wild Hog would later do much better than this especially with Shadow Warrior 3 and Evil West.

Legacy of Kain Defiance: Remastered Review

When this remaster was announced, I was groaning if not outright apathetic towards it. I replayed the emulated PS2 version of Defiance on PS5 back a few months ago and playing that was test of endurance. Both in that the game wasn't very good and in that there was seeds of something well made there. The remaster however took a game that strugged to remain consistently mediocre and turned into at the very least a decent game.

The obvious change of course being: the camera. I would've prefered for a better version for what the original game tried to do and have it be more like the older God of War games' camera. The original Defiance felt like a proto GOW but at the same time even if a controllable camera is playing it safe, I still prefer over it the original. The camera in the remaster is more like Batman Arkham's in that it's over the shoulder when exploring and it zooms out when in combat. This is fine since the camera during the exploration sections is what played a big role in what made the original game such a mess.

Thanks to all this, the levels go by much faster and I'm able to enjoy the story a lot more due to it not feeling like an eternity for the next plot point. It's easier to relish the more entertaining moments in the story like Moebius celebrating Kain's "death" or the foreshadowing that would eventually pit Kain and Raziel against each other. The whole aspect of the Hylden is still unexplained but that was supposed to be for later installements.

I also appreciate the level design of Vorador's Mansion more because of this. How you slowly get lead down to different parts of the Mansion solving the various environmental puzzles to eventually get to him. My only big gripe is that there was no quick cinematic of the one of the walls getting damage in fire reaver area of the room to single the player to go visit there.

The idea of the levels being more like adventures where you do environmental puzzles, combat and plaforming really does annoy me on what could've been since God of War would do all of this 2 years after the original game.

Issues like many of the games' levels being the same copy and pasted temple rooms where you have to go through a series of teleporters are still there. It's over much faster due to the controllable camera giving better direction but it's still going through the same temple rooms again and again.

The combat while decent at first with things like different special area of effect attacks for the Reaver for both Kain and Raziel as well as building enough damage to have the Reaver hit harder and telekinesis is ultimately just the same combat encounters. You get new combos but even those are just variations of Dante's million stab from Devil May Cry an overhead slash and kinetic shakles on bigger enemies. The enemy line up remains mostly the same when the gargolyes get introduced and the bizarre devilish enemies are very unpolished and awkward to fight since they give no health drops upon getting downed.

There's also the unpolished nature of combat where enemies just randomly zone in and hit you while constantly dodging and can interrupt your moves out of nowhere.

Overall, while this remaster is a technical marvel and does a solid job at improving a game that wasn't very good even for it's time and I appreciate the hard work done, it's not hard to hide the shortcomings that Defiance already had. Still, I'll give it credit, it did make that an inconsistently mediocre game into a moderately decent one.

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves(Playstation 5) Review

For the longest time, Sly 3 was always my least favorite game in the trilogy but after replaying it a few years ago and playing it again now, I've come to appreciate it a lot more. When it comes to story and writing, it's my favorite in the series however in terms of gameplay, it can be very unevenly paced and structured when compared to Sly 2. Apart of me gets the criticism of "not enough Sly" but another part of me understands why considering by this point, Sucker Punch was starting to become aware of the problems with the titular character's movement and by extension Bentley and Murray's. Sly 3 was a sequel that was made in a year and there wasn't going to be a change in the game engine so no possible mechanical improvements but the syngery between gameplay and story was the strongest part of Sly 2 so just hone in more on that which Sly 3 does.

The story is by far the strongest aspect of the game. It's the best tale in the franchise. Not only is the gameplay and story synergy here but the main villain with Dr. M is the best too. He's far better written than Clockwork and Neyla with him having former history with Sly's father and his hatred for him feeling more justified by comparison. He does loathe Sly and his lineage he does offer a hand of compassion towards Bentley and Murray which rounds him as a character. He also represents the highest stakes the series has ever had with Sly needing recruit more members to his gang to beat Dr. M at his own game.

The new characters and returning characters are all well written. The Guru being the best of the former and the Panda King being the best of the latter. Panda King being my favorite in terms of writing in how his face turn and coming to gripes with who he once was and accept Sly's help.

This introduces the biggest change in the game in terms of structure: there are less levels but they are each longer and the mini game count is doubled. This would spell doom but since this is following Sly 2's structure that means that while you are doing lots of mini games and playing as the main trio feel like it's on occasion, every mini game and every mission contributes to the overarching main goal of defeating the main villain of that level.

Another difference now is that since the levels are longer and every villain gets beaten in the same episode, they will now get the occasional drop on the much expanded Cooper Gang. Don Octavio will kidnap Bentley in one mission. General Tsao might be the most destable villain in the series in his world views, manages to even make Bentley lose his cool when stealing the laptop and even manages to geniunely get on Sly's nerves. The Baron will also try to pit Mugshot and the Cooper gang together and so on.

My only big issue is the story that while in the gameplay, the capers don't go according to plan as they did in Sly 2, it's never acknowledged with the story. There's never a moment of Sly saying to himself, "maybe we should retire since things aren't going as well as they once did".

The ending is still a great way to cap everything off with everyone moving on to different things and Sly putting his lineage behind.

When it comes to story and writing, Sly 3 is the series' best but when it comes to gameplay, it's still mostly on the serviceable side all though now more uneven than before. The series is no stranger to mini games, the first game had it's fair share but the furthur you get into Honor Among Thieves, more and more mini games get introduced almost to the point where whenever you play as Sly or even Bentley and Murray it can feel like a whiplash of, "I forgot Sly was in the game".

This reaches it's boiling point in Episodes 5 and 6. Early on, it's fine but by Episode 5, there's multiple mini games, a very bizarre pirate ship section that feels a little too fleshed out for what is supposed to be a side attraction and then it's just mini game after mini game. I was honestly just super surprised when I got to control Sly again to the point where I said, "wait, this game had platforming?" There's also a very challenging wave section as Murray towards the end and the melee combat system has not really been improved from Sly 2 on top of trying to be familar with his play style again.

While Sly 3's characters and mini games does serve the story, it makes the game side of it very all over the place. While Sly 2 didn't improve upon Thievous Racoonous, it was more even with the playable characters being Sly, Bentley and Murray.

However to defend this, Sly 3 doesn't reuse the same objectives of "pitpocket x guards, take pictures, tail this person, hack into this computer, beat up these guys" or any mission involving TNT barrels again. I personally wished Sucker Punch didn't have to rely on more characters and mini games to do it even if I know it might be engine limitations and deadlines.

Overall, Sly 3 has a good story but that can lead to uneven pacing and structure with still no mechanical improvements.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare(2019) Review

This reboot of Modern Warfare caught me by surprise when I first played it and the direction CoD went into after it, surprises me even now. By this point into CoD's run, the franchise was flanderized, the campaigns while still decent action movie romps were just a side attraction to the multiplayers and it became the divisive punching bag it is now. While the idea of "back to basics" or "back to it's roots" was thrown around a lot in the 8th gen. CoD MW 2019 really did feel like it was doing just that along with CoD WW2 to a lesser extent. The campaign clearly wasn't a side attraction since there are no multiplayer trophies to be found here. Infinity Ward was expecting you to play the single player portion this time around.

Playing MW 2019 surprised me how this sub series of the CoD franchise still had a lot of life left in it. MW3 2011 before this point was heavily reusing assets and scenarios from the original versions of MW1 and 2 so to see a lot of fresh and compelling ideas at this point into CoD's run caught me off guard.

It also goes back to what CoD originally was, you being the underdog against an overwhelming force rather than you being an action movie hero where your npcs take all the credit for everything you do. Just that now it's darker and grittier.

I mentioned new ideas and there are some great missions here with much more mechanical depth this time around like "Cleaning House", "The Wolf's Den" and my personal favorite "Going Dark". The first two can be tense tactical shooters where it's about moving slowly with actual door breaching and opening animations with the flashbangs finally being useful now. The atmosphere of the missions as well as enemies attacking you from anywhere in those claustrophobic rooms can really make for tense moments you could find in a more tactical game. Always being careful when to fire shots and don't accidentally hit civilians. On top of this, you even get a darkness meter too.

This culminates in the penultimate mission "Going Dark". Ubisoft to this day has never made a new Splinter Cell game using the power of consoles post 7th gen and this mission lets you experience that all though only for one level. Shadows and light meters have been absent in games for so long at times I forget you can shoot out lights for more optimal sneaking conditions, it was in some instances but it was great to finally see these mechanics come back only for this one level in this one game in the rebooted MW series.

Other missions like Embassy and Sniper's Den are no slouches either. The former reminding me of the days back when CoD campaigns were about being the underdog and being overwhelmed where it's about an overwhelming force trying to take over and kill everyone in the US Embassy in Urizikstan. Where you have to escort an npc in a stealth section using cameras and then have to defend it from overwhelming counterattacks. Borrowing from Comrade Sniper in CoD2 isn't nearly as overt here as it can be in. The only big issue with this level is that snipers can expose the scripting of the level by not being able to sniper the enemy firing the mortor at you later in the level from across the map.

Sniper's Den does a good job at teaching the player bullet drop and is accomdating enough to have him be super good at it since it's a one off mechanic. It's Comrade Sniper again but at least there is a new mechanic to accomdate for it as well keeping in line with the theme of being the underdog especially with the enemies soldiers and trucks keep on coming.

There are some weird missions like a steath section where you play as child Farah but I didn't mind it too much despite how heavy handed it can get with it's theming on who's the bad guy. There's also a section later in the game where the game tries to pull sympathy cards by having threatning to kill The Butcher's family in order to have him to talk but I didn't mind it too much since the campaign mostly won me over by this point.

Issues I had is that during the missions where it's traditional CoD shooting galleries while there are attempts at innovations like a lean mechanic, it's not as smooth as it could be. The shooting is still ultimately just using hitscan weapons to point, shoot, get shot and then regen health. This is fine when the enemy count is small but can lead into frustration when enemies are everywhere and it can be hard to have them get line sight of sight off you so you can wait for health to regen. This is especially ergregious in "Proxy War" while the arena is decently open, the issues with the hitscanners and regen health can get in the way of the enjoyment.

Some sections can be a little too scripted especially early on in Embedded when you aren't picking up the brick and it's an instant fail.

Overall, playing this campaign again reminded me that CoD did have life left in it. Not very big on where the rebooted MW games would go into but like the og MW games this first one was captivating.

YS IX: Monstrum Nox(Nintendo Switch) Review

After playing YS VIII months ago and surprisingly enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, I decided to give YS IX a shot. As a whole, the latter isn't as good as the former but I still enjoy it enough to get to the end and roll credits on it.

Just to be warned, only get the Switch version of YS IX if you have no other option. The frame rate can get very slow almost to the point of single digits during certain parts of the games especially when fighting the enemies in the Balduq overworld.

This now transitions to the next part of my review. Instead of an unexplored island like in YS VIII, you are now in a prison city knows as Balduq. This is where much of the game can be a drag since now, you don't have the approval rating to get the "real" ending like in YS VIII so you can by bypass much of the downtime spent in the city by just spawning enemies in the overworld of the prison city. You do this for many hours until you spawn the Grimwald Nox and you do a series of wave defenses and then finally after all that, you can progress the main story.

This really can get tedious due to the game being as long as it is. It also doesn't help that the wave defenses this time around are a lot more unfair and cheap and this in large part due to the fact that enemies during these sections can spawn behind from the crystal you are supposed to defend and no matter how much you invest in the defenses, you can't spawn any traps or defenses from that blindspot. So during a wave defense, enemies might spawn from behind and due to the said crystal being so fragile and enemies being tanky, a game over will inevitably happen so then it becomes a process of knowing when they will spawn from the blindspot and lowering the difficulty enough that they will die faster and minimizing the damage done to the crystal until the wave is over.

However on the flip side. The dungeons are quite memorable. One big reason is due to the music in them being fantastic and really immersing you into the adventure and being great tunes to listen to. The various powers you get also makes traversing them more enjoyable since now you have a grapple hook(abeit contextual), wall run, glide, being able to destroy cracked walls, have a vision mode that can highlight hidden switches among other various ways to traverse through the environment. If there is one thing YS IX is an improvment over VIII, it's definitely this.

There are some annoying quirks however like the wall run being finicky on what surfaces you are allowed to run on and if it's not a smooth vertical surface, don't bother. You also have to manually switch to Yufa in order to use her hammer to break cracked surfaces.

Combat is mostly the same as VIII so it's decent but only when the enemies and bosses aren't moving so fast that the lock on will move along with them. It does get very easy to start doing the same old tactics when fighting hordes and fodder enemies.

I did miss the way the blacksmith worked in VIII since it was more about gathering materials than having currency and it encouraged you to explore the island rather than constantly get money to pay for weapons and gear.

The story is a weird one, it's not terrible and there are parts that can be pretty good especially the late game twist. However much of the story is spent doing the Grimwald Nox wave defenses for Apprills, doing a bunch loosely connected side plots and most egregious of all, those dull and boring sections where you play as the *real* Adol and not Crimson King. The last one is so bizarrely presented that for much of the game, I'm wondering "what is the point of any this?" It's never made properly clear what these sections are for until late game where it's there to avoid any bizarre retconning. I'm also starting to get more annoyed how Adol has no real personality and is just a stand in for the player or the responses you get are there to avoid him from being a complete mute.

The late game twist is quite interesting and insane but it takes so long for it to happen and a good portion of the game has gone by at that point. Also it was very weird how inconsistent the game was on what lines were voice acted and what aren't. There will be voice acting one minute but then during seemingly important scenes there won't be any at all. It can be incredibly jarring.

With all this said, due to the amount of time I spent with the game and the characters by proxy apart of did get emotional by the time game eventually wrapped up so in spite of my complaints, I did enjoy it since spent about 55 hours playing it.

Overall, YS IX was in improvement in some ways but is lacking in other areas. The music, dungeons, traversal and parts of the story do carry it.

Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition Review

For a what is mainly a AA game that was originally a VR title, Alien Rogue Incursion is a solid time. Sure when compared to similar action horror games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space Remakes as well Cronos: The New Dawn, it does fall short. However as far as Alien games that are about fighting Xenomorphs and involving space marines are concerned, I do enjoy it more than Alien Fireteam mainly because it's a single player game where you don't need to play with others to get anywhere.

The story surprised me, it isn't amazing but I was more engaged than I thought I would be. I enjoyed Zula and Davis dynamic and the former struggling with whether or not she wants to live. Davis despite being an AI cares for Zula and wants to see her survive her ordeal. Their moment to moment dialogue is engrossing enough in the moment. The game is episodic and it ends on a cliffhanger and it's up to Part 2 to nail the landing but what's here did engage me.

Gameplay is fine enough in the moment and especially for it's short length but if it was any longer, I'd be much harsher.

What Rogue Incursion ultimately boils down to is that you have to complete a series of objectives traveling through the snowy outpost as you get attack by 2 or 3 Xenomorphs every couple of minutes. You are firing and killing xenomorphs with the iconic Pulse Rifle so that novelty alone carries much of the game. What also makes it stand out that it isn't shooting hordes of Xenos like in AVP games, Colonial Marines and Fireteam. You got to use the motion tracker and often anticipate when they will attack you and shoot them before they can hit you. It's more about predicting and acting accordingingly than slaughtering them by the dozen when in your sightline. Combat is also more like RE4 where you get just enough ammo and healing items to go through the level but never too stocked up on. There is no inventory mangement like in older Resident Evil.

It also helps that killing Xenos with the pulse rifle, shotgun, grenades and revolver all feel punchy. They will be spawning a lot so they should feel good. Save points are mostly plentiful and the game never feels over stingy with resources.

You will also backtrack, get new items and open new parts of the map. You will also need to carry items and deliver them parts on the map to continue the story. Much of the novelty of Rogue Incursion in that it's a game that is more like Aliens but it's more about managing resources and backtracking than horde shooting. Remember that scene in Aliens where the marines enter LV-426 and the marines are all frantically checking the motion sensors knowing when the Xenomorphs will come out their hiding spots and shoot them. Rogue Incursion is a whole game based around this.

This is where much of the problems lie however. You fight regular Xenos and fighting the occasional facehugger where the challenge comes from how much your hand can bear the trigger mashing mini game to get them off. It's either fighting Xenos when they spawn in on the map as you explore or a story progressing wave survival section. That's main enemy types you go up against.

When you eventually deliever the distress signal to Amanda Ripley, the game really loses steam and feels padded out. You have to then go do a series of fetch quests have and then have a drawn out section of Zula finally destroying the facehugger inside of her. The game started to geniunely test my patience after a certain point due to how much it feels like it's dragging things out.

I also had two game breaking bugs where I had to reload past saves to then continue on with the story. There are also instances where Zula refuses to reload when I kept pressing the fire button after the clip was empty.

There also carry over of this being a former VR game where you have to motion imputs that are now replaced with QTEs which makes it obvious about it's origins.

A decent fight with the Alien Queen where you have to time the explosive pipes and then shoot her and then the game ends.

Overall, Rogue Incursion has it's issues but the game fortunately ends when I was really starting to get sick of it. I'm hoping Part 2 makes some major improvements since while this game is has decent fundamentals, it's going to need more of a backbone to be more than just a "solid Alien game" where the license carries much of it's quality.