Titanfall 2 Campaign Review

There isn't many if any games where I have played 4 times and I still enjoy playing it even now. Usually there'd be things I'd be more critical on or aspects about the game that just annoys me now. Maybe there's parts of the game I dislike or portions of the game I feel is underdeveloped but no. Everytime I replay the Titanfall 2 campaign every few years and every time I play it, I still find the same level and enjoyment and awe I do when I originally played. Sure there are some issues but every piece media has problems but they are minor in the grand scheme of things.

One major aspect I like about the game is the story but especially on how it's told. Titanfall 2 follows the Half Life logic of the player getting to play out the journey with no major cuts happening unless if it's a load screen. With Titanfall 2, it's more of the bond between Jack Cooper and BT-7274. As the game's opening cutscene eloquantly puts it, "what truly separates the pilot from all the grunts and machines on the battlefield is the bond between a Pilot and his Titan". The story is ultimately about Jack and BT as they are reluctantly paired up together to deliver a distress signal about doomsday weapon that can destroy Harmony. It's a simple set up but it's told very well with Jack and BT's banter and how it's interspliced at the right time.

What also helps is how the game forgoes the issues that many FPS games had where the player character talks during cutscenes but never speaks during gameplay or just not have the character talk at all. Here, Jack talks and while the dialogue options seem pointless, it keeps the player in the moment of wanting to participate but without taking control away from the player and it adds small talk during the down time sections especially.

Jack and BT go through so much together through their banter and with them learning to become efficient together as the game foreshadowed with the quote I mentioned, it's hard for me not to get teary eyed at the ending of "The Beacon" mission.

Gameplay of course carries everything. Right off the bat, Titanfall 2's gunplay feels snappy and punchy and the weapons feel and sound great. You also get a cloaking ability but considering how large the enemy count is and how quickly enemies can put you down, you can use it as a quick way to break line of sight and then relocate to get the drop on the enemy.

What also helps is the movement system since for one you can double jump and you can wall run. What helps the wall runs in this game is that they are easy to do and they can be endlessly chained as well. Double jump is a good to carry the fast paced momentum. There's also the slide which can be fun to use when chained into a sprint and get some quick kills.

Okay, gunplay is good, it's mechanically sound and movement controls are great. What about the levels? They also don't pull punches either. First you have a solid tutorial known as the "pilot's guanlet" that goes over gunplay and movement. Then you got the a rather simple but elegant tutorial as you do 3 of something to restore BT. After that you go to well a made sewer level which is a great series obstacle challenges as you fight soldiers and suicide bombing robots. There's a level where you go through an assembly line that tests your platforming ability as you fight off hordes of enemies towards the end. Effect and Cause being the amazing level where you traverse through 2 different timelines and learn about the doomsday experiement. What's cool here in that it even encourages you switch when there's stage hazards too so what could kill you could help you progress through a level. The Beacon is a great downtime level where it is foreshadowed where you need to be at the start of a level as you slowly progress doing shootouts, puzzles platforming to get to that part. "Trial by Fire" a titan only level. The Ark where you have to platform through moving ships as you kill enemies and having BT do the throw again. It all culminates in The Fold Weapon where you get reign fire with the smart pistol.

Best part of all this? While this is no doubt a short game it never FEELS that way due to how amazing all these levels and everything is in the moment. The weakest level here is Trial by Fire and it's not because it's bad but because it's a Titan only level.

Might as well go to the negatives. The Titan parts while empowering can get boring during extended periods due to how simple it can feel compared to on foot combat. Bosses aren't that great while more going on that a lot of bosses in the genre, they suffer from the weak framework Titan gameplay has. The AI can also be rather stupid too constantly having them run into things or have no idea where they even are. I also find it disappointing that the grapple hook can't be used during single player.

Overall, these issues are minor in the grand scheme of things. Considering how much TF2 is a killer no filler campaign that I enjoy after beating 4 times is surprising.

Shadow of the Colossus(2018) Review

Shadow of the Colossus is a rather strange game to review. Not because it's terrible but because a lot of the games I tend to play multiple times and write reviews on tend to not lean so heavily to the "artsy" side of gaming. Playing SotC feels like a game you are meant to play once or twice at the most but a third time can enter into the realm of diminishing returns. You play it the first time back on either PS2 or the PS3 HD version and then a 2nd time with the Bluepoint's remake of it and then stop there. It can be said for a lot of games but it feels most apparent for me here. There is still a lot of enjoyment and thrills to be had from SotC, it's just not the kind of game you play because of how "fun" it feels to play.

The story is interesting in that not much of it is told through cutscenes. What cutscenes are here are very brief and the storytelling itself is either inferred through details with the sparse dialogue or in the environment. If you are one of those, "every storytelling medium should use the strengths of it's medium" people, I got a feeling you would no doubt champion SotC and Team ICO's games by extension.

What the story can be boiled down to is that you play as a nameless Wanderer and ride his horse Agro as you traverse a forbidden and empty land as you kill monsters who have done nothing to you to resurrect a dead girl. Is she your girlfriend, your sister or an innocent woman he helps out of reluctance? Up to intrepretation. It's an interesting way to tell a story over multiple hours without overly relying on cutscenes and dialogue by extension. It can be an intriguing story to ponder on.

Gameplay is what carries any game and I respect SotC in a lot of ways. Remember those overly long and drawn out enemy waves that plagued ICO? Gone. There's no combat to be found here which to me is the developer realizing their limitations. They know making another game with poor combat wouldn't cut it so they made a boss rush title instead.

I also respect the game for how much it carries itself on these boss battles since outside of these moments, you'll be spent traversing a large, barren and empty world with barely anything to do or even find.

So no enemy waves and no explorable world. The game is ultimately a boss rush game broken up with long horse back rides. Your time is mostly spent fighting these super large "colossal" giants and gameplay is spent trying to find their weak spots and performing the most painful acupunture on both the giants and yourself.

There are two aspects that help sell you on how epic it all feels: music and controls.

The music is almost a character in of itself. I'd say without this soundtrack, the game would fall apart almost immediately. Hearing the haunting music pieces as you are trying to get on to the collosi but then when you get on, these super heroic and triuphant songs start playing and it gives the player the feeling that he is barely hanging on to dear life. It adds so much to the thrill.

How Wanderer controls also plays a role and this divides many. You of course got the grip guage but the way Wanderer platforms around or how unpredictably he can move creates a sense of unpredictablity to the gameplay. Wanderer could struggle to move the way you want him to, he'll fall when you least expect it or the him refusing to grab on to a ledge the way you intended him to.

I argue unlike ICO's terrible combat that there is some delibrate aspects to this since it's supposed to create a feeling that Wanderer is this small insignificant being climbing on a creature that is way bigger than him. It makes the title feel less "gamey" and makes the act of climbing more tension. I dislike using either of them as defenses but considering how SotC has no explorable world and no enemy waves, might as well try to something dynamic to the gameplay.

As a result even if the gameplay does become diminishing returns after a 2nd time, it can still feel amazing to defeat a collosi with the gripe guage almost depleted and with that music playing.

The game isn't absolved of issues. For one using the light sword can be cumbersome since there's a lot of dark areas and the sword is useless when the player is under them making these empty horse rides last a little longer than expected.

Wanderer takes forever to get back up after getting knocked down. It could take about a minute and if you are fighting smaller collosi, you could get hit again and repeat the process.

Since SotC is a puzzle game, you'll get more out of it if you're a speedrunner since if you already know the collosi weaknesses beforehand much of the boss fight gameplay is cut in half. You are meant to slowly think and ponder on how to beat them.

The final collosi is the weakest since by that point, SotC becomes an actual platformer and the collosi itself can feel gamey in how scripted it can add plus the controls needing you to be precise now.

Overall, SotC is still enjoyable but can run into issues

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resyncned Review

This remake is a rather fascinating one on paper. You could say the idea of a Black Flag remake sounds "pointless" since one could argue that it plays "well" even know but I'm not sure if you could really say that about the original game. The story is good and is easily one of the series' better tales, many aspects of it's gameplay especially combat and stealth weren't that great even back then. A modernized version of the game does sound it could help make an okay game, a solid one.

Since I already praised it, the story especially for a franchise that has some characters I geniunely loathe(Ezio Auditore and his entire cast of characters) is surprisingly good. It was rather obvious that Ubisoft was trying to make a more "likeable" lead character again after the divisive if not outright negative reception Connor had at the time of Assassin's Creed 3's release. It worked here since while Edward Kennway is a charismatic lead, he isn't so likeable to the point where he can come off as someone who could never do any wrong or is always right like Ezio was.

For one, Edward starts off the game as someone whose broke and down on his luck and the interesting part is that his wife Caroline doesn't really seem to mind as long as he has him. Edward wants to change his down on his luck status and become more of a made man. He resorts to piracy and throughout the story, that slowly starts to become less of a viable option. He's becomes obessesed with the "Observatory" and he thinks that will get him out of that status. What really sells me on the story is how it can almost at times come off as a deconstruction of the AC series. Where Edward like the audience doubts the significance of the Creed but the more the story goes on, he becomes more accepting of it and views it more of a guide to help him out in life.

It's how all this happens throughout the game and how it feels like a journey is what sells me on the story. How Edward starts off as a no good greedy pirate to trying to make amends for all the wrong doing he did. It's kind of like the first Assassin's Creed with Altair but Edward Kennway has more of a clearly defined backstory this time.

The gameplay itself while certainly an improvement over the original game is nothing overly exemplary. With that said, an improvement is still an improvement.

You have an actual crouch button now instead of the stalking zones of the original game. So now, stealth feels like something that is actually possible. That does depend however since much of it can a game of getting to bush to bush and especially abusing the whistle feature and having enemies getting close enough to you to those said bushes to kill them. The only real way to be caught during these sections is if Edward kills a guard but he doesn't conceal himself and the dead body in the bush right away.

Since stealth in the original game wasn't really a high standard even for it's time with games like Splinter Cell Blacklist releasing the same year, this can be overlooked. I would prefer to have easy but doable stealth than having no crouching button and sprinting to bushes.

The frequent tailing missions are thankfully gone now. I don't mind a few tailing missions but the main story missions of the original game relied on them a little too much.

Combat is also better and arguably seen the most improvement. For one it's counter based and it's not nearly as easy to go on a chain killing spree and wipe out an entire small army. You need to parry and also guard break into order to effienciently kill enemies now. You can guard break through sweeping, kicking into walls, using Edward's guns, smoke bombs can help thin out the herd too. The only issue with combat is that the counter window can be very finicky and some bosses like Roberts can take an insane amount of damage to kill. I had to lower the difficulty here.

I'm describing the on foot combat a lot here but why is it that? For all of Black Flag's reputation of being a "great pirate, bad Assassin's Creed" game tends to be. That can be rather false. Many of the main story missions tend to be the on foot AC affair. Only a couple of the story missions at the most tend to involve the Jackdaw or anything sailing the high seas. Since this is the case, I'd rather put ship combat to easy and occasional get materials to loot to upgrade the ship due to infrequency of story missions that involve the Jackdaw.

Another massive boon this remake brings is that the modern day portions have been completely removed. So no more annoying pace breakers or reimagining plot points that never went anywhere like Juno dying in a comic book.

Overall, this remake did what it set out to do. Pick the AC game that isn't too fundamentally difficult to overhaul and refine that game. It's a decent game, now more of a solid one and is one of the couple games in the series I enjoy.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Review

When this game was first announced and it was said to be a Lego game based on Batman movies, it was going to be like the Arkham games and Rocksteady was co developing it, I said to myself, "this is Batman Arkham: The Force Awakens". After playing through it, that's exactly what the game was. By no means is it something I consider "bad", if you ignore it as an "apology letter" for games like Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it greatly loses it's luster for me. It also serves as sort of a "back to basics" reboot since Lego Batman 3 was going overboard with the greater DC Universe and it might've rubbed off the Batman only people the wrong way.

The narrative is kind of interesting on paper where it combines various aspects of Batman's on screen appreances like the live action movies, 90s animated series and the aforementioned Arkham Games into one narrative. It does kind of feel more interesting in concept than execution. You'll start the campaign doing Bruce's training in Batman Begins and Talia's there at the start this time unlike in the Nolan Trilogy. After that, you'll go through the Burton films and surprisingly even the Joel Schumacher Batman movies are featured here. You'll get into some run ins with some of Batman's comic villains but were in the Arkham games like Firefly and Black Mask. It all culminates with a homage to the following the Joker sequence in Arkham Asylum and one big homage to the Dark Knight Rises. There's also a shot for shot sequence of the Batman TAS intro too.

It can all feel very haphazardly put together since it combines various different Batman media with different tones and styles all into one narrative. Sure Talia is at the start this time but then she no shows for a while and you'll have different side kicks like Gordon and the Bat Family along for the ride. You also got Jack Nicolson Joker just out of nowhere turning into Heath Ledger Joker and there's even a weird tie in to the Killing Joke prior to the former.

The game's story can almost feel like a Batman history highlight reel than something fresh featuring Batman. This was definitely the point but it also goes back to my comparison to the Force Awakens I made earlier.

Gameplay itself is interesting in that it was more or less what the advertising entailed in that it was "Batman Arkhamlite" which while is true for aspects like on foot city traversal and the Batmobile.

Surprisingly, the actual combat and stealth shares a striking resemblance to the Spider-Man games by Insomniac. It was hard to unsee it. For one, remember how in the Arkham games of yester year required the player to use stealth with some degree of profiency in order to avoid Bruce getting pummeled by hitscan machine guns? Now, it's just large enemy waves where you can't even clear a room using stealth and it's just there to thin out the herd, like the Insomniac Spider-Man games. Enemies now give health drops in the middle of combat even on the highest difficulty. Health regain did work differently in Insomniac Spidey but the fact that you can get back health mid combat is something you couldn't do in past Arkham games. You had to clear out an enemy wave to get health back. There's also area of effect attacks that are marked with a circle or an enemy having a line of sight to shoot you to get out of the way. Enemies will also have try to shoot you from a higher vantage point too like in those games.

As easy as it is for me to throw in a "gotcha" moment for all the years when Insomniac Spider-Man was said to be an Arkham "ripoff". It just tells me that when Legacy of The Dark Knight isn't borrowing from past Batman media, it's borrowing from the very games that borrowed from the Arkham series itself. It can give the game the feeling of being "souless" especially if you don't hold care for or hold games like Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League with an extreme level of contempt.

Dark Knight difficulty feels quite superfluous in the grand scheme of things since you'll have to try hard to get an actual game over or if you die to the buggy platforming or misunderstand the solution needed to damage a boss. Not that I'm demanding challenge out of a Lego game but I thought this whole thing would amount to more.

The puzzles are just kind of there. You just activate detective mode, look at what's highlighted and then break the lego items to build them. Lego games of the past at least had you just keep smashing things to find what you need to build the level progressing item or choose a character who had the right skill set to build them but that's streamlined now too.

Overall, I don't dislike Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight, it's a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable game in the moment but it's existence and how it's made is hard for me to not look back upon my time with it an immense cynicism. I can say it's more consistent as a whole than Skywalker Saga was which is a complement I'll give.

Halo: Campaign Evolved(Playstation 5) Review

When this remake was announced and it being on put on Playstation no less I was like, "you could've just ported the Master Chief Collection instead". A remake like this does sound redundant on paper since the original Halo CE is often cited as an old shooter especially on consoles that still holds up today. With that said, while the existence of this game is rather questionable, playing it in the moment is "fine" at least for the for the first half of the game. It's not as nearly as much of a souless remake as the Metal Gear Solid Delta is. There's some interesting cutscene changes and some fun bonus missions here.

The best way of describing "Campaign Evolved" is that what if you had "Combat Evolved" but with the gamefeel of the 343's Halos and modern additions like sprinting, vehicle jacking and Halo 2's regen health. You also have the quest markers be there at all times rather than having them pop up at random points instead.

Story is much of the same but there is newly recorded voice acting and some cutscene changes. For one Miranda Keyes gets established early on as opposed to coming out of nowhere like in Halo 2. There is one hilarious cutscene change of two Hunters getting crushed by a Covenant ship at the end of the Truth and Reconcilation. Fohammer's model is actually shown and a really cool one of Chief fighting off Covenant before boarding the ship to get off Halo at the end of the game among others.

It's much of the same as a whole so it's basically just an excuse plot where it has slightly more going on than games like old Doom and Duke Nukem. It can be summed up like this: Covenant find Pillar of Autumn, Chief and Cortana crashland on Halo, find Captain Keyes, they find 343 Guilty Spark, there's a the flood, Halo is a doomsday weapon meant to kill them, blow up the Autumn and get off. It's as simple as I described similar to the vein as the original Star Wars before being retractively called a New Hope. There's not much in the way of interesting characterization and themeatic richness to be found here. It's as simple as I described it.

It's "fine" in the moment but it can be very simplistic and barebones compared to the multimedia franchise and expanded universe the series ultimately ended up spawning. The fact that much of the story was in a tie in novel would no doubt get scruntized if Halo was a brand new IP released today. World building without needing supplementary material was something even A New Hope had. There's no fun, destable or interesting villain here either.

Halo is an FPS after all and you came here for gameplay and for the first half of the game is quite good. Aspects of the game compared FPS of yester year is how streamlined everything is. No need to collect ammo since you just need to pick up weapons already on the ground or off dead enemies. Health management? No longer needed since your health regens so no need to worry about health pick ups.

Enemies are a lot smarter by comparison to those games where Covenant Elites will flank, move out of the way or will try to come up and ambush you if there shield isn't depleted. There's also the shield and flesh system where bullets drain flesh and plasma drains shields.

Vehicle sections are here too to break up the pace all though it's awkward to see the controls changed here since it now controls like a vehicle in anyother game

The environments are a mixed bag on the positive side, they are a lot bigger compared to the corridors and round circles and squares of shooters prior to this but at the same time so much of the design is copy and pasted which can lead to samey areas and bloated maps. You can tell that the devs of this remake are aware of this so they added nav points at all times now.

Some aspects I appreciate more now like how during the one section with no gun, it's there so the player can get used to controlling the camera. The first level is also meant to train you for the larger maps like Halo and also with higher enemy count and stronger enemies like in Truth and Reconcilation.

Assault on Control room is going through the same triagular areas 3 times and from then on the campaign gets weaker.

The 2nd half of the game is still very weak. If you didn't like the first half the game, then stop at 343 Guilty Spark because after the Library it's just the first half in reverse. You fight the Flood and all they are is that they swarm you and that's it. You point, you shoot, get hit, regen health, reload and then throw grenade every once and a while.

There are people who boil down FPS and shooters to "point and shoot". That's what these Flood sections are. They are very dull. The addition of sprint means that these sections are over faster and you could run past them on lower difficulties. The inconsistent checkpoint system is still very annoying but that is a Halo staple at this point. 

I did enjoy the extra campaign missions but they have more environment variety than the 2nd half of the game and there's no Flood battles.

Overall, questionable remake but still fun in the moment for the 1st half.

Metal Gear Solid 4(Playstation 5) Review

The common joke when discussing MGS4 for the longest time was whether or not it would ever leave the PS3. It finally did and with a solid functioning port too. I have a weird relationship with this title. I have beaten the game multiple times over the years but the more I start to play it, the more I start to realize that the game's strengths in terms of gameplay and even story comes Acts 1 and 2. Everything after the Act 3 tailing mission is where the game become diminishing returns and that's what sums up MGS4. It's the personfication of that very term.

I often start these write ups with story first but I have to here since you'll be engaging with that more than any other aspect of this game. It's been said and mocked to death how you'll spending more time watching cutscenes than actually playing the game. This has always been the case with the prior Solid games but MGS4 really wants to sell you on it's story.

It's easy to point out the issues like exposition that go on for ages, characters constantly reminding the audience of things they already know, the overuse of nostalgia baiting or mention of characters who weren't in the Solid games like Dr. Madnar, the constant retconning especially with many of them involving nanmachines, the rewrites or nothing changing for established characters, the open ended ideas MGS2 established being barely touched on or contradicted or how characters taking an excuriatingly long time trying to figuring things out. Two eregious examples is Meryl taking a long time to figure out that Johnny wasn't hooked on nanomachines or Otacon taking a few minutes to figure out Liquid Ocelot needed Rex even though it was already mentioned in the MK2 recording before getting destroyed.

What destroyed the story fundamentally was just how much of a disinterested and lifeless bore Old Snake is. The story never feels like you are going on a self discovering journey with him. Most of it is hearing other characters talk on and on and Snake just listens to them even him taking what someone just said and turning it into a question is gone. Now it's just replaced with awkward silence and cold indifference as characters around him keep on talking. Solid Snake at least showed enthusiasim in MGS1 and 2 but here he just wants to kill Liquid Ocelot and stop his insurrection because Campbell told him too.

Speaking of Campbell, this transitions me to the good. He and Raiden are some of the better characters in the game. Campbell in this game is in line with MGS1 where he witholds information from his friends and loved ones even if it means he'll hurt them for the greater good. Raiden also is one of the few characters Old Snake cares about and shows any conviction in saving. Him bringing out the best in Old Snake makes the former one of the better characters by proxy.

The cutscenes are beautifully rendered and are mostly very directed and the music, man the music it does so much of the heavy lifting where the story is unable to. It's a good thing these two aspects are top notch since without them, the game would be very insufferable to go through especially the ending that is as long as a feature length film.

This now transitions to gameplay and well thing is there's aspects about it I do enjoy. Act 1 and 2 feel like a streamlined version of MGS3. Octocamo is far better than the camo system in that game. The environments are more open and the psyche meter keeps the surivival system of that game without adding needless bloat. The controls are better now with crouch walking and there's actual third person grass crawling animations. CQC is more refined although it didn't get much use this playthrough.

There is also an encouragement to use the tranq pistol since in Act 1 and 2 it's about all out avoidance or you could help either side. Enemy gunfire can also tear thorough Snake's health quick on Solid Normal and it goes back to the ration system and no very slow regen health from MGS3.

If MGS4's was just this with occasional shakeups(notable one in Act 2 when tracking Naomi), I would be much more positive on the game but it isn't. Remember when I said it was diminishing returns? This is what I meant. Act 3 at the start has a decent tailing mission but it's divorced from the kind of stealth earlier. After that? It's just set pieces, boss fights and the stealth gameplay itself starts to dwindle the more the game goes on. You go back to Shadow Moses in Act 4 but since it is that level it has that more linear cramped block designs of MGS1 with annoying enemy placements for the Dwarf Gekko. You could cheese these with chaff grenades and I wouldn't blame you then it's setpieces and boss fights.

Act 5 has one very brief sneaking section and it's bosses and long cutscenes after.

Overall, MGS4 is mostly cutscenes and the story isn't very good with only Act 1 and 2 having decent writing. Same can be said for the gameplay. It can be easy to dislike despite not being bad on a technical level.

Cosmic Star Heroine Review

I'm not really familiar with turn based games outside of this and Child of Light. I remember being so mesmerized by the game at the time. A turn based game with a combat system I was really into, the soundtrack, a shorter RPG with quick action movie style pacing. It really did nail a lot in spite of not being familar with the genre in question and haven't really played many afterwards.

The story is interesting in that it's a bit of a double edged sword. RPGs are known for being long games and a time sync and this is game that gives you a quick and to the point experience. It's refreshing even now with only games made by the same dev and the occasional new release doing it.

As a result, the pacing goes by quick and there isn't too much meandering with the exception of going Rhomu and trying to get a macguffin there. The ealier parts and after do have the pacing go back to normal.

This can be a double edged sword like I said earlier. It's essentially what if a JRPG was paced like an action film? In action movies, you more or less expect the film to have charismatic characters with some depth thrown in here and there. In an RPG especially JRPG especially how long they are, it's expected that by the end, you have come to learn more and went on a big journey with them.

As a result, many of the characters at least on the main questline can feel like you don't know much about. It's like they're just there for the ride. It's charming but can also feel weird.

The soundtrack is amazing especially when I first listened to it. They add a sense of adventure and whimsy to the locations you are in. They are also catchy tunes in their own right. They can also be very chill to listen as well.

Combat is where things get interesting. You got the style system. What especially is interesting is how JRPG turn based battles can be infamous for how long they can last. Cosmic Star Heroine subverts this by encouraging the player to finish battles quickly. The longer they go on, the harder they become. The more fighting wears on, the less damage your characters will be able to take.

What helps with all this is hyper mode and when to time it right with your stronger attacks. There's also different enemies being weak to certain elemental weaknesses too or how you can give damage buff on a character one turn before a hyper mode activation.

To add to all this, there is different team up moves you can do with various party members. Depending on how experimental you get, you can end battles in wild ways too. Like for example, if you widdle down a boss' health down enough you can do a devastating attack that could to finish the fight but a risk is that you could have low HP. You can also finish fights by even using status aliaments too. You can charm enemies and even prevent them from attacking for one turn.

Two issues to level at the game is that the game requires you to play with certain party members so abilities and powers you were used to by that point are now taken away. You get to used to fighting with the new party members but then you swap again. By the time you get to freely swap, it starts to feel awkward since it's been so long since you used them. With a game as short as that, it's hard to get experimental with certain team ups too.

Second issue is that fights can go on for too long especially when you get a decent while into Rhomu and into the swamp level. Normal enemy battles have large amounts of HP and they start to feel like bosses. As a result, when you fight bosses especially when they can attack you twice in one turn, it becomes a game of them of constantly comboing you and then die. The game can get challenging even on easy at times.

Prior to the that the battles went on at a reasonable pace.

Overall, I still do enjoy the game and still give it credit for exposing me to a turn based combat system I find interesting. There are issues I notice a lot more now when replaying the game but there's lots of positives to balance it out.

Mafia II Review

Oh Mafia 2. I recently replayed the Definitive Edition of the first game after I recently finished The Old Country. I recall being lukewarm when I initially beat Mafia 2. The game seemingly didn't have the open world that Mafia 3 would be infamous for. If it didn't why was so I lukewarm on Mafia 2 but really enjoyed the first game's remake? Playing it again, I understand better.

I recall really enjoying to Mafia Definitive Edition and still do after replaying it. Mafia 2 on the other hand was a lot more hazey by comparison. I can see why that is now. I see on some parts on the internet that Mafia 1's story is cliched and Mafia 2 is more interesting due to being more ambitious. I disagree with that notion. I prefer a simple story that is well presented over a poorly presented complex one.

Mafia 1 was following the story of Tommy Angelo who starts off as a lowly cab driver but then discovers the mob, rise through the family ranks becomes disillusioned then tries to leave.

Mafia 2 tries have more subplots and be told over the course of multiple years and eras. A big issue is how there are a number of plot points and threads that ultimately go nowhere. Some examples include the hinted romance between Vito and the hooker. It seems that they're going to happen but once he goes to jail, this sub plot is dropped.

Vito's sister in Francesca shows up and here and there but has no promient presence in the story. A particularly ergregious example is during a chapter, you think everything about to wrap up but then out of nowhere she calls him about her cheating boyfriend. After this? Gone. In the same chapter, you get attack by the irish and get your house burned down out of nowhere considering the boyfriend subplot was disconnected from this.

Late game there's someone who is revealed to be a rat for the feds and the character is so underdeveloped that the twist can come out of nowhere.

No joke, on the last mission of the game. Vito's father who by this point in the story has accepted that his dad was a deadbeat loser turns out his death was actually a murder and he was standing up for his fellow workers. I usually try not to use the term "retcon" when something feels out of nowhere in a story since they happen with prequels and sequels but how out of nowhere this was, it can feel that way.

Don Clemente is also just randomly comes back in the story after seemingly is written out.

To top off all this, the ending can feel like a cliffhanger and is a massive step down compared to the first game's very well written conclusion.

After all this, what prevents me from being harsher on the story? The voice acting is very good and the chemestry between Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro carries A LOT of the game's story. Their interactions are very fun to listening to and the journey the two have together is the one narrative thread that persists throughout the game. If you cut this aspect out, I wouldn't even get to the end.

Gameplay is where it's really easy for me to get harsh on. Yes, Mafia 2 seemingly has the structure of the first game and it's remake where the open world is optional...but that is deceptive. Most of your time in Mafia 2 is spent driving. It's almost 60% of the game. If not 70%. You watch a cutscene that lasts less than 5 minutes and then 5-10 minute driving sequence then watch another cutscene and back to more driving. They changed the police system this time but considering how long driving to the next destination is, the cops can feel more like an annoying progression roadblock.

Compare that to the first game where car rides went by quickly and the car chases happened during big story moments. In Mafia 2, it's easy to call it downtime driving simulator. At times, it felt like the plot points dropped were supposed to be their own quest lines in a traditional open world.

Fist fighting is just kind of there. It doesn't have much going on to really go into detail on.

Then there's the shooting. Oh the shooting. I originally played on normal difficulty and thought easy mode might make it more bearable. It didn't. You can get down to critical health very fast on easy mode too.

A big issue with cover combat is that the higher you raise the difficulty or the more that is added, the longer time is spent waiting for health to regen. Mafia 2 is this. The big challenge of the shooting is hoping you can kill an enemy fast enough before they hit you and your health goes down to critical. Die? Do it all again since checkpoints aren't that frequent.

So much time is spent just waiting for health to regen and trying to land a shot on an enemy. Third party controller did add extra issues I will admit.

A good aspect of combat is that weapons kind of feel punchy. Sound design could be better.

Overall when looking back on my time with Mafia 2, I can't help but say to myself, "oh my god I spent hours of my life doing boring car rides and drawn out cover shootouts. I don't want to touch this again."

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition Review

As much as I have a soft spot for this game being one of the big titles that got me more into gaming that went beyond licensed games and the occasional Ratchet and Clank, playing it now made me realize more than ever the amount of flaws there is. When it comes to combat, visuals and music. DMC4 comes together but it is marred by so many other issues that undermine those qualities too. I'm going to try to be as quick and concise as I can be regarding how lukewarm I am on this game.

The story comes first and to put it kindly, it's remarkable how a plot for an action game like this can be hard to follow and underdeveloped at the same time. I'll give the game credit for it's moderately well done opening with the nice angelic choir song and later with Dante showing up shooting a religious figure in the head and the game starting off with a fight against him. Everything goes downhill after that. The story afterwards tries to have an overarching conspiracy plot that is very half baked with underdeveloped characters to partner it.

It's easy to tell since after Credo orders Nero to go after Dante. The thing is, you are searching all around for an empty town with no idea where he could be, his last sighting or where he might go next. Just hope you wander around for a while and he pops up. Compare that to DMC3 and even 1. In the former, Arkham attacks Dante and Vergil summons a tower, you go to that tower and fight him. DMC1 has Dante be hired by Trish who uses the face of the former's mother to encourage him even more to go there.

There's a locations that make me wonder why they are even there. There's a castle in the snow but also one in a forest? Why is there two locations that are both are a home base?

The characters are underdeveloped like Kyrie who is just soft spoken childhood friend of Nero's with nothing else to flesh her and is just a damsel. Credo is supposed to be Nero's equivilant to Vergil and Nelo Angelo but you only fight him once and then in the next scene after Santcus kills him. For a game that already reuses bosses, it's rather bizarre how quickly Credo is gone despite his importance to the story of being a rival to Nero.

Nero is a stock standard generic protagonist you could find in a shonen anime with not much making him stand out.

Wait, Devil May Cry already had an established protagonist, it's Dante. To give the story some credit, he's easily the best part. Watching the more flanderized version of him 3 but now more powerful than ever in 4 is fun to watch. Watching him taunt and make fun of his enemies is a joy to see. His personality, the way he acts, it creates a ludonarrative harmony with the gameplay....unforuntately, this version is more along the lines of Jack Sparrow. He's a supporting character in someone else's story and that is Nero. Why do we need the him? Dante's is already very powerful and it's not like he ages like a normal human.

Santcus is a unsurprisingly is an undercooked villain and with how powerful Dante is now. He's somehow supposed to get Dante into his statue of doom. With no worf effect on Dante and how powerful he is protrayed, it almost feels like Dante didn't want to finish off Santcus as a way being nice to Nero. Santcus has some vague plan on having the world worship Sparda but no idea how it was going to occur.

I've been going on about the story but it's just awful that it's hard not to write this much about it.

Gameplay fares better...when it comes to combat. Nero is initially fun to play as with using Red Queen combo A, B and C, alternate to buster, using snatch, going up in the air, hitting the enemy then charge Blue Rose up to do a powerful shot. However the only new ablitiy in combat Nero gets is Devil Trigger and the rest are puzzle items and navigation abilties.

Dante of course is better. You got style switch, different weapons and different guns to use and it's better than Nero's limited arsenal but Dante only has 7 missions and everything is given at a rapid fire pace. You know it's crazy when Dante gets a new fighting style and he's fighting a puzzle boss for his final level. DMC, a game acclaimed for it's combat having a puzzle boss. That's quite a low.

So you got more missions as a character with less and less missions with a character with more. There's also the whole thing of backtracking to the start of the game fighting the same bosses but that's been said to death.

The proud soul system is terrible. You only get a significient amount after a mission so Divinity Statue visits during missions when not buying items is pointless. You can't buy anything until a mission is done and get a good number of points to buy anything. This problem goes double for Dante since he has 7 missions.

The platforming and puzzle sections are unnessecary since it's combat focused but outside of a terrible one with spikes in Fortuna Castle, they aren't too annoying. The dice game bad.

Overall, good combat but a weak campaign surronding it.

Ruiner Review

This was a game I played a while back due to me liking the way it sounded. A twin shooter with over the top glory kills? Sign me up. I decided to play the game again just to see if I still would and I still do enjoy it. If anything, I consider Ruiner so much fun to play that I wished it was longer since the 4-5 hours it takes to beat the game can breeze by so quickly. Maybe 7-8 hours would be fine for me.

Ruiner is quite the charming game. It's an overly violent cyberpunk twin shooter that can almost resemble various cyberpunk anime. It even has Susumu Hirasawa of Berserk fame doing some of the tracks in the game. Speaking of that, they are quite good especially the overworld theme. It has much of his singing you can find in the 90s Berserk soundtrack although it shares some resemblance to the tracks of the Dreamcast game. The end credits theme is also quite good, I'm a little surprised I didn't spot him the first time I beat it.

The story is quite minimal but it does try to have more going on with it having what is seemingly an unreliable narrator. It's sort of vagely intriguing. There was one part of the game where a boss was called "TrafficKing" which can be almost too on the nose for me.

Gameplay is what is you'll primarily doing. Shooting and blasting your way through hordes of enemies. It does share similaries with Doom 2016 almost to the point where it feels like what if that was a twin stick shooter. Ruiner does have a dash mechanic a few years before Eternal would adopt it.

You can attack through melee and shooting. Attacks are mostly projectile with melee users. Battle are a fun ballet of using your Ruiner Gun which is similar to Robocop's Auto 9 with it's burst fire. You'll be switching between many guns with no reloading or two weapon limits either. Similar to how Neo was using firearms in The Matrix. That and constantly dashing and eventually doing the glory kills on downed enemies like I mentioned earlier. This is encouraged to get back health and be more aggressive in combat.

I did wish melee played a bigger role, I mainly did it occasionally on normal difficulty.

There's also a skill tree system that allows different for play styles and abilties. Not a big fan of this since I prefer to have it be structured in a more linear and universal way. This can sort of create "replay value" since I went with abilities I didn't get in my first playthrough. In this one, I unlocked and put points into a slo mo bullet time style ability similar to Max Payne and FEAR. It can help moving away from projectiles easier and aim shots with the sticks since I played on PS5.

You can also pause the screen and time and chain dashes but considering how fast and frenetic combat can be partnered with the bullet time ablity, actively using does feel like it would slow things down even more.

There also random deaths because a dropship landed and it instantly kills you.

Bosses are just okay and kind of feel like spongey fodder enemies.

With all this said, my only big issue is the length since it all this can feel so quick and breezy. This could be me having so much fun that I wish the game was slightly longer. The issues I mentioned are just minor in the grand scheme things especially with how enjoyable the action is. Since the pacing is so fast and it checkpoints so often that the super annoying parts never last long enough to feel insufferable.

Overall for a game I decided to just randomly feel like playing again. It lived up to my initial thoughts I had about it which is always a sigh of relief for me since it tells me I know my tastes well.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review

The best way to describe Shadow of the Tomb Raider is "arc fatigue" the game. The signs were already there in Rise of the Tomb Raider where Lara is learning the same lesson she learned in the 2013 reboot. Everything about the game feels like we should just move on already but let's drag things out furthur. It can be seen in the story and gameplay. As a whole, the whole title feels like making a new Tomb Raider for the sake of it but at the same time, she can't "become" the Tomb Raider she's destined to be just yet.

Story is a good example of this. Rise already shoehorned a bizarre rivalry between Lara and a secret organization bent on world domination known as "Trinity". This game is here to quickly wrap it up. It's easy to tell just by the way it starts. The after credits ending of Rise protray them as a group is very secretive and shouldn't be messed with. At the start of Shadow, Lara already manages to figure out who the leader is. Speaking of this "leader", he is super dull and uninteresting to the point I wonder how he's even a "main villain". I almost wished they went all the way and had Natla be the leader. The series did sort of play at her being the Lex Luthor and James Moriarty of the franchise and it felt like one big missed opportunity to not have everything come together and come full circle. Not that this would single handedly save the game's story but Dominguez has no screen presence and never does much of anything interesting other than, "I'm trying to save the world" monlogues.

There is an interesting premise of Lara indirectly causing the end of the world and has a sequence similar to Protragual from Assassin's Creed Rogue. It's squandered by much of the game taking place in Paititi where Lara spends much of the game chasing after one specific macguffin that ends in her not getting it. Much of the game is trying to get it with not much really happening. The only thing connecting all this is that Dominguez just so happens to the leader of the cult you are going up against in these parts.

It doesn't help that they retcon Lara's backstory again where Richard was still seeing his wife before his death and Ana from Rise isn't even there. She's still shook up over her father's death.

Things do pick up towards the end with a fake out death of Jonah and then Lara finally becomes the Tomb Raider...for real this time. It's hard to get enthastic towards this story since there's much of nothing in it.

Gameplay is much of the same. TR 2013 and Rise had combat, climbing and puzzles be broken and spread evenly throughout both campaigns.

Shadow on the other hand has shooting be downplayed considerably. The best way of describing the gameplay is that it wants to be a TR of yester year really badly. Much of the game is spent just doing platforming and puzzles. It might not be bad on paper but the DNA of the first two Survivor games are still here. You still have the scrap system and skill tree. Why would you want to use scrap to upgrade weapons when there isn't as much combat anymore? Why get combat related skills when the combat itself is much easier and downplayed?

Speaking of combat, the design of itself has been gutted. Stealth does seem to be improved with actual suspicion bars and a last known position system but this fall aparts when the guards notice you very quickly, are clumped together and have a hivemind system where one guard detection means the whole area is on alert. Gas arrows are gone and fear arrows come in late in the game. You can use mud to hide but the guard AI issues hold that bad too.

Combat itself? The arenas mainly just squared rooms with about many 4-7 guards that can quickly be gunned down. Where's the melee and shielded enemies, enforcers, armored enemies, enemies that throw grenades and molotovs, or enemies enemies from furthur distances? It's just the same machine gun wielders clumped together in a squared room. Drum mag assault rifle later on makes it more trivial

The hardest section is when you lose all your guns and you have to use stealth to get by but the AI issues especially the hivemind AI holds that back. Fear arrows are interesting but they come in too late.

Much of the game is puzzles and climbing. The latter especially. It does have more going than Uncharted does but having so much of the game be this reveals what little depth there is and how scripted it can be. It was always like this but Shadow dedicated much of the run time to it makes it more obvious so many deaths because it wasn't exactly what the game wanted me to do. It doesn't compare to the simple and elegant tile and grab system from the Core Design games.

Puzzles are "fine" but the over reliance on them just makes it feel like it wants to be the aforementioned TR of yester year. They are supposed to be downtime but after them it's back to more dull and more climbing again.

Overall, I've beaten Shadow 3 times over the years and it always manages to be a lukewarm game every time.